Supernova EMP- The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  The rat-a-tat-tat of the pistols and machine guns stopped almost in unison, as the magazines needed to be swapped. Holden was looking at Lander.

  Tally pushed herself off her mom and brother, and rolled for the Uzi.

  It felt big and blocky in her hand as she got up on one knee and fired a single shot into Holden’s shocked face as it came around to focus on her from the jungle. He went down without a sound, and in the confusion of sniper and return fire, it didn’t seem that the next nearest Harborman, Captain Lander, even noticed that one of his men had been taken out of the game.

  Tally peppered Lander’s back with bullets as Maxine crawled forward to snatch Holden’s gun and fire from where she was, laying into two other men—who were covered from the sniper, but not from her.

  Storm wasn’t resting on the moment, either. He rolled through the sand to where Captain Lander was slumped against the rock, pumping blood from the wounds in his back, and picked up the Captain’s gun. He shot two others as Tally took out another.

  Frayne stood up with his hands held high; he’d seen the writing writ large on the wall. He threw away his gun and said, “I surrender! I surrender!”

  But he hardly got the second line out before the sniper’s bullet lifted the top off his skull and sent him cartwheeling over a waist-high rock to leave him slithering to the sand in the now silent night.

  “They’re dead!” Tally called into the night. “All of them! We’re all okay!”

  Silence greeted them in reply.

  “Who was it?” Storm asked as he checked the bodies for signs of life. Only Burns remained alive, just. He was lying in a wide puddle of blood. The shot to his thigh looked like it had severed something substantial, and his life was bleeding away by the second.

  Tally left her mom and Storm to make Burns as comfortable as they could as he died and checked on the probationers—especially Ten-Foot, who had taken the hardest of the beatings. Meanwhile, Tally jogged along the beach clutching Burns’ Uzi.

  The sound of the burning jungle receded, and she could hear the waves around the rocks. This being a small island in the Caribbean, there were no tides to speak of—just the constancy of the ocean around it, and when you were on the beach among the rocks, you’d never be far from the sound of the sea coming up against the rocks. Depending on the weather and the wind, that sound might be deafening or whisper soft. The Grimoire was in near darkness, and all the firing on it had stopped around the same time as the charges laid by Lander and his men had gone off. The near silence after so much frenetic activity was more than a little disconcerting.

  Tally reached the point in the jungle closest to where she’d seen the muzzle flashes from what she assumed to have been a sniper’s rifle. It was impenetrably dark in between the trees and palms, as well as around the brush. Tally couldn’t see any movement, so she took a step forward.

  “You haven’t shot at us, so I guess you don’t want us dead. Who are you? Is it you, Halley? Poppet?”

  A harsh rustle in the undergrowth five yards to her right snapped her head around. She almost brought the gun up and fired as a figure stumbled from the jungle, blood all down its front like a bib, its jaw slack, arms out and imploring, but Tally was able to stop herself.

  She didn’t want to add to Poppet’s wounds.

  24

  Tally’s shouts had brought her running from Storm and the probationers. She could see that her daughter kneeled down holding a body against her thighs, but it was only as Maxine got within a few yards that the terrible truth came home to her hard. Maxine was looking down on Poppet.

  Poppet had been shot in her chest, through her lung and out the other side, so that she sported a large exit wound in her back. She was barely conscious by the time Maxine had reached her daughter’s position.

  “Sorry…” Poppet was saying, “didn’t mean to get… blood on your jeans.”

  Tally stroked the older woman’s forehead, on which Maxine could see sweat standing out like studs in leatherwork. If didn’t take her more than a few seconds to realize that the woman was not going to make it. Even if they’d had a fully equipped emergency room with many units of blood and the finest surgeons, Poppet Langolini’s future would still have been touch and go. Here on a dark Caribbean beach, with the susurrating waves and a sky filled with the moon and the nebula, her chances were zero.

  “Don’t talk,” Tally said to Poppet as Storm, who had followed behind Maxine at a slower but no less deliberate pace, kneeled down beside Maxine.

  Poppet managed a derisory snort which sounded like broken plumbing in her chest and brought a froth of bubbles to her lips. “Don’t talk? Honey, I’ve… got… way too much to say right now… to waste my words on… dying.”

  Maxine smiled and held the woman’s hand. It was cold and deathly pale. Already, her body was in shock and the nonessential periphery of her being was losing out in the rush to send as much healing blood and oxygen as it could to the core system in her body. The hand might be cold, but the insane flutter of pulse in her wrist was testament to what was going on inside Poppet’s body. The body didn’t just give up. It would work to the last moment to try to plug holes, to save its life. Poppet’s body was no different, and she was going to take advantage of that.

  Poppet held out her bloody fingers and grasped Storm’s hand. “Now, kid, you listen to a dying… woman… yes... Yes?”

  Storm looked at Maxine, his eyes imploring her, as if he didn’t know what to do. Maxine didn’t know what was going to come out of Poppet’s mouth, but she could make a guess. She nodded to Storm. “Just listen.”

  “I never had any… kids… couldn’t make it… work. Joey wanted them… but—” She broke off coughing, and a dribble of blood replaced the froth at the side of her mouth. There was an ache of pain in her eyes. Maxine held her other hand, that one that wasn’t clutching at her son like a drowning woman. “We… tried… and it failed. Biggest hurt of my life, kid.”

  Storm had fresh tears on his cheek.

  “I’ve seen the best of Josh… the very best. He’s been brave and he’s been righteous… he’s not always made the best decisions… but he’s always made them for… the right reasons. And through… all that, Storm, he’s had you, your mom, and your sister at the center of his mind… I’ve not seen him falter… from that goal… keeping you all safe… Storm…” Another coughing fit interrupted her, and this one made her head loll against Tally’s arm, wrenching tears from Maxine’s own eyes.

  “Storm… if I’m going… as I know I am… please, give Josh… your dad… another chance… he’s gonna screw up… he’s gonna be a doofus. That’s what dads are for, it’s in the job… descript… description.”

  Poppet’s breathing was becoming more labored, the sweat on her face running down to mix with the blood that was coming from her mouth and the snot leaking in a thin line from one of her nostrils.

  “…but even when he’s a doofus… he’s your doofus, Storm. He’s the guy who not only has your back… but wants more than anything else to have your back… are you listening, kid? Are you?”

  Poppet was pulling at Storm’s hand. Bringing him closer, pulling his head down close to her mouth. Maxine had no idea when the lucky shot from the Harborman’s indiscriminate firing had hit Poppet. But the woman must have carried on shooting from her hiding place for some time. She’s had the steel to carry on doing that, and now, even though she knew she was only moments from death, she still had that steel.

  “Do it for me… if nothing else,” the New Yorker said. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d have died from that… burst appendix… remember it was me and your mom who saved your life… in my world, that means you owe me a debt, kid. And that debt is to make… sure you fix things with Josh… ya gotta promise me, okay? Promise…”

  Storm’s head lifted up away from Poppet’s mouth. There were dots of her blood on his cheek from where the bubbles of blood on her lips had burst when she’d spoken.

  Maxine waited an age for t
he response from Storm.

  But instead of words, instead of a promise, he got up from his knees, wiped his bloody fingers on his shirt, and walked away towards the water.

  Poppet’s head rolled to one side, her last breath a tiny groan that had sorrow and regret right in the center of it.

  And then it was over.

  Except for the helicopter.

  Josh didn’t want to believe what Gabriel had gleefully told him about Lashaunda “Lash” Rochelle. It had never occurred to him that one of the probationers, who had been through so much, would align themselves with Gabe Angel and comprehensively sell them down the river. Almost literally.

  “These kids have come from nothing. You saw Ten-Foot. He was more than happy to join the Harbormen. I’m not sure what you did to turn him, but he was there at the sharp end for many months, and he reveled in carrying out my orders—however bloody and extreme they might be. Lash… she was not a soldier, but she had… other skills, shall we say, and she wanted to be part of Jaxport; wanted the riches and the power that might bring her one day. A few trinkets, and a few promises, and she was mine forever, Josh.”

  Josh shook his head.

  “Oh, it’s true. When my men cut her away from the pack while they were watching your progress at Bluehills, she beautifully gave us chapter and verse on what you were doing and what you had planned. It’s only a shame that she couldn’t get away from Halley’s search for—what was it? —dopamine production-enhancing food to find out exactly how you were going to get on the Grimoire. But no matter. We were ready and waiting for you, weren’t we? Good old Lash, she gave us nearly everything we needed.”

  Josh didn’t know if it was Gabe’s wine or the subject that was warming him up so much or a combination of both, but the so-called king was animated, his eyes were alive with the enjoyment of what had happened.

  “It’s thanks to Lash that your wife and daughter, and my son, are back under my control… how does that feel, Josh? To have so comprehensively lost again?”

  “He’s not your son, douchebag.” Donald had spoken up for the first time. His chin jutted out, his mouth set. “Lash hasn’t told you everything, has she? Not everything at all.”

  Gabe’s eyes narrowed and he put down his goblet. “Did I give you permission to speak?”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Yes, Donald—old man—yes, I am.”

  “Then I don’t need permission. I’m gonna say what I want to say whether you want to hear it or not. We old men, we don’t stand on ceremony or worry about treading on toes. We come out and say what we want straight.” The cords in Donald’s neck were standing out, his temples clearly throbbing, and Josh almost imagined he could hear the old man’s lion heart trying to beat its way out of his chest.

  Gabriel gestured to one of the Harbormen guarding the room. His Colt Government 1911 was raised and pointed at Donald’s forehead.

  “You think I’m scared by that,” Donald sneered.

  “You won’t be feeling anything if I click my fingers, old timer.”

  “I’ll tell you what I do feel, you cut-rate tyrant with delusions above any kind of grandeur. I feel I’ve done Josh Standing the gravest disservice all these years. I didn’t see past my own stupidity. I didn’t see that my daughter loved the very bones of him. And that he was a good man. Not a man without faults—who is? —but that he was a good man—to my daughter, and to his daughter and to his son.”

  Gabe got up from the table too quickly, so that his thighs banged into it and the shudder turned the bottle over to glug away its contents across the varnished surface, causing the bottle to roll off the edge of the table and smash on the floor. It threw up splashes of wine like blood. “Storm is my son!”

  “He’s not,” said Karel.

  “Absolutely not,” said Henry.

  “See,” continued Donald, “we know the truth now. Josh knows the truth now. We’ve seen the science. Did you know that, Mr. Big I Am? That your eye color, Josh’s and Maxine’s eye colors, and Storm’s are so distinctive that, for the chances of them not to be Storm’s parents are something like a hundred million to one. Like those odds, do you, big shot?”

  Gabe picked up a sliver of broken glass, came around the table, and ground the point of it into Donald’s shoulder. The old man gasped.

  “Leave him alone!” Josh screamed. Gabe turned on him like a viper and ground the same sharp needle of glass into the top of Josh’s arm. The pain exploded white and deep in his flesh. It sucked all the breath out of his lungs and made his legs almost give way.

  And then, when Gabe twisted the glass in the fresh wound like a drill going down into the muscle, Josh’s legs did give way and he fell sideways as the point of the glass scratched against the bone in the top of his arm. It was pain like he had never experienced before, smashing through his shoulder in simultaneously hot and cold waves of agony.

  Josh’s eyeline across the deck of the cabin put him in a direct line of sight through Gabe’s legs to Donald, who was slumped forward and breathing hard, but still up on his knees. Glistening blood from the wound in his shoulder was starting to run down the material of his already sodden T-shirt. Drips of water from their scuba swim across to the Grimoire fell from the bottom hem of it like tears.

  Josh blinked. His head was swimming from the pain and he was focusing on the wrong things.

  Think. Think.

  “I’m really sorry, Josh,” Donald was saying, “that it’s taken me so long to recognize that you’re a better man than the first piece of scum Maxine ever brought home to the M-Bar. I blamed you for taking her away, but really, it was this a-hole who pushed her away from him and into your arms. I never, ever thanked you, Josh. But I’m thanking you now. For making my daughter happy.”

  Gabe’s roar almost took the roof off the cabin. His arm scythed through the air, and for a moment, Josh thought that he was hearing the whisper of glass cutting a slice from Donald’s neck, but then he saw it had just been the hiss of unconsciousness escaping Donald’s lips as the stabbing, back-handed punch of Gabe had stunned him so that he fell, like Josh, onto his side.

  The pain in his own shoulder was relegated to a dull throb, but remained deeply unpleasant. Like he had a stomach ache and nausea rolled up into a ball of discomfort that had moved sideways into his shoulder.

  Think. Think.

  His hands were tied behind his back, but his feet were free. He wouldn’t get much kicking done before he got shot in the face even if he tried, though.

  There were two guards and Gabe. The guards had their pistols drawn and racked, so it would be the work of a moment to raise them and fire.

  There was nothing near enough to his feet to kick over, but as Gabe paced in front of the windows, his hands rubbing through the hair on the side of his head, there was something that occurred to Josh.

  Something that he might be able to use.

  The windows.

  They were modern reproductions built for the nineteenth century ship. Square, with single-glazed glass, and held in a lattice work of varnished wood.

  If anything hit them at speed, there was a good chance that that thing would go through and make it to the outside of the Grimoire. If that thing was Josh, and that thing called Josh was moving fast enough, and that thing called Josh wasn’t being shot through with holes, he might just make into the water.

  No need to worry about his hands being tied up, either—Josh had an old party trick to deal with that.

  All Josh had to do was get to the window at full pelt without the guards shooting him like a dog first.

  25

  Josh kicked at the table legs, pushing the heavy, mahogany piece of furniture away to skid across the wooden floor of the cabin. The boards were well varnished, and the table, heavy and stable as it looked, had already moved once when Gabe’s thighs had crashed into it and knocked over the bottle of wine, so now that there was real force behind it, the table moved with vicious speed.

  Pushed with all
of Josh’s strength, it skimmed across the varnish like ice on ice. It hit the two guards in the midriff and bent them over before they even had a moment to realize what was happening, or, crucially, lift their guns. Josh was already rolling up onto his feet, crunching through the broken bottle’s glass and taking the four steps to the window with his head down.

  His shoulder crunched into Gabe, sending him sprawling. Gabe screamed, “Take him alive!”

  But Josh was already crashing into the window.

  If the pain in his arm was harsh, hitting his head against the window as he launched himself off of his feet was on another level. There was a crack, a tearing, a desperate hand reaching for him, and then with a splintering crash, he was out into the open air and falling.

  “Get him! Find him!” Gabe was screaming. “Launch a boat! Get into the water!”

  And then Josh was below the cooling surface of the waves. He felt like the top of his head had been flattened by the impact and like his face may have turned into a jigsaw puzzle of flapping flesh, and there was warm liquid around his head that wasn’t sea water—only one thing that could be, and that was blood. He dimly wondered why they weren’t shooting at him as he kicked down below the surface.

  Gabe’s last words echoed around his thoughts.

  Alive. Alive. ALIVE.

  Gabe may have wanted the ex-cop alive, but unless Josh could get out of the bonds holding his wrists behind his back, then he’d be something else.

  Dead. Dead. DEAD.

  Party trick.

  Yes.

  Party trick.

  Josh had in the past, and even as recently as a few months ago, been able to put his handcuffed hands down to the floor, roll onto his back in one swift movement, and bring the cuffs and his hands to the front of his body in one fast action. It had delighted friends back in the day, and it had gotten him out of a tight fix in Trace Parker’s mansion in Parkopolis.