Supernova EMP Series (Book 1): Dark End

by Hamilton, Grace

  Although several windows along the hospital’s frontage were broken, there were no signs of burning or other wanton destruction. This gave Maxine hope that perhaps the place hadn’t been ransacked completely. It wasn’t on a natural route in and out of the city, separated as it was from the broad thoroughfares that bisected it. It was also enough outside of the downtown area to have not been caught up in the worst of the madness. The fact that it had survived with so little damage was testament to that.

  Maxine made her way across the parking lot towards the main entrance. The sun was making a good attempt to burn off the early morning clouds and polish the day with sunlight. The warm feeling on the back of her head actually helped put a layer of optimism over her mission as she enjoyed the sun’s caress.

  The set of revolving doors at the top of the steps moved easily at Maxine’s first touch, and she was inside.

  It was as she looked up to the wall behind the still intact reception desk that the voice sucked any optimism she might have felt from her entire body.

  “We shoot looters here.”

  Maxine had been disarmed, then hauled by two men in U.S. Army combat uniforms along the marble floor of the hospital’s entrance. The person who’d informed her about what they did to looters was a woman in an Army Major’s uniform. She was pinch-faced with dirty blond hair curling out from under her baseball cap. Her eyes didn’t look as if they had ever opened fully, and her mouth spat words out like she was getting poison off her tongue.

  The woman’s name tape identified her as Jonstone.

  Maxine had tried to explain what she was doing as the soldiers had dragged her up two flights of stairs, her boot heels banging painfully against each step, but Jonstone and her men weren’t listening or responding.

  Jonstone searched Maxine’s pack as they walked, pulling out wads of tissues, a box of matches Maxine had found in a car two days before, her canteen of water, and underwear she’d washed in a stream yesterday and dried on an overhanging branch. Each of these were discarded like the woman was a raccoon throwing stuff from a garbage sack while it looked for the good food. Maxine watched the trail of her things laid on the stairs behind her until finally the bag was discarded, and Jonstone walked on silently behind them.

  Eventually, on the fifth story of the hospital, Maxine was taken through a set of double doors into a wide ward with beds arranged in bays of four. But there were no patients in the beds, as far as she could make out. Most of the beds had Army gear laid out on them—camouflage jackets with Army packs by the side of them, and occasionally she got glimpses of men in their combat pants and khaki vests sitting around tables playing cards, reading, or just lying still and contemplating the ceiling. It wasn’t so much a medical ward as a sort of field barracks, and there were a lot of men and women here using it as a base.

  In an office off the main ward area, a man in a general’s uniform whose name tape said he was named Carron sat at a desk reading a handwritten report. Carron had a regulation buzzcut, a Kirk Douglas chin, and an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth.

  Maxine was turned and dumped in a chair in front of him.

  He sucked the wet end of his cigar as he read.

  “I’m not a looter,” Maxine began.

  Carron held up his hand for her to be silent as he finished what he was reading. Maxine sat on her mouth.

  When Carron finally put down the paper, he fixed his camouflage-complimenting green-brown eyes on Maxine.

  “I’m not a looter,” she repeated.

  “Okay,” said Carron. “Let’s see… do you have permission to be here?”

  “No… but I didn’t know I needed…”

  Carron’s hand flicked up again. “If I need an explanation, I’ll ask for it. So, you don’t have permission to be in here. Are you coming here to report an incident of looting in another part of the city?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you don’t have permission to be here from one of my men, and you’re not here to report on any malfeasance in the city, then I can only conclude you’re here to remove some of our jealously guarded resources.”

  “But, I…”

  Hand up. “Yes, or no? It’s not rocket science.”

  “Yes… but I demand…”

  Maxine’s ear stung as Jonstone swiped the back of her hand across it with a precise flick of her wrist.

  “So, if you’re here, without permission, to take away some of our resources, that makes you a looter in my book.”

  “No,” Maxine said.

  “I’m afraid that’s the findings of this military court. This city is under martial law, and you have just been found guilty of being a looter.”

  “But… I… I… court? Martial law… I…?” Maxine tried to rise from the chair, but the soldiers to either side of her pressed their hands into her shoulders and sat her back down as fast as her fear rose.

  Carron sucked on the cigar and his eyes dropped back to another sheet of paper. When he spoke, it was with the bored, uninterested tone of a man who had said the same words many times before, so much so that they’d become perfunctory and automatic. “The sentence is death, Major Jonstone. Take the prisoner away.”

  23

  Josh crashed against the side of the Empress when his hand finally made a successful grab for the makeshift rope and held on. He dropped the Heckler & Koch machine gun and it clanged down the hull to splash into the water. Above him, the section of railing he’d been standing against just before Joey had shoved him over it was sparking and splintering as a torrent of 9mm rounds spat and ricocheted around it.

  He could hear Joey returning fire at whoever was firing at them, and now that he was unarmed, there was nothing Josh could do.

  He could hear running footsteps across the decking, and another burst of fire as he clung on to the rope, his feet trying to get purchase against the smooth steel. The muscles in his arms were burning with the effort of staying where he was. As he looked down, he saw that Banger was sticking his head out of the Jet-Ski bay to stare up with concern at what was keeping Josh from coming down the rope.

  “Go!” yelled Joey from above. A splash of blood fell on the back of Josh’s neck as the voice, croaky with pain and harsh breath, called down to him.

  Josh looked up.

  Joey was looking over the railing. His smile was bloody, and there was a ragged tear in the shoulder of his shirt, from which red bloomed and dripped. “Last roll of the dice, Mr. Interloper,” Joey said. “I got them, but I’m not gonna be… coming down with you. Not this rope or… any other.”

  “Come down! Come on! We’ll wait!” Josh managed to say as the heat in his biceps came on like an opened furnace door.

  Joey was finding it difficult to breathe now, and he shook his head. “They didn’t… go down… without…a fight. They got me in the shoulder, the gut, and the chest. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what that means… Mr. Interloper… I’m drowning in my own blood right now… I’m gonna sit here and hold off any… others who come my way… You get Poppet of this ship, ya hear? You get her off this ship and back… back home.”

  “I’ll come back up for you. I’ll carry you down if I have to!”

  Joey shook his head. “Ya… can’t be the… hero of dis film… Mr. Interloper… not every film… sometimes you need to know when to cash in… now, get down that rope, and take my Poppet off this ship. Promise me.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t deny a man his dying wish, Mr. Interloper. I… reckon I got minutes before I lose more n’ enough blood to make me staying alive this long… to help you… irrelevant. Make… that… promise.”

  Josh nodded, and Joey rolled back away from the rail.

  “You can’t ask more of this life… than to die well… Mr. Interloper,” were the last words Josh heard from Joey as he began to lower himself down the side of the Empress.

  Josh looked down on Ten-Foot, who sat trussed up and tied to the mast on his backside. His face was thunderous, his eye
s wild, and he strained constantly at his bonds.

  “The other kids wanted to throw him over the side, but I didn’t think you’d approve,” Tally said once she’d finished hugging Josh after he and the others had climbed out of the dinghy and gotten back onto the Sea-Hawk’s deck.

  “No, I guess not,” Josh said. “But what we’re going to do with him when we reach land, I have no idea at all.”

  Ten-Foot fixed Josh with a killer stare, his lips working and his voice no more than a hiss. “I know what I’m going to do with you, bossman. I know what I’m going to do with all of you!”

  Poppet was hunched against a gunwale, her face pressed into the wood. She hadn’t cried when Josh had told her that Joey was no more, but she’d shrunk into herself, becoming compliant, if uncommunicative. Josh and the teens had jumped the fifteen feet into the sea once the rubber dinghy had been pushed into the water, and then hauled her into it. Now on the deck of the Sea-Hawk, she sat huddled in a blanket, hair in rat tails, painted false nails broken and cracked, her knees up to her chin.

  Dotty-B had offered her a cup of coffee, but Poppet had looked straight through her as if she wasn’t there.

  Tally was at the wheel, ordering the probationer crew to trim the sails as they began to tack against the oncoming breeze, and the Empress and all it represented soon fell behind them and out of sight over the horizon.

  The sky was filling with clouds now, and the wind was whipping up. There was a tang of rain in the air. Josh knelt down beside Poppet. “I think the weather is closing in. You want to come down below and get out of those wet clothes. I’m sure we can find you something more practical than an evening gown.”

  Poppet didn’t reply; she stared unblinking over Josh’s shoulder, giving him the same treatment as Dotty-B.

  “Okay,” he said, squeezing the top of her arm, “whenever you’re ready, Poppet.”

  As Tally called out commands, Ten-Foot growled and yelled at her and the crew. He made threats that he sounded genuinely enthusiastic about carrying out, over visiting each and every one of them with the rage of his vengeance. He refused to speak to Josh directly, and twisted his head back and forth so that Josh couldn’t get a good look at the wound on the side of his head from where Dotty-B had poleaxed him with the blunt side of a fire ax. The blood had dried, and there was plenty of bruising coming out down the side of his face, but the boy wasn’t interested in Josh getting close enough to assess him.

  Trussed up, Ten-Foot very much behaved and struggled like Petersen had. There was no consoling him, no calming him. It was as if the switch in his head had been flicked over to full-aggression, his thinking clouded with hate and fury.

  Josh wondered if the switch would ever be flicked back the other way like it had been before, or whether the boy was lost like Petersen had been. He had no idea, but he’d pretty much convinced himself that this was a sign of some sort of residual psychological change brought on by the supernova, which had remained undetected in Ten-Foot when he’d been cooperating, but caused him to free Petersen and send him on his rampage, ending in Spackman drowning with him.

  At least with Ten-Foot tied up and watched, he wouldn’t be cutting himself loose any time soon.

  Banger and Lemming were as happy as dogs with two tails to be back on the Sea-Hawk, and had been more than effusive with their thanks and praise for Josh once they’d changed into dry warm clothes.

  “We used to think you were the worst, man, the worst.” Lemming confided. “Just a bleedin’ heart do-gooder with too much power and a God complex. But…”

  Josh blinked. These were the most words he’d heard from Lemming’s lips since he’d taken the sullen car thief and drug mule onto his caseload. He’d surprised Josh with his psychological insight and impressive vocabulary before, though. Don’t judge a kid by his rap sheet, Josh reminded himself. “Well, I think you’ve hidden a compliment in there somewhere, Lemming. I’ll take it if you’re offering.”

  Lemming smiled. “It’s buried deep, Mr. Standing, but it is there.”

  Josh laughed at that, perhaps for the first time in a very long while. The way things had gone with the world, it wasn’t just resources that were going to be in short supply. He’d take his laughs where he could get them, too.

  He thought about what they would find when they did eventually get back to shore. If the events on the Sea-Hawk and the wanton murder and destruction on the Empress were any indicator of what had happened on the mainland, then things were going to be bad. What had happened to Maxine and Storm in Boston? Had the madness spread as far as there? Or beyond?

  What would Maxine do? Would she have tried to make her way back to Morehead City? Eight hundred miles of hard travelling just to get back to their home? Or would she, more than likely, have gone to her parents’ farm in West Virginia. Half the distance, and self-sufficient with cattle and crops. Donald was a practical man who’d acquired many survival skills as a rancher, and as a Marine. It made sense to Josh that Maxine would go to the nearer safe haven with Storm. Going back to Morehead, to fend for themselves in a city with dwindling resources, just wouldn’t make any kind of sense. Maxine had the practical smarts from her father to suggest to Josh that getting to their farm would be the course she would take, and he said as much to Tally when they discussed it at the wheel.

  “When we land, I think we should find out exactly where we are, and make for the farm. Mom would have taken Storm there, I’m sure of it.”

  Tally nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Which makes for a change, because very little else does.”

  The clouds had cleared somewhat in the last hours, and the rain which had been just a ghost of droplets on the wind hadn’t arrived. Now there was hard sunlight coming down, and the deck was warmed by it. The probationers took their commands and ignored Ten-Foot as he continued to spit his threats.

  “What are we going to do with the kids when we get back?”

  Tally’s question was one that Josh had known would come up sooner or later. Josh could feel the subtext cruising below the surface of her words, too. Tally was really asking what Josh was going to prioritize when the time came. She’d asked the question in the same way Maxine would have. Letting Josh hang himself with the rope she supplied. Where was Josh positioned now?

  He knew the answer Tally might want. He knew what he should do for the sake of his family, but could he just abandon the probationers to a world gone crazy?

  He didn’t know, and he said so.

  Tally’s lips tightened, but she didn’t say anything. This was going to be an argument for another time, Josh thought. At some point, he was going to have to choose, and he knew which choice his family would want him to make. But could he? Could he leave these kids to their own devices after he’d spent so much time and effort to keep them safe this long?

  The silence remained unbroken by Tally and Josh. He could feel the renewed tension between them, which he hadn’t felt since the first night of the disaster.

  She was looking ahead, across the wheel, and avoiding eye-contact. Josh stood beside her, his hands thrust into the pockets of his hoodie, making fists as a place to hide the frustration and uncertainly threating to break out all over his face.

  “Oh, why don’t you shut up, you foul-mouthed scum bag?”

  CLUNK.

  Tally and Josh turned as one.

  Ten-Foot was unconscious, and Poppet was standing over him with a length of pipe.

  “And when you wake up, if you don’t keep that trap shut, I’m going to brain you again, kid. See if I don’t!”

  “You just need a three-foot length of wood or… hey, what about my piece of pipe?”

  Poppet brandished the pipe she’d used to belabor Ten-Foot into unconsciousness and said, “We put it upright on the deck in the sun, pull the sails in so we’re just on the current, throw your sea anchors out so we don’t move too much, and then mark the top of the shadow with a coffee mug or whatever, wait twenty minutes, and see where the shadow h
as moved to and mark the top of that.”

  Tally and Josh looked at Poppet with utter confusion. Since she’d been motivated to wallop Ten-Foot into the land of nod, she’d hardly stopped talking or rested to take a breath. They were doing everything wrong; she’d said. Everything.

  “If you can’t tell what the time of day is, you can’t get an accurate bearing on travelling west. None of your onboard clocks are working, right? They were all digital, and none of you have a decent wind-up watch, right?”

  Tally and Josh nodded.

  “Okay, so you have to get an accurate bearing. This works best on land, but if we can stop the boat on the water as best we can, we can use this method to get an accurate direction. You with me?”

  “Not really,” Josh said, “but carry on. You sound like you know what you’re doing.”

  “I do. Sham-pag-nay was just my little joke with Joey. You didn’t really think I thought it was called that, did you?”

  Josh said nothing, but he could feel his cheeks reddening.

  “Shame on you, Mr. Interloper. Okay, I have no idea what they’re teaching to people and you kids these days, but back in the mists of time, we learned how to find our way out of a tight spot if we had no compass miles from home. I guess you didn’t teach your daughter that, either, huh?”

  “Well… I…”

  Poppet winked at Tally. “World’s worst father, right? No… don’t answer that, his ego has taken enough of a battering today already.”

  Josh shook his head, but let her go on.

  “So, after twenty minutes, you put your left foot on the place where the first shadow finished, and your right foot on the second. Then that means you’re facing due south, and that means…”

  “That your right arm, held up, at a right angle to your body will be pointing west,” Tally finished.