Whatever processes were going on inside Ten-Foot’s head right now, they seemed like they were working towards Josh’s suggestion. Ten-Foot took a shuddering breath, and then he relaxed his arm from around Tally’s throat.
Tally ducked out from Ten-Foot’s grip and she ran for Josh, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It all happened so fast. One minute, he was with Petersen, and then he had me around the throat, telling all the others you were trying to get the radio working so you could sell them out. I don’t understand why he changed so fast.”
Josh kissed the top of her head, glad beyond all measure that his daughter was out of immediate danger for now.
Ten-Foot looked exhausted. He was leaning one hand on the main mast, his other holding the knife loosely by his side. His eyes seemed unfocused.
His hand opened and the knife clattered to the deck.
Then, with a crack of unutterable pain, it seemed like Josh’s head exploded as a fresh killing headache inflated in his head like an airbag in an auto crash, and everyone once again fell to their knees, and then onto the deck to writhe, holding their temples and yelling their agonies to the four winds.
Josh couldn’t tell if the wetness on his cheek was water or blood, and he was too terrified of the pain that might greet him if he opened his eyes to check. So, with stiff muscles attached to joints that had been frozen in time, he reached up to his face, brushed the liquid off his skin, and slowly pressed his fingers to his lips.
The taste of water. Sea water.
His clothes were flapping in the breeze; he felt them rippling up his back, and for a few moments he really had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.
And then, as the events of the previous few hours came rushing back in a tumbling freak show of horror, he felt his hands involuntarily reaching out to find Tally. One hand found and rested on her arm. The groan from her lips told Josh she was in exactly the same state as him.
He opened one eye and risked a look along the deck. He could see Ten-Foot keeled over; a ribbon of drool laced from his lips to the varnished wood. Behind him were the other probationers—like Josh, collapsed to the deck. Some were still unconscious, others rubbing at their temples. One, like a flipped turtle trying to right itself, was attempting to lift one shoulder away from the floor and getting nowhere with his efforts.
The next thing that struck Josh was that it was daylight. When he’d slipped into unconsciousness, it had been full dark, coming up on midnight if he guessed correctly. Now the sky was a dirty yellow, filled with scudding, bruised purple-bellied clouds, pushed by a wind that was whipping across the deck stronger than it had before. It brought stingingly cold sprays of seawater up over the side rails and scattered them like rain.
The sails overhead were still straining; a rope had come loose from one corner of a sail at some point in the last couple of hours, and the canvas it had been holding to a spar was flapping crazily in the near gale.
“Dad… Dad, are you okay?”
Tally crawled up onto her knees. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin pale. She was shivering in the cold. Josh raised his head up, wondering if the pain of the headache had truly gone and gingerly rubbing at his temples as if doing so would make any difference at all to the internal processes. “I think so,” he muttered.
“We’ve been out for hours,” Tally said, sitting up and rolling onto her backside.
Josh shook his head gently, hoping that he wasn’t pushing his luck too far. The probationers, all except Ten-Foot, were moving now. Getting onto their knees or tentatively up onto their feet, holding onto ropes or wooden balustrades for support. Ten-Foot, hadn’t moved at all, and Josh, suddenly concerned that he couldn’t see if Ten-Foot was breathing, began to crawl across the deck towards him. He couldn’t summon up any burning antipathy towards the boy, even after what had happened with Tally. It was clear that, in some of them, whatever had caused the headaches had also made psychological changes. Captain Rollins was not a murderer, and Ten-Foot wasn’t a paranoid psychotic. The changes had affected them all in different ways. Now that Josh had seen it come on later in Ten-Foot than it had in Rollins, he was suddenly gripped with the fear of what might happen if he were next, or God forbid, Tally? What if they all had to take their turn at dancing the cemetery tango?
Spackman was up and staggering towards the mast with the flapping sail, his concern for the ship’s tack overtaking his physical abilities in the moment. Josh’s head was too swimmy right now to even attempt to stand, so his admiration for Spackman grew exponentially as he watched the man haul on one set of ropes while releasing other ropes tied to halyards, and the flapping sail was raised up and held in place with yet another set of ropes locked into place with complicated seamans’ knots. It looked like a terrible lash-up that Spackman had achieved through necessity rather than tidiness, but at least the sail was stilled and no longer in danger of ripping away from its moorings any further.
When he had finished, Spackman fell to his knees, head bowed. Exhausted.
By this time, Ten-Foot had recovered somewhat and begun walking towards Josh.
The ex-policeman stiffened, not knowing where Ten-Foot currently sat on his own personal violence-o-meter. Although Ten-Foot didn’t have the knife any longer, Josh knew he was in no shape yet to resist a physical attack.
Ten-Foot held out his hand.
“Sorry, man… I… I don’t know… what…” he stumbled, shaking his head.
Josh grabbed the proffered hand and let Ten-Foot haul him to his feet. “I don’t know either, son, but whatever it was is still happening, and we need to make sure we’re on our guard.”
“And…” Spackman said, raising his head and taking in a huge gulp of air, “we still need to find the captain.”
“Buddy up,” Josh said to the others on deck. “Pick a friend, someone you know well enough. Keep your eyes on each other. If you start to see anything out of the ordinary, a change in behavior, however small—and, Tally, I include me in this—call the others. Fast. Before things get out of hand, get that person restrained and leave them be until it passes. If Ten-Foot here is anything to go by, it comes on fast and doesn’t last.”
Ten-Foot looked ashamed, but nodded his agreement. “I dunno what happened; it was like someone flicked a switch in my head. Suddenly, it was full of thoughts… hate, and the desire to kill or destroy. I’ve done some bad things in my past, I know that, but nothing went through my head like this. It was horrible, man…”
Ten-Foot’s voice trailed off and he cast his eyes down. He’d already apologized to Tally half a dozen times, and he did so again now. It was like, along with the bout of violent paranoia, the boy’s standard-issue attitude against authority had dissipated at the same time. All that negativity had been drained out of him, as well.
It’s an ill wind…
The probationers finished getting into pairs, boys with boys and girls with girls, which left Tally, Ten-Foot, Spackman, and Josh.
Petersen had been brought up from the girls’ cabin to the deck, still bound and gagged. He strained at his bonds, his eyes rolling rabidly. He had not come down from his murderous rage yet and didn’t look like he would any time soon.
Josh twinned himself with Ten-Foot, and Spackman with Tally.
“We have no idea if Rollins has come through it like Ten-Foot or is still under the influence like Petersen. The fact that he’s not made himself known suggests that he hasn’t returned to how he was before, or he was injured and he can’t make himself known. I want all of you to stay up here on deck.”
There were groans about the spray and the cold.
“I know, but the alternative is, you get trapped in the cabin like last time. And that’s not safe. At least up here you have good lines of sight and can see what’s coming. It’s not going to take us long to find Rollins and flush him out. Not with four of us looking.”
Josh gave a loaded flare gun to Tally and kept on
e for himself. Axes were handed to Spackman and Ten-Foot.
“We’re armed and we’re going to be careful. Just stay up here and make sure you holler if there’s any trouble.”
Tally and Spackman took the middle deck as Ten-Foot and Josh went down two levels and began in the engine room.
It was dark down there, apart from the wan gray light coming in through a couple of small portholes. The engine, a huge many-cylindered diesel—all green painted metal, with big rivets and thick black grease—was silent and stank of fuel. There was no reason why it shouldn’t be in full working order, and when he checked the fuel tanks’ levels, the gauges suggested both the main tank and the reserve were almost at full capacity. That certainly gave Josh a welcome tingle of relief. Perhaps they weren’t so stuck out here after all.
Ten-Foot returned from the far side of the engine, holding his ax in the hollow of his shoulder and shaking his head. “He’s not back there.”
“Not this side, either. We go on.”
They made their way out of the engine room, through two watertight metal hatches that compartmentalized the lower deck in case of flood, and found themselves in the first of the holds. The air was thick and bitter. There were many sacks of ballast—rocks and stones used to weigh the Sea-Hawk lower in the water in lieu of cargo. She was a replica of a merchantman after all, and the hold, on long voyages from the orient, would have been full to the gunnels with exotic goods and wares, giving the ship the necessary draught to keep it stable. When a ship like this, Josh remembered Rollins telling him, traveled without cargo, they would fill the holds like this with rocks from huge piles of ballast kept at the docksides.
“So, why ‘Ten-Foot’? There’s nothing on your file, and I’ve asked you a dozen times before; now seems like good a time as any to tell me. Why do they call you Ten-Foot?”
Ten-Foot smiled for the first time in an age. “That’s just between me and the ladies, bossman.”
Josh snorted. “Very good, but you and I both know that’s not true. Come on. Why ‘Ten-Foot’?”
They moved beyond the sacks of ballast to where there were two large catering freezers. Stainless steel all around, and bolted to the hull so they couldn’t move around in a storm. Each was big enough to hold a man. Josh and Ten-Foot exchanged glances. Ten-Foot shrugged.
Josh reached out to the door of the first freezer, but kept his voice conversational so as not to alert anyone hiding inside the metal box of his intentions, “Come on. Tell me. After the last few hours, I reckon you owe me at least that.”
Ten-Foot reached for the door of the other freezer, their hands resting on the handles at the same time. Josh held the flare gun up. Ten-Foot held his ax three quarters of the way up the shaft, and high above his shoulder, ready to bring it down in a swift arc.
“I was nine years old. I stole a carton of Marlboros from the convenience store next to the school…”
“Nine? Marlboros? You started early.”
“I was a cono-sewer.”
Josh mouthed Three.
“The fat asshat owner ran out after me. I was fast, but man, I ain’t ever seen a fat man run that fast. He really wanted those cigarettes back bad.”
Two.
“I ran into an alley. Buncha kids from the school were skipping lessons, shooting some hoops without a hoop and hanging out. I burst through them kids with Fatman behind me like a bowling ball.”
One.
“End of the alley was a concrete wall. Smooth as you like, no hand-holds, nothing to grab onto, just graffiti. It was ten feet tall. Fatman almost had his hand on my shoulder, but I went for it, man. I leaped. I have no idea how I made it, but I did, up to the top of the wall like I was flying; held on, rolled over, and BAM! I’s gone. Ever since then. Ten-Foot. That’s me.”
NOW!
They opened the doors simultaneously and a near wall of defrosted water sloshed out of both freezers, soaking their feet and shins. Josh was so shocked that he fired the flare gun into the freezer and they both had to dive away as the charge exploded and filled the hold with dazzling glare, then smoke.
As they made their way out of the hold, dripping and cold, Ten-Foot said, “Only, no one else knows, so don’t you go telling, on the other side of the wall was Officers Horrigan and O’Shea. I landed on the hood of their patrol car and dented it in the shape of my backside. They whupped me good and sent me on my way, but not before they’d taken the Marlboros as tax.”
Tally and Spackman found Rollins in his cabin, hanging from a beam, face blackened by strangulation and eyes bulging. Next to him on a table was a piece of paper, on which he had written just one word.
SORRY.
8
Maxine ducked as Gabby swung the baton. The smoke was streaming past them, the light from the fires scattering and flaming. Maxine’s lungs burned, and her legs, even though she could breathe some welcome oxygen from the hot air, weren’t moving as they should.
Gabby’s face was a mask of vengeance and murder, her lips drawn back in hatred and rage. And her eyes burned like Boston, reflecting the skyline, spittle streaming across her chin. She raised the baton to strike down again, and Maxine tried to roll, but she was locked between the girders at the bottom of the escape stairs and the wall. She had nowhere to go.
All she could do was hold up her hands.
A dash of white, and a yell of anger flew out of nowhere.
Sudhindra crashed into Gabby as she began to bring the baton down. They both went sideways, smashing into the wall. Maxine heard a distinct and sickening crunch as one of those tangled bodies smashed their skull against the brickwork.
Maxine tried to scramble to her feet, but Gabby was quicker, rising from the tangle of limbs like a killer in a slasher movie returning from the dead. Suddenly, she was above Sudhindra and slashing down with the baton upon his already injured head.
One.
Two.
Three.
Stunningly effective blows hit home, and Sudhindra’s head deformed.
“No!” Maxine screamed and reached for Gabby with her despairing hands.
Gabby turned, the blood dripping from the baton, her eyes wide and wild, her mouth a circle of pure frenzy.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Gabby smashed back into the wall. Two bullet holes appearing in her chest, head snapped back.
McCready had only fired two shots.
The third BOOM signaled the lancing return of the headache crashing through Maxine’s head, bringing pain and horror to cover the anguish she already felt at seeing Sudhindra’s lifeblood leaking from the wounds of his beautiful head.
When Maxine awoke, it was daylight.
The city was still aflame. The night sky had been replaced by a glut of colliding clouds that were heavy with the promise of rain, which she immediately hoped would torrent down, extinguishing the burning city but also cooling the heat of grief in her heart.
Storm sat with his back to the wall of the institute, hugging his knees, coughing. McCready was pacing, biting at his thumbnail, occasionally taking off his cap and scratching at his head. Looking up at the sky and then muttering darkly to himself.
When she was able, Maxine smashed the window of a parked Suburban and then, after pulling a plaid blanket from the back seat, covered Sudhindra’s body with it.
She left Gabby’s corpse where it lay, pausing only to pick up the baton and wipe it clean on a handkerchief from her coat pocket. She closed the baton and offered it to McCready.
McCready shook his head, and so Maxine put it in her pants pocket.
“What are we gonna do, Mom?”
Storm looked wasted. It was nearly a day since the last round of chemo, and Maxine knew this would be when the worst side effects were starting to kick in. She gave him some antibiotics and painkillers from the medical bag, which he had to swallow dry, and she shook her head upon looking at the rising smoke all around, listening to the occasional crump of explosions off in the distance.
“I really have no idea. Other than, if we don’t get inside somewhere warm and dry soon, we’re going to get caught in one hell of a storm.”
The clouds were building now, bubbling up almost as if the rising smoke was adding to their threat, coloring them blacker and expanding them with dark energy. The last vestiges of clear sky disappeared as they looked up. The apartment building that had produced the worst of the smoke as she and Sudhindra had descended the fire escape had all but burnt itself out, and was now just a smoldering tower of grayish fumes from which occasionally pieces of concrete would fall away and crash down to the street beyond the institute.
McCready still paced, looking up, looking down, and chewing at a nail which Maxine could see was bleeding along the edges.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “It’s been twelve hours, easy. Where is everyone? Where’s the fire department? Where are the news helicopters, and the cops? Christ, where’s the Army? It’s like we’ve been left to fend for ourselves.”
There was a childish whine to McCready’s voice. Although he’d been able to use his gun twice now to save Maxine and Storm from injury, nothing else about him inspired confidence. She remembered back to Josh talking about his colleagues, back when he’d been a cop. There were those you could rely on to back you up whatever was going down, and there were some, a minority, who were more interested in their donuts and paychecks than allowing themselves to get in harm’s way. McCready seemed to be one of the latter, when what Maxine really needed now was a dose of the former.
She thought of Josh again, on that fool boat trip with the probationers, and taking Tally along as a female cover for the girls. If he hadn’t gone, hadn’t been such a damn boy scout and stand-up guy, he’d have been with them now. Yes, she knew that Storm had pushed him to go, telling him he just wanted his mom with him, but they needed him now. They’d have been together as a family, and whatever their differences, Maxine knew that Josh was always a good guy to have around in a crisis.
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 8
