“We should split up,” Josh said, and Barney flashed him a look of annoyance. “It you think it’s a good idea,” Josh added, trying to keep any sense of sarcasm to a minimum.
Barney didn’t say anything because his eyes said it all. I’ve told you once; don’t make me say it again.
Gerry pointed towards an exit into the store proper, some thirty yards away through the wrecked warehouse. “I’ve got no idea where to find the things we need in here. It’s all barcoded. At least out there we might find the things on the list in the aisles since those have been signposted.”
Before they burn, Josh thought, but he didn’t say it.
Their shopping list—such as it was—was for tools, axes, saws, planes… indeed, anything that would assist woodworking efforts. Carpentry was a skill everyone would have to acquire; Trace had said to them before sending them off with Harve toward Thunderbolt.
They were to bring back any weapons they found, as well, and had been given directions to places beyond the Home Depot where they might find some.
Jackdaw had given them a bunch of empty rucksacks and duffel bags to bring back their finds, and enough spare ammo to get themselves out of any sticky situations where they might find themselves.
On the ride in, Ralph and Gerry had told Josh about roaming gangs who were not only fighting their own turf wars in the city, but defending Savannah from Trace’s insurgency. Ralph and Gerry had been, they said, chased out of the Savannah Historic District already, and that was why, Josh reckoned, Barney had such a desire to get everything they could from the Home Depot and hightail it back to Thunderbolt.
“Oh my God!”
It was Ralph. Josh spun, bringing the submachine gun up at Ralph’s alarmed utterance.
Ralph was pointing at the forklift. Now that they had passed the machine, they could see the other side of the driver.
He was empty.
Half his torso had been ripped away; the innards removed. There’d been chunks of flesh torn from his forearm and bicep. Teeth marks and scratches covered the rest of his skin, and there were places where enough of his arm and torso had been removed to show bone.
Bone that had been chewed through.
“Dogs,” Gerry said simply and without need. The injuries to the forklift driver were more than obvious.
“Okay—Josh, Gerry, and Ralph, you go left when we get through the door. Rest of us’ll go right.”
Leaving behind the driver and his hideous post-mortem injuries, the crew made their way into the store proper.
Although the ceiling, once they moved out of the warehouse, was as smoky as what they’d seen before, there was still no evidence of flame in the far corner of the store. There were pops and crackles as things were licked by flames, but nothing they could see. The two groups split, and looking up at the signage, Josh and his two companions struck out down the aisles, hemmed in by the orange, metal-framed storage racks.
Josh led the way, gun at his shoulder, trigger finger poised. Whatever had torn the driver apart might still be in the building, burning or not. The other thing that niggled at Josh’s mind was that, although the dead guy in the forklift was in an advanced state of putrefaction, he’d not been dead since the Barnard’s event. The body had been there in the forklift maybe two weeks, max. Josh had seen enough dead bodies dumped on waste ground to know this. There’d been too much damage to him to tell what had killed him—perhaps in his desperation to get away from whatever had attacked him, he’d climbed up on the dead forklift to get up onto the storage cages and just been caught there.
Maybe whatever had eaten his body had been chasing him.
Ralph and Gerry were silent behind Josh, maybe thinking the same thing. Whatever the dangers in the store, the fire was likely not going to be the only one.
They reached an intersection. The aisles here were full of displays for furniture and bathroom fittings. Many of the porcelain basins had been smashed in what appeared to be a frenzied orgy of mindless violence. Other displays had been knocked over, and a couple of attempts had been made to set fires here some time before, though they either hadn’t taken or had burned themselves out.
Josh looked up, trying to see the store signs which might tell them where the equipment they were looking for might still be found, but the smoke running across the ceiling was getting thicker, making the air hazier. He couldn’t feel the heat of the fire, but the smoke told him all he needed to know about how desperate the situation was right now.
“If we haven’t found anything we need in three minutes, I say we get out of here,” Josh said.
Before Gerry or Ralph could answer, one of the tall display racks, filled with paint cans of all descriptions, began to topple to Josh’s right. He caught a can of magnolia dislodging out of the corner of his eye, and had just enough presence of mind to step away from the teetering column and duck out of the way of other falling objects before a spray of bullets tore open the side of a garden swing seat to his left, sending sprays of torn material and foam up into the air.
Josh rolled onto his back and saw the bullets spitting from the muzzle of Gerry’s MP5.
The high paint racks went over completely, and Ralph disappeared under a crash of metal and gushing paint.
Gerry was still firing over Josh, into the area beyond the fallen racks.
“Look!” Gerry was screaming as he fired. “Look!”
Josh swiveled and rolled onto his knees, gun up, ready to empty the magazine into whatever threat was there. But when he raised his head up to look through the racks, he could see nothing in the aisle beyond them.
Gerry had stopped firing. Ralph was calling for help from below the wreckage, and the smoke above had begun dropping ever lower.
In the after-echo of Gerry’s gunfire, Josh thought he could hear running footsteps, but that sound was covered almost immediately by the detonation of a muffled explosion way off in the distance of the store.
This was crazy. It had been crazy to even come in here, and it was crazy to stay. He completely understood the reasons Barney and the others had wanted to take the risk, so they could make sure their kids were safe, but this mission into the burning store was tantamount to suicide.
“Keep watch. I’ll get Ralph,” Josh said, and with that he began kicking away the rolling cans on the paint-slick floor, trying to get to where Ralph was lying with just his feet showing from the wreckage, and his voice, filled with pain, calling for help.
He’d just about reached Ralph’s left foot when a German Shepherd, snarling and howling, leapt across the aisle, aiming its glistening canines at Josh’s throat.
And behind the dog came people. A screaming glut of half-starved wraiths. Pickaxes and shovels in their hands, and murder in their eyes.
9
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Tally couldn’t distinguish between the thumping in her chest and the thumping of the footsteps behind her.
Tally had no idea who was following and no intention of looking back to see; if she didn’t keep her eyes on the ground ahead, there could well be pits or natural furrows in the grassy earth that would trip her—even if her concentration only lapsed for a second.
She ran hard toward the next transmission tower in the line that stretched off into the distance. There was a rise in the ground to the left of it, which was the start of more solid ground than could be found here on edge of these wetlands. And there was a row of scrubby bushes and trees beyond that. If she could get to the tree line, she might be able to give the pursuer the slip.
Maybe.
Breath hot in her throat, Tally ground on, pumping her arms. The air was warm and humid in her mouth. Thick, almost. She’d been on a boat for more than six weeks and then shipwrecked. She hadn’t done any purposeful exercise in all that time. Too wrapped up at the beginning in her anger at her dad for making her go on the trip to help him babysit the four female probationers among a complement of ten and an all-male crew. Then, once her anger had been dispersed by the Barnard’s Star supe
rnova effects, she’d spent the rest of the time trying to keep herself alive against the savage attacks and the machinations of Dolan “Ten-Foot” Snare, the probationer whose level of aggression and cunning had been multiplied exponentially by whatever the supernova had done to everyone. Even she’d felt quicker to anger and more willing to get physical since the new smudge of the nebula had appeared in the night sky.
Tally didn’t think the aggression that was driving her forward now had in any way been augmented, however. Right now, she was convinced she was running for her life.
Tally could feel the lactic acid building up in her muscles as they started to ache with the constant movement and exertion, and knew she would soon enough hit the wall between her desire to escape and her ability to carry out that desire. She would hit it and she would start to slow, and whoever was behind her would catch her.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The thudding footsteps were nearer. She was sure of it.
If she was going to go down, she figured she should go down fighting and with a weapon in her hand.
She knew she wasn’t going to make the next transmission tower. She knew she wasn’t going to make the tree line.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Closer.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A hand on her shoulder.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Tally dove and rolled into the springy grass, reaching behind her head to the rucksack and gripping the haft of the fire ax. She pulled it clear as she came up, flipping the blade to face her pursuer and screaming the most fearsome battle cry she could as it came upon her.
The cry died in her throat as the all-black, man-sized, alien ant monster brushed her ax aside with an armored fist and crashed into her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the ant said.
Tally had been struggling for thirty seconds as the creature bore down on her, straddling her shins and holding her down with black-armored hands.
“Stop struggling and I’ll let you go. I had to stop you before you reached the trees!” The ant’s voice was muffled and distant.
“I was calling to you the whole way, but the mask… it stopped you hearing me!”
Ant mask.
Gas mask.
The voice was that of a man, a young man. There were red hairs sticking out of the hood of his black coverall. He was covered in tactical belts and webbing, and his chest, arms, elbows, wrists, and knees were strapped with armor shards. His gloves had heavy protection on the back, and tactile rubber fingertips which were biting into Tally’s upper arms.
“Let go of me!”
“I want to! I do! But if you keep running, running in the direction you were, you’re going to die. Not at my hands, but because of the people you’d be running into! Trust me!”
The rush of fear and anger were running hot through Tally now, and she could feel her muscles tensing involuntarily as if her body wasn’t going to hold back getting this guy off her, whatever her mind told it to do. It was like she was trapped in the same body with an angry tiger.
She yelled and tried to free an arm, to reach for the ax, pick it up, and bury it in his face. Right in the middle of his face!
And then Tally caught herself.
No. Stop.
Don’t give into the rage.
He’s telling you stuff. If he wanted you dead or hurt, he could have done that by now.
A cool wave of rational thought splashed over her. She told her arms to stop resisting, and they did. She made her legs relax. She pushed the murderous thoughts from her mind.
“Okay. Let me up and I won’t run. I promise.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll trust you. But if you are going to run, don’t run that way,” he said, pointing to the trees. “Trace Parker’s men have an observation camp there, and anyone trying to get in or out of the city, they kill. Or worse.”
“Worse?”
“You’re a pretty young woman. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“No.”
The ant released her hands and got up off Tally’s legs. Then he reached down, picked up the ax, and handed it to her. It felt heavy in her hand. She could have used it there to hack him down, and there was still a bright nugget of that thinking at the back of her mind, but she suppressed it like she had before.
The ant trusted her enough to give her the ax. That had to count for something.
“We should get away from here. It’s too exposed. If they send out a patrol, they’ll see us. Follow me.”
And with that, the ant turned and headed inland, but away from the wetlands and the transmission towers.
His name was Henry Grange, he was nineteen years old, and he wouldn’t take off his gas mask.
They’d found a hollow in the grass where they couldn’t be seen from the tree line. He told her, “Whenever I move into a new area, I leave the mask on for twenty-four hours. Precautions.”
“Precautions against what?” Tally had been given a foil survival blanket Henry had taken from his pack. She’d offered him one of her candy bars, but he’d pointed at his mask with the shoulder-shrug equivalent of rolled eyes. She’d taken the bar back and eaten it herself. The survival blanket warmed her, though, and that warmth soothed her aching muscles. “Precautions against what?” she repeated.
Henry did the shoulder thing again and pointed at the mask. “Gas, obviously, alongside some sort of EMP attack of unknown origin. I don’t know if the weather has fully dispersed the gas. There are still plenty of crazy people on the loose, burning and killing, so I guess they’re either pumping new toxins into the atmosphere, or the initial bursts are lingering.”
“There’s no gas.”
“How do you know?”
Tally had to admit that she didn’t know for sure, but when she told Henry about her trip on the Sea-Hawk, what had happened out there and how she and her dad had reckoned it had only started when whatever had hit the earth from Barnard’s Star had arrived, Henry refrained from again insisting the world’s problems had been caused by gas attacks—but he still didn’t take off his gas mask.
Henry stood up and, surveying the bleak landscape around him, said with finality, “We need to get out of here. We’re still too close to Trace’s men.”
“I need to find my dad.”
“Was he washed up the same time as you?”
“Yes. We were in a lifeboat. It smashed on the rocks. Me, my dad, and Poppet.”
Henry rubbed the top of his head with a gloved hand. “I’m sorry…”
“About what…?”
“I saw Trace’s men dragging some dead bodies out of the water.” He pointed back in the direction from which Tally had approached the transmission towers across the wetlands.
The news hit Tally like a blast furnace toppling over. Her legs throbbed and became rubbery. Even though she was sitting down, she had to put out a hand to steady herself. “Bodies?”
The gas mask nodded. “Two of them. Dead, for sure.”
“Dad! Stop! Dad!”
Maxine ran from the kitchen out onto the porch after her father. She hadn’t seen Donald with a shotgun in his hand since the incident in the bedroom upstairs, where her mother was still chained. The shame of that knowledge thudded into her as she thought of it. Shame that she’d still not been able to find a way to bring peace to her mother or her family. However much training as a nurse she’d had, and regardless of her experience of dealing with difficult patients, she still couldn’t fix this. And that hurt almost as much as feeling the desperation of the state of affairs she found herself dealing with now.
To Maxine, the family was the basic unit of life. You found a way to deal with things together, all facing the same way at the others’ shoulders. But Donald was a taut bow string, Maria was in the grip of unescapable madness, and Storm wasn’t out of the woods with his cancer treatment, while Josh and Tally were lost somewhere out in the wide Atlantic. Maxine didn’t know what shoul
der would be the one to stand next to now, or with whom she was going to face down the challenges to come.
“Stop!”
Donald was stalking across the yard, past the dead truck and the barn, heading for the road outside the M-Bar. The sky was big with a brisk trail of scudding clouds. It was going to turn into another warm one, but the trail Donald was leaving on the air was deathly cold.
The morning had started with the usual tensions in response to Maria’s howling and screeching. Donald had thrown down his spoon from the porridge Storm had made them all and clattered out of the house, only stopping long enough to snatch his Stetson from its hook and plant it on his head.
“Shall I go after him?” Storm had asked. Since he’d helped Donald deliver the breeched calf, Donald had softened considerably to the boy and his daughter in the face of his family’s dysfunctional condition. Maxine had advised against either of them following, though, until she’d later noticed Donald through the kitchen window… coming back towards the house with a face that looked like a time bomb with three ticks left.
Donald had crashed into the house without a word, pulled the shotgun out of his cabinet, and, still saying nothing, had walked briskly through the door like a man who wasn’t going to brook any disagreement over the action he was about to take.
Maxine ran after him, the warm Virginian morning sun casting sharp shadows over the earth. “Dad, wait! What’s the matter?”
They reached the road. Donald broke the gun and slipped two cartridges into it, taken from his pocket just then.
“What’s the matter?” Maxine was breathing hard, and she had to stand right in front of her father to make him even look at her. He was scanning the road and the surrounding land that sloped up to the mountain with a face that could take the tops off bottles.
“Damn them. Damn them all!”
“Who? What’s happened?”
“In the night. We’ve lost ten head of cattle.”
“Lost…?”
“I don’t mean they’ve decided to go on vacation, Maxine, I mean someone came to the ranch in the night and took them. There’s a bull gone, too. Plus, sacks of feed from the barn.”
Supernova EMP Series (Book 2): Deep End Page 8