With the launch hidden beneath the ship’s bow, Taylor stood up and balanced in the boat as he reached up and gripped one of the lines. With a heave of effort he hauled himself up and swung his legs around the rope, crawling up to the bowsprit in the darkness and then easing his way down onto the deck.
Seth followed Taylor up onto the Phoenix’s deck, and they crouched in the darkness as Taylor slipped his rifle from his shoulder and checked the mechanism.
‘I don’t see anybody,’ Taylor whispered.
‘Probably at the wheel house,’ Seth guessed. ‘Saunders won’t let anybody else in there as long as the captain’s away.’
‘So what do we do?’
Seth crept away across the deck in silence, and Taylor gripped his pistol tighter as he followed.
*
Reece leaned against the bulwarks, the deck bathed in a faint but comforting glow from the pair of lights hanging from the stern rail. Beyond, the inky blackness of the water merged seamlessly with the darkened decks.
There, near the mainmast, several of the crew lingered. An occasional flare from a cigarette glowed against their faces, making them look like demons lingering at the gates of Hades.
Reece was not fooled by Saunders’ confidence in the captain. The crew were regularly swapping watch, catching some sleep as others watched. They knew that it was only a matter of time before exhaustion got the better of Saunders, and without him there was no way that Reece could hold off the entire remaining crew on his own.
He looked down at the heavy pistol in his hand, and wondered not for the first time just how the hell he had gone from a career in biochemistry to a sailor on an antiquated ship holding off a mutinous crew with a handgun he’d never fired before.
None of this had been their fault, and yet since the storm he had seen Bobby Leary cover for him only to be mauled to death by a polar bear, and then seen his remains eaten by the crew of the Phoenix. God only knew what had happened to the captain and his friends ashore, but after everything else Reece guessed that it was not good.
He looked up at Saunders. The old man was sitting with his eyes closed, his chin resting on his chest. Reece looked at the crew. They remained in place, watching, waiting and biding their time. It would not last much longer, a few hours maybe? Then Reece and Saunders would be overrun, and then…
He shivered as he thought of what might become of them and forced the thought from his mind.
A movement to his right caught his attention and he looked across the decks to see the crew vanish into the darkness. Reece squinted, trying to see where they were going, but only silence and blackness loomed. He turned and gave Saunders a nudge with his boot.
Saunders blinked awake, looking up as Reece indicated the deck.
‘Where have they gone?’ he whispered.
‘Just walked off,’ Reece replied. ‘Maybe they got bored of waiting.’
Saunders’s finger touched the safety catch of the shotgun as he shook his head. ‘Not likely. Stay here.’
Saunders eased himself out of his chair and crept forward to the edge of the light, peering into the darkness near the mainmast.
‘Careful,’ Reece whispered, his grip on his pistol fierce.
Saunders edged further into the darkness, careful to keep his back to the stern and cover any retreat he might be forced to make. He took another step and then a sharp crack rolled out over the deck. For a moment Reece thought that one of the rigging lines had snapped, but then Saunders cried out as his leg buckled beneath him and he crashed down onto the hard deck.
Reece leapt forward to help the old man, but froze as Taylor and Seth loomed out of the darkness amidships, Seth’s pistol aimed at Saunders.
‘Don’t move!’ Taylor growled.
Saunders rolled on the deck, one hand clasping his wounded leg as the other swung the shotgun around to point at Taylor.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ Seth yelled as he changed position. ‘You shoot and I’ll put a bullet in Reece’s brain!’
Saunders glanced up at Reece. Reece stared back in horror as the rest of the crew swarmed in behind Taylor and Seth. Muir nipped forward and stamped the shotgun down against the deck before Saunders could respond, then yanked it from the old man’s grasp.
‘Give up the pistol,’ Seth snapped.
Reece stared at Seth’s tattooed visage, half in shadow from the stern lights, his eyes glinting like evil points of light and his tattoos looking like dark veins lacing his skin.
‘Man the wheel!’ Saunders managed to shout above his pain. ‘Don’t quit, Reece!’
‘Shut up!’ Muir roared as he stamped a foot down on the old man’s knee.
Saunders screamed in pain and Reece felt rage and fear flush through his veins as he stared at Seth.
‘Drop the pistol!’ Seth shouted.
Reece raised a placating hand at Seth and crouched down, pointing the pistol at the deck. His shadow across the crew vanished as he ducked below the lights from the stern and into darkness. Seth’s features squinted as he tried to watch Reece.
Reece whipped the pistol up to point at Muir and then he pulled the trigger.
Time seemed to grind into a slow-motion blur of silent movement as the gunshot rang in Reece’s ears. The recoil snapped Reece’s wrist back, a flash of muzzle flame spurting from the weapon to illuminate Muir’s face as Reece’s vision momentarily blurred from the bullet’s shockwave.
Muir’s head snapped back as the bullet smashed through his forehead and exited the back of his skull to smack into the mainmast. A fine haze of black blood splattered the deck and his legs quivered as they collapsed beneath him.
The crew scattered in surprise as Taylor whirled to aim the shotgun at Reece. Muir dropped like a stone onto the deck as the pistol dropped from his grasp. Saunders grabbed for the weapon as Taylor backed up and fired the shotgun.
Reece hurled himself to one side and hit the wheelhouse door as the shotgun’s blast peppered the panelled wall beside him. Reece aimed the pistol at Taylor just in time to see Saunders fire at the big man.
Taylor folded over as the bullet impacted low in his belly and he collapsed on top of the shotgun. Saunders fired twice more, Taylor’s huge bulk shuddering with each impact of the bullets before he fell silent and still.
Reece aimed the pistol out across the decks but he could see nothing of the rest of the crew. Saunders groaned and sucked in painful breaths of air as Reece hurried across to him.
The old man’s knee was a bloodied mess that soaked his jeans and had spilled onto the deck.
‘Stay at the wheel,’ Saunders gasped. ‘Get the guns and get back in there!’
Reece tried to grab the old man by the arm to haul him to a safer spot but Saunders shook him off angrily. ‘Man the goddamned wheel!’
Reece staggered backwards. He turned and managed to pull the shotgun from beneath Taylor’s inert body and retreated up the steps to the wheelhouse, back into the glow of the stern lanterns. He realised that he was shaking, his face damp. He touched his hand to his face and his fingers came away wet with tears.
‘Lock the door!’ Saunders yelled.
Reece reached out for the door and slammed it shut, then pushed down hard on the door brace until it slid into position. He turned the key in the lock and backed away until he bumped into the wheel.
In the darkness he glimpsed through the windows the faintest hint of light across the eastern sky. Maybe a couple more hours and then he would be able to see everything again.
He was about to let hope creep through his veins when a voice called to him from outside.
‘Now, Reece, we’re going to make this just as easy as we can for y’all!’
Reece lurched to the wheelhouse windows and saw Seth standing over Saunders. Seth had Saunders’ pistol in one hand and a belaying pin in the other.
‘How ‘bout you open that door for us?’ Seth yelled.
Reece gave his best shot at a confident answer. ‘No can do!’ he shouted. He soun
ded like a five year old cornered by the high school football team.
Seth cackled a laugh. ‘That’s a shame, boy. Don’t want to get all medieval on your asses!’
Moments later he felt sick as he saw Seth drive the belaying pin into Saunders’ wound. The old man writhed and screamed in agony as metal grated against bone.
***
31
Cody leaned back against the thick bars of his cage as he waited for Sawyer’s henchman to return for Hank. The vast amphitheatre echoed with soft shuffles and the murmurs of other prisoners, and in the cage to Cody’s left he could see Charlotte asleep and Hank sitting with his chained crucifix in his hand, fingering the icon in thoughtful silence.
Cody fixed his gaze back upon Maria.
She lay asleep on a pile of old jackets in the cage to his right, covered in a shawl and watched over by a young girl of maybe twenty years old called Lena who seemed to have taken Maria under her wing. Her protector’s face was stained with grime and her cheeks hollow with starvation but she lay alongside Maria as the little girl slept, unwilling to leave her side.
Sauri watched over the both of them.
Cody had learned much from the young girl in the past hour. Lena Harris had been a downtown bank clerk, she had told him, before the storm hit. Two brothers, both parents, a nice home just outside the city. The perfect suburban image of the American Dream realised. Both her parents had been killed in the riots in Boston as they tried to find food for their family: her mother had been gang raped and shot, her father beaten to death. Her brothers had died attempting to protect Lena from more rapists weeks later. Lena had been caught but had escaped without molestation soon after, only to land in the hands of Sawyer’s men a few months later as she scavenged the city for morsels in the bitter snows of winter. She had made little attempt to escape, barely able to walk let alone run.
Lena had found Maria in the cages and instinctively protected the tiny girl. Half of the people in her cage had suffered likewise, seen families murdered or die from exposure or disease, and they too were protective of the young in their company no matter whose child they might have been.
Such humanity in the wake of unspeakable barbarism, like small flowers blossoming amid smouldering plains of ash, tugged hard at Cody’s heart.
‘How long has she been here?’ Cody whispered across to her as he looked at Maria.
Both Charlotte and Bethany were watching them in the darkness, Jake standing opposite Cody to block the view of the guards lingering near the exits.
‘Two months, give or take,’ Lena whispered back. ‘I don’t know about other militia in the city but I’ve never seen Sawyer kill or harm children.’
‘Wow,’ Jake murmured, ‘he’s all heart.’
‘Anybody ever escaped?’ Cody asked her.
‘Sure,’ Lena replied. ‘The guards often brawl among themselves and people slip away when their backs are turned, but not for a long time now.’
‘How come?’
Lena cast him a foreboding look through the bars of her cage. ‘You see the walls outside when you came here, the bodies?’
When Cody nodded, Lena sighed and gently stroked Maria’s hair.
‘If Sawyer’s men capture an escapee, they bring them here and throw them back into the cages. Then, they take the closest friend or family of that escapee and strap them to the fences outside to die.’ Lena looked down at Maria. ‘That’s how they guarantee obedience. They punish the innocent.’
Cody swallowed thickly as he looked at Maria.
‘And the rest of the prisoners?’ he asked her. ‘Sawyer said that they’re food.’
Lena nodded. ‘If things get hard, yes,’ she replied. ‘They’ll take the oldest or weakest and kill them to eat. It was worst in the winter, but nobody’s been taken for a while now.’
It was said with such a frank expression that Cody wondered briefly if Lena’s mind had gone, that she was no longer capable of being emotionally moved by the horrors that she had witnessed. Then he watched her hand stroking Maria’s hair and realised that he did not fear for his daughter, that his instincts and her actions assured him that Maria’s protector was still sound of mind. Only her soul had been scoured of its emotion, as though she were somehow hollow like a ghost, a shadowy reflection of the young girl she had once been.
‘I don’t understand how Maria got here,’ Cody said. ‘How did she survive the Great Darkness?’
‘She was with a group,’ Lena replied. ‘A bunch of scientists from MIT so I was told, stuck together after the storm. Wives, friends, family or whatever, they tried to make a go of it and get out of the city.’
Cody sighed in relief as he realised that his colleagues at the famous institute must have guessed what was happening before the rest of the population. They would have gathered together, made calls, got wives and parents and children alongside them, stockpiled and prepared for the onrushing collapse of civilisation.
Maybe Danielle made it out with them too, with Maria, but got separated somehow.
‘You hear anything of her mother from the people at MIT?’ he asked. ‘Her name was Danielle.’
Lena’s eyes flicked to Cody’s at the mention of the name, and he saw within them a grief that seemed to have become a constant companion in all of their lives as she whispered in reply.
‘She died.’
Cody swallowed as silent tears flooded his eyes once more. ‘How?’
Lena’s reply seemed to come from far away. ‘They were attacked, by looters searching for food. The children were sent south with younger survivors to flee while the parents stayed to hold back the looters. I guess they failed.’
Cody buried his head into his arm, tried to hold back the disbelief and the shame that he felt. He had not been there. He should have been there. He had fled when his family needed him the most and now his wife was dead, nothing but a memory.
‘The group held out for a few months before they were attacked,’ Lena whispered in the darkness. ‘They looked after the children, kept them safe. I guess Sawyer’s men picked them up soon after and brought them here. Maria’s never been alone, Cody. There was always somebody looking out for her.’
Cody felt fresh grief sweep across him as he heard the young girl trying to console him, after all that she had endured. He felt Bethany’s hand rest on his shoulder but he could not bring himself to look at either of the women.
‘I heard you all talking earlier,’ Lena said, ‘something about signals, from outside the city?’
Cody, relieved at the change of subject, managed to master his grief. For reasons he did not want to think about it was getting easier each time to swallow his pain, like a bitter pill or a noxious fume endured so many times the brain becomes immune to it.
‘There may be other survivors, organised people,’ he said. ‘But we don’t know where they are.’
‘You called it Eden,’ Lena replied. ‘People talk about it from time to time, a safe haven.’
‘Just like I said,’ Hank whispered from somewhere behind them.
‘What have you heard?’ Cody asked her.
Lena shrugged and her shoulders slumped slightly as though fatigue was slowly wearing her down.
‘Rumours mostly,’ she replied. ‘A lot of survivors believe in it, and that somehow people will come back with working machines again and everything will be restored to the way it once was.’ She looked up at Cody. ‘You think that it’s true?’
Cody stared at her for a long moment. The temptation to lie and to tell her that everything was going to be all right was almost overwhelming, but when he looked at his daughter, alive and well, he knew that he owed Lena more than that.
‘No, it’s not true,’ he said. ‘Things will never be the same again.’ Lena nodded to herself in silence as though she had known all along as Cody went on. ‘Silicon chips have been burnt, cables will have frayed, power-stations are crumbling, materials and pipelines decaying. It’s already too late, Lena. The world we knew is gone and i
t won’t come back in our lifetimes.’
A silence descended in the cages around him and Cody realised belatedly that every pair of eyes were watching him. A lone voice spoke up, tremulous with age.
‘You sure about that, son?’
‘I used to work at MIT,’ Cody replied into the darkness. ‘If there was any chance humanity could recover from this, believe me I’d champion it. But there isn’t. All we have is each other.’
Heavy footfalls alerted Cody and he turned away from the cage bars as a muscular man stepped up and shoved a key into the locking mechanism of Hank’s cage.
‘You,’ he snapped as he pointed at the captain, ‘with me, now.’
Hank stepped away from the bars as the door was hauled open and stepped outside. Another of Sawyer’s thugs snapped a pair of handcuffs around the captain’s wrists and shoved him in the general direction of the exit.
Nobody said anything until Hank and his escort were out of sight.
‘You think he’ll do us right?’ Jake whispered, almost to himself.
‘We don’t have much choice but to trust him,’ Charlotte uttered as she glared across at Cody. ‘Can’t trust anybody else.’
Cody did not reply but Bethany shook her head. ‘We should trust in ourselves. Hank will sail out of here if he gets the chance. He owes us nothing.’
‘Better than being stuck with Cody,’ Charlotte snapped.
Cody ignored her as he turned back to Lena.
‘Do you know who Sawyer was, before the storm? How did he come to lead these people?’
Lena shook her head, her eyes heavy with sleep. ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know.’
Cody sighed as he looked about the vast hall and listened to the moans of the sick and the weak, a hymn of mankind’s suffering echoing around what had once represented the power of government and the security of democracy. All gone now. Mankind had lost far more than just the ability to light and heat buildings or power vehicles: he had lost the will to succeed, the spark of resilience and innovation that had driven him to excel and overcome. Mankind had given up, and only those born of more brutal minds held sway over the beleaguered remains of a once great nation.
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