Donald and Henry rushed forward and were both held still, struggling with Harbormen. They each yelled to Josh and tried to get away but were too securely gripped.
The Harbormaster toed Josh’s body and flipped it over onto its back. Tally gasped when she saw the gash on the side of her father’s head, and watched with horror as the blood pumped out into a spreading pool of red.
At a signal from the Harbormaster, two Harbormen rushed forward from the guard. They unceremoniously picked up Josh’s body and carried it out, trailing blood in thick dollops across the floor as they went. The last Tally saw of Josh was his head, upside down and swinging freely from his shoulders, lolling like it was attached to a neck that had no tension at all.
Jank and the guards moved Tally and the others forward. Donald and Henry were still struggling and cursing, with Filly and Martha stunned into silence. Halley had not left Grace’s side as she’d been moved, but Tally saw he was watching the events unfold with exacting precision.
Jank put his arm across his chest in a form of salute and bowed his head. “Your majesty.”
Your majesty? Tally thought. Who is this guy?
His Majesty gave a wave to Tally and then turned to Donald. “Hey, old man. Welcome to my kingdom.”
Donald’s eyes were wide, his mouth a thin slit of rage. But he gave no word of acknowledgment.
The guy in the crown turned back to her. “You must be Tally. I’ve not heard a lot about you, but what I have has been wholly positive. You’ll make one of my Harbormen a lovely wife one day, I’m sure.”
Tally’s jaw unhinged with shock. “Wife?”
His Majesty shrugged. “Or consort. Doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that you contribute.”
“Contribute to what? I don’t understand,” Tally said. “Who are you?”
“Gabe Angel,” said Donald, apparently finally finding the words to acknowledge the man who everyone else in the room deferred to.
Gabe pointed at his crown. “That’s King Gabriel the First of America to you, old man.”
Donald spat at the floor.
“Oh,” said Gabe, wiping a smear of blood from his scepter with the cuff of his black shirt. “You’re a dyed in the wool supporter of the old republic, I see. With emphasis on the dye.”
“I need to see if my dad’s okay. When can I see him?” Tally asked, drawing the king’s attention back to her. Gabe fixed her with his almost endlessly black pupils. “I’m not sure that’s necessary at this point. If he lives, I’ll be wanting to have a little chat with him myself first—attacking the sovereign is, of course, a capital crime in these parts. And so, I can’t say right now if he’s going to survive even that encounter. Best for you to think of him as dead now, and then you don’t have to be disappointed all over again later.”
The sheer callousness of tone against his matter-of-fact delivery turned Tally’s legs to shivering Jell-O. There were precious few certainties in the world at this point, but those which had existed for her were now all gone. As if the rug of the world had been pulled from beneath her feet in one sickening rush.
“You can’t do this. You can’t…”
Gabe stepped closer to Tally, the two Harbormen in front of her parting as he did so. He put an index finger under her chin and lifted up her face. “Want a bet on that, little lady?”
Gabe spun with a laugh and looked up high into the bleachers. “Storm! Why doncha come down now?”
Tally spun her head wildly up in the direction in which Gabe had spoken. At the very top row of the stands, there was a small figure who she hadn’t noticed until now. The figure stood and began to walk down the steps, hands in the pockets of his jeans.
It was Storm. It really was Storm.
But something didn’t compute from the very moment she saw him. He was alone. He wasn’t being guarded. He wasn’t bound, either, and he certainly hadn’t come rushing down when his father had been poleaxed by Gabe’s scepter.
Storm reached the floor level and came over.
But instead of coming straight to Tally, he hung back and actually looked at Gabe as if waiting for permission to come forward.
Tally didn’t want to believe what she was seeing.
None of this made any kind of sense. “Storm… Storm… what’s the matter with you? What the hell are you doing?”
Gabe nodded his permission, and Storm came close to her. He was clean and smelled good.
His hair was washed and tidy. He looked better than he had since before he’d been diagnosed with the cancer. He looked complete, serene and content.
“Hey, Sis.”
He said it like he hadn’t seen her since last night. As if nothing was awry and, in fact, all was fine with the world. This scared Tally far more than anything, even more than seeing her father carried out bleeding from that deep head wound.
The sense coming off Storm that this was all normal and above board turned her shaking world right on top of itself and then pulled it inside out. Her head swam, and all she could hear above the yammering of her heart was the sound of Grace trying to scream her lungs raw against the gag in her mouth.
Storm opened his arms and leaned in to hug Tally.
But she took a step back. “Have you gone insane? Storm! What’s happened to you?”
“It’s complicated,” said Storm levelly, “but right now, all I know is that Josh is your father, not mine.”
Blue bolts flashed behind her eyes. Her brain felt like it was being microwaved in her head.
“And although I’m finding it difficult to believe myself, King Gabriel here—or Dad, as he’d like me to call him—is actually my father. I’m waiting for Mom to get out of herself and tell me the truth, but all the evidence seems to point in that direction.”
Tally felt like not just taking a step back, but running from the building all the way back to Morehead City without breaking stride.
Donald wasn’t having it, either; he swore loudly at what a crock all this was. Henry was prevented from coming closer to Tally by one of Jank’s men, be she was aware that he’d tried.
“Don’t say this,” she whispered to her brother. “It’s crazy stuff! Have you been drugged? Brainwashed? What?”
She wanted to free her bound wrists, grab him by the shoulders, and shake the sense he had lost back into his body. Were these further effects of the supernova? Was this a special kind of madness she and the others hadn’t yet experienced? The madness of believing things that were so wild they hardly even qualified as lies, as they were just… pure insanity.
Gabe stepped up next to Storm, another of his smiles playing on his lips like he was remembering a tune from his youth, or waiting for a plate of strawberry ice cream to turn up in front of him. “No, young lady. Just exposed to the truth, as you’ve now been. But the lad seems to have taken the news a lot better than you have, which,” Gabe said with a smile, “is another pointer to him being from superior stock. Not so… flaky.”
Her mind now in near-total shutdown, Tally couldn’t locate any words with which to answer, so Gabe brought proceedings to an end by leading Storm away in the direction his guards had taken Josh.
Tally and the others were ushered from the throne room by Harbormen. Halley was locked in a room with Grace, Donald with Henry and Tally in another, and Martha and Filly in yet one more.
Donald collapsed on a bed, putting his head in his hands. Tally sat on the other bed as the door they’d come through was bolted and locked from the outside.
Neither could start a sentence, such was the stunned shock of their moods. And perhaps it was a good thing they didn’t start to speak sooner, because if they had, they might not have heard the sound of Maxine sobbing.
24
“Mom? Mom, is that you?”
Maxine turned on the bed, wiping the tears from her cheeks with her palms. The voice was coming through the wall. She sat up. “Tally?”
Maxine clearly heard a gasp on the other side of the wall; it had come from the room ne
xt to this one. She sat up, clearing her nose and wiping at her chin.
“Yeah, Mom. I’m here with Gramps.”
The rush of relief that coursed through her brought another cargo of tears to her eyes and a sob from her throat. Josh’s mission to Pickford had been successful. Her father was alive. There wasn’t much hope left in her world right now, but this took the edge off of her despair.
“Are you okay, baby?” she asked as her voice started working again. “Is Gramps?”
Donald’s gravelly tone replaced Tally’s softer words. “Hey, sweets. Apart from a couple of healing ribs, and a saddle-sore backside, I’m not ready for Glory just yet.”
Maxine took deep breaths and steadied herself on the bed. Leaning closer to the wall, she asked, “Have you seen Storm?”
The last two days had been agony for her, locked up in here with her son—who told her that he resented everything she had told him and not told him through all the time he’d been growing up. And as to when Josh had become distant from the family, Storm blamed her for not making it clear that Josh might not have been his father. He’d told her he could have coped with the cancer better, and would have had a more positive outlook, if he’d known about Gabe.
Maxine had taken his anger and not tried to counter it. He was too close to the lever that had changed the track leading the express of his life down another line. He wasn’t ready to let go of that lever yet. So, she didn’t try, but how it had cut and pummeled her just sitting with the feelings. The black wave of the supernova-accelerated depression had engulfed her again. Made her transparent with grief for all that she’d lost—and may be caused to lose yet. She knew that this well of sadness would reduce in-depth as her body adjusted to it, as it had when Ten-Foot had told her about Gabe being the Harbormaster, but it had still been a staggeringly sad experience.
Now there was a small glimmer of hope. Her daughter and her father were safe. Well, at least as safe and she was, incarcerated as they were.
“Mom…?” Tally’s voice was plaintive and almost too quiet to hear, but Maxine knew what she was going to say. “Mom… I don’t understand…. What’s happened to Storm? He said that Gabe is his father… that can’t be true, can it?”
Maxine took a deep breath, and then she told the truth on the subject out loud for the first time since she’d discussed it with her mother, back at the M-Bar all those years ago.
“I don’t know,” she said.
There was silence on the other side of the wall—a silence that persisted for a long time—and then something that she didn’t expect happened. Tally would have every right, Maxine felt, to pour scorn and resentment on her through the wall—in the same way Storm had done over the past two days. But she didn’t. What Tally did say instead was, “I love you, Mom.”
“And so do I,” Donald added.
Hearing that brought the tears back again. She cried for a long time after that.
Later, when she’d recovered, Tally recounted some of what had happened to her since they had been attacked that morning in Cumberland. How she’d met up with Josh after coming back from Pickford with Donald, and how they’d found Halley and his sister in Eagle Rock before being taken by Jank on the killing ride south. And what had happened to Josh in the throne room.
Maxine was shocked by the ferocity of the blow meted out on her husband by Gabe. She wondered aloud how Josh was. Was his skull fractured? Was he dead?
Tally didn’t know the answer—only that Gabe had said that, if Josh survived, he was probably going to kill him anyway.
Images of Josh and Gabe as college boys fighting over her in a Raleigh parking lot flooded her thinking. There was twenty years of animosity between them that had been built up, covering the relationship with Gabe that had tired and gone sour, and the one with Josh which had taken twenty or more years to go bad in a different way. The idea that Gabe had known that Storm might be his son was breathtaking. That he had admitted to keeping an eye on the boy as a freshman at UNC was creepy beyond belief. How long had Gabe been nursing and cultivating his sense of revenge? For how many years had he been stalking her and Storm?
Now she was locked in the… she could hardly bring herself to even think the word… castle of her apparent stalker, and he was turning out to be the most powerful man in this new, insane world.
He obviously had the charisma and the psychological strength to carry people with him. There were thousands of people here who looked to him as their leader; he was amassing an army, and flexing his influence across the country.
These were circumstances that challenged everything she’d once known or felt sure of.
Maxine talked with her father and daughter into the evening, trying to make sense of what had happened. But the three of them were coming up blank. Maxine wondered why Storm hadn’t been sent back to the room, but the more she thought about what Tally had said of his behavior, she wondered, why would he need to be?
He was accepting Gabe’s assertions as truth. And neither she nor Tally would be able to counter those assertions if Storm was already fully under Gabe’s spell.
At last, she fell into a dreamless sleep from which she woke some hours later—under the constant oil lamps, it was hard to tell if it was day or night, and she had no means of telling time—to the sound of the door being opened.
Two Harbormen were there to handcuff her and lead her from the room.
They went down the corridor towards the sound of voices. There was a hubbub in the distance, which made it sound like many people had gathered. She was led into the throne room, where she saw immediately that Gabe was there on the dais with Storm. Gabe was seated on the throne looking smug, and Storm stood beside him like it was the most natural position in the world.
All around them on the benches of the bleachers sat a huge crowd. Maybe a thousand or more people. Some in red Harbormen’s uniforms, others in civilian dress. A full cross-section of the community. They were in good spirits. There was laughter and whoops. Someone was playing a guitar, and she noticed Ten-Foot leaning against the wall of the entrance to the throne room with a smile on his face and his arms folded across his chest.
“What’s happening?” she asked as she passed him.
Ten-Foot didn’t break his smile for a moment. “You are.”
Ten-Foot peeled himself off the wall and took Maxine’s arms. The raucous crowd didn’t acknowledge her as she was pushed forward to towards the dais.
Gabe was looking off at the guitar player, who’d begun playing a gentle acoustic melody and operated just below the hubbub.
Storm caught Maxine’s eye and smiled. It was a smile she’d not seen on his face for quite some time. He seemed content—happy, even.
The vertigo that opened in her made her sag momentarily as Ten-Foot encouraged her forward. “Keep up, Mrs. Josh, the king requires your presence.”
They reached the foot of the dais and Ten-Foot put his arm across his chest in a salute. “As requested, Your Majesty.”
Then Ten-Foot let go of her arm, bowed, and walked ten paces backward before he turned and faced the crowd. There were a couple of cheers from the crowd, and a couple of chants of “Ten-Foot! Ten-Foot!”
It was like a bad dream. Like she was still asleep in her room, and this was an invasive nightmare. She wanted to shake her head, to scream and run, but Maxine was rooted to the spot.
Gabe swung his head from the guitarist to look directly at Maxine.
“Ask, then,” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Maxine replied, genuinely confused.
Gabe rolled his eyes extravagantly and leaned forward. “Ask me why you’re here.”
Maxine blinked and licked at her arid lips. “Why am I here?”
Gabe gave a wide smile. “That’s better. So, let me tell you.”
He stood and held up his hand. All of the noise in the throne room was sucked out of the air as the crowd in the bleachers became immediately silent.
“Today, my people, I bring
you good news. Today, I am… to marry!”
Enormous cheers rose from the seats. The cheers lasted for nearly a minute before Gabe raised his hand again and silence fell.
“I am glad you approve, but like a good king before me, I must make a few changes. The woman I intend to marry is already hitched.”
The crowd booed. Gabe raised his hand again.
“But that’s not really a problem.”
Gabe looked at the chunky golden Rolex on his arm.
“Because, in about twenty minutes, she’s going to become a widow!”
Josh awoke to a pain that was like a pickax being driven into his skull and then a boot being tramped down on his face so that the pickax could be levered out of his head.
The pain took his breath away.
When his lungs came back online, he risked opening his eyes. The light around him was warmly yellow from an oil lamp, and the room smelled of antiseptic and paint.
He raised his hand to his head, feeling gingerly around the wound there. The edges around it were pulpy with bruising, and across the center, he could feel a jagged line of stitches. He half-expected to see Poppet there—who had stitched him up before when he’d been shot in the leg—but instead he was lying on a gurney, and there was someone there hunched over a tray of instruments. From the frame, he knew it wasn’t Poppet, but he couldn’t tell if they were male or female. The shoulders were covered in a white coat, and for a moment he wondered if it was Halley before the figure turned.
But it was a woman who was new to Josh. Gray-haired like Halley but thin-set, ruddier of face and with intense blue eyes. She was pulling off surgical gloves and dropping them into a clinical waste bag.
“Welcome back, Josh.”
As the ruddy-faced doctor turned around fully, Josh saw there was a livid scar down the side of her face, which still had the crust of a scab along the top of it.
“It does seem a little ironic of the Harbormaster, or I suppose I should call him King Gabriel, to impress on me how you should have the best medical care we can prescribe, just so you can be fit and well… to… well… be executed. But there we are. Ours is not to reason why and yours is just to do and die.”
Supernova EMP Series (Book 3): Bitter End Page 23