Supernova EMP- The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Seeing Donald up close and personal—the way that he had dealt stoically and bravely with the death of Maria, how he’d fought like a tiger when the ranch had been attacked, and how he’d been the first to want to go into Jaxport to rescue her mom and brother—had garnered more than just her respect for him.

  She could definitely file the feeling she had for him under love.

  He was a much more complex man than she would have given him credit for before the Barnard’s event had turned the world upside down. Seeing him at his best, even though he was at the point in his life when finding things to occupy his retirement should have been the only challenge of his life, had been a revelation.

  As the Sea-Hawk had gone down, it had been her grandfather who’d withstood the waves like a rock in rapids. It had been Donald who’d thrown her unconscious father into a raft and pushed others in after him, including her mother. It had been her grandfather who had taken Tally and Storm by the proverbial scruff of the neck, screaming into the wind, “I’m not letting you two out of my sight!” as he’d dragged them into the last raft with Poppet after all the other probationers had been zippered into theirs, then waiting with them for the next waves to lift them off the deck and into the raging sea.

  It had been her grandfather who had held Tally and Storm tight in his arms as the raft had been buffeted, thrown, and crashed around for what had seemed like hours and hours.

  And it had been Donald who had been first out through the flap when they’d heard the scrape of stones and sand beneath the raft, emerging even as the storm still raged overhead and stepping into the shallow waters of a rocky inlet. Trees bending in the onslaught, the sky a yell of weather, the waters a witch’s cauldron of dark spells… and through it all, he had dragged all of them up over the rocks and then gone back to pull the raft out of the water, settle it on a raked but flat portion of muddy land, and put them all back inside of it to wait out the storm in safety and relative warmth.

  When the storm had passed, and they’d all gotten what sleep they could, dozing fitfully, her grandfather had left the raft and gone off to, as he said, “Reconnoiter the surrounding area, to see what’s what.”

  That had been an hour ago.

  “Should we go and look for him?” Tally asked Poppet, who was arranging the tumbled stores and weapons into a semblance of order.

  “He’ll be fine,” Poppet said in reply. “He’s like a cockroach. He’ll survive anything, that one.”

  Tally didn’t take kindly to the comparison, but she understood the feeling behind it. Donald was tough as old boots.

  Storm had left the raft, too, but Tally could see him through the flap in the newly bright, post-gale afternoon. He was sitting on a rock rubbing at his wrists and ankles, massaging the spots where he’d been hog-tied by their dad. He hadn’t said much in the raft when he’d woken and been released by Donald. As they’d been buffeted and tossed by the seas and wind, his face had been set, his eyes thousand-yard-staring into an unknowable distance. Tally had only caught part of the conversation between her mom and Halley as they’d brought Storm out onto the deck. Halley had been re-explaining the genetics of eye color that proved Storm was Josh’s son and not Gabe’s, but she could see Storm was now having some kind of crisis of confidence in his thinking. His eyes were lost to the horizon as he rubbed at his wrists. The circulation must have returned to them hours ago, so this was just an automatic movement—anxiety overspill, as her mom might have called it.

  She guessed he had a lot to be anxious about right now. She thought about going out to talk to him, but concluded that the best thing might be to wait for him to talk to her—to give him the space to find his own way back into the family, assuming that’s what he wanted. Tally hadn’t really understood what the lure of Gabriel had been for Storm—Josh had been the man who had brought him up, and been there for him most every step of the way—admittedly, only until the last few years, as things had deteriorated between their parents had Storm’s relationship seemed to change with Josh. But that was not the point. Dad had been there for both of them when they had been young. Not this crazy Gabriel Angel.

  But Storm had been so easily taken in and over. Perhaps the effects of the Barnard’s event hadn’t coalesced in her brother as madness, but as a yearning for something else. Something bigger than their little, normal lives in North Carolina. Or maybe he’d been searching for a way out from the fights and the battles they’d been dealing with, and Gabe had presented him with a route away from all that.

  Whatever the reasons for what he’d done, Storm looked like someone trapped in limbo. Tally resolved that she would supply the rope out this time, but she reckoned that Storm would have to choose whether or not to grasp on and pull himself in.

  16

  Once they were away from the huge black rocks of the beach, the jungle closed in around them quickly. Wherever they were, and on what island, Henry said that this part of it had not been deforested in the way many of the larger Caribbean islands had been. That suggested it might be the island they had been making for—the mainly unspoiled Dark Point of which Halley had spoken and where he’d had his vacation residence. Not having Halley with them now made finding him a priority just slightly below that of finding Tally, Storm, and Donald.

  The sun had set directly behind them on the beach, and so going into the jungle in an easterly direction to begin with, towards the mountain to find fresh water, was the best route to take right now.

  Once they’d found a stream and boiled the water, they would have to decide whether to traverse the island in a northerly or southern direction, keeping the beach in sight.

  “With just four of us, we can’t split up and go in two directions at once,” Josh had said, and they shouldered their way between the high, rough-barked trees of the interior. “Too dangerous.”

  Henry added. “We should go north as a unit when we can. Dotty’s raft washed up north of us… maybe the gale blew the others along the north coast. If we go north for a ways and don’t find anything else washed up, we can turn around and concentrate our efforts south, along the other shore.”

  “But for how long? At least if we split up, we can cover two directions at once,” Maxine pleaded as they made their way through thorny bushes, beneath the shade of high, unnamable trees with lush foliage and wide leaves.

  Josh felt glad that Maxine was less wired than she’d been the night before now that she’d had some food and sleep. He, too, felt the pull of wanting to find their kids, but also knew that if they went off half-cocked and didn’t take account of the survival situation they were in, they wouldn’t help themselves or their kids by making the wrong decisions. And in making those decisions, Josh couldn’t help thinking they should rely heavily on Henry.

  Henry, who had met up with Tally on the outskirts of Savannah, had been the son of a keen survivalist and prepper who had passed on much of his knowledge to his young son before he’d been killed by the forces working, ultimately, for Gabriel Angel. Henry had already proved himself invaluable in keeping Tally alive on the road north to the ranch, and again when they’d been separated from Maxine and Storm in Cumberland, before the trek back south to Castle Jaxport. He was an excellent shot, brave, and had a ton of survival smarts to impart as they walked.

  “We can survive here for a good while once we run out of food, however long that might be,” he offered.

  “You know what’s good and not good to eat, plant-wise, smart boy?” Ten-Foot asked. “In… this… jungle?”

  Henry shook his head. “Nope. But I know how to find out. We can hunt and trap animals and birds; there will be plenty of those. We can collect fresh seaweed from the sea—not the stuff on the beach—and boil it or roast it. Full of iron and vitamin C. That’ll keep us going. And if we fail to find success in our hunts, we can test what plants are good to eat and which are not.”

  Josh shook his head, dipping under a branch and holding another out of the way so Maxine and Ten-Foot could get through. “
How do you do that without killing yourself in the process?”

  Ten-Foot agreed, looking around the trees. “There’s gonna be a lot of stuff here just waiting to kill us.”

  “True,” Henry said. Josh could see the boy was enjoying imparting his specialist knowledge to them, especially to Ten-Foot. Perhaps he was auditioning for him in the same way Josh himself had never been able to do for Donald in respect to Maxine. “But there are a pretty simple set of rules to follow when you’re choosing which plants to eat. Wanna hear the list? I learned it.”

  Maxine and Josh exchanged glances—the boy certainly sounded like fine son-in-law material even if no one knew when another marriage ceremony might ever be carried out. “Sure,” Josh said. “Knock yourself out.”

  Henry grinned, cutting through some brush with his knife. “Never eat plants with thorns—basic 101 survival. Avoid plants with shiny leaves. Easy to remember. Forget fungi. Many are okay to eat, but many are also toxic or deadly, so it’s just not worth the risk.”

  Henry pushed through the next area of light brush in the dappled shadows and the ground began to rise. The comfortable heat of the morning was becoming sticky and humid at midday, and the discomfort of it all was compounded by the vegetation, even in the shade. Henry was out into a small clearing now, and he continued as they took a breather and a lesson. Ten-Foot looked at his nails and rolled his eyes a couple of times, but Josh knew that even though the probationer might be showing his aloofness, under it all, he’d be taking it in.

  “Umbrella-shaped flowers are a bad sign. Steer well clear. Same with white or yellow berries. More likely than not, they’re gonna make you hurl. And if a plant’s sap is milky or discolored, leave it alone. Ready?”

  Josh nodded as Ten-Foot side-eyed Henry. “You got any room left in that big brain of yours for anything normal, boy? You’re a walking internet.”

  Henry looked askance at the ex-delinquent. Their lives couldn’t have been more different before the Barnard’s event. Street smarts and criminal mentality versus books and a sense of preparedness for whatever might come. Swap them in their respective environments, and would they have turned out differently? Probably not, thought Josh. You could only do what you could for your kids, he thought, and after that… well, after that, they had to become their own persons. Henry had found a way to survive that was just as cast iron and knowledgeable as Ten-Foot’s experience with the underbelly of the world. They’d both gotten this far, though, and that must say something.

  “An internet is what we need right now. Carry on—north, and with your list please, Henry,” Maxine said to the boys. And Josh had to concur.

  “Okay. Avoid beans or plants with seeds inside a pod. If it tastes soapy or bitter, get it out of your mouth stat. If it smells of almonds, pass. Same as with poison ivy, dodge plants with leaves in groups of three. And here endeth the lesson on what to avoid entirely; once we find some plants worth trying, I’ll teach you how to test each part of each type of plant that you might use for food.”

  “Impressive,” Josh said. “You can be our chef.”

  Henry smiled. “You got it.”

  Ten-Foot carried on ahead of the group with Maxine almost but not quite at his side. Her determination to get water found as quickly as possible so that they could get on with the search ran almost as strong as Ten-Foot’s apparent desire to appear as useful to the group as Henry, and he showed it by taking the lead now, forging ahead through the brush and trees.

  Josh looked at the muscles in the boy’s shoulders, searching for signs of tenseness. He had been out of Halley’s improvised treatment program for two days now. There hadn’t been any signs of reversion to the Jekyll side of his character yet, but Josh knew he would have to keep the notion in his head that there might yet be such a change for the worse. Of course, the boy had changed of his own accord—without any treatment—a few times already. Perhaps the tides of exotic particles thrown out by the supernova had waned for the time being, and Ten-Foot would stay calm and amenable.

  But Josh resolved not to let his guard down, and not to stop thinking that Ten-Foot might still be a time bomb with not that many ticks left on the clock.

  Thinking that, Josh started as Ten-Foot, who had been taking up all his internal concentration for the last few minutes, yelled with triumph and threw his hand in the air before screaming and disappearing completely—dropped as if through a trapdoor—and Maxine, who had been close behind Ten-Foot, reached out to grab at him, got her fingers snagged in his shirt, and pitched over with a yell and was gone.

  Tally was building a fire with Poppet when they heard the shots. Three of them—their rapports dampened by the surrounding vegetation, but loud enough to send a flock of multicolored birds, dotted with several bright red macaws, into the white-flecked blue of the sky.

  Storm stood up from the rock where he’d been sitting, still lost in his own thoughts. He hadn’t helped collect the wood with Tally and Poppet, preferring to stay back at the makeshift camp while they did so. Since his cancer diagnosis, Tally had become used to him needing to sit out physical activity while undergoing chemotherapy for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but as the treatment had been a success, and he’d traveled from Boston and down the east coast of the continental United States to Florida pretty much under his own steam, she felt that it was just him being ornery and self-indulgent now.

  Especially when there was work to be done.

  However Storm was feeling about the situation with Josh and Gabe and the resolution Halley had provided, there was still work to be done, and she had told him as much. “Storm, we’re gonna need you to help out—you can’t leave everything to us. It’s not fair.”

  Storm had not answered at all, and had only moved when they’d heard the gunshots.

  Poppet got up from the fire and passed out weapons to the three of them from inside the raft. “Just in case we need them,” she said, looking into the trees and biting her lip. “We don’t know who else is on the island. Might just be Donald taking a potshot at dinner, but it’s best to be prepared.”

  Twenty minutes later, Donald emerged from the tree line some fifty yards away from the camp. His shirt was drenched with sweat and stained with blood, but it wasn’t his. It belonged to a dark-bristled, pointy-eared, wild-looking pig that was dead and lain across his shoulders with a lolling head. There were two bullet wounds in its side and one in its head.

  “Quenk,” Donald said as he threw the already gutted animal down near to the fire. “Collared peccary to you and me. Fast little critter, but I got him in the end. Good eating. Better than the rations in the raft, that’s for sure.”

  Tally’s grandfather began butchering the animal there in the sand and handing pieces to Poppet to hold above the flames on sticks.

  “We’re gonna be okay here, whatever happens,” Donald said. “However long we have to stay here, we’re not going to want for anything. All we have to do is make camp near some fresh water—and if tomorrow we head up this inlet, we’ll see where anything fresh is draining into it, and then we can start looking for the others.”

  “Do we have to?”

  Everyone looked at Storm. It was the first time he’d spoken in hours, and Tally felt the knots tying themselves tighter inside her as he finished the sentence. There was no anger in his voice or sarcasm—just flat seriousness. As if he was asking if it was okay for someone else to go to the store to get milk today instead of him. Matter of fact. Normal.

  Mirror world normal.

  “What are you saying?” The words were hot out of Donald’s mouth, like they were fizzing and spitting fat. “Yes, we do have to. I want to find my daughter and your dad, and I want Henry and anyone else back with us! If we’re going to get off the island, we need to find everyone. And damn it, Storm, you’re going to help us find them!”

  Tally had been aware, secondhand, that her grandfather had a temper—not really having seen it herself—but it was now as if something incendiary had been ignited in him. If eyes
had been gun barrels, Storm would have been shot to hell right now.

  “Am I?” Still no rise or heat in Storm’s reply. He sounded like he was talking about a sandwich and soda. “I don’t want to find either of them. Henry, I don’t mind, but Mom lied to me all my life and Dad almost broke this family apart.”

  Donald looked at Tally’s brother over the sizzling quenk meat, wafting smoke out of his eyes with maximum irritation. “While you’re with me, boy, you talk about your parents with the respect they deserve.”

  “Respect?” Storm asked coolly, with an arched eyebrow. “When did you ever treat Mom with respect? You avoided her when we came to your place as kids, and you hated Dad. You were famous for it. Why can’t I be as pissed with them as you were, Grandfather?” Now there was something in Storm’s voice… something nearer to what Tally was feeling.

  “The world as we know it is dead!” Storm hissed. “We’ve had the good fortune to wash up here with a clean slate. You said it yourself, that we can survive here with no problems. There’s food, we’ll find water, and we will be okay. I want that second chance, Grandfather.”