by Alexa Dare
“We can do this,” Hannah said. “Look, I know I’ve been, uh, not so nice at times.”
“A meany, but not a big bad one.” Darcy Lynn grinned.
“I shall reach deep within the void,” Vincent said. “We shall be one.”
“Send the energy on, I’ll send it up the wire. Hannah will share it with the rain.” Abe’s wild eyes darted to the gaping holes in the roof. “This has to work.”
“Okay, fine, I’ve not been the nicest,” said Hannah. “I care about you guys. I always have.”
“We love you too, Hannah.” Darcy Lynn waved her fingers over the curve of the wire.
A sharp breeze spun about Hannah’s bald head.
“Love you.” Isaiah smacked his lips in kisses. “I want hair like yours.”
“Let’s not get sappy or silly.” The upper tips of Hannah’s ears warmed. “Let’s send all our energy up and out.”
“Like people batteries.” Abe, his face flushed hot pink from his effort to focus their energy surge, stared hard at the wire just in front of him.
Foot-long bolts zinged from the copper.
Brody bobbed at the end of Hannah’s arm.
She held on tight, tried to tug him farther from the crackling strand.
A bolt, with a loud sap, struck his butt.
“Ow, ow, ow.”
The kids giggled.
The fumes of singed cloth wafted with wisps of gray smoke.
Hannah spread out her energy.
Water and she.
As one.
Ah, the story the water told.
Water shared with her the grasp of what was going on in the reach of the rain.
The valley was filled. Rivers left their banks and merged. Water sloshed against church spires and ripples rung the bells. Debris floated, while the creeks soaked the lands.
In the here and now, a rush of hissing fumes, white light rode the wire. Hiss. Snap. The glow shot upward.
“Irene, roll the roller the other way.” Brody yelled, “Now.”
Irene sang a lyric-less tune from above. Her sad song lifted into the rain. Yet the notes held…
Hope. Joy.
Hannah gave.
A swoosh and pop flashed bright in the gloom.
Irene’s voice faded, then her song rang out loud and strong.
Thunder rolled overhead. Boom.
Zap. Long jagged orange bolts blasted.
“She’s singing in the day for us all. Let’s help her bring in the new dawn,” Brody said. “Irene, you can flip the switch now.”
“We’re blasting the clouds away.” Junior peered into the muted sky.
Isaiah’s hold tensed on Hannah’s hand.
The bleak sky paled to gray. Pale rays fanned.
“It’s working,” Darcy Lynn yelled.
The clouds sucked solid again, tinted back to black.
Irene’s song cut off.
The glow sizzled and zinged down the wire.
“Irene. Turn. The. Switch.” Brody jerked free of Hannah. He swung and clawed at the rope on his ankle. His swing took him too close to the sparks.
The wire hummed as if taking up the tune of Irene’s now quiet song.
“Backlash,” Brody yelled. “Let go.”
Only Abe didn’t.
Hannah sensed he pushed harder.
About two feet within the roof edge, the wire sparked red.
“What about last time when things went wrong?” Yet Hannah added her own mental shove.
“That was starting,” Abe said. “This is ending.”
“What’s going on with Irene?” If only they might see past the hole and onto the rooftop.
“Guys, you’ve got to let go.” Brody didn’t give an answer about Irene.
Hannah, with both hands, gripped the cord hard. “Can we do this, if we push back hard enough?”
“In theory.” Brody scowled. “Dang it. Tonya, take the little ones to the hall. Even to the other side of this place. You can’t stay in this room. This isn’t a kid’s game. This is to the death.”
“Can’t we just make do? Live in the world the way it is?” Tonya asked.
“Bugs, snakes, worms, and spiders have mutated.” Brody swayed. “Which means other changes, of all kinds, might be in the works.”
“Do you mean for us?” The sky’s red haze tinted Tonya’s wide brown gaze.
Worry, like iced tea without sugar, gurgled in Hannah’s tummy.
“Perhaps. Maybe. Likely. I’m not real sure.” Brody glanced up at the red glow oozing six feet inside the roof. “Take the kids away from here, please.”
“Why? If that’s going to happen to us.” Tonya held on to the boy and the wire even tighter.
“Even if the backlash gets us, the storm should… Uh. Um. Break up.” Brody shook his head. “We gotta hurry, I’m losing my smarts, which means—”
“We’re losing our oomph too,” said Junior.
“I’m stuck.” Isaiah frowned.
The other little ones jerked back, but their hands held on as if glued.
Letting out a sweet vanilla sigh, Isaiah rested his head on Hannah’s outer upper arm.
“Water. Conduit. I know this. I do.” Brody’s eyes glazed. “Like a magnet. You can’t let go. I should have worked it out. Our powers are shifting. After the storms, each side effect is so much worse.”
Twelve feet inside the ceiling, the red buzzed loud and flowed to halfway along the wire.
“All of us. We must think happy thoughts and send them to the sky.” Hannah reached way down inside, then pushed outward.
“Happy, happy, happy,” Isaiah said.
The knowing of how far the water spread and rose, fast faded. She got the gist of lakes rushing into the oceans and giant oceans flooding the lands.
“Water’s the key.” Instead of aiming at the tiny wire strand, Hannah homed in on the steady shower. “Of course.”
Water was the all and the end.
Hannah closed her eyes. She placed her cheek against the toddler’s brow and inhaled his wet kid scent. “So, so sorry about your brother, little guy.”
“Me too, you too.”
Instead of sending their energy along the wetness of the wire or directly up the raindrops, Hannah focused on the water as a whole.
Like a big sponge, the wetness soaked up their powers.
Screams pried her eyelids open.
The biggest spider ever climbed down the strands of Brody’s white rope.
The shiny black, with pulsing eyes and belly, jumped from the rope. Fast, the black widow dropped on a web strand of its own.
Fear would do nicely.
Isaiah tucked his face into Tonya’s neck.
Odd how she missed the little guy’s touch.
Fear gathered like soggy bread under her ribs.
The spider hung a few inches before Brody’s face.
Wide-eyed, he pursed his lips and moaned.
Hannah sent energy along the rain lines, up, then down the length of the spider’s strand.
All around the room, water spray hung like clear threads, then shot upward.
If not for Nora and the stupid project, they’d be home. All these kids would be some place safe. Anger, worse than and better than fear, boiled inside her. Like hot water to steam.
Downpour batted the spider.
Then water rose from the pool to rain bottom up.
The black widow bit at the spurts of water.
An upward shower hit Brody, who tucked his head under his arm.
A gush slammed into the spider and shoved it at the roof.
After a few feet, the spider spun. With two legs limp, it slunk up the strand. In quick jerks, it inched back up top.
“Yay!” Junior pumped his fist.
“Go, Hannah.” Abe threw back his head. “Whoo-hoo!”
“Yes.” Darcy Lynn said, “I’d clap if I could.”
Along the wire, the red, a yard or so from Abe, raced down fast. Smoke puffs lifted in the wet.
Hannah sent the rain to take their power to the clouds.
Within a foot of Abe’s hands, the sizzle stopped.
A spark of light flared. The white chased the red. Pop. Sizzle. To the ceiling.
Hannah felt her power leave. Not fading like before. But being drawn out of her. With no sense of ever making a return. No, she wouldn’t let her powers go.
She was water. Water was she.
Bright white flared in the sky.
A rumble of thunder boomed. The roar shook the place.
The black parted and faded.
Soon, gray clouds rolled and pure light rain fell.
Freed from the wire, she waded to mid pool. She raised her face to the drizzle. With a soft smile, she caught lazy sweet drops on her tongue.
Her final—so short—joining to water told much.
Water covered most of the earth. Few places rose above the unrelenting tide.
Chapter 39
High in the Rocky Top attic, a few hours after the children left, and tucked in by swaths of webs, Nora let those just hatched to attend to her.
The cluster’s web lined the musty crawl space. The hazy glow of the web did not throb with alarm. So no need to fret about the other egg sacks ready to hatch.
The crawl space, at the top edge of the roof stood gray amid the shroud of white web.
Metal boxed in the area that the clutch of spiders chose.
Scouts, the size of dimes and rapidly growing, came back from their mission. With a swish of their front legs, they shared with Nora that only she and they lived here.
Ah, for so long she strove for a simple life.
Not so long ago, while in her old form, she had been called the black widow. Such skill she had… She was able to bring death with a touch.
Here, in her web, many legs crept over her, to groom her and stroke. The gentle brush of limbs lulled her, priming her for what must soon come.
On the far sides of the web’s front, two gray-wrapped forms hung draped in large sacks of white.
Food for the cluster for some time to come.
Tart drool slid from Nora’s fangs.
Nora would be well fed.
No, the meals might not be up to her usual choice of fare, but…
In such an odd way and in a rare place, Nora found the life she’d long for. Her every need fulfilled . She was never alone, but always valued and kept safe.
Many were one. One was many.
Go. Find the others.
As their queen, she sent orders to them with her mind.
Do not harm them. Send news back to me.
One big, happy family…
One that would live on.
Dozens of black eight-legged beings left to track and find those who left her.
For now, she left her first vessel, Olivia, alone to serve as meals for the cluster later on.
Also, a small shape bulged from inner motion.
That one Nora meant to save for later.
As the black widow, Nora neared the body of her third, and best, pick.
One by one, Nora bit and cut the strands tying down the redhead.
With two hurt legs, Nora crawled over the soft flesh of Irene’s lower neck. Grazing the tip of her chin with her mouth, Nora tasted, but did not bite. She left a light trail of venom on the jut of the woman’s jaw.
As the last of the storms ceased, Nora rode the last weak power surge to transfer. A green mist shot from her mouth.
Irene, so lovely in her sleep, took in Nora’s essence.
So easy and quick, really.
In the black widow in one breath.
Within Irene the next.
With a gasp, Nora woke.
The musty attic area held a heavy aroma of decomp of those tucked in pockets within the web strands.
A flick of her hand dusted away the dried up now useless husk from her neck.
Many tiny spiders spewed from a nearby egg sack.
With the stroke of her nails, she sent them to feed on the used up human host.
Also, she sent the idea of jerky, nuts, and fruit to them. She let them know food must be found and she too must be fed.
She took in her own lilac scent as she stroked the curve of her neck. All the while, the urge to sing rose as a soft hum in the back of her throat.
With a warm flush, Nora basked in her rebirth.
Epilogue
Later in the day after leaving Rocky Top, the scratch of a No. 2 pencil against the white sheet of lined notepad paper pleased sixteen-year-old Vincent Hicks.
The hint of graphite from the pencil tinged the earthy aroma of the mud-swathed island and the ocean breeze. The spray from the ocean waves coated his lips in damp sheen of salty wetness.
He eased his grip on the smooth, yellow pencil wood.
On the shore, three yards or so along the bank, the spray of waves wet the canvas of his bright green sneakers with a fishy spray.
In the cradle of three tree trunks, he sat and sketched the new world morning.
What used to be valleys rippled and waved as far as the eye could see. Topmost peaks rose from the depths to form bleak islands covered with black-crusted mud.
Even a water world, after being shut away in a metal room for most of his life, stoked the beat of his heart.
Nora, his mother, knew quite a bit about hearts.
Trees such as those in this small oasis were rare. The shade of the three spindly trees soothed him. After going through such ravages and being forced to choose between Nora and his friends, he carried on.
He paused in a down stroke.
Was not the course of voltage similar to blood flow?
His forced study of anatomy, to help him draw images of the sick and dying, might prove useful for what Brody desired for his new design.
Vincent drew loops of wiring from a telephone casing. Quick strokes added tiny arrows to show the likely route of an electric charge.
Very different from using his skill to draw the onset of illness and death.
Noises raised above the slosh of the waves.
Vincent was no longer alone.
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DEDICATION
This series is dedicated to Ben, Breanna, Mattie, and Jada, the closest to Children of the Elements I have ever been honored to know. My gratitude for your inspiration!
About the Author
Multi-genre Author Alexa Dare stepped out of the realm of Top-Secret documents (shh, don’t tell…) to write sci-fi and paranormal fiction.
Alexa survived and escaped both the entertainment field and the government-contracting environment, craves the Walking Dead, and entertains what-if tidbits about “supposed” technological and biological advances.
No stranger to the goings on in the city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Alexa Dare blends a down-home flavor with a former in-the-know—hypothetically, of course—technical background to craft the twists and intrigue of Secret City Adventures.
Alexa welcomes contact from readers and invites you to visit her website. You may contact her, read her blog, and sign up to receive notice of new releases at:
www.alexadare.com
Table of Contents
Contents
Unrelenting Tide
Books by Alexa Dare
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
About the Author