by Alexa Dare
Hannah angled the glass mouth, with a rotten egg whoosh, farther into the gap made by the bugs. “Irene or Merv, get some gloves. I need for you to hold the jar.”
“I can.” Water, two feet deep and more falling, splashed as Darcy Lynn hurried to the reeking acid-filled pickle jar.
“You had your mother, Vincent, and you met your father.” When she stood, the water reached above Hannah’s knees. “They both sucked, but at least you knew them.”
Merv, shoulder crawling up the corner of a shelving unit, slid to his feet and lifted the twins clinging to his neck above the deep pool. “Hannah, you’ve said more than enough.”
“Merv, do you really think helping us makes up for you being part of the project that took our parents from us and that made us the way we are? Or from being one of the groups that let the doctor perform tests on your own nephews?”
Stern-faced, her guardian Irene stepped in between the man and Hannah.
A quick over-the-shoulder glance told Hannah that Darcy Lynn, waist high in water, stood before the door, wearing adult-sized work gloves, and propped up the jar
“You knew all along, Irene, and you kept it from us. You never prepared us to fight against the secret organization’s project folks or let us know we needed to protect ourselves. Your own sister died because of your lies.”
Hannah caught a blurry movement in her vision’s edge.
Irene’s palm smacked Hannah’s blisterless cheek.
The smack of the slap shocked her—never before had Irene struck her—and for a second the hurt of the hit flooded out the burn on the other side of her face.
Within seconds, gallons of fresh, crisp water fell in stinging sheets.
An angry groan shrieked from her throat. As Irene had done to her earlier, Hannah turned her back on them.
A one-sided sneer slid across her lower face.
Fine, let them all drown.
Chapter 23
With gasoline fuel fumes from the unsteady rumble of the motor occasionally visiting the hull, the tank served as a metal cocoon for Nora.
As the black of night lightened to the pale charcoal of dawn, she sat in the closed-in interior, while one of Yates’ men drove, and two other living squeezed in, yet leaned as far away from her as possible. Yates, on edge and somber, sitting beside her, fidgeted in one of two seats behind the driver’s seat.
Metal, mechanical grease, and decomp hung like a swarm of gnats inside the vehicle’s belly.
“Good thing your men are trackers. We start the journey well-fed and eager to begin our new lives.” Nora’s belly no longer hurt. Feeding on three beef cows that had been stored in a below ground dairy, she and her zombie troupe were much happier campers.
“Our timing for the transfer must be perfect.” Nora sucked at a string of raw beef caught between her right molars. “You can perform the transfer of my essence into her upon command, correct?”
Yates’s brows lowered. “Timing is a big part of what I can do.”
“So, your abilities come and go as well?”
“Seem to.” Yates shrugged. For a teller of such intricate lies, he spoke such casual truth. “After the storm surges, like you said. I feel it coming on.”
“I see.” Well, that presents a dilemma.
With screeching creaks, Yates cranked opened the tank’s side panels—perhaps prompted by her and the librarian’s overly ripe decomposing conditions—so that the view of what must be morning dimly spreading across the unfamiliar starkness of the landscape was revealed.
Everything within sight and reach in the East Tennessee mountains presented gray, as a compliment to Nora’s current complexion.
Beneath a canopy of solid, coal-like clouds filled with faint, orange blips, soot-filled standing water gathered in pools on the scorched earth. No trees remained. Not even the spindly trunks from the earlier tornadoes’ savagery. Lush green replaced by crusted coatings of charcoal and ash, soaked by seeping groundwater to form a dirty slurry.
“The world is not as it was,” Nora said. “Nor as it should be.”
“We stop the storms, and the world will heal, and we can rebuild.” Yates’ hand hovered over hers tucked in her lap. He eyed her bluish gray skin and bluish fingernails, then pulled his hand away. “I’ll do right by you, Nora. You have my word.”
“Your words aren’t worth the breath it takes to speak them.”
Yates sat back, his lips pulled into the frown-laden pout she recalled from their time together so many years ago.
“Yates?” Nora longed for the once giddy excitement building in her chest during her interactions with her son’s father.
His heavy-lidded gaze, she supposed as she had long ago, indicated his boredom or disinterest in the situation at hand.
“Should you botch my transfer, the librarian will make sure all of you are hunted down and eaten alive.” She patted his knee. Her thumbnail flicked off and fell away. As any true southern lady would, she pretended not to notice. “Just so we grasp where the other stands.”
“I told you I would stand by you,” he said, lifting and dropping his shoulders in a massive shrug, “and I will.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
The brunette, sitting next to another guard behind Yates, mewled and sobbed in low, chuffing breaths.
The rapid and steady beat of their hearts entered her hearing and increased in sound.
Nora clasped her fingers, but when her right thumb tilted too far outward over the back of her hand, in hopes of minimizing any damage to her fast-devolving body, she eased her grip and placed her hands palm up on her lower thighs.
Two of Yates’ militiamen rode up top with some of the zombies, yet even from that distance she could hear their heartbeats strum.
Nora closed her eyes. In gentle sways, she relaxed her dead body into the tank’s movements. Her potential vessel, Nora didn’t recall or care to know the woman’s name, sat behind her, while the librarian stood farther behind and directed the zombie brigade from the open hatch.
Water, close to a normal temp for now, yet heavy with decay funk, dripped from the sagging hem of the dead woman’s dress in frequent plips against the tank’s metal floor.
The sound of human heartbeats lulled Nora, while she focused on keeping her hands to herself and tried not to acknowledge her once again revving state of hunger.
So much for gorging on steak tartar and filet mignon an hour ago.
Would Vincent fear her as a zombie? Be disgusted by her? Just as he claimed she’d made him what he was, her son caused her to become this thinking dead thing.
Despite her apparent relaxation, Nora anticipated bumps so she could open her mouth so her teeth wouldn’t hit together to dislodge more teeth. A bump jostled her, but she rode out the lurch with her eyes closed and mouth open to prevent any further harm.
She half dozed in the motor rumble and in the nestle of hearts, slow, steady, ever so slow, beating around her.
Something plopped into her lap to land on her palm.
She raised one eyelid.
How odd.
The fleshy part of an earlobe, blue gray and looking like melted rubber, rested in her hand. She turned her hand over to cover the piece that was no longer part of her.
Had Yates seen?
Yates’s skin, once filled with a healthy glow, held a bluish tint.
What?
The entire crew’s heartbeats seemed to have slowed, greatly so, as she relaxed.
Thwump. Long pause. Whump.
The driver slumped forward and the tank rolled to a stop.
“The living seem to have collapsed,” the librarian said.
Nora hadn’t touched them, not any of them, especially the men up top.
Yet she’d somehow mistakably slowed their heartbeats.
Nora’s evolved powers grew in strength as she keyed in on their sluggish heart rate and thought them into speeding up.
Soon, a normal rhythm beat in their chests. The pink and healthy hues o
f rosy cheeks returned.
Their hearts beat strong, yet the sound faded from her hearing. In a blink, her return of powers disappeared once again.
She elbowed Yates. Something popped in her elbow. “Hurry, Yates. There’s not much time.”
Nora cradled her limp lower arm, holding the bend of her elbow in place, not daring to let go.
Yates roused, flinching when he opened his eyes.
“You must do the transfer now.”
“Nora, despite my strong leaning toward self-survival, I do care for the person you were and the woman you are inside that…hull. If I tried now.” He rubbed his chest. “I’d lose you in mid-transfer, and maybe end up killing you and your vessel.
The vessel, giving off a temptingly sweet and sour flavor from her pores, sobbed not so quietly from behind Nora.
Nora kept her head straight ahead and the earlobe out of sight. She contented herself with the memory of the woman’s smooth, supple skin. Her strong jaw, her large, expressive eyes.
Features intended to belong to Nora.
The now dead Nora could stop hearts with her thoughts.
If only time would bend to her will.
Chapter 24
In the Observatory bomb shelter, Hannah, sucking in angry waterlogged breaths, sloshed through water well past her knees. Realizing she clutched her face, she dropped her hands to her sides.
The door, the others, the over-processed food—cinnamon protein bars, gag—everything, but also nothing at all, fueled her anger. Rage flooded and soured her fisted stomach, tightened her neck and shoulder muscles, and ramped her already fast-pumping lungs.
As the room darkened, the indoor rain stung worse.
The wet weighed down her too-big clothing.
With her back to everyone except Darcy Lynn, Hannah faced the door and all but ignored the wide-eyed little girl as she struggled to hold the oversized jar horizontal.
Hot and ragged, sobs threatened from under Hannah’s ribs to spew out of her clenched throat. Except, they’d be dry and heaving, because Hannah couldn’t—wouldn’t even if she were able—cry.
Shooting Hannah The Look, Irene, wrapped in faint lilac, waded past to help Darcy Lynn.
“Your emotions rule the rain, right?” Merv said. “Only stands to reason with the plunges and boosts of the storm, your feelings would take a ride too.”
A few feet away, Vincent stared at the wall, or more like out into nothingness, as if in a daze.
“Vincent,” Hannah said, “won’t you try and help?”
The teenager didn’t blink.
“I fear the boy’s lost in making moving pictures in his mind. Lord, help us, if the effects somehow make it out of his head,” Merv said. “Hannah, I realize you’re not yourself, but if you’re going to be angry, use that vinegar to break us out.”
“Hannah, there’s a little hole,” said Darcy Lynn. “And my arms are all noodley.”
Jolted into action, Hannah elbowed the little girl out of the way and took over holding the jar.
In steaming acrid sags, metal drooped around the latch in sunken dents. The bugs’ acid had eaten a hole through in a fist-sized place to reveal the darkness of the hallway.
“Send Vincent out first,” yelled Peyton from outside.
“Peyton, step back. Either you move or you’ll get splashed with acid or hit by one heck of a tidal wave. Your choice.”
“That a girl,” Merv said. “You be helping her with your wind, if you can Darcy Lynn, when the time’s right.”
Irene, with a quick squeeze of Hannah’s upper arm, slogged through thigh deep water to lift Darcy Lynn onto a waist-high shelf.
Merv sat the boys on middle shelves, and wide-eyed, Isiah and Jeremiah crouched
Hannah pushed the jar forward until the glass rim crunched and chipped against metal.
Why wouldn’t I be mad?
When the few bugs not killed by their own acid overload flew out the door’s opposite side, Hannah removed the goo filled jar. She set, away from the kids, the glass containing a dully-glowing blob filled with melting dead bugs onto a top shelf.
She used a light stick to peer inside the door slab, upward toward the latch.
“What’s the big deal,” Peyton said from just outside the door. “They’re just lightning bugs.”
Head ducked, Hannah snorted under her breath. “Why not check them out real close?”
Someone behind her—probably stuffy old Irene—smacked the waist-high water.
Frustrated, Hannah dropped her head backwards and studied the cotton candy clouds. She said, “The bugs spew acid when their body lights up. Take my word for it, these are no ordinary insects.”
“Why should I believe you?” Peyton, her voice dropping into a low threatening hiss, asked.
Hannah held the light stick alongside her head. “Look at my cheek.”
Mean Peyton’s hateful eye appeared in the opening.
Light stick near her face, Hannah tilted her chin aside to show the throbbing wound upon her cheek.
“Fine,” Peyton’s voice dripped hatefulness as stout as lightning bug acid. “Step back.”
Hits pounded and boomed along different parts of the outer door. The eye reappeared. “I’ll jimmy the latch from this side. Whatever you’ve done has loosened the door’s seal. Remember, I want Vincent. I won’t stop until he’s my prisoner.”
“Vincent’s not even talking. He’s in some sort of stupor or something. Why don’t you leave him and us alone?”
“Why are you all wet, besides the obvious reasons?”
“I won’t let you hurt him, Peyton.” Hannah’s stiffened jaw sent even harsher throbbing hurt into her acid-burned cheek.
“Except to splash me with water like before, what can a little girl like you do?”
“Make you wish you’d run while you could.” Hannah placed her trembling hand against the door. Tapped into her anger, she willed the water to gather, to push.
No fair that her twin and she had never known their parents. Wasn’t right that their other guardian and Irene’s sister had died.
From outside, metal clanked against metal as Peyton attempted to release the latch.
“Why’s there more water on one side of the room. Are we topsy turvy?” asked Darcy Lynn.
“It’s Hannah,” Merv said. “She’s opening the door.”
Water sloshed around Hannah’s neck and shoved the slab. Water as one. One with water. Flowing. Wet. Liquid. Fluid. Gather. Pool. A magnificent force, the pressure of the water around her increased, and the metal slab groaned. With a squeaking creak, the door’s bottom part curved outward.
“A little help here, Darcy Lynn.” Hannah braced.
A hard breeze gusted, shoving around the olive, sweet pickle, and acid fumes as if swishing to blow them away.
Darcy Lynn squealed. “I don’t want to play anymore.”
Hannah turned in the unrelenting tide until her back bumped metal.
Hair fluttering, the little girl hovered. Swirled in a swish of circling wind, she floated upright over the rising water. The wind buoyed her, and with a shoving gust, rushed toward the room’s front.
Shoved hard, Hannah rammed into the slab. A gasp of an inhale tugged the water into her windpipe. She gagged, coughed.
At her back, metal popped.
Behind Hannah’s back, the slab shifted in the doorframe. She, pressed flat by the force of the harsh gust, clutched the smooth surface.
Water droplets circled in the wind that held Darcy Lynn aloft, so that the top of her head remained a foot or so from the ceiling.
From underneath the water, a light fanned from the hole in the door.
Hannah, rolling on her shoulder, shifted inch-by-inch onto her front. Breath held, she slipped beneath the water’s surface.
Welcomed. At home.
Before the acid-eaten gap, where water gushed out, an eye, bloodshot and gray, stared back.
Through the cushion of water, a voice said, “Hannah, dearest, so
good to see you once again. I’m so thrilled we will be one big happy family.”
The door lurched outward. Water slammed Hannah forward. Under the intense force, her skull hit metal. Specks of light blinked in front of her eyes. Her head bounced back with a jerk of her neck.
The slab wrenched from the latch and hinges.
Too late to turn the tide, Hannah held on, tumbled into the arms of the head zombie.
Chapter 25
With a wrenching of metal, the thick door keeping the mouthy Hannah girl from Nora tore from the doorframe and fell into the hallway with a bang.
A five-foot tall wave of water shot out.
The force of the wave knocked Nora off her feet. Flat on her back, she lay as a deluge rushed over her. Her dead-weight flesh no longer able to shudder, she could practically feel the mold growing on her flesh as she used the hall wall to stand.
Beneath the rush of the stream, atop the door lying on the floor, Hannah slid along the surface of the metal slab. Sputtering, she looked like a cropped-haired mermaid out of water.
Outside the room, with Nora’s zombie troops and three militiamen, Yates bear-hugged the gagged and bound Peyton from behind.
One of the gun-toting men led Nora’s potential vessel with a nylon rope tied to her wrists bound in front of her. The woman gripped the rope with both hands, hung her head, and sniveled.
Yates pinned the struggling teen’s arms at her sides. He shined a flashlight into the safe room and chuckled. “Son, good to see you.”
Within the garlicky, pickle-putrefied room, the sixteen-year-old stared out into space and didn’t respond.
What had they been eating?
Lamb was so much more appealing.
“He doesn’t recognize you.” Nora longed to shake the water from her clumps of hair and ragged clothes but feared her nose and remaining ear might suffer the same fate of her former earlobe.
“I am your father, son,” said Yates.
“What are you talking about? The kid’s father is Brockton Yates.” Merv, Brody’s uncle, propped upright by a shelving unit, held the sniffling twins.
“Do you think you were the only one to be enhanced?” Yates smirked. “Roderick was as well, although we were forced to leave that vessel behind.”