Supernova EMP- The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  He couldn’t tell if Maxine was taking any of this in. She was going to do this whether Josh was with her or not, unwilling to be deflected by any of his words, and that was clear enough.

  And when she responded, “Look, you can go back with the others, but I’m not leaving him here,” Josh knew there was only one way to try to keep them both alive and get them both out of Castle Jaxport. And that was to go with her now, and try to find Storm.

  They hurried on through the deserted corridors, their only guiding principle being the clatter of gunfire. Maxine spoke up as they moved at pace, “If Storm hasn’t escaped already, then he might have gone with the others to fight the fire. You know what he’s like. He doesn’t run away from danger.”

  Maxine was right, and Josh knew it. Storm, even though he had been through the most awful experiences imaginable between cancer and the enforced changes in the world, was not someone who shied away from danger. If there was trouble, Josh knew he would run straight towards it.

  But…

  “If he’s still here,” Josh said, knowing he was thinking it, so he might as well say it. “That’s the point.”

  “I can’t leave this place without knowing, Josh. You know that. I can’t.”

  “And I can’t leave you behind. I’m not letting you go, and that’s that.”

  Maxine stopped, put a hand behind his head, and pulled his lips down onto hers. It was the briefest of touches before she was off again, but the starburst of fireworks exploding in his chest told him that he was going to make up for those last five wasted years of existing in their marriage rather than living it.

  He followed on after Maxine. The shooting was getting louder, and the smoke getting thicker. Three civilian occupants of Castle Jaxport ran past them going in the opposite direction, carrying buckets and water containers. They didn’t give Josh or Maxine a second glance, so focused were they on their mission to bring water back to the fire.

  As the couple came down a thinner service corridor, five more apparent firefighters came jogging by, their faces weary and their shoulders drooping with depression. Josh could see they all thought they were fighting a lost cause, but it looked like they had been given no choice but to do as they were told. Their faces carried the oppressive ‘on the pain of death’ look that Josh had seen in so many of Gabe Angel’s people.

  “We’re getting close.” Josh moved himself slightly ahead of Maxine so that he would get to the corner first, his pistol raised. The gunfire had become more sporadic in the last minute or so, as if both sides in the battle were taking stock to see what the other side would do.

  Josh put his shoulder to the wall and inched forward. He could feel Maxine behind him, her body pressing into his back. He felt like he was holding back an eruption of anticipation and fear as her body trembled against him.

  “Just hold off until I’ve seen what’s what. Okay?”

  An affirmative grunt sounded from Maxine, but he wasn’t going to be able to keep a lid on that pressure cooker for much longer. Josh looked around the angle in the wall to the place where he and the others had entered the castle some forty minutes before.

  They moved forward another ten yards into a long corridor that ran along the back of the castle. There was smoke and a confusion of people at one end––Harbormen firing, while other people were fighting the fire. A small intersection fifteen yards ahead spilled out people with buckets heading for the flames.

  Josh could see the large hole in the wooden wall where they’d made it into the castle, blown through by the force of the propane tanks exploding. As they moved cautiously towards the intersection, he could see more flames, and bodies dotted about the floor—dead Harbormen. As well as the bodies, he noticed several other people in civilian clothes who’d hunkered down behind the makeshift barricade of wooden wall sections in front of trestles. Beyond them, more Harbormen were taking occasional potshots through the flames and ducking as, just as occasionally, fire was returned.

  Josh had told Donald to defend the area as best they could, but not to turn it into a raging inferno too soon. They’d been meant to just keep Gabe’s men occupied, not wipe them out. So, it seemed strange that there were so many dead bodies around.

  But then, as he looked further along the corridor, the explanation came into sharp relief.

  “Can you see Storm?” Maxine’s voice was impatient.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “There’s too much smoke,” she said. “What if he’s in all that!?”

  Josh couldn’t see his son, but what he could see drove his chin to the floor with disbelief. “No… but… oh my God…”

  From the intersection ahead, a Harborman was backing down the corridor with his hands in the air—he was backing towards them. Josh and Maxine were hemmed in on both sides by blank wooden walls. If this Harborman wasn’t going to bump into them, they would have to retreat, but then Josh saw something that made him freeze in his tracks. The Harborman’s arms were shaking, and his feet didn’t know where they were going because there was no way he could risk taking his eyes off the man who was pointing a gun at his head. The person who had caused Josh to freeze.

  “Gabe…” breathed Josh.

  The self-styled King of America was pursuing the Harborman on stiff legs and with a face like grim masonry. A livid, scabbing wound was visible along his cheek, and there was blood caked over his ear. His own arm was outstretched, and at the end of it, a Webley revolver—thick, black, and weighty—was held in his grasp. The Harborman was saying something that Josh couldn’t hear over the noise from the flames or the gunfire way back behind Gabe. But whatever he was saying looked from behind, for all the world, like he might be pleading for his life. Shadows from tallow flames framed in the background flickered along the corridor like a crazy carnival ride.

  But when Gabe began to shout, Josh could hear him clearly. “Deserter! Coward!” the king roared, and then he pulled the trigger on the Webley. The kick lifted his arm and the back of the Harborman’s head fell away in splinters of bone and hair. As the Harborman’s body toppled backwards, however, Gabe suddenly had an uninterrupted view along the corridor.

  He looked straight into Josh’s eyes.

  Gabe pulled the trigger again, but the Webley remained silent. The barrel was empty.

  Josh raised his own gun, pointed it at Gabe, and began squeezing the trigger. But then Storm stepped in from behind Gabe into the corridor and placed himself in front of his new father.

  Maxine came out from behind Josh, her pistol raised.

  Storm put up his hands.

  Ten yards of stand-off in a burning corridor that wasn’t going to last as long as this confrontation might.

  “Put down your gun, Josh,” Storm called out. “I’m gonna stand here until you either get the hell out of here, or our men back there realize what’s going on and come and kill you themselves.”

  “Well said, young man,” Gabe said. “You’re a chip off the old block after all.”

  Josh felt Maxine put her hand on his wrist and push the gun down. Gabe and Storm were safe.

  For now.

  “Storm, we’ve come to find you,” she called. “To take you back with us.” There was no mistaking the emotion in Maxine’s faltering voice.

  Josh could see that Gabe was reaching into his pocket behind Storm—maybe he was going for more rounds for the Webley, or maybe he was reaching for another gun.

  The Harbormen who stood another thirty yards down the corridor were still firing out through the flames while the firefighters beat at what tongues of fire that they could with blankets and jackets, waiting for more water to arrive. They were all occupied at the moment, but all it would take would be an order from Gabe or a stray glance, and they would be on this standoff in seconds.

  “Come with you?” Storm replied coldly. “Mom, you’ve lived a lie your whole married life, and, Josh, you did everything you could to break us up by not being there for us. Why would I want to come back to that? I have e
verything I want here with the king. Now, you’ve had your chance. Either run now, or you will die. Right, Dad?”

  Gabe had brought his hand out of his pocket. There glinting in the smoky light was a six-bullet fast loader for the Webley. All it would take for him to be ready to shoot at Josh and Maxine would be for him to unhinge the barrel, upend the spent cases, and slip in the fast loader, and the Webley would spit death at them.

  Josh stood his ground, and Maxine didn’t move.

  Gabe unhinged the Webley.

  8

  “Please, Dad. Please let them go. They only came back to get me.”

  Maxine knew she would never get used to Storm calling Gabe that. Dad. But right now, it was the least of their worries. Gabe sniffed at Storm as he gripped the Webley and clicked the barrel home.

  “Son, that woman tried to stab out my eyes. That man tried to burn down my home. With, I might add, me in it. That’s a capital offence around these parts.”

  Maxine looked at the wound in the side of Gabe’s face. If only she’d been quick enough to actually stab out his eyes, they wouldn’t be in this particular position, and then maybe Storm wouldn’t have been fixing to stay in Jaxport.

  Gabe waved the barrel at the bleeding body in front of them. “Look at the Harborman I just retired. All he did was tell me fighting the fire was a waste of time and that he wanted to get out and let it burn. What do you think I’m going to do to the people who started the damn fire?”

  Gabe shook with rage, and Maxine saw there was the purest instinct of murder pinballing around in his eyes—but she also noted that he wasn’t yet ready to push her son aside and open up on them.

  “I could take you from here, Gabe,” Josh said, trying to lift his gun arm again. Maxine put the pressure back onto it. Forcing it back down. It would be the work of a moment for him to shrug her off, but like Gabe, he was walking the cliff’s edge of his restraint.

  “No, Josh, please,” she said.

  “Going to risk it, are you, Josh? Risk putting a bullet in your boy just to take me out? I doubt that. I doubt that very much.” Gabe was a sneer made flesh. A catcall with its own gun. Maxine could see he was trying to press Josh’s buttons and to get him to fire first, which would then give Gabe all the reason he needed to kill them both.

  Gabe leaned forward, putting his lips closer to Storm’s ear. “See, son? This is how much they think of you. Action Hero here is so annoyed you’re not his son anymore that he’s willing to risk blowing your head off, just to see if he can take me out. So, tell me again why I should let either of them go?”

  Maxine, hoping that Gabe’s twisted feelings for her would stay his hand, if only momentarily, moved in front of Josh to shield him in the same way Storm was shielding the king.

  Storm turned his head slightly so that one eye could earnestly target his newfound father. “I just want them to live. Please, Dad. Whatever. You’ve won.”

  Josh tensed again behind Maxine. She reached back and gently took his wrist—keeping the gun pointing down.

  “You’ve won me,” Storm continued, turning back to Maxine and Josh while still addressing Gabe. “I’m happy you’re my dad. I don’t care about being a Standing anymore. I’m an Angel, and that’s all that matters. These are just people I know now.”

  That knotted in Maxine’s gut and festered there.

  “Killing them would put them out of their misery. You let them go, and this is going to burn them for the rest of their lives.”

  Maxine swallowed the hot bile that was rising in her throat. She searched his face for the true feelings behind his words. Hoping she would find something to hold onto. Or did Storm really believe that? Did he really want them to suffer so? Or was it just a ruse to get them out of there alive?

  But was there any point to living on if they had to leave Storm behind?

  “Run,” Storm repeated, locking eyes with Maxine. He indicated Josh with his Colt. “Mom, get out of here and take that sorry carcass of a man with you. He’s nothing to do with me anymore. Get out of here while you can, because Dad isn’t going to hold off shooting you much longer.”

  “Damn straight,” said Gabe. “But by all that’s holy, I am digging your thought processes, Storm.”

  Storm smiled, but he kept looking at Maxine the whole time. The moment hung over the precipice on a burning thread. Maxine could feel it fraying and curling them all away from safety.

  Gabe lifted the Webley and put it over Storm’s shoulder, still using the boy as a willing shield. Maxine could feel the heat coming off the flames now, but there was a different heat coming at her from Josh. His muscles were bunched and trembling. It was clear he wanted to lift his gun arm, but Maxine pushed it back down again. Soon, if Gabe or Storm kept goading him, it would be a battle she might lose, and then where would they all be?

  “Josh, I think we should go.” She couldn’t believe what had just come out of her mouth, but she knew it was true, despite the fact that she couldn’t believe what she was about to abandon there in the corridor. Josh’s arm went limp, as if she’d sucked all the strength out of it with her words. She looked back at him over her shoulder.

  Josh’s head tilted slowly, like the head of a giant in rusty armor. She imagined the squeak and protesting of the metal as that skull came forward to fix her with incredulous eyes—like the sound disbelief would make if it could transmit its anguish to the world.

  “You want to go?” Josh whispered. She could feel he was still on the cusp of action, but she hoped it was the action that would get them out of there to fight another day.

  “If we’re alive,” she whispered back, “then that still gives us a chance to find Storm and persuade him to come back to us in the future. If we’d dead, we can’t do that.”

  “Come on, Josh!” Gabe called, a black vein of laughter running through his words. “It’s time to crap or get off the pot.”

  And the burning thread chose that precise moment to snap, but not in the way Maxine was expecting.

  The explosion tore through the corridor with a hot gust like that which would come from the mouth of Hades. The wooden walls around them simply disintegrated into whirling splinters and they were all knocked off their feet, sent sprawling. The heat was intense, but rolled over Maxine without burning her, although Maxine felt cooked in her skin for the seconds she was in its grip.

  Maxine found herself on her back with the smell of singed hair in her nostrils. She blinked and opened her eyes into a rain of dust and the sound of moaning. She wiped at her eyes and tried to sit up, but there was something across her legs pinning her to the ground. She lifted her head. It was Josh.

  He was sprawled across her, the entire weight of his torso across her knees. He held his head and groaned in semi-consciousness, but he looked otherwise intact, and there were no visible signs of open wounds or leaking blood.

  Maxine looked down what was left of the corridor.

  Storm was kneeling over the body of Gabe, who was still and silent beneath him. Far beyond her son and Gabe, the firefighters and Harbormen had taken a severe kicking in the blast, which had torn an even greater hole in the side of the castle, but had perversely seemed to blow out the fire with its ferocity. The Harbormen who weren’t dead were getting to their feet and tending to the bodies of those who looked like they were.

  Josh rolled off of Maxine’s legs and tried to sit up, but he was too groggy and confused to manage it. He flopped onto his back as Maxine regained her feet and reached for him.

  “Josh? What happened? Was that Dad and the others?”

  Josh shook his head. “Maybe, but more likely another of the propane tanks got blown. Maybe two. Something hit my head. Hurts like hell. Are you okay?”

  Maxine rubbed the dust from her eyes. “Yes, I think so.”

  She fixed her gaze on Storm, who was still tending to Gabe. “Storm… Storm, are you alright?”

  Storm ignored her; he was still checking Gabe for injuries, and the man seemed to be unconscious.
<
br />   Maxine held out a hand to Josh and helped him up. Clouds of dust puffed from his hair, and his skin was deathly pale.

  “Storm!” Maxine called again.

  With a frustrated roar, Storm spun on his heel. Leaving Gabe behind, he walked towards them with his gun arm raised and his Colt glinting in the gloom.

  Seeing his approach, Maxine realized that she didn’t have her gun in her hand, and neither did Josh. They were both unarmed, and Storm was almost upon them.

  Storm snarled, “You are so lucky he’s still alive. So damn lucky.”

  The gun was pointed in Josh’s face. His arm was trembling, but at this range, there was no way that Storm could miss if he pulled the trigger.

  “You two will not say a word. You will get out of here now, and you will forget you ever knew me. I don’t want to see you again, not ever.”

  Maxine opened her mouth, but the bolts from Storm’s eyes transfixed her heart with the cruelest archery. She could see that he meant it.

  “In ten seconds, I’m going to call the Harbormen over here to assist the king, and I’m going to get them to set up a firing squad, and you’re both going to be the stars.”

  “What has he done to you?” Josh breathed out.

  “Woken me up to what a drag you’ve been on my life, Josh. Now, go. Ten… nine…”

  Maxine took Josh’s hand and led him through the debris, over to the hole in the wall which the second explosion had created. Through the smoldering ruin of this section of the warehouse, she could see the nighttime quayside, the braziers burning, the toppled container ships, and her father and her daughter standing there in the middle of it all.