by Alexa Dare
“What?” Brody blinked.
“There’s plenty of water.” Junior gripped his elbows and moaned. “It’s rained for days. Water will do what you want the copper to do.”
“Yes. Of course. What was I thinking? All we need is a single strand, leading up to the blaster. I guess I outthought myself.” He tried to cull the truth from his ping-pong thoughts. A big aspect of what played out, flittered, teased, just out of reach.
“Close the hatch.” Junior lunged for the lid. He faltered, reeled, his knees rigid, and teetered on the edge of the hole.
While Abe latched on to Brody’s arm, Brody grabbed for the kid and tugged him back.
Below, in the grayness, dark shapes writhed and scurried.
Abe grabbed the door flap, and the three of them struggled to put it back in place. The thirteen-year-old shoved the slab downward, swaying on his feet. “My temp’s shot way up.” He yelped and skittered back. “I see colors when I talk.”
Snakes, every length, with all sorts of patterns of grays and slivers and yellows, slithered out from the edges of the hatch before it whumped closed, and naked-tailed, tannish-gray rats leapt from the shadows.
“Are they real?” Abe clenched his eyes closed.
“Uh , heck, yes to the rats and snakes. Not the colors.” Brody grabbed Abe. Heat emanated from the boy and scorched Brody’s hand. Sucking in his pain, he grabbed a handful of sleeve, and twisting, he pulled the teen away from the hissing, writhing mass flowing out from under the building.
Fever obviously sky-high, tottering, blinking away stuff that might or might not be real, Abe set several rats bursting into flame.
The flames, filled with scorching fur and rodent flesh, for a short time, held back the onslaught.
Junior flopped atop the hatch dropping the lid closed in a slamming whap.
“Won’t hold them for long.” Brody nudged his temple with the ball of his hand. “Why didn’t I think of water? I came close to getting us killed for wire and a piece of pipe.”
Junior hunched over like an ancient old man unable to unbend his joints or his spine. “Told you, you think too much. But something’s gone wrong. Hurts. Real. Bad.”
By his hold on his shirt, Brody led a feverish and dizzy Abe, while he helped Junior along by holding him upright with the waistband of his pants.
In a quick supply raid, they ducked into the bomb shelter and scrounged as many packets of rations they could shove into their shirts in a few seconds flat.
Abe’s floating fire light, hovering a few feet out directly in Abe’s line of sight, grew dimmer, and, once they got into the hallway, flickered. “The time of our power is fading.”
Squeaks and hisses filled the shadows of the hall.
They ran—no more like stumbled and staggered—for the stairs.
“Can we do this, with using water?” Abe asked. Did his hand sear on the metal of the stair railing?
Brody grunted under the weight of the rations and holding the two boys upright. “Abe, what’s happening to you?”
“My temp spike is off the charts.”
“The water will work.” Brody shook his head in a useless attempt to clear the cobwebs. “I feel stupid not to have keyed on the simplest solution before.”
“Hannah’ll be able to help, after we rescue her.” Abe squinted out in front.
The fireball sputtered.
Once back at the leftmost set of doors, Junior slumped against the latch bar. The door shoved open.
“They were supposed to re-block the doors.”
“Something’s not right.” Abe pressed his forehead to the doorframe. A sizzle and his brow came away red, as if seared. He shoved into the auditorium “Nothing’s right.”
Moans within a chilled unlit room greeted them inside the door.
A whoosh brought light to the room.
In the glow of a second, smaller and less bright, ball of flame over the stage area revealed that piles of snow and glass mounded the stage’s center and most of the front seats.
Room-sized high or maybe even to second floor high, piles of thick white heaped toward the ceiling.
“I can melt the snow slowly.” The fireball gasped out and back into existence, as if on a switch with Abe’s blinks. “Too fast, and there’ll be burns.”
“Too much glass to shake things up.” Junior, bent over in pain, all but crawled down the steps.
“Not sure.” Where were the ideas? His words. “No time. The storm and our powers are waning again.”
With their hands, then when forced by the cold, they used broken chair seats or backs to scoop, they worked together to dig child after child from the debris and snow of the collapsed roof.
“Brody, he’s not moving,” Abe said of one of little boys.
“Cut pretty bad,” Junior added, scooping aside red stained white slush.
“We’ll come back and do right by him later. Let’s move on.” Something inside Brody shrank and burrowed down deep.
They found three dead.
“I always thought death smelled like grave dirt.” Junior stared out from the hollows of his eyes. “But it’s like zombie stink or cold and nothing at all.”
They placed the living against the side wall, at the start of the left seating section, out of the brunt of the harshest chill and snowy rain pouring in through the gaps in the ceiling.
A dozen, with scrapes and bruises, were cold, wet, and huddled together near the injured.
Their shocked silence and confused, hopeless gazes chilled Brody to the bone. His aching half-numbed fingers throbbed. Prickling poked at the chill of his eyeballs, as if his natural tears iced.
They found Darcy Lynn unmoving on the first row.
They dug her out and placed her tiny, fragile body with the injured.
Screwing his mouth closed, Brody forced bitter rising sobs back down his throat in little hitching grunts. His cheeks worked as if he stored sunflower seeds and corn kernels within them like a hamster.
“If we’d been here...” Junior held Darcy Lynn’s blue-tinged hand.
Like a ball of too-tough beef, a sob stuck, and Brody swallowed the knot of emotion . His throat gripped so hard the squeezing pain caused his eyes to water. “I know. None of us might have made it out.”
Three more kids, shivering and gasping, came next.
“They are running out of air.” Brody went back to scooping with his hands, though he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. “Free as many faces as you can.”
Because of the numbing cold, the piles lay heavy, like globs of dumped cement, along the front row, yet in quick fits and starts, like an in-step rescue brigade, they dug every foot and a half down the row.
Abe, no longer keeping up the firelight, scooped snow from around his guardian’s head, while Junior uncovered Merv.
The ominous orange blips of the black clouds overhead lent a crimson haze like a blood moon over the Hawkins County Tennessee mountains. The hue splashed the snow’s starkness.
Fingers filled with a numb throbbing, Brody uncovered one more person on the far side of his uncle.
The older girl, Tonya clasped Brody’s hand, opened her mouth, and sucked in hitching, grasping gulps.
“We’ll be back. We’ll get you out.” Why had he doubted himself? Heck, he always did. “We shouldn’t have left you.”
“If you had.” Tonya’s cheeks so smooth and stark against the white snow blew out puffs of cinnamon-tinged breaths. “We’d all have died. There would be no one to dig us out.”
The rest of the seats in the row proved to be empty. He cradled his fingers in his armpits before he dove in to dig the people in the second row out.
“Merv can heal those that can be healed.” Brody rocked his upper body to generate more internal warmth.
“Don’t think so.” Junior, on his knees atop the snow hugged himself and hung his head.
In a frantic rush, Abe and Junior cast looks at Uncle Merv’s blue face and dug in quick grabs around Irene and the boy
s that had been trapped with Hannah in the shelter room.
The sight of his uncle’s gauntness knocked Brody back a step. “No. Uncle Merv?”
Tromping through the banked snow, with numb hands, Brody grabbed at the lower curve of his uncle’s neck. “Fingertips are too numb. Can’t find a pulse. There has to be one.”
His uncle’s hand shot up and grabbed the neckband of Brody’s t-shirt.
Smacking short-stroked slaps, Brody squealed and yanked back.
“I’ve not expired. Yet. Once I do, you know what you have to do.” Uncle Merv pulled a shocked and struggling Brody close. “You’ll have to take care of all of us that don’t make it.”
The too-sweet offness, like over-saged sausage ready to go bad, fanned his face. Not wanting to listen—oh, man, he so did not want to hear—Brody shoved at the man’s big hand to knock his hold away.
Merv gave the shirtfront a shake. “Surviving in a world where the deck’s stacked against you ain’t easy, son. Thought I was doing good for you and your brother, but I was wrong. Tell Irene—”
“She’s right here beside you.” How much more could an ex-techno geek take? If only, the stabbing chill might freeze the hurt inside him. “You’ll get better. With Cantrell gone, you’re the only family I have left.”
All the color, even the bloodstained snow and redder-than-red glow, around him turned to faded sepia.
Sharp fear flavor turned to blandness.
“You. Kids. One another.” His uncle’s gaze stared out into nothingness, as if he set his sight on things beyond this life and focused on whatever lay next.
“Uncle Merv?” Under his ribs ached as if his heart shriveled.
Uncle Merv gasped. “Tell Irene. Love. Her. Dearly. You’re like. Son. To...” Merv’s head dropped and bobbed too loose on his neck, to flop at a sharp angle to the side.
Irene clawed at Brody’s upper arm. Head shaking she threw back her head and screamed. Her former siren’s voice roared out a shriek like none to ever touch his ears before.
Her shrill screech echoed through his brain, ripping parts of his awareness away.
Chapter 34
Piercing screams drilled Brody’s ears and sliced away at his brain like a hot knife to a stick of butter.
His legs buckled, and he flopped onto his back on a snow pile. Tinny spit surged as he lay face up, atop mounds of snow, staring into the ice-filled rain falling through the gouges in the Rocky Top Observatory auditorium roof.
The squeal burst through the auditorium, if not the whole building. Whereas Irene’s lovely singing lulled and lured even the zombies, her echoing shriek blared like a runaway train or a bullet blasting from a rifle muzzle.
No longer a siren, whose voice soothed even the risen dead, she let out a long screech.
From something his once sharp mind read…
The wail of the banshee warned of pending death. From siren to banshee. No wonder the woman had stopped speaking and singing.
The smell of those freshly dead echoed the strange times.
More death to come?
Confusion claimed Brody, while the shriek of the banshee shrilled on and on.
***
“It’s not time yet, bro.” His brother Cantrell, wrapped in the earthy pine of the outdoors, leaned over him and grinned an in-your-face Cheshire smile.
Brody stared upward, taking in his brother’s friendly open face backed by the broken building roof. His bronzed face and reddish-brown hair popped bright before a backdrop of the metal girders and the strange oily shifting of the sky.
“You’re dead.” Pressure sat on Brody’s chest as if a boulder sat on the curve of his ribs. “I buried you. Twice. Once in the river. Once outside this building, on the edge of the parking lot, in a rock-covered grave.” Brody dragged his eyelids closed.
He yanked them opened with a quick flare. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Did you reckon I was waking you for blueberry pancakes? Maybe showing up to take you on to the unknown. Big range of emotions, huh, bro.” Cantrell chuckled.
Hands patting his chest, to perhaps shove aside that heavy awkward weight on top, Brody’s breath fanned in thin rasps. “Am I? Did I? Uh, um…croak.”
“You’re above the daisies. I’m the one who’s dead, Steady Brody.”
The outdoorsy aroma turned rancid, like damp soil. A shudder wrapped Brody’s neck.
Grave dirt.
Except he buried Cantrell atop the ground, under a pile of rocks. Then, his body was burned to keep him from coming back, once again, as a zombie.
An odor of soil and singed cloth—not flesh, oh, heck no—hung heavy and shoved at Brody’s tonsils.
“It’s you who doesn’t belong here.” Cantrell’s wide grin edged to clownish. “Get your butt back there and help those kids.”
“I’ve been lost. In the woods and inside myself ever since this mess started.” Brody reached for his brother’s shoulder.
Cantrell leaned just out of reach.
“I miss you.” A hot chokehold pressed against Brody’s throat. “Life’s not right without you.”
“The world’s not like it used to be, that’s all,” said Cantrell. “Just like the storm has changed your ability to think with your smarts is changing, so has Irene’s voice. Her banshee scream sent you to your greatest wish, yet before you go, you’ll meet what you most fear.”
“I’m glad you’re here, but I’ll pass on the most fearful stuff.”
“After that, you either stay in the loop, facing those two things over and over again in limbo while your physical body lays and rots, or you return to your life the way it was.”
“I could stay?” Brody blinked scratchy lids over hot eyeballs. “With you?”
“If you so choose.” Cantrell quirked one side of his mouth.
“You think I should go back?” Brody asked and sighed. “Every day is so hard.”
“Life is hard.” Cantrell shrugged. “Always is. Always will be.”
“Kids dying.” Brody clenched his eyes shut against the hot wetness pooling behind his lids. “What about Merv? Can I trade my life for his?”
“Uncle Merv’s passed on. No swaps. Doesn’t work that way. Good try though, bro.” Rough hands shook him, forced him to open his eyelids.
His brother’s sad gaze pinned him to soppy wet snow.
Licking the cold saltiness from his lower lip, he glanced past his brother and keyed on the orange blimps in the sooty clouds. “You’re Can-Do Cantrell. Can’t you pull some strings?”
“Not even for my favorite brother.”
“I’m your only brother.” Brody’s mouth tugged into what had to be a sickly grin.
“Good thing, because I don’t won’t have to put up with yet another one. Since the first one’s nickname is Steady. Yet he’s anything but.”
“Hey.”
“I had enough of your bumbling. Putting up with another you? Why would I want to live another day?”
“You stop.” Brody squirmed in place. He dug in his heels to slide out from under his hovering brother. His feet slid, and he remained stuck in place. “You’re not yourself.”
“I’m not, but I bet you wish you weren’t you. How does it feel to go all your life longing to be someone other than who you really are because you will never be good enough?”
Brody jerked his face side to side, sucked cold earthy inhales. “This is my worst fear, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Cantrell sneered, his once kind gaze narrowed and accusing. He snapped his fingers.
Gone.
No poof. No witchy cackle of laughter. No crackle of ions.
His brother just vanished.
The soggy snow at his back soaked cold through Brody’s shirt. Jarred by the sudden rush of cold wetness, he sat up.
Only a couple of yards away, Merv’s corpse slumped in a front row seat.
Irene’s body slumped over his chest.
Abe and Junior lay lifeless on the snow, their little boy hands reachin
g toward Brody.
The rest of the children rested unmoving along the wall.
Dead. All dead.
Even cold, the decay stench flooded the place.
“Can’t be.”
Did Irene’s scream kill them all?”
The two sets of double doors stood open. Piles of zombies lay in the doorway and trailed into the corridor.
“Wait. My greatest fear times two.”
The real Cantrell was one confused brother, but not out-and-out mean.
So the others being dead…
A lie. All lies.
Junior’s body moved.
Brody, slipping and sliding, lurched to his feet and slid toward the boy.
Rats, naked-tailed, mangy-furred, and stinking of rat pee, squirmed out from beneath the body.
Hoofing it back, Brody tripped and landed butt first in the snow. The jar of his tailbone banged his rear teeth together.
The rats attacked.
Naked tails slapping, their tiny claws clung to his clothes and skin. They bit, in stabbing, stinking bites, and gnawed.
Brody screamed.
“Easy, easy, bro,” said Cantrell’s out-of-nowhere voice.
“Cantrell, please.”
“What’s it going to be?” his brother’s voice asked. “We can spend time together through eternity, but then you’ll face your fear, over and over. Or you go back to the real horror of the disaster you caused. Time to choose.”
***
In the hallway before the closed theater double doors, Hannah stood frozen. Cold that followed the use of her power, except way more chilly, seeped through her muscles, locking her in place.
A scream, from the depths of someone’s very soul, shot from the auditorium where a big crash boomed only seconds ago.
No ordinary yell, the shriek vibrated through Hannah’s icy frame like one of Junior’s quakes.
Behind her eyes, dizzy loops swirled.
Yet, the freeze of water—all she was about and was, hugged her as if one of Irene’s mountain ballads.
“My sister has a lovely voice, does she not?” Louise, Irene’s sister, her long auburn hair hanging in a single braid from over her shoulder and down her chest to her belly, stood in a white flannel nightgown before the doors.
Joy gushed like warm hot cider in Hannah’s chest.