by Alexa Dare
“Time’s running out.”
Panic rounded Delbert’s face as he bolted from the cabin. The dude’s booted foot splatted a dab of vomit, and he slid. He banged his shoulder against the doorframe and ricocheted in an impressive leap onto the porch.
Determined, Brody retrieved a bottled water, rinsed his mouth, and stepped outside to spit several bitter mouthfuls off the edge of the porch.
“Two minutes to lockout and counting,” announced the too-real fake voice from inside the cabin.
Too many men with guns charged toward them.
Brody braced himself for the backlash no doubt headed his way like a runaway train. He shouldered the porch post. Insides quivering like plants in the wake of a locust swarm, he forced a smirk.
Rifles and pistols aimed. At him. Again.
As if unfazed, he propped himself against the post and forced his face muscles lax so that he hopefully looked bored.
Yates strode at a stiff-legged clip across the compound.
While the hint of vomit breath escaped from between his lips, with a squaring of his shoulders, Brody pretended his stomach didn’t cramp and that he wasn’t scared spitless. Instead, he nodded in greeting. “Morning, Yates.”
Gaze beaded, the man stomped across the porch.
“One and a half minutes,” the metallic voice purred from the cabin’s innards. “Lockdown pending.”
Yates’s hard, iced gaze cut in the direction of the sound. Like an overloaded caboose or a whipped puppy, Delbert trailed Yates and wiped at his shirtfront with a dirty rag.
To look more macho and to hide that his hands were shaking, Brody tucked his arms behind his back.
“Like I said, sir.” On the porch steps, Delbert’s towel flicks sent the nearby-armed men scattering. “He wants a doctor for his brother, or else—”
“Thirty seconds to lockdown,” said the robotic voice.
“Fine. We’ll bring in a doctor,” Yates said. “Stop your lockdown. Now.”
Brody’s heart ramped like a bass drum in his ears. His chest burned. If only his exhales were fresh. “No disrespect sir, but I don’t believe you.”
Yates barreled to within inches of him.
Behind Yates, Delbert edged toward the cabin door.
“Won’t do you any good, Delbert. The lockdown protocol is passworded to the nth degree.”
In a blur, Yates’s fist shot out and rammed Brody’s jaw. Head knocked back, Brody’s feet flew out from under him and he fell. His shoulders slammed against the porch planks. A jar vibrated through his skull as he lay flat on his back staring at spider-webbed porch roof rafters.
A boot appeared in front of his face. With Delbert’s massive stomp, the bottom rushed toward his nose.
Brody gripped the edges of the boot’s sole.
“Lockdown in place,” the electronic female voice taunted.
Delbert’s boot shoved against Brody’s hold.
“You’re fast becoming not worth the effort.” Yates’s humorless chuckle rasped.
The bottom of Delbert’s number elevens scraped Brody’s nose.
“Hurt me,” Brody hissed through clenched teeth, “and your system stays locked down.”
“Hold up, Delbert.” Yates leaned in, and his blue-eyed gaze stapled Brody to the spot.
“Do as you said you would.” Brody clutched his injured shoulder. “After three hours, there’s a window to log in and unlock the system.”
“Held hostage.” Delbert lifted his leg higher. “The little nerd is holding our own system up for ransom. I won’t have it. Damn the little fucker, I’ll smash the rebellion out of him.”
“More like blackmail, not ransom.” Brody groaned at the sharp pains flaring in his hurt shoulder as he wrestled with the oversized boot.
Delbert’s boot shoved down in a quick drop.
Elbows unable to bear the man’s weight, Brody held on to the shoe, but turned his face to the side. The rough tread of the boot sole pressed into his cheek.
“Keep it up, and you’ll lose your entire system. For good.” Brody breathed in the leather from the boot bottom and cringed. His cheek radiated throbbing, white hot pain.
“I can have enough equipment to get us back up in a few hours,” Delbert’s smooth southern drawl promised, digging his boot tread into Brody’s cheekbone.
In sharp twists and cuts, his teeth cut into his jaw. He ground out, “In three hours, if the password isn’t entered, your location and your entire militia manifesto will be forward to any and all tech-savvy folks near Briar Patch Mountain and beyond.”
“At ease, Delbert.” Yates’s voice sounded weary of the game, but firm in getting what he wanted.
With a growl, Delbert twisted his boot. The flesh of Brody’s cheek ground into his cheekbones, teeth, and jaw.
“Delbert, stand down,” Yates barked. “Now.”
The boot pressed down harder, then the pressure eased, and the foot was gone. Delbert barely set his attack foot on the planks, when the butt of a rifle slammed into the big guy’s nose. Blood spurted. Delbert wailed and covered his face with his hands. “What the fuck, Yates? You broke my nose.”
“When I tell you to stand down, you stand down.” Yates handed the gun to another comrade. “Next time instead of the rear end of the rifle, you’ll get the full blast from the barrel.”
“Okay. Okay.” Delbert stumbled backward across the porch.
“Lesson learned?” asked Yates.
“Yes, sir.” Delbert hunched against the porch railing. “No problem,” he said in a pinched whine, “you got it.”
“Bring in Doc Halverson.” Yates aimed his chin at the door.
The steel knot cables in Brody’s belly eased.
Glasses askew, Delbert pulled himself to his feet. “But...”
“Ain’t no buts in my regiment.” Yates grabbed the top tufts of Delbert’s hair and yanked his head back. “Question me again, Delbert, and the last thing you’ll experience on this earth is a bullet bouncing around inside your skull.”
Delbert’s Adam’s apple slipped up and down. “Whatever you say, Yates.”
The militia leader held on to Delbert’s hair. “You’ve used up your second chance. There’ll not be a third.”
Delbert’s chin dipped and scooped in short, quick jerks. His gaze rolled around like a wild rabid dog’s, the copper of his blood fermenting in the breeze, until his seething glare latched on to Brody.
Hand on his cheek, Brody scooted to his knees, then stood. His fingers searched the angles of his face for boot imprints.
“Delbert,” Yates said, his voice dropping to just above a whisper. “Get Old Doc Halverson. Now.”
The flunky huffed a grand sigh, and strings of blood splattered from his lips.
Yates offered Brody his hand. While Nora from Briar Patch Mountain’s eyes were vacant and uncaring, Yates’s eyes held cunning and malice.
Off to the side and from behind his glasses, Delbert’s magnified glare bulged with unfettered hate.
Yates’s grip increased as stout and punishing as the devil. He locked his baby blues on Brody’s face, not glancing away when Brody stood and tugged his hand free. Yates aimed a tilt of his head toward the doorway.
With each step, Brody walked closer to his doom.
Once inside the cabin, Yates kicked the cabin door closed with a loud bang.
Brody flinched. A shudder spread down the middle of his back. Rancid throw-up fumes blasted the inside of the cabin to crinkle Brody’s nose hairs. An uneasy flutter jittered in his guts.
In loud rakes, Yates rolled the office chair near the computer keyboard. “Sit. Boy, I’m used to dealing with men that can barely play checkers, and you’ve just introduced me to a fine game of chess.”
“No matter what happens to me, you’ll get Cantrell help?”
“You choose not to play by my rules,” said Yates, delivering a non-blinking stare, “and you pay the price.”
Brody’s heart jackhammered in his chest. A stale sharp
ness coated his tongue so that his frequent swallows poked his gag reflex even harder.
“Your brother said you were smart, and damned if you didn’t outsmart all of us.” Yates shook his head and snorted. “I usually can tell if a man’s bluffing, but with that scared-out-of-your-gourd look of yours…” He shook his head. “Shit, you fooled me.”
“If Cantrell’s got some sort of plague, why aren’t the rest of you afraid he’s contagious?”
“Doc Halverson will evaluate Cantrell’s condition when he gets here. You’ve got what you wanted, so do whatever you need to do to gain access to Briar Patch Mountain.”
“I would if I could, sir, but if anyone tries to access your system, the info about this location is sent to several online sources and the lockdown, well, uh, locks down for good.”
With every minute that passed, the spade of trouble dug a deeper hole for Brody, and thus, for his troubled older brother.
“You think you’re so fucking smart.” Yates marched across the length of the room.
The muscles across Brody’s forehead and temples banded his skull. “Cantrell’s been working for you all along, hasn’t he?”
“Guys like you always need answers. Results are what matters.” Yates veered close to the door. He bent and scooped something far more foul smelling than dill from the floor. He held out his index finger. A yellow-white clump balanced on its upper curve.
Yates brought his vomit-smeared finger near.
Tangy sweet and sour drilled Brody’s nose. Anchoring his heels, he rolled his chair back a foot or so until the back bumped the table. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but—”
“I’m not playing. I’m showing you the difference between seeking answers and getting results.” Yates grabbed a handful of Brody’s hair. “I need this system working now.”
“I can’t.” Brody squirmed and ducked.
“Do it now.” Yates smeared the slime across the area between Brody’s nose and upper lip in a slimy puke mustache.
The sour stench skewered Brody’s nostrils.
“Urk.” What was left of Brody’s breakfast ejected out of his mouth in a hot liquid rush. He vomited between his boots until all he could do was dry heave.
Yates’s black military boots moved into his line of sight. “Looks like we’ll need a spoon.”
Chapter 15
A skittering noise echoed toward the ceiling. Mice? Snakes? Roaches?
Despite the warmth of the stuffy room, a shiver jabbed from Junior’s neck to his tailbone. They must have hauled him out of the box while he slept and put him in the tiny cell. Sometime in the morning hours, locked away, with strange sounds from overhead, Junior lay on a small cot in a corner.
In the barely lit closet-sized room, sheets of plastic covered the place top to bottom and no air stirred. All’s else inside was a metal locker, where Junior’d stuffed the suit he’d taken off when he woke up only minutes before.
Head cocked to the side on a too-flat pillow, he listened.
No more sounds.
At least he didn’t feel as sick anymore. He sniffed. No more blood. He rolled on to his back and rested his head on a sweaty smelling pillow. Closed in, his chest tight and smothered, he wanted out of the room.
High-pitched squeaks echoed.
Rats!
Wide-eyed, he peered over his knees. At the movement, his belly cramped empty. Right now, he’d even fight a mouse for a dry piece of cheese.
Shadows cupped the metal grate near the ceiling. Barely there scratches sounded from behind the metal air vent covering. When he lived with his aunt, a mouse had bitten him once, when he fell asleep in the cellar.
Real quick, he learned to not talk back and to not sleep if you do.
Junior squinted in the faint light. The one wall fixture above the vent glowed dim.
More squeaks sounded. Turn by turn, one of the vent screws backed out of the grate. No bug or snake or mouse could do that.
“Who’s there?” he croaked and sat up on the narrow cot. His voice sounded like the rusty hinge of a screen door.
The screw stopped turning.
“Whoever you are,” Junior said. “help me get me out.”
Screaks and screeches continued. A few more turns. The metal screw head angled upward, then down. Shoved farther out of the hole, the screw fell. With a plinking noise, it hit and rolled along the floor.
Strange scraping noises echoes burst through the small room. Another metal head turned and inched from the grate’s metal frame.
“You can tell me your name.” He held his breath, listened. In a locked room, all Junior could do was wait.
The last of the four screws dropped to join the others with a ping and a roll. Metal rubbed against metal, and the grate jarred in place. Then quiet settled like a gnat’s whisper.
Junior, unable to see through the finger-width grate slates, leaned forward.
A slam rammed the grate’s inner frame. The metal cover flew off the wall. With crashes and clangs, the square vent, about the size of a TV tray top, landed between him and the locker.
Junior shoved his bare heels on the cot to scurry away from the open shaft, but a wall at his back blocked him.
Vincent, with his blond hair, light-colored eyes, and chubby face, popped into view. “Do you, by chance, possess a pen? Perhaps a sheet of paper?”
“Vincent.” Junior matched the teenager’s grin, but then the idea of what the teen asked tugged down his mouth’s outer edges. “Don’t you think you having a piece of paper and pen is a bad idea? When you draw stuff, bad things happen.”
“Depends on one’s definition of bad.” Vincent’s head popped out of sight. After a few banging noises, his tennis shoes came into view. They weren’t yellow or green, but sort of in between. “You are all better,” his muffled voice asked, “are you not?”
“Do your shoes glow in the dark?”
Vincent held on to the duct. A step on the locker top, and he gripped the vent’s edge. With a squeak, his shoe soles slid down the metal to the floor. “I am told the style is beyond rad. Your pen and paper, please.”
“You shouldn’t draw.” Junior, alone and trapped with the strange teen, waited on his cot.
“How else are we going to create a map for you to follow to leave this place?” Vincent wasn’t so bad, for an older kid with a wicked, mean mother. With his head lowered, he looked from beneath his brows with those strange, pale eyes of his.
“If we can find pencil and paper, you tell me which way, and I’ll draw.” Junior peered at the teen.
“Quite a good idea.” Vincent nodded.
On the locker’s top shelf, Junior found a hand-sized pad of paper that had the word Notes printed at the upper edge of each page. An ink pen, along with a man’s wristwatch sat next to the pad.
Other stuff, besides the hateful suit he stuffed inside, filled the lower part locker, such as a uniform and a pair of sweaty-foot-stank boots. Seemed like the person who lived in the room before left in a hurry.
Junior held the pad and lifted the pen. “Wait.” He tucked the items behind his back. “Why would you help me?”
“You have not killed on purpose yet, have you?”
“No. I wouldn’t. Ever.” Although there were those hurt in the town they wrecked…
“But you shall.” Vincent plopped his butt on the low riding cot. “If mother turned her own son into a killer, she will do the same with you.”
“She wouldn’t. I would never—”
“Nor would I. Until she and the others tricked me, then forced me, to draw down on death. Thus, I have ended so many lives.”
“By drawing your pictures?”
“Perhaps I should show you.” Vincent aimed his wild gaze at Junior’s back.
Junior fisted the pen and clutched the pad tighter.
“I healed you. I know that I can do good, if allowed to do so.” Vincent stepped close. “Your link with the earth, deep down inside you, grows stronger. You must feel it. Soon
, all of Children of the Elements will become.”
“Become?”
“Better. More lethal. Just as my mother plans.”
An alarm blasted through the hallway outside the door.
“Pen, along with the notepad, please.” Vincent grabbed the front of Junior’s t-shirt and twisted. “I think it’s best I draw what I need to draw myself.” Under the twist of his grip, seam stitches popped and cloth ripped. Vincent yanked him off his feet and shook him. With the teen’s face close, a tease of bubble gum fanned across Junior’s face. “I must have them.”
“The alarm’s for you. If you stay here, they’ll find you.” Junior kicked as if punting a ruined gourd out of the garden. His foot rammed what Aunt Pearl called boy parts.
Fish lips gulping, Vincent’s too-light eyes bulged, and his pale face pinked and flushed deep red toward purple. He let go of Junior and grabbed his crotch.
Junior fell. Landing flat on his feet, he rolled on to his back and pinned the ink pen and pad beneath him.
The room’s plastic-lined door swung inward, and soldiers rushed inside.
Vincent limped toward the duct, but Junior lunged and grabbed for his ankle. The teen dodged. His tennis shoe bottoms skidded on loose screws, until his feet tangled on the grate, and he went down.
Two soldier men hauled the struggling teenager out into the hallway.
Others ran in, grasped Junior’s arms and legs, and lifted. As he pulled against their grips, the soldiers gathered the plastic suit from the still open locker and carried him away.
***
“I kept him from drawing. That should count for something.” Junior sat in a chair, once again dressed in plastic, while Nora paced by him in the earthy smelling office. The hood made his neck and ears sweat. With only his face exposed, he scowled. “You’re going to take me out of this suit now, right?”
“For now,” Nora said, “I think we’re all much safer with you in it.”
Jitters scurried in his middle and his spit tanged like cooked spinach. A quiver jarred his jaw. “Are you gonna lock me away in the box again?”
“Why would I do that?” Nora stopped pacing.
“You did before...”