by Alexa Dare
Chapter 31
Brody’s chest wall ached as if his ribs had been pried apart. No biggie. Only moments before, his heart had stopped, and Nora had just brought him back from the dead. Weak and woozy, he slumped in the second row on the passenger side of the all-terrain vehicle. He lurched like butter in a milk churn as the maxed-out ATV drove through a night filled with quakes, wind, fire, and rain on flexible metal tracks.
Talk about high-end gear and tech savvy.
If only Brody had the energy and time to admire the vehicle’s design. Instead, wrapped in new Cadillac odor, he planted his uninjured leg on the seatback in front of him and braced for every bump, stump, and dip.
Man, would his heart rate ever return to normal?
He scrubbed his ribs with his wrist and massaged as if the outer pressure might ease the tight squeeze.
“The ground’s breaking up behind us,” Hannah yelled. “Faster, Abe. Faster.”
Abe leaned so hard on the gas pedal that his butt tipped on the outer edge of his seat cushion. The brave kid drove the thing like a pro. “We should be… Hold on!”
When the vehicle front lurched downward, Brody bounced off his seat. Tossed in the air, the top of his head brushed the low ceiling of the decked-out, tank like ride.
Out of a ditch and onto a gravel road, the all-terrain sped away from the militia camp.
“Where are we?” Hannah asked in a squeak.
“Carver Road, I think.”
The thirteen-year-old girl, in the dimly lit all-terrain cab, shot a do-something-like-yesterday glare toward Brody.
“Where me and Mamaw and Papaw used to live.” Darcy Lynn’s voice sounded as if her tone held buckets of tears.
The road wound through hilly farmland. As the all-terrain sped along, damage bordered either side. Trees cut off by past and more recent tornadoes stood as three- or four-foot-tall stumps. Not a house or building dotted the terrain. Like gouges, sheared off dugouts and basements marred the hillsides. What used to be a pond looked like a mud hole with dying, flopping fish writhing in the muck.
The all-terrain tracks crunched over a fallen tree.
Hannah looked back from across from Abe and squealed. “Faster!”
“Going as fast as she’ll go.” Abe’s butt bobbed three inches above his seat bottom.
“Huh-oh.” Darcy Lynn, on her knees in the row behind Hannah, faced backwards. “Not fast enough.”
Using the shoulder that hadn’t been injured—was there any part of him that didn’t hurt?—Brody twisted toward the back window.
Dread and threat filled the sky in ominous gray. A twister blocked out the entire horizon only a half mile behind. A few hundred yards back, cracks split the packed gravel-covered road like ice on a winter lake come spring.
“Holy crap.” Abe slammed on the breaks. “Sorry.”
“What the…” The vehicle skidded to a stop, and Brody’s wounded shoulder rammed the front seatback, and he fell to the floor. His upper torso screamed in pulsing, agonizing pain.
“Brody,” Abe’s voice dropped low, “you’d best come see.”
On hands and knees, Brody crept along the aisle.
“We have to—” Hannah gasped. Hand covering her mouth, she stared ahead.
Brody pulled himself up by hand walking the low-riding dashboard. Out front, His brother, face, chest, and arms smeared with streaks of mud, stood in the middle of the road.
“Like war paint,” Abe muttered.
Camo-dressed and at attention, Cantrell blocked their passage.
A vinegary pucker poked Brody’s cheeks, and he shuddered. For what felt like hours, all he managed was to breathe smothering plastic, leather, and metal fumes. Gulping a loud inhale, he finally said, “There should be an intercom.”
Abe flipped a switch.
A siren whooped.
“Wrong one.” Abe switched the siren back off and then flicked a toggle button. A green light blinked on beneath a small speaker on the dash.
“Cantrell?” Brody’s voice sounded like sandpaper formed his tonsils.
“Turn yourselves over.” Cantrell held out his arms to his sides as if to barricade them from passing.
“To who? What for?” Brody gripped the dashboard.
“Many questions find few true answers.” Cantrell projected his voice loud and strong and tilted his head to the side. “In these trying times, chaos beckons.”
“You’ve chosen the wrong side. Get in. All of us can make it out together.” Brody gripped the dash so hard his knuckles panged in added jolts that throbbed up his arms.
“Why am I always the one who’s wrong?”
“You’re not. You’ve been right more times than you know.” Brody pressed his palm to the windshield. Dread clamped his throat like some sort of phantom hands choking the life out of him. “The side that causes harm is where the bad guys live.”
Cantrell reared back, taking in the sight behind the all-terrain. Even from yards away, the muscle cords of his neck stood out. “Why, because you or some local yokel deputy says so?”
“Please, there’s no time. We need to go.”
“Turn them over.” Cantrell nailed Brody with an accusing gaze. The flatness of his expression belied the burning gleam in his eyes. “The children need to be in their rightful place.”
“All around us, there’s water gushing from the cracks in the ground. If we don’t fall into a hole, we’ll be washed or blown away,” said Hannah.
“Can you slow the water?” Abe cast a look in the rearview mirror.
“Not anymore.” Hannah’s complexion reminded Brody of gray pot-making clay.
“Cantrell, if you don’t move, we’re all going to die.” Brody tugged in quick, flat breaths. Heartbeat jabbing in his throat and temples, he clasped the glass so tight that his fingers slid and his nails scraped . “You could come with us. The children need us Thackett brothers to take care of them, remember?”
“Yates needs them.” The former soldier shook his head. “For the betterment of the cause.”
“That was before.” Brody let go of the thick glass and, turning to the door, said, “Things are different now. Come on, get in.”
“Don’t try to confuse or trick me.” Cantrell pumped his arms as if side-lifting ten-pound weights. “The trickery of others can play a man for a fool.”
“The brother I knew would never do this. You’re too good of a man to be Yates’s puppet.”
“I think for myself.” Cantrell squared his shoulders.
The rear of the all-terrain rose. The front end canted toward the hard-packed gravel.
Darcy Lynn screamed.
“Abe! Brody!” Hannah squealed shrill and long.
“Cantrell, get out of the flipping way.” Propped up by the dash, Brody stood. His already damaged heart fisted and radiated sharp stabbing throbs throughout his upper torso.
“Stand down, Brody.” Drill sergeant-like, Cantrell ordered, “Do as you’re told.”
Brody grasped Abe’s shoulder. Tears wet his cheeks as he said, “Go.”
Even as he shook his head, Abe stomped on the gas pedal.
The vehicle shot forward, ramming into Cantrell. He leapt and clung to the curve of the windshield. The wildness in his eyes chilled Brody down to his toes. Through the speakers, the roar of the wind and earth deafened him. Deep down, the ache in his chest spread like putrid pus in a wound. “Faster.”
Against the violence of nature and time, they raced down the road. Foliage blurred green, then flamed bright. The road clouded thick with gray smoke.
Darcy Lynn clapped. “We’re getting ahead.”
Clinging to the outside of the windshield, Cantrell grimaced. He yanked a wiper until the blade broke free and stabbed the glass with the metal frame.
“Bulletproof,” said Abe. “I think.”
Cantrell’s face contorted into a mask of rage. Where and when had Brody’s brother gone off the deep end?
Brody switched off the speaker. “Hannah, are
we far enough ahead to stop for maybe two or three seconds?”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“Everybody, hold on.” Brody scooted his butt into the copilot seat and braced his hands on the dash. “Abe, stop!”
Abe tromped his foot down on the brakes.
Cantrell’s one-handed grip failed him. He flew off and crashed on to his back several yards out in front on the gravel road. Unmoving, he lay face up with his arms and legs spread-eagled.
After a drawn-out silence, Abe asked, “Is he, um, er, breathing?”
As if in answer to the boy’s question, Cantrell sat up. Both Abe and Brody flinched big-time .
“Like in the scary movies.” Abe white-knuckled the steering wheel.
“This is no movie. We’re in real time. He’s my brother.” Brody’s hand trembled as he fingered the intercom switch and flipped it back to the on position. Once again, the little green light blinked. “Cantrell, get up and move out of the way.”
“Steady, Brody.” Cantrell lifted his chin and grinned a canted smile. “You and the children belong to Yates.”
“Look beyond Yates and his militia leanings. Please.” A numbness encased his heart. Was that what it felt like to die inside, bit by bit?
“The destroyers must be abolished, for those who bring about ruination shall be destroyed by the hand of the chosen.” Cantrell sounded like he preached from a pulpit.
Brody’s heart sank to his knees. He dropped to his hands, wagged his head, and slapped futilely at the switch.
Abe swatted his hands aside and turned off the intercom microphone and speaker. “Brody?”
“The landslide’s now a river of mud.” Hannah rushed to stand behind the driver’s seat. “Right behind us. Coming up really quick.” She clasped the seatback in a white-knuckled hold.
“Better hurry,” said Darcy Lynn.
“This is on me.” Brody felt along the floorboard and knocked Abe’s foot from the brake. With all his strength, he pressed down on the gas pedal and croaked out, “Drive.”
The all-terrain barreled forward.
“Ahhhh,” Abe yelled.
“Darcy Lynn,” Hannah said, “tell us what’s happening behind us.”
The all-terrain’s front bumper slammed into something. Whump. Bang. Into someone. Brody added his other hand to the pedal. “Forgive me, brother.” The vehicle’s tank-like track treads lifted and dipped.
“Like a log,” Abe muttered. “Not a person. Another lump of a tree trunk. Bump in the road.”
“My doing, Abe.” Unnamed emotions, raw and hot, banded his throat. “Not yours.”
Pings of hail banged the metal housing. Lightning hit, in a silent flash, only yards out. A roadside tree exploded. A shoving vibration shook the vehicle. Good thing the speakers were off…
Darcy Lynn squealed. “The mud river’s here.”
Sure enough, a wall of mud as tall as the all-terrain’s body rammed the back of the tracked vehicle.
“We’re gonna die.” Hannah, the barely there girly citrus orange of her shampoo lending a bit of hope to a hopeless situation, held on to Abe’s seatback.
“No more red.” Darcy Lynn bawled.
“So not good.” Abe gripped the steering wheel even harder.
Brody grabbed Abe’s foot and placed it on the oblong gas pedal. Under the press of the seventeen-year-old’s hand, the boy pushed the pedal so hard his butt once again arched out of the seat.
The mudflow sluiced under them, lifting the all-terrain and shoving them along at a breakneck speed.
“What happened to the bad man?” Darcy Lynn asked.
“He’s, uh, gone.” Holding on to Abe’s seatback, Hannah planted her legs wide apart and bent her knees.
What had Brody done? No taking it back. How could he? His own brother. The hurt of Brody’s wounds seared until he draped his body as one tower of pain into the passenger seat. But the outside hurt didn’t even begin to compare to the slashing ache of loss inside him.
A hit smacked the back window. Spinning around in the copilot seat, Brody cringed. Splashed mud smeared the thick pane, then Cantrell’s mud-coated face popped into view.
Brody’s screams joined the others as Hannah herded Darcy Lynn toward Abe. Cantrell beat the rear window with his fist. Mud and blood splattered. Cantrell showed his whacko-crazy smile within his muddy face. Whites of his eyes and teeth gleaming wild, he pulled out an army knife and pounded the glass with the blade.
“Make him stop. Red. Too much.” The seven-year-old fisted one eye and covered one ear. Not enough hands for anyone to shelter from it all, let alone a child.
“Bulletproof, has to be.” Abe’s gaze darted to the rearview mirror. “Crazy.” He sucked in a gasp. “Sorry, Brody.”
“No offense taken.” A sort of dulled pain, like when the dentist shot your mouth up with numbing stuff, spread through Brody’s chest.
Was this dying?
He crawled the aisle to the rear. “Abe, there’s a sliding window cover. Can you raise the one for the back?”
“I’ll try.”
Metal plates slid in place to cover the windows on both sides of the vehicle.
“Sorry.” The boy rummaged around again. “Okay, I found the right one.” His wide eyes reflected in haunted smudges in the reflection of the rearview mirror. He asked, “Are you sure?”
Brody pressed his forehead to the smooth glass. The banging jabs of Cantrell’s knife jarred through his skull until the blade tip broke and shot away. “Do it, Abe.”
A metal plate slid upward from the bottom of the window. Cantrell stopped his frantic stabs and dropped his knife. In quick swipes, he painted backwards letters in blood-tinged mud.
“Chaos wins,” read Hannah.
Cantrell’s gaze pleaded. He splayed the flat of his hand against the glass. The metal plate whirred and inched along the outside of the window glass, covering the clear pane. His grip pried free, Cantrell lunged and tried to regain his hold, but his twisted, mangled legs, no doubt crushed earlier by the tracks, dragged him down.
“Sorry, man. I love you.” Brody matched his hand, through the thick pane, to his older brother’s palm. The mud sucked at him and pulled him away. At first, he stroked his arms, trying to swim in the churning stew.
The all-terrain, with its spinning tracks, gained traction within the mud.
Left behind, Cantrell grew smaller and smaller in the narrowing slit. He reached out as if grasping through the distance for help. Grabbing, greedy mud pulled him under. As Brody raised up to see over the panel, with a snick, the metal slab settled in place to cover the entire window.
Shock torqueing in his head like an inserted counter-threaded screw, Brody dropped to his knees and bumped his forehead against the covered glass. Gentle, yet insistent, children’s hands pulled at him, guided him to a seat. He hung his head and clutched the upper curve of his left ribcage. The source of hurt, either actual heart damage or grief didn’t matter, for the agony in his chest echoed the tempo of his world torn apart.
Chapter 32
“Just like you must face your sorrow, I reckon it’s up to me to end this.” Gravel, in the tight pitch-black space, scraped Junior’s elbows and outer upper arms. The under-the-ground power tingled in his aching joints as the smell of damp earth welcomed him home.
“You intend to try to halt the earthquakes?” Nora, like the snake she was, slid along on her belly through the slim crawlspace-sized passageway.
Overhead, on the surface, a tree crashed onto the ground. The earth shook, and the top part of the crawlspace sagged. Crumbles and gravel sprayed down from the ceiling like pouring rain from overhead.
Braced, Junior turtled his neck. Grit and gravel shifted over the back of his head and split around the handles of his ears to trail his cheeks and onto the floor. Junior scooched along the angling chute. “Come on.”
From behind him, Nora coughed in the earthy flurry of dust.
Shoring up the earth around them, he didn’t wait for Nora. Eit
her the shrewd woman would follow him or she wouldn’t. Whichever way, she deserved what she had coming to her.
The crawlspace walls and floor swayed and bucked. Junior took in the energy, allowed it to fill him, then let the power seep out slowly each time he grabbed handfuls of earth. Under the ground, too much like the closed-in cellar, sweat dripped from his hairline to plop in the mud. In salty licks of his lips, he tasted the heady salt of the earth.
From behind, Nora bumped into his jean-covered thigh. “Hurry along, if you’re able. I don’t want to touch you by accident.”
“We gotta get out of here.” A curl of Junior’s fingers and toes eased the bumps and tremors. “I can’t hold the walls up for much longer.”
“Can you truly stop the quakes?”
“The collar doesn’t make me stronger anymore, at least, not as far as I can tell.” He swiped grit from between his lips and shoved the bitter soil from his front teeth with his tongue. “The tear in the earth sits far below my reach.”
“Your powers seem to have overcome the smart chip technology.”
“Don’t know about that stuff, but the hurt is back in my jaws, elbows, and knees.” Junior reached out, mind-wise, and gauged where they were along the rolls of the mountain above. “Before I pulled you underground, you were headed to find your son. You planning to stop him? Because he’s up to something really bad.”
Nora gripped his stretched-out shirttail. “How are you aware of this?”
“It doesn’t take a genuine smart fellow to figure out what Vincent might do since he’s out on his own.”
“You are able to sense his location?” She tugged hard.
The neck of his shirt tight at his throat, Junior froze in place. “I just know.”
“What about the others? Brody, Hannah, Abe, and Darcy Lynn?” Nora jerked the material again. “Where are they?”
“Far off, where you’ll never get your hands on them.” Junior pulled at the neckband of his shirt to ease the tightness of her yanks and got his bearings. Although his heart longed to head in the direction of Brody and the other children, he stayed the route Nora’s son was headed. “Come on.”