The sky turned, and as she took a breath, a white wave submerged her head and cut the air out of her mouth like a punch to the gut.
Out into the air again, her arms went grabbing for and failing to find purchase, her feet kicking free. Nothing around her offered anything to hold on to. Something that may have been Ten-Foot bobbed to the surface of the river some twenty or thirty yards away, but the sight of it was lost to her almost immediately, and the frothing rapids she had fallen into when grabbing for the boy carried her with great speed away from where he had hit the surface.
She was in a fast-moving river, between two rocky limestone walls that had been some thirty yards apart where she’d entered it, with muddy beaches on either side, huge cracked and lumpy rocks squeezing the current and making the surface of the water ever more turbulent, and she had to assume Ten-Foot was somewhere ahead of her being carried in the same currents.
The water, gritty but neutral in her mouth, told her at least that Ten-Foot’s yell of triumph, a result of finding a source of fresh water, had been justified, but that if he’d been looking where his feet had been treading instead of claiming the bragging rights, they might not have been pitched into the fast-flowing water.
Maxine’s panic was not in any danger of completely subsiding as of yet, but some thoughts that might actually help her started to leech through her fear in a way that might be helpful. On a family vacation a million years ago, she and Josh and the kids had traveled to Bryson City, North Carolina, to an outdoor center for zip-wiring, trekking, white water rafting, and general all-around R&R. The safety instructors on the rapids run had given their advice for actions taken by someone who’d fallen overboard and was wearing a life jacket—a piece of equipment she’d left back at the beach—but the principle of going through the water feetfirst in the direction of travel, to use your legs rather than your head as a shock absorber, seemed like a salient one right now. Maxine rolled and threw out her arms, doing what she could to change her attitude in the water and flip over onto her back, star-splaying her arms and sending her feet downstream first.
The only other thing she could remember as the water carried her along, bobbing her up and down all the time, was to breathe and then immediately hold her breath as soon as she broke the surface after a choppy wave rolled over her face. The wave train she was being transported in would have peaks and troughs, and she would breathe in the troughs, immediately closing her mouth against the next rush of waves.
Thinking back to that safety demonstration in Bryson City helped get her heart and her head under control for the time being, at least. She couldn’t have been in the water for more than forty-five seconds so far, but just as time had stretched when she had fallen, actually being in the river had elongated the clock astronomically.
Maxine looked sideways in either direction as she breathed and clammed up her lips between waves. There was no sign of Ten-Foot. If he was in the water with her and conscious, though, he might be within earshot. The wave race was loud and sloshy in her ears, but she could shout above it if she picked her moment in the troughs.
“Ten-Foot!” she screamed. “Go feetfirst! Feetfirst! Use your feet to protect you!”
Maxine couldn’t know if the boy was close or if he’d heard her, but that wasn’t going to stop her trying.
After another ten seconds that felt like half a lifetime, she was humped up and dropped hard by a flat rock just a foot or two below the surface. She threw out her hands as she splashed back down after a six foot drop like she’d been poured from a beer pitcher into a glass.
Her body rushed and bobbed out from under the small waterfall she’d just traversed, and she felt right away that the state of the water beyond the drop was calmer and cut off from the main thrust of the river, which she could still hear like a tumult from twenty yards away on the other side of the rock over which she’d flown.
Her feet nudged up against a rocky barrier, and suddenly she was still. The shock of no longer moving was as unsettling as being raced through the rapids had been. She had to take three deep, calming breaths before her heart began to slow and the trembling in her body from the injection of adrenaline began to dissipate. She looked up and around. She’d landed in a tree- and bush-surrounded pool maybe fifteen yards across, with smooth rocky sides and a small beach studded with water-worn rocks; it was this serenity that greeted her. She experimented with putting her feet down, and within four feet, her boots crunched on a surface bed of stones, plants, and gravel.
Shivering and hugging herself, she stood up. Her head finally rose above the water, and even above the level of the rock that had stopped her traversing the pool.
And that’s when she saw the reptile.
It was yellow and green, thin with a jaw of jagged and hideous teeth. It looked like an alligator that had had all the size sucked out of it, taking it down to a wizened tree branch of flesh.
It looked directly into her eyes as her head came up, opened its cage of teeth, hissed like hell’s own steams, and began scrambling towards her.
In the end, they didn’t see the helicopter, but they had all heard it. The noise hadn’t just been Tally’s imagination overreacting in response to the severity of the stand-off between her brother and her grandfather. That had been a definite thwop-thwop-thwop on the air. Storm had almost dropped his knife in shock, and Donald had shouldered past him and Tally to get to the widest point of the beach and get himself the best view of the area.
They’d scoured the treetops from the distant line of the sea to the tidal pools around their feet and on across the expanse of the inlet’s afternoon-shadowed surface, then right up to the rising blue cone of the mountain that sat deep in the island’s interior. But other than the circling birds coming around in their flocks on the humid air to land back in the trees, there had been nothing for them to see of the helicopter.
“Are we sure that’s what it was?” Tally asked.
Her grandfather nodded. “No doubt. I’ve heard enough of them in my time. It’s not a huge buck like a Chinook, and neither was it a tiny micro-copter. It was substantial as a Huey, for sure.”
“A helicopter. Here? How can that even be possible?” Tally breathed out incredulously. Even Storm was shaking his head. The only person with their eyes on the prize was Poppet, who’d already kneeled back down to the fire in order to ensure the strips of quenk didn’t burn.
They sat down then and ate.
“That’s the first machine I’ve heard in I dunno how long. I know Halley got the compass and that bell working with his copper cages—but a helicopter? Could it possibly be that the effects of the Barnard’s event haven’t reached this island? Wherever it is?” Poppet asked as they ate, and then she drank from their fresh water ration.
“No,” said Tally, “I don’t think so. Everywhere we’ve gone, the devastation has been total and there’ve been no working machines. Not one. Either someone has discovered the same thing as Halley, which is possible, or Halley was in that helicopter…”
“Halley!” Storm spat. “That’s another name I don’t want to hear again.”
Tally could see that her grandfather was tensing as her brother spoke, and they didn’t need another fight. She put her hand on Donald’s arm and squeezed. Donald nodded gently and let Storm speak.
Storm swore coarsely. “He made the eye thing up. Just to get me on their side. Cooked it up while I was unconscious and you’re all playing along. I’m not stupid, you know. I can see it’s just a continuation of the lies I’ve been told my whole life. It’s just that you two—” he pointed at Donald and Tally, “are in on it now, and you, Poppet, just do as you’re told. Like you must have in your marriage to a criminal thug.”
Poppet bristled, but Tally could see that she wasn’t going to rise to Storm’s goading. As he chewed on the pork, the juices running down his chin, Tally could see the same emotions she’d seen before. There was so much anger in her brother’s face. If it was being brought to the surface by the Barnard�
��s event, letting it loose to bubble up through his thinking and attack his mood, then it was doing a great job. Maybe—if they could find him—Halley would be able to do the same thing with Storm as he had done for Ten-Foot, who had mostly been cured of the supernova’s effects by the time that storm had torn them all apart from each other again.
In that moment, Tally again started to feel sorry for Storm. He had been through so much, only to now be tortured by Halley’s so-called ‘particles’ setting off whatever dark and hateful thoughts there were going on in his mind. Perhaps that’s why Gabriel had been able to turn him so quickly away from his family.
Tally got up and went to sit by Storm. He kept looking at the fire as the night closed in around them. “I don’t want to talk to you,” he said at last.
“I’m not here to talk,” Tally said. “I’m here to listen.”
Storm didn’t say another thing, and before they retired to sleep for the night, Poppet whispered in Tally’s ear, “Way to go, girl,” and kissed her on the cheek.
In the morning, they packed what supplies they could into a small survival rucksack they’d found in the raft, wrapping the rest of the cooked quenk up in palm leaves to take along, and took the guns and what ammo they could with them as they struck out along the shoreline of the inlet, heading inland.
The going was rocky, but easy for the time being, and Donald took the lead with Poppet bringing up the rear. Storm avoided eye contact with everyone, but Tally walked with him quietly. Not speaking—just being a presence. Storm hadn’t said anything more about Halley or Gabe or their parents, but he also hadn’t offered any resistance when Donald had told the party they were moving out.
Tally’s grandfather kept a brisk pace across the rough ground, but the others found it easy enough to keep up. The West Virginian hadn’t been one for many words during her childhood in the rare times she’d visited, and so this didn’t seem out of place, but she knew that what Storm had said to him last night would have cut him deep. She hoped the old man would see that Storm wasn’t himself—God, none of them were anymore—and that it was better to let Storm rant, letting the ill tide in him rush out, rather than try to turn it back with arguments he wasn’t ready or willing to hear. Tally reckoned that, if she could get her grandfather alone that evening, once they made camp again, then she would be able to persuade him to respond to Storm in the way she was going to from now on.
You couldn’t argue with madness, wherever that madness was coming from and whatever was causing it. Fighting it with anger or reason wasn’t going to get any of them anywhere. Best to leave Storm to his thoughts, and when they found Halley again, they’d let him see if he could work his scientific magic on her brother, too.
Before Tally could consider more ideas for dealing with the behavior and needs of her brother, Donald stopped dead on the beach ahead of them. After a second, he dropped to one knee, motioning the others to get down, too. Storm was the last one to go down, and even then, he did so with a belligerent look on his face.
Tally crawled forward to land by Donald where he’d stopped. Beyond them, a few yards ahead, he’d been able to see around a bend in the river before the others. Tally came to his shoulder to see what had sent him down, immediately seeing that there was a group of houses—maybe a dozen of them—at the water’s edge, some two hundred yards ahead and around the palm trees’ line beside the black rocks of the inlet. The houses looked like the typical beachfront property of the rich––white walls, huge windows, and silver metal-lined balconies with decorative palms dotting the cinder road that ran in front of them. A couple of the properties had burned-out roofs and soot-blackened windows which gave the effect of mascara running from crying eyes.
A couple of burned-out SUVs were also evident at one end of the range of properties.
“Have you seen anyone?” Tally asked as Poppet and Storm reached them. Tally was slightly disappointed not to see the helicopter they’d heard outside the houses. Part of her had been waiting for them to find it.
Donald shook his head. “Nothing. Doesn’t mean there’s no one there, though.”
“Roger that,” said Poppet. She was reaching into the pack and brought out the binoculars they’d been using on the Sea-Hawk. She put the glasses to her eyes and scanned the buildings. “Dead as a doornail,” Poppet breathed out as she passed the binoculars to Donald.
“Well, let’s get going then,” Storm said, getting up with a sigh of frustration. “There might be food, but there will be shelter and there will be water.”
“Storm, wait…” Donald began as the boy stalked past him with a confident stride. But the old farmer didn’t get to finish the sentence. The palms and bushes in the tree line shook and then exploded into life as, to their left, a screaming pack of people emerged from the shadows—running down the beach to attack.
18
The bullets smashed into the reptile’s nose and broke its jaw in half as it leaped. It hissed and screamed, falling back, arrested by the impact to curl on the rock like a Catherine wheel fallen from its moorings, but still spitting sparks and fire.
Two more bullets smacked into its belly as it writhed and then a last one hit its skull, killing it and pushing it to the lip of the rock. It rolled from the boulder and landed with a dull plop in the water. Its near yard-long tail slid beneath the surface of the pool last, like a mast going down.
The hands Maxine had put up to ward off the emaciated, alligator-like reptile when it had prepared to leap down, and through eyes which were smeared with river water and tears, a vision walked out of the tree line to first stand on the rock, and then kneel to reach down towards the water with a hand for Maxine to grip.
Karel.
“Come on, up you get,” the blond-haired woman said as Maxine was dragged out of the pool and laid down the rock by a glistening smear of reptile blood and broken teeth. “Marshal,” Karel continued as the boy named Pruitt came forward from the trees. His face bore a livid bruise in his wiry beard and his eyes looked sunken with exhaustion, but he was the first surviving probationer, apart from Ten-Foot, who Maxine had seen since the Sea-Hawk had been lost. “Get the, er… thing with teeth. We’ll cook it later.”
With nothing more than a nod, Marshal jumped into the water to retrieve the so-called thing with teeth.
More than her having been saved from the reptile, she was relieved by the new knowledge that the odds of Storm and Tally being alive had gone up again. More figures were coming out of the trees onto the rocky platform.
Karel had taken Marshal Pruitt, the steal-anything-with-wheels car thief, into her raft, which had been the largest of the inflatable rafts, as well as Stanley ‘Goober’ Nash—a wiry twenty-year-old with a string of credit card frauds behind him along with a murdered father. Alongside them, she soon saw Carl ‘Lemming’ Field, who was eighteen and looked thirty, who Josh had told Maxine had had a criminal career that a forty-five-year-old con man would have been proud of.
Then there was the young Lashaunda ‘Lash’ Rochelle, drug mule and credit card fraudster, as well as KK Kyle––ex-addict, with a string of petty burglaries behind her. And, finally, from Maxine’s point of view, there was the girl she had connected with most on the Sea-Hawk, Scally Lish.
They were all bruised and cut up, their faces puffy and their lips split. Some were armed with guns which Karel and Donald had thrown into their rafts while others were holding thick sticks––but they were there. They were okay.
Karel watched Maxine scan the faces as she helped her to her feet, cocking her head compassionately. “No, we haven’t seen anyone else. We heard you from the trees calling to Ten-Foot in the river, but that’s all. Who are you with?”
Maxine tried not to let the disappointment of no news about her children mask the relief she felt over finding the others alive as she told them who had survived with her, and then said quickly, “We should go back to the river; see if we can see Ten-Foot, and maybe the others, too.”
But one person was missi
ng from Karel’s group, Maxine realized. In the desperate scanning of the faces she made again now, she realized that one of their number was not present. Professor Robert Halley.
Maxine remembered pushing him into Karel’s raft herself.
“Where’s Halley?” she asked suddenly.
Karel’s eyes dropped. “I’ll tell you as we go.”
As they walked, Karel told Maxine that they had washed up on the beach about four miles away. They’d taken a hell of a beating on the rocks beyond the shore, but had made it that far in the storm. They’d been forced to abandon the life raft about fifty yards from land after it had snagged on some coral and started to deflate. That was where Karel had lost Halley in the tumult. She didn’t know if he’d been swept away, or if he’d drowned there, but she’d looked around and he’d been gone. The seas had been too rough at that point to search for him. “It was everyone for themselves,” she told Maxine.
Karel looked embarrassed to even say such a thing, but Maxine nodded. “I get it. I do. You have to save yourself if you’re going to be around to save others.”
That acknowledged, Karel continued her story. They’d made it through the waves—all except Halley—saving only a few pistols and a little ammo in a dry box. After they’d partly recovered on the beach, they’d made a search for Halley along that stretch of coast, but had found nothing. He’d been assumed lost at that point, and they’d had other pressing concerns. They’d had no fresh water, and after a thirsty night on the beach, Karel had led them inland to see if they could find a source of drinking water.
“We looked for him, we really did,” she added. “But when you’ve got no water…” Karel trailed off sadly, and Maxine nodded again. She had to hang onto the notion that at least it hadn’t been any of her kids who had been swept away. Sad as it was to lose the vitally important Halley, they would survive here on the island without him once they could start to exploit its natural resources. And once they had found Tally and Storm.
Supernova EMP Seriries (Book 4): Final End Page 17