“But where?” Josh asked, looking ahead to the bald, blank horizon.
Tally shook her head. “I don’t know. But going west gets us nearer to Mom and Storm than east. Once we get in sight of land, I guess we’ll know which way to sail.”
“And you think you and the… well, I guess… crew, are going to be able to do that?”
Tally set her chin into the wind, her blonde hair fluttering behind her like party streamers and the sunlight reflecting off the Hi-Vis yellow of her life preserver. “We’re going home, Dad, and that’s that.”
It seemed that while Josh had been spending his days in the engine room, fruitlessly working at trying to get it and the generator to fire up, Spackman had passed on as much knowledge as he could, such as it was, to Tally and the others. She, Ten-Foot, and Dotty-B were taking turns working the wheel, calling out the commands, and corralling the others into a team of proto-sailors.
Josh knew that navigation was still the most difficult obstacle to overcome, but Tally was right—knowing they were going west, even if it was into the wind, was something; slow progress was still better than nothing. At night, they took in as much sail as they could, dropped sea-anchors—basically underwater drogue parachutes that kept the Sea-Hawk from being blown off-course—and hoped the current wouldn’t drag them too far back while everyone got some rest. They had no way yet of navigating at night. No idea which star to set a course by even, and the cloud cover was such that even if they had known how to navigate with celestial reference points, they wouldn’t have been able to see them. Josh wondered if the progress they made though the day was wiped out at night, with them being sent back to where they’d started by the current, but he kept that observation to himself. It wasn’t a good idea to hit morale while they still felt they were making progress during the day.
Two things nagged at Josh over the next few days as the Sea-Hawk carved its erratic course across the ocean. The most present was the healing pain in the ligaments around his knee, and the other was trying to work out who had cut Petersen’s bonds.
The erratic nature of everyone’s behavior, his own included, since the attacks of headaches and blackouts had already proved to Josh that no one could really be trusted one hundred percent. All Josh knew was that he himself hadn’t cut Petersen free, and he felt fairly sure Tally hadn’t. And Spackman was an unlikely option. But the others? Ten-Foot?
Ten-Foot had already shown his aggressive traits to be amplified since the supernova—but he’d also helped chase him down, and why would he release Petersen? Why, considering how crazy the first mate had been, would anyone?
It made no sense.
But in the crazy days since his world had been turned upside down, Josh had wondered if the fact that there was no logical reason for Petersen to be released had made it even more likely to happen; such was his inability to predict what might happen in the minds of those around him, it made random craziness logical.
That twisted up his thinking to a degree that concerned him greatly, and negated his ability to make accurate risk assessments of what might happen. When anything could happen, out of the blue, there was little he could do to predict possible problems ahead. The best he could do was to make the environment as safe as he could.
While the others worked the sails, and tried to keep the ship heading vaguely west on the tack, he tried, as discretely as possible, to go around the ship collecting fire axes, knives, and anything else that could be used as a weapon, and he stored them in the captain’s cabin, which was the only place on the Sea-Hawk that had a sturdy lock for which he had a key.
As he was coming up onto the deck after his latest trip to the make-shift armory, a shadow fell across his eyes as he limped up the stairs and out into the grey light of the afternoon.
“What you up to?”
Ten-Foot was waiting for him. His voice was low but steely. “You been skulking around all day while we been working. What you up to?”
“Making an inventory.” Which in and of itself wasn’t a lie, as he was making an inventory—one of all the objects on the Sea-Hawk that could be used as a weapon.
Ten-Foot was tense, his chin set and his bald head glistening with sweat. “Inventory of what?”
Josh met the boy’s hard gaze with a placating smile. “Just gear and equipment. Just so we know everything we’ve got in case of emergencies. We don’t know how long it’s going to be before we make landfall, and even then, we don’t know how far we’ll be from home. You guys are doing so well with steering the ship, I thought I wouldn’t get in the way and would get on with some other way to be useful.”
Ten-Foot swore under his breath and Josh saw his fists tensing. “Man, you bosses are lazy. We’re doing the hauling and the liftin’ and you going around making lists. Why can’t I make the lists and you do the hauling and the liftin’?”
“Well, maybe we can do that tomorrow, alright?”
Ten-Foot considered. His eyes were thin slits, and there seemed to be a tremble to his whole body—almost imperceptible, but there nonetheless. He stood there like a tuning fork, waiting for the next note to be struck. The boy may have come out of one aggressive phase, but it looked more than likely he was phasing into another.
Josh was glad that he’d finished his inventory of the potential weaponry on the Sea-Hawk and that the boy was too wired to think to make him go into full detail about what he’d been doing. It seemed just to be a beef about workload and labor division, and nothing more—but as Josh had already noted, the unpredictability of everything now meant the situation could cut on a dime into something darker.
He clapped Ten-Foot on the shoulder companionably. The boy leapt back as if stung.
“Don’t touch me!” he yelled, raising his fists.
Josh put his palms up. “Hey, I was just going to suggest we went and got some lunch. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry if I offended you…”
And I’m happy to have discovered how ramped up his triggers were, Josh thought.
It was a trick he’d learned back when he’d been a cop, to determine how close to the edge someone was. A tiny invasion of personal space on the pretense of something innocuous and friendly that could easily be apologized for could give him an accurate measure of someone’s state of mind. Invaluable information in a tense situation like this. The quick apology and the open, unthreatening palms added a layer of believability to the action, and often dispersed the tension. It wasn’t something you could use in every situation, Josh knew—especially if the other guy had a knife or a gun—but in a one-on-one like this, it told him everything he needed.
He vowed to keep Ten-Foot in his line of sight for the rest of the day; he would also warn Tally not to be alone with him, and he would, as far as his painful knee would allow him, work alongside the probationers on the rigging.
Over the next three days, Josh did just that, and Ten-Foot, although more sullen and quieter than threatening, kept a lid on whatever resentments were bubbling under his surface. Nearby, Josh hauled lines, worked winches, and steered the Sea-Hawk at Tally’s instruction.
Josh felt they were making progress, but the uniform greyness of the sky and the endless waves gave up no secrets in what that progress might be. There was no clear view of stars at night, but the sun during the day could at least be seen as an opalescent glow in the clouds, and it allowed them to guestimate their direction for the tack.
Tally’s still was working well, though, and they were getting enough fresh water to keep them going; the canned and dry food stocks were healthy, too, but if they were going to be out here more than another week or so—and Josh hoped that was the maximum time it would be—then they would have to start to think about rationing.
Goober and Puck were bending safety pins into hooks and tying them to lines baited with small, rolled-up pieces of rice or stale bread to see what they could catch from over the side. They were having no luck whatsoever, but Josh praised them for trying. He’d never been interested in fish
ing when growing up, so it wasn’t an area he’d ever gotten his head around. His dad couldn’t have been less outdoorsy if he’d tried. The man had said he saw “no point in fishing; no sport in being able to outwit an animal with a four-second memory.”
That had always made Josh laugh, but not so much now. When his friends had been going with their dads out on a ketch from the harbor to go sea-fishing, Josh had scoffed sarcastically. He definitely felt a heel about that now as he watched the probationers with their lines and makeshift hooks. Perhaps they’d strike it lucky, perhaps not, but he admired them at least for trying.
Some of the probationers slept fitfully, and others didn’t sleep at all. On occasions through the night, as Josh tossed and turned on his bunk with the throbbing ache of his knee making sleep impossible, he would sometimes hear rough laughter, or the hum of conversation from the deck above. There were never words he could make out, but one strand he could recognize was that Ten-Foot was doing a lot of the talking, and the others were laughing and howling with approval. There was nothing of the wolf about the howling, and it didn’t transmit a sense of fear down to Josh, but it was clear that the probationers, disparate group that they are, were starting to coalesce around Ten-Foot as their lodestone.
They were trusting him, and looking to him to provide leadership in this time of confusion. They weren’t looking to Tally, and certainly not Josh. It was classic group dynamic theory in practice. A group will form, storm, norm, and perform. Leaders will emerge in times of crisis.
And Josh knew Ten-Foot was emerging. The thought made him realize it would be much better to have Ten-Foot as an ally, at least until they got back to land. A falling out with Ten-Foot under these conditions might mean a falling out with the whole group—and however good at de-escalating situations Josh knew that he was, one person could do only so much when push came to shove.
Josh got out of his bunk and, after using the facilities, went up on deck to join the others. The night was a little clearer, so that they could see some stars, as well as the Barnard’s smudge high overhead.
Ten-Foot sat with five of the others, cross-legged on the deck, and eyed Josh suspiciously as he approached. Everyone had stopped talking, like when a sheriff walked into the saloon of a lawless town in a movie. They were looking to Ten-Foot to deal with the interloper.
Ten-Foot didn’t say anything. Just met his gaze in the yellow light of the deck’s oil lamp. And Josh looked right back.
There was a moment that could have stretched on forever, with neither side willing to give. Josh waited three more seconds, smiled, and then, sitting down on the deck among the probationers, said, “I couldn’t sleep, either. Mind if I join you?”
Rather than standing over them in the embodiment of authority, he’d come right down to their level.
Ten-Foot hadn’t been expecting that. He blinked. “No. S’cool.”
The tension dissipated, and Josh spent an hour or so with the probationers, listening to them talk about their fears, their worries, and their hopes for what would come over the next few days. He didn’t contradict Ten-Foot, and in fact, he backed him up a couple of times when he suggested they should be doing more to catch some fresh food. The fishing wasn’t going well, but there were odd occasions when they’d see sea birds resting in the rigging or on the deck, and perhaps they could find a way to trap some.
When the impromptu meeting broke up as dawn started to creep above the horizon, and Tally arrived to shape the probationers into the crew for the day, Ten-Foot took Josh to one side.
Josh thought his intervention had gone well. The others had warmed to him, and seemed to like that he’d been taking a conciliatory tone with Ten-Foot. Josh was tired now, but thought it had been worth it. However, his bubble was soon well and truly burst.
“I know what you’re doing.” Ten-Foot hissed. “It won’t work.”
Before Josh could reply, Ten-Foot kissed his teeth, and shook his head and turned, stalking away across the deck to take his position winching in the sea anchors.
So much for group dynamic theory, Josh thought bitterly.
Dotty-B saw something first, and yelled with delight. She came bounding over the deck with the news, but not to tell Tally or report to Josh—to tell Ten-Foot first. He bent his ear to her mouth as she told him what she’d seen, the breeze whipping her words annoyingly well out of earshot.
Tally looked at Josh, but he shook his head. “Leave it for now. This is a long haul. Just, as always, keep one eye on Ten-Foot. Don’t drop your guard, not for a second.”
Tally nodded and kept her hands on the wheel, but Josh could see that her knuckles were whitening as she gripped it.
The probationers had all left their posts and rushed to the starboard side of the Sea-Hawk at Ten-Foot’s command, and they were whopping and hollering, high-fiving and drumming their trainers on the deck.
As he arrived, Josh looked over their shoulders, between their heads and out across the expanse of gray Atlantic. Initially, the view made no sense to him because the object the probationers were pointing at was so far away, and because the sea was gray, the sky was gray, and the object itself was an off-gray dirty-white. A few seconds were required for him to work out what it was he was seeing.
It was difficult to tell with the distance. It could have been much smaller and thus nearer, or bigger and so further away. But one thing was for sure… it was there, and it was as large as life.
There on the horizon was a many-decked, modern ocean-going ship.
A big, beautiful, and life-saving liner.
14
The parking lot was dark, humid and hot. Cars shooshed by on the highway, their headlights like razors. She didn’t want this. Not now. She just wanted to go back into the bar and talk, laugh, and sing along to the juke box.
She didn’t need this.
The voice telling her that he loved her in one ear while his stiff body and tense jaw told a completely different story. Gabe Angel kissed her cheek gently, and she pushed him back.
“Look, no. I don’t want to. Not now. Not tonight,” she said.
Her heart kept fluttering in her chest like a butterfly in a jar of cyanide.
“I’ve paid for the room in advance. While don’t we just go back there and talk?”
“Because you don’t want to talk, Gabe. Talk is the last thing on your mind.”
Gabe put a hand on her shoulder and stroked the exposed skin there.
She remembered that the way the muscles worked in Gabe’s forearms had been one of the things that had immediately attracted her to him physically when she’d first met him six months before. She knew it had been a wholly shallow attraction, but he’d backed it up with being charming, funny, and smart, too. The rippling forearms and the chunky, well-defined calves on his legs had just been the icing on the top of the cake. When she’d cut inside the sugary crust, there’d been all kinds of goodness inside.
But she knew in her heart she wasn’t ready to go further tonight. Gabe Angel just had a way of being very persuasive. He’d asked her to head out of the bar to the parking lot to discuss something private, and then dropped the news that he’d booked a motel room for the night and wanted to take her back there now.
Gabe Angel—named by his parents that way deliberately, as Angel Gabriel reversed. Angel—pronounced Anzhel in the Latino way, although as far as she knew Gabe wasn’t of Latino decent, and had to put up with the name through school and college. Where some would have buckled at the ridicule, Gabe wore it as a kind of strength. It had done, she guessed, what his parents might have hoped it would. Toughened him and tempered him. Now Gabe, anything but angelic, liked to go against the notion of religious grace his name might suggest. He liked to outrage, and liked to provoke. She appreciated his sense of humor mostly. He wasn’t the kind of guy who seemed malicious, or someone who wanted to wound on purpose, but just someone who played up to the notoriety. Some of the professors in the classes they’d shared had loved him; some of the others ha
d hated him. He was a guy it was difficult to have a neutral opinion on. He brought that out in everyone around him.
She found him infuriating at times, but mostly she found him wonderful.
But although they hung out, and to all intents and purposes they were a couple, she’d made it clear to him from the get-go that there would be nothing further than fully-clothed making out. She’d upset her conservative parents enough by leaving home and coming to the city to study. Getting deeply involved with a boy to the point of making the beast with two backs—as her father would have styled it—would break off the tenuous relationship she had with her parents, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. Anyways, she kinda liked the idea of waiting until the ring was on her finger. Not from any religious fervor or abstinence pledge, but because, as her mother had always said, “If you pick the right one, you’ll never regret a moment.”
And although Gabe had more than enough going for him, she wasn’t sure if he was the right one.
On the other hand, Gabe’s best friend—gangly, endearing, awkward-around-girls Josh Standing—had caught her eye a couple of times, and she sometimes wondered why he’d been looking at her so intently. When she’d looked back, he’d dropped his eyes as if stung, and it had caused her to smile. Was she being admired from afar? She’d wondered. Perhaps. But where Josh was the breeze in their group of friends, Gabe was the hurricane, and right now, it was he who was blowing her along with the rush of everything.
And yet.
Here she was…in a parking lot, being told that the die had been cast. the room had been booked, and that was all there was to it.
More kisses on her cheeks.
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 14