EMP Aftermath Series (Book 3): Retribution Page 15

  Kenny ran down the stairs to the first deck, and then joined the crush of the O'Donnell crew as they climbed over the rails and ran across planks laid between the two ships. Gunfire erupted and men scattered in all directions as they moved for cover or returned fire.

  Pete, Captain O'Donnell's oldest son, charged forward with two of his crew on his heels. A Martin Hale guard came around the corner and opened fire with a pistol. One of Pete's crew was hit in the arm, but raised his pistol and returned fire. Before the guard fired a second shot, Pete cut him down with a blast of buckshot from his shotgun.

  Chaos ruled the lower decks as the two crews fought with pistols, shotguns, knives, and even their bare hands. Kenny raced to the center of the ship to the locked bays where he had last seen Sarah and his mother. As he rounded the corner, a man with an axe rushed towards him, swinging it wildly. Kenny skidded to a halt and arched his body backward. The axe blade whistled as it carved a path an inch in front of his face, sinking deep into the ship's wooden wall. The man pulled at the axe to free it, but before he could free it, Kenny brought his pistol up and shot the man three times at point blank range.

  The guard fell to the floor. Kenny searched the still twitching man's body, rifling through his pockets, and took a pair of keys. He ran down the central hallway until he came to the cell where his mother and Sarah had been earlier. Kenny threw the door open, only to find the two women were gone. Panic set in. He fought against his fear of what could have happened to Sarah, trying to stay calm and rational.

  "Please help us! You have to help us," a woman pleaded with him.

  Kenny shook free of the fear paralyzing him, and he fumbled with the keys as he struggled to find the one that fit the lock to her shackles. "My mother and--"

  "Yes, I know them. Amy and Sarah. The man in the suit and his guards came and took both of them away. You must hurry," she said.

  Kenny finally fit the correct key into the shackles and unlocked the woman's hand and foot bindings.

  "Here, give me those keys. I'll set the other women free. Go now, find them," the woman said.

  Kenny ran across the deck, sidestepping a struggle between a Tweed crewman and one of the O'Donnell men, then raced up the steps to the second deck. Kenny tripped up the last two steps, banging his shin painfully on the hardwood. As he scrambled to his feet, he heard Sarah cry out.

  Kenny searched the first two rooms he came to on the upper deck before he found a room with a brass sign reading Captain's Quarters. He kicked open the door. Sarah was tied to a chair in front of a desk, and Victor Tweed stood behind the desk, holding Amy in front of him at gunpoint, using her as a human shield.

  "Don't do anything stupid or I'll blow your mother's brains out," Tweed said.

  "Please don't hurt my son," Amy cried.

  "Shut up." Tweed moved the gun from Amy's head, pointing it at Kenny. "You and the rest of those savages destroyed my ship! Now listen to me, punk, and listen good. You're going to give me that other boat. You go tell O'Donnell I'm taking it. You tell her to get all of her men off of that ship and turn it over or I'll kill these two."

  "She's not going to let you take her ship, even if I told her to. Let them go and--"

  "You deaf, kid?" Victor shouted. "Don't think I won't kill them. Get O'Donnell and tell her what I said."

  Kenny looked from Sarah to his mother, fearful for their lives. Tweed was holding his mother too close for him to get off a clean shot. It was too risky. He might hit her. He was about to leave the captain's quarters and fetch O'Donnell when he saw his mother's eyes widen expressively and look down, as if she were telling him something.

  Kenny followed her gaze down to her right hand. She held her four fingers extended, and then pulled one back. It was a countdown. With three seconds left, he brought his gaze back up to meet Tweed's so that Tweed wouldn't catch on to whatever it was she was about to do. Kenny was in the dark as well. He would just have to trust her and be ready to react.

  "Listen, Mr. Tweed," Kenny said, trying to buy time. "I can't go back to Captain O'Donnell and--"

  Her countdown finished, Amy violently threw her head against Tweed's face. A sickening crunch filled the air as the hard bone at the back of her skull broke Tweed's nose. She twisted out of his grip and seized his gun arm, pointing it off in a harmless direction. Tweed fired his gun, but Amy clung to his gun arm, keeping it aimed at a wall.

  Now that his mother had twisted off to Tweed's side, he had a clear shot. Kenny brought his pistol up lightning fast and fired three shots into Tweed's chest.

  His nose still bleeding profusely, Tweed wore a look of shock and let his pistol fall from his grip. He looked down at his chest, clutching at his tie and suit jacket as he tried to open his shirt. Three neat holes formed a perfect triangle in the center of his chest, and began to stain his white button-up shirt bright red. With a last gurgling attempt at breath, Tweed fell to the floor, dead.

  Kenny rushed to Sarah and hugged her tightly. The feel of her hair in his face and the delicate smell of her lilac scented perfume was more than his overloaded senses could handle. He pulled back from her and looked at her face, all of his anxiety left him as he saw her smile.

  "What took you so long, Kenny?" his mother asked, smirking.

  Kenny shook his head and laughed. The excitement over, his adrenaline rush began to subside. The sound of gunfire became less frequent on the deck below as the battle drew to a close. With Sarah and his mother safe, a wave of exhaustion came over him. The pain in his ribs and hands throbbed insistently. His muscles were cramped and aching, pushed to their limit by the struggle to stay afloat in the Ohio River.

  All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep.

  Chapter 23

  Carrying loads of wooden planks and steel parts along a pier, repair crews climbed the scaffolding attached to a pair of massive riverboats floating alongside the bank of the Ohio River. The riverboats were moored to a long pier, situated close to the O'Donnell family home and business. Men worked diligently, replacing damaged decking and support timbers on the Dawn 'til Dusk.

  Next to the second ship, a steam-powered crane hoisted a new boiler into the air, cautiously guiding the steel tank through a hole in the hull. Other men carried armloads of steel pipe into the hold, and a man on the second deck was hard at work, painting over the ship's old name. Captain Patty O'Donnell crossed the plank crossing over from the pier to the second ship, appraising the painter's work.

  "No, no, no. Don't paint over the whole thing! I want a big red X painted over that. Paint the new name over there," Patty yelled at the painters.

  "But if I just put an X over it, people will be able to see the old name. Are you sure that's--"

  "That is exactly what I want. I want everybody to see whose this ship this was, and who owns it now. Put the new name right over there," Captain O'Donnell said, pointing to an unpainted section of the wheelhouse.

  The painter shook his head and went back to work, painting a broad red X over the script of the ship's old name. The painter finished the crude edit and began to outline the ship's new name in stylish flowing script. His paint strokes quickly took shape, and Patty smiled at the results. The Queen's Prize. Her oldest son Pete had dubbed the new ship, a far more fitting name than The King's Archer. The ship was hardly compensation for the loss of everything Tweed had destroyed, but it was a start.

  After inspecting the work being done to install a larger steam boiler and paddlewheel into her new ship, O'Donnell returned to the wheelhouse of the Dawn 'til Dusk, where she felt most at home.

  Looking out over the burnt husk of the old warehouse and fishery, her gaze shifted, resting on the new buildings being constructed a hundred yards away. Carpenters were hard at work unloading timber from wagons, reclaimed lumber they took from an abandoned building in town.

  They would rebuild, start again. Just as she had done after her husband died, and as they all had after the EMP. This was just one more speed bump in the road of life.

&n
bsp; For generations, the O'Donnell family had been survivors. They understood what it took to overcome the odds. Survivors didn't rely on luck and understood they wouldn't win every battle. What made a survivor succeed was picking yourself up off of the ground and getting back up on your feet after each and every stumble, long after others had given up. Survivors were defined by their stubborn refusal to quit. It was as simple as that.

  She glanced over at The Queen's Prize, remembering the vicious battle to take the ship. Fate had intervened, handing her an opportunity to take action against Tweed. Her sense of justice in the world had been restored by his downfall. She wouldn't let the family business be endangered again.

  O'Donnell had a plan, a vision of the future she wanted to help build. As soon as the two ships were repaired and her own affairs were in order, she would find the riverboat captains that Tweed had pushed out of the business. She would convince them to seize their old ships and begin again. What they all needed was an alliance of independent riverboat captains, something larger than themselves, something meaningful to ensure that this would never happen again.

  There was a power vacuum right now, similar to what had existed and allowed Tweed to come into power. That vacuum would be filled, but she would make sure it was filled by people with a different set of values than Tweed's. For all the damage it had done, the EMP had also done some good. It had leveled the playing field for the little people. Their labor was now much more valuable to the community. Captain O'Donnell was in no hurry to see big business and people like Tweed come back into power and profit at the expense of the common man.

  Chapter 24

  Chief Howell sat behind a desk covered in stacks of papers and hand drawn maps, scowling at the disordered mess laid out before him. He couldn't concentrate; his mind kept turning away from the work at hand, daydreaming of a glass of whiskey in hand and a nice cool spot in the shade. The hunger inside of him for a drink was powerful, but he forced himself to focus on what needed to be done and purge the need from his mind. His own addiction put a fine point on why it was so important that he focus.

  In the rows of tents of the former detention facility, more than two hundred men were hours away from experiencing the first stages of withdrawal. Howell had little time to waste. He had to come up with a plan to feed, house, and care for the men while the highly addictive drug left their systems.

  The meth lab run by the Martin Hale guards had gone up in flames during the fight to free the prisoners. Initially, the destruction of the lab was the last thing he thought of as a problem, until he was faced with the proposition of two hundred men experiencing cold turkey withdrawal. After months, and in some cases years, of being dosed with high potency methamphetamines, their bodies expected to receive the drug like clockwork. There was no more of the drug left, and with no meth lab, there was no way to manufacture enough of the drug to wean all of them off. It was a crisis that needed to be dealt with immediately.

  A brown haired woman walked through the bullet hole ridden doors of the detention facility administrative office and tossed a stack of paper down in front of Howell, putting her hands on her hips. "Here's the list you asked for. I don't know how to put this any other way, but twenty of them aren't going to make it until the morning. They would have died whether we freed them or not. Fifty of them are so thin and weak that they are at risk of dying from dehydration and malnourishment during withdrawal. The rest of them should be fine as long as we can keep them hydrated. It's a real mess."

  "Thank you, Dotty. Let's call the families together this afternoon and prepare them for the worst, and then fill them in on the recovery plan. Fortunately we have plenty of shelter, clean water, and food. We need to let them know what to expect as their family members go through withdrawal, and how to support them best," Chief Howell said.

  The woman gave him a grim nod and then left.

  Howell was exhausted. He hadn't slept for more than an hour in the last two days. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest, but there was nobody else available with experience that could take charge of the situation. Hell, he was hardly qualified to organize something like this, but he was all those men had. Somehow, he had to help them through their ordeal, even if he could only provide them with food, shelter, water, and a safe place to stay while the drugs left their system.

  Skimming the report Dotty had left, the lines of the text jumbled together and words danced about. His tired eyes wouldn't focus; he couldn't see clearly enough to read. Howell tossed the stack of papers on the desk and made his way out of the building. It was time to get out of the stifling heat of the office and see what it was they were up against.

  Chief Howell walked down a row of tents. A short distance from the administrative office he saw a familiar face. Roy kneeled down next to his son, who lay in the grass just outside of a tent, his head propped up on a rolled up jacket. Seth's face was pale and his hands trembled. It looked like the early onset of withdrawal symptoms. Likely he had been towards the end of his shift in the mine and due for his second dose of the day when Howell and his vigilantes freed him.

  "How is he holding up?" Chief Howell asked.

  Roy sighed, and ran his hand over his son's head, smoothing down his coal dust streaked hair. "I'll be back in a minute, Seth. I'm going to go talk to the chief for a few minutes." Roy got to his feet and cocked his head to the side, indicating he wanted to talk elsewhere.

  After they were out of earshot, Roy broke the news to the chief. "He's thin as a rail, and weak. They had these men strung out like you wouldn't believe. This is going to be a rough week."

  "I know it. We're going to do what we can for them and see that they all pull through. They've been worked like animals. All of them are weak. Come to the administrative center this afternoon, and pass the word along that everyone should come. I need to make sure everyone is on the same page," he said.

  "Will do. And Chief? Thank you for finding Seth. I won't forget it," Roy said.

  Howell nodded, unsure of what to say. He watched Roy walk back to sit in the grass by his son, and then paced around the rest of the camp, taking everything in.

  There was much left to do before the day ended. The dead from the morning's battle needed to be buried. Eight of his posse had died. All of the Martin Hale guards perished in or shortly after the battle. No trials had been required; the angry families had carried out swift retribution. Few of the prisoners or family members cared what happened to the guard's bodies, but Howell still talked them into burying the bodies so that they wouldn't spread disease over the coming weeks. The last thing they needed was an epidemic on their hands.

  Chief made his rounds of the camp, sick to the stomach by the inhumanity of what had been done to the men. Convicts or not, they were still human beings. There were probably more camps out there just like this. The idea gnawed at his mind. Howell would send the word out to fellow law enforcement officials he knew he could trust and have the camps shut down one by one. And then he would make sure Victor Tweed and his accomplices were punished for what they'd done. After that, he would head home for some well deserved rest, and maybe hang his hat up for good once Jack was back in town.

  Chapter 25

  A gust of wind blew through the open window of the small farmhouse bedroom, stirring Kenny from sleep. He opened his eyes and stared up at the underside of a bunk bed a couple of feet above him. His mind foggy, he was uncertain where he was for a moment. Eventually he remembered he was in Danny's room, on the bottom bunk of the bedroom they now shared. He groaned and rolled over, stuffing his face into his pillow to block out the morning light. Even now, a week after the ordeal with the Tweed, every muscle in his body was sore. Kenny settled back in and was on the verge of drifting back to sleep.

  POW!

  A loud noise like a gunshot roused him immediately from sleep. Kenny sat bolt upright, smacking his head against the wooden frame of the top bunk. His pulse pounding, he looked around for signs of danger.

  Danny stood
next to the bed, holding a shoe in his hand, smirking at him.

  So it wasn't a gunshot. It was his younger brother playing a prank. Apparently Danny had slapped the shoe against the side of the bunk bed frame, nearly giving Kenny a heart attack in the process.

  "You awake?" Danny asked.

  "Danny! What's the matter with you?" Kenny barked, rubbing his forehead.

  "Mom said you should get up," Danny said. "Now you're up."

  "Remind me why I saved your bacon back in Baltimore?" Kenny asked, pulling his jeans on.

  "Because I'm the son with the brains and the good looks. Mom would be devastated if something happened to me. Can you imagine if all she had was you?" Danny asked.

  Kenny shook his head from side to side. "Moron. I'll be down in a minute."

  "Don't be too long. Sarah and Andrew have been up for an hour already," Danny said.

  Danny was having a lot of fun pushing his buttons. Now that they shared a room, Kenny was a captive audience. They had doubled up in Danny's bedroom to free up his old room for Sarah. Andrew used the spare bedroom down the hall. With their parents gone, Amy had insisted that Sarah and Andrew stay with them until the siblings were back on their feet. Andrew planned on going back to his parent’s farm, but it was clear that he wasn't ready to go back there just yet. It was too soon after his parents were killed to be in the home that carried so many memories. He was still reluctant to even talk about what had happened. It was a tight fit with that many people in the Miller’s old farmhouse, but they spent most of their time working outside anyway where space wasn't an issue.

  Kenny hadn't asked Sarah if she planned on going home when her brother left, but he hoped she would stay here with him. He wasn't ready to let her go too far out of his sight after what they'd been through. The thought of losing her was too much to bear. He never wanted to leave her side again.