by Alexa Dare
Door closed once again, the vehicle drove away to zig and zag around cracks.
Wordless, he waved, then swiped smoky tears from his stinging eyes. He gulped a hint of what tasted like burnt marshmallow grime stuck to his teeth. Slipping on one sock, like a crane bird, he hopped. Shoving his sock-covered foot into a shoe, he put on the other sock and shoe. Right away, the inch-thick rubber soles heated and sort of stuck as if gluey. Beneath the soles, charred ground crunched and steamed.
Junior stooped and placed his fingers upon the crust. Heat singed his fingertips, and pain shot up his hands. “Ouch.” Shaking his wrists, he blew on his burning, throbbing finger pads. Only three-sidestep strides to the right, and he found moss-covered regular ground.
Hands pressed to earth, Junior reached. Far below the surface, farther than he’d ever gone before. With his mind, with himself…
Something below was off kilter. Broken. Like a festering sore beneath skin, rips, tears, and bulges hid underground.
Wind flip-flopped between blowing hard in heavy gusts to no stir at all. A roaring in the distance warned him of the twisters that veered across the ridge-line for now. Rain drenched him, and cold steamed his breath. The next minute, the woods heated to smoking and broke him out in a sweat that steamed on his skin.
Was there any way to fix what he and the other children had broken?
Junior pushed. Below the surface, the earth and rocks shifted. Molars pressed, he leveled the largest bulge. Then another. The earth fought back, quaked harder. More fissures cracked the outer layer. Another bulge formed as rocks pressed together and fought to fill the same space.
Knocked off his feet, Junior banged his shoulder. Scrapes stung the pads of his palms and burned his elbows.
A couple of yards away, the earth split like one of Vincent’s torn sheets of paper. The rip ran toward the buildings and tents in the camp. The quaking ground below-the-surface rocked together in wrenching groans. The crack stretched broad. Smaller sidelong splits broke out in all directions.
The bigger middle gouge spread wider. The side of the crevice nearest Junior dipped, while the other side rippled and rose. The slant of the slope steepened and tipped.
Off-balance, Junior toppled on to his side. With a grunt, he rolled. Dust filled his nose and smeared bitter grit over his tongue.
The widening crevice gaped open like a jagged mouth, but Junior dug in his heels and knees. The crusted edges of the ground scrubbed his bare arms. Even clawing, he couldn’t stop his slide. Heated gravel scraped and burned his bare arms. Stomping in sidelong crawls, he clutched but found no grip. Tossed about, he tumbled to his back and slipped toward newly formed the gorge.
One of Hannah’s untied boots ripped from his foot. The hard crust, through the white sock, scuffed his heel and foot bottom. Clawing hard crust, then nothing but empty space, he fell. The earth gulped him down whole. The roaring rumble ate his screams.
After a lengthy fall, he landed on a pile of dirt. The hit robbed his lungs of air. He writhed until the clench under his ribs eased and then let a thin breath sip into his lungs. Inside the earth, Junior curled into a ball of pain. Dirt clogged his nose and mouth.
Above, the opening began to shut. Loose silt and pebbles dropped on him.
Coughing and sneezing, Junior covered his head. Locked away. Again. The damp earthy smell, like in his Aunt Pearl’s cellar, stifled him. He wobbled to his hands and knees. Bumping into a wall, he hand-walked to bring his lower body upright.
Though blinded by the shadows, he sensed he was in a dugout of a tunnel. No wonder the top of the ground split so easily with passages so close to the surface.
All around him, the earth tilted and rippled.
Tugging off the remaining shoe and both socks, with all he had, Junior took in, then soothed and calmed the energy, and let it flow out of him.
Finally, the walls of the old mine tunnels steadied until only a tiny tremble shook the ground. The earth shared its knowledge , and Junior judged the route to go after Vincent to stop him from using his power.
Just as he scoped out where planted seeds lay buried, he connected and let the earth’s energy home in on where Vincent might be. He’d show Abe, Hannah, Darcy Lynn, and even Vincent what a tunnel-rat boy could do.
Chapter 30
Body dangling within a three-story-deep crevice, Nora scrabbled to hold on to the edge of the rip in the earth. Her fingers slipped, and she clawed the ground to hang on. Sharp and burning, the pressure of soil wedged under her fingernails pried at her nails and threatened to pull them from their beds. Grunts escaping from between clenched teeth, she tugged in the earthy rain-soaked scent of the storm.
Clinging to her legs, Vincent slipped downward and his weight dragged at her.
“Hold on.” Her desperate grasp scraped and slid, losing the battle to hold the bulk of their combined weight. Her pant legs pulled, and her socks tugged downward. If her bare ankle was exposed and he touched her flesh, her son’s heart would stop or burst before he ever hit bottom.
His pinching hold slipped until he clung just above her boot tops.
Rain and slivers of ice pelted her and slickened the rim to slimy mud. No way could her son continue to maintain a grip on the wet slippery leather of her boots.
Murky water poured over the rim into her face. She blew the muddied stream from her lips and shook her head to fling the stinging wetness from her eyes, nose, and mouth. “Yates. Fine. You win. Please, just help our son.”
“Nora, you must not.” Vincent’s grip shook from the stress of his weight. “What he intends…”
“I won’t allow you to die.” A jagged sob caught in her throat.
“Then you trade your life for mine,” Vincent said.
“Hang on.” Brody Thackett peered down from above.
“It’s not like we have a choice.” Nora wanted to laugh, to hug someone without causing their death. Warmth spread through her torso, and a tight smile tugged the outer corners of her mouth.
When Brody dropped a splintered plank along the rim’s side, blobs of mud splattered Nora’s cheek. Nora squinted through the rainfall. “The children are no longer in control of the elements.”
“Their powers set this in motion, but it looks like nature has plans of her own.” Brody put out more boards, and then lay atop them. In a lunge, he grabbed her sleeve-encased arms near the elbows.
“If I slip,” Nora said, “even a brush of my hand might kill you.”
“If I leave you then I’m no better than those whackos my brother chooses to support.” Brody pulled, and the strain on her hands eased. “Vincent, do you think you can climb along your mother’s back without touching her skin-to-skin?”
“I cannot.” The shudders in Vincent’s arms rocked through them all. “I am too heavy, and I fear my efforts shall end us both.”
“Vincent—” Nora drew in air to berate him for putting himself down.
Brody met Nora’s gaze head-on and shook his head.
Nora, instead of verbally attacking both teens, pressed her lips tight. From the pelting rain, colder-than-cold water streamed between the folds of her upper and lower lip and sluiced over her chin and off her jawline.
“I’ve got your mom. Swing your feet from side to side, just a few inches out, and sort of climb up. Once you get momentum going, you can perform the handy-dandy, human-ladder circus gymnastic feat.”
Speaking directly to Nora, he lowered his voice. “The entire camp’s pure chaos. Groundwater’s rising in gushes. Tornadoes are spawning more twisters. The few remaining cabins are smoking like they’re getting ready to spontaneously combust.”
“And the ground’s breaking apart.” Nora’s aching elbows quivered. “What more could a girl ask for?”
Not the most agile of sixteen-year-olds, Vincent swung until he adjusted his grip so that he wrapped his arms around both of Nora’s calves.
“Hurry, Vincent, climb up.” Her fingers slipped.
Muscles visibly corded in Br
ody’s neck as he tightened his hold.
“Perhaps it is best that I do not.” Vincent’s arms clung around her knees. “You and the entire world shall be better off without me.”
“Don’t.” A mud-tainted half sob ripped from Nora’s throat. “Please, don’t do this to me. Haven’t we already been through enough? I want you to live. Can’t you at least consider, for once in the horrid life forced upon you, that you might choose to be happy?”
“Come on, dude,” Brody yelled. “Show both Nora and Yates what you’re made of.”
Vincent stopped swaying and his grip eased on Nora’s legs. “I cannot.”
A tight band crimped Nora’s brow. But, for the moment, she met Brody’s condemning gaze and remained silent.
“You can, Vincent,” Brody said. “It’s way past time you stood up on your hind legs and acted like a man not a spoiled little shit who uses his power as an excuse to hide inside a metal room. One from which, at any time you could have escaped by drawing one of your deader-than-dead pictures of some of the staff.”
“My mother was my warden. Were I able—”
At the shake of Brody’s head, Nora clamped her lips on her rising protest.
“You were all along. You had to have, at least deep down, known that, dude.”
With renewed effort, her son climbed as overhead, charcoal gray clouds gathered and rolled. Lightning arrowed across the grayness, and Vincent inched in bruising grabs about her waist and climbed along her back. His upward journey jabbed, pinched. After a few moments, his fear-soured breath fanned her neck.
“Careful. Don’t touch my skin directly.” Nora dug into the sloppy mud and sank her fingers in deep. “Brody, please help him.”
“If I release my hold on you...”
A burly arm appeared, grabbed Vincent by the front of his shirt, and hauled him up and over Nora.
With a yelp, Brody scooted out of view.
Nora clawed mud and dug in the toes of her boots. Suspended and on his way out of the crevice, Vincent kicked. His foot slammed into Nora’s cheek. Pain blasted through her face, and star-like blips flashed in her vision.
Not by accident, her son stomped her hands. “It is your loss the world craves.” His grimace of hate cut like a garish mask into her memory. “All would be well if you were no more.”
“Get hold of yourself. Your side effects…” The need to kill heated in her hands. She plunged her aching fingers farther into the soggy mud as if to tamp out the urge.
Even as the unknown person lifted her flailing son away, Nora’s grip slid, and she grabbed for the plank that had supported Brody as he tried to rescue her. Splinters jabbed beneath her nails.
“Cantrell came back.” Brody’s head and shoulders scooted back into view. The teen reached again for Nora’s arms.
“Unfinished business,” said the older brother from out of Nora’s field of vision.
“Ouch. Stop kicking.” Brody rolled to the side. “Hold him.”
“Uhn,” Cantrell grunted.
Pain blasting her face from stings of hard rain and pelts of ice, Nora yelled, “Please don’t hurt him.”
Brody flopped again onto his belly. He reached for her elbow. His upper hand dragged up her arm toward her wrist. He grabbed again, his palms smacking against the wet canvas of her shirt. His prying grip slid closer to her gloveless hand.
Eyes wide and pleading, he said. “Promise me you’ll bring me back.”
An out-of-it numbness buzzed around Nora’s ears. “Brody, no.”
“Your glove’ll be too slick.” He let go of her arm and grasped her bare hand. A shocked, pained mask contorted his face. With a roaring groan, he pulled her upward.
Nora dug in her boot toes and walked her way up the slippery, crumbling soil. The edges of the rupture slumped and fell. Silt and lumps of mud pelted her.
Brody, though she no doubt killed him in the process, pulled. The strength of his grip faded, but Nora grabbed the plank and hefted toward the surface. She slipped, rammed her boot into the crevice wall and hurled her upper body over the edge.
On the edge of the pit on a plank and in the mud, Brody collapsed.
Using the warped board, she pulled herself out. All around, through the smoky, windy terrain, pieces of wood and ashes and glass slashed. The wind whipped away the rain as if it never showered at all.
Belly flopped in the mud, Nora got to her knees, turned Brody over, and shielded him with her body to probe the chill of his neck.
No pulse.
“No. No. No.” She hovered over him. Something slammed her in the side, knocking her away. Twisting Vincent’s booted leg away from her, she scrambled back to Brody and ripped open his shirt. She slapped both her hands against his upper left chest.
“Beat,” she willed his heart. A flutter, barely but there, of heart muscles. She yanked off her remaining glove and palms to his chest beneath his shirt, willed the boy to life. “Fight your way back. Your brother needs you.”
Across the gaping, extending fissures, a massive tornado bore down. The funnel, wider than the compound, promised death and ruin in its wake.
“Cantrell, get Vincent some place safe.” A quick sidelong glance told Nora she and the fallen seventeen-year-old were alone.
Neither Cantrell or Vincent remained in sight.
“I’ll bring you back.” The wind stung her eyes. “What would your brother do without you? Those kids need a man like you to set an example.”
His flesh grew lax and chilled.
“I won’t let you go. You saved me and my son.” Nora pictured Brody's heart, already mildly damaged, stuttering to life, his life’s blood following through the pumping muscles. Never had she reversed the effects of her touch. Yet, beneath her fingers, she felt a mild tremor.
For the young man who saved her, Nora gave, instead of taking. Below her fingertips, a flutter wakened deep inside Brody’s chest. His eyelids flew open. His mouth yawned wide, and he sucked in a lungful of rushing air.
Nora, even before he let out his first exhale, anchored her arm beneath his and dragged him along. Wind lashed, sucked, punished as the tornado bore down on them. Holding tight to the seventeen-year-old, Nora stepped off the ledge.
Like stones, the two of them dropped. Wind, steeped with cedar, pine, blood, and rawness, sucked at them. Logs and pieces of tin rushed by overhead. How deep? The mother to this stranger that she never was to her son, Nora sheltered Brody’s head against her chest.
How many broken bones? She braced physically for the landing, and emotionally for the fact that they might not survive the fall.
The suction of wind from above increased, then a strong breeze rushed from below to lift them. Grains of soil and stones lofted around them. Their downward racing plunge halted. After a brief hover, they floated upward.
“Cantrell was right about her being able to harness the wind,” Brody muttered. “Darcy Lynn’s one special little girl.
As they rose, Nora peered out of the rift.
Blood dripping from her nose and ears, Darcy Lynn stood in front of the all-terrain vehicle a few yards out. The tiny child, for now, held the tornado at bay and controlled the wind to lift Nora and Brody from the abyss.
A pinch tightened in Nora’s temples, threatening a headache despite the ramp of power provided by the metal collar about her neck. “Her oxygen levels.”
“Hurry.” Hannah stood in the doorway of the all-terrain.
“Where’s Cantrell?” Brody wobbled on his feet as Nora landed in a slow glide beside him.
“He and Vincent went into the woods.” Hannah reached out.
“I can’t leave him.” Brody’s knees buckled.
Sulfur vapors, like rotten egg reek, rose from the crevice.
Lifted by the wind, Brody stepped onto solid ground. But a grab tugged her ankle and pulled her downward. Not enough breath for a scream, she dropped into the pit. Earthen walls closed in around her, choking, smothering. After a long drop, she landed on a bed of mounded soft so
il.
“Welcome to below.” Junior’s voice reached Nora through the earthy darkness. “If we dig in, we can wait out the storm. I can keep things steady right around us.”
The floor beneath her trembled and pitched inches up and inches down.
“I have to get back to the surface and find my son.” Nora dodged about the ground as if it were a writhing snake.
“He and another fellow headed out.”
“You sense his whereabouts from here?” Nora squinted, although her gaze remained blocked.
“I do.”
“Where did Brody’s brother take my son? Why did you bring me down here?”
“You’re gonna get your feet wet. Water’s rising.”
Wetness soaked her knees, lower legs, and hands. “Did you make this place? Is this an underground burrow?”
“Some sort of tunnel. Ground’s weak here. We have to go before the whole thing falls in on us.”
“Where to?” Nora sucked in earthy fumes as she struggled to stand. “How can you see?”
“The earth’s all around us. I just know.” The little boy’s hand bumped her sleeve at her wrist.
Nora jerked away. “I can’t touch you. I’m not wearing gloves.”
“Can you reach out, slow and steady?”
“Yes.” Nora’s hand trembled.
“Keep your hand low, about my waist high.” Cloth brushed her fingertips and quivered under her touch. “I brought you here so you couldn’t make more trouble up there. So, for now, grab the shirttail and hang on.”
All around them, the ground shook. Soil rained on top of and around them.
“Please hurry. I can’t let them take Vincent.” A low-grade achiness thrummed in her temples.
“Ma’am, Vincent wasn’t taken. He went willingly with whoever he was with. The earth’s knowing let me know that they walked together, as if they were the best of buddies.”
Over her lifetime, since they experimented on her, how many hearts had she stopped or caused to burst? Within her chest, Nora’s own heart shriveled. “Before this, I never knew what being heartbroken felt like.”
“I reckon,” the boy whispered in the gritty gloom, “now you do. And that’s why I brought you here. I can’t let you cause any more harm or heartbreak.”