Henry nodded. “And they would have made the journey back to Morehead? All that way?”
Tally thought, and then it occurred to her that perhaps they wouldn’t have. “Morehead is going to be just as crazy as Boston or Savannah. Right?”
“Absolutely,” Henry said, putting more wood on the fire.
“My grandparents have a farm in West Virginia. Nearer to Boston than Morehead City. My brother would be suffering the side effects from his chemo, so I reckon my mom could have made for there.”
Henry nodded. “Makes sense. Any rural area that can be defended is going to be better than a city, town, or just being out in the open. That farm sounds perfect. In the short term at least.”
Henry’s face became concentrated in thought, and he counted out some calculations on his fingers before stopping and looking up, as if something else had occurred to him. “Your dad, if he couldn’t find you here in Georgia… Assuming… well, you know what I’m assuming…”
Tally didn’t want to countenance what he was assuming. “He might try Morehead first, but that’s not too far out of his way en route to West Virginia, I guess. I think he’d head there.”
“If he knows his stuff, I think he’d assume you were heading there, too,” Henry said, his fingers flicking again as he nodded to himself.
“It’s likely, yeah… what are you working out?” She pointed at his fingers.
“Oh, that. I’m just working out how many days it would take us to walk there. To the ranch. About twenty-five days.”
Henry added more wood to the fire as if what he’d just said was the most logical thing in the world, and as if it were a foregone conclusion that he’d accompany her and get her to where she was going. He turned and began looking for something in his pack. Rummaging way down into it. Tally wondered if she should tell him that she might want more discussion about what they were doing and where they were going, but it suddenly occurred to her that everything he’d said had been logical and reasonable. Her dad… if he could… would make for there, and so should she. She kept her own counsel, finding that she didn’t mind the idea of him coming along with her. In any case, Henry was off on another tangent.
He brought out duct tape-covered boxes from the pack, along with collapsible tools, two knives, another survival blanket, and a whole bunch of other survival gear.
It seemed like Henry’s pack was prepared for any eventuality.
“I guess you’re a prepper, right? Is that the right word?” Tally asked.
Henry half-shook his head. “Kinda. My dad was the expert. But he’s dead now, thanks to Trace. This is all his gear. You could say I inherited it.”
On the Sea-Hawk, Tally had become stronger and more confident since the disaster, just from having to step up to the plate and get things done. She guessed that a similar transformation had occurred with Henry. The necessity of survival driving his single-minded behavior. For her part, she’d managed to build a water purification still, and she’d persuaded some of the probationers to overthrow Ten-Foot when he’d been intent on abandoning Josh and sailing the ship away. She’d done things she never would have thought herself capable of because the moment had demanded it. Tally had a little survival knowledge, based on what she’d read in a rudimentary book on prepping and wilderness survival that she’d bought for Storm’s Kindle. She’d used the little knowledge she’d accrued to good effect, but the Sea-Hawk had been a self-contained world with finite resources and people. Here on land was another proposition entirely.
Henry had been thrust into a similar position, she reasoned, but the mainland was not a contained, finite area which could be traversed with predictable results. What he’d said about her father—if he was alive—made a lot of sense. Going back on her own to where the lifeboat had been wrecked, running the risk of capture or death would not help anyone. Least of all herself. She had to believe in her dad, and her mom and her brother. Believe they had survived and were all on their way to West Virginia and the M-Bar Ranch.
Because if she didn’t, that would suck all the hope out of her world. Every last drop of it.
“Here…” Henry had finished searching in the pack and was holding something out towards Tally. It was a kind of bracelet, but not like one she’d ever seen before. It looked as if it was made from coiled climbing rope, and there were a number of embedded attachments among the coils of cord.
“What is it?”
“Put it on. It’s a paracord survival bracelet. It’s got a flint fire starter, scraper, compass, whistle, and parachute cord buckle all built in. If we get separated or our gear gets taken, it’ll give you an edge until we get back together. You can have this, too.”
He pulled out one SIG and unstrapped the holster from his leg and belt, handing it all over in one tangled lump.
“If you need me to show you how to use it, I’ll teach you as we go.”
“To West Virginia?”
“To West Virginia. We leave at first light.”
12
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just send you to Harve and his boys for a little bit of their particular brand of fun, Mr. Standing. Harve has been champing at the bit since your aborted escape to have at you, and nothing I’ve heard so far minds me to stand against him having his way with you.”
Trace Parker leaned back on the red velvet chaise longue and sipped at his margarita, which a beautiful woman he’d called Lacy had been placing in his hand as Jackdaw and Steve had brought Josh into one of the reception rooms of the mansion.
The room had been sumptuous once, like the rest of the mansion, but now had a decayed glory—lots of cobwebby brocades and moldings, dusty mirrors reflecting the yellow candlelight, and furniture that had seen not just better days, but better centuries. There was a distinct smell of damp in the room, too, which all but made Josh wrinkle his nose.
Lacy was anything but matched to the faded decrepitude of the room, though. She was tall, thin, and looked to be made from cut glass. All her angles were as sharp as hell, and her near-black eyes seemed to slice Josh into chunks as Jackdaw kicked his calves from behind and made him fall to his knees. Lacy was in a tight black dress with a savagely V’d neckline, holding a thick pearl necklace over mountainous cleavage.
She’d arranged herself on the end of the chaise lounge like a complicated and beautiful piece of origami, and was proceeding to rub Trace’s feet through his argyle-patterned socks. Trace had yet again changed his clothes and dressed like a young buck from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel—all cravat and bright yellow waistcoat taut over his ample stomach, and a plaid lounge jacket above plus fours. He was taking his role as lord of this particular manor to extremes.
“You’ll do what you want to do, Parker, but there’s things you need to know about Savannah. Things that have implications for all of us. For all the country.”
“I doubt that, Mr. Standing, I doubt that very much indeed. I only agreed to this meeting to hear what lame excuse you might have for coming back with nothing to show for your endeavors, other than the deaths of several of my hostages.”
Josh had been hurried back from Thunderbolt to Parkopolis by Jackdaw, along with the other three men who’d survived the battle in the burning hardware store. The other survivors had told a story of scattering when they and Barney had been attacked. They’d run for the front of the store and made it out some time before Josh, then run all the way back to Thunderbolt empty-handed to plead with Trace’s men not to harm their children in retaliation for the failed mission.
They were blaming Barney completely for the screw-up, Jackdaw had told Josh. One of them saying over and over that they should have listened to Josh.
That was no real consolation to the ex-cop, however. Gerry and Ralph were still dead, and the poor wretches still in Savannah—whatever proportion of the population that represented—were being tortured inside their own bodies. It was a horror story that washed through him with unholy dread. As if things weren’t already bad enough. Josh had s
pent the journey imploring Jackdaw to let him see Trace, to tell him what he had discovered in Savannah. He hadn’t known if Trace would even see him, or if he would be amenable to changing course, but Josh was going to try anyway.
While he’d waited outside under guard, Jackdaw had gone into the mansion to seek permission for the audience. He’d returned an hour later and taken Josh inside, telling him, “You make this good or this will reflect bad on me, Standing; and if it reflects bad on me, you’re gonna suffer.”
Josh knew he had rightly identified Jackdaw, the youngest of Harve’s men, as the one who would listen to reason and maybe get him in to see Trace. If it had been Steve he’d spoken to, he didn’t think his argument would have gotten through the tough exterior, and if it had been Harve who’d brought him back from Thunderbolt, it would have been an impossible ask—and probably gotten him a beating for his troubles. That it had been Jackdaw who’d met him at the roadblock was fortuitous, and he’d worked on the young man all the way back to Parkopolis.
But now that he was here in the presence of Trace Parker, all bets were off. It could go either way, and the conversation seemed more than likely to go down in flames.
“My problem is that I’m too lenient and too compassionate,” Trace said, offering his other foot to Lacy to rub. “You failed in your mission. You came back empty-handed, and instead of having your head put up on a pike after I’ve roasted a couple of children in the cage as a warning to the others, here I am actually listening to you. When I sat in meetings—in a world that seems so desperately long ago—underlings would come to me with their ideas for advertising campaigns that I knew right from the first syllable would be a waste of my very valuable time. But I nodded, listened, and made these underlings feel like they were contributing to the company I had busted my backside to make ascend to greatness. You remember the Chucky Bar campaign, Mr. Standing? That was one of mine.”
“I… no…”
Trace ignored Josh’s negative and plowed on, his eyes sparkling with happy memories. And then, astonishingly… he sang. “Chucky Bar! Chucky Bar! Your Best Friend Near or Far. Chucky Bar! Chucky Bar! The Best, Best Bar to Eat in Your Car!”
Josh had no idea how he was supposed to respond, and so he didn’t.
“The genius of the Chucky Bar, of course, is that the blend of chocolate they’d created was deemed too hard on the tooth, too difficult to be successful, and then we at Parker-Leeming-Flambard—well, me specifically—came up with the idea of a chocolate bar you could leave in your glove box that wouldn’t become all melty and horrid if it had been in there for a while. You must remember the commercial, Mr. Standing. The cartoon car running around the cartoon sun trying to get its sunlight fingers inside to melt the Chucky Bar? No?”
Again, Josh shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t watch much TV—well, didn’t. I just want…”
Trace sighed and sipped at his drink. “A thousand apologies, Mr. Standing, I do tend to go off on a tangent sometimes, but the point of my story is a valid one, I feel. Too many times, my open-door policy to allow even the most subordinate of employees to come to me with their utterly worthless ideas meant I had less time to be brilliant on my own. And I’m sensing now that you’re going to offer up something as inane and valueless as one of those imbeciles. And yet here I am, being compassionate and accepting. It’ll be my downfall, Mr. Standing, you mark my words. It will be my downfall. Now you go ahead, and we can get this over and done with the least amount of pain… for myself.”
Josh’s head was throbbing with the surreal nature of the conversation, such as it was. There was a deep thread of threat and implied violence running beneath Trace’s words. The entire set-up of Parkopolis was testament to that, but the blithe tone, self-absorption, and insanely confident self-glorification on display just piled weighty levels of present danger into the room. Trace was not only dangerous, but he was childish, mercurial, and unpredictable. The knowledge that he’d been a high-ranking advertising executive at the top of his own firm perhaps explained in some ways why men like Harve, Jackdaw, and Steve followed him without the need to have those dearest to them threatened. Josh imagined that Trace Parker was indeed a very rich man and had promised wealth and control to those who followed him once things in the world got back into a more equitable condition.
Power bought with money and threat. It was ever thus. Pre- or post-apocalypse.
Which made the things Josh wanted to say even harder to articulate in a way that Trace and his ilk would find palatable.
Thank you. The last words of the man he’d shot in the Home Depot, reverberating through the moment. Josh would try for that reason alone.
Thank you. For those two words, if nothing else.
“The people in the city. The crazy ones, as you call them.”
“Yes?”
“They’re not crazy.”
Trace laughed, and even Lacy suppressed a giggle.
“Have you been up close to them?” Josh asked.
“Well, I’ve shot a few. One needs a certain amount of intimacy for that.”
Josh shook his head. “Have you tried talking to any? Captured any?”
“No. Of course not. For the first few days, they were setting light to my property and trying to murder me. That tends to act as a barrier to good conversation, don’t you find?”
“Yes. I had similar experiences on the Sea-Hawk. But I’ve discovered something I think is significant. Something that might mean you don’t have to threaten anyone. Don’t have to keep kids in cages to make people work for you.”
Trace threw his head back and laughed, then stopped suddenly in mid-guffaw, dropping his eyes and fixing Josh with a stare made from razors. “I like keeping children in cages. It works. Why would I want to stop? Come, come, Mr. Standing, I’m feeling the boredom setting in…”
Josh held up his hands, the pistol in Jackdaw’s hand already smooshed into his ear. “Hands down, now,” Jackdaw hissed.
Josh put down his hands. “Okay, I’m sorry. Parker, the crazy people are not crazy. They can’t help themselves. Something changed in their brains, something fundamental. But the people who attacked us were starving themselves to death because they couldn’t help their acts of violence and rage. They’re not in control, but they can see what they’re doing is wrong. It’s horrifying to them. One of them thanked me after I’d shot him down. He thanked me because death would give him some peace. They’re not mindless zombies, they’re victims, and we—you—could be doing something good. We could be helping them. We could find some doctors. We could find some medication. Round them up, maybe. Treat them.”
“We could…?”
“This is not the way we should be allowing our fellow citizens to suffer, Parker. You have to see that. There’s a greater good to consider here. For the future.”
Trace handed his drink to Lacy, took his feet off her lap, and stood up, flexing his toes against the floorboards.
“What an over-developed sense of public duty you have, Mr. Standing. I would commend you if I didn’t want to see you hung from a tree for wasting my time.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Trace bent over at the hips, suddenly screaming into Josh’s face, spittle spraying over his cheeks. “Yes, it does! Yes, it damn well does, Mr. Standing! You know why it does? Because that’s how I want it! I am a king here. An unassailable king! Why would I want to work to fix this? What’s in it for me? Hmmm? I ask again, Mr. Standing, what’s in it for me?”
Josh knew then that he wasn’t dealing with a remotely rational despot; he was dealing with a sadist who enjoyed inflicting pain. Someone who got intrinsic comfort from the misery of others. As Trace returned himself to an upright position, smoothing down his jacket and twisting his neck to a more comfortable position behind the bright yellow cravat he wore, Josh could see no spark of humanity, duty, or empathy left inside the man. Whether it had been there before was debatable, but perhaps the switches that had been flicked in Trace
’s head by the supernova had honed this part of his character to the sharpest of points.
As the gun pushed into his ear, and Trace retrieved his cane from the side of the chaise lounge, Josh wondered how close he was to death now. How close to the end was coming for him.
Trace Parker held the silver-topped cane across his body. One hand at each end. His arms were trembling slightly, and his pudgy face had a sheen of sweat over it that almost glowed in the candlelight in the room. Trace looked like he was building up to commit murder, psyching himself up behind those cold, wet eyes as Josh looked right back into them.
If he moved, Jackdaw would shoot him.
If Trace’s hand dropped from the silver end of the cane so he could use it as a club, then he was dead.
Josh tensed; whatever happened, he would have to react fast. He was on his knees, so that meant moving explosively would be difficult. He didn’t know how quick Jackdaw would be on the trigger, either, but it didn’t seem he’d get far before a bullet was fired.
Trace let the gnarled end of the cane swing free.
Club it was. Death was coming.
Josh readied himself, knowing Jackdaw wouldn’t fire before Trace made the first blow. He wouldn’t want to rob Trace of his sadistic moment of pain and murder. Josh decided he would push into the barrel of the gun, hoping to at least slide it over the top of his head before Jackdaw fired. He could reach up and take the wrist to turn the arm, perhaps as Jackdaw let another round go with a chance of burying it in Trace’s chest.
Maybe… but if the world was built from maybes, perhaps he wouldn’t have found himself where he was, about to be sacrificed to the rage of Trace Parker.
Trace took a step forward, his mouth a slit. His eyes bright as gimlets.
Trace raised the cane.
Wait ‘till it comes down.
Wait until it starts to move.
That’s when Jackdaw will hesitate. That’s when you’ll have your chance.
Supernova EMP Series (Book 2): Deep End Page 11