“Don’t talk,” Tally said to Poppet as Storm, who had followed behind Maxine at a slower but no less deliberate pace, kneeled down beside Maxine.
Poppet managed a derisory snort which sounded like broken plumbing in her chest and brought a froth of bubbles to her lips. “Don’t talk? Honey, I’ve… got… way too much to say right now… to waste my words on… dying.”
Maxine smiled and held the woman’s hand. It was cold and deathly pale. Already, her body was in shock and the nonessential periphery of her being was losing out in the rush to send as much healing blood and oxygen as it could to the core system in her body. The hand might be cold, but the insane flutter of pulse in her wrist was testament to what was going on inside Poppet’s body. The body didn’t just give up. It would work to the last moment to try to plug holes, to save its life. Poppet’s body was no different, and she was going to take advantage of that.
Poppet held out her bloody fingers and grasped Storm’s hand. “Now, kid, you listen to a dying… woman… yes... Yes?”
Storm looked at Maxine, his eyes imploring her, as if he didn’t know what to do. Maxine didn’t know what was going to come out of Poppet’s mouth, but she could make a guess. She nodded to Storm. “Just listen.”
“I never had any… kids… couldn’t make it… work. Joey wanted them… but—” She broke off coughing, and a dribble of blood replaced the froth at the side of her mouth. There was an ache of pain in her eyes. Maxine held her other hand, that one that wasn’t clutching at her son like a drowning woman. “We… tried… and it failed. Biggest hurt of my life, kid.”
Storm had fresh tears on his cheek.
“I’ve seen the best of Josh… the very best. He’s been brave and he’s been righteous… he’s not always made the best decisions… but he’s always made them for… the right reasons. And through… all that, Storm, he’s had you, your mom, and your sister at the center of his mind… I’ve not seen him falter… from that goal… keeping you all safe… Storm…” Another coughing fit interrupted her, and this one made her head loll against Tally’s arm, wrenching tears from Maxine’s own eyes.
“Storm… if I’m going… as I know I am… please, give Josh… your dad… another chance… he’s gonna screw up… he’s gonna be a doofus. That’s what dads are for, it’s in the job… descript… description.”
Poppet’s breathing was becoming more labored, the sweat on her face running down to mix with the blood that was coming from her mouth and the snot leaking in a thin line from one of her nostrils.
“…but even when he’s a doofus… he’s your doofus, Storm. He’s the guy who not only has your back… but wants more than anything else to have your back… are you listening, kid? Are you?”
Poppet was pulling at Storm’s hand. Bringing him closer, pulling his head down close to her mouth. Maxine had no idea when the lucky shot from the Harborman’s indiscriminate firing had hit Poppet. But the woman must have carried on shooting from her hiding place for some time. She’s had the steel to carry on doing that, and now, even though she knew she was only moments from death, she still had that steel.
“Do it for me… if nothing else,” the New Yorker said. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d have died from that… burst appendix… remember it was me and your mom who saved your life… in my world, that means you owe me a debt, kid. And that debt is to make… sure you fix things with Josh… ya gotta promise me, okay? Promise…”
Storm’s head lifted up away from Poppet’s mouth. There were dots of her blood on his cheek from where the bubbles of blood on her lips had burst when she’d spoken.
Maxine waited an age for the response from Storm.
But instead of words, instead of a promise, he got up from his knees, wiped his bloody fingers on his shirt, and walked away towards the water.
Poppet’s head rolled to one side, her last breath a tiny groan that had sorrow and regret right in the center of it.
And then it was over.
Except for the helicopter.
Josh didn’t want to believe what Gabriel had gleefully told him about Lashaunda “Lash” Rochelle. It had never occurred to him that one of the probationers, who had been through so much, would align themselves with Gabe Angel and comprehensively sell them down the river. Almost literally.
“These kids have come from nothing. You saw Ten-Foot. He was more than happy to join the Harbormen. I’m not sure what you did to turn him, but he was there at the sharp end for many months, and he reveled in carrying out my orders—however bloody and extreme they might be. Lash… she was not a soldier, but she had… other skills, shall we say, and she wanted to be part of Jaxport; wanted the riches and the power that might bring her one day. A few trinkets, and a few promises, and she was mine forever, Josh.”
Josh shook his head.
“Oh, it’s true. When my men cut her away from the pack while they were watching your progress at Bluehills, she beautifully gave us chapter and verse on what you were doing and what you had planned. It’s only a shame that she couldn’t get away from Halley’s search for—what was it? —dopamine production-enhancing food to find out exactly how you were going to get on the Grimoire. But no matter. We were ready and waiting for you, weren’t we? Good old Lash, she gave us nearly everything we needed.”
Josh didn’t know if it was Gabe’s wine or the subject that was warming him up so much or a combination of both, but the so-called king was animated, his eyes were alive with the enjoyment of what had happened.
“It’s thanks to Lash that your wife and daughter, and my son, are back under my control… how does that feel, Josh? To have so comprehensively lost again?”
“He’s not your son, douchebag.” Donald had spoken up for the first time. His chin jutted out, his mouth set. “Lash hasn’t told you everything, has she? Not everything at all.”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed and he put down his goblet. “Did I give you permission to speak?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Yes, Donald—old man—yes, I am.”
“Then I don’t need permission. I’m gonna say what I want to say whether you want to hear it or not. We old men, we don’t stand on ceremony or worry about treading on toes. We come out and say what we want straight.” The cords in Donald’s neck were standing out, his temples clearly throbbing, and Josh almost imagined he could hear the old man’s lion heart trying to beat its way out of his chest.
Gabriel gestured to one of the Harbormen guarding the room. His Colt Government 1911 was raised and pointed at Donald’s forehead.
“You think I’m scared by that,” Donald sneered.
“You won’t be feeling anything if I click my fingers, old timer.”
“I’ll tell you what I do feel, you cut-rate tyrant with delusions above any kind of grandeur. I feel I’ve done Josh Standing the gravest disservice all these years. I didn’t see past my own stupidity. I didn’t see that my daughter loved the very bones of him. And that he was a good man. Not a man without faults—who is? —but that he was a good man—to my daughter, and to his daughter and to his son.”
Gabe got up from the table too quickly, so that his thighs banged into it and the shudder turned the bottle over to glug away its contents across the varnished surface, causing the bottle to roll off the edge of the table and smash on the floor. It threw up splashes of wine like blood. “Storm is my son!”
“He’s not,” said Karel.
“Absolutely not,” said Henry.
“See,” continued Donald, “we know the truth now. Josh knows the truth now. We’ve seen the science. Did you know that, Mr. Big I Am? That your eye color, Josh’s and Maxine’s eye colors, and Storm’s are so distinctive that, for the chances of them not to be Storm’s parents are something like a hundred million to one. Like those odds, do you, big shot?”
Gabe picked up a sliver of broken glass, came around the table, and ground the point of it into Donald’s shoulder. The old man gasped.
“Leave him alone!” Josh
screamed. Gabe turned on him like a viper and ground the same sharp needle of glass into the top of Josh’s arm. The pain exploded white and deep in his flesh. It sucked all the breath out of his lungs and made his legs almost give way.
And then, when Gabe twisted the glass in the fresh wound like a drill going down into the muscle, Josh’s legs did give way and he fell sideways as the point of the glass scratched against the bone in the top of his arm. It was pain like he had never experienced before, smashing through his shoulder in simultaneously hot and cold waves of agony.
Josh’s eyeline across the deck of the cabin put him in a direct line of sight through Gabe’s legs to Donald, who was slumped forward and breathing hard, but still up on his knees. Glistening blood from the wound in his shoulder was starting to run down the material of his already sodden T-shirt. Drips of water from their scuba swim across to the Grimoire fell from the bottom hem of it like tears.
Josh blinked. His head was swimming from the pain and he was focusing on the wrong things.
Think. Think.
“I’m really sorry, Josh,” Donald was saying, “that it’s taken me so long to recognize that you’re a better man than the first piece of scum Maxine ever brought home to the M-Bar. I blamed you for taking her away, but really, it was this a-hole who pushed her away from him and into your arms. I never, ever thanked you, Josh. But I’m thanking you now. For making my daughter happy.”
Gabe’s roar almost took the roof off the cabin. His arm scythed through the air, and for a moment, Josh thought that he was hearing the whisper of glass cutting a slice from Donald’s neck, but then he saw it had just been the hiss of unconsciousness escaping Donald’s lips as the stabbing, back-handed punch of Gabe had stunned him so that he fell, like Josh, onto his side.
The pain in his own shoulder was relegated to a dull throb, but remained deeply unpleasant. Like he had a stomach ache and nausea rolled up into a ball of discomfort that had moved sideways into his shoulder.
Think. Think.
His hands were tied behind his back, but his feet were free. He wouldn’t get much kicking done before he got shot in the face even if he tried, though.
There were two guards and Gabe. The guards had their pistols drawn and racked, so it would be the work of a moment to raise them and fire.
There was nothing near enough to his feet to kick over, but as Gabe paced in front of the windows, his hands rubbing through the hair on the side of his head, there was something that occurred to Josh.
Something that he might be able to use.
The windows.
They were modern reproductions built for the nineteenth century ship. Square, with single-glazed glass, and held in a lattice work of varnished wood.
If anything hit them at speed, there was a good chance that that thing would go through and make it to the outside of the Grimoire. If that thing was Josh, and that thing called Josh was moving fast enough, and that thing called Josh wasn’t being shot through with holes, he might just make into the water.
No need to worry about his hands being tied up, either—Josh had an old party trick to deal with that.
All Josh had to do was get to the window at full pelt without the guards shooting him like a dog first.
25
Josh kicked at the table legs, pushing the heavy, mahogany piece of furniture away to skid across the wooden floor of the cabin. The boards were well varnished, and the table, heavy and stable as it looked, had already moved once when Gabe’s thighs had crashed into it and knocked over the bottle of wine, so now that there was real force behind it, the table moved with vicious speed.
Pushed with all of Josh’s strength, it skimmed across the varnish like ice on ice. It hit the two guards in the midriff and bent them over before they even had a moment to realize what was happening, or, crucially, lift their guns. Josh was already rolling up onto his feet, crunching through the broken bottle’s glass and taking the four steps to the window with his head down.
His shoulder crunched into Gabe, sending him sprawling. Gabe screamed, “Take him alive!”
But Josh was already crashing into the window.
If the pain in his arm was harsh, hitting his head against the window as he launched himself off of his feet was on another level. There was a crack, a tearing, a desperate hand reaching for him, and then with a splintering crash, he was out into the open air and falling.
“Get him! Find him!” Gabe was screaming. “Launch a boat! Get into the water!”
And then Josh was below the cooling surface of the waves. He felt like the top of his head had been flattened by the impact and like his face may have turned into a jigsaw puzzle of flapping flesh, and there was warm liquid around his head that wasn’t sea water—only one thing that could be, and that was blood. He dimly wondered why they weren’t shooting at him as he kicked down below the surface.
Gabe’s last words echoed around his thoughts.
Alive. Alive. ALIVE.
Gabe may have wanted the ex-cop alive, but unless Josh could get out of the bonds holding his wrists behind his back, then he’d be something else.
Dead. Dead. DEAD.
Party trick.
Yes.
Party trick.
Josh had in the past, and even as recently as a few months ago, been able to put his handcuffed hands down to the floor, roll onto his back in one swift movement, and bring the cuffs and his hands to the front of his body in one fast action. It had delighted friends back in the day, and it had gotten him out of a tight fix in Trace Parker’s mansion in Parkopolis.
As he sank in the water, he tried to change his attitude, bring up his knees, and begin to bring his wrists towards his ankles.
He got as far as the bottom of his calves and no further.
He tried again, the agony in his shoulder matching the growing agony in his lungs.
If he didn’t breathe soon, he would either drown or his inability to swim away from the boat would leave him vulnerable to Gabe’s men, who he imagined were dropping a boat into the water right now.
He tried again. But all he succeeded in doing was causing his body to use up more of the precious oxygen in his system. He hung upside down in the water, head swimming with the pressure.
Concentrate on your body. You’re too tense. You’re full of adrenaline. If you’re going to get this to work before you drown or break surface, you have to concentrate. You have to think yourself into your limbs. Let go of everything else, Josh. Let go and twist your body to make this work. Think yourself into your limbs.
He pulled up his knees, reached down with his arms, pulled the ropes on his wrists apart as far as they would go, and…
Gah! What was that?
It felt like something sharp and hungry had taken a bite out of one of his fingers.
He was surrounded by a cloud of his own blood from his various wounds, though, so it wasn’t exactly a leap of faith to put two and two together to make four.
Oh God, don’t let it be a shark. Please don’t let it be a shark!
He felt downward again, desperate to bring his wrists around to the front of his body so that he could work on the bonds with his teeth and swim away from here.
Gah! The same finger was nipped again. In exactly the same place as it had been before.
What the hell…?
It wasn’t a shark. It couldn’t be a shark. Not even close.
He strained––with his lungs bursting––feeling around as best he could below his ankles. There was a piece of the bottle that had broken in the cabin on the Grimoire, and it was wedged in the rubber of his boot sole from when he had run across the shards to the cabin window.
Feeling carefully around it, and mindful to get the strongest grip he could, he pulled the thumb-sized piece of curved glass free of his boot and began to saw at his bonds.
He kicked as he sawed, trying to get as much space between him and the Grimoire before he would need to break the surface. He couldn’t hear or see anything on the surface of t
he water yet except for the shimmering moon and the distorted smudge of the Barnard’s Nebula.
There was a moment of clear focus when the water above him seemed to no longer have waves; it had become flat as a mirror, and the nebula resolved into something approaching clarity.
At that moment, his wrists came apart, and the rope fell away from his sawing fingers.
Josh could swim, and swim he did. Breaking the surface just to take his first breath for two minutes and filling his lungs with pure energy. If he could get back to the shore, there might be a way to take Gabriel again.
Maybe.
He stayed below the surface as best he could, only coming up to breathe when he absolutely needed to. It was on the second of these surface breaks that he heard the gunfire.
He turned in the water. The sound of shots wasn’t coming from the Grimoire, directed at him; it was coming from the shore, and it was pretty clear there was a battle going on around the burning jungle.
How could that be the case if everyone had been captured by Gabe’s Harbormen?
Shouts nearer to him made him look back to see two boats had been launched over the side of the ship, and one of them, now sculling in his direction, had a red-uniformed Harborman at the prow. The Harborman was gesticulating wildly and pointing at Josh’s head, which must have looked shiny and seal-like, breaking the water at this point.
He’d stayed surfaced for too long, trying to work out what was going on with the beach and the battle—the beach where his wife and children were.
He kicked below the surface again, only just recognizing that the gunfire on the beach at least seemed to have stopped. When he rose again to take a quick breath, he couldn’t hear a thing. Not even shouts from the Harbormen chasing him down through the waves.
Supernova EMP Seriries (Book 4): Final End Page 23