by Alexa Dare
“You got a few more minutes.” Roderick’s steps padded back across the porch planks and tromped down the steps where he no doubt waited.
“Okay, I thought about a bug sweeper, but I decided a signal blocker would be best. All cameras are down and audio’s out. We have five, maybe ten minutes tops before they show up to figure out why they’re getting snow and white noise. I didn’t get a chance to look at your footage on the watch yet.”
“Check out the video later.” Cantrell sighed. “I did what I did for the cause. I believed in Yates and the others, like I wanted you to believe in me. I messed up. Looking back and forward, some things don’t add up.”
“If we go through with this, I’ll be crossing the line, because the gear inside the other walkie will take down anything electronic.”
“What line do you think you’ll cross, Bro?”
“You need to make certain that getting out of here is what you want to do, because once we activate the EMF blaster everything goes. Most of the equipment will fry, for good.”
“But I don’t get—”
“Look, there are too many older dudes running around this place for some of them not to have pacemakers. We turn this on, and anyone with an implanted heart device, like a pacemaker, drops in his tracks.”
“You don’t suppose old Doc has one in his chest, do you?” Cantrell bolted to his feet, charged into the bedroom, and came out with his hiking boots and two jackets. “You’re a good man, Bro. Take the hoody. You actually don’t think they’re going to let us leave free and clear?”
“The cabin’s on the edge of the compound. In the, uh, aftermath, we can sneak away. We have to do this. I can’t let them keep using you.”
“Why would they use me?” Cantrell studied the second walkie on the floor near Brody’s outer hip. “To turn it on, you push the Talk button on the second one too?”
“Yes. The blaster’s set up is in Delbert’s cabin. I tapped into the cables and used the giant satellite dish on top of the roof for a boost.”
Cantrell scrubbed his chin. “Uncle Merv’s missing and Yates is out of hand.”
“Good to have you back.” Brody grinned and scooped up the second radio. In a grab of Cantrell’s outstretched other hand, he allowed his older brother to haul him to his feet. You play lost-your-marbles really well.”
“Been doing it for years.” Cantrell toe-heel stalked toward the cabin’s front door. “This go-around, the time for planning’s long gone. Let’s go.”
“Roderick’s out there.” Hurt spread under Brody’s ribs.
“Back door’s boarded and the windows nailed shut, so it’s the front exit or nothing.” He shoved the hoody jacket at Brody’s chest and tipped back to scoop up the paper towel-wrapped flatbread. “Reckon Roderick might want a snack?”
Hustling Brody to one side of the doorframe, Cantrell crammed the bread into his hand. Against the other side of the door, Cantrell flattened his back to the wall. His lifted his finger to his lips and prompted Brody with his sly gaze.
Nearly quaking in his boots, Brody turned the knob and pulled.
“Ready to go?” Roderick bounded up the steps.
“He, uh, he wasn’t hungry. You want some flatbread?” Brody held out the crunchy offering.
Off guard, Roderick looked down.
Cantrell lunged past Brody, threw a punch, and blasted the tall man in the jaw.
At the punch, Roderick went limp. His body folded, and he dropped like a marionette puppet with broken strings.
Cantrell dragged the man’s body inside.
“Let’s go.” Cat-like, Cantrell slinked out in front of Brody. Sheltered from the moonlight under the porch roof, he held out his hand.
Doubt tensed Brody’s grip on the second walkie-talkie. “My device.” Regret rasped the hush of his voice. “My burden to carry.”
“Burdens, oh, so, weary.” Cantrell grabbed for the black box.
Instead of handing it over, with a squeeze. Brody pushed the button on the side and tossed the now useless device onto the porch floor planks. “Brace yourself.”
A dizzy wave knocked Brody back. He grasped the porch post, lost his grip, and then tumbled over the railing. Once flat on his back on the ground, he gulped air and lemony spit. “Man down.”
Cantrell crawled down the steps. “You weren’t kidding.”
“How long since the blast?”
“Don’t know. Knocked us both flat on our butts.”
Together, propped on each other, they staggered upright in the smoke-filled night breeze.
“About what you said. You were right, Brody. It’s up to a brother to do right by his own.” Cantrell hauled him by the belt.
Brody flapped his arms to catch the upper part of his body up with the rest of him. When Cantrell skidded to a stop, Brody rammed hard into his brother’s back.
A single person’s applause joined scattered yells in the background. Back toward the camp, a man roared in an agonized howl.
Several yards out, a woman screamed, “No. No. No.”
No longer the same, leaving childhood behind with the press of a button, Brody peered over Cantrell’s shoulder and squinted through the dimness, the stood on the toes of his uninjured foot to peer over Cantrell’s shoulder.
Shrouded in shadows and wrapped in moonlight and the cloying fragrance of honeysuckle, Yates clapped as if praising their escape attempt.
The piece of flatbread Brody didn’t realize he still clutched crunched in his hand.
“I should have never gone along with the idea to enhance you boys,” Doc Halverson, standing like a second shadow next to Yates, said. “After all these years, you two boys are way more trouble than you are worth.”
Chapter 25
One of the few times he was thankful for the stupid, plastic rain suit, Junior ducked his head. Rivulets of water ran down the bridge of his nose and along his cheekbones so that even batting his lids fast didn’t keep the water from flooding his eyeballs.
Water streamed down the walls of the underground metal room to pool on the floor. Tape slipped and drawings slid down the polished metal, sounding too much like snakes slithering through dried leaves.
In the faint single bulb glow on soppy drawings giving off a wet paper and soggy lead pencil stink, he ignored Hannah until silence bore down like a sledgehammer.
“Nora’s son’s not going to like what you’re doing to his pictures.” With a sigh, he asked, “How do you make it rain when you want to?”
“Most times, I think of something sad.” Hannah pushed aside the soppy bedcovers and sat on the edge of the cot mattress. “Or stuff that makes me mad, like Abe sneaking the last brownie or slice of pecan pie overnight.”
“Since that’s just about everything, it’s a wonder it doesn’t storm all the time.” Junior crossed his arms. “Stop being so upset and moody. Keep on, and you’ll drown us both.”
“What? You want me to think happy thoughts when I’m stuck here? With you?”
More papers glided to pile in wet curls around the edges of the floor.
“They looked like drawings of cartoons and such before they got all smeared and ruined.”
“Not cartoons, silly. Mummies, vampires, monsters, and zombies.” Hannah nudged a pile of soaked papers with her over-large boot toe so that the pages floated on a thin film of water. “Horror brought to life on the page.”
“Um, what are vampires and zombies and the rest?” Keep her talking and the rain might stop. Junior lifted and dropped a shoulder.
“You’ve never read the book Dracula? How about Frankenstein?” Hannah groaned. “Wait, I forgot, you can’t read. Well, at least you’ve seen the movies, right?”
“Are movies like cartoons?”
“You weren’t allowed to watch television, except for cartoons?”
“Work came first. Always” Junior shrugged. The thirteen-year-old wasn’t teasing him, was she? “You mean there’s more on TV than cartoons?”
“You can’t be th
at backwards.”
“My aunt must not have told me the straight of watching television. Anyways, you ruined the drawings with your rainfall.” Junior shook his head to flick water from his face.
“Not my fault.” Hannah gripped her forehead. “Besides, this room makes me feel not myself.”
“I wish,” he muttered. Within minutes, water a half-inch deep rose around his booted feet, and he moved to the wobbly seat of the desk chair.
“It’s stuffy in here,” she whined. “Did they turn off the fans?” Hannah sighed long and loud. “If this keeps on, we may not be able to breathe in here.”
Overhead, the single light made a zapping noise, dimmed, and flickered off.
“Junior, we need out.”
The bulb squeezed out a glow, then dimmed like a flashlight with run-down batteries. Only a tiny circle of light shone in a direct circle near the bulb. Blackness blanketed the rest of the metal room.
No air. Closed in.
Junior shut his eyes. Heaviness filled his sodden breaths. Had to get out. Normally, the earth’s power hummed, pulling at him to break his way free. Mustn’t hurt the house where he lived or his aunt.
He muttered, “I’ll be good.”
“What?” asked snooty know-it-all Hannah. She sucked in a loud wheeze. “Wait. Metal comes from below ground. Could you…?”
“Hannah, you’re smarter than you look.” Junior, grinning, smacked the palms of his gloves together in a sharp popping slap.
“That is so not nice.” Hannah sloshed in inch-deep water.
“Help me out of this suit. We gotta do something. If the air doesn’t run out first, you’ll drown us. One way or the other, we’re done for.”
Tape peeled free from his right wrist, and Hannah removed the glove. Junior shoved the left hand at her, while he worked the tape around his boots with his free hand.
“Be still. The sticky hangs on even when wet.” She yanked his arm. The more Hannah fought to free him—maybe because she got all worked up and huffier—the greater the shower poured into a deluge. “We have to get away. From all of them. The four of us, and maybe even the weirdo Vincent, if he wants to tag along.” Hannah’s voice held a hint of happiness within the gloom.
Junior blew at the trail of water flattening the sprouts of his hair and running around his ears. “Then we’ll break out and find Darcy Lynn. I can’t leave her behind.”
Even though his hands slipped, he peeled off the plastic pants. Feeling more like himself than he had in days, even when inside the metal room and with the collar, he splashed toward the door. “She’s just a scared little girl.”
“With power over the wind.”
“She’s not the same, because she was made to do bad things to other folks.”
“Like they’re going to make us,” Hannah said.
Hurting people… A lot different from working the garden.
“It stinks like wet dirty socks and soggy newspaper in here.” Hannah blew out a breath that sprayed the downfall outward from her face. “You really can’t read.”
His cheeks heated. “Aunt Pearl didn’t take the time to show me.”
“When we get out of here, I’ll teach you.”
“That would be mighty fine later, but for now, if you turned off the water works…”
“Sorry.” Hannah backed away. “My nerves are on edge.”
“Every reason they would be. Do you suppose we can scrounge some food when we get out? Maybe some ham, but not on those hard-as-a-rock biscuits.” Palms against the door’s metal surface, he reached out with his mind. “Whatever this metal is, I’ve known it before in little bits within stone. Don’t know what it’s called though.”
“We’ll figure that out later too. You’ll learn what plants and stones are called and will be a regular walking encyclopedia.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s iron or lead. But since you’re good at what you do, it doesn’t matter what it’s called.”
Rising water reached over his bare toes to slosh over his feet. “Stay put. Maybe move back to the bed. The door might fall in, instead of outwards.”
“I’ll try to stop the drizzle.” Chatters shook her chin. “I get cold when I become.”
“Become?”
“You connect to the earth, right?”
“If you say that I’m as good as dirt, me and you are going to have it out.”
A slap sounded as if Hannah clamped her hand over her mouth. Her muffled giggles bolstered more than a little hope in Junior’s chest. If she were happy, maybe the downpour would end.
When he pressed his soles to the floor and his hands to the wall near the door’s edge, he drank in power like a thirsty man after a month-long drought.
“Ha! No more rain because I’m no longer so sad. Thank you for that.”
“You were more mad than sad.” More than just a soaked tunnel rat, Junior let the belowground power fill him up like the sand of an hourglass.
“Good luck, Junior,” Hannah said, instead of huffing and puffing like he expected.
“Luck’s something you make.”
“One of your aunt’s sayings?”
“She was mean, but most times she knew what she was talking about.” Hands on the panel, he reached out—with his mind, with his senses, with himself—and gauged the thickness of the slab. “There’s a rubbery seal around the edges, so maybe I can keep to the door part instead of taking out most of the wall.”
“I’m getting sleepy, Junior. On top of the wet and cold, the stuffiness smothers me.” Hannah yawned. “You’ll get us out. I know you can.” The cot squeaked as if she lay down. “Even if you are a dweeb.”
Buoyed by her trust, he took in and let go of the door’s natural energy in quick surges. Under his palms, the metal vibrated and hummed.
The sliding slab jiggled against the seal and rattled. Behind him, Hannah gasped. With the frame weakened, he shoved outward. The rim holding the door ripped with a screech.
In a moment, Hannah’s shoulder brushed his. She stood next to him and joined him in pushing.
He grunted. “If it comes back the wrong way…”
“Then we push harder.”
Finally, the outer rim of the doorway gave way, and the panel pulled halfway loose until the door wobbled.
“Get back.” Junior shook off his fear.
In quick splashes, Hannah edged back toward the cot.
Determined, he backpedaled, then ran toward the doorway, gripped the top of the frame and kicked. He sent every bit of stored energy blasting through the soles of his feet until they smacked metal.
In a rush of air, the door fell. The slab crashed into the tunnel passage. As the metal rang on the concrete, the dimness of at least a little light from the tunnel beamed into the room.
“You did it!”
He landed solidly on his feet. Warmth coated his insides, and he scuffed his bare toes in an aw-shucks chuff of his foot.
“There’s a little light in the hallway.” She slipped out but poked her head back inside. “Junior?”
“Huh?”
“Did you actually make the spinach grow?”
“Nope.” A shudder trembled within his neck. “Told you I hated it.”
Hannah’s giggle urged him out into the tunnel, but her laugh cut off. “Abe, you came for us.”
Running footsteps echoed. “We were on our way to get you out,” her brother, from near the doorway, said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”
“Junior took out the door.”
When Junior stepped out into the passage, Abe patted Junior’s back.
He stood proud and pushed out his chest. “The electric sliding doors aren’t working.” Junior aimed the tilt of his forehead at the door slab.
“Neither is the air system,” said Abe. “Nothing coming in, but the exhaust is going out.”
“Let’s go. Hurry.” Hannah gasped and back stepped. “What are you doing here?”
“You can visit in the all-terrain,” the Ross guy said and, holdin
g one of the collar control boxes, joined Abe. “We’re getting out of here together.”
“What’s an all-in-the-rain?” Darcy Lynn tottered her heels up and down like she felt better. “What did Hannah do?”
“An all-terrain is a truck that can go anywhere,” Ross said. “Come on, troops. Let’s move out.”
The little girl slipped her hand into Hannah’s grip, making Junior reflexively close his hands. The seven-year-old grinned wide. “It will drive even in the fishing lake?”
“Even.” Ross smiled like he was their best friend. He took in Hannah’s drowned-rat hair and his mouth drew out even wider. “We need to clear out. Because of the outsiders, the facility here is no longer safe.”
Nora ran down the length of the tunnel. “We finally pried open the doors leading to the outside.” She skidded to a halt. “We came close to needing Junior’s help.”
Darcy Lynn, smile unsure, held out her other hand to Junior.
Breath caught, he cupped her small, warm fingers.
“Come on.” Her small fingers circled his in a strong grip. The curl of her tug around his hand spread warmth in his chest as they zigged and zagged within tunnels under the mountain.
They entered the giant area where they once hung Junior over a dump truck and made him use his power to grow the watermelons and to quake the dirt in the truck bed. In a big cave with other trucks and jeeps, on his way up the steps into the fancy squared off truck that looked like a big toy tank without the gun on top, Junior glanced over his shoulder into the grayness of the cavern.
With barely a twinge in his knees and elbows from using his power, he felt like a strong man beneath the collar. Yet… Shouldn’t he feel good about leaving behind the bad stuff that went on in this place? Instead, dread, like a pile of rocks, weighed heavy in his belly.
The unknown, outside these walls, loomed like an avalanche of boulders.
Chapter 26
Within the area outside the vehicle, low clouds clung to shadowed treetops so that ghostly wisps reached through swaying branches. As dusk fell, the tension within the all-terrain vehicle keyed Nora’s nerves as taut as one of the children’s out-of-sync field tests.