As he was coming up onto the deck after his latest trip to the make-shift armory, a shadow fell across his eyes as he limped up the stairs and out into the grey light of the afternoon.
“What you up to?”
Ten-Foot was waiting for him. His voice was low but steely. “You been skulking around all day while we been working. What you up to?”
“Making an inventory.” Which in and of itself wasn’t a lie, as he was making an inventory—one of all the objects on the Sea-Hawk that could be used as a weapon.
Ten-Foot was tense, his chin set and his bald head glistening with sweat. “Inventory of what?”
Josh met the boy’s hard gaze with a placating smile. “Just gear and equipment. Just so we know everything we’ve got in case of emergencies. We don’t know how long it’s going to be before we make landfall, and even then, we don’t know how far we’ll be from home. You guys are doing so well with steering the ship, I thought I wouldn’t get in the way and would get on with some other way to be useful.”
Ten-Foot swore under his breath and Josh saw his fists tensing. “Man, you bosses are lazy. We’re doing the hauling and the liftin’ and you going around making lists. Why can’t I make the lists and you do the hauling and the liftin’?”
“Well, maybe we can do that tomorrow, alright?”
Ten-Foot considered. His eyes were thin slits, and there seemed to be a tremble to his whole body—almost imperceptible, but there nonetheless. He stood there like a tuning fork, waiting for the next note to be struck. The boy may have come out of one aggressive phase, but it looked more than likely he was phasing into another.
Josh was glad that he’d finished his inventory of the potential weaponry on the Sea-Hawk and that the boy was too wired to think to make him go into full detail about what he’d been doing. It seemed just to be a beef about workload and labor division, and nothing more—but as Josh had already noted, the unpredictability of everything now meant the situation could cut on a dime into something darker.
He clapped Ten-Foot on the shoulder companionably. The boy leapt back as if stung.
“Don’t touch me!” he yelled, raising his fists.
Josh put his palms up. “Hey, I was just going to suggest we went and got some lunch. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry if I offended you…”
And I’m happy to have discovered how ramped up his triggers were, Josh thought.
It was a trick he’d learned back when he’d been a cop, to determine how close to the edge someone was. A tiny invasion of personal space on the pretense of something innocuous and friendly that could easily be apologized for could give him an accurate measure of someone’s state of mind. Invaluable information in a tense situation like this. The quick apology and the open, unthreatening palms added a layer of believability to the action, and often dispersed the tension also. It wasn’t something you could use in every situation, Josh knew—especially if the other guy had a knife or a gun—but in a one-on-one like this, it told him everything he needed.
He vowed to keep Ten-Foot in his line of sight for the rest of the day; he would also warn Tally not to be alone with him, and he would, as far as his painful knee would allow him, work alongside the probationers on the rigging.
Over the next three days, Josh did just that, and Ten-Foot, although more sullen and quieter than threatening, kept a lid on whatever resentments were bubbling under his surface. Nearby, Josh hauled lines, worked winches, and steered the Sea-Hawk at Tally’s instruction.
Josh felt they were making progress, but the uniform greyness of the sky and the endless waves gave up no secrets in what that progress might be. There was no clear view of stars at night, but the sun during the day could at least be seen as an opalescent glow in the clouds, and it allowed them to guestimate their direction for the tack.
Tally’s still was working well, though, and they were getting enough fresh water to keep them going; the canned and dry food stocks were healthy, too, but if they were going to be out here more than another week or so—and Josh hoped that was the maximum time it would be—then they would have to start to think about rationing.
Goober and Puck were bending safety pins into hooks and tying them to lines baited with small, rolled-up pieces of rice or stale bread to see what they could catch from over the side. They were having no luck whatsoever, but Josh praised them for trying. He’d never been interested in fishing when growing up, so it wasn’t an area he’d ever gotten his head around. His dad couldn’t have been less outdoorsy if he’d tried. The man had said he saw “no point in fishing; no sport in being able to outwit an animal with a four-second memory.”
That had always made Josh laugh, but not so much now. When his friends had been going with their dads out on a ketch from the harbor to go sea-fishing, Josh had scoffed sarcastically. He definitely felt a heel about that now as he watched the probationers with their lines and makeshift hooks. Perhaps they’d strike it lucky, perhaps not, but he admired them at least for trying.
Some of the probationers slept fitfully, and others didn’t sleep at all. On occasions through the night, as Josh tossed and turned on his bunk with the throbbing ache of his knee making sleep impossible, he would sometimes hear rough laughter, or the hum of conversation from the deck above. There were never words he could make out, but one strand he could recognize was that Ten-Foot was doing a lot of the talking, and the others were laughing and howling with approval. There was nothing of the wolf about the howling, and it didn’t transmit a sense of fear down to Josh, but it was clear that the probationers, disparate group that they are, were starting to coalesce around Ten-Foot as their lode-stone.
They were trusting him, and looking to him to provide leadership in this time of confusion. They weren’t looking to Tally, and certainly not Josh. It was classic group dynamic theory in practice. A group will form, storm, norm, and perform. Leaders will emerge in times of crisis.
And Josh knew Ten-Foot was emerging. The thought made him realize it would be much better to have Ten-Foot as an ally, at least until they got back to land. A falling out with Ten-Foot under these conditions might mean a falling out with the whole group—and however good at de-escalating situations Josh knew that he was, one person could do only so much when push came to shove.
Josh got out of his bunk and, after using the facilities, went up on deck to join the others. The night was a little clearer, so that they could see some stars, as well as the Barnard’s smudge high overhead.
Ten-Foot sat with five of the others, cross-legged on the deck, and eyed Josh suspiciously as he approached. Everyone had stopped talking, like when a sheriff walked into the saloon of a lawless town in a movie. They were looking to Ten-Foot to deal with the interloper.
Ten-Foot didn’t say anything. Just met his gaze in the yellow light of the deck’s oil lamp. And Josh looked right back.
There was a moment that could have stretched on forever, with neither side willing to give. Josh waited three more seconds, smiled, and then, sitting down on the deck among the probationers, said, “I couldn’t sleep, either. Mind if I join you?”
Rather than standing over them in the embodiment of authority, he’d come right down to their level.
Ten-Foot hadn’t been expecting that. He blinked. “No. S’cool.”
The tension dissipated, and Josh spent an hour or so with the probationers, listening to them talk about their fears, their worries, and their hopes for what would come over the next few days. He didn’t contradict Ten-Foot, and in fact, he backed him up a couple of times when he suggested they should be doing more to catch some fresh food. The fishing wasn’t going well, but there were odd occasions when they’d see sea birds resting in the rigging or on the deck, and perhaps they could find a way to trap some.
When the impromptu meeting broke up as dawn started to creep above the horizon, and Tally arrived to shape the probationers into the crew for the day, Ten-Foot took Josh to one side.
Josh thought his intervention had gone
well. The others had warmed to him, and seemed to like that he’d been taking a conciliatory tone with Ten-Foot. Josh was tired now, but thought it had been worth it. However, his bubble was soon well and truly burst.
“I know what you’re doing.” Ten-Foot hissed. “It won’t work.”
Before Josh could reply, Ten-Foot kissed his teeth, and shook his head and turned, stalking away across the deck to take his position winching in the sea anchors.
So much for group dynamic theory, Josh thought bitterly.
Dotty-B saw something first, and yelled with delight. She came bounding over the deck with the news, but not to tell Tally or report to Josh—to tell Ten-Foot first. He bent his ear to her mouth as she told him what she’d seen, the breeze whipping her words annoyingly well out of earshot.
Tally looked at Josh, but he shook his head. “Leave it for now. This is a long haul. Just, as always, keep one eye on Ten-Foot. Don’t drop your guard, not for a second.”
Tally nodded and kept her hands on the wheel, but Josh could see that her knuckles were whitening as she gripped it.
The probationers had all left their posts and rushed to the starboard side of the Sea-Hawk at Ten-Foot’s command, and they were whopping and hollering, high-fiving and drumming their trainers on the deck.
As he arrived, Josh looked over their shoulders, between their heads and out across the expanse of gray Atlantic. Initially, the view made no sense to him because the object the probationers were pointing at was so far away, and because the sea was gray, the sky was gray, and the object itself was an off-gray dirty-white. A few seconds were required for him to work out what it was he was seeing.
It was difficult to tell with the distance. It could have been much smaller and thus nearer, or bigger and so further away. But one thing was for sure… it was there, and it was as large as life.
There on the horizon was a many-decked, modern ocean-going ship.
A big, beautiful, and life-saving liner.
14
The parking lot was dark, humid and hot. Cars shooshed by on the highway, their headlights like razors. She didn’t want this. Not now. She just wanted to go back into the bar and talk, laugh, and sing along to the juke box.
She didn’t need this.
The voice telling her that he loved her in one ear while his stiff body and tense jaw told a completely different story. Gabe Angel kissed her cheek gently, and she pushed him back.
“Look, no. I don’t want to. Not now. Not tonight,” she said.
Her heart kept fluttering in her chest like a butterfly in a jar of cyanide.
“I’ve paid for the room in advance. While don’t we just go back there and talk?”
“Because you don’t want to talk, Gabe. Talk is the last thing on your mind.”
Gabe put a hand on her shoulder and stroked the exposed skin there.
She remembered that the way the muscles worked in Gabe’s forearms had been one of the things which had immediately attracted her to him physically when she’d first met him six months before. She knew it had been a wholly shallow attraction, but he’d backed it up with being charming, funny, and smart, too. The rippling forearms and the chunky, well-defined calves on his legs had just been the icing on the top of the cake. When she’d cut inside the sugary crust, there’d been all kinds of goodness inside.
But she knew in her heart she wasn’t ready to go further tonight. Gabe Angel just had a way of being very persuasive. He’d asked her to head out of the bar to the parking lot to discuss something private, and then dropped the news that he’d booked a motel room for the night and wanted to take her back there now.
Gabe Angel—named by his parents that way deliberately, as Angel Gabriel reversed. Angel—pronounced Anzhel in the Latino way, although as far as she knew Gabe wasn’t of Latino decent, had had to put up with the name through school and college. Where some would have buckled at the ridicule, Gabe wore it as a kind of strength. It had done, she guessed, what his parents might have hoped it would. Toughened him and tempered him. Now Gabe, anything but angelic, liked to go against the notion of religious grace his name might suggest. He liked to outrage, and liked to provoke. She appreciated his sense of humor mostly. He wasn’t the kind of guy who seemed malicious, or someone who wanted to wound on purpose, but just someone who played up to the notoriety. Some of the professors in the classes they’d shared had loved him; some of the others had hated him. He was a guy it was difficult to have a neutral opinion on. He brought that out in everyone around him.
She found him infuriating at times, but mostly she found him wonderful.
But although they hung out, and to all intents and purposes they were a couple, she’d made it clear to him from the get-go that there would be nothing further than fully-clothed making out. She’d upset her conservative parents enough by leaving home and coming to the city to study. Getting deeply involved with a boy to the point of making the beast with two backs—as her father would have styled it—would break off the tenuous relationship she had with her parents, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. Anyways, she kinda liked the idea of waiting until the ring was on the finger. Not from any religious fervor or abstinence pledge, but because, as her mother had always said, “If you pick the right one, you’ll never regret a moment.”
And although Gabe had more than enough going for him, she wasn’t sure if he was the right one.
On the other hand, Gabe’s best friend, Josh—gangly, endearing, awkward-around-girls Josh Standing—had caught her eye a couple of times, and she sometimes wondered why he’d been looking at her so intently. When she’d looked back, he’d dropped his eyes as if stung, and it had caused her to smile. Was she being admired from afar? She’d wondered. Perhaps. But where Josh was the breeze in their group of friends, Gabe was the hurricane, and right now, it was he who was blowing her along with the rush of everything.
And yet.
Here she was…in a parking lot, being told that the die had been cast. the room had been booked, and that was all there was to it.
More kisses on her cheeks.
She didn’t know about love. She didn’t even really know about lust, but she wasn’t going to give up everything just for a roll in a no-tell motel.
“What is your problem?”
“It’s not a problem, Gabe. It has to be right. I want it to be right for me. Don’t you understand? There is only one first time; I don’t get another first time.”
Gabe snorted. “Yeah, right…”
She felt the anger rising up in her, and her voice rose when she answered, “I’m not lying, Gabe. I’m not. How little do you really think of me?”
Gabe laughed, throwing back his head. “It’s because I think so much of you that I booked the room. It’s because I want to spend the night with you. Don’t you understand that?”
She squeezed his hand. “Of course, I do.”
Gabe shook his hand free of hers. “Don’t take pity on me! Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not… I just…”
There were faces at the window in the bar. Some she recognized, some she didn’t. They were putting on a show for the patrons inside. One, a friend of Gabe’s she knew only as Jonno, raised a bottle of beer to his sneering lips and winked at them both.
“You’ve told them. Haven’t you?”
“No… of course, I…
“Yes, you have! Jonno knows! Look at his face. Were they taking bets on how long it would take you to get me there?”
Hands on her shoulders again. “Please, don’t get bent outta shape. We’ve been going steady for…”
“It may have been steady for you, Gabe, but for me it’s just been a fun thing with a guy I’m attracted to, but I do want it to be more than that…”
Gabe sighed, took his hands off her shoulders, and put them on his hips. She knew that he’d had a bunch of beers, and they’d flushed his cheeks, but that flush may have been harder emotions, too. Gabe was a persuasive, charismatic guy who had everything going for h
im, and in time, then, maybe she’d feel different about going that extra mile with him.
Just not now.
“There’s no point arguing with you. So, let’s just leave it.” Shaking her head, she turned away and took a step back towards the bar.
That’s when Gabe locked his fingers around her upper arm.
Maxine woke with a sob and held herself.
She hadn’t had the dream about that night for many years, and now the thudding rush of it pounded through her head like an express train. Storm still slept in his sleeping bag on the floor of the bar with dawn working at the dusty window. In the distance, she could hear a dog barking.
They’d found the roadhouse three days out of Boston on I-78 W, near the town of Willington, Connecticut. The door had been hanging open, and all the beer and spirits had been looted already, but there’d been some cans of corned beef in the kitchen, and some bottled water out back. It seemed the looters had enough fresh water for now, and had instead carried out the more pressing items. Perhaps they’d come back for the water, but seeing as Maxine and Storm only planned to stay for the night before heading on, she hoped they wouldn’t come back while they remained.
They’d not encountered many people on the road, and those they had seen had given them a wide berth. Everyone was as shell-shocked as everyone else, not to mention wary, and no one seemed to want to be neighborly to a lone woman and her ill boy. She didn’t blame them. If she’d learned anything from the run-in with McCready, it was that trust was in short supply.
There had been no sign of government intervention, either. No planes, no helicopters, no troops or National Guard mobilizations. No FEMA disaster relief operations. No Red Cross tents.
It had become clear, very soon after they’d left the outskirts of Boston behind, that whatever had happened in Boston had happened over a much wider area, too. Buildings were smoldering, cars were wrecked, and there was no power anywhere.
Supernova EMP Series (Book 1): Dark End Page 14
