Supernova EMP- The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Josh and the others had easily disembarked from their kayaks at the quayside and made it across the fifty yards of concrete in the pitch-black night, going very much unseen. Ten-Foot had given them what Josh considered to be vital intelligence about patrols around the port-facing edge of the bonded warehouse—there basically weren’t any, the implication being that Gabe’s forces were so vicious and cruel that all resistance would be neutralized.

  Everyone had been majorly suspicious of Ten-Foot, obviously—how could those who had experience with him not be? But in Josh’s opinion, the boy had lost much of his swagger and self-confidence. He was now much more like the boy who’d been on his caseload back when he’d been the kid’s probation officer. Yes, he had criminal tendencies, and yes, he operated on the periphery of society, but he wasn’t the murderer he had become, and neither was he still the lieutenant that Gabe had demanded he be for the Harbormen.

  Ten-Foot had told them how he’d heard from one of the Harbormen that Greene Davidson had been seen carrying an unconscious girl into the food store on the north side of the Jaxport facility. The description of the girl had matched that of Tally, and Ten-Foot had thus explained, “That changed something in me, I can’t explain to you. I didn’t get it. But I knew I had to get down there and get her away from Greene.”

  “And I’m glad you did,” Tally had said. “Another five minutes and I would have been toast. You saved my life, Ten-Foot.”

  Ten-Foot had looked sheepishly at the floor. “I can’t explain it. Yesterday, I would have let you die. Today… I just couldn’t.”

  He’d come back with Tally without his uniform, with only his gun and this story to tell. The story that had piqued Halley’s interest even more than Josh’s.

  “I just kept asking myself what I was doing?” Ten-Foot had said as they’d sat downstairs listening to his explanation. “All the anger and the hate just zipped away. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror when I thought about what I’d done—not just in Gabe’s name, but for the sake of it. For the fun. It was like I’d been filled up with anger—I was burning with it, Boss Man. Burning. And I couldn’t let anything happen to Tally. Greene was a dog… and I put him down like one.”

  Josh had remembered back to the change in the boy on the Sea-Hawk, and how a similar thing had happened to his mother-in-law, Maria. How she had changed from a raving lunatic to being meek and submissive, and then back to a screaming harridan with murderous intent. On the boat, Ten-Foot had made similar changes—if not as pronounced ones—but his cooperation had at one time been subsumed into antagonistic fury at other times.

  Halley had pushed up his glasses on his nose. “Was it gradual, this change of heart, or was it like the flick of a switch?”

  Ten-Foot had clicked his finger and pointed in the affirmative at the scientist. “That’s it, man. Like a switch was turned in my head. Boom! Gone. Just like that.”

  Halley had turned to the others then. “It’s in line with what I’ve been thinking for some weeks now. The rage and the insanity are not permanent changes. It’s very much dependent on the body affected and the exotic particles hitting the Earth in streams from the Barnard’s event.”

  “Is that even possible?” Poppet had asked, her face incredulous.

  Halley had nodded. “Well, you’ve seen the change in millions of people. Some have been driven to pure insanity, and with Ten-Foot here, it’s made him susceptible to higher levels of violence than even he would have considered acceptable in the past.”

  “And for me,” Josh had said, “it’s been a falling blanket of depression. Waves of it. There was a time on the Sea-Hawk where I even contemplated taking my own life.”

  Tally’s eyes had widened in shock at the admission, but Josh continued. “That’s just not me. I don’t think like that—but since the Barnard’s event, I have. It comes and it goes. Looks like everyone has a different experience. And some people are not affected at all.”

  Halley had warmed to his subject. “It must be due to a change in the serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain. These exotic particles—whatever they are—are acting as suppressants in the brain, very much like others are stopping the movement of electricity through metal. This is all way outside all known knowledge of physics and biology, so it’s just a hypothesis, and I’ll need to carry out some more experiments and tests—as best I can—but there very well might be a way to counter the effects of these exotic particles in the human brain, in the same way I’ve managed it in small pieces of electronics. Maybe.”

  “But first,” Donald had said with an air of finality, “we have a battle to win and some people to rescue.”

  The group hadn’t needed to be told twice. They’d taken their equipment, Molotov cocktails, weapons, and other explosives, down to the water’s edge where Donald, Henry, and Tally had found a boathouse stacked with abandoned boats used for urban kayaking trips, and made their way downriver to the harbor.

  It had been a twenty-minute paddle across the flat calm of the waterway that led to the Jaxport Harbor. As they’d approached, they’d been able to see braziers burning at the front of the warehouse, leading on to where the main entrance was heavily guarded, but the water side of the facility had been deserted. The Harbormen hadn’t expected an attack from the water.

  They’d tied up the open-framed kayaks right by the hull of a nearly overturned container ship that had spilled its contents over the quay. Moving against the darker blackness of the ship, they’d moved across the apron to the warehouse and set their charges. Falling back thirty yards in case of something going wrong after setting those charges had been the best decision they’d made that night. When Donald had lit the petrol-soaked rag in the top of a cocktail and launched it through the air, they’d had no idea what was about to happen.

  The thermite had done its job precisely as Halley had expected it to and burned a hole through the thin metal of the warehouse wall, as if they’d cut it with a torch. Unfortunately, as they’d found out half a second later, there’d been a store of propane bottles placed behind it, and these blew apart in huge gouts of flame, tearing a hole in the wall which was the size God’s can opener would have made. Flames had scorched the concrete and overturned a row of industrial-size garbage cans. Smoke was punching up into the air, as well, ready to bruise the clouds.

  The rush of heat and the whirling shrapnel went over their heads, raining down around them with a pattering of flaming debris. Through the hole in the side of the warehouse, Josh saw that fires had already been set off by the blast, and they could hear screams and handbells being rung to alert the people inside of the fires.

  Halley looked at the huge hole in the side of the warehouse, the licking flames, and blackening propane bottles beyond it. “Perhaps a little more damage than I was expecting.”

  “You don’t say,” Josh said, getting to his feet and brushing splinters of wood out of his hair.

  The others were getting to their feet as well, checking their weapons and pulling Molotov cocktails from the crate in which they’d been transported.

  “Everyone ready?” Josh asked.

  Nods of affirmative assent came from around the assembled company. “We have a job to do,” Josh said, the fire from the warehouse crackling along with the quiet energy in his words. “You all know what you have to do. Let’s do it.”

  And with that, they moved towards the flames.

  6

  Josh double-tapped once, then twice. Four shots total, each one impossibly loud in the confined space. Both Harbormen fell before they had a chance to return fire, their arms wheeling and their legs crumpling as they crashed into the walls.

  Josh, Karel, Henry, and Ten-Foot, with Jingo on their six, moved as a unit down the corridor.

  The hole they’d blown in the wall of the warehouse and the flames were behind them. The fire from the propane tanks hadn’t yet leaped across the divide to Gabe’s Jaxport palace, but it wouldn’t be long before that happened.

  Donald,
Poppet, Halley, Filly, and Martha were back there defending the exit for when Josh and the others would need to use it as an escape path.

  Ten-Foot pointed ahead to the end of the corridor. “We turn right up ahead—Maxine and the others were kept there.”

  The only light in the corridor came from guttering oil lamps which burned in soot-blackened glass. They were dotted down the corridor every ten yards or so, leaving a dark oily residue on the ceilings above them. There had been decorating work going on in this section of the castle—the walls were being painted royal blue with gold trim.

  You couldn’t fault Gabe for his ambition, Josh thought dryly.

  There were still handbells ringing in the distance as Harbormen were being called to fight the fire. If things went to plan, Donald’s group would engage them and keep them busy while Josh and the others got on with searching for Maxine, Storm, and the others.

  They turned the corner and stopped. Josh took a second to process what he was seeing. Two Harbormen were down, injured, but not by gunfire. They had both been opened up across their chests with an unimaginable ferocity. And slithering in the blood between them, trying to get up while at the same time stem the flow of blood from a gaping wound in her neck, was Grace.

  There had been some sort of fight here with knives or bare hands or a combination of both. Everyone had ended up injured—fatally. The Harbormen were dead and Grace was dying. Her lips aspirated droplets of blood as she tried to rise, her knees buckling after she managed to get up on them, causing her to fall forward again. Her eyes locked on Josh, and he felt the lightning of recognition fizzle between them. For a second, Grace’s eyes cleared and she nodded, almost just to herself, before she fell forward across the bloodied bodies of the Harbormen. Her hand twitched once and went still.

  It was over in less than twenty seconds.

  If this had happened to Grace, what might have befallen Maxine and Storm?

  “Come on,” Josh said, stepping past the bodies and trying not to look down on the carnage, breath catching in his throat and his heart kicking up a quickstep in his chest.

  They reached the corridor where Ten-Foot told them Maxine and the others had been kept. The doors were open and the rooms were empty.

  “This is not what we needed to find!” Josh hissed, running his fingers through his hair. “Dammit all to hell!”

  Karel turned to Ten-Foot. “Where else might they be? There’s no way they’re going to be outside the castle with the others, so where could they be?”

  Ten-Foot shook his head. “Maxine was under guard the whole time. If she isn’t here, she’s going to be in the stateroom with Gabriel––other than that, I don’t know.”

  Josh’s thoughts raced. “Wait. Grace was out of her room, right? And that was here, too?”

  Ten-Foot pointed to the door into the middle room. “She should have been in there. They didn’t let her out, either. She was too crazy, man. Too crazy.”

  “Then, if she’s out, there’s a good chance she escaped. And if Grace escaped, maybe it was Maxine who released her. Yes? Am I being crazy? Or does that follow?” Josh looked around the faces for someone, anyone, to tell him his thinking was sound.

  Henry gave him the support he needed to accept his summation. “Yes. It’s possible.”

  Josh fixed his attention on Ten-Foot. “If she was going to get out of here, which way would she go?”

  “Not to the front entrance, that’s for sure,” the young man replied. “She’d not make it through the guards on the inner compound.”

  “Then where? Come on, Ten-Foot––where? Think.”

  “There’s no back way out. Nothing. You have to go through the front entrance. Past the staterooms, into the throne room, and out through the great hall. That’s the only way.”

  “I know what I’d do,” Henry said.

  All eyes turned to him.

  “I’d create a diversion. I’d hide until there was a good chance of getting out unseen while they were dealing with something else.”

  “Something like the diversion we’ve created at the back wall?” Josh said.

  Henry nodded. “You got it.”

  Josh began stalking off down the corridor, and the others followed his lead. “Then if she’s free, she’ll be biding her time near the entrance, waiting for her chance. So, that means she might be close by. Come on!”

  The party picked up speed as they made their way towards the throne room. Almost immediately, they were forced to hang back as a phalanx of Harbormen carrying buckets of water and fire extinguishers rushed along the main thoroughfare, too focused on their firefighting mission to check on who might or might not be crouched in a side corridor.

  One last Harborman filed past, intent on getting to the emergency, and Ten-Foot pointed his SIG at him. Josh shook his head and pushed Ten-Foot’s arm down. “No,” he whispered, “let them go. We don’t need a battle here.”

  Ten-Foot looked like Josh had just kicked his puppy, but he nodded.

  When the fire detail had disappeared, Josh and the others jogged onto the thoroughfare. There were a few civilians there—cooks and servants rushing along with pails and more extinguishers, all of whom looked at them strangely but said nothing as they passed… obviously concluding that the heavily armed party wasn’t worth tackling right now. Josh waved them on with his pistol, and they rushed off with expressions of sheer relief on their faces. Josh wondered if they would even raise the alarm about them being there. Existing under the yoke of Gabe’s oppression would not be something anyone sane would welcome. Maybe the servants would welcome the castle burning down, though. Josh would have if he’d been in their place.

  Ten-Foot led them down a wooden-walled cut that took them to the back of the dais where Gabe kept his throne. It was obviously the rat-run the king had used to spirit himself away with Storm and Maxine when Tally and the others had started firing.

  There was a black drape pulled across the path, which Ten-Foot peeled back a corner of so that they could look over the throne room. They had a good view of the bleachers and the doors that led out to the hall, beyond which sat the entrance to the inner compound.

  Josh hadn’t really taken much in when it came to the throne room before, and now as he looked over Ten-Foot’s shoulder along the length of it, he was struck by how completely absurd this fantastical construction was. All these people on the edge of survival had been forced to build it or face the murderous rage of one man who’d managed to convince a small army of thugs to follow him.

  It was ever thus, wasn’t it? When people were scared and unsure, they would happily follow someone who told them they had all the answers. The whole edifice was a monument to a cracked ego, this castle a ludicrous construction which said everything that needed to be said about Gabe and the view he had of himself.

  A ragged line of civilians was filing into the throne room from outside, encouraged forward by Harbormen at gunpoint. They were being brought in to fight the fires that must surely have been spreading by now, and coming with more buckets and containers of water which had fairly obviously been taken from the quayside. Other inhabitants of Jaxport were shuffling back the other way with empty containers and pails to go pick up more water to haul back inside.

  Still, distant gunfire told Josh that Donald and his party were proving to be the thorn in the side of Gabe and his Harbormen, just as he’d hoped they would be.

  Josh squinted along the line of Jaxport civilians as they were herded and kept moving by Harbormen.

  And that’s when he saw Maxine.

  She came out from the side of the bleachers and, keeping her head down, joined the line of people filing out towards the entrance. She didn’t have a bucket or extinguisher, but she was trying to hide that fact by walking close to the person in front of her so that he shielded her some as she walked quickly past Harbormen.

  Then Josh saw Larry, three or four paces behind her and also walking empty-handed, with his head down and his shoulders bunched, as if we we
re expecting to be found out at any moment.

  A cry from a Harborman froze the blood in Josh’s veins. As he watched, one came forward and struck Larry around the head, sending the old surgeon spinning to the ground in a sprawl of arms and legs. The Harborman drew his weapon and pointed it at the man. “Stop the line!” he shouted at his comrades. “This is one of the king’s prisoners! Search the line!”

  The line halted. Faces turned back to the captors, sheened with sweat and grimed with soot. Everyone wore expressions that equaled masks of fear and anxiety. All except Maxine, who was burying her chin into her breastbone.

  As Josh watched, Harbormen went down the line checking faces as they went. They would be on Maxine in seconds. He could see she was visibly shrinking where she stood. Trying to be invisible, trying to not been seen.

  But it was far too late for that. A Harborman put his hand on her shoulder and pointed his Colt at her temple.

  “Got her!” he shouted to the others. “I’ve got her!”

  Maxine knew the hand was going to fall on her at any moment. She knew that she was going to be found out right here and right now.

  So, she’d planned some contingencies. The concealed gun in her dress spat twice, and the Harborman went down with two bullets in his femur, screaming and rolling.

  Maxine dove for the nearest bleacher, hitting the low front wall awkwardly and spinning over the top of it in an uncontrolled barrel roll that crashed her to the floor and sent the gun spinning out of her pocket and far from her grasp. She knew the game was up even before she tried looking around for the gun. It had fallen beneath a bench and clattered to the floor level under the bleachers. Now, not only had she shot up several Harbormen and knifed the King of America, but she was unarmed and at the mercy of the next Harborman to stick his gun over the wooden wall and shoot her where she lay.