The way it was always going to end.
“I have more than enough reason to kill you where you kneel, you insect. Don’t think by giving me the silent treatment that you’re going to force me into a rage where I’m going to kill you quickly and cleanly, Josh. Not a chance of it. Just one of the crimes you have committed against me and my kingdom should see the pestilences of hell visited upon your body for all eternity. Combine them all, and your death will come down a well-worn line a long, long time from now.”
Gabe leaned forward in his chair, resting an elbow on the table, his index finger playing idly along the length of the scar on the side of his face. “You won’t just beg for death at the end, Joshua Standing, you will embrace it like a lover.”
This was not the Gabriel Angel from Josh’s teenage years—the charismatic jock who everyone had loved and who the awkward Josh had, for a time, even admired, looked up to, and called a friend. That Gabe was gone. He’d gone at the very moment he’d treated Maxine so appallingly in that Raleigh parking lot. When Josh had intervened, whupped him, and left him embarrassed and with a foundry-hot anger burning in his heart.
That Gabe had been replaced by this… creature. He’d obviously gone and gotten himself an education––or perhaps his rich father, a successful import and an export businessman, had bought him one. Because where before Gabe had been a simple and popular boy, Gabe the man was a scheming, ambitious, and dangerous enemy to everything Josh had stood for. Even before the Barnard’s event, he had tricked and drugged Maxine in a squalid act of revenge––which Maxine had spared Josh from finding out about for many years––but the supernova effects had supercharged a deep and abiding psychopathy in the man, who was now living out his twisted fantasies. Being a king. Being the one in power. Being the man who held the life or death of anyone he chose in his hands. Without the Barnard’s event, Josh considered, Gabriel Angel would have been a rich fool, a golf-club bore with a trophy wife and children who hated him. But since the Barnard’s event, he’d found the motivation to grasp power, and the ability to take people with him in building an empire on fear and pain.
“You know what I did when I found out you’d been in Parkopolis, Josh?”
Parkopolis was the embryonic town––little more than a colonial ranch house surrounded by tents on the outskirts of Thunderbolt, Georgia––which had been created by Gabriel Angel’s outlying underlings and the near equally psychopathic Trace Parker. Josh had fallen into his clutches after making it back to the U.S. on the Sea-Hawk.
“You know what I did?” Gabe repeated.
Josh didn’t even give him the satisfaction of a blink.
Gabe rolled his eyes, and then he whispered, “Pearls before swine,” with an empty snorting laugh to himself, next announcing, “I did a little dance. That’s what I did. I did a little dance. Me! Can you believe it? Here I was building my own castle, reaching out across the land to control and build the Harbormaster’s empire, and I was getting a second bite of the cherry. I was getting the chance to finish what I’d started with you.”
Josh kept his eyes on Gabe. There was nowhere else to pin his concentration now, and if he had to listen to this dreck before he died, then he’d listen to it. It wouldn’t make any difference to the situation to hear it, and he would not show that it was affecting him––because that’s what Gabe wanted. And you didn’t give Gabe what he wanted. So, he listened. Face blank. Eyes hard.
“So, I sent out my people to find you. I knew there was a good chance you, Maxine, and your brat of a daughter might take my son to Donald’s pathetic little house on the prairie. So that’s where I sent my men. There was some chance you might go home to the Carolinas, too, so I sent men there, as well––they burned your home. I thought that was a nice touch.”
The pang in Josh’s heart over his home in Morehead City didn’t reach his face, not even creasing his eyes.
“I’ve been dogging you at every step, Josh. From Georgia, to West Virginia, to Castle Jaxport, to Dark Point Island––I have been on your trail. You might have gotten yourself some breathing space here and there, but admit it, boy, I’ve had you at every turn. When we saw the washed-up life rafts and we encountered you when you attacked my boat upriver, I knew that you would try to come for me. How could you not? I was your son’s father, after all. How could you not extinguish that burning agony in your soul by leaving me and my men to their own devices?”
Gabe poured some wine into an ornate goblet which looked like a prop from a pirate movie.
“We’ve been watching you since you made it to Bluehills, Josh. I’ve had men around you from the moment you left Evergreen. Do you think I’d be so stupid as to leave you to make your plans? We mined the beach, then waited for you to come. Watched you prepare and lay in wait.”
Josh blinked.
Gabe smiled.
“I’ll give you massive congratulations for getting yourself onto the Grimoire. We didn’t see that coming, but your silly little catapults and your stones and your attempts to trick us into believing you were low on ammunition––they were all mind-numbingly stupid.”
Josh blinked and licked his lips. The room was hotter and smaller than it had been before. His knees were hurting against the hot wood, and the revelation that Gabe had been on top of everything they’d been doing for the last two days was smacking into his punch-drunk heart like a haymaker.
“So, perhaps now would be a good time,” Gabe said, sipping at his wine, “to tell you about the traitor in your midst.”
And that gave Gabe the reaction he wanted from Josh.
23
The palm trees on the shore were alight, throwing long orange reflections across the water towards Gabe’s ship. Maxine was pressed against the trunk of another tree with a knife at her throat, while the Harbormen who had come upon them as they lay dazed and in pain after the explosion continued rounding up the stragglers and bringing them back to where Maxine was being held.
Tally had a small gash in her forehead which was leaking blood down her cheek, but her eyes, flicking towards Maxine as she was forced to her knees, told her that her daughter was ostensibly okay. Storm was brought in a few moments later. His clothes and hair were a little singed, but he was going to be okay, too.
Everything had been going to plan. Josh and his crew had been in the water and on the other side of the Grimoire. Donald had signaled with one wave of his arm at the pre-arranged moment, just as he’d passed under the ship’s bow, and the signal had been seen in the bright moonlight through the binoculars Maxine had been holding.
She’d then given the signal for Ten-Foot, Goober, and Marshal on the catapults––each catapult was made up of two wooden piles driven deep into the sand with bungee rope stretched between them––to prepare the first shots from their respective piles of stones. The practice they had had back at Bluehills, across the river, had told them that the one hundred and fifty yards across the water to the Grimoire would not be an issue once they got into range. It had taken just three or four practice shots each before the fist-sized stones had begun to clatter into the side of the ship, and the Harbormen had begun to fire back. The catapults had been quickly abandoned then, and they’d all taken up their positions along the beach behind the large rocks ready there to provide them cover.
Maxine had felt that everything was working fine until the beach had blown up behind them.
If they’d still been at the tree line with the catapults, they would all be dead or dreadfully burned by now. As it was, the roil of fire had been blown out by the detonation, and the force of compressed air which had sent them flying or crashing into the rocks had been enough to cause a welter of damage. The Harbormen who’d set off the detonation had come crashing down the beach then, swarming over the rocks and landing upon them like hellions.
Maxine had been dragged backward by the hair, a knife edge digging into her throat, as the Harborman who’d taken her hissed flatly in her ear, “Don’t make me gut you. At the moment, Gabriel
wants you alive, but don’t make me hav’ta tell him you died trying to escape. No one wants to see that happen, right?”
The Harborman had twisted around her, pushed her against the trunk of the tree, and pointed the tip of his knife to the middle of her throat. He was tall and broad, a beard bushing on his chin, and his pale blue eyes stood out in the sickly orange light from the nearby flames, where dry vegetation was reigniting the fire from the near-extinguished embers that lay scattered everywhere.
He stank of sweat, and his breath was like stale air from a tomb. There was sand in his hair, and his face looked like it had been smeared with soot deliberately to disguise his face while he and his men had watched what Maxine and the others had been doing.
“We should have detonated while you were still in the trees,” Pale Blue said, “but orders is orders, I guess.”
There were at least eight other Harbormen bringing in the probationers. Goober and Scally were disorientated, and the boy kept thumping his ears with the palms of his hands as if he was trying to get them to start working again. Lemming and Marshal were kicked into the circle and covered with guns and knives. Maxine heard a scream, a rattle of gunfire, another scream, and then Ten-Foot was dragged into the circle, too. The Harbormen punched and kicked at the boy on the ground. Pale Blue, who appeared to be the leader, barked at them to stop, but they carried on for another good twenty seconds of vicious beating. When they did finally quit, their faces were streaked with sweat and exhausted strings of spit dripped from their lips. One of them wiped his hand across his mouth, dug his boot into Ten-Foot’s side, and said, “He killed Zack and Beedle. We should crucify him on a damn tree.”
Ten-Foot groaned and rolled in the sand, bringing up his knees to cover his stomach.
“Maybe we will,” Pale Blue spat, “but not until we get our orders. Frayne?”
A younger Harborman with a straggly blond beard and a closely shaved skull peeled from the team, stepping over Ten-Foot as he did so. “Go signal the Grimoire. Tell them who we have and that we’re awaiting orders.”
“Roger that, Lander,” Frayne said before Pale Blue, who’d now been identified as Lander, grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and murmured cruelly in his ear. “Captain Lander. Captain.”
Frayne nodded, made an apology, and jogged back along the beach away from the trees. New flames were licking their trunks, and it wouldn’t be long before the effects of the explosion were fully reversed and the jungle was a conflagration all over again. The two Harbormen who had brought in Ten-Foot were beckoned to close to Lander. “Holden and Ahern, if you two do not follow my orders immediately again, I’ll shoot you both myself. Is that understood?”
Holden and Ahern understood. Without question. They were dismissed to take care of the bodies of the men Ten-Foot had killed while they’d been capturing him.
The heat from the increasingly more intensely burning wood was wafting with a sting of smoke across all their faces. Maxine, now that the knife had been taken from her throat, was allowed to sit down with Tally and Storm. Goober’s ears seemed to have started to work, and Ten-Foot lay in a trembling ball, but at least he’d stopped groaning.
That meant, Maxine realized with a thrill of fear and optimism combined, that everyone on the beach had been accounted for.
Except Poppet.
Maxine couldn’t remember seeing her just before the explosion. She hoped against hope that the woman hadn’t gone back into the jungle to get something she’d forgotten, or to take one more shot from a catapult. If she had, there was a good chance she’d been roasted in the flames, or worse still, lay unconscious even now with the blaze moving inexorably towards her.
Both Tally and Storm shook their heads when Maxine whispered to them to ask if they’d seen Poppet.
Damn. Maxine hoped the older woman was free. Maybe running up the trail to Bluehills to raise the alarm to Halley and the girls.
Everyone ducked as there was a sharp crack off in the trees. A shower of sparks seemed to mark where a tree trunk had exploded in the heat, spitting chunks of wood in all directions, but Maxine was confused. The sharp crack and the shower of sparks from the nearby fires didn’t seem to match up.
And when Ahern crumpled to his knees and then onto his back with blood pumping from a bullet wound in the center of his forehead, Maxine knew the sound hadn’t come from the fallen tree at all.
Tally threw her arms around Storm and her mom as it became apparent they were being fired upon. She thought she’d caught a muzzle flash, somewhere out in the dark, from over along the beach in an area of the jungle that wasn’t alight, but it could have just been a reflection of the fire.
“What the hell?” Storm exclaimed, struggling under her arms.
“Stay down! Both of you,” she whispered. “There’s someone out there firing at us!”
Captain Lander had already hit the sand and was screaming orders to his men. “There’s a sniper! Return fire! Return fire!”
A barrage of muzzle flashes backed by the chatter of machine gun fire was loosed off into the darkness. They couldn’t in any way tell where the first shot had come from, so they covered all their bases and aimed everywhere.
As the first round of magazines emptied and fell silent, there was a general fluster of activity to eject them and clips and replace them with fresh ones. Lander looked up over the rock he’d hidden behind. A metallic zing and cherry red sparks exploded from the rock right in front of his face. He went down on his knees again, clutching at his cheek with his hand. When it came away, Tally saw there was blood smeared on the skin of his face and on the palm of his hand, glistening in the firelight. He’d been hit by rock chips from the ricocheting round.
A rotting mixture of anger and fear covered his face as he pushed Holden away from the rock where he was cowering to crawl across the small stretch of sand to where Tally, Maxine, and Storm were lying, “Keep them covered!” he yelled. “Don’t let them get away in the confusion!”
The rest of the Harbormen couldn’t readily be seen. They were down between the rocks or had made it behind various trees at the edge of the jungle. But when Lander gave the order to “Continue firing!” Tally could see pretty much where the other men were situated, which meant that whoever the supposed sniper was, they would be able to see them, too.
This observation was borne out as a heavy caliber shot whistled over Tally’s family, coming from the opposite direction from the one the Harbormen were firing in, and a second Harborman fell forward from his position behind a tall palm, screaming from a torn, blood-geysering throat that he was “Hit! I’m hit!”
Another shot buried itself in his temple, sending a spray of blood and bone into the air, and the man was silent.
“Parnell?” Lander called towards the dead man. “Parnell? Are you okay?”
Tally realized that Lander couldn’t see that Parnell was silent and still. She caught Holden’s eye, who was biting at his lip while covering them with a distinctly quavering handgun. Holden saw that Tally was looking at him and did what he could to harden his face and stop the gun from trembling in his hand.
“Burns! Michaels!” Captain Lander called from his position on his knees in the damp sand, his eyes wide and his hair awry. “Head out! Over the rocks! Whoever it is can’t be far. Hunt them down! Hunt them down!”
Nobody moved. Tally risked a look around her to see if Holden was back to being scared, and if she could identify whose deaf ears Lander’s orders were falling on.
“Who is firing?” Maxine whispered up from the ground, blowing sand off her lips.
“I don’t know,” Tally replied. “Poppet? Halley? Someone who knows how to handle a gun.”
Two bullets pinged, sparking off rocks just ahead of them. Holden dug his head further down towards the sand, but kept the gun on them. “Don’t even think about moving,” he said.
“Burns! Michaels! I said get going, NOW!!!!” Captain Landers couldn’t keep the strangled squawk out of his voice. It came home
to Tally then, that the Harbormen were not at all professional soldiers in the accepted sense of the word. Maybe they liked pushing people around, and maybe they liked the uniform—whatever—but here and now, when the chips were down and they were being attacked out of the darkness by an unknown assailant, that was when they were found wanting. And it might prove to be something Tally could use to their advantage. The more Holden lost vertebrae from his backbone and screwed himself deeper into the sand to keep himself out of the line of fire, the sooner Tally might be able to use his fear against him.
“Burns! Answer me, dammit!”
“If you want someone to go out there under fire, you go!” came a reply from behind a rock.
Lander made a fist and punched at the rock in front of him, skinning his knuckles. “I’ll see you hang for this!”
There was no reply.
These Harbormen may have been safe to charge with laying some explosives and keeping up surveillance of what her people were doing, but Tally could see their discipline was evaporating quicker than thin ice on a warm spring morning. Another of the sniper’s bullets dinged off a rock, and this time she did see the muzzle flash away in the dark. It was about seventy yards away, in the jungle, low down in the base of a clump of brush ringing the base of several palm trees.
Holden’s eyes were wide, peering around as if his nerve had long since disappeared and he was looking for a way out. He kept looking from Lander to the fires and back to Tally and her family, the whites of his eyes showing through the soot on his face.
A shot from the sniper fizzed past his head and buried itself into the thigh of Burns. The scream was long and high-pitched. His leg buckled and he went down holding his smashed thigh, blood pumping out from the wound and all over the sand.
He was no more than four feet away from Tally, and Burns had dropped his Uzi and was ignoring it. Holden was on lookout, his petrified eye sweep from the back of Lander’s head to the jungle and back to Tally. If Holden continued in this cycle, Tally would have two seconds to roll, grab, and then turn and shoot. She had Lander in range, and Holden, and could see where two other Harbormen were crouched and firing into the jungle.
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 96
