The woman, when Maxine and Storm had eventually been allowed to turn around, showed herself to be thickset and ruddy-faced. She could have been any age from forty-five to sixty-five. Her features were pinched into the center of her face, which gave her a hook-nosed visage studded with dirt gray eyes that moved quickly and precisely. Her checked shirt hadn’t seen a press in a thousand years, and her neck had been engrained with work dust. She wore thick jeans stuffed into black, steel-toed boots. Her mouth did the minimum amount of moving to let her words out, but as they sliced from her, it was clear that she would brook no disagreement or argument.
A man perhaps half her age, and dressed in similar work clothes, jumped up onto the buggy and disarmed first Storm and then Maxine. Pocketing their pistols, he began rummaging through their rucksacks. He came up with a bright smile on his lips as he pulled out the bag of Storm’s medication, but the woman shook her head.
“Put it back, William, we’re not thieves.”
William nodded and replaced the bag in the rucksack, but Maxine caught the look of resentment on his face.
“Get down from the buggy, please,” the woman said, waving her shotgun at Maxine’s midriff. “We’re not thieves, but we will defend what we have. And if that means giving you both barrels, I don’t mind that at all.”
Maxine stepped down from the buggy and raised her hands. “I’m Maxine Standing, and this is my son Storm.”
The woman smiled. “Storm, eh? Why, you don’t look like a Storm; you look sicker than a young foal. I don’t think I’ve met anyone so able to disprove the theory of nominative determinism.”
So, she’s got a sense of humor at least, Maxine thought. I’d much rather have a gun pointed at me by a person who knows how to laugh than not. “He’s had cancer. Just finished chemo.”
“Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Storm offered. “And I blew the storm out of my name beating it. I’m not as weak as I look.”
The woman guffawed heartily and lowered, then broke, the shotgun. “I’m going to like you, Storm.”
“I’d like you even more if I knew your name,” he said levelly.
“Nancy Childs is the name. You can call me Nan. Everyone else does. That’s my boy William, and you’ll meet the rest of our merry band when we reach the house.”
Maxine started and stepped away fearfully as William slapped the reins across Tally-Two’s back and giddyapped her into a trot.
All their worldly goods and Storm’s medicines jounced off down the track towards the quarry. Nan fitted the shotgun into the crook of her arm and began to follow it. “Walk with me,” she said, as she struck off into the deepening gloom as the evening fell towards dusk.
The house was an ancient ranch-style property with a gently pitched roof, screens over every window, and smoke curling from a chimney. It was poised on the lip of a long dugout quarry like an act of defiance. There were pens for pigs and goats, and three chicken coops. The house was in the shadow of three near-derelict grit hoppers that looked like they’d been brought back from a time travel trip to the 1930s. To complete the illusion of anachronism, a young woman was pumping water from a standpipe into a pail, and a toddler was running up and down by the fox fencing around the chicken coops in bare feet and only a grubby white vest. The young woman stood up from the standpipe and, hauling the galvanized bucket up and sloshing some of the water over the side, called to the child. “Terry, come inside now.”
The boy looked crestfallen, but giving one more shake to the fox fence, he skipped over to the woman and followed her inside the ranch. There was no sign of the buggy or Tally-Two, but as they approached the ranch and the hoppers, Maxine could see there were a couple of barn-like buildings that could have been either work-sheds for the quarry or construction associated with the ranch, and they were plenty big enough to accommodate the buggy and the horse.
When William appeared around the side of the ranch carrying their rucksacks, Maxine felt even more convinced that was where their transport was being stored.
“So, he was already dead when you found Freddie?” Nan was saying as they walked, after Maxine had explained again how they’d come by the buggy and horse.
“Yes. Perhaps an hour. Maybe two. Not a lot more than that.”
Nan rubbed at her chin. “That won’t satisfy the Klanes none, that’s for sure. Even before this change in the world’s circumstances was visited upon us, they were… shall we say, a difficult bunch to get along with. They’ve tried to raid us twice already, but we’ve fought them off.”
“That’s why they turned around at the top of the hill,” Storm realized as they went inside the ranch.
Nan nodded. “Just the two of them. Under-gunned and outmanned. But you bringing the buggy here is going to make them even more convinced we’re the black hats in these parts.”
Inside, the ranch wasn’t any more in the twenty-first century than the outside. There was one huge family room inside, from which doors and short corridors led out to other rooms and the kitchen. There was washing hanging from lines in the ceiling, and a good fire burned in the grate.
Two bench tables ran down the middle of the room, and chairs that some people would have called artisan, and others just called ugly, were lined down each side of it. There were perhaps fifteen adults and seven children in the room. From the toddler Terry right up to a woman who could only be described as wizened, and who had the whispery paper-like quality to her skin that you mostly only saw in mummy movies.
“I’m sorry if we’ve caused you more trouble. We were just trying to get off the road after they started firing at us.”
Nan shrugged as she motioned them to sit down, and one of the other boys, who Nan identified as Luke, brought them steaming black coffee in earthenware mugs.
The only sop to modern technology in the room was an old cathode ray tube TV in a wooden box as shiny as a coffin, with dials as brassy as its handles. There were papers and magazines piled on top of it, and bent out of shape indoor aerials on top of the pile of papers, along with a power line that Maxine followed to the wall and found, to her not complete surprise, didn’t end in a plug, but in bare wires that had been left to curl on the unvarnished wooden floor.
Next to it was a dog of indeterminate breed, which could have been half wolf and a quarter greyhound. It was shaggy and rangy, and once it had decided that neither Maxine nor Storm were any kind of threat, it put its head back down and ignored them while they drank their coffee.
Nan did a series of introductions of the people scattered around the room, and while there were too many for Maxine to take in fully and remember, it seemed the make-up of the group was fifty-fifty, with half being Nan’s close and extended family, and the others being people from the local area who had gravitated towards the Childs’ property since the disaster and decided to stay.
“Safety in numbers,” said Nan as the coffee in front of Maxine and Storm was replaced by plates of steaming stew. The food was as rough and as artisan as the furniture, and depending on which restaurant you’d confronted, it would have cost anywhere between seventy cents and thirty dollars a plate. There was a distinctly timeless authenticity about Nan’s group that showed hers was a family who would always have been well-placed to survive events the like of the ones they’d experienced. An overwhelmingly low-tech vibe accompanied the whole set-up, which suited the prevailing conditions. Perhaps before the supernova, there would have been ATF agents staking out the place, with legions of social workers ready to roll in and pluck the children out of the real-world remake of The Grapes of Wrath, but not now.
“Safety in numbers?” Maxine asked with genuine curiosity.
Nan chewed and spoke at the same time, her mouth working around hunks of stew with yellow and blackened teeth. “Yah. I figure the government ain’t gonna ride over the hill like the cavalry and save us. We’ve seen nothing of police or authorities. Everyone is shell-shocked. And confused. Up in Wilkes-Barre they’re too busy killing each other and setting fire to their ow
n houses to think about where the next meal is coming from. We were already pretty much self-sufficient here before the change. Now, I reckon we’re in good shape to continue and provide for our family, and anyone who wants to join us. And, I think, the more people we get to stay here the better it will be for all of us.”
The people around the table who were listening nodded.
“Your set-up here strikes me as one that was already in place. Prophetic even,” Maxine said.
Nan sucked the juices off her spoon and indicated to William that she wanted more stew. “We weren’t what you’d call a traditional family here anyways. The hunting hereabouts is good, and the locals kept out of our way mostly. We didn’t have much in the way of income—we sold goat’s milk and cheese to a few stores in town. We worked the quarry in a small way. There’s not a lot left in it, which is why it was abandoned, but there’s enough hard core for us to dig it out and sell it to building companies… but that was never more’n a sideline. I know it don’t look like much, but we can wash our own faces food-wise, and we have our own water supply. The lack of ‘lectricity since the change means we miss the services on TV and radio on Sundays, but other than that, we were set up already. The only thing we’re going to have to go looking for is ammunition for our guns, and oil for our lamps. Other than that, we don’t need to leave the quarry at all.”
“And the Klanes?” Storm asked.
Nan sighed. “We’ve been disputing with them for many years. They want the land; they want the quarry. They want it all. They have a similar set-up as us over on the other side of Wilkes-Barre. Was a time when we rubbed along just fine, but the change has… motivated them to bring things to a head. You may have noticed there’s not a lot in the way of law enforcement around here right now. Klanes have coveted our set-up for some time, and now they don’t need to be fighting anything through the courts—because, well, there are no courts anymore, and I don’t think they’ll be coming back anytime soon. Numbers will help us to defend and grow.”
She pointed to a tall, thin man who sat away from the table on a sofa that had seen better days. His hands were clasped around his knees, which were drawn up in front of him. His face was pale and his eyes spoke of great pain. “Take Ralph here; before you guys, he was our latest convert to the cause. Ralph doesn’t have much in the way of skills in farming or hunting. On his own, unless he could loot effectively, he’d be dead in a month. Here, he’s got the space and time to learn how to handle a gun or milk a goat. Ralph was an accountant. Not much need for them anymore. Right, Ralph?”
Ralph gave a thin smile that looked like it had been painted on by a child with no artistic ability. It didn’t convince Maxine at all, but that wasn’t the sudden focus of her thoughts. “Before us? Converts? What do you mean?”
“Well look, honey. You’re one woman, and your child is sick. Your medications will run out soon enough. How long do you think you’re going to survive out there? If Freddie Klane hadn’t done you a favor by dying, you’d still be walking. I can see your boy don’t have much hair under that cap. I’ve seen the cancer and what it can do. The cancer took my John, God rest his soul. You keep drivin’ that boy west, and you’ll be killin’ him as sure as the cancer would. Face it, Maxine, you need us.”
Nan’s eyes sparkled, and meat juice dripped down her chin.
In the corner, the dog snarled at little Terry, who’d begun pulling his tail. The toddler ran into the arms of the young woman, who Nan had called Mary.
Ralph looked away; the room silent.
Beneath the table, Maxine felt Storm reach for her hand and squeeze it.
“Get out of here as fast as you can. Get out of here and get as much distance between you and Nan as possible before she realizes you’re gone.”
Ralph had unpacked his thin limbs and climbed off the sofa like a mantis to join Maxine and Storm in a quiet corner of the huge room, while Nan had corralled the others to get the children bathed and into their beds, as well as parceled out the work details for the next day to the others. Ralph had hissed his words out of the side of his mouth while he’d amplified his kindergarten smile, clapped Storm on the shoulder, and nodded his head vociferously, giving the impression to anyone who might be watching from the other side of the communal space that he was telling the new arrivals how damn blastin’ great it was there in the Childs’ set-up.
Maxine understood the rules of keeping the deception going, and she nodded along, and smiled and laughed, but inside of her, a black blade of concern was slicing up out of the pit of her stomach. Between smiles that snagged painfully against the emotions she was really experiencing, she asked Ralph in a normal tone innocuous questions about division of labor and what the plans were for the future, and then when the opportunity arose, she hissed, “I don’t understand. You’re here. Why haven’t you left?”
“I can’t,” came the whispered reply. “Mary’s my daughter, and Terry’s my grandkid. Nan has a rotation of her boys watching them at all times. We’re stuck here. My advice to you is to get out before they start following Storm in the same way. Nan’s got some good ideas, but she also is a spider in the center of a nasty little web here.”
“So why did you come?”
“That’s just it,” Ralph whispered. “I didn’t. They took Mary and Terry from our house, and told me that if I didn’t follow, William would shoot them down like dogs.”
17
Josh made his way through the interconnecting corridor between the two sides of the Empress, his heart knocking in his ears like a woodpecker trying to peck through a concrete block. As he came out onto the starboard side of the liner, he caught sight of the Sea-Hawk. Not much more than a dot now. Sails full, heading away from the liner at a speed that would soon take her over the horizon so that she’d be lost to him forever.
There was a click behind him, and then he felt the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed into the nape of his neck. A voice with a heavy Bronx accent, all acutely emphasized ‘ois’ and three words running into each other like they couldn’t get out of the mouth fast enough, demanded, “Hold it right there, Mr. Interloper. I don’t want to open up a new mouth in the back of your head. I’d kinda like you to turn around and use the one on the front of your face to tell me everything I need to know. Hands up, as they say in the movies.”
Josh did as he was told and turned. The business end of a Colt Government was pointed unwaveringly at the middle of his face. The man holding it was grey-haired, perhaps in his mid-to-late-sixties. His knuckles and fingers dripped with gold, and a golden chain heavy enough to strangle an elephant hung around his neck. He wore an open white shirt from which gray chest hair exploded like stuffing out of an old armchair in a dumpster. His eyes were the thing, though. They held Josh’s gaze like eagles’ claws in the flanks of a leaping salmon. They just wouldn’t let go. This guy may have had twenty years on Josh, and be six inches shorter, but there was nothing insubstantial about his physical presence, or inauthentic or disconnected between his words and his ability to carry out his threat.
“We saw your Pirates of the Caribbean boat, and we saw you come aboard with the two spooks. We saw you looking in the cabins, seeing what you could lift. We saw you, Mr. Interloper. Now, whaddya doing, and who are you? ‘Cause I get the feeling you ain’t here to rescue me or my boys. I get the feeling you wuz gonna take what you could and leave us here to fend for ourselves. Now I tell you this for nuttin’, Mr. Interloper, I’m done with fending. I want off this boat.”
Josh’s eyes flicked to the diminishing silhouette of the Sea-Hawk. “You and me both.”
The man pushed the gun against Josh’s forehead and pushed it in. “Talk like your life depends on it because, let’s face it, it does.”
Tally struggled against her bonds as the stanchion in the side of the Sea-Hawk’s deck bit into her back. Her wrists were tied, and her ankles were lashed together so tightly that she wondered if her feet would die.
Her head was groggy from the blow it had tak
en when Ten-Foot had pushed her away from the wheel. She’d stumbled backwards, and tripped and landed in a daze as her head had thudded into the deck. Goober had come forward to take her arms while Ten-Foot had gotten to work with his lines on her legs.
“Now you be quiet and act like a good girl, and I won’t throw you over the side,” Ten-Foot had said, his eyes blazing with a fury that had stopped any attempt to argue in Tally’s throat. Then she’d watched as Ten-Foot had taken the wheel and barked out orders to the crew to draw in the sea anchors, get the sails unfurled with the winches, and set them to run with the wind, such as it was.
Tally’s stomach turned, and burning nausea worked its way into her mouth. She didn’t know if it was because she was concussed, or because of the anxiety of watching the Empress swing out of view and got out of sight at the stern of the Sea-Hawk.
Tally closed her eyes and shook her head. Ten-Foot had learned well enough how to control the clipper, and had obviously taken the view that leaving her father and the boys behind on the ocean liner was the best course of action. Her father, she knew, had been trying to keep Ten-Foot on their side because of his volatility, at least until they got back to land, but she could also see that Ten-Foot was once again filled to the brim with paranoia and hatred. The probationers were as scared of him as they were of the situation they were in, and so they were following his orders.
“Please,” Tally croaked. “Don’t leave my dad on that ship. He’s our best chance of getting home.”
Ten-Foot threw his head back and laughed as he steered. “Best chance, little girl? Don’t make me laugh. As soon as we’re back on shore, he’s gonna take me down. With him here, I’m going to prison for a million years, we get back to where we came from. No. We’s going in the other direction now.”
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 17