Supernova EMP Series (Book 1): Dark End

by Hamilton, Grace

  Joey’s eyebrows went so high they threatened to fall off the back of his head. “So, now the cops are here. Can my day get any worse?”

  “Was a cop. I work in probation now. Well, I did. I don’t think I’m going to have a job to go back to.”

  Joey stopped on the stairs and fixed Josh with incredulous eyes. “You think this thing is more widespread than this boat and your galleon?”

  Josh nodded. “You said it yourself, Mr. Langolini…”

  Joey held up a hand. “Joey. Please.”

  “Joey, then… a ship this size, thousands of people on board, and no sign of rescue? I think there’s a very good chance that this might be a global thing. That star exploding… Before my satellite phone cut off on the Sea-Hawk, my son said he saw Professor Robert Halley making some pretty wild predictions about what might happen when the effect hit the earth. If he’s right, then it really could be a worldwide phenomenon…”

  Joey’s eyes narrowed. “Halley? The TV science guy? Schmuck with the ponytail and communist manifesto under his pillow?”

  “Well, I don’t know about…”

  “Climate change this, climate change that. Gahd. The sheer nonsense that poured out of his mouth. I can’t see any problem with better summers and a lot less Florida for the Cubans and Columbians to muscle in on our business interests. Global warming sounds like a winner to me. But this?”

  They reached the top of the stairs and came out onto the deck. They were on the starboard side of the Empress. Josh scanned the waves. Still no sign of the Sea-Hawk. Not even a dot on the horizon.

  The chill in Josh’s gut grew savagely. The thought of Tally, alone with the probationers and Ten-Foot—half psychotic with the influence of the supernova—twisted him up in a knot.

  “I have to get back to my ship, Mr. Lang… Joey. I have to get back to my daughter, if I can.”

  Joey looked hard at Josh, who immediately regretted the word that had come out of his mouth. Joey was smart as a fox and sharper than its teeth.

  “So, there’s no signal…”

  Josh shook his head, knowing there was no point continuing the lie. “Look… I’m… sorry. The Sea-Hawk was supposed to stay alongside the Empress… I don’t know what’s happened, but this wasn’t the plan. I embellished the truth…”

  Joey raised a hand dismissively. “Ya think I don’t know a man won’t say anything to stop getting extra ventilation in the head?”

  “I guess not.”

  Joey’s eyes were weighing up the situation, and when he spoke it was preceded with a resigned sigh. “I reckon we’re quits now. But you better be on the level with me from now on, ya hear, or I might not take your next transgression so amicably. Are we clear?”

  Josh nodded.

  Joey shrugged. “So… you got any idea how to get your sailboat back? Because I haven’t.”

  And Josh could only agree that he didn’t, either.

  Dotty-B finished tying the bonds behind Ten-Foot’s back. He was being held down by Puck and Marshal. There was a smear of blood on the side of his head where Dotty-B had hit him with the blunt side of a fire ax, sending him spinning unconscious to the deck. By the time he’d woken up, the probationers had secured his ankles in much the same way as he’d tied Tally, with Dotty working on his wrists.

  Ten-Foot squirmed and struggled. “I’ll kill you for this, you bitch! I’ll eat your heart out through your throat!”

  His ire was directed almost exclusively at Tally, who stood nearby rubbing the circulation back into her hands and stamping her feet to get them working again. She knew she’d taken a terrible risk telling Dotty-B where her father had stored all the weapons, and handing over the key, but she’d worked hard on Dotty-B—and with an argument that had worked emotionally and logically.

  “Look at him, Dotty,” she’d said. “He’s out there were the buses don’t run. He’s left Lemming and Banger to die on a drifting liner without a thought. Do you think he would think twice about doing the same to any of the rest of us? I know you’re sweet on Lemming, I could see that a plain as the nose on my face, but Ten-Foot left him and my daddy to whatever awaited them over there.”

  Dotty-B’s eyes had dropped, and Tally had known then that what she was saying was working.

  “You know how hard it is to crew the Sea-Hawk as it is. Can we really afford to lose three members of the crew just like that?”

  Dotty-B had shaken her head.

  “My dad would not leave any of you behind. Not even Ten-Foot. It’s a part of his character that drives my mom crazy, and has damn near split up my family, but if he were here now, he would do his best to look after all of us, and get us home.”

  Dotty-B had hooked her damp, tearful eyes to Tally’s.

  “I don’t want to go to Africa, and I can see that you don’t. I want to go home to my mom and my brother. And you want to get back to your family. Am I right?”

  Dotty-B had whispered a near silent “Yes” to that.

  And so, Tally had told her about the key to the captain’s cabin and what was kept there, and why getting back to the Empress was their best chance of surviving and getting home.

  Tally turned away from the struggling Ten-Foot, who was now lashed to a mast so that he couldn’t move from his position on the deck, and she took the wheel.

  “Right. Let’s get this ship turned around!”

  Poppet didn’t hug Joey as she came out of their stateroom, high in the superstructure of the Empress, but she greeted the case of Dom Perignon like it was her long-lost father back from the war.

  Joey sprawled on a sofa in the opulent three-room expanse of marble, deeply stained mahogany, and ornate mirrors with its wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out over a wide veranda to the sea beyond. The clouds were moving briskly, but there was no threat of difficult weather in them. That there was no sign of the Sea-Hawk was threat enough.

  Poppet dug her way into the case and pulled out a bottle, immediately twisting off the wire cage and foil around the cork. There was no pretense or artifice about her frenzied anticipation. This was a woman with a problem, and that problem was an unopened bottle. It was a problem that ran way deeper than that, of course.

  Joey just seemed pleased to not having her nagging at him for sham-pag-nay anymore, to the extent that Josh felt himself feeling sorrier for Joey and Poppet than he would have liked to admit. He could be sure that Joey Langolini, mob boss and gangster, had committed a myriad of crimes, and had destroyed the lives of too many people, but in this quiet moment, with Poppet working at the cork and Joey with his legs crossed, chin on his hand, his face awash with relief and also regret, all Josh saw was a depiction of a marriage broken. A couple of people each with their own agendas, neither of which came together to enhance the other. Just to break it apart a little more.

  Josh wondered what someone would see if they could look at him and Maxine on the same sofa, at different ends, close in physical space but a million miles apart in emotional space. Was Josh the addict, tearing at the wire and foil around the job that he needed to bring order and meaning to his life? Was Maxine Joey’s equivalent? Waiting for the moment when keeping the relationship together would be overtaken by the imperative to pull it apart?

  Josh sighed. He hadn’t expected those thoughts to hit him that hard right now.

  You only appreciate what you had when it’s gone, hmmm? he thought to himself, sitting down at the table and suddenly feeling a million years old.

  Was this the influence of the supernova, or was this a real moment of reality biting at him?

  He didn’t know, but he sure felt like hell about it, whatever the cause.

  A groan outside the door made everyone except Poppet look up. She just gave a little squeal as the cork popped out of the bottleneck just as Barney fell through the doorway, a line of bullet holes running up his back like stitches.

  20

  Maxine crawled towards Terry, whose tiny frame had somehow become separated from the other kids near Mary
, and hugged him tight as 9mm rounds tore across the ceiling from at least two of the windows.

  She covered the toddler’s body with her own and then rolled to take them both under one of the long refectory benches.

  Plaster and splinters rained down across the room. Whoever was shooting through the windows wasn’t trying to hit the occupants, but the sprays of lead were a warning to stay down, and stay inside.

  Nan was pounding her fist on the floor, her face red with rage. “The Klanes’! Damn them all to hell!”

  William was firing at the window from his prone position, but Maxine could see that he didn’t know who or what he was shooting at, and more importantly, William didn’t seem to care.

  He put a fresh clip in his pistol and started to drag himself across the floor towards the nearest window.

  Terry was limp in Maxine’s arms; she could still feel him breathing, but he was frozen in terror, his limbs unresisting and his face buried in her chest. She smoothed his hair and told him that everything was going to be okay.

  “They’re just trying to keep us pinned down!” Maxine called as Willian reached up and fired blindly again. A burst of fire was the reply, sending him skittering to one side as glass, wood, and wire exploded above him. “Stop firing! They just want to make sure we’re contained! You keep firing back and they’re going to keep shooting at us!”

  “Who made you the freaking expert, lady?” William hollered as another burst of automatic fire hit the ceiling.

  “Because, if it’s the Klanes’, they did the same to us on the road when they tried to get us to stop in the buggy! They’re not aiming for people right now! I don’t think they want to kill anyone if they don’t have to. They want us alive if they can manage it!”

  William reached up and emptied another clip through the window. “Yeah, well, I want them dead!” he shouted above the din of returned fire.

  “Stop firing, William! Do as she says!”

  William looked at his mother as if she’d just started speaking in tongues. “You mad? They’re shooting up our home, they’ve set fire to the barn, and they’re going to take everything away from us!”

  Nan sat up and fixed her son with the kind of look that could break corners off a concrete block. “I’m not dying today, and neither are you. Put the gun down and let me surrender or I’ll shoot you myself!”

  Sally Klane was a woman who wore her recent widowhood like a hollow-eyed mask. Her voice sneaked out of her mouth like it was ashamed to raise its volume beyond a funeral-level respectfulness. She was a little older than Maxine, with her hair tied back in a severe ponytail that dragged at either side of her face, like claws. She was dressed for practical work, not fighting a war, and she carried a weariness on her shoulders which spoke of regret over things descending so far down the circles of hell that she’d had to risk the lives of her family to bring things to a head.

  Nan was seated at the table as Sally paced. Once the surrender had been offered and the barn fire had been contained, Nan’s people had been brought back into the family room under guard of Sally’s ragtag band of brothers, sisters, and teens. William and the others had been disarmed, and had been sat in a huddle on the floor with their hands on their heads.

  Storm had come in last, with Sally herself. He wasn’t under guard, didn’t appear to be considered a threat, and had a pistol in his belt like the rest of Sally’s people.

  Maxine didn’t understand why Storm hadn’t been put with the others among Nan Childs’ clan, and when she threw him a questioning glance, he motioned her to wait until Sally had finished her negotiations with Nan.

  “Nan Childs, when will you get it through your thick skull that we don’t want to run you off your land and away from this quarry? We don’t want to steal your land. We want to share it!”

  Nan said nothing, but her face made it clear what she was feeling inside. Her cheeks were red, and her eyes burned with hatred.

  “I know we’ve never seen eye to eye, Nan, and yes, it’s true we’ve tried to take whatever legal action we can to prove our claim on the quarry…”

  Nan thumped the table. “You have no claim!”

  “Your daddy and my daddy owned the company, Nan. Your father swindled my father out of his half of the business. You know that; I know that. He boasted about it enough when he was drunk in the bars in town.”

  Nan seethed.

  “We only wanted what was ours. But now everything has changed. The world has gone mad. This is a perfect place to set up a working community. It’s defensible. It’s secluded…”

  “And that’s what I was trying to do!”

  “Yes, with threats and fear under a dictatorship. Don’t think we don’t know how you’ve threatened to kill Ralph’s Mary and the others if they don’t stay here and work? We know you’ve taken Storm’s medication, too, and him a boy with cancer! Where’s your moral compass, Nan? Where’s your humanity? He’s got cancer, and to keep his mom and him here, you dangled his drugs over his head like a death sentence!”

  Maxine looked at Storm, who was nodding along with Sally, his face set and determined. She didn’t think she’d ever loved him more than she did in that moment.

  Nan boiled where she sat.

  “We’d already taken up positions in the night when we saw the boy sneak out of the house and set light to the barn.”

  Maxine felt her own eyes widening as she stared at her son as he began speaking.

  “I thought if I caused a distraction, we might be able to get away in the chaos,” Storm explained to the room, backing up what Sally was saying.

  “It was just the confusion we needed,” Sally said.

  “Who let you out of the house?” William spat at Storm from his position on the floor, his eyes burning into Ralph, who had also been allowed to stand away from the others, with Sally’s people.

  “You did,” Storm answered. “Nothing to do with Ralph. You let me out because you were asleep on duty, William. This one is all on you.”

  William’s mouth clammed shut, and Nan’s eyes bored into him.

  The room fell into complete silence then, even the children who had been restless and whiny seeming to pick up the feeling in the room and still themselves without the intervention of the adults.

  Terry was asleep in Maxine’s arms, his tiny hands clinging to her sweater.

  Eventually, after what seemed like an hour of hush, Nan Childs nodded to herself. She sighed and then held out her hand for Sally to shake. “I was just doing my duty to my family in the best way I thought,” she said simply.

  Sally nodded, her face determined, but her eyes leaked compassion. “I understand.”

  Nothing else needed to be said.

  “I didn’t know they were out there. I just thought setting one of the barns on fire would make everyone leave the house, and then I’d be able to get back in to free you.”

  They were in the buggy, pulled by Tally-Two, back on the highway as the morning worked its way to midday. Storm was grayer than he’d been for a few days, and Maxine could feel the fatigue smoking off of him like a sick vapor. The anxiety and tension he’d experienced, going first past William—and Maxine could relate to that—and then going to the barn, checking to make sure it was empty of people and livestock, and setting the building on fire before being captured by two of Sally Klane’s boys… it had all knocked the little stuffing he’d had left out of him. His skin looked dry and ready to crack open. His eyes lacked moisture. There were wisps of blonde hair that had fallen from his head—some of it new growth—across his shoulders.

  “I thought they were gonna kill me for sure, Mom. Shoot me down because I’d been involved in their father’s death and stolen his buggy, but Sally stopped them. I didn’t think they were gonna believe me, but they did. Then they attacked the ranch.”

  Maxine reached across the seat and kissed the top of Storm’s beanie. “It’s okay, Storm. You rest as best you can, and we’ll stop in a couple of hours to have some food.”

&
nbsp; Her eyes flicked to the bags of provisions Sally had given them when she’d gifted the horse and buggy to them. Nan had shown good faith in her acceptance of the truce, and had handed the bag of medications back to Maxine without any ability to make eye contact with her.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d whispered under her breath.

  Good, Maxine had thought.

  They’d taken the track away from the quarry around 10 a.m., after a much-needed snooze and a plate of beans. Terry had had to be extricated from the folds of Maxine’s sweater by Mary before they could get going.

  “You made a friend for life there,” Mary had observed of her son.

  “I guess so.” Maxine had smiled back, ruffling Terry’s hair.

  “And of me, too,” Mary had said, reaching up and kissing Maxine on the cheek. Ralph had then dived in for a hug that would have squeezed all the juice out of an orange, and Maxine had hugged him back. It had amused Maxine to note how different it felt to hug Ralph in comparison to Josh. It brought back a rush of memories, taking her to when Josh had first hugged her. Big, awkward Josh, who hadn’t looked like anyone’s hero back then, but who’d become her hero that night, for sure.

  She urged Tally-Two on, the warmth of the day rising to combat the early chill. A wheel of the buggy crunched over a piece of broken tail light on the tarmac and, in her head, Josh was marching into the parking lot. Then he was dragging Gabe away from her, his hands covering his face as Josh pummeled his friend to the tarmac with blow after blow.

  Gabe had rolled into a ball and laid there sobbing while Josh had hefted her off the ground where she’d fallen trying to free her arm from Gabe’s grip.

  Gabe had struggled to his feet, bloody snot streaming from his nose.

  “You stay away from her, Gabe, ya hear! Leave her alone. You don’t put your hands on a woman. Never!” Josh spat at his now ex-friend.