Dire Rumblings: A Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Children of the Elements Book 2)

by Alexa Dare

  “You gave the girl her toy?” Cantrell dragged his hand down his face. “Only thing left of her family, you know.”

  “One of the children had the stuffed dog. If he can, he’ll get it to her.”

  “I was bad off, but I woke up this morning healed. I have been spared to serve my purpose.” Cantrell made a spider-crawl finger movement down Brody’s lower arm.

  The tickle on his arms sent a knowing tingle through Brody’s temples. Lips twitching, he shaped the words, the toy is bugged?

  Gaze directed at the fireplace, Cantrell dipped his chin.

  Hiding a tracking or listening device in a child’s toy— How deep does this crazy bizarre plot go?

  Brody tapped his ear and tugged the lobe.

  Cantrell nodded. If he were to be believed, someone listened to and heard what they said to each other. “I want to give you a gift, brother. You’ve always stood by me, even when you thought I rode a bus that was off the rails.” He held out a silver-and-gold wristwatch.

  Not just any watch, but one of Brody’s unique devices. Within the inner works, a state-of-the-art digital video recorder nested.

  “I’ll keep the one you left behind at Uncle Merv’s place.” A second matching watch sat in his open palm. “One each to remember the other by.”

  “We’ve got each other. No need for keepsakes.” Brody brushed the offering away.

  “Of course, there is. It would mean the world to me. Take it.” He pointed to the watch face. With his index finger and thumb, he made a circle and peered through the loop of his fingers at Brody.

  “They wouldn’t have let me visit, because they said you were infected. Made out like you lived out here in quarantine.” Eyes wide, Brody tapped the side of the wristwatch and nodded. “Let Doc look at you, okay? He’ll make certain you’re all right.” Not saying what they really meant sucked. Big time.

  “I was sick, but now I am healed. When the divine intervenes, no one can grasp the whys and wherefores.” As if performing a magician’s slight-of-hand gesture, Cantrell tucked one of the watches into Brody’s hand.

  Brody stroked the slick glass face with the pad of his thumb. Would the video footage his brother must have recorded on the specially designed watch get them the heck out of there?

  “What I see might not be what you need for me to see at all.” Cantrell reached beneath the couch and pulled out a rigged baseball cap. “The fancy headlamps come in handy in the dark of night. Use this one as a go by. Make a few more baseball caps rigged with lights for the militia. The men can make use of them.”

  Cantrell tapped the area beneath his eye and then pointed in short jabs. Once in the direction of the kitchen. Another toward the middle of the living room. Again, at the dining area.

  Yeah, he’d scoped out a camera blind spot.

  “I can make more.” Brody clutched the cap and watch against his upper stomach.

  Rigged with lights, the cap’s brim also held a mini camera. The watch served as a wireless recorder. A fantastical device designed by Brody for a high-end client right before the conspiracy mess exploded in their faces.

  “You recall the McConnell’s barn?” Cantrell’s cryptic gaze offered so much that Brody couldn’t fathom the unspoken riddle at all.

  “Trouble with the local law comes to mind.”

  “You’re one of us now,” his brother said, “so you are cleared to know.”

  Why did folks keep telling Brody stuff he flat out didn’t need or want to hear? As expected, he asked, “Know what?”

  “Tunnels run beneath the ground in most of this area. The McConnell’s place hides a passage to the surface. If you had believed me back then, things might’ve turned out a lot different.”

  Boot steps echoed on the porch, and then the door swung open. Within seconds, food smells overtook the heavy soot and mothball odors. Brody breathed in the aromas of cooked meat, onions, tomatoes. Even cornbread. His nostrils twitched, and drool pooled so that he gulped in quick hungry swallows.

  Doc, carrying a dinner tray, stepped into the room. “Brody, you’ve stayed long enough.”

  “Not on a weekday and never on Saturdays and Sundays,” Cantrell muttered.

  “Sorry about the soft drink. Stew and cornbread without sweet iced tea doesn’t seem right, but times have changed.” Doc set the tray, steadying the bottled drink, on the small dining table and tilted his head toward the doorway. “Come along, Brody. You can eat your dinner back at your cabin.”

  “We’ll talk some more soon.” Brody got to his feet.

  “That’ll be fine, Bro.” Cantrell hummed an off-key tune that might have been a ballad. In seconds, he lost himself in a stare at the empty hearth. He muttered, “Perhaps truth and chaos are one and the same.”

  Chapter 21

  Composure regained and vent grate back in place, Nora sat at the compact desk. Too much like the loathed, dead general, she propped her elbows on the desk and blanked her face.

  “Sir? Ma’am?” a female technician asked through the speaker. “Our computer system’s coming online Somehow booting up on its own.”

  “Shut it down. Now.” Nora tugged her gloves at the wrist and pulled her sleeves down. The less exposed, the better. Was the upgraded collar to blame for the disconnect inside her?

  Nora trotted down the hallway, entered the control room, and stood at the back.

  Ross, along with several techs, scrambled to computer stations, and several soldiers gathered along the room’s edges.

  Rows of work stations, with mega sized monitors and flat screens, filled the entire room space. Forty-plus-inch diameter monitors banked one wall from floor to ceiling.

  Only half a dozen computer operator techs remained within the facility.

  “We are unable to shut the system down,” said the overly enthusiastic female tech. “Perhaps after full reboot, sir?”

  A need to remove her gloves surged so hard through Nora, that she held onto a workstation table to remain upright. How long had it been since her last kill? The eager heat—too long since she’d used her ability—burned the tips of her fingers. Never had she looked so forward to a reason to kill.

  “Sir, we’ve been locked out.” The exuberant ever-so-positive female tech, with her engaging glances at Ross, would serve nicely.

  Sweat collected at Nora’s temples and across her forehead. She needed to get back to her quarters.

  Nora about-faced and bolted.

  “Darlin’,” a voice from the past drawled, “I do hope you’re not leaving on my account.”

  As if yanked by the hair, Nora jerked to a halt.

  “Long time, no see,” the oh-too-familiar smooth as cream voice reverberated through a system speaker.

  Nora whirled around.

  The bank of wall monitors featured multiple views of the face of the man she had thought long gone and never to be seen again. Head shaved, the man on the screen grinned to line his face in a good-old-boy welcome. His light blue eyes twinkled with more than a little mischief. The square of his jaw bracketed a dimpled chin and framed full lips that telegraphed more than his words.

  Her lips numbed and her earlobes heated.

  “You should see the look on your pretty little face,” said the multiple images. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  She blinked, ignoring the shocked faced of the staff, and fought to corral her surfacing, runaway emotions.

  “You look well, Nora,” the man on the wall, Brockton Yates, he said, “my little southern belle.”

  The cutesy, blond female technician gasped.

  One of the techs or soldiers snorted.

  “Don’t call me that.” Nora darted frantic glances about the control room. Every gaze from the techs slid aside. A couple of soldiers failed to hide their smirks, but all looked away.

  At her shoulder, Ross studied her reaction, like any aide or assistant would, though the caring burning in the depths of his gaze hinted otherwise.

  “You hacked into our system.” Dry
ness scraped her throat. “Why?”

  “Don’t you think after all this time,” Yates drawled, “the two of us should have a little chat?”

  “Clear the room. Now.” Nora faced the monitors. Back straight, she shifted into a widened stance. No way would she cower before him, not after going it alone after all these years. Face blank and eyes steely, she offered the image on the screens the lift of her chin.

  “You heard the lady.” Ross waved a hand toward the door.

  The men exited the room. On her way out, the lone blond female bestowed a honey-been-there-done-that look upon Nora.

  The shared empathy surged a flare of heat into Nora’s cheeks. Were the man on the screen here, she’d enfold him in a deadly embrace.

  “All clear,” Ross reported.

  Nora resisted tucking her gloved hand into his. “You too, Lieutenant.”

  “Nah, let the fellow stay.” Yates’s mouth pulled wide to fill the bottom half of the screens. “Every woman deserves a right-hand man.”

  “Leave, Ross.”

  All handsome and soldier through and through, Ross remained at Nora’s right shoulder and faced the wall of monitors head on. Even the twitch of his hand at his side bolstered the image. “Beg pardon, but I’ll stay, ma’am.”

  “You never needed anyone, did you, Nora? Leastwise, you didn’t think you did.” Duplicates on the wall, Yates’s images chuckled. “What’s it been? Nigh on twenty years?”

  Seventeen and a half years, give or take a week or so. Nora said, “That’s in the past. Why are you here now?”

  “Well, my little digital visit, thanks to your former colleague, serves several purposes.” The crinkles around his eyes lined deep. “First and foremost, would be to suggest a potential alliance between the militia and you mountain dwellers.”

  “An alliance?” Nora breathed in deeply. In her stomach, the bite of too old breakfast biscuit churned like butter made from wild onion-tinged cow’s milk.

  “The way I’ve got this figured,” said Yates, “we both want the same thing.”

  “Yates, why don’t you stop playing the bad boy…?”

  Ross grunted a chuckle.

  “...and tell me what you want?”

  From the monitor, a dozen sets of his light blue eyes drilled her. “Besides you, Nora Belle?”

  A stirring heat from her chest shot upward to amp the warmth of her already flushed face. Long-dead yearning crested to the surface. Her heart pounded as if trying to break her ribs apart.

  As if her perceived her internal reactions, Yates leered. “Best we get on with our chat. We both want free from authority. Let’s pool our resources. What do you say?”

  “I say, thanks but no thanks.” No woman in her right mind would trust a man who skipped out on her so long ago. “I said yes once to what you were offering, and you left without even saying a proper goodbye.”

  “Back then, I had to move on. Things to do. A great deal to take care of. Surely, after all these years, you would want out of the project.”

  “You know about the project...” As if backhanded by the past, she flinched and tried not to show a reaction. Failed. “Of course, you do.” Nora snarled in a roll of her upper lip along her upper teeth. “You were part of their scheme all along.” Her heartbeat roared behind her eardrums. Anger burned and seared so deep, she fought to tamp her rage.

  “Nora?” Ross shifted his shoulders into a fighting stance and moved a fraction nearer so that their shoulders, through their clothing, grazed.

  Surely, standing so close, Ross heard her pulse thunder as her heart crumbled to tiny pieces in her chest.

  “I’ve regretted a lot of things over the years,” Yates said, “but I’m back and ready to claim what’s rightfully mine. With the aid of those children, we can establish our own private country within the region.” Yates grinned a smirk. “We’ll secede from the Union and force Big Brother to leave us be.”

  “You’re more of a love-them-and-leave-them type.” Nora steadied her raging breathing. “I never imagined you were an extremist.”

  “Anything worth having in life is worth going to the extreme for.”

  “I fail to see what you have to offer or how we might benefit from such an alliance.”

  Yates’s baby blues iced. “You always were a get-down-to business kind of woman.” The teasing lift of his lips, the insolence of his voice, lured her back in time before the horror. “We offer protection.”

  “By protect, you, no doubt, mean from your own forces.”

  “Ah, gal, you know me well.”

  “Though we shared a brief time together, Brockton Yates, I don’t know you at all. You leaving saw to that.”

  “Remember what I used to tell you, there’s a story and a reason behind what most people do.” His somber multiple gazes on the screens unnerved her.

  She lifted her chin once again. “I didn’t realize at the time you were warning me.”

  “Speaking of warnings...” He narrowed his gaze. “Here’s what’s going to happen. If you don’t agree to an alliance, we’re going to take over your computer system. We’ll cut all access to and from your facility. There’ll be no electric power. No airflow from the surface. In the meantime, we highjack outgoing networks. Tell the world about your deliberate exposure of the county to disease. Share what a danger the Briar Mountain project presents.”

  “You’ve caused more harm to me than you’ll ever know.” Nora’s earlobes swelled and pulsed with angry heat. “I will not allow you to play me again, Yates.”

  Shoulders and upper arms bunched for attack, Ross edged forward, closer to the monitors.

  Nora stepped in front of him and cut him off. “The government is aware of the children’s abilities. They are also aware that we will use whatever weapons at hand against them. Why do you think they haven’t attacked us yet? Surely not because of your piddling little local pretend-militia group.”

  “Nora, your tongue cuts me like a sword to the core.”

  “You will not come back into our—my—life like this.” Anger burned hotter than the shame flaming Nora’s cheeks. She fisted her hands and struggled to slow her ragged breath.

  “Instead of us shutting you down and making you a target,” Yates said, “turn the children over to us.”

  “Never.”

  “Ah, never say never, my Nora Belle. You’ve one hour to consider your options or our sanctions go into place.”

  The monitors blanked to black.

  Tremors shot through her so hard her teeth chattered.

  Hands gripped her upper arms and led her to a rolling chair. “All contact’s been severed,” said Ross. “At least, for now, so he’s not watching.”

  “Spying, you mean.” Nora sat and clenched her hands in her lap.

  After seventeen years, Brockton Yates was back.

  Ross knelt beside the chair. “Nora, please know you’re not alone in this.”

  “I do.” A weak, yet peppery, smile lifted her lips. She nodded, laboring to even out her breathing. She nodded, clung to the remnants of her southern roots, and forced a weak smile. “Thank you.”

  “You knew him from before?” asked Ross.

  “When we were young and foolish.” What a fool she’d been. Set up. Tricked. Used. If only she had known.

  “Delbert might be an option to block them out of our system.”

  “Risky.” Whom to trust? Young, foolish, smitten, desperate for love, she trusted Yates once. “Odds are the tech geek was sent to infiltrate us.”

  “Nora,” his low, calm voice reassured her, “if they can access us remotely, perhaps we could do the same to them?”

  The flesh of her forehead and scalp banded, then went slack as if her brain returned from a mini vacation. She tugged in the flat gasps and lifted the corners of her mouth into a slow, wide smile. “The children.”

  Chapter 22

  Junior and the others waited before computer screens. In side-by-side chairs they faced giant televisions, while Vin
cent sat at the room’s front beneath the screens and faced out.

  Now that he was still, Junior couldn’t keep his eyes open. He gripped the beef jerky the Ross guy handed out extra hard so when he dozed, the chewy snack didn’t topple from his hand. If he sniffed the salty beef before he nodded off, would he dream of a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry shake from the local drive-in restaurant?

  Both thirteen-year-old Abe, in a chair on Junior’s left, and his twin Hannah on the right snoozed as well because their heads drooped and bobbed.

  On the other side of Hannah, Darcy Lynn leaned against her chair arm. She stayed tired a lot since coming back to Briar Patch Mountain, so Junior couldn’t tell if the seven-year-old was sleepy-headed or not well.

  Lots of computer stuff covered long divided tables, while screens fit together along one wall.

  “Junior, you caused a quake in a town from a hilltop.” Even when the Nora lady didn’t scold, her sharp do-it-now voice bullied.

  “Mm hmm.” He nodded. His neck crooked until his chin rested on his chest.

  “Would you be able to...?” Nora’s words blobbed like a cartoon voice and ran together. “Adjust…collar…back. Few minutes.”

  The dream-lull inside Junior’s head chained his eyelids to his cheeks. Sleep was good. If they left him be, he’d sleep for a week or two. Pearl never let him sleep much. Too much work to do. Hard work that kept him tired and hurting.

  “…need to stop them. Can you work your abilities from here?”

  Poked from nodding off by her question, or maybe Hannah punching his arm, Junior managed to pry one eye open. “Huh?”

  “Where the TV place is?” Darcy Lynn pointed at the wall.

  “Can’t you turn the machine off?” Hannah whined. “I can’t think. My thoughts are drowning inside my head. The machine’s so strong and it’s so stuffy in here that Junior’s going to fall out of his chair.”

  “Like anybody’d care.” His own voice sounded miles away. “Just lay me down on the ground and let me rest.”

  “I’ll adjust the EMF dampening device.” Nora glanced from one to the other with a better-than-you lift of her nose.