by Alexa Dare
Wheezing smoke filled his crimped windpipe, and he leaned his skull back until his spine threatened to snap.
In taunting slow-motion stalks, the biggest black widow spiders in the known world clung to and crawled up the front of Brody’s mustard-green military t-shirt.
The tickle of their legs up his middle sent prickles all the way to the top edges of his ears.
“The blood-red hourglass marking on their bellies means they’re all females,” he whispered. “The males aren’t as dark in color. They are decorated with pink or red spots on their backs. Normal-sized, black widows are extremely poisonous. Most folks don’t suffer serious reactions, but at this size...”
No way could he stop talking. The words poured out of him like a stopper pulled from a drain.
“Dull muscle pain at the bite-site. Chest pain. My already healed heart’s a goner. Dosage effects multiplied a hundred, if not a thousand-fold, with no option to seek emergency medical attention immediately.”
“He’s doing smart-speak again.” Junior staggered and grunted. “My head’s pounding, so a bump in power’s coming our way. Don’t think me shaking things up will help any.”
“Not advisable.” Swat one away and the other would bite him. Even with his brain in high gear, the odds stacked ceiling-high against him. “Even revved up, I can’t think my way out of a box right now.”
“Brody,” Abe said, “close your eyes.”
“If you catch them on fire, they may explode into flames like the ones on the web. I kind of value my eyebrows, nose, and face, but thanks for the thought.”
“There might be another way.” Abe edged closer. “Like with a microwave. From inside out. You know, like a kidney bean in a bowl of chili.”
“What?”
Abe pressed a hand to his forehead. “I’m not going to catch anything on fire, but best not look any way.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?” A curdled, icky taste rose into the back of his throat, gagging him, forcing him to swallow a rancid spitball of fear.
“Nah, but somehow I do, you know?”
“Turn your face to the side,” said Abe, “just in case.”
“I don’t want to watch them take a chunk out of me anyway.” Brody rested his chin on his shoulder and braced for a bite. “Junior, Abe, and Tonya, you’ll keep the other children safe, won’t you? I realize you’re kids yourselves, but we have no idea who has survived out there and who hasn’t.”
He sucked in a rasp of dankness. “Together you can figure out how to make the tools and manual gear that you need. Take my word; as long as you have one another, you’re going to do all right. I think my brother would be proud that I tried, don’t you? I did my best.”
The spider closest to his t-shirt neck vibrated in place.
“Ah, geez.” Brody clamped his eyelids as tightly shut as a passworded chunk of viral software code. “What a way to go. I should have done better by all of you children. Cantrell would have done a heck of a better job.”
“He turned on us. Tried to hurt us.” Ten-year-old Junior sounded more adult than Brody. “Besides, you’ve always been here for us, and your brother never was.”
Along the outer curve of Brody’s ribcage, splashes of heat flared.
A spot near his collarbone seared pressing iron hot, and another flashed stove eye intense on his lower chest, directly over his heart.
“Ah, heck no.” Although he didn’t want to look, his eyelids peeled up of their own accord.
The hinged-legged spider nearest him opened its long, toxin-dripping fangs. Its foremost legs reached past his neckband and stroked his lower neck.
Goosebumps erupted up into his hairline, while sending prickles down both his arms.
Brody whimpered.
The black widow’s body quivered. Its fangs drew into its body. The bulbous back part of the body flattened, and the entire body shriveled. The legs folded and curled against the hull. The hourglass and eyes no longer glowed orange.
The blackened blob quivered and dropped from his shirt.
The second spider trembled, and its legs twitched. Like the first, this time with a sucking slurp, the rounded torso imploded and legs curled until it too fell away.
In frantic slaps, he smacked at his now bare shirtfront. Unable to knock away the memory of the crawling sensations, Brody staggered backward. With drawn out moaning squeals, he lunged and stomped the crunchy bodies until only crisp, black char marks smeared the floor. Sucking gulps of smoke flavor, he propped his hands on his knees and looked up.
A rush of heat seared Brody’s face.
“Abe, stop.” Burnt hair smoldering reamed Brody’s nose like a plumber’s snake tool. He smacked his brows and patted the bangs of his hair on his forehead with quick solid whaps.
Abe turned aside.
The rest of the webbing flamed.
“Save some of the web. We can use the fibers,” Brody said.
“Can’t. Back. It. Down.” Abe’s boy-to-man voice wavered.
Sizzling flames scorched the passage walls and curled from the sides to battle one another across the carved stone ceiling.
Rasps of lung-heaving coughs fought to free the heavy, acridness from Brody’s lungs.
Junior scooped out the cocoon that held Jessie and dropped it into a kettle of water as Tonya grabbed the yapping puppy and herded the kids deeper into the tunnels.
Brody hugged and lifted the pot holding the spider. “Not sure for what, but we may need it.”
From the entrance side, the clang of tin cans taunted them.
The thirteen-year-old Master of Fire turned to the few remaining pots of water. Beneath his fire-starting stare, the water steamed, and in seconds, boiled to release mineral-like fumes. The pile of rocks heated to red, flaring the aroma of the long-lost potato and ham stew.
“I’ve got the webs.” Junior rushed after the others.
“Brody,” Abe, his voice dropping low and dry, said, “I can’t see.”
“Smoke in your eyes?”
“Darkness.” The boy’s eyes, brightened by the burning orange blaze, stared glassy and steady. “All of a sudden, I’m blinded.”
“Reach up. Grab hold of my belt. My brother led me all over these mountains this way.” Brody, with Abe in tow, jogged.
Within moments, they caught up with the others in an adjoining mining tunnel, in an older section of the mine. The shadows of the narrower tunnel, with sagging timber bracing, seemed to fight the glow of their light bottles.
The quiet group of children huddled around someone.
In their midst, Tonya squatted and tried to comfort a fallen kid. “He’s hurting.”
Junior, holding the kettle, writhed on the ground.
“The storm effects, I, uh, think.” Brody muttered. His thoughts slogged like drying glue, and he staggered in a circle of confusion. “Wait. Where are we?”
For the life of him, Brody no longer recalled where he was or why they were there.
Wherever there was.
Chapter 22
Under the indoor rain shower, Hannah’s teeth chattered. Water dripped from the tip of her nose. Rivulets ran from her jaw. Even cold and drenched, she held steady the glass jar filled with acid-making lightning bugs.
Determined, she pushed the lip against the sagging dip sunk into the Observatory bomb shelter door’s metal.
The rain was a part of her, the never-ending downfall was brought about by her stupid out-of-control feelings.
All while trapped in a metal safe room.
In the chilling rainfall, three walls of wide, stainless-steel shelves holding military-type rations and long-shelf life foods, like pickles, olives, and beef jerky, made up the room.
Trapped, their group of seven, held steady atop Rocky Top’s ridge, as an eighth tried to get inside.
Though not to save them.
For now, Peyton’s bangs on the outer door stopped.
“S-s-so cold.” Darcy Lynn stood off to one side. A stiff breeze whipped around the blon
d, curly-haired seven-year-old. Holding out a protein bar, she poked the fragrant snack toward Hannah’s mouth.
So not hungry, Hannah tilted away, but only so far, so she didn’t let the warming glass of the jar slide from the door.
As the glow of the light sticks grew dimmer, the gritty crumbling scrape of the bar across her lips left her with a tinge of cinnamon on the tip of her tongue.
Might as well be rice cakes.
Her lips pinched closed, she shook her head until Darcy Lynn moved the unwanted, worse-than-yucky, so-called treat away. “I’ll eat once I stop the rain, and we break out of this place. Do you suppose they have milkshakes and French fries somewhere back there?”
“Fries,” one of the boys yelled.
“Crinkle fries with extra ketchup.” Darcy Lynn placed the nasty protein bar in the plastic box that held a stash. With her fingers tucked tight under her thumbs, she bunched her fists close to her belly. “Oh, Hannah, the wind wants to play.”
So sad that the seven-year-old fought to keep her hands still so as not so stir up a breeze. “It wants to go fast, fast, fast.”
The big tornadoes she’d created—
“Do your best, little gal, not to play. Ignore and put aside how badly the need teases you,” said Merv.
Within the stale stillness of the closed-up room, her silenced guardian, Irene, huddled beside Merv and cuddled the twins in her arms, while Vincent skulked in the shadows.
Merv worked on healing the hurt twin’s lightning bug blister. “Before this power boost ends, you’re next Miss Irene.”
A splash against water pooling on concrete whapped.
Startled, Hannah’s hold on the large, glass pickle jar slipped. “Watch it.”
“My apologies. Clipboard.” The slosh of Vincent’s constant foot shuffling drew Hannah’s attention to the deepening water. He said, “My urge to draw grows greater as rapidly as the water rises.”
The water, in a span of a few minutes, deepened three inches.
Hannah sighed. She didn’t seem to have any control of the rate of indoor rain or of stopping the shower. “There has to be a drain.”
“Probably plugged.” Merv sighed. “Not sure we want to know what might be stopping up the pipes.”
Along with the acid-burning-through metal fumes, Hannah’s sharp cheek pain set in as a constant burning sensation.
“Our best bet is you and those bugs.” Merv jabbed a crunchy bar, crumbs plopping into the drink, in Hannah’s direction. “Don’t worry about the water rising. We must use all the tools on hand to get us out, and your gathering water is one of them.”
Hannah blew an upward stream to dislodge a rivulet of water trailing over her brow. “I know I started the rain, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything with it. It’s like I got hurt, had a flood of emotions, then nothing. Right now, I feel all numbed out inside.”
“There. All better.” The sound of Merv patting one of the kid’s back or head sounded. “Here you go, Irene. Let’s see if we can get you talking and singing your pretty songs again.”
Even in the chilled rain, the low drop in Merv’s tone fanned heat across Hannah’s cheeks.
After all these years, why did Irene have to get a boyfriend now?
Yuck and double-ugh.
The cold jittered her jaws. Her anger at Irene clenched them until her entire head bobbed.
Despite the indoor weather, the dangerous acid from the strange lightning bugs ate away at the door’s metal. From around the jar top, tiny tendrils of pungent smoke fanned the metal door slab right below the pull-down handle.
Nothing or nobody would ever be the same.
All because of her stubborn brother and too-smart-for-his-own-good Brody. Both of them should have known better, but obviously, couldn’t do any better when it came to setting things right with the zombies and out of control weather she and the other gifted ones created.
Correction, had been forced to create.
In no time, as rain poured in a hard-freezing shower, toe-numbing water rose to half a foot.
Bone-deep shivers shook Hannah until her lower jaws worked in jerking, side-to-side motions. Cold settled into her flesh in an aching block.
“Don’t like the cold,” said a whining and fidgeting Jeremiah.
“Go away, rain.” Isaiah, ever the typical three-year-old like his brother, stomped his foot.
A slushing splash splattered Hannah’s back. The splotches of wetness landing on her upper back sent racing tremors jittering along the length of her spine.
“The chance of locating French fries in the military rations is rather grim.” Vincent, in the stomping clomp of a sixteen-year-old, stepped closer and sloshed water deeper up Hannah’s kneeling form. “Perhaps you should cease the rainfall now.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Hannah’s shoulders ached, but not as much as her arms. She couldn’t afford to look back. “I can’t control the rain right now any more than I can serve up a fresh order of deep-fried French fries.”
“Yay,” the little fellows yelled.
“If,” Vincent said, “I were to draw the room as dry.”
“No,” both Merv and Hannah blurted out.
“Can you trust yourself not to draw other stuff, son?” asked Merv.
“Probably not.” The sixteen-year-old’s voice sounded so very sad.
“Don’t even think about drawing or sketching.” Hannah’s jaws ached from both the tension and the biting chill. “Think about something else.” Well, duh, maybe irritation wasn’t on the list of things she couldn’t feel. “What’s something fun you’ve done?”
“Drawing sketches is the only activity I was allowed.”
Hannah let out a massive sigh. “What would you like to do? Something fun, besides drawing?” The jar opening’s lip sank into the metal a good inch. She tilted the rear of the jar downward, to better aim the bugs at the latch.
“I am not sure.” The big-boned, too-pudgy teen shifted his legs, sloshing water farther up Hannah’s body in waves. “I have never considered doing otherwise.”
“Come on, Vincent.” Hannah rocked her upper body in tiny little sways. Her wrists throbbed. “Don’t you want to learn to drive? You’re sixteen. How about movies?”
“Movies?”
Hannah huffed a sigh and rolled her eyes. Since she faced the door, for her own benefit if no one else’s.
She zeroed her gaze in on the doorknob handle a few inches above eye-level from where she knelt and willed the deadly bugs in that direction. Her cheek, under the blister, spasmed in quick twitches.
“Please tell me you’re kidding, Vincent.”
“I must acknowledge that I do not have a propensity for humor,” he said.
“Right, like you don’t know about moving picture shows, but then that takes you sort of back to drawing again, doesn’t it?”
“Moving pictures?”
“Hannah,” Merv said, “you’re opening a can of worms best left closed.”
A tangled double-knot tightened in her chest. “Mind your own business. You’re not the boss of me and you are for sure not my father.”
A sharp tug on her earlobe twisted Hannah’s head to the side.
On her knees in the water beside Hannah, Irene held the glow stick. However, even in dimness, Hannah would not have had a problem making out her guardian’s stern narrowed eyes and pressed, thinned lips.
With pinching, sharp pain throbbing in her ear, anger bubbled inside Hannah, like boiling water in a pot.
Jerking her head away and freeing her ear from Irene’s pinch, Hannah said, “Don’t touch me. Can’t you see I’m trying to get you and the others out of here. Without me, you’re weak. You’re nothing. So leave me alone.”
A brisk breeze, thanks to Darcy Lynn, buffeted the back of Hannah’s head.
Chill bumps trailed Hannah’s neck. “It’s okay Darcy Lynn. I’ve got this.”
Irene’s squinting gaze stung like a hornet’s sting, worse than the acid burn on
Hannah’s upper cheek.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m angry, okay. You would be too if—” Only Hannah didn’t have an answer as to why. What was wrong with her? “I don’t know why I’m mad. I truly don’t.”
Protein bar wrappers, from fake chocolate to bland lemon zest flavors, floated on top of the foot-deep water. Cinnamon wafted from the opened bar that floated by like a tiny log.
The water, as she knelt, reached halfway up her calves and over the curve of her backside. Her saggy, too-big military pants extra drooped and hung on her as if they weighed a hundred pounds.
Water rose as quickly as her gushing temper.
Irene shrugged her shoulders and held out her hand, palm up. Rainwater splashed on her flattened hand.
“I know, I know, all right. The rain’s my fault.” Hannah blew out a full-lung exhale. “Don’t you think I would stop it if I could?”
“Those of you that rule the elements and us that are enhanced are all affected by the storm outside,” Merv said.
Hannah’s gaze drilled imagined holes through the door, then she glanced back to Irene’s face.
“Sorry.” Only Hannah wasn’t. Hot, tight mad balled in her belly like a giant fist.
“Imagine, Vincent said, “if I drew a whole series of single pictures of scenes in my mind.”
“Don’t you dare.” Hannah shoved the jar more tightly to the metal. The glass lip crunched. Quickly, she eased the pressure on the glass, but her hips and leg muscles stiffened, as if she might not stand straight again. “Forget what I said, okay?”
Irene, with a sideways glide of her gaze, slipped away.
Merv’s presence looming from behind her, Hannah shifted her upper body as if trying to shrug him away. The man was one of the people who took them from their parents, or even killed their mothers and fathers. And why her other guardian was dead and she and her brother were apart.
“We must adapt,” Vincent said. “We shall find new ways to be the amazing beings we were meant to be.”
The jar glass heat raised until warmth seeped into her fingers. Her overly chilled state, one that usually happened when she used her ability, cooled her hands enough to grasp the heating-up-fast jar.
Ever the Ice Princess, as Abe always taunted.