Supernova EMP Series (Book 3): Bitter End

by Hamilton, Grace

  Donald’s hand had struck out like a cobra and grabbed Maxine’s forearm—fully pulling up the material that had just betrayed her skin right in front of him. Maria had tried to intervene, telling Donald that henna wasn’t permanent and that he was overreacting, but Donald wouldn’t be persuaded that this wasn’t the thinnest edge of a much thicker wedge. A wedge that proved Maxine was descending into the black morass of moral turpitude. As far as he’d been concerned, the tattoo was the first step along the road to drug use, prostitution, teenage pregnancy, and a million other parental horrors.

  Maxine had tried to pull away, the dinner table had upended, and the night’s food had been splattered to the floor in a welter of broken crockery and roars from Donald.

  Maxine had been sent to her room to “consider very carefully what she had done and give herself a good talking to.” Donald had then added, “If you were a boy, I’d take my belt to you!”

  “Yes, I know you’d much prefer me to be a boy! You make that clear every damn day, Daddy!” had been Maxine’s parting shot before slamming her bedroom door and throwing herself onto her bed.

  She’d heard raised voices for much of the evening, echoing through the ranch house. In the morning, when Donald had been out seeing to the animals and Maxine had been getting ready for school, Maria had told her that she would be grounded for a month and that she would help her that night to remove the henna tattoo with lemon juice and baking soda. “This time, Maxine, I couldn’t move him. Maybe if you hadn’t said what you’d said about being a boy…”

  But it’s true! Maxine had said in her head. But her mouth had only made Donald’s stoic line—exhibiting one trait she’d inherited from her father—and she’d just nodded.

  There’d been no point in arguing, but later on, looking back over time, even though this episode came years before she would leave home to go to Raleigh and escape the claustrophobia of the farm, Maxine believed that that was the day she’d begun leaving.

  “Can we talk?”

  Maxine’s eyes flickered and she crashed back into the present. Josh was standing in front of her. He held an orange juice in his hand, but he wasn’t drinking it. The barbecue was sizzling; Karel and her men were eating steaks and talking about the best route to take back to Cumberland. Tally was sitting with Storm, their heads together as they talked quietly. Poppet and Larry were discussing something animatedly on the side of the yard, beyond even Donald, who stood alone in his silo of stillness and contemplation.

  Maxine looked up at her husband for what seemed like the first occasion in a lifetime or more. She hadn’t had time for anything else since they’d been reunited, as they’d arrived in the middle of a battle and she’d been concerned first with dealing with Storm’s surgery and then with burying her mother. The rush of everything else had kept Josh from her thoughts almost completely.

  And she realized now that she was glad of it. There was so much other stuff to unravel about their relationship, and the way it had stagnated and treaded water for so long, not to mention her resentments—justified, she believed—over his focus shifting too far away from what was important: his family, at a time when it needed him the most.

  Maxine knew the look on his face all too well. Josh was not someone who shot first and asked questions later. He was not a hot-head or one to fly off the handle. He was someone who thought through things before he voiced concerns or made criticisms. His face now was the one he wore when he’d done all his thinking and was ready to speak his mind, and to hell with what anyone else felt or what stage they were at in processing their own concerns.

  “About?” Already, her voice was clipped and there was a razor in it—she could hear it in herself. It was the default position of their communications over the last three years or so. Ever since Josh had left the police department and become a probation officer for young offenders. It wasn’t the change in career that Maxine had resented, but how it had changed him. She understood that after the death of Cody Zem—the young probationer had been stabbed to death when Josh had been mentoring him—Josh had needed to get out of that uniform and do something else. But the fact that it had turned his concerns away from the family had itself turned Maxine’s concerns away from him.

  “I want to talk about us… the family.”

  Maxine shook her head. “Josh. I just buried my mother. We can talk, yes. Talk about us, another time. We have to get away from here. We have to get to Cumberland.”

  “Not about us,” Josh said. His fingers tightened around the glass of orange juice. “Our family.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “I know you don’t… I just need to know one thing. One thing, that’s all.”

  Maxine felt her muscles tensing. After all this time, after all that had happened, suddenly Josh wanted to talk about family? “You want to do this now? You haven’t been part of this family for getting on three years, Josh. And suddenly, because you have no surrogate kids to care for, you want to start caring for your own again? That’s a bit rich, don’t you think?” Her voice was a hiss of static, not raised enough to lift over the hubbub of conversation in the yard, but cutting enough. Maxine saw that Storm and Tally had stopped talking and were watching them intently. They weren’t near enough to hear the actual words, but they were attuned enough to their parents’ fighting to pick it out as it started, and do so way before anyone else.

  “That’s not what I meant. Look—”

  “No, Josh, you look. Just because you’ve suddenly realized you have a family doesn’t mean we just fall back into place as if nothing happened. You may not have noticed, but the world has changed everything. We’re not safe. None of us.”

  “I just want to know if Storm is my son,” Josh hissed through gritted teeth.

  The bang and the flap of it burst open in her head. Maxine actually felt herself take a step back.

  “Before she died… Maria… your mom… told me… Gabe. Gabe Angel… that I should know the truth.”

  Maxine took another step back, and Josh’s hand came out of nowhere. Grabbing her wrist. Just as Donald had done when he’d seen the henna tattoo. And just like then, Maxine began yanking herself away and screaming, “Get off me!”

  Such was the force of her pulling away from Josh that she felt herself spinning and falling backward off the porch, the black smoke of horror fuming through her thoughts as the black smoke of the barbecue rose up. She fell through it and crashed into the metal grill over the red-hot coals.

  5

  “The hell do you think you were doing?” Storm’s eyes blazed as he made fists. He coughed, and there were tears in the corners of his eyes. Josh raised his hands, trying to placate his son, but the anger and recrimination in his face and voice were not to be placated.

  “It was an accident, Storm. I just held her arm and she pulled away. I didn’t mean—”

  “You expect me to believe that? I don’t know who you are anymore, Dad! I don’t have a clue!”

  They were back in Storm’s room. Josh had helped carry his son back there with Tally and Poppet while Larry had supervised treating the burns on the side of Maxine’s face and hands. And now, sitting on the one wooden chair in the room, Josh was playing a game of damage limitation… and losing.

  Henry had moved quickly as Maxine had cannoned into the barbecue, pulling her off almost as quickly as she had crashed into it. Her hands had absorbed most of the impact, but the force of the fall had upended the grill, and it had imprinted its lines on her cheek. She’d rolled away as Josh had rushed forward to see how she was.

  Donald had stopped him in his tracks with a hand on his chest. “I’ll see to her. You’ve done enough damage here, boy.”

  Josh had known he wasn’t going to barge past the older man, and he hadn’t wanted to risk a fight or injuring someone else in his family, so he’d just nodded and turned away.

  Now Storm, rigid with anger and fury, was back in his bed. Tally and Poppet had withdrawn to check on Maxine just before Storm h
ad ripped into Josh.

  “Son, I didn’t…”

  “I saw what you did, Dad! I saw it! How could you?”

  Josh knew there was no way he was going to convince Storm of his innocence. If he hadn’t grabbed Maxine’s arm, she wouldn’t have had to pull away, and she wouldn’t have fallen into the barbecue.

  But he still couldn’t believe the look he’d seen on her face when he’d asked her about Storm and what Maria had said in her final moments.

  It hadn’t been a surprise.

  It hadn’t been sorrow.

  It had been guilt.

  Maxine had obviously wanted to get away from him and get away from his questions. She’d confirmed Maria’s words without needing to say any of her own.

  Storm was not his son.

  “If this world hadn’t gone crazy, I’d be reporting you to the police!”

  Storm’s words cut right across him. Scalpel-deep and red. And he shuddered internally as they bit into him. But even in this moment of turmoil, there was one immediate but tiny benefit to the situation. Josh could cleave to it for now—at least until he’d processed what was happening in his own personal apocalypse. And that idea was that Storm didn’t seem to know the truth, either.

  The anger pouring from the boy was rich and bitter, and it was full of rejection—but not because Storm knew the truth. If he had, he surely would have used the classic step-kid line—Why should I do what you say? You’re not even my dad!

  Josh could cling to that notion like a drowning man in a tumult. “Storm, you need to rest. The journey tomorrow is going to take it out of you.”

  Storm was holding his hand over the pad taped across his stomach as if he was trying to keep both halves of the wound together. His eyes were hot with hatred. “How can we trust you, Dad? How can we know that you’re going to keep us safe? Tell me that? Is this you? The real you? Or is it the supernova sickness?”

  Josh’s eyes flicked to the floor by the side of the bed. It had been easy to dismiss the effect that the Barnard’s Star had had on him since it had lit up the sky over the Sea-Hawk in the western Atlantic, but Josh knew there had been some ways in which he’d changed, however subtly. Could that have been what had made him reach out and grab Maxine… could the evil influence of that broken star be racing through his mind in the way it did in so many others?

  Or was he just looking for an excuse?

  I should be angry, he thought. I should be crazy-upset and wanting to get to the truth of Maxine’s betrayal. How could I not be? I would feel like this no matter what, star or no star.

  Or would I?

  Josh shook his head as if trying to unravel the knotty thoughts from his mind. He rubbed at his face and got up. “I need to go speak to your mom. I need…”

  “You need to leave us alone!” Storm hissed. He turned his face to the wall, and his intention was clear. He didn’t want Josh—his father or not—to be anywhere near him right now.

  Josh got up. “I’ll check in on you later.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  Josh left the room feeling like he was walking a tightrope over an impossible drop. The backyard was empty, the barbecue extinguished. Karel’s men were sitting in a group near the barn, cleaning and checking their weapons. They were going to sleep in there tonight.

  “Penny for them?”

  Josh started and turned. Karel stood next to him. She was out of her tactical vest and just wearing a combat greet T-shirt over her black pants and utility belt. Her blond hair had been tied up and was held in place by a grip. Her face looked freshly scrubbed, as if she’d just come from washing it in cold water.

  “I don’t think they’re worth even that.”

  Karel shrugged. “I don’t have a penny, so it was a silly question anyway. You look like you could sleep for a week.”

  “I feel it. A month.”

  “You’re lucky, though.”

  “I don’t feel that.”

  “No, you are.” Karel smiled. “You grabbed me like that, you’d be dead right now. You should count your blessings.”

  Josh felt the air suck out of him and stood in stunned silence until Karel winked and slapped his shoulder. “Accidents happen, baby. I’m just pulling your leg.”

  Josh sighed. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

  “Yesterday is yesterday. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Maxine’s okay. Just a little shaken up and with a few minor blisters. She’ll be fine.”

  Josh began, “I didn’t mean to…”

  Karel raised her hand to stop him mid-sentence. “We always mean to. In the moment, you meant to. Accept it. You regret it now, and that’s good. But back then, of course, you meant it, or you wouldn’t have done it.”

  Josh couldn’t argue with that. “I guess.”

  Karel put her hands on her hips and set her chin with a businesslike thrust. “But we can deal with the fallout later. We’re going to be on the road at first light. We need you—everyone, in fact—on the ball and ready to fight our way out of here if we have to. There’s no baggage allowance on this trip. Don’t be baggage.”

  With that, Karel took her businesslike chin across the yard to her men.

  Josh blinked and swallowed. What Karel had said made sense, but he wasn’t ready to let go of the hurt yet. The first thing to do was go and apologize to Maxine. If nothing else, she didn’t deserve for him to get physical with her. He’d messed up bigtime, and now was the time to tell her that. Then maybe they could explore the truth behind the emotions.

  Tally was coming out of the kitchen as Josh approached from the living room. When she saw him, she clicked the door closed behind her and walked purposely towards him, her face set and her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Like Karel, she had washed the battle off her body and changed into fresh clothes consisting of a plaid shirt and jeans. Her feet were bare.

  “Is your mom in there?” Josh asked, indicating the kitchen.

  “Yes, she is,” Tally replied.

  Josh detected the reticence in her tone. She was avoiding eye contact, too, looking over his shoulder to the broken window.

  “Is she ready to speak to me?”

  Tally shook her head. “No, Dad. She doesn’t want to talk to you. She asked me to go find you. Tell you not to talk to her until she’s ready.”

  Josh felt the tightening of fresh anger in his gut, but screwed the lid back down on it. He put his hands into his jeans pockets and nodded succinctly. “Okay. How is she?”

  “She’s fine. Poppet and Larry dressed the burns, but the doc said they were superficial. How’s Storm?”

  “Angry.”

  She nodded, as if she’d expected the answer before Josh had spoken it.

  “Are you?” he asked.

  Tally said nothing. Gave no new expression.

  “I don’t know what I am, Dad. I know what happened shouldn’t have happened, and Mom won’t tell me why it did. Will you?”

  “I need to speak to your mother first.”

  “Then I guess I’ll tell you how angry I am when that’s done.”

  Tally brushed past Josh and went up the stairs.

  Maxine looked at her wrist. The place where Donald had grabbed her when he’d seen the tattoo. The place where Josh had grabbed her before she’d spun away into the barbecue.

  The place where Gabe Angel had grabbed her when…

  No.

  No.

  She pushed the unwelcome thought down in her mind. There was just too much going on in her head right now to let that one raise its ugly head. No need to consider thoughts about an event that had happened and was done, and that up until her mother had been shot had been known to only three people in the whole world. Maxine, her mother, and Gabe Angel. The consequences of the event had only been known to Maxine and her mom, because after it had occurred, the only person Maxine had confided in was Maria. Those were thoughts she had tidied away in her mind all these years, and she wasn’t ready yet to unlock that particular closet just yet.

/>   In the candlelight, Larry was having his injured hand redressed by Poppet at the other end of the kitchen table from where Maxine was sitting. He’d lost the top of his index finger, and a spider tangle of Poppet’s stitches crested the space where his nail had been. Larry’s middle two fingers were smashed but had been reset and splinted under his instruction. Maxine, if her own hands had not been burned, would have made a better job of that than Poppet. Maxine was a nurse and wound care specialist, after all. That kind of thing was her stock-in-trade, but Poppet was an enthusiastic amateur who worked slowly but methodically.

  There was a buzzing sting to the pain in her hands. Same on the side of her face. Larry had said, “It’s okay, Maxine, it’s okay. You hit the coals like a clumsy fire walker. You weren’t on them long enough to do any serious damage. Couple of days and you’ll be fine.”

  He’d made her plunge her hands immediately into a bucket of water to take the heat out of the skin, and applied a cold compress to the side of her face where she’d skidded across the coals. She couldn’t get the stink of singed hair out of her nostrils, but Poppet had assured her that none of her hair had been burned away from the side of her head. “You’re not a toupee case just yet, sister,” she’d commented.

  It had been easy to keep the emotions from crashing through her while Poppet had dressed her hands and put the pad on the side of her face, liberally smeared with Bacitracin. The sharpness of the pain had concentrated her mind perfectly. But now that Poppet had turned her attentions to Larry’s hand and the sharpness of the ache had turned into a manageable sting, Josh, Storm, and Gabe were threatening to burst through her defenses.

  Maxine was feeling a certain level of frustration with herself because she had reacted to Josh’s question in the way that she had. A poker face, a flat denial, and a suggestion that Maria hadn’t been thinking straight in her final moments would have been the best policy. But Josh’s question had come so far out of left field that she hadn’t been able to stop the level of shock and guilty shame that must have crossed her face.