The men were all hollow-eyed, dirty, and unshaven. Josh had been able to smell them as he’d been brought into the room. Timothy—one of the survivors from his first trip into town, a broad-shouldered, prematurely balding thirty-year-old—had whispered to Josh that they’d been locked up, beaten, and treated like animals since the failed trip. He hadn’t been allowed to see his wife or visit his daughter in the cage to check on her—which seemed to be a privilege that had been removed from all the men in the group. Timothy’s eyes had been wet as he related the update, and his head sunken.
“We can’t screw up this time. We can’t. You were right about the Home Depot. You’re a cop…”
“Ex…”
“I don’t care. I’m a damned dentist. You have experience and skills I’ve never learned or wanted. They’ve told us to look to you, Josh, and you better make it worth our while.”
Timothy’s fingers had been digging into Josh’s upper arm as the man spoke, the quaver in his voice demonstrating high emotion and even higher levels of anxiety. Josh hadn’t been expecting this, not being put in a position of authority. He’d turned as Harve came into the room with his face thunderous—followed by Lacy, the epitome of cool calm.
Harve had unrolled a map of Savannah on a table, thudding stones down on each corner, high color in his cheeks. Not a happy bunny, Josh had observed. In fact, his face had held the same expression when Trace had slapped him down for considering shooting Josh on the night of the escape. Josh thought he’d caught a slight tremble in Harve’s hand as he’d smoothed out the map. Another bad run-in with Trace? Sent there to be his errand boy? There was a lot of pride in that body, Josh thought. Pride that looked like it had been given a good kicking.
Lacy had observed from across the room, smoking a thin cigar held delicately between her watchmaker’s fingers.
“You’ll take Route 80 from Thunderbolt until you hit Drayton Street here, and head north until you reach the Savannah River at Yamacraw Bluff. That’s your target area for this mission.”
“That’s right in the center of things,” Josh had said.
“Top of the class,” Harve had replied without humor, the color still high in his cheeks. As he’d leaned forward, the collar of his shirt had opened, and up on Harve’s shoulder blade Josh had been able to see a fresh bruise with a small tear of blood weeping from a break in the skin. Had Trace been at him with his cane? It seemed like there was enough evidence to suggest it.
There was something very rotten in the State of this particular Denmark, Josh had thought with grim resignation. Every day and every way, the clouds lowering over the mansion and the impromptu settlement were darkening.
“I can’t see there being any big-box stores there to get tools or equipment. It’s a tourist district down by the river. It’ll be all hotels and cafes. What’s Trace expecting us to bring back from there that’s useful?”
Lacy had peeled herself off the wall and come towards them. “Trace isn’t expecting you to bring back anything. The Harbormaster is.”
Timothy and the others had exchanged fearful glances with each other at the very mention of the label.
“Who…?”
Lacy had rolled her eyes. “Just be aware, Joshua, that we are what you might call a subsidiary outpost here at Parkopolis. Part of a wider endeavor, you might say.”
Harve had snorted his derision at that, Lacy stabbing him with a look in response. “Not in front of the children, Harvey. Trace is the master of all he surveys.”
“For now,” Harve had said.
“Harvey…” Lacy had pointed at Josh and others. Raising a questioning eyebrow.
Harve had shaken his head at her. “Who cares? They’re all going to be dead in a day if we send them in there.”
Josh had opened his mouth and Harve had exploded into action, a Colt Government M1911 drawn and being pushed into Josh’s mouth before he could get a word out. Harve’s eyes had smoldered furiously.
“One word. Just one.”
Josh had offered the slightest of nods, and the barrel had been scraped back over his teeth and out of his mouth.
“So…” Lacy had begun, squeezing Harve’s uninjured shoulder with the hand not holding her cigar. Blue smoke had tumbled from her nostrils and curled around her face. “The mission has changed. Whether Trace or someone else gave the orders is not important. A decision has been made to concentrate on gold and silver on this trip.”
Lacy must have picked up on the questions on Josh’s face without the need for him to express them. “No, indeed,” she’d said, “we can’t eat, build, or heal with gold and silver, it’s true, but it has been concluded that at some point in the future, systems of commerce will have to return to the United States, and precious metals will be the basis of that. In the absence of being able to get into the Federal Reserve, alongside the usual materials we’ll take from the city, we’ll also be collecting gold and silver. That is your mission today, and that is what you’re going to do. Without question. Are we all on the same page?”
Josh and the others had nodded.
Jackdaw and Steve had accompanied them into Thunderbolt and to the roadblock. From there, they’d been armed with MP5s and, other than pausing for the brief gun battle, made their way easily down Route 80 to the intersection with Drayton Street before going north towards the river.
Cars had been rolled onto their roofs, windows smashed, and others set alight, evidence of an orgy of violence. In the closer-packed streets now that they were off the road, there were bodies everywhere. Dogs prowled between buildings, the stench of decay and corruption hung over the city now, clinging to the senses. If Josh had ever looked for a representation of Hell on Earth, he couldn’t have imagined anything worse than this. They passed an overturned Mercedes SUV and disturbed a family of rats which had made it their base. The creatures scurried out of the windows in all directions—perhaps thirty of them.
One ran over Josh’s foot, sending a wave of revulsion up to his gut. “I hate rats…” he said to Timothy, who looked like he was about to jump up onto a chair like he was a housewife in a stupid sitcom.
Someone else sent a line of bullets across the concrete as the rats scurried. Missed every single one, too, but did manage to disturb a clutch of more rats that had congregated in a rolled and burned Prius.
“Stop firing!” Josh demanded. “Leave them be. You’ll only bring more out and waste ammo. We don’t know what we’re going to be up against down the line.”
The shooter, Crane Lefèvre, a fifty-year-old with a paunch and what Josh would have described before the apocalypse as an unfortunate ponytail, made his weapon safe. “Sorry. Rats, man.”
Josh nodded and walked on, leading the wedge of frightened men. But now he kept as wide a berth as he could from all the vehicles in the road.
Without the usual coddling of city services—waste removal, working sewerage systems, and an operational power grid—Josh could see how a city like Savannah could fall back into the clutches of nature more quickly than he would ever have imagined. And with a population that was hidden or insane, unable to feed themselves or, in the case of those fully affected by the supernova, unwilling to do so, this would be a pattern that was repeating itself all over the country—or maybe the world.
He thought of his family’s modest house in Morehead City. Had his neighbors burned it down? Was it destroyed and derelict? Were there rats moving though his things?
Savannah was the big picture, but when Josh thought about the exact and the specific—his house and his possessions— his sense of terrified awe at what was happening in Savannah turned into a kind of personal grief for what might have been happening in his home. It wasn’t as strong a feeling as what he felt for his distanced family, but for the first time, the enormity of the task of not only getting the U.S., but even just his life back on track, took the wind out of him.
“You okay, Josh?”
Timothy, walking alongside Josh, was regarding him with an awkward concer
n. Awkward, Josh guessed, because Timothy was placing maximum store in Josh to get them in and out of Savannah alive, and anything that Josh showed on his face to suggest that he might be as terrified as the men he was leading would be a real destabilizing influence.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“You look like someone just kicked your dog.”
“Just the rats, Timothy. Just the rats.”
Timothy didn’t respond, but Josh knew he didn’t believe him.
They carried on along Drayton Street, hearing dogs barking in the distance and occasional small arms fire. Way off, perhaps more than a block away, they heard something substantial rumble and collapse. A dusty white cloud came up between the buildings to the west, the clatter of rubble moving down a debris field, and the harsh smash of glass assailing their ears as they walked.
The city was consuming itself.
They didn’t speak, their hands holding tight to the submachine guns. Josh felt a buttery sweat between his palm and the grip-frame. Several times, he had to wipe his hand against his pants to get the skin dry again.
Timothy consulted the map he was carrying and pointed ahead. “Raynesford Jewelry up ahead. Looks like it hasn’t been burned out yet.”
“Okay,” Josh said, wiping his palm again. “Brian, Grover, Luke, and Marty, you take Raynesford, and we’ll carry on to the next stop. What is it, Tim?”
“Timothy,” one of the other men said assertively.
In Josh’s experience, when someone had no control over the bigger picture, they would often focus on the tiny things they could control. Things that might seem prissy or argumentative, but to them might leave a crumb of comfort on this table of terrors. So, with compassionate acquiescence, Josh clarified, “What’s the next stop, Timothy?”
Timothy thanked Josh with his eyes and a slight nod of the head. “One more city block, then west on Bay Street and it’s on Bull Street, opposite city hall. Berkovich Jewelry and Couture Pieces.”
The four men indicated by Josh peeled off and started to find a way into Raynesford Jewelry. The scavenge team had been told to concentrate on high-carat gold, silver—no plate—and high-end watches of the Rolex type. It made no sense to Josh to be getting this stuff rather than useful gear, but they had their orders. “You know who this Harbormaster is, Timothy?” he asked.
The other man shook his head. “I heard the name, and I saw Trace’s men look like the contents of their guts had turned to water just at the mention of it. They didn’t give us chapter and verse and don’t generally take us into their confidence. I just guess everyone works for somebody, and Trace works for this guy.”
As if dealing with Trace wasn’t bad enough. The level of evil he’d experienced emanating from the man was breathtaking as it was. But to know that there was a monster even the monsters were scared of was all the more unsettling, to say the least.
They turned onto Bay Street and made their way toward city hall. Someone had gone down the whole street and burned the trees. Empty jerry cans of gas, orange and buckled from the heat, lay discarded in several places. The trees had gone up like candles, and the stench of their ash was on the wind as it rustled their stiffly burned branches. Every so often, a fall of sooty powder would be dislodged by the breeze coming off the broad, gray expanse of the river. On the far bank, flames which were still burning licked around the roofs of the buildings they devoured.
The whole scene was one of desolation and destruction. It banged against Josh’s heart. Such a terrible thing to have been done to a beautiful and historic city.
A terrible thing to be done to the world.
Rich and Walt, two solid guys in work shirts, moved ahead of Crane, Timothy, and Josh. The way they moved showed they wanted to get this done, to get back to their families as soon as they could. They’d been happy to take direction from Josh as they’d left Thunderbolt and gotten into the short firefight, but Josh could sense now that their impatience was growing.
The store they were looking for was on Bull Street, fifty yards down the road, just beyond the U.S. Customs House which was itself gray and burned out with hollow windows.
“Guys, hold up there,” Josh called out, looking around. “Let’s keep close. I know you’re eager to get this over, but…”
“We haven’t seen anyone since a mile out of Thunderbolt,” replied Walt.
“And that should make us wary,” Josh said. “Let’s just keep cool and stay together. Okay?”
Ralph and Walt exchanged glances, but jogged back all the same.
They could see the length of Bull Street now. It had been barricaded at some point with burned-out cars. There were corpses on the sidewalk with terrible injuries. Some had been burned, and judging by the agonies of their contortions, that had probably happened while they’d still been alive.
Josh averted his eyes as they walked slowly past and arrived at the barricade. It had been crudely constructed, just cars pushed together. Josh couldn’t tell if the side they were on was for the defenders to hide behind or where the attackers had swarmed towards it.
The cars were on their roofs, so there was some visibility of the street beyond. Josh could make out the façade of the store they were heading for. The security windows of Berkovich Jewelry had been smashed, but not broken through. The white stones above the store in the building overhead had been burned out, too, but the store itself didn’t look to have suffered fire damage—on the outside, at least. What it was like inside, they would have to find out.
Remembering the rats in the cars on Drayton Street, Josh said, “Maybe we should find a way around the barricade. We don’t know what’s inside these cars. I don’t want to be competing with rodents again…”
A scream of alarm behind Josh shook him from his thoughts of rats. As he spun, he saw that Walt was pointing back forty yards to city hall.
Walt cursed and took a fearful step back.
City hall was alive with bodies.
There were residents swarming from the doors, running down the steps. Some were climbing from the windows and dropping to the street clumsily, not caring if they stumbled and fell before picking themselves up. Their clothes were ragged and torn, their faces black with soot and dust—hair awry, cheeks pinched, and expressions wild. Soon there were fifty or sixty of them running towards Josh and the others.
For a moment, Josh wondered if they were running from something rather than towards something—as if there was something wholly terrifying behind them to drive them out of city hall towards the barricade.
But that thought was blown away in the same way his wariness of the rats had been by Walt’s scream.
Because that’s when the shooting started.
15
He’d fainted on top of her. The round Tally had been forced to fire as they’d gone down had torn the material of his shirt over his shoulder, grazing the top layer of skin and causing a drop of fresh blood to drip onto her cheek.
God, he was heavy. Tally was strong, but she was pinned thoroughly to the ground by the weight of the man. The unpleasant stench of sweat and long-unwashed armpits assailed her senses. She could also hear his hungry belly rumbling and feel his leg twitching convulsively.
It wasn’t until Ant-Man appeared between the trees and hauled the dead weight off of her that Tally was able to breathe properly again. She sat up coughing.
“Is he dead?” Henry asked, pulling off his mask with a rubbery plop.
Tally shook her head. “No, I think he fainted. He hit me at full-speed and we went down together. The gun fired and he collapsed. He’ll need something for his shoulder, but he’s breathing just fine.”
She handed the man’s gun to Henry, who put it behind the belt at the back of his pants. “Did you see what he was running from?”
Tally shook her head. “No, I only saw him. When he hit me.”
Henry grinned. “I heard a lot of crashing. There could have been other people around, crazies, but they’re well gone now. I followed him back here to make su
re you were okay.”
Tally stood up and looked down at the body rolled against the trunk of the loblolly. He was perhaps twenty-five, with a straggly hipster’s beard and a nose that had been broken and set sometime in the past. She couldn’t tell how tall he was, but he looked long. His thighs and arms were thick, and from what she remembered from being underneath him, his limbs were somewhere between muscle and fat. He was carrying some heft. Gold rings shone on his fingers, and his jeans and bloodstained shirt looked expensive.
He stirred.
Tally knelt down, uncapping a canteen and holding it to the man’s lips while Henry got to the first aid kit in his rucksack.
The man took an automatic sip from the canteen and his eyes flickered open. It was still too dark to see what color they were, but they were quick and sharp.
He pushed the canteen away. “We’ve got to get out of here. They’ll kill us.”
He tried to get up, but winced as the pain in his shoulder became apparent to him and caused his knees to buckle. Henry was back with sachets of sterile water, a wound pack, and tape. “Who’s going to kill us?”
The young man shook his head. “I don’t know. There were four of them. Guys, I think. They came at us from nowhere while we were sleeping. Killed the others… with knives or machetes or something quiet and sharp. I was lucky. I’d woken up for a whizz and was away in the trees when I heard the screams. They were in the middle of the camp… killing…” his voice faltered, and he held back a sob. “We don’t have time for this. We have to move!”
Henry shook his head. “I’ve scanned the area. There’s no one around. Whoever they are, they’ve gone. Guess it was more of the craziness we’ve seen everywhere since the attack.”
“Did… did you find the bodies?”
Henry nodded; his face screwed up with the memory. It sent a shiver through Tally to see it etched so painfully in his expression. “Yes. There were three of them. A guy and two women. That all?”
Supernova EMP Series (Book 2): Deep End Page 13
