Children Of Fiends (9 page)

“How is that, Captain?”

“I observed myself and these ships from the perspective of the shore.”
 

This was met with a long silence. Finally, Thompson said, “We are familiar with the phenomenon. Are you able to assert proximity, direction? We have systems aboard that may be able to pick up heat signatures on shore.”

Dean raised the hailer to his lips. “We are past the point on the peninsula where this was experienced. We haven’t experienced it again and the children are only speaking of a broad sensation of...” He paused to find the right word then lifted the hailer again. “...Of perception.”

There was another long pause from the drone. Then Plimpton’s voice came across. “Captain. Councilor Niles Plimpton here. We have only spoken briefly when Miss St. James chose to join us. We are of the consensus that you have indeed experienced an encounter with one of the devils. Observed we have, that they are part of the wild that is now this world. We are used to dealing with them. Our scan of the entrance to the canal and the ruined city reveal no activity, neither motion nor heat. Keep your vigil and let us press on.”

Dean turned to Sanders and asked, “Thoughts?”

“Like being tied to a dog that’s got the scent and won’t hear a holler.”

Dean looked at his first mate skeptically.

“What?”

“You suddenly from West Virginia?”

Sanders shrugged. “Seemed like the right cliché.”

“Sure. Why not?” Dean scanned the shoreline, his helmet zooming in as needed. Abandoned shipping was either submerged or wrecked against the beach and rocks. A few larger vessels remained floating inside a small man-made harbor. “Worst comes to worse, we cut lose and hope one of those wrecks has viable fuel.”

Sanders nodded at the destroyer. “I doubt they’d think kindly to that.”

“No, and we should plan accordingly.”

The sun broke over the tree tops in its full glory. A nearly cloudless day presented a sunrise that simply took everyone’s breath away. The pucks were rightly amazed, having no memory of seeing such a thing. The Halflie crew was without a dry eye as they took in the sight of their star over the dense mist-capped jungle. Sunlight glinted off the remaining windows on the dead hotels, and it seemed a good omen for moving forward.

Aboard the destroyer, the feelings were much the same. The handful of men and the girl Brandy stood and stared at the scene. Brandy asked no one in particular, “It’s the sun, right?”

Plimpton’s smooth voice answered while he placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “Magnificent, isn’t it my dear?”

Brandy allowed the physical contact, the moment so profound that a human touch helped ground her. “It hurts my eyes.”

“Don’t look straight at it. It will make you blind.”

Hanson observed all of this with a jealousy that he didn't understand. Rather, he experienced the sensation of a hole growing in the pit of his stomach and a tightening in his chest. He pretended to look at the sunrise while taking in the girl’s form from the corner of his eye. Yes, don’t look at it. You don’t want to spoil those beautiful eyes. Deacon Jones entered the room and blocked his view of the girl.
 
The pastor saw the view and exclaimed, “God be praised.” Hanson thought about his promise to himself; that he would seek out one of the deacons to pray. He had instead taken to polishing and refining his thoughts on the girl, going over and over them, especially his encounter with her at her open door. He had polished until those thoughts nearly outshone the sun, repeating over and over the sight of the girl standing in her T-shirt, her young breasts... During the night, with a mixture of mortification and delight, he had stood at the crack of his door, staring at hers and imagining her sleeping form beyond. With his heart beating at a rate that he feared was a bit high, he had relieved himself, finally becoming sleepy enough to lie down. As he gazed at the sunrise, he chose to forgive the master’s hand on the girl’s shoulder. Who could blame him? Then he had a rare moment of self-discovery: He never really blamed the master. In truth, he wished that he could be the master - at least concerning the various girls.
 

Jamesbonds spotted the first mine. Just below the surface and no more than ten meters off their starboard flank, the menacing thing seemed to innocuously shift at its anchor while being disturbed by the Delfshaven’s bow wake. Then before the man could gather his wits and scream a warning, he watched the bomb shift again, its magnetic element drawing it to the ship’s hull. There was an audible thud as the mine bummed up against the steel plates. Jamesbonds managed to dive to the deck, yet nothing happened. The floating bomb simply scraped along the hull until it was released by the stern wake. His heart pounded and his healing shoulder wound ached with the action of diving onto a hard surface.
 

Dean saw his lookout’s motions and ran to the rail. The weapon bobbed in the wake. “All hands! Get to the rails and look for mines!”
 

As they continued to approach the mouth of the canal he spotted a barrier ahead: a series of anchored barges in various forms of decay. Some were partially or almost completely submerged, and all were connected by thick rusting cable. The entrance to the canal was effectively fenced off, the harbor apparently mined for added effect. Clearly, the people of Nicaragua had tried to close themselves off to a dying world.
 

The men on the Lyndon Johnson had begun to slow the ship. Too quick a stop and the Delfshaven would smash into the destroyer’s stern.
 

Dean didn’t need to yell for attention this time. With the destroyer’s engines at idle, he raised his voice to the drone. “A magnetic pressure-actuated mine made contact with our starboard side. It was either a dud or deactivated. It was obviously not a lone device. Mines like that are capable of remaining armed for a hundred years or more.”

“Stand by,” said Thompson through the drone’s speaker. After what seemed like an interminable length of time to Dean, Thompson spoke again. “Here is what we are going to do. Drop a boat you will, with that welding kit we lent and send a team to go cut one of those barges free. We will tie the barge to our bow and use it to sweep ahead, hopefully detonating anything that may lay between us and the canal.”

Dean looked at Sanders who shrugged. “It’s simple, straightforward. Can’t argue with it.”

Dean exhaled and turned back to the drone. “Our lifeboats have no power to tow one of those barges. You’ll need to send your tender.”

There was yet another long pause and then Thompson said, “It appears that you wear specialized helmets. We assume that this provides you with some type of immunity from the devils. Our man will be unprotected from those that travel with you. Do we have your guarantee that he will be left unmolested?”

Dean shook his head in annoyance. “The children that travel with us have no desire to molest you people.”

Bishop, Cinders, Murphy and Wall volunteered for the mission. Within an hour the men had severed the cables fastened to the two ends of a barge. The crew watching from the Delfshaven saw the great splash of the cables as they fell. Moments later, a man set out on the Lyndon Johnson’s tender to rendezvous with the now free floating barge. The man threw two heavy lines to the crew on the barge and in short order the big flat vessel was towed toward the Lyndon Johnson’s bow while the four men from the Delfshaven rowed along next to the tender. Bishop called out steering instructions to avoid yet another mine that was moored between the two vessels.

When the barge met with the bow of the destroyer, another team stepped from the cover of the stealthy ship to lash the two together while the Sentinel remained on the stern as a simple reminder to not mess with the Shoremen. When Dean’s crew returned and they had hoisted the lifeboat back aboard, Bishop reported that the Shoremen never spoke a word, instead using hand signals for the work. “Play it close they do, Cap.”

The Lyndon Johnson fired up her engines and pressed forward, pulling the Delfshaven and pushing the huge barge. The notion of imminent sinking served to refocus everyone on the immediate task.
 

As they passed through the gap in the cable and barge line, Dean ordered everyone to the top deck and to find a place where nothing above them could fall and crush. If there were an explosion, the resulting shockwave would certainly knock people off their feet and perhaps even break limbs. All they could do was look forward and stare at the barge as it slowly approached the gateway to the canal and the still erect but densely rusting Bridge of The Central Americas.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. Please don’t hesitate to add a review at your favorite retailer. I’ve provided the soil and the seed, reviews are the sun and water to make it grow.
 

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Part 3 of Children Of Fiends is next - keep having fun. An excerpt from the book follows this page.

Cheers,

C. Chase Harwood

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C. Chase Harwood made a career in Hollywood, decorating sets for film and television before turning his passion for story telling into clicks on a keyboard. While scaling the walls of the screenwriting world, he chose to experiment with prose and found a fondness for Scifi-action-adventure. Within that framework he gets to explore the countless ways that humans interact while under duress. "Life is all the more lived when the consequences are high. When told as a tale it can be quite a page turner," says Harwood. He lives in Los Angeles with his costume designer wife and young boy girl twins.

The following are some other storytellers with whom the author finds a kindred spirit: HUGH HOWIE, STEPHEN KING, SCOTT SIGLER, DJ MOLLES, RHIANNON FRATER, SEAN PLATT, JUSTIN CRONIN, JAMES S.A. COREY, PETER CLINES, SUZANNE COLLINS, ERNEST CLINE, MAX BROOKS, VERONICA ROTH, LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD, ORSON SCOTT CARD

"Pretty big shoes…”

MINES

They heard the scraping bass tone of contact all the way on the command deck of the Delfshaven. The barge way out front had struck something, running its shallow hull across what was likely the superstructure of a submerged vessel. The screeching echo of rending steel reverberated through the water and off the surrounding boats, buildings, trees and walls. The speed of the Lyndon Johnson fell from a walk to a crawl as the helmsman of that boat made a fruitless effort to steer around the sunken obstacle, the sound of its own hull coming into contact next. The keel screamed in protest as the port side scraped by, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. Then it was the Delfshaven’s turn. The deeper hull immediately caught on something unshakeable and the lines between the ships tightened further with the strain, drawing all three boats to a halt. From his post at the bow, with Wen as a second pair of eyes, Dean yelled through his hailer for the Shoremen to stop. The strain eased as the Lyndon Johnson’s engines fell into neutral, the rubber band effect drawing the two boats together until they touched with a hollow thunk.

Dean could clearly make out the sunken ship below; it’s ghostly shape reaching up to seemingly take them down with it. He absently calculated that it had been either a victim of a mine or just as easily a decade of harsh weather. He called out to the drone that stood at attention, anticipating his words. “You’ll have to reverse. Any pulling forward is liable to either snap the lines or tear our hull.”

Thompson’s voice came back, “We’ll give it a go. Try and pull you in a bit of an arc when we go forward.”

“You need to put a man on the bow of that barge rather than a camera. Your camera sees the mines, but it’s not going to see into the water.”

“I’ll repeat. We don’t have a man to spare. You have plenty.”

Dean would be damned if he was going to risk letting one of his people fall hostage so instead he simply grinned and said, “We’ll leave it to you to get blown up first.”

They spent nearly an hour, gently pushing and pulling, backing, turning, steel screaming out in protest until the three ships fell into the shape of a crescent while the Lyndon Johnson backed up once more. It was Green this time who screamed from the stern for them to stop. A mine was gently being pulled in their direction and only its anchor chain kept it from doing its worse. An agonizing groan came up from below as the Lyndon Johnson pulled forward and passed once more over the sunken vessel, finally breaking free. As they slowly passed under the rusting hulk of the huge suspension bridge, nerves easing, an explosion sent the bow of the barge high enough into the air that when it came back down its stern badly crumpled the once sharp bow of the destroyer. Hundreds of birds that had been nesting on the bridge broke into the air at once and within seconds the barge was taking on vast amounts of water, its sinking threatening the pull the destroyer down with it. Dean saw four men run forward with axes in hand, hacking at the tow lines with frantic vigor. The bow of the Lyndon Johnson tipped heavily toward the water while the stern lifted and scraped along the bow of the Delfshaven until Dean could nearly walk between the two. In a sudden burst of energy, the barge was cut free, righting the destroyer and plunging its stern back down with such force as to yank the bow of the Delfshaven down, throwing Dean and Blakely hard to the deck. The towropes snapped with a deafening crack and the two ships started drifting apart.

“Oh shit,” said Wen as he spied another mine in the path of their drift. The tide was moving out and the current quickly grabbed ahold of them. They had minutes at best.

It was Palmer who leapt to action, running for the lifeboat, followed by Jamesbonds, Mr. Kile and Cinders. Palmer yelled over his shoulder, “We got it, Cap!” The men swiftly jumped aboard and released the lines. The boat hit the water so hard it knocked them all to the deck. Jamesbonds heaved off the hook for the bow hoist and scrambled to dig out the anchor while Palmer unhooked the stern hoist and grabbed the rudder. Kile and Cinders pulled out the emergency oars and, with the practiced ease of whale men on the hunt, pulled the boat in the direction of the mine, picking up speed with each synchronized stroke.