Supernova EMP
Dark End
Deep End
Bitter End
Final End
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
RELAY PUBLISHING EDITION, MAY 2020
Copyright © 2020 Relay Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. Published in the United Kingdom by Relay Publishing. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Grace Hamilton is a pen name created by Relay Publishing for co-authored Post-Apocalyptic projects. Relay Publishing works with incredible teams of writers and editors to collaboratively create the very best stories for our readers.
www.relaypub.com
Blurb
The truth will be revealed, whether they’re ready or not.
The firefight for the M-Bar’s valuable resources rages on in the post-apocalyptic madness, but the Standings are finally standing together… until secrets that Maxine has tried to keep buried come to light. And when they do, they threaten to severe the last tenuous strands holding the family together.
Reeling from betrayals that cut deeper than flying bullets, Josh Standing follows after his revenge-seeking father-in-law. He doesn’t seem to have much choice, as it seems the Standings are collapsing from within and there isn’t anything that can keep them together.
And then they hear of a new horror: People are being rounded up and systematically slaughtered or enslaved by a single man leading a train of carnage. He’s ruthless, he’s cunning—and now he has Storm Standing, too.
To save her family, Maxine will have to come face-to-face with her past and stand down her worst fears if she has any hope of stopping the man threatening her family.
Before her final secrets become the death of them all.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
End of Bitter End
Thank you!
About Grace Hamilton
Sneak Peek: Final End
Also By Grace Hamilton
1
Josh Standing, who had lost his family and then found them again, no longer felt sure of who they were or how he fit in to their lives. But, for now, he had a more pressing concern to attend to.
He had a dead woman in his arms, and there were bullets smashing through the windows of the bedroom where he knelt.
The M-Bar Ranch was under attack. If Josh didn’t defend the property right now, the notion that had been placed in his head by the dying woman—that he was not the father of his son—would be moot. Moot because they’d all be dead anyway.
Maria, who was Josh’s mother-in-law, had been attacking him when she’d been hit by one of the bullets slamming into the ranch. They were being fired on by Dale Creggan’s men. As she’d died, a moment of seeming lucidity behind her blood-smeared lips had led her to implore her daughter to tell Josh the truth about who Storm’s father really was.
Now, that rabidly screeching, murderous woman, smothered in the slobber of a rabid madness and the blood from her injuries, looked like the broken fossil of a small bird.
Josh laid the limp and now pathetic form of Maria Jefferson down onto the floorboards. Moments before, she had been attacking him with all the fury of psychotic insanity—an insanity that seemed to have been visited upon ninety percent of the world’s population. The effects of a supernova that was something like six light years from Earth had rushed over the planet in a welter of madness and technological destruction, causing savage insanity to well up in billions of minds since that moment.
Josh closed his eyes, ducking as another bullet spat through the second-floor window beside him, punched a hole through the ceiling and sent out puffs of white plaster and splinters from ceiling beams.
Josh got up and, keeping low, went to the wall at the side of the window and looked out through the bullet holes in the boards which covered it.
Creggan’s men hadn’t yet made it as far as the yard, but the pasture beyond the yard, where the cattle had been corralled, was a bloodbath of dead beef. Creggan’s men, advancing, had shot thirty of the animals to use as cover. The rest of the herd had stampeded away from the gun battle. Josh could see the retreating forms of the animals as they ran along the road away from the ranch. From there, some of the terrified animals had broken for the plain that eventually led up to the foothills of Alleghany Mountain.
Puffs of smoke below told Josh the tale of those left downstairs—his father-in-law Donald Jefferson, his daughter Tally, and Poppet Langolini, Henry Grange, and Greene Davidson—who were defending the ranch with vigor at the moment. Keeping Creggan’s men pinned down for now, too. But it wasn’t a situation that could last forever. Ammunition was finite, and if the quick forms of the attackers dodging behind the dead carcasses and moving about on the hillside were anything to go by, Josh and the others were outnumbered ten to one.
Josh had a sidearm, a Glock in a holster on his hip, but it wasn’t a gun that would be a useful defensive weapon from up here. Downstairs, he had a bolt action Remington Model 700 that fired hefty .300 Winchester magnum cartridges, which he’d liberated from an exclusive gun store in Savannah, Georgia. He’d placed it with his pack at the bottom of the house’s front stairs. With that weapon, with its scope and range, he’d be better placed to pick off attackers as they made themselves available to him.
Josh ducked away from the window as the board before him rattled and warped—bullets tearing through it to smash into the far wall of the room.
He ran for the door, got out into the corridor, and made for the stairs.
The front range of the ranch house was mostly made up of the large and generous kitchen, a storage area, and a utility room. Donald and Henry had boarded the windows there, too, but left enough of a gap below the plywood to observe and shoot through. Josh came into the kitchen with the Remington already in hand, clicking the bolt and chambering a round.
Donald, in his early seventies, was as tall as John Wayne and wide as the West Virginia sky. He and his shotgun remained focused outside as Josh came in. Henry, nineteen, red-haired, and keen as mustard, kneeled below the windows with his MP5, taking the occasional shot through the gaps beneath the board in front of him.
Poppet Langolini, a self-described ex-gangster’s moll in her early fifties, blonde and brassier than a vintage Italian espresso machine, was loading shells into weapons and changing magazines in others on the kitchen table. She was getting them ready to pass to Donald and Henry as they were needed. She was an excellent sports shot herself—a long-time skeet shooter and hunter—and Josh knew this would only be a temporary respite from her getting back into the fray.
When Josh came in, bullets were rattling the frame of the house, glass was falling with shattering crashes, and the air was full of dust. Josh co
uldn’t help being glad the old man was concentrating on the attackers. He didn’t want to meet Donald’s eyes and have to tell him right now that his wife had been killed. This wasn’t the best environment in which to receive the worst of news. Instead, Josh took the Remington to a window and began sighting through it.
“They’re not going to stop until we’ve killed ‘em all,” Donald said as Josh fired his first shot. The head he’d been aiming at had already ducked out of sight behind a carcass in the paddock.
“They’re tying us up here,” Henry said, sending a burst from his MP5 out beneath the window board. “Best we can do is keep them down. But the ammo ain’t gonna last forever. And I bet you they’re circling the house already.”
“I’ll go and take a look out the back,” Poppet said, hefting a shotgun and two boxes of shells under her arm. “I’ll look in on Maxine and Storm, too. Hopefully, the operation’s nearly done.”
Storm was in a back room being operated on by Lawrence Banks, a surgeon Maxine had risked everything over in order to bring him back to the M-Bar to deal with her son’s appendicitis. Maxine, a nurse and wound care specialist, was assisting Banks, and as the house came under fire, Josh couldn’t imagine how difficult the operation had become with this new addition of stress.
“Thanks,” Josh said as Poppet left the room; however desperately he wanted to know that Maxine and Storm were doing okay, he was needed here in the kitchen more.
Henry sent out another burst of bullets just as Josh saw a figure making an opportunistic break from behind cover to run towards the barn. The figure was caught by Henry’s fire across the legs and pelvis. His arms flew wide, his Stetson spinning away and his body flailing. He wasn’t dead, but he was out of the game.
“Where’s Tally and Greene?” Josh asked, sending another shot into the paddock, though it didn’t find his target.
“Covering the windows at the side of the house in the den,” Donald said, sending a blast of shot towards the paddock.
Josh chambered another round with the bolt and took aim through the scope. He had no idea how this was going to end and who would be left at the end of it to pick up the pieces.
Maxine felt like she was going to fall into the open wound in Storm’s abdomen. Doctor Banks—Mr. Call-me-Larry—was wrapping tape around the gauze he’d circled around his shot-up fingers, and he’d sat back on his backside to direct Maxine in continuing the operation.
“I can’t,” she’d said at first.
“You can,” Larry had answered. “The wound is open. You can do this under my direction. Back in the mists of time when I learned how to do this, the maxim was ‘See one, do one, teach one.’ I’ve done this a thousand times. You can do it.”
A volley of shots had interrupted Maxine’s answer, and Storm, sweating, covered in his own blood and in Larry’s from his injured hand, had reached for his mom. “There’s no one else, Mom. You gotta do this. Please.”
So, as the shots had pummeled the side of the building, coming through the window boards with anxiety-spiking regularity, Maxine had followed Larry’s instructions.
It wasn’t a case of being squeamish. She’d seen plenty of open wounds in her time as a wound care specialist at Morehead Mercy, where she’d worked in their North Carolina hometown. It was just that this was her son. Opened up to the world, and in a room that was coming under sustained gunfire from attackers outside.
“Right, Maxine. We’re nearly there. Hook your finger through the peritoneum and you should be able to feel the appendix there. It’s thin like a green bean, and squashy but tough. Get your finger under it and bring it out.”
Three bullets sang across the room from the window to bury themselves in the wall opposite. Maxine and Larry ducked instinctively. Plaster spat into Larry’s silver-gray hair, and he used his free hand to dab at Storm’s iodine- and blood-smeared abdomen to remove the flakes.
“The longer this goes on, the more garbage that’s going to get into the wound. We can flush it out, but it’s still a huge risk. Get the appendix now, Maxine. Now.”
Maxine nodded and hooked her nitrile-gloved finger through the last layer of muscle in her son’s abdomen. Larry had managed to open everything he’d needed to before he’d been shot. That was something to be thankful for, at least. Now, the sweat was standing out on his wrinkled forehead like rivets on a battleship. Maxine knew he must be in terrible pain, but he was keeping a lid on it. He couldn’t help her other than to direct her movements.
She closed her eyes to think herself into her finger. Feeling through the small hole to try to locate what Larry had described. Larry was swabbing around the retractors and forceps that were already in the wound in order to staunch as much of the blood as he could. Storm groaned as Maxine worked her finger in and she almost pulled back. But then the thin, hard ribbon of gut she was searching for moved against the pad of her index finger, and suddenly she was hooked beneath it.
She pulled up with her hand and the appendix—blue-red, swollen, and hot beneath her finger—came into view.
“That’s it, girl. Well done. Infected for sure, and the thing that’s been causing all his pain. Homestretch now, son,” Larry said, a strained smile sketched across his face as the sounds of the battle intensified outside.
“Okay, hold it there, and I can use the forceps to clip the artery feeding its blood supply; then you can ligate… tie off… the vessels before we crush and cut out the appendix.”
Larry clipped the arteries and told Maxine how to prepare the surgical thread to tie them off.
The door opened breaking her concentration as Maxine spun her head. For a moment, she expected to see one of Creggan’s men in the doorway about to shoot them down. But it was Poppet. She came in with her face determined and her shotgun in hand, kicking the door closed with her heel behind her. “They’re moving up behind us and to the side. I’m gonna see if I can pin some of them down from here. Okay?”
Maxine nodded. She hadn’t had time to get to know Poppet yet, but she hoped she would on the other side of this if any of them got out alive.
Poppet knelt at the window and fired both barrels of the shotgun through it. “Nailed one. They’ll think twice about just walking up here now.”
She ducked as a line of machine gun bullets studded the board.
“Or maybe not.”
The operation continued as best it could under the circumstances. Larry explained how to tie off the arteries and Maxine followed his instructions with shaking fingers. Then she was directed to crush the base of the appendix with another set of forceps and tie off below the crushed area. Larry reached in with forceps-scissors at that point, and the appendix was free. Maxine pulled it away and dropped it on a plate by the side of the bed.
“Now to close up. First, we need a purse stitch around the stump of the appendix, and…”
Larry’s head dropped forward, his face pale and his mouth lolling.
Poppet fired two more shots from the window and tracked back to look at Maxine, who felt like her heart was about to burst out of her chest. Her hands were still in the wound, and as Larry’s voice had trailed off, he’d slid back. His chest was rising and falling softly.
Poppet felt for a pulse in his neck. “He’s alive. Fainted from the pain or blood loss, I guess.”
“But what are we going to do?” Maxine asked as the firing intensified outside again.
Poppet pushed Maxine backward and her hands plopped from the wound in Storm’s tummy.
“Improvise,” Poppet said. She passed the shotgun to Maxine’s bloody hands and started pulling on a pair of sterile gloves.
“You take the window, and I’ll do what I can here.”
“You know how to stitch up wounds?”
“Some. Ask Josh if you ever get the chance. He’s living proof.”
Maxine nodded and went to the window.
Tally Standing took a step back as Greene Davidson moved around Laurent’s exsanguinated corpse and came towards her; his knife was h
eld out in front of him like a magic wand, and his greatest trick had been disappearing Laurent’s life.
His eyes were wild, and all the blood had been sucked from his thin lips behind his beard. But that wildness in his face held something even more disturbing than straight-up murder. Greene looked like he was enjoying himself. His cheeks were flushed, his chin thrust out with anticipatory relish. Like a guy who was looking forward to the best meal in his life.
Tally moved so that there was a low coffee table between them, cutting off direct access. But this was not a tenable position to be in.
She would need a real escape route soon.
Tally and Henry had met Greene on the road from Georgia. He’d come to them in the night with stories of his murdered companions. And when they’d investigated Greene’s camp, they’d discovered the bodies of his companions with their throats cut—in the same way that Laurent’s had been.
Henry and Tally had taken pity on Greene, a twenty-four-year-old software designer with few survival smarts and a penchant for bragging. Really, he’d seemed like nothing but a young rich guy with a hipster beard and a clumsy gait, who’d caused them a couple of problems on their way to the M-Bar. And who, because of his recklessness in killing four of Creggan’s men with an RPG—men who had already been vanquished and who had been walking away without their weapons—had triggered the assault on the farm, which was being led by the man running the nearest town, Dale Creggan.
Supernova EMP Series (Book 3): Bitter End Page 1