Supernova EMP Series (Book 2): Deep End

by Hamilton, Grace

Josh had made it out through the warehouse, and instead of skirting the burning store, not knowing who might still be inside if he came out the front doors, he’d climbed the fence into the scrub and run down to the highway.

  Taking the off-ramp back onto Route 80 as the building had gone up, he’d heard the roof tearing back like the lid of a tinned can left too long on a campfire. Flames leaping up, licking at the base of a huge cloud of smoke. Looking back after nearly two miles, with the sooty banks of destruction rising high, Josh figured he’d be able to see the smoke rising from Parkopolis.

  As he walked, he couldn’t stop thinking about the last man he’d killed and his final words.

  “Thank you.”

  Such torment in one body that the release of death was welcomed. Was this what the supernova had done to these people? Driven them on to murder and destroy, but left them with the insight that what they were doing was wrong? Had the particles, or whatever they were coursing through the atmosphere, plugged directly into people’s aggression circuits so that they couldn’t stop themselves from attacking, maiming, and killing?

  He’d seen something like it back on the Sea-Hawk. The crew had turned on each other, and then those who had survived the frenzy had come for Josh and the probationers. But he’d never considered for a moment that the killing was out of the control of the mind of the killers. It must have been like being a passenger in a car driving through a crowd of people at top speed. Having to witness the horror and yet unable to do anything about it.

  No wonder the man he’d shot had thanked him.

  The attackers in the Home Depot had been thin to the point of emaciation, their skin pale and their faces filthy. They had neglected themselves to the point of near starvation. Was that a factor in what had changed them, or were they refusing to eat and drink as a way of stopping the rage and aggression that had taken them over on autopilot?

  Josh shivered in the heat. Was this going on in every town and city across the United States?

  Was Parkopolis, even though it was sick to the very core under the control of Trace and his men, at least a place of relative calm compared to the rest of the country?

  Josh looked back toward the rising smoke, and on past it to the broken city of Savannah, Georgia.

  What on earth was it like in there? What madness prevailed? And would he have to go back in there again and again on the callous whims of Trace Parker in order to find out?

  11

  Maxine felt like she’d been walking all day, but when she looked at her watch, it was only ten after noon.

  She was tired and thirsty, and she didn’t want to be doing this—but unless she tried, the reckoning Donald had sworn would probably end in all their deaths. Certainly, that of her father, and she wasn’t prepared to let that happen.

  The heat was killing her, though, slapping her shoulders and heating the insides of her lungs like roasting meat.

  Maxine rested in the shade of a tree, took a canteen and map from her pack, and drank from one while she consulted the other. She was still three miles outside Pickford, over rough country, and as she wanted to get there, talk, and return before midnight, she would have to press on.

  She wished she didn’t have to make the journey, but she could see no way around it for now. If the men from Pickford and their leader Dale Creggan weren’t stopped from their course of action, then there’d be a fight, and that would be that.

  Dale Creggan’s men had come to the M-Bar two days before. Storm had seen them from an upstairs window and raised the alarm. Maxine, who’d been on Pasture Watch all night, had only recently gotten to sleep after Donald had relieved her in the field.

  Donald had insisted on a 24-hour watch on the herd since the ten head had been taken, and although between the three of them they could do that, it didn’t leave a lot of time for all the other things on the farm that needed to be accomplished. Tending to the other animals, feeding them and mucking out stalls, using the plow they’d borrowed from Mr. Tinkerman to prepare the fallow field for next year’s cattle pasture, and a thousand other things. They had good stocks of food and live animals they could trade for goods and turn into meat, but preparations for next season had to be made. They’d also be plowing much earlier in the season than they usually would have because Tinkerman would need his plow back, so it wasn’t ideal, but Donald had pointed out that they had to make the best of the cards they’d been dealt. But his first priority was building an enclosure that would keep the cattle safe at night so they could be better watched from the house; meanwhile, Maxine had pulled the night shift in the pasture and Storm had slept.

  Maxine had been woken from her near slumber by Storm running down the stairs, shouting as he ran.

  When she’d looked through the window, she’d seen the men, too. Three armed fellows on horseback. Stetsons, dusters, and boots, looking for all the world like they’d stepped out of a Western.

  “We’re from the Pickford Regional Government,” a fat, nut brown man with a swarthy chin blue with stubble had said from the lead horse. The other two, White Hat and Black Hat, had hung back, but as Maxine had seen clearly upon joining Donald in the yard, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, both had had their hands on their guns, ready to lift them at a moment’s notice.

  “And what’s the Pickford Regional Government?” Donald had asked, his shotgun across his chest. “I ain’t ever heard of them.”

  Blue Chin had smiled. “It’s an organization in its infancy. Dale Creggan has assumed the mantle of command, reluctantly of course, and he’s sent us out here to spread the good news to you and your neighbors.”

  “Dale Creggan? The bloodstock agent? That Dale Creggan? I can’t imagine there’s going to be many thoroughbred horse racing for a while, so I guess he’s got to do something to keep himself busy. I didn’t even know he was back from Kentucky.”

  Blue Chin’s smile had lost a little of its illumination over that. “Mr. Creggan’s organizational skills are what he’s offering to the community in these troubled times. He’s very public spirited.”

  Maxine had raised her hand then. “What about the sheriff, the town council? What’s happened to the organizations who were there before?”

  Blue Chin had looked at her like he’d trodden in something a guilty dog would leave behind. “Perhaps you haven’t been keeping up, lady. Like everywhere else, half of Pickford went crazy. We only just managed to fight them back and save a little of what we could. Unfortunately, there were none of the original town authorities left once the battle was over. Mr. Creggan and those of us who fought for the town have instigated a local government to run things in the area until the world we knew comes back. I’m Sal Laurent, and I’m one of your deputy governors.”

  “I don’t remember an election,” Donald had said.

  “There will be elections in due course, but for now we have to do some imperative things. We need to maintain the security and safety of those in the area, and we need to ensure those infected with the disease are removed so they can’t spread their corruption to the healthy folks on the farms and in the town.”

  Maxine couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “Disease?”

  Laurent had rolled his eyes. “Yes, disease. What else you think sent those folks crazy? Some kinda rabies, I shouldn’t wonder. A biological weapon dusting the country alongside the EMP attack that knocked all the machinery and power out.”

  “How do you know it’s a disease?”

  “Well, we don’t have no scientific proof if that’s what you’re asking. But it stands to reason that’s what’s going on. Some fast-spreading bug that gets in the mind, like rabies, and sends the carrier mad as a wounded cougar. We’re checking over the properties in the area, too. Make sure there are no more carriers around.”

  Maxine had prayed that her mother, who was quiet at the moment back in the house, stayed that way. She really hadn’t liked the way this was going.

  Donald had shifted on his feet. “Well, we’re all fine here, so you can go
on your merry way, Mr. Laurent. If we need you, we’ll call.”

  Laurent had thrown back his head and howled with laughter over that. “That’s not how it works, Mr. Jefferson. We also want to make an inventory of your resources so that we can see how we can best provide for everyone back in the town. Mouths to feed, you understand.”

  “I think I’m beginning to,” Donald had hissed.

  Laurent had raised a hand. “No need for animosity off the bat. Sir, we’ve all got to survive. In return, we’ll provide you and your family with protection and security. I’m sure you realize your cattle will be attractive to the more desperate elements in the community when food stocks start to run low, and that’s where we come in.”

  Maxine and Donald had exchanged glances, the same thought occurring to both of them at the same time. It was the classic protection racketeer’s tactic. Commit an act of aggression against property or person, make them worried and anxious for their survival, and then turn up a few days later to offer protection against the threat they themselves had created.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Donald had asked.

  “We most certainly do,” Laurent had answered, his smile back to full beam, but White Hat and Black Hat’s faces had remained stony, their hands staying on their guns.

  “Turn your horses around and leave my property. We don’t need your protection, and we’re not submitting to any search or inventory.”

  Black Hat’s horse had skittered as he raised his rifle. White Hat had moved his to shoulder height. Laurent had remained still, instead answering, “Now, can’t we all do this in a friendly—”

  “You ain’t my friends.”

  “We’d hate to use force.”

  “Then don’t,” Maxine had told the man.

  “You’re leaving us little choice. We have to come to some sort of accord here. Let us see around the property, make some lists, and we’ll be gone before you know it.”

  “You’re pointing a gun at me and my daughter. We already know it and we don’t like it,” Donald had said, his hands tightening on the shotgun.

  “You’d be down before you pulled the trigger, Mr. Jefferson. Please understand, this isn’t a request; it’s an order.”

  “So is this,” Storm had called from an upstairs window just then. Heads had turned and looked up. He’d been hanging halfway out with a carbine in his hands, pointing it right at Laurent’s head. “And this order, Mr. Laurent, is that if you don’t do what my grandfather tells you to do, I’m gonna shoot you. And that’ll be before your thugs have a chance to get to their triggers.”

  Laurent had licked his lips. “Okay, folks, let’s keep everything cool here. Why don’t we go away now and say come back in a few days? Three, maybe? In the meantime, you can think it through. You can either live here as you have and work with us, or we can come back with twenty men and run you off your property. Up to you.”

  With that, Laurent had turned his horse around and trotted out of the yard and back onto the road, his Hats following him.

  And now, after a day of arguing with Donald that they couldn’t defend the ranch from these men, and couldn’t travel with Maria, Maxine was on the move.

  It followed that if Creggan’s men saw her mother and the state she was in, they would kill her because of their belief that she was diseased. Maxine, against Donald’s express wishes and Storm pleading with her to stay safe––“Don’t take away the only parent I’ve got left, Mom! Don’t leave me like Dad did!”––was walking into Pickford to chat with Dale Creggan.

  They’d made camp after a hard day’s walking, stopping in a forest of longleaf pine on the outskirts of Pembroke. They’d avoided the town itself, in which fires were still burning, and settled in a gully near enough to a stream to get water, with enough dead dry wood on the ground to light a fire.

  Tally had walked like a robot. Stiffly following the brisk pace set by Henry in his black body armor—black pack, black boots, black utility belt, and black NBC hood around his black, ant-faced gas mask. The boy was fit and had the stamina of two horses. Tally had had to ask him a couple of times to stop so that she could take a breather.

  She hadn’t told Henry that it wasn’t just a breather she needed, but also to slow the thoughts and fear blasting around her head like shotgun pellets. The damage they’d left in the body of her thinking felt near terminal. Henry wouldn’t talk to her about what he’d seen of the bodies pulled ashore. “There’s no time for talking now; we need to go,” he’d said, and with that he’d marched off.

  Tally had had a choice to follow or stay in an area without food or real shelter, and where there were people Henry said would kill her… or worse. Following the guy with the equipment, the plan, and the guns had been the only real option.

  In Henry’s leg holsters were two SIG Sauer P226 pistols. In addition to those, they had stopped in a hollow where a bag had been hidden which contained two AR-15s and ammunition for all four guns. Henry had lifted the bag with little effort and placed it over his shoulder, and then marched on without a word.

  Again.

  Late in the day, Henry had led them past Pembroke, which he’d said was a “No-mark town about thirty miles west of Savannah, but in an area where Trace Parker’s men were not operating as of yet…” as they were “maintaining their ring of fear around Savannah.”

  Tally hadn’t really known of what Henry was speaking, but the mention of Trace Parker, and the possibility that it had been his men who’d pulled her dad and Poppet’s bodies from the sea, had welled up a mess of sadness from her gut to tear prickled eyes.

  When the fire had been lit to boil water from the creek, Henry had given Tally a high energy bar from his pack to eat. It was chewy and nutty, but it did nothing to fill the emptiness inside her.

  That had nothing to do with hunger.

  Henry finally took off his mask as night fell, and his pale, freckled, almost feminine face was underlit by the flickering glow from the fire. There was the suggestion of a red-haired beard on a nondescript chin. A full mouth between well-defined cheeks sat beneath intense blue eyes and a high forehead. Out of the mask, his voice lost all of the muffled boom of having to speak louder to be heard. Freed from the plastic and rubber, and at the normal conversational tone, his voice had the twang of the southern states, with the attitude of someone who wasn’t ready to let go of their teens. It alternated between the two timbres and occasionally had a harshness and directness that spoke of hiding awkwardness and overcompensating for shyness.

  “Even if it wasn’t your dad I saw them dragging up, if he’s captured, he’s as good as dead. And if he’s not captured, then he’ll need to get as far away from Trace and his boys ASAP or he’s gonna be dead. I can see the look in your eyes, Tally. You ain’t stopped thinking about going back since I met you. But trust me, you go back, you might as well have drowned.”

  Tally couldn’t deny the logic, but the thought of leaving her father behind to a cold grave or the prospect of one filled her up with shame, regret, and some anger. “I can’t just walk away.”

  “You can. Trace’s men killed my dad and my mom. They burned down our house, and I only just got away with my life. They don’t care, Tally. If you resist them, they kill you.”

  “And I can’t just leave my dad to that, either. I’m sorry about your family, Henry, truly I am. But you have guns and equipment. Help me go looking for him. Please!”

  Henry chewed on his own energy bar and fixed her with his Hollywood-blue eyes. “Let’s think about this logically, okay?” Tally said nothing, but Henry continued anyway. “If your dad is dead, going back won’t help, right?”

  “I… don’t…” Tally sighed. “No… it wouldn’t. I guess.”

  “If your dad is alive and he’s been captured, are we—you and I—going to be able to get him out of a heavily fortified base with perhaps two hundred men, who are all armed to the teeth and have a nice line in hanging people they have a beef with as a deterrent?”

  “Unlikely.”<
br />
  “Now you’re getting it. But, let’s consider this: if your dad survived the shipwreck and wasn’t one of the bodies I saw being dragged from the water, what would he do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tally, you know your dad. One of the most important skills you need to stay alive is to be able to predict the behavior of others. We can’t just exist by reacting to what happens to us. We need to think, weigh up, and prepare. We need to make the best guesses based on what we know. So, what would your dad do, if he was not captured and was still alive?”

  “He would look for me.”

  “Exactly. So, where would he look? Where’s the best place for you to go, for him to find you? If you want to be found, you go to a place where you can be found. A place you both know. It’s not rocket science.”

  Tally was finding this all very uncomfortable. She hadn’t even begun to mourn for the possible loss of her father, and Henry was making her focus on the practical and the believable. “I don’t know. My home?”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Morehead City. North Carolina.”

  “Is that where your mom would be? If she’s still around, that is?”

  “No. She was in Boston with my brother. He has cancer. He was having his last treatment of chemo there when this all hit.”

  “The cities are death traps now,” Henry said, seemingly without worrying about how that information would affect Tally.

  “Who died and left you in charge of optimism?” she demanded.

  Henry’s eyes flashed. But his face changed with a wash of contrition. “Sorry. I didn’t… sometimes I speak without thinking. I…”

  “It’s okay. Cities are death traps. Go on.”

  “Population gone crazy, no sanitation and no power. Everyone out for themselves, it’ll be chaos. That’s why I’m avoiding them. If your mom and brother had any sense, they would have got out but fast.”

  Tally thought of her strong, brave, and above all practical mother. “If their minds weren’t affected by the supernova, I guess they would have left. Yes.”