by Alexa Dare
Smoke wrapped the loft. Long reaching blazes reached from the staked hay bales in roaring slashes.
“You’ve got to go. Now,” yelled the boy.
“No.” The little girl pressed her face to the boy’s belly. He grabbed her arm and dangled her upper body. “Catch her, please.” He flung the yelling girl outward and let go.
Arms spread, Brody eased the impact of the girl’s fall. The two of them dropped to the ground. Breath knocked out of him, he shoved her off him and gasped in the burn of smoke.
The girl ran back for the ladder.
Eyes blurred and stinging, Brody ripped off his shirt. He tied the sweaty, smoke-soaked cotton over his lower face. He caught the girl halfway up the rungs.
Above, the boy sidled to the lip of the planks. “My sister. Save her. Please.”
Brody took the boy’s sister, legs flailing, and dropped her down into what he hoped were Junior and Abe’s arms.
He raced to the loft. Tripping, he caught himself by hooking his arm on a ladder rung.
“Here.”
Flames ate at the boy’s back.
He screamed and kicked the toddler away.
Like a rock, the kid plunged.
Brody dove, and in a move his ex-military brother would have admired, got his hand on the boy, spun onto his back and broke the kid’s fall.
In the blazing loft, the brave boy burst into flames. Flesh sizzling like frying bacon, he threw the baby.
Amid shrill shrieks, the infant fell in flaps of a tiny pink blanket.
Overcome by the harsh yellow and orange blaze, the burning kid squealed shrill. His screams of agony hung like the thick smoke.
Brody, with hard shoves, steered the little boy to the hatch, but he latched on to his leg. Reaching out, he dove to catch the falling bundle.
As if in slow motion, he dove. The tips of his fingers grazed the soft fuzz of the blanket.
Like the sports guy Brody would never be, Abe caught the baby and backed away from a loft quickly caving in.
Outside, fire continued to rain down.
Brody thudded to the floor. Rammed his chin. The shirt over his lower face ripped away. Sharp aches blasted his jaws. Blood spurted, metallic and thick, into his mouth. From a cut tongue, cheek, or lip? No clue all ached.
With a kid latched on to his lower leg, he lurched to his knees.
A shadow darted past.
Abe threw a cloth, dark and wet, toward Brody.
“Junior, get the kid.” Brody tried to pry the little child loose without hurting him. He placed the wet blanket on the ladder rungs and climbed, trying to shake the clinging kid off his leg.
Junior grabbed the child’s ankles.
The kid’s legs lifted. He or she clung tighter.
Little fingers dug into Brody’s calf like ten-penny nails.
Abe joined the tug of war, strong-arming the poor kid’s upper chest.
Finally, they peeled the child off him, and Brody climbed.
On the loft’s edge, flames and smoke swallowed the now-quiet burning boy.
Hands grabbed at Brody’s waistband and clung to his belt—the same belt his brother had used to steer him in the woods at night only a few days ago.
He kicked.
“You can’t,” Abe or Junior yelled. “It’s too late.”
Globs of burning straw and wood dripped down. Hot stings burned away arm hair. Blisters rose on Brody’s wrists and hands. He lost his grip. Fell.
“Too late,” yelled a kid.
Hot, sharp pain lined Brody’s back. The steaming wool blanket covered him. The heat. Too much.
The hatch closed as the barn roof fell with a hot woomph and crash. The ceiling of the bunker exploded into flame. A swish of hot, ashy stench swirled down.
Shrill screams fused with the roar of the blaze.
Smoke-filled tears spilled from Brody’s stinging eyes. Each lung-huffing exhale sucked curdled gags from his stomach.
They took him away from the materials that might help to stop the ruin.
Like an echo over the hills, the taunt gushed in his head.
Too late.
Chapter 8
That evening, Hannah’s dry-eyed sadness never reached the downpour of rain.
The earlier mist never let up, only thickened and dripped until the day’s darkness grew grimmer and all the once spring green deepened to drab browns and blacks. The thick clouds, with orange flashes, stole the shadows of night.
On top of the dimness, the driving rain enveloped the woods moldy, dank, and darker than dark.
She tapped first her anger, then her deep-down resentment toward the hateful Peyton girl. After hours, even the sorrow she felt for Darcy Lynn, no matter how hard Hannah focused, never allowed her to tap into, or become part of, and stop the rain.
Through the soggy ground, roots and rocks jutted up to trip them. Slippery leaves on carpets of moss slid beneath their feet.
Rain. Rain. More rain.
Not of Hannah’s doing or making.
The memory of zucchini-pecan bread with strawberry-rhubarb jam fading ever faster, she hiked onward. She and Louise, her and her brother’s guardian that died in the house fire when Abe was kidnapped and taken to Briar Patch Mountain, used to sneak down to the kitchen at night to talk and snack.
Shoulders jostled toward her ears, she dropped them down and back and sighed.
Loved ones and days long gone, to never be found again.
Even the sadness of loss failed to bolster her possible control over the rainwater.
Although not her doing, and perhaps with nothing to do with the natural happenings of nature at all, rain kept pouring down. The supernatural storm overhead was unlike any she’d ever seen. Somehow Brody and Abe changed things.
Something went wrong, and strange, bad stuff happened.
On their trudge through the East Tennessee forest toward the Rocky Top Observatory, the force of the rainfall stung her, while wetness soaked her hair and clothes.
Hannah, no longer part of, suffered the rainstorm effects, just as little Darcy Lynn did.
A foot taller than Hannah and with a longer stride, Peyton led the way in their rush to the forest. Three or four yards ahead, hand in hand with the twin boys on each side of her, the teen turned back and sneered.
Hannah chugged her heavy, aching legs harder with each uphill step. She’d show the Peyton girl all right.
If only the teenager would lift her face to the onslaught, open her mouth like a duck, and drown. Green, scummy, stinky pond water might be better.
Hannah scraped her tongue along her upper teeth, as if to scrub away the wilted-lettuce algae notion.
Anyway, bossy was too kind for the overbearing witch.
A yelp shot out from behind.
“Ow.” In the twilight and cloudburst of rain, Darcy Lynn clutched to catch hold of something, anything, but off balance she pitched toward the ground.
Sliding down the slope several yards, Hannah huddled over the little girl, while Peyton continued to forge ahead up the slope.
Water showered all around, splatting on leaves and nettles, as if counting down like the ticking of a windup clock.
Let her go. Better off without her.
No. Not without their powers, they weren’t.
The word scalding her reluctant throat like boiling water, Hannah called out, “Stop.”
Peyton turned and hefted her shoulders. Hands on hips, she rolled her eyes toward the black-clouded sky and huffed as hard as one of Darcy Lynn’s rushing wind gusts.
Witch spelled with a B.
Cupping her under the arms just below the shoulders, Hannah hauled Darcy Lynn to her feet.
“I tried to keep up,” the little girl said.
Peyton, balled fists braced on her jutting hips, tromped to them. “You don’t have any pull with the storm?”
“Not anymore.” Hannah blinked and shook to toss away the clinging droplets. In less than half a blink, rivulets poured over her like a secon
d skin. Except she wasn’t part of the water as she had been all of her thirteen-year-old life.
“Would be mighty nice if you were extra-special.” Peyton, standing all fairytale warrior princess willowy, even in a rainstorm, squeezed water from the long dripping strands of her reddish-blond hair.
Hand to her head as if her arm lifted all on its own, Hannah fingered the short-cropped sprouts flattened to her scalp.
“Rainfall’s gone from ice cold to too warm.” Peyton stared skyward and blew water from her lips. Turned toward Hannah, she squared her shoulders and widened her stance. “Something’s up.”
As if stabbed or burned, Hannah yanked her exploring fingertips away. “Not my doing. Either way, we need to get out of the weather.”
“You think?” Peyton lifted her upper lip toward her nose, revealing the whites of her teeth and the pink-tinted gums in the grayness.
“I know.” Hannah had had about enough of you’ll-do-everything-I-say Bossy Butt.
“I don’t like being all wet,” a soggy Darcy Lynn said.
“Your no-longer-rainmaker friend should be used to it.” Peyton probed at the trunks of a few trees. “According to the moss growth on the north side of the tree trunks, we’re headed in the right direction. We should reach the top of Rocky Top soon.”
“Why would you think they’re still there?” Might her brother and Brody and the rest have remained in the building?
“Might not be, but we’ll have a starting point.”
“For what?”
“To search. I’m going to find your zombie-making friend and make him pay for what he did to my family and for each and every one of the others that suffered because of him.”
“Will they have candy there?” asked Isaiah.
“Silly, the zombies ate all the candy up.” Jeremiah dug the toe of his shoe into the soppy, rain-slickened leaves and twisted his foot. “Then they ate peoples.”
Not a bad story.
Hannah failed to swipe the grin completely from her face. “The rain would have washed away any tracks.”
“Dad was a wildlife tracker, one of the best in the country, so I’m better at tracking than most.”
Well, tracking animals isn’t very…” Hannah rolled a shoulder. “Um, ladylike.”
“While you’re busy being girly-girly, feeling sorry for yourself, and starving, I will be surviving and will have a full belly.”
“Junior showed us which berries are good and which might make you sick.” Darcy Lynn wrung water out of her dirty white t-shirt. Grass, mud, and old blood stained the girl’s white clothes and shoes as if she were ready for a laundry detergent commercial. “I’m not too good at mushrooms though.”
“Once I get this taken care of, I’ll show you the difference between eatable and poisonous. Ugh, what I wouldn’t give for a veggie mushroom sub with mustard.” She tromped to a log and patted the fallen trunk in encouraging smacks. “Hop up, because, thanks to never-the-weather girl, we gotta pick up the pace.”
She shot a down-the-nose glance toward Hannah.
Could the teenager be any haughtier?
Hannah lifted her own nose skyward.
Oh, yes, Peyton was a big, fat B with a capital B.
Darcy Lynn allowed the older girl to help her to stand on the coffee table-wide log. “What if the water gets hot, hot?”
“Pull the neck of your shirt over your head like a hood.” The supposedly smart girl said, “Then tuck your arms inside the sleeves.”
Not to be outdone, Hannah snickered. “She’ll look silly.”
“Talk about looking silly. Your hair’s chopped up and you are little miss rainmaker who can’t do anything about the rain.” Peyton snorted a not-ladylike huff. “While you worry about getting your pretty on, which tends toward drowned rat by the way, we’ll be the ones who won’t get scalded.”
Hannah crossed her arms and glared.
The boyish, gawky teenager backed toward the log.
Darcy Lynn hopped on, wrapping her legs around Peyton’s waist and her arms across her shoulders. Without a look back, Peyton, with Darcy Lynn aboard and taking a hand of each of the boys, hiked to wherever the moss told her to go.
Like Hannah couldn’t do anything at all.
Hateful. Bossy. Smart-mouthed. Sharp-tongued.
Her feet dragged and stumbled.
Didn’t all that describe what Abe said about Hannah?
Argh.
Didn’t matter.
She stomped along from behind. She’d show Peyton.
Through the tree canopy, too warm droplets splattered and pelted her exposed face and arms.
Several yards deeper into the woods, glad for the little shelter the trees provided, Hannah pulled her arms inside her t-shirt and turtled inside the neckband. Frantic, she tucked her head inside the sweaty cloth, while hooding the shirt around her face.
Even a smarty-pants teenager had a good idea once in a while.
Hannah’s gaze shot icicle daggers through the heavy rain.
Luckily for Peyton, she was no rainmaker for now.
Before this, Hannah had been able to be one with water. She would one day be a true Rain Maiden again. Her hair would be long, with curls this time, like Darcy Lynn’s, except as black and as shiny as coal. Within the shirt, she poked the short ends of what was left of her hair.
She’d get the zombie woman, if Nora didn’t rot away first, for cutting off her hair.
Just wait.
Even tapping into the mad about the hair shearing did nothing to help Hannah stop the warming rain. Instead, with each step, Hannah wrapped herself in her fantasy of long flowing hair.
Mean Girl Peyton led them from the woods into a parking lot. The lot, and the burned bodies lying scattered, steamed from the heat of the spray. Wet boiling meat fumes rose like car exhaust from the asphalt.
Hannah glanced about. None of their group was…well, here. At the sight of the scorched zombies, the fist in her chest loosened.
“Run.” Peyton bent forward and raced for the building.
In seconds, the rain no longer stung but burned.
Like tears she was unable to shed.
The five of them made it inside only moments before the puddles started to boil and drops of fire fell from the sky.
Hannah stared out of the thick glass windows and watched the fiery shower spear at the ground.
Fire rained, and Hannah’s childhood struggled to stay afloat inside her. The bonfire-tending Rain Maiden part of her sank, down, down, down, until her little girl-self submerged.
Chapter 9
“Nora. Nora. Nora,” an incessant chanting of many voices rose from the far side of the rundown elementary-grade school throughout the evening.
Nora, held by the wrist and a jagged-edged hunting knife, blade glinting in the lamplight, inches from her face, pressed back into the office chair behind a desk that took up a fourth of the room.
In hopes Roderick, who exuded a shall we say savory, freshness, didn’t cut her nose off to spite her face, Nora remained unmoving.
Not hard to do.
Especially when she was, well, dead.
Her saliva gurgled wet and rotten.
“They’re waiting for you in the gym.” He turned the blade away from her and offered her the handle. “Thought you might want to do something about your hair.”
“They?” Uncertain whether Roderick attempted to trick her or if she should feel relieved, Nora set aside the pen she intended to use as a weapon. Palms down, she placed her hands upon the desktop. Nora stared at the blade. “I can’t.”
While no mirror, thankfully, glassed the walls, lanterns sat atop a metal, four-drawer file cabinet and on a bookshelf, with sagging, book-filled shelves, near the doorway. A third burned bright on the far edge of the desk.
Eternal night from the windows behind her glowed faintly. The faint orange light reflected crimson in the mountain militiaman’s somber gaze.
“I’m no hairstylist or barber, ma’am, but
I’ll do my best.” As gentle as if he cuddled a newborn calf, the lanky mountain man came around behind her chair and cut frizzed locks of hair from her head.
Nora braced herself for Roderick to transition into Yates and for the blade to press against her temple or hover before her, readied to plunge into her brain. “Roderick, who are the people chanting?”
“Your followers. They’re here for you to usher them into this new world.”
Followers…
Could it be?
That she might ascend to lead the masses as their zombie queen?
Rain outside pounded steadily on the flat roof of Lakeview Elementary School.
“There. Better.” Roderick grunted. “Might be better if you take a look and see what you think. I can take more off, but I cut away the worst.”
“No. No need.” Nora stood and held his arm above the elbow.
Endearingly, he didn’t shrug off her dead touch.
“Roderick, I trust you with what little remains of my life.”
“I’m truly honored, ma’am.”
“You will protect me from them?”
“Your followers won’t harm you.” Roderick patted her cold, limp hand.
“Ah, not just from those waiting for me.” She dared not grin for fear of cracking her lips. “You’ll shield me from Yates and Doc as well and keep them from ending what time I have left.”
“Nora.” The muffled chanting lifted to a dull roar. “Nora.”
Roderick led her from the room and down the hallway. As they neared a wide metal door lettered GYM in black blocked letters, he turned his head aside, and when he turned back, his tightened features and squinted lighter eyes moved in close.
Nora sucked down her own putrid breath.
“Nice try, Nora Belle.” He, the Yates part of the trio, brought the knife close to her ear. “Keep that up and I’ll take you apart, piece by piece, and feed you like hunks of raw beef to the zombies.” He tapped the tip of the blade against her earlobe. “You’d do best to keep in mind that we—Doc Halverson, Roderick, and me—are one.”
His eyelids lowered and fluttered. Only white showed in the winking slit of his eyes, then Roderick grinned at her. “You look mighty tidy, ma’am.”
“Why, thank you.” Nora, ever the faux southern belle, accepted his aid in bringing her stiffened body upright.