Unrelenting Tide: A Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Children of the Elements Book 4)

by Alexa Dare

  It took the efforts of all three of them to lift the hatch.

  Flat on his stomach, Brody scooted to the edge of the hatch pressing sharp into his belly. Gripping the bottle light, he dipped his body from his belly up into the barely lit shadows to peer into the musky, dank hole.

  About a yard out, piping and wiring ran beneath the building and into the ground.

  “See copper pipe and wire.” Junior, his face half shadowed, knelt beside Brody and grinned.

  Brody lifted his head. Wrenching his grip loose from the hatch’s side, he managed a thumbs-up sign. His front canted down, and his upper body dipped farther into the hole. The bottle flipped out of his hand and hit with a dull sloshy thud.

  Brody fought to grip the edges but slipped.

  From below, scraping and shifting echoed.

  High-toned mewls and hissing headed toward the light.

  Chapter 32

  Cold numbed Hannah’s nose, and the upper tips of her ears and bare scalp seemed to draw the chill as she stayed out of Nora’s reach. Which wasn’t much help if the woman chose to kill with her mind.

  Nora, her long brown hair hanging around her face, stumbled and clutched her chest. Her wide-eyed gaze, set above sharp cheekbones and a turned-up nose, targeted Peyton and Hannah.

  In the classroom of the Observatory building, white covered the windows, inset waist-high in the walls, to hide the dimness of the morning. The icy snow piled so high that the windowpanes cracked. Screechy popping of glass sent puffs of icy chill into the cold already seeping through the thick outer wall.

  Hannah shivered, feeling more like a banana ice pop than herself. How deep is the snow and how cold? In any case, the outside freshness sucked the zombie stink out of the room.

  Nora pushed off from the doorframe and staggered toward Peyton and Hannah.

  Peyton’s paleness. Her freckles stood out in a dusting across her nose and cheeks. But the line of her mouth and tilt of her jaw… The teen readied to fight.

  Timid knocks vibrated through the door.

  “Nora, it is I,” Vincent called out.

  Hannah, her breath chugging, darted glances from Nora to Peyton.

  “Unfreeze the door, Hannah.” Nora, her pouty lips tinted blue, pointed. “Do it, or I end your friend Peyton with a single thought.”

  Unfreeze the door, but keep the soldiers frozen…

  The natural chill kept the guards iced for now, but since they were zombies, she had no clue as to how long before they would defrost.

  To keep from thawing the two deadsicles, Hannah edged closer to the door. She worked up her anger, then shot her fury at Nora toward the frozen layer wedging the wooden slab in the doorway.

  With a sucking whoosh, the ice crystals melted and water dripped down the wood.

  Nora, gasping, waved for Hannah to open the door.

  Paler than Peyton and even what Hannah imagined her scalp to be, the sixteen-year-old’s round cheeks lengthened and his eyes widened at the sight of his mother’s zombie body lying at the front of the room. Brows lowered, he dropped his chin to his chest. “I did that to her.”

  Zombies milled and growled in place in the hallway as Hannah pushed closed the door.

  “Whatever happened doesn’t matter because I’m no longer in need of that body,” said the latest Nora. “Together, my smart, talented son, we can live on and on.”

  Hannah, darting quick glances toward Nora closed the door and refroze the slab in place.

  “You claim to be the Scientist Nora Hicks?” Vincent stood, looking like an oversized toddler, all hunched over and blinking in shock.

  “I not only assert but can provide proof that I am.” Nora smiled a tender smile. “Remember, the dog we used to imagine you might have some day? You were to name him Sir Barkley Barks-a-lot, when you were six years old.”

  “I never received a canine companion,” Vincent edged around her. “Yet you have been granted a new body.”

  “Yates called her my vessel.” Nora ran her fingers through her long, flowing brunette strands.

  Discomfort heated, and probably flushed, Hannah’s bald head like a guiding light lantern at the top of a castle tower. How awful it must have been to have Nora as a mother.

  “This form is quite attractive, don’t you think?” With a sorrowful—fake no doubt—expression pulling at her eyes and mouth, Nora cast a forlorn look at the slumped body of Vincent’s dad. “I am so sorry about his regrettable, but necessary death, Vinny.”

  The teenager’s feet slid slower than a zombie shuffle. The poor guy. He’d lost his father… And soon would lose his mother. Sadness for him chilled and filled Hannah’s chest. If she had anything to do with it, Nora wouldn’t leave this room alive.

  So cold.

  She aimed her deep sadness directly at Nora.

  Standing over his father’s body, Vincent shook his head. His expression slack, he glanced toward and studied Nora. “I barely knew him.”

  “The former militiaman, Brockton Yates,” Nora said, “in his current form, while living, might very well have made a better father in the future, if he were able.”

  Hannah edged behind Peyton, bent low, and whispered, “We can be on the same team. Or not. Your choice.”

  “Now that we are together, Nora.” Vincent stepped over the legs of his dad’s body as if the man was a sack of potatoes. “You shall let the girls go now.”

  “You’re my sweet, kind boy.” Nora leaned over a chair back and wheezed. Her lower blue-tinged lip quivered. My current vessel is not quite suitable.” Nora clutched her chest. “She is rather damaged, I fear; therefore, I require another, more suitable host.”

  “I shall not let you harm anyone else.” Vincent, stiff backed, marched to stand between the teens and Nora.

  “Oh, you are precious, but since I no longer need touch, you can’t protect them.” Nora opened her mouth wide as if she let out a gigantic, tonsil-revealing yawn.

  A crushing knot formed in Hannah’s chest.

  A string of greenish yellow smoke shot from Nora’s mouth to aim directly at Hannah.

  “No.” She shoved Peyton the rest of the way to the floor and dove to the side.

  The green mist shot over Peyton and curved.

  Hannah crawled to the wall.

  The shooting flow rushed at her, backing her against a window, until her shoulders pressed against the broken glass and icy cold wet shoved at her back.

  “You will be mine,” said Nora.

  Did the voice come from Nora, the mist, or inside Hannah’s head?

  “Welcome me,” coaxed Nora.

  Hannah held her breath and shook her head.

  Like a mask, the smothering mist covered Hannah’s face. A sharp, lemony jolt curled the outer edges of her tongue near her back teeth.

  Forever ago, but only a few days past, she longed for the days where she and her brother foolishly built bonfires to guide their long-dead parents home.

  “Wait.” Peyton held up the rolled envelope. “What about the letter with your name on it? I slipped it out of Hannah’s waistband. Don’t you want it?”

  “I’ll have it in due time.”

  “Not if I rip it to pieces and feed it to the zombies.” Not only was Peyton a good pickpocket, but a smart bargainer to boot. “Leave her be, and it’s yours.”

  The rushing mist entered Hannah’s nostrils. Slipped between her lips. Shoved into her ears.

  From somewhere far away, the sound of tearing paper reached her hearing.

  The mist sucked away and left her.

  Hannah collapsed onto her hands and knees. She gasped in a faint rot tinge as if it were a sharp summer breeze.

  Ears heated with shame because she’d let Nora get the upper hand, she tugged the icy chill away from Peyton. The least she could do was give the older teenaged girl a chance to fight.

  “Vincent,” Nora said, staging to a desk seat, “bring my envelope to me.”

  Vincent took the large envelope from Peyton. His gaze
slid, slow and soulful, back and forth between Hannah and Peyton.

  As he angled across the front of the room, as if he took the scenic route, he stumbled. Pitching forward, his free hand sank into the abdomen of Nora’s useless zombie body. His hand squelched in up to the wrist.

  “You mustn’t be so clumsy,” said Nora.

  “My sincerest of apologies.” The suction of his hand from the discarded corpse stirred the putrid rotten stench.

  Bile gurgled up Hannah’s throat and spread bitter before she could quick swallow.

  One handed and with his clean fingers, he opened the envelope flap. Quite the gentlemen, he held the nasty hand away from Nora.

  Nora slipped out the contents. Her hands shook, and her clutching fingers rumpled the paper.

  “Shall I read your hand-penned letter?” asked Vincent.

  She passed the letter back to him.

  “This looks private. For your eyes only.”

  “We will soon be me. So we can exist, truly together, forever. Read it.” Nora, clawing at her chest, wheezed.

  Hannah, dizzy and weak, tried to bring together and focus the dampness. Only to fail. Making it to her knees, gulping tinny saliva, she swayed.

  Vincent moved a couple of yards closer to his mother, while maintaining a vigil of standing between her and Hannah.

  Peyton remained still. The alertness of her gaze and her fisted hands showed she’d returned to a normal temperature and was at the ready.

  Peyton wanted to kill Vincent.

  Vincent could, with a sketch, kill them all.

  While Nora would most likely destroy them with her will.

  Funny. Not ha-ha, but sad.

  “The note is from the long-dead general’s aide, the dearly-departed Fitz Ross.” Vincent blinked. His gaze held Hannah’s as if he wanted to say something. Like his gaze spoke, but Hannah didn’t catch the words.

  “My dearest, Nora,” Vincent read in his sharp-worded voice. “When I came looking for my children, I never expected to find a woman I could care for as I had my first love. You are strong, and though your unchosen and unwelcome abilities have brought you great hardship, you have persevered to be an admirable woman.”

  “How uncommonly sweet.” Nora shrugged.

  “We will take your son and my Abe and Hannah and will make a life together, if you will have me.”

  “Huhn. Huhn.” Cold locked Hannah’s lungs. No breath in or out. Hannah gripped the floor.

  “I came to keep them safe,” Vincent went on. “I shall make it up to them the best I can for not being there for them. They, and you, are my future, and my life. Signed, Yours, Fitzgerald Ross.”

  An inhale sucked into Hannah as if she readied for a scream. “Our father. We never knew him, and you killed our father in front of us.” Panting, Hannah lurched to her feet. She should have opened the envelope marked with Nora’s name earlier. “Nora, he—he—he loved you, and you killed him.”

  “What does it matter?” Nora shrugged. “I’ve killed everything I’ve touched.”

  “It matters. He mattered. We mattered.” With a shriek, Hannah lunged to grab the letter from Vincent.

  Snow—that frozen wonder of water—burst through the windows with her movement, as if mimicking Hannah’s attack.

  Window glass shattered. Cold surged into the room like a tidal wave of icebergs. The snow knocked Vincent off his feet. The letter went flying. His gore-stained index finger stood stark against the sugared white.

  Snow covered Hannah. She lay within, felt herself a part of the cold. Never had she felt snow so heavy or so much a part of her. The cold, like a soft cotton quilt, wrapped around her.

  “The others need you to stop all this. We have to go.” Vincent dug out clumps from around her, tugged at her clothes, pulled at her lower arms.

  “No, leave me alone.” Yes, leave her in peace in her element where she belonged. Water slipped between her lips in fresh coolness.

  Closer to the window, snow buried Nora deep, so that only her hand stuck out from under the starkness.

  “I’ll take care of Nora.” Peyton tossed one of the jagged arm bones their way. “You’ve got powers that can help. Get out of here, before I kick both of your butts.”

  “Come with us.” Hannah allowed Vincent to pull her upright. With a desperate grab, she clasped the bone on top of the packed snow.

  “Not interested in being part of a group.” Peyton squirmed to free her legs from the banked ice-packed pile.

  “Your opportunity for survival may hinge upon your leaving with us.” Vincent reached out his hand as if to tug her from the snow pile.

  “Staying.” Peyton glared. “Get out.”

  Snow shifted from where Nora’s Olivia-body lay beneath.

  Vincent tugged Hannah upright and yanked her along. Through a floating out-of-it-ness, Hannah unfroze the door, and once in the hallway, she iced the dead.

  With crinkling pops, the dead flesh on the zombies frosted.

  “Hurry, Vincent.” They ran down the hall until, she backed against the double doors. “They aren’t alive, so the deep freeze won’t hold long.”

  Vincent, with the arm bone, stabbed several in crunchy sloshes. Wrapped in the stench of iced decay, he took out more zombies before falling back.

  “Wait. You’ve got a game going on. Earlier, you fell on purpose, didn’t you?” Hannah’s feet dragged to a stop. “Vincent, what did you draw?”

  “I used the envelope to make a quick sketch.”

  “Everything else we’ve done has made things worse. If what you did goes wrong…”

  “This sketch shall not.”

  “And you know this how?” Hannah eye rolled, spun around, and pounded the theater’s double doors. “It’s us. Let us in.”

  “Hannah, I extend my deepest sympathy for your loss.”

  “Same here.” Her flesh and joints ached as if… From the cold. But cold had never affected her that way. Not ever. A shiver jarred her elbows against her ribs and an odd taste like freezer-burn smell edged her tongue.

  “We are Vincent and Hannah.” Vincent smacked his hand against the door. “We shall help.”

  “Abe it’s us. I have something to tell you.” Hannah shoved the push bar latch. “I need to tell Abe about our father.” She lowered her choked voice, “Abe needs to know that our father was out there after all.”

  Hannah beat her fists against the door’s surface. The blue of her fingernails startled her. The cold, for the first time in her life, refused to leave her. Her teeth chattered. Crisp ice crystals formed on her taste buds.

  Growling erupted from down the hallway, and a female scream cut off in mid shriek.

  Peyton? Nora?

  Panicked, Hannah lifted her arm to strike again, but in mid-strike stopped. Her lungs emptied. Her exhaling breath iced on the rim of her nostrils.

  “Hannah,” Vincent asked as if he yelled from the water’s surface as she sank to the depths, “what’s going on?”

  She wanted to explain. Call for help. Throw a tantrum. But she was too busy freezing solid, from the inside out.

  Chapter 33

  From directly below the lower level, squeaks, hisses, clicking scratches, and rubbing slithers sounded. An odor of animal-type urine and musk oozed from the crawlspace holding the majority of the Observatory building’s piping and wiring.

  “Ah, gak.” Despite needing both hands to haul himself up, Brody clamped a hand over his nose and mouth. Through his palm, he muttered, “Snakes.”

  The bottle light glowed in the crawlspace pit that pulled him down.

  Junior and Abe gripped his lower legs, stopped his downward tilt into the barely lit abyss beneath the massive building.

  “Snakes.” The set of hands on his ankle trembled. Junior, in a choked whisper, said, “And mice or rats.”

  The mewling turned into howling shrills and the hissing grew so loud Brody longed to cover his aching ears and curl up in a ball in a closet somewhere.

  Hide. Run.


  A monstrous crash sounded from above. The force boomed through the building so hard that the concrete floor shook and the opened hatch rattled on its hinges.

  Only the grips on his legs kept Brody from pitching face first into the hole.

  “The auditorium.” Abe tugged at Brody’s other leg. “We gotta get back there.”

  “The roof. I doubted what I heard and myself. We have to help them. But we need the copper. If we can get some of the pipe…” Brody held his breath, gripped the hatch lip, and shoved back. “We need enough to harness our energies and the energy of the storm.”

  “What if I fry whatever’s down there?” Abe’s hand on his calf grew warm.

  “Ouch. Your touch burns.” Brody kicked and wiggled his leg, tossing the kid’s hand away.

  Brody fast backed, onto his knees, and sat on his heels.

  “Sorry.” Abe’s too-flushed face shone in the blaze of his levitating fiery ball. Along with a bit of mild smoke, the floating crackle of flames put out heat, but not enough to turn the thirteen-year-old face bright pink.

  “If there’s gas build up down below.” Brody’s mind filled with strings, like zombie muscles and ligaments, of ideas. “The whole place might explode.”

  Lots of ideas. Thoughts rushing like a raging river, no way to hang on to any one of them.

  What was going on with his thinking?

  “Could a ripple in the ground lift the pipes within reach?” Junior nudged Abe’s arm to get him to show light below.

  “I think, uh, maybe, the structure of the foundation would weaken.”

  “What then?” Junior sat on the floor. His too-slim and bony little kid’s elbows tucked into his ribs and his back hunched as if he all of a sudden suffered mega pain.

  “I don’t know.” Thoughts slipping, like shower water swirling down the drain, Brody forced himself to think. The now familiar, with the onset of their abilities, sugared metallic zest shot into his mouth. "If we make a connection to the EMF blaster device on the building roof and you guys can hold sections of wire or pipe, the copper will serve as a conduit for your energy.”

  “Water conducts energy, right?” Abe asked. Sweat dripped off the kid as if he stood outside without a baseball cap on a southern August day.