by Alexa Dare
“Hold on.” Brody jerked alert as if shaken awake. “What did you do to us?”
“We used a similar technique on you and your brother as the others. Since you were older and not in the womb, you did not transform; however, you changed.” The doctor’s closed-lipped smile scared Junior far more than the bald man’s toothy sneer.
“No wonder Brody seemed like one of us.” Abe took off his sunglasses.
“You intend to take over the entire world?” Nora seemed addled, as if a rock had fallen out of nowhere and hit her on top of the head.
“Doesn’t everyone,” the doctor, dressed in blue-jean overalls, said, “who isn’t a sheeplike follower?”
“I’m no sheep.” Junior drew his mouth and cheeks into aching knots. “For all my ten years, I’ve been told what to do and when to do it and how to do it. Ya’ll took us and made us do bad things. You even used a seven-year-old. When do you think enough’s enough?” Instead of surging his anger directly at Nora, the old doctor, and mean bald man, he gritted his molars.
A tremble of a root system, a few yards out, shook trees.
“Junior,” Nora said. “Hold up.”
“I don’t want to or to be bossed around or locked way. Or made to do things to hurt people.” He sent out a shove of power from his feet.
A shift of the patch of forest floor underneath them knocked the Doc fellow and Yates guy off balance. The rise and pitch of the ground shoved a belch of rich black soil upward. Left unguarded, Brody and Cantrell, hands tied behind their backs raced toward the tank-looking ATV.
Yates and Doc fell, while the few bad men that stayed went to their knees and crawled into the woods.
Darcy Lynn gripped the back of Junior’s t-shirt and held on. Her sobs weakened into snuffles.
“I won’t do this anymore.” Junior reached behind and clasped Darcy Lynn’s hand. “For any of you.”
“Us either.” Hannah got her mad face on.
“Me neither.” Darcy Lynn waved the hand not holding on to Junior.
A rush of wind arrowed from the sky to blast Doc and Yates.
“Leave us be. We’ll leave here and nobody gets hurt.” Abe gripped his glasses like he suspected he might have a need to put them on again.
“Nora, shall we depart?” Paper crinkled under Vincent’s grasping fingers. “There is nothing here for us.”
“Don’t say that, son.” For once, Yates didn’t grin. “We’ve just met.”
Surges of energy vibrated in Junior’s feet.
“Dear children,” said the old doctor, “you are smart enough not to realize you are far too valuable for us to allow you to walk away. You have my word. The Mountain Militiamen will take good care of each one of you.”
Junior braced his jaws at the man’s words as anger heated his cheeks and ears.
“Junior, it’s best we show them we mean business.” Hannah screwed up her mouth to one side. As her face tightened, clouds gathered above the tree branches and blocked out the stars.
“Best you let us go.” Junior curled his toes against dewy moss and leaves. From inside him, he reached down, down, down, then up and out.
Down slope, the cabins beneath the trees shook.
Shadows of men ran out of the buildings, holding their arms out for balance and struggling to keep their footing. They darted in all directions like scattering chickens chased by a fox in a coop.
The collar jittered prickles around Junior’s neck. Where pain used to settle in his joints, only power pulsed.
In the front yard of the nearest cabin, the ground cracked open. The gouge in the earth widened and streaked toward the log house. The building split in two, and the middles angled into the crevice. The chimney ripped loose from the roof and fell inward. Loose shingles toppled like playing cards into the breach.
A thrill akin to biting into strawberry-rhubarb pie teased the outer corners of Junior’s mouth.
“Impressive, young man.” The doctor, staggering to his feet, clapped his hands. His applause echoed off the hillside. “I have so many uses for you. For each of you. You are all so very special to me. To all of us.”
“Nora,” Yates, barreling upright, said, “you know we can’t allow any of you to leave.”
“I don’t recall asking your consent.” Nora charged at him.
He pulled out a box-shaped gun. Shiny metal spikes shot from the barrel. In a loud smack, the prongs hit Nora’s shoulder and stuck in. The scientist woman, her mouth gaped open and clawing at the prongs, fell.
Darcy Lynn groaned and hid her face against Junior’s back.
“You’ll all do as you’re told, or you're next.” Yates snarled like a dog guarding a bone.
Glasses tucked in his too-large, army shirt neck, Abe yanked the jolting prongs from Nora’s shoulder and chest. He held the silver probes in his hands. “You need to head back where you came from,” said Abe, his voice growing stronger as if the shock from the wires fed him. When he stood, a strange light flickered in his eyes. With a sneer, he tossed the smoking metal spikes and wires back toward Yates. “We’re leaving now.”
Tree limbs right behind Yates and Doc whooshed into a crackling yellow and orange blaze. Beneath the tank car, the ground rocked and buckled.
Off balance, Junior fell.
Darcy Lynn wrapped her arms around his waist and hung on. “Stop shaking things, Junior.”
“That wasn’t me.” Junior rose into a squat and placed his palms and feet soles solid.
“Natural quake,” Brody yelled. “Something may have broken loose underground.”
Beneath them, the slope bucked and dipped. The force shot at Junior, not to and from him.
“Make it quit.” Darcy Lynn clutched the back of his shirt at the groaning of the earth. She shook him in quick yanks of cloth so hard that the neck seam of his collar ripped.
Spurred on to continue to keep his friend safe, Junior dug his fingers into the soil. He rode the land, latched on to it, with the little girl, holding steadfast, on his back. Where before, he always reached, tugged, and pushed, the energies bulleted straight at him. Instead of pushing back, Junior took. He accepted the energy rocketing from the earth. He threw back his head and yelled a wordless roar as his joints felt as if they pulled apart.
Finally, he didn’t know after how long, he collapsed, and Darcy Lynn scurried off him. Cheek planted against mildewed leaves, Junior let the captured power seep slowly back into the earth.
With a grumbling sigh, the shaking stopped.
“Bravo! I can’t wait to put you to work.” Laughter cackled out of the doctor.
Weakness, with the roots of his teeth and his elbows and knees aching a bit, Junior scrambled into a kneeling position, flexed his toes, and pressed the soles once more to the ground.
All Junior’s doing, the soil beneath the doctor’s feet crumbled. Yates grabbed at the older man. “Doc, watch out.”
The older man sank. He sidestepped in the loose, sinking dirt and flapped his arms to stay upright. Both men slid and stepped in place to find solid ground. Even as Yates hauled Doc downhill, the ground swallowed his feet and legs up to the knees.
With a snarl, Yates took out a pistol.
At the sight, Junior’s belly rolled and he curled his toes deeper against the ground.
With a plunge, Yates pulled free of the ground. He yanked Darcy Lynn from behind Junior. Burly arms wrapped around her, Vincent’s dad lurched backwards.
Darcy Lynn screamed.
As Yates ground the end of the barrel into her temple, her scream cut off.
“Mister, you’re going to make me do bad stuff too.” Junior stood. No more the scared little kid locked in the cellar, a part of him, inside, hardened into granite. “Put her down now, and you walk away.”
“If either you or your friends attempt to hurt me or harm my compound, I’ll blow the brat’s brains out.” Yates held Darcy Lynn to his chest while her dirty tennis shoes swung in wide sways.
“You hurt her, you die.” Fury t
ightened Hannah’s face.
From overhead, a teeth-rattling boom of thunder rolled. The scent of earth and energy-charged air lay so heavy the tang stuffed Junior’s mouth.
“Children,” Nora wobbled to her knees, “we don’t need to force his hand.”
“You’re just like him. Maybe worse, because you pretend to care about us and that you’re on our side.” Hannah’s breaths came in rough pants.
Yates glanced down. Soppy, moldy wetness seeped from the ground. In wide steps, Yates stepped back, slipped.
In a lunge, Nora rammed her shoulder into the big man and ripped Darcy Lynn out of his arms.
In a heap, Yates landed next to the struggling old man.
“Run, Yates.” Nora rejoined the children next to the truck track. “Before you make these precious, innocent children murderers.”
“They’ve no other fate, Nora.” Yates staggered and pulled Doc to his feet. “You’re prolonging the inevitable. They are the weapons they were bred to be.”
A boulder weighted Junior’s chest.
For a soon-to-be dead man, Yates spoke the truth.
“You win this one, Nora.” Yates grimaced as if he bit into a rotten tomato. “Just remember, this was a skirmish, not the war. They’ll be in my custody sooner or later.”
“This is who you both are?” Vincent blinked slow and heavy as if his eyelids were sandbags.
“We’re not so evil, Vince. Just human. You don’t have to go back to living locked away. You can be who and what you are.” Yates scooped his hand to get his son to come ahead. “You go with me, and you live the life you were meant for.”
“Vincent, he’s a lot like my Aunt Pearl.” A low-grade ache settled in Junior’s joints, like the hurt he suffered before the new, powerful collars Brody made. “Folks thought she was as sweet as fried, sugared yellow squash, but instead she was slimy okra. You’re older than me. Can’t you see it in his eyes?”
Vincent looked at Junior with eyes a lot like Yates’s gaze.
“I’ve heard second and third hand, Vinny, about your talent,” Yates said. “I’d like to hear it from you.”
Vincent grunted and sneered. “I draw pictures.”
“And people die,” said Junior.
Hannah tugged Darcy Lynn away from Nora.
“Yates, he’s mine.” Nora stepped forward. “I’ve done my best to raise him even when the project interfered. Leave him be.”
“He’s my son too, and he deserves to live his life.”
“A better life? With you?” Nora snorted. “You were cruel enough to allow Doc to experiment on a woman you claimed to love and your own unborn child. You helped do this to him; therefore, you don’t deserve to know him.”
Yates supported the doctor, who, though off-balance and addled, darted his eyes from one to the another of the group.
“Draw a picture of him, Vincent.” Yates half-waved in Junior’s direction. “He’s just a bratty little kid. He damaged my compound, and you can make him pay.”
“You want your son to hurt me?” Legs planted solid, Junior drew more earth force in through his feet. “You’re worse than Aunt Pearl ever dared to be.”
“No need, Yates, Father, or whatever you choose for me to call you. I’ll go with you.”
“You will not, Vincent.” Nora body-blocked the teenager.
“I’m sixteen, old enough to decide on my own.”
“Vincent, don’t do this.” Nora held out her hand.
“Watch out,” Darcy Lynn squealed. “Mustn’t touch.”
Nora drew back. “Vincent, please don’t go. We can start fresh. We’ll make a new life. With the new collars, you can gain control of your ability. We’ll have a home. Imagine all of us together, as a family.”
A family.
If only...
Instead of listening to her, Vincent ran off into the trees.
“No,” Nora yelled. “Vincent.”
Brody’s brother bolted after Vincent until the forest hid them both.
“No, Cantrell…” Brody dropped to his knees. Beside him, Junior slumped to the ground. All the energy and strength he’d reserved seeped out of him and drained away. Yet, the ground shook and sifted dirt and cedar nettle billows in dusty puffs.
The others turned to him.
“Not me this time either,” he yelled over the bucking rumble.
Didn’t they realize that the earth had turned into an angry giant awakened from a long nap?
Chapter 28
A gust hit the group, slamming Brody and the rest against the jazzy military all-terrain. “Umph.” Brody slid down the massive track of the camo-painted metal and dropped to one knee. Darcy Lynn lay beside him, and he captured her hands. Even though her fingers didn’t move, he held on tight.
Yet, the building, stinging breezes rushed to a howl.
Bits of decaying leaves and moldy soil stuffed Brody’s nose and battered the exposed teeth of his grimace. A hairy fear tang coated his tongue and stuck like gritty paste to his tonsils. As debris blasted, he huddled to face the vehicle and sheltered Darcy Lynn with his body.
“The wind won’t play.” The seven-year-old sobbed. She yanked free and pulled at the silver EMF balancing collar around her neck. “Why can’t I play?”
Overhead tree branches popped and cracked.
Limbs crashed.
“Get inside the all-terrain,” Nora yelled. Head down and arm shielding her eyes, she shoved through the driving windstorm. “I must find Vincent.”
“You’re leaving us?” Brody, his voice pitching high, asked.
Rain sleeted, with thumbnail-sized hail spurting from the sky as if shot from a gun barrel. Sharp pings banged the hull of the vehicle.
Beneath the curve of her shielding hands, Nora’s sad eyes and her forlorn expression held her goodbye. Over the roar of the storm, she yelled, “I am sorry for the harm I caused. Get away, while you still can.”
“Nora, wait. Maybe we can—” The lady scientist fled toward the militiamen compound before Brody could finish his sentence. Ice pellets tell from the clouds in thumping, stinging hits. Brody ducked his head “Hannah, stop.”
“I’m not calling up the storm on purpose.” Hannah darted for the ATV’s door.
“Get in, Ice Princess.” Abe dove into the ATV.
“Get a move on, Burn Boy,” said Hannah as she rushed in behind her brother.
Fire erupted in the surrounding treetops.
“Abe!” Brody ducked.
Abe shot a look over his shoulders, and his wild gaze lasered on Brody. “Not me.”
“We have to stop this,” Brody shouted over the pounding of hail as he carried Darcy Lynn into the metal hull. Might their use of their powers have tipped the balance of nature. If energy surges changed the normal flow and flux of the weather…
Blue eyes wide, she said, her voice kicking up a notch, “The. Wind. Won’t. Play.”
“Nature has a mind of its own. The EMFs in the area have shot out of control” Brody placed Darcy Lynn upright inside the vehicle entrance.
“We did this?” Standing in the shadowed aisle, under-eye shadows smeared like bruises on Hannah’s pale face.
“You started it, but now there’s an imbalance. Somehow, something’s gone wrong. Big time.” Brody, even with his enhanced brain, couldn’t quite fathom the magnitude of what was happening. Maybe he didn’t want to grasp the level of trouble they were in, of the degree of chaos they just caused.
“Whoa!” Junior pointed out a side window.
Only a few yards away, a mini tornado whirled and barreled down the slope toward the compound. Before the rush of harsh wind, trees snapped like toothpicks. In an instant, in wrenching groans and cracking, trunks sheared off and treetops sucked into the funnel.
“But, but, but.” Darcy Lynn shoved her clasped trembling hands into Brody’s grasp. “I’m not playing now.”
Brody squinted and peered through the smoke of burning green treetops along the driver’s side. The ground jarred the
all-terrain in foot high, right-to-left whips on the rocky slope.
“Try. Get these out-of-control elements back in line. Come on. You can do this.”
Their too-wide glances and shocked faces turned to him.
Another, then a third tornado, farther out past the flattened trees, whipped into existence.
One of the brave Children of the Elements, Darcy Lynn teetered down the stairs to the bottom step of the vehicle, and Brody went to huddle on his knees beside her. Opening her arms, she brought her palms close together. The destruction of the trees slowed for a moment, but then all three tornadoes descended toward the militia camp like runaway locomotives.
The little girl shook her head. Disbelief and shock marred the innocence of her young face. Once again, she cupped her hands.
The ripping-and-roaring twisters stuttered. Like spinning tops, the second and rearmost twister came together. The two merged to form a broad funnel approximately several barns wide.
“I can’t.” A short bark of a cough erupted from her throat, and her hands dropped to her sides.
“Darcy Lynn, please.” Brody grabbed her upper arms. “Cantrell’s somewhere down there.”
Coughing stole Darcy Lynn’s breath until she collapsed to her knees.
“It’s okay. You did your best.” He patted her shoulder and dragged her up the steps. “It’s bad out there. We need to get as far away as possible.”
The gigantic cyclone sped down the treed obstacle-course slope like a racing cannonball.
Abe blinked as if he were waking from a dream.
An out-of-control inferno raged through the compound. All the buildings within his view burned.
Sweat popped out along the boy’s brow and upper lip. “I can’t control the fire. Won’t. Snuff. Out.”
The branches of nearby trees blazed. Flames jumped from tree to tree.
Shivers shook Hannah and her lips quivered around the chatter of her teeth. “I can’t bring the rain.”
“Abe, can you or Hannah drive this all-terrain thing?”
“We’re thirteen-year-olds.” Hannah propped hands on her hips and moved farther into the interior. “Kids don’t drive.”
“Maybe.” Abe studied the steering wheel, buttons, and shift-levers.