The Barnard’s Nebula was bright and high in the sky. Its jagged edges were more pronounced, its smudge becoming a broad smear of light. A badge of desecration worn on the breast of heaven. Every time Tally caught sight of it, she immediately wanted to avert her eyes from the very symbol of the world’s realignment as a post-technological planet in the grip of a myriad of madnesses. She thought that she’d never again be able to look up to the stars with anything like a feeling of awe. And that was a sharp, vinegar-in-a-paper cut pain on top of all the others. How much more would the phenomenon take away from those survivors left to pick up the pieces?
The black tree line of spruce where the plain became the steady foothills of Alleghany Mountain came up as a ragged tear against the dark blue of the night. They made the trees without raising an alarm and began to move more slowly than their race over the grass had gone, slinking up to where Donald expected Creggan’s spotters to be.
Henry raised his fist and the line came to a halt. Tally was behind him as her dad came up. Henry pointed ahead. It was difficult to pick sights out clearly in the gloom, but fifteen yards ahead, she could see four figures, three of them sitting and one prone, this last one holding a rifle pointed down the valley towards the M-Bar.
“I’m sick of these sandwiches, Ray. The bread’s stale, and a rat would turn his nose up at the cheese. I need a hot meal.”
“Shut up, Spencer. Your mewling is sticking in my gullet. If you want to go back to Creggan and tell him you’re not happy with the culinary arrangements, then be my guest. I’ll tell your sister you died well.”
“Ray, all I’m saying…”
There was a fast rustle of clothing, a thud, and a yelp. “There was no need…”
“Shut up, or the next time I’ll smash your nose so hard you’ll be able to sniff the back of your neck!”
While this exchange had been going on, the M-Bar team had been taking up their positions in the prearranged fashion.
Henry, Tally, and Greene to the right; Josh and Poppet to the left.
Tally finished her count of fifteen in her head and tore the cap off the road flare she was holding, exposing the striking pad; she pulled the cover off and lit the flare. The sudden flash of red light illumined the tableaux of Creggan’s men, and she tossed the red, fizzing tube into the middle of them.
The four men dived away, scrambling for their guns.
Josh, Henry, and Poppet moved forward, their weapons ready.
Josh fired over Creggan’s men’s heads. “Don’t make me shoot you, boys. Let’s keep this friendly. Get on your knees and put your hands up.”
Creggan’s men did as they were told. “You kill us and Creggan will bring fifty men here.” The voice had come from the guy who’d been identified as Ray by the so-called Spencer. He had a black Stetson jammed on his thin-faced head. Next to him was a chubby guy in a white hat. The man who had been prone on the ground with the rifle hadn’t had a chance to get up, and so he’d simply rolled over, sticking his hands comically into the air all the same. He got up and joined the others on their knees.
The fourth—a drooping, mustached, pock-faced man with hooded eyes that were made ever more so by the guttering red light from the flare—still hadn’t put up his hands.
There was a gun in a holster on his thigh, but at the moment he wasn’t reaching for it. Neither was he complying with Josh’s instructions.
“Don’t just take Ray’s word for it,” Mustache said, flicking his eyes to Ray. “Gee, if you don’t hand over your weapons, I’ll just kill you all myself.”
Tally looked at her dad. His machine gun was pointed squarely at the man who was speaking with such confidence and disdain.
“Trust me,” the man continued, “you are in a world of trouble; up until now, Dale has been more than patient with you. He was even prepared to let Laurent be collateral damage in the process since he seems to be enjoying more of your hospitality than expected. Dale said that if Laurent was stupid enough to get himself taken by a bunch of amateurs, he didn’t care about getting him back. But you hafta understand, there’s a natural order of things around here now. What you might call a pecking order. We peck down. So… you gonna shoot me and start a war?”
“Now, Greene,” Josh said.
There was a hiss and an ignition, then a shoosh, and a tree twenty yards away blew apart in a gout of flame and flying splinters. Greene giggled, and Josh gave him a look that made the giggle freeze in his throat. Tally could tell her dad’s glance said, Not the time and place. Back at the ranch, Greene had told Josh while they’d been planning that he was keen to be on RPG duty. He’d told them he “couldn’t shoot pistols for taffy” and had argued that, as they didn’t know how much resistance they were going to get from Creggan’s men, that him “standing at the back with just the one job make sense, yeah? While you all handle the bad guys.” Josh hadn’t had time to argue, and Tally had thought Greene sounded reasonable––he had settled down, after all––so she hadn’t even argued against it. Henry had just shrugged when she’d looked at him questioningly.
Now, Josh turned to the men on their knees. “You want a war, mister, you got yourself a war. Now you tell your Mr. Creggan that there’s plenty more where that came from. If he wants to talk, we’ll talk, but there is no way your pecking order, as you call it, applies to us. You want a share in the animal produce of the M-Bar, you’re going to have to play nice. Or… bye bye, boom boom.”
The three men looked at Mustache. Their faces in the red flare light were full of concern, and they weren’t drawing any confidence from Mustache. “Came on, Daniel. There’s no need to bring matters to a head now. They’re being reasonable,” said Spencer.
Daniel spat on the ground and then smoothed his mustache with his fingers. “Spencer, you’re a damn coward. We walk away from here and Dale is not going to be happy.”
“Let me worry about that,” Josh said. “Just get up. Leave your weapons and take yourself back to town. We’ll release Laurent in the morning. Your guy is right. All we want to do is get along, but we won’t play nice if you try to lord it over us. We have the firepower and the determination to resist you, as well as the weaponry, and we will resist. So, let’s all be reasonable, yes?”
Spencer and Ray got to their feet, hands still in the air. After a few seconds, the sniper joined them. Daniel hadn’t moved, and his black eyes were brittle, black quartz in his face. This was a man Tally would rather have on her side than against it. Her dad was dealing with the situation well, using what her mom called his cop skills—the conflict resolution strategies employed in these situations to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.
After what seemed like an age, Daniel nodded and, using his thumb and forefinger, lifted his Glock from his hip holster and dropped it to the ground.
“You can have all the hardware back once we’ve talked to Creggan, okay?” Josh commented as Poppet and Tally went forward to pick up the guns and rifles and search them for hidden weapons. The sputtering flare was still throwing off a bright bubble of red light over them all. As Tally and Poppet withdrew to a safe distance with the weapons, her father spoke again to Daniel. “You’ll have horses up in the trees, I’m sure, hidden from sight. Where?”
Daniel boiled, but pointed up the trail into the trees. Josh said, “Henry?”
Henry nodded and jogged away from the group in the direction Daniel had pointed.
“You’re going to have to leave those, too,” Josh continued. “We’ll look after them, but I want to see you walking away down the slope and taking the road back to Pickford. Am I clear?”
“As crystal,” Daniel said, and the bubbling rage beneath his voice came through clearly. His eyes were boring into Tally’s father’s, but Josh was staring right back at him. In the end, it was Daniel who broke the stare first. The man turned on his heel and began to stalk away from the fizzing flare.
The other three followed him. Tally and the others watched them for forty seconds as they went down. Soon
, the dark would engulf them and they’d be out of sight.
Then, for the second time that night, there came a hiss, an ignition, a shoosh… and a rocket tore away from the group, lancing through the night. The four men from Pickford didn’t stand a chance. The exploding RPG blew them apart in a splash of fire, a heave of earth, and billowing smoke.
“Liars,” said Greene, dropping the launcher before anyone could take it out of his hand. “They were gonna come back and kill us anyway. But I showed them. I damn well showed them.”
29
Six days late, Maxine and Doctor Banks––“For God’s sake, call me Larry, young lady”––sighted the M-Bar from the road through the tree line.
Since leaving Cumberland with fresh supplies, ammunition, and clothing, all at Clitheroe’s insistence, they’d made good time from Maryland into West Virginia, stopping just long enough to give Tally-Two the rest she needed to freshen up and be on her way again.
Larry’s traumatic amputation of General Carron’s leg had been allowed to go ahead in the dimly lit operating theater, and the general’s screams as the stump of his leg had been cauterized––“It’s the only way, I’m afraid,” Larry had said––had haunted Maxine’s thoughts from the second she’d turned away, covering her ears. Not so much because she felt any sympathy for Carron, but because those would be the same conditions under which her son would be operated on.
Larry had been quiet as the buggy had passed the intersection that led up to his property in the woods. Maxine had told him what she’d found there and what she’d done when his wife had died. Larry had been tight-lipped, pale-faced as a few wandering tears wound their way down his cheek. He’d thanked Maxine for staying with his wife until the end, grateful for what she’d done afterwards. It was that, more than anything, that had convinced him he should come with her to the M-Bar rather than stay and help the people of Cumberland.
Clitheroe had given his blessing, too, on the understanding that Larry Banks would return to the city as soon as he was finished with Maxine’s son. A doctor of Larry’s experience and ability was not someone they could do without for long. Maxine had agreed that she’d get Larry back as soon as she could, and with Larry’s agreement, the deal had been struck.
The sight of the M-Bar down the Alleghany slope, across the plain, was a sight that made Maxine’s heart leap and hurt in equal measure, but when the man dressed all in black—and with a gas mask over his face, no less—stepped from the shadow of a spruce and pointed a sub-machine gun at them in the road, her heart almost stopped.
Maxine reined Tally-Two to a stuttering halt as the ant-faced man came towards them.
“Mrs. Standing?” the muffled voice from inside the mask asked. “And Lawrence Banks?”
“Yes,” answered Maxine. “Who’s asking?”
The man pulled off the mask, exposing red hair and the fact that he wasn’t so much a man as not much past being a boy. He came forward and patted Tally-Two gently on the rump. His eyes were bright, fast, and his tongue worked anxiously at his lips. He seemed worried about the trees, as if he were expecting someone to burst out of them at any time.
“I’m Henry. We need to get you off the road, right now. Creggan’s men are coming. If you come with me, I’ll take you to your family.”
“You need me to fight with you. I’m an asset, not a hindrance!”
Greene’s eyes blazed, Josh thumped the table, and Donald ground his teeth.
“Killing those men has started a war, Greene. You’re a fool and a liability,” Josh said, his bitterness hissing out of him like he was a cobra threatening to strike.
“I say we shoot him now and be done with it,” Donald suggested.
Greene raised his hands. “You know they were lying! There were going to be no negotiations. They were going to come back here and wipe us all out anyway. It’s what people like Creggan do. How stupid are you?”
Josh rubbed his eyes. In the last four days, there had been no contact with Creggan’s men or Creggan himself. But they had seen activity up on the ridge where Greene had exploded the RPG, and two nights ago, they’d seen shadows moving in the paddock, which Donald had fired at, though he’d hit nothing. Josh guessed Creggan had sent a couple of guys to see what they could find out about their strengths and armaments, and what preparations they were making on the farm to defend it.
The windows in the house had been boarded up by Donald and Josh while Poppet, Henry, and Tally had done what they could to keep an eye on the roads approaching the farm. Josh reckoned that if Maxine was going to come back in without getting attacked, they would need to get to her first before she drove her buggy out into the open and exposed herself to Creggan’s men.
Laurent was still tied up in the lounge, Josh figuring that he might still be useful as a bargaining chip if Creggan and his men made an attack, but he understood that was a longshot. Especially after Greene had blown up his men.
It was a desperate situation. If they could have moved Storm, they could maybe have hightailed it out of the vicinity south, but that just wasn’t an option. In the last few days, Storm’s abdominal pains and vomiting had returned—going beyond the capacity of the antibiotics and the painkillers to bring him respite.
If his appendix hadn’t burst yet, it was getting ready to.
And what to do with Greene?
Josh had to concede, if only to himself, that Greene had a point; when Creggan’s men came at them, they would need all hands at the pumps to defend the M-Bar and get to a position where they might be able to negotiate a settlement. But the hollow ache in Josh’s guts suggested to the ex-cop that he was clutching at the last straws in the wind.
“I should be out there with the others, defending the place.” Greene’s voice was a whine, and Donald was doing that thing where he stuck his thumbs in his jeans and rocked on his heels with his chin in his chest, as if he was struggling with himself to not just shake Greene by the throat and dash his body to the ground.
They could hear Laurent, too, tied up and laughing from the other room. That probably meant that Maria was in there with him, smiling and saying “Donald” every three seconds. This seemed to amused Laurent to the point of hysterics.
Josh sighed. “Greene, if you want to do anything, get in there and keep an eye on Laurent. Make sure he doesn’t get free. He’s the last chip we have in the game.”
Greene got up from the table, turning as he got to the door. “I’ll need a gun.”
Donald spat in the sink.
“I’ll think about it,” said Josh. “Now, go.”
The post next to Tally’s head exploded. She ducked back down and brushed the splinters from her hair. “Dammit. Dammit. Dammit!”
She’d seen Henry leading her mom and the white-haired doctor down on foot from the tree line, along the cattle fences and the dotted trees of the plain, which meant Creggan’s men could have been able to see them also. The sniper who’d replaced the ones Greene had turned into so much mincemeat didn’t appear to be as skilled as the first, but he obviously had a tad more optimism. He’d already loosed off a few shots which had whanged overhead, and one which had split the fencepost by Tally as she’d looked up to check on the progress of those coming down from the hills.
Creggan’s men weren’t ready to come down as a group yet. Obviously, her dad had said, because they didn’t know how many grenades, with the means to fire them, there might be left at the M-Bar. If they knew there was only one, they might not still be skulking on the ridge and taking potshots. So, they had to be thankful for small mercies. It was clear they weren’t going to wait forever, and Tally got the distinct idea they were planning some sort of assault in the next couple of days. How could they not? How could Creggan save face with his people if he let the killing of his men and the taking of Laurent pass?
The simple answer, as her dad and grandfather had agreed, was that Creggan could not. It was a boil he was going to have to burst.
Henry, Tally’s mom, and the doctor–�
��tall, lanky, and carrying a black doctor’s Gladstone bag from another century––were crouched low and running. The shots rang out from the ridge, but they didn’t seem to be in danger of hitting their target except by accident.
As the three reached Tally, she upped and crashed into Maxine. She felt like she would have wrapped her legs around her as well as her arms if she could have.
“Oh, Mom! I thought I might never….” her words broke off in sobs that were deep and hard.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” her mother said, hugging back. Her tears wet on Tally’s forehead. “I’m here now. Henry said Dad made it back, too…”
“Yeah, got here just after us with Poppet.”
“Poppet?”
“Gangster’s wife. You’ll love her.” Tally smiled through the tears.
“All these hugs and kisses are all very well, young lady, but if I’m going to prevent your brother from developing peritonitis, then time is of the absolute essence,” the white-haired doctor commented, tapping Tally on the shoulder. “Lead on. Lead on.”
Neither Maxine nor Donald could bring themselves to take Maria back to the room where she’d been chained before, so Josh simply led her up the stairs.
She clung to his arm and smiled and said, “Donald” as she squeezed it. So much of the woman he’d known peripherally, all his married life, had drained away to leave this compliant, smiling husk who he just couldn’t match up with the description Maxine and Donald had imparted. How she’d been in the weeks leading up to Creggan’s first visit to the M-Bar––insanely violent and violently insane––now there was a child-like tone in her being. A blissful innocence which calmed the heart and unfurrowed the brow whenever she was near. Everyone seemed to respond to her differently. Donald would have a mist in his eyes, Tally a lump in her throat. Henry and Poppet thought she was the sweetest thing in the world, and Greene seemed to be nothing less than uncomfortable in her presence, as if she were the very negative image of him. He wouldn’t acknowledge her in a room even if she sat by him and reached for his hand. Laurent, tied up on the couch, thought she was hilarious. Josh, feeling the pull of Donald’s loss and the ache the older man was experiencing, felt more akin to the older man than he ever had before. It was like seeing his own feelings of loss about his own marriage made flesh.
Supernova EMP Series (Book 2): Deep End Page 25
