“This is Billy. Billy tells us what we need to know.” Jingo’s voice had an edge of enjoyable anticipation about it. “Billy says they’re heading for Jacksonville, Florida. The Harbormaster is based at the container facility there, Billy assures us, don’t you, Billy?”
Billy’s eyes were wide with terror. He nodded vigorously. Josh couldn’t tell how old he was because of the state of his face—he could have been anywhere between twenty and forty. Fear was seeping out of him like blood.
Josh didn’t have a chance to say anything before Karel stalked into the room and thudded the butt of the Glock into the side of Jingo’s head, swearing at the young man as he went down and then putting her foot on his chest and pointing the gun in his face.
“Is this what we do now? Is it?” She pointed at Billy, who was cowering in his bonds, trying to hold his broken fingers over his face, unsure what was going to happen to him next.
“We needed information!” Jingo hissed, a trickle of blood coming from the side of his head where the butt of the Glock had bitten into the skin.
“We don’t need it this bad! This is not the way we do things. We have to be better than them! We kill when we have to, but we don’t torture. I won’t have it. Not on my watch! And if Clitheroe were here, he’d say the same.”
Jingo got up onto his elbows, resisting against the flat of Karel’s foot. “They nailed Clitheroe to a damn wall, Karel! He was still alive! Or weren’t you listening when I told you that?”
Karel pushed Jingo back to the floor. “I was listening to you, Jingo, and that knowledge makes me all the more determined not to sink to their level. Now, you get him cleaned up and you dress his wounds. I want him clean, fed, and chained up properly, and then we can decide what to do with him. And don’t give it to one of the others to do. You do it yourself. That is an order! Is that understood?”
The notion seemed to take a few seconds to percolate into Jingo’s head, but he eventually nodded, so Karel made the Glock safe and took her foot off his chest.
Over the next hour, Josh and the others watched as Billy was cleaned up and fed, his wounds being dressed by Jingo. Throughout the process, Billy kept lifting his eyes to Karel when he saw her. He must have said “thank you” a dozen times.
“Dad, I need to tell you something.” Tally had joined him on the dusty floor, leaning against the wall. She’d brought him coffee and a sandwich, which Josh tucked into hungrily. He realized then that he hadn’t eaten all day.
“Go ahead…” he said between mouthfuls. Right then, the sandwich was the best thing he had ever tasted. The Defenders were baking their own bread in smoky, wood-burning ovens. The bread was rich and filling—the first fresh bread he’d tasted in a very long while. It tasted of a golden past. Of another life.
Tally crouched down next to him. “Mom and Storm have been taken south by… Ten-Foot.”
The bread turned to ashes in his mouth. “Say that again.”
“Ten-Foot. He’s working for the Harbormaster. He attacked us. His Harbormen who sliced me with a sword.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, Dad. I saw him plain as day. They sailed the Sea-Hawk off after they put us to shore in Georgia, remember? I guess they must have been captured or made an alliance or something. But Ten-Foot is working for them, and he has Mom and Storm. Poppet and Larry, too, we think. It didn’t look like they’d gotten away. Henry pulled me out of there pretty fast when he saw how bad my shoulder was. I think we’d have been taken, too, if it wasn’t for him. The only reason we didn’t go after them straight away was that we wanted to make sure we got to you before you rolled into town thinking everything was okay here.”
Josh put down the coffee undrunk. His mind turned like an overstuffed laundry dryer. Just when he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse, they had. With interest.
He got up and marched across the room to where Karel was still giving the stink-eye to Jingo.
“Karel, I need horses, and I want to get out of this city before dawn.”
18
The journey south for the next week was a blur of indistinct images, distant voices, and dog tiredness. Storm kept asking her how she was, and Maxine kept saying that she was fine, but she knew deep down inside that she wasn’t fooling anyone.
The idea that Gabriel Angel was the Harbormaster had opened a rat-infested chasm in her mind, which squirmed and roiled a sick horror through her. The extrapolation of Gabe’s anger in the Raleigh parking lot, on through his duplicitous drugging of her, and him being the possible—that word thunking against her heart like an anvil dropped upon it over and over again—father of her son, and now the Harbormaster they’d heard so much about… it had not just turned her world upside down, but had minced it and then set it on fire.
She rode without sense, letting the horse follow those around her, and when she did try to speak, her mouth was so dry that her voice came out in a frog-like croak that only a long pull from a canteen would counterbalance.
The Harbormen came across several fledging communities along the way, each of which they attacked. Murdering and ransacking their way through to steal what little supplies they could take for their own. They came upon clutches of nova-mad people who had attempted to overrun the Harbormen before, and they were also cut down with gun and sword.
Ten-Foot led his men with youthful vigor and celebrated each atrocity with them—coming back steeped in the blood of battle with his eyes as wide and bright as could be.
And all the while, this hardly registered with Maxine—she was in the grip of a clawing fear that debilitated her almost to the point of incapacitation.
She knew that, in the rational portion of her mind, her feelings and thoughts were being ramped and colored by the effects of the supernova. This depression and anxiety would more than likely have been there without the star-borne effects ravaging the ethers around the Earth, but they had been screwed up all the tighter by it. There were waves of dread about what lay ahead rushing through her. Several times on the journey, she had thrown up without warning. Food had no taste, and although she was inside-out tired, she found getting to sleep almost impossible and would wake constantly throughout the night.
She knew all the symptoms she was experiencing would add up to a massive depressive episode if a doctor were around to assess her, but that sliver of insight into her condition didn’t at any time allow her respite from what she was feeling.
After seven days, she felt the worst of the black fog surrounding her thoughts and feelings start to shift and some of her energy return. Maxine, at last, found she was able to begin the process of piecing the Legos of her shattered volition back together into a semblance of coherence.
Only one thought dominated her mind now.
She and Storm had to get away from the Harbormen. They couldn’t make it to Florida, to where Gabe Angel was waiting for them.
“Remember what he said to us about whispering,” Poppet whispered back to her, with no little irony in her voice on the evening of the sixteenth day of travel south from Cumberland.
They had been averaging around thirty miles a day, and Maxine knew that meant they were just over two hundred miles from Jacksonville. If they didn’t try something soon, then they wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. “I know, but we’ve got to get away from here. I can’t let Storm meet the Harbormaster.”
Poppet had covered well for Maxine over the last few days. Although they had both sat around the campfire when the Harbormen had made camp by the side of the highway, on the surface making the food for the troops, Poppet had done most of the work and Maxine had mainly just stared into the pot. Today, Maxine had been a little closer to her normal self and had helped out much more. Poppet had gratefully accepted the help, but she wasn’t convinced by Maxine’s insistence that they had to try to escape. Poppet held up the chain linking them together. “Apart from the fact that we’re tied up closer than the DNA of twins, have you seen Larry lately? He’s not at all well, Maxine. Th
e riding is killing him by degrees.”
Maxine hadn’t noticed anything about anyone for days—she’d been too wrapped up in her own fears and worries—but looking across the camp to where Larry was sitting, chained to Storm, she was suddenly shocked by his appearance. The old surgeon, who’d already been a thin man, looked like he’d lost another thirty pounds since they’d left Cumberland. His eyes were haunted, his skin sallow and wrinkled in a way it hadn’t been before. The killing pace of Ten-Foot’s journey south was taking a physical and mental toll on all of them, but on Larry most of all.
But Maxine couldn’t let that deter her. “Poppet, I know, and I’m sorry for him—without him, Storm wouldn’t have survived his appendicitis—but I can’t get past this. Storm cannot get to Jacksonville. You have to believe me. He just can’t.”
Storm, in contrast to Larry, was now almost fully recovered. He was moving better, Poppet had taken the stitches out of his wound two days ago, and there was zero sign of infection. He was eating well, and although he hated being held captive, there was a freshness about his face and a lightening of his features that showed his strength was growing.
“Look, honey, I don’t wanna get to this Harbormaster any more than you do, but unless we have the keys to these padlocks, and a bunch of firepower, we’re here for the duration. However much you might want to get away.”
They carried on preparing the meal in silence, Maxine watching Ten-Foot and the other Harbormen resting, laughing, and going about their sentry duties. No one needed to go out on a hunt because their packs were well-stocked with food that had been both carried from Cumberland and looted along the way. Maxine felt her thinking unfurling from the dark of the last few days like a spring flower. She didn’t understand the processes that were going on inside her, but the clouds were clearing a little. She was still desperate to get her and Storm away from the camp, but Poppet was right. They were chained up whenever they were off the horses, and when they were traveling, there were heavily armed Harbormen riding around them who would have the easiest of shots to take if they made a break for it.
Although she could think clearer about the conundrum now, it did not make it an easier nut to crack. Just kicking into the side of a horse and galloping off wasn’t even close to a solution. This was going to take guile and intrigue if they were going to pull it off.
She looked at Larry again. He seemed frozen in time. A statue of a man. And then she looked next to him. Between him and Storm. There in the grass of the clearing was his old battered doctor’s bag—like something from a 19th century quack’s accouterments. Ten-Foot had left it with Larry because he’d been treating Storm with his dwindling stock of antibiotics, and administering to the Harbormen when they needed it. He’d even made up an herbal preparation for one of the horses that had shown signs of colic. They’d lost a day’s progress to the horse’s ailment, and Ten-Foot had sent riders out to see if they could find a replacement, but to no avail. Maxine was glad the Harbormen hadn’t found one. That day of rest had been good for all of them. Not just the horse.
The clarity of the plan which was forming in her mind was pin-sharp and plausible. It would look odd if she left the fire now to go over to talk to him, though. Hell, she didn’t even know if he’d have the wherewithal to respond positively even if she did, but one thing was for sure—that bag could well be Maxine and Storm’s ticket out of there.
Two nights later, the plan Maxine had made was set in motion. It had been created through a telephone-like game of whispers played out between her, Storm, and Larry, with a side order of Poppet.
Storm had more of a chance to talk to the surgeon when the progress of his wound was being checked on. Although the stitches were out now, Ten-Foot hadn’t needed or wanted regular updates on Storm’s condition, so while they were chained up, Larry and Storm were left to their own devices in the camp.
The half-full bottle of morphine which the plan required had been smuggled back to Poppet by Storm, and from the inside of Poppet’s blouse to Maxine.
Larry had perked up a little when he’d learned of the plan and willingly given over the last of his stock to the idea. It would mean that they’d need to find more somewhere out there in the wilds or in a town when they got away—it was useful stuff, after all—but he’d readily agreed that it was worth the risk.
The morphine-laced stew and coffee was ladled out and poured among the Harbormen, and they ate and drank their evening meal with the usual gusto after a hard day’s traveling. Their current camp was one hundred and fifty miles from Jacksonville, according to Ten-Foot’s maps, and twenty days of hard riding had made for Harbormen who were ready to fall asleep even without the induced unconsciousness. Maxine and the others enthusiastically consumed the meal, making a show of it for the Harbormen. The stew and coffee Maxine and the others were consuming had been poured out before the morphine had been added. Larry had told them there would be a slight sweetly chemical taste to the morphine, which Poppet had disguised as best she could with oregano and basil—calling the stew an “Italian Classic” to whoever came up for it.
Soon, the dominant sound in the camp was the sounds of heavy breathing and occasional snores. The night was clear, and under the canvas of their tent, Maxine and the others were alert, still chained together and waiting for the best moment to make their move.
As per Ten-Foot’s standing orders, two Harbormen were left on sentry duty during the night. One of the key pieces of information that Maxine had gathered, which suggested her plan had more than a chance of working, was that the guards would generally guard the camp on a one-hour-on, one-hour-off basis. One would sleep or rest while the other walked the perimeter yawning. Tonight, was no exception. The first guard she could see out of the flap of the tent was already propped up against the trunk of an oak. Chin on his chest. The hard traveling had already mixed well with the morphine he’d ingested to create a perfect storm of unconsciousness. The other guard was making slow circles of the camp, alternately yawning wide and scratching at his belly. He was a slight, willowy man in his twenties with a shock of curly blond hair and a Georgia accent.
Maxine waited until his circuit brought him within three feet of the entrance to the tent flap. She checked that Poppet was ready, and when the other woman gave her a clear thumbs-up, she stuck her head out of the tent into the cool night.
“Go back inside,” the Harborman hissed, pointing back into the tent.
Maxine put a knee out, widening the flap. “I just need to take a breath. I’m too hot.”
He reached out for her to push her back. “I said, get back inside! Don’t make me wake Ten-Foot…”
His hand bit into her shoulder to give her a shove.
That was all Maxine needed. She grabbed at the slight guard’s wrist and fell backward into the tent, pulling him with her. He started a cry of shock and indignation which was immediately cut off as Poppet crashed the fist-sized rock she was holding down onto the back of his head. Then he was unconscious, but still breathing. Poppet reached down, grabbed both sides of his head, and gave a savage twist so that the Harborman breathed no more. They dragged the body inside the tent. Their breathing came hard, and Maxine’s heart’s beating was fit to shake out her fillings.
“Ready?” she asked Storm and Larry, who were picking up their chains and crawling to the front of the tent.
The four were locked together, and unable to take more than a half-stride at a time because of the way they had been secured, but they began to inch their way through the camp in a caterpillar of tension. There was no moon to speak of overhead, but there was just enough light reflected from the still spreading Barnard’s Nebula in the sky for them to pick out the edges of the tents, and to avoid being tripped up.
The tent they were heading for was fifteen yards away, and it took them nearly three minutes of cooperative travel to get there. Maxine could hear the snores and the breathing counterpointed by the odd hoot of an owl away in the forest by the side of the road.
&n
bsp; Maxine hunkered down at the entrance to the tent they had been aiming for, her breathing almost as fast as her beating heart. Blood thumped in her ears, anxiety levels hitting trip-hammer proportions.
The Harborman who usually kept the keys to the padlocks securing the chains was named Dawidziak. He was a monstrous-sized, pink-faced, head-shaved fellow whose improvised red uniform jacket rode up over his belly. The horse he rode was the largest of those in the group, and even a horse of that size seemed exhausted at the end of a day’s travel. The huge horse was tethered to a tree close to the tent. Head down, breathing gently. But it stirred as they approached, as if the beating of Maxine’s heart was loud enough to disturb it.
Maxine knelt down while the others kept watch. Poppet had lifted a Colt Cobra from the dead guard’s belt, as well as a thick hunting knife which she’d handed to Storm. Larry was breathing hard, and there was sweat standing out on his forehead in the chill air.
Maxine played out what slack there was in the chain connecting her to Storm and then pulled the flaps of the tent apart. Dawidziak, still fully dressed, lay just inside the tent, on his back like a humpbacked whale beached inside the canvas. He was breathing through trembling lips, his cheeks puffing and blowing. Beyond him in the tent were two other Harbormen. With a distinct horror that flushed her spine with glacial fear, Maxine saw that one of them was Ten-Foot.
And not only was Ten-Foot turned on his side, facing Maxine in the entrance of the tent, but both of his eyes were open. He was staring directly at her.
She almost stumbled back into Storm, but reached down to the ground to steady herself. Ten-Foot’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t conscious. Maxine’s medical training kicked in, and she sighed with a sense of utter relief. Nocturnal lagophthalmos—sleeping with one’s eyes open—wasn’t as rare as some people might think, and she’d encountered it before in the hospitals where she’d worked. The first time she’d come across it, on a night shift where she’d been the only nurse on duty, it had freaked her out—she had almost run from the ward to find a priest to perform an exorcism. But she’d eventually gotten used to seeing the open but vacant eyes on subsequent night shifts, and she could be sure that was what she could see now in Ten-Foot.
Supernova EMP Series (Book 3): Bitter End Page 18