“Can they catch us?” Josh pressed.
Ten-Foot shrugged. “I don’t know, Boss Man. Dotty-B says the Grimoire is fast when it’s empty, and if she’s been teaching the crew of it, you can bet ya last dime they know what they’re doing. They got the drop on us off the coast of Georgia because we weren’t expecting an attack. This time, we know what they’re capable of, at least. Dotty thinks the best we can hope for now is to run ahead of the Grimoire. From the position we’re in, that shouldn’t be so difficult… for now.”
“Will the engine make a difference?” Karel asked. “If Halley can get it working?”
Halley had taken the hair dryer, with a small voltage inverter, and was now shielding the ship’s battery in the engine compartment. That way, the inverter could convert the DC power it output to 110 volts AC. The hairdryer was then to be taped into the air input on the diesel engine in order to see if it would warm the engine up enough to get the reaction going. Once the engine was running, as long as it wasn’t turned off, it would run without any need for electricity to operate the glow plugs.
“It would allow us to go straight into a head wind, I suppose,” Donald answered. “They’d need to tack, and we could put miles between them and us that way.”
Josh could feel the strain in the old man’s voice—like the tension gripping the back of his neck. Donald looked dog tired, in fact, and if Maxine’s father felt in any way like Josh felt right now, his last reserves of strength building a camp on the outskirts of exhaustion, then Donald would fall over soon—and no one would blame him.
The grizzled farmer ran his hand through the gray hair that was reaching down past the collar of his shirt now—the longest that Josh had ever seen it. More evidence, if it were needed, that times were rough, hard, and unusual for the old man. Josh looked around the group and re-assessed. “Okay, the priority is to keep outrunning Gabe’s ship and get the engine running. If he’s got the armaments Ten-Foot says he does, then we’re done for. All we have here in the way of supplies is what we brought, I’m guessing, yes?”
Ten-Foot smiled. “Well, big Boss Man, you might think that…”
Josh narrowed his eyes. “Why, Ten-Foot? What have we got?”
Less than five minutes later, after a brisk walk and climb down through the superstructure of the Sea-Hawk, Josh and the others watched in the hold as Ten-Foot and Goober began levering the lids off of several crates that had been stored there. The crates had been taken onto the ship since the last time Josh had been on the Sea-Hawk, but before she’d been stolen from Jaxport.
The first crates contained a supply of MP5s and AK-47s, plus box after box of ammo and row after row of magazines. There were even more boxes of canned provisions to be added to Tally and Henry’s inventory of food, too.
“Gabe was fixing to use the Hawk to go north with a crew of Harbormen, maybe as far as New York to see what they could set up there. A boat moving around the coast of the U.S. would be fast and efficient for travel in this world,” Ten-Foot said, picking up a well-oiled AK-47 and looking down the sight.
He threw the gun to Josh, who caught it. The weight of the gun felt solid and reassuring in his hand. The rows of black, curved magazines stuck up like dinosaur dentistry implements from their crate.
Another crate was opened, and he saw that rows of rocket-propelled grenades were embedded in straw packaging, along with several launchers.
Karel whistled. “That’s some serious firepower.”
“You can bet that the Grimoire has the same if not more,” Josh said. “As well as everything else. I suspect Gabe would have stocked his ship with all sorts of goodies if he knew he was coming after us.”
Karel picked up a launcher with the tenderness of someone picking up a newborn. “Maybe, but we’ve got something Gabe hasn’t got.”
“And what’s that?” Josh asked.
“Me,” Karel said simply.
Back on deck, Josh raked the sea with the binoculars. The Grimoire was slung low in the water, about a mile off the Sea-Hawk’s bow. Sails taut, and a wash of white spray at the prow. Night was coming hard on the dull gray day. There was no way to pick out yet where the sun might be above the clouds, and as bulky, rain-fat billows stretched all the way to the horizon, he knew there wouldn’t be much chance of locating it now. The advantage of having the working compass allowed the Sea-Hawk to travel south and be confident they were traveling in the right direction, but all the Grimoire had to do was follow them. They didn’t need a compass of their own when that was the goal.
“We need to cut all deck lights,” Josh said as the gray went down another notch towards night. The Grimoire’s deck was dark. There were no lights visible glinting in any of the superstructure yet. Josh lowered the binoculars. “They’re following us visually. At night, we can’t allow them to get a fix on us so easily. We gotta hope the cloud cover stays; otherwise, the moon or the Barnard nebula will light us up like a Christmas tree.”
Tally and Henry went around the deck, passing on to the crew that they would need to do what Josh wanted with the lights. “We can tie off the sails and keep them steady,” Dotty-B said as she turned the wheel on the rear deck of the Sea-Hawk. “But I’ll need a light to see the compass if I’m gonna stay on the correct heading.”
Maxine picked up the compass and pointed to a hatch behind Dotty-B. “I can take it down the hatch to the first level; if we move off south, I’ll call up to you and tell you which way to steer. There’s no portholes down there. We can risk one lantern. Sound like a plan?”
Dotty-B nodded readily as Josh smiled at Maxine, and she picked up the oil lantern hanging on a hook beside the wheel, already beginning to climb down through the hatch.
Josh knew that Maxine was just putting on a brave face for now. She was accepting that they were moving further from Storm, and she really wasn’t convinced they’d ever be able to go back and rescue their son—but, for now, she was pulling in the same direction as everyone else. He made a point of telling himself to make her aware of his appreciation of her when they got a moment out of this mess. She deserved to hear from Josh how he felt and how he admired her right now.
Josh put the binoculars back to his eyes and sought out the Grimoire again; the ship was getting less distinct in the half light, becoming indistinguishable from the waves and the sky.
“Josh!”
It was Maxine. He pulled down the glasses. His wife was sticking her head out of the hatch—her face, in the failing light, shining with grave concern.
“I can smell smoke!” Maxine said.
11
They found Halley unconscious outside the engine compartment, a thin line of blood coming from his nose and a darkening, swelling bruise on his forehead.
Jingo was dead. A large kitchen knife stuck out of his T-shirt in the middle of his back. The floor was slick with the blood that had pumped from his wound.
And the engine was on fire.
Rags and papers had been stuffed around it and into its vents, and then set alight. There were extinguishers in the corridor leading to the compartment and two others inside it. Josh and Goober fought the fire as Maxine and Karel pulled Halley and Jingo away from the smoke and bright flames.
Halley groaned and sketched his hand up to his forehead, his eyes flickering. Nearby, Karel closed Jingo’s eyes and looked around with murder in her own. She grabbed a handful of Halley’s shirt-front, “Who did this? Tell me!”
But Halley was nowhere near conscious yet. Not even on the edge of any kind of understanding. His eyes flickered and his hand flopped to the deck with a dull thud.
Karel spat a curse and, drawing the SIG from her holster, struck off down the corridor. Josh looked back out of the compartment, ducking under the billowing smoke as the fire was fully extinguished and turned into furious black, oily clouds around him.
“Go after her!” Josh called to Maxine, his face smutted with black residue from the fire and fresh sweat from the heat.
Maxine nodded and
bounded off after the Marylander, leaving her gun in her belt; it was easier to climb ladders without it clogging up her hands. The smoke had been clawing at her throat, and she had already been finding it difficult to swallow with the thickness of the smoke coating her throat. At the end of the corridor was the ladder they’d descended only moments before to find the crisis around the engine. Karel had already traversed it, and Maxine heard her footsteps clattering across the deck.
The first droplets of rain hit her face as Maxine made it out through the hatch and blinked in the chill air. There was still enough daylight to see along the length of the Sea-Hawk. The probationer crewmembers were at their stations, Henry and Tally bent over a prone figure on the decking, and as Maxine came up, she could see they were helping her father back to his feet. The old man’s face was thunderous.
Maxine reached them in four strides. “What happened?”
“Karel,” said Henry breathlessly. “He tried to talk to her, and she just pushed him out of the way.”
“Don’t darn well talk to me as if I’m not here!” Donald roared. “What’s happened with the engine? Why’s Karel gone crazy? What’s going on?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” Maxine said. “Which way did she go?”
Tally pointed forward of their position along the deck. The gloom was encroaching by the second, as if the darkness had filled up the sky below the horizon and begun spilling over the edge of the day.
A female scream from up ahead sent Maxine off across the deck with the other three hanging onto her footsteps. Amidships on the Sea-Hawk and in the shadow of the mainmast were the lifeboats and kayaks being stored under tarps. Between them was a raised wooden enclosure with glass windows, through which Maxine could see benches. When the Sea-Hawk had been used as a training vessel, before the supernova, lectures and training sessions had been run there. There was a hatch in the deck at the far end of the structure which led down into the hold in one direction and the dormitory cabins in the other. Maxine had also been shown a radio room down there, from which a satellite radio—when such things had still worked—could be operated. Down the narrow wooden corridor toward the prow of the Sea-Hawk was another deep hold which had been modeled on the historical ship, but which was now to being used for storage. Just before that was where a modern galley had been situated in the superstructure of the ship. In the little exploring Maxine had done on the Sea-Hawk since she’d been on board, she’d found that it wasn’t really a maze down there, but there were plenty of places for a person to hide. With Karel’s rage high because of Jingo’s demise and her gun in her hand, there would be plenty of accidents just waiting to happen. Maxine was glad, as she entered the lecture area and made for the hatch—where the scream had come from—that Tally at least was behind her rather than in front of her, and thus not in any immediate danger.
Who would have tried to set the engine alight, though? Which one of the crew would have wanted to sabotage it? Josh had given Maxine a summary of what had happened on the ship to him and Tally when many of the crew had gone insane after the first effects of the supernova had hit. How the crew had murdered each other in the most horrific ways imaginable, and then turned on Josh, Tally, and the probationers. She’d seen for herself, firsthand, how Ten-Foot had behaved when he’d been in the thrall of Gabe, and she’d been told how his moods had swung and swayed between good and evil ever since the Barnard’s event. His viciousness waning and waxing like the phases of the moon. She realized now, as she came down the ladder, that there had only been three people she hadn’t seen on deck just now or else near the engine.
Karel.
Ten-Foot.
And Scally Lish.
A scream sounded. Maxine drew her pistol from her belt.
Three shots were fired in quick succession from ahead and then Karel’s voice yelled, “Let her go! Let her go, Ten-Foot, or so help me God, I’ll shoot you both to get you down!”
Maxine ducked through the low door that led into the galley area. There were steel-topped ranges with a plethora of steel pans and skillets hanging above them on hooks, all of them swinging as the ship keeled and rolled in the swelling ocean. There was no light in the galley—just the paltry yellow glow from the oil lamp swaying in the corridor behind them.
Maxine felt Donald come up to her shoulder and edge forward with her. At the other end of the galley, there was a doorway which was half-closed, showing a dark slice of shadow beyond it.
Scally screamed again, and the black was lit up by two bright muzzle flashes as bullets fizzed around the enclosed space and slammed into the hull.
Donald and Maxine ducked. Maxine turned to Tally to order her, “Get out of here. Leave this to us.”
Tally was already drawing her pistol, and she gave Maxine a withering look. “I can handle myself, Mom.”
Henry had unshouldered his MP5 as he edged forward with Maxine and the others.
The sounds of shuffling came from the hold, and something hefty sounded like it had been toppled over with a metallic thud.
“Stay back! Stay back!”
It was Ten-Foot. His voice was harsh and cold, the edge on it like a razor on the air. He meant business. Maxine was transported back to when Ten-Foot’s Harbormen had attacked them in Cumberland. The sheer psychopathic sense that had boiled off the boy then like the icy blast of a winter wind. The hardness in his eyes. The line of his mouth like a blade. It was all back and present in his voice.
And it was just as clear that he had Scally as his prisoner, and somewhere, Karel was in there, too.
Maxine edged to the door at the end of the galley, keeping her head down. The gloom beyond was indistinct, but as she stared around the edge of the door, detail slowly became apparent in the half light. One of the old steel freezers had been pushed onto its side about ten yards away. As Maxine listened, she could hear Scally sobbing in the darkness.
Maxine moved her head a little more into the gap, and a hand fell on her shoulder. She looked around, seeing that her dad was shaking his head.
Maxine shrugged off his hand. “I just need to see…” she whispered.
Her dad’s face was grave, but he gave the smallest of nods. Maxine put her head around the door again and tried to locate Karel. Perhaps seven yards away were three crates. The guns and grenades that they had been shown by Ten-Foot and Goober earlier. Maxine looked closer and saw that Karel’s foot was visible between two of the crates.
“Why did you kill him, Ten-Foot? Why did you knife Jingo in the back like a damn coward?” Karel demanded.
Scally’s sobbing continued, and Maxine ducked as Ten-Foot’s hand holding his pistol came over the top of the freezer like a periscope. Two bullets slammed into the top of the crate which was keeping Karel from view.
“Stop firing in there!” Maxine shouted. “Ten-Foot, you’re firing at a crate of grenades. Are you trying to blow us all up? Do you want to die right now, right here?”
The hand came up again and fired twice more, the bullets tearing the wood of the crates and blowing splinters into the near darkness. “Yes! Yes! I do wanna die! You think I wanna live like this? You think I like what’s going on inside my head!”
Ten-Foot fired once more, and this time Karel stood up and fired two shots in return. The slugs spat across the space and tore chunks out of the wall on the other side of the hold.
“Karel! For God’s sake!” Maxine screamed.
“He killed Jingo! He’s going down and I’m taking him down!”
The click of someone clipping a new magazine into a gun sounded out, and then three more shots came in such quick succession that it was impossible for Maxine to tell who had fired them.
Maxine bit into her knuckles and looked back at Donald. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“Ummm, I know you’re all a little tense, but if I could just squeeze past?”
Maxine and Donald looked up with incredulity as Halley came up behind them in the galley, turned sideways, and then, without an appar
ent care in the world, threaded himself through the crack in the doorway and then walked unarmed into the hold.
Josh arrived just ten seconds later.
“Where did Halley go?” he demanded, kneeling down behind Maxine and Donald who were covered by the door. Tally and Henry were pressed against the other side of the doorway, over against the range with their weapons ready.
Maxine pointed into the hold. “Couldn’t stop him; he just walked through. He’s not even armed. What the hell is going on?”
Josh shook his head and rubbed the sore spot over his sternum where Halley had elbowed him and pulled away. Josh and Goober had finished extinguishing the fire and come out into the corridor where Jingo’s body had been lying next to the unconscious––or so he’d thought––Halley. Josh had just kneeled to check on the scientist when the man’s eyes had snapped open and he’d sat bolt upright. “Where’s the boy? Where’s Ten-Foot?” Halley had asked, already trying to get to his feet and slipping in the blood leaking from Jingo.
Halley had looked down at the body with a mixture of disgust and annoyance as he’d finally gotten fully to his feet.
“Who did this?” was the first and most reasonable question Josh had thought he could ask, but he’d thought he knew the awful truth already, and there was going to be hell to pay if it was true.
But Halley hadn’t answered him. He’d just rubbed at the bruise on his head and pulled away from Josh. Instinctively, the ex-cop had reached for the scientist and pulled him back by the shirt.
The explosion of pain in the center of his chest as Halley’s elbow had stabbed him unexpectedly had taken him by surprise and had hurt not only his body, but his ego, as well. Halley was not a fighter; he was not a fantastic physical specimen. He had years on Josh, and he was built like a willow tree. But even though his nose had been bleeding and there’d been signs of a nasty contusion on his forehead, he’d been away from Josh in a second and bounding off down the corridor like Jack Frost over the rooftops of Olde London Town.
Supernova EMP Seriries (Book 4): Final End Page 11