Without warning

Jules shifted position, scowling furiously. The boat deck was crowded with three big vessels and at least half-a-dozen jet skis, all of which provided excellent cover, but also denied her a clear line of sight to her target. The whole area was a terrible fucking mess, totally ripped up by hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Her guy was trapped a level down, where he’d come aboard on the diving platform. Conceivably, if she was able to find a position that covered both sets of stairs up onto the boat deck, she could keep him pinned down until the others were free to help her. But then, she wasn’t familiar with the design of the yacht, and it was more than possible that he might be able to work his way up and behind her via an internal route directly from the docking bay. She didn’t see any way of avoiding a direct confrontation with the little prick.

Despite the late hour, the sun was still putting out a fierce heat that made all her clothes sticky with sweat. Her tongue felt dry and swollen, and she had trouble swallowing. The yacht swung hard a-starboard, almost throwing her to the deck, but Jules used the momentum to push forward a few more feet to where a couple of black jet skis lay under the keel of the biggest of the auxiliary vessels, the 42-footer. That gave her a better view – she could now see at least part of the other staircase – but it also left her a good deal more exposed.

She caught a flash of long matted hair and blasted away at it, to be rewarded with a strangled cry. Jules didn’t think the wound was mortal. A Remington made a horrible mess of a human head when it struck with full force, and she saw no evidence of that. Most likely a couple of pellets had hit home and raked out some skin and bone. But nothing fatal.

‘Time to double down, Lady Balwyn,’ she muttered to herself, summoning up her courage with a phrase her father had often used.

A whoosh followed by a sudden explosive roar told her that Fifi had launched her rocket. Without thinking, without waiting, Jules leapt up and ran forward, racking another shell into the breech and squeezing it off. The shotgun boomed in her hands. She racked the slide again.

Boom.

She’d made the head of the stairs and now fired down into the well…

Boom.

But the boarder was nowhere to be seen. Damn!

Blood tracks led away to the other side of the boat. There was one particularly large splatter, but it wasn’t flecked with bone chips or brain flecks, and so mostly likely wasn’t evidence of a killing stroke. Still moving as quickly as she could in the pitching, treacherous conditions, she attempted to rack another shell, but the Remington clicked empty. Oh, for fuck’s -

And then she was on top of him – a small wiry man, deeply tanned, his bare torso covered in dense, brightly coloured swirls of tattoo ink. He was waving a gun around, but apparently blinded. His face was bathed in blood, and the flesh from his nose up had been badly torn by a few pellets of buckshot.

He fired wildly at the sound of her approach, unloading the better part of an MP5 mag at her, but Jules was already diving before he pulled the trigger. Head tucked in, heart pounding, she crashed into his thighs and knocked him backwards into a set of air tanks on the diving platform. Awkwardly, but with all of her strength, she slammed the butt of the shotgun into the soft, fleshy part of his upper arm, paralysing it, and tried to lock the injured limb under her knee as they wrestled.

The rank, sour stink of his sweat mingled badly with the coppery smell of blood and something richer, nastier. He writhed about beneath her weight, much stronger and quicker than her, but badly wounded and handicapped by his lack of clear vision.

For her part, Jules was restricted by having to keep so much weight on his gun arm. Knowing she couldn’t win a battle of strength or endurance, she dragged the empty shotgun around and smashed the stock into his face. He screamed with rage and pain, and redoubled his efforts to get out from under her, but three more blows, the last one caving in his forehead, ended any resistance. The body twitched and shuddered and then went limp as his bowels voided themselves all over her legs.

She gagged, but just managed to hold it together. Snatching the MP5 from his twitching fingers, she crawled to her feet with the muzzle trained on him the whole time. Her leg muscles were rubbery and weak, however, and her knees folded up beneath her as she backed away.

Sitting there with her legs splayed out in front of her, covered in gore and worse, it took her a minute or so to realise she couldn’t hear any more gunfire. And then, after a few moments when all she could manage to do was breathe and tremble uncontrollably, Jules realised that, for the first time all day, she’d forgotten about the energy wave that had swept away most of America.

* * * *