by Alexa Dare
“We’re gonna crash bang.” Darcy Lynn grabbed papers and toy parts and ducked down in the floor between the seats.
“Hold on,” said Hannah.
The Am-Sub speared through the muddy water. A cutting warning signal blared through the tension in the cabin.
“We’re going to crash,” Abe yelled.
“Shut up, and drive.” Hannah punched Abe’s upper arm.
“Take us to ground. The system has to reboot.” Brody’s knees banged the hard rubber floor lining as he knelt before the control panel.
“What?” asked Hannah.
“You want us to crash?” Abe’s voice shot up three octaves.
“No. Can you set her down easy?” He held on to the dash. “On the river bottom.”
“Crash?” Abe squeaked. “Easy?”
The temperature within the cabin warmed.
Sweat formed and pooled in Brody’s hairline.
“Abe. Cool it.” Hannah planted her feet and strained to pull back on the steering column.
“We’re under flipping water, and you want me to chill. You’re as bad as he is.” Abe cut a glassy gaze at Brody.
“We’re crash banging,” said Darcy Lynn from the floor.
“Pull.” Brody left the panel and joined the twins. As they struggled, his arms shook from the effort and pain flared through his chest. Even with such little exertion, Brody fought for breath.
The Am-Sub’s underbelly slid over the rocky river bottom. Metal clanged as they bounced along. The side-to-side jostles knocked both Hannah and him off their feet.
Amid all of their and the others screams, the submerged vehicle slammed to a halt.
Brody’s shoulder crashed into the dash. The impact whipped his head to the side, and the upper part of his skull smacked the edge of the raised screen. In rapid blips, speckles of light dotted behind his eyelids.
He reached up from the floor. The tiny screen blurred. A dizzy swirl swept across his forehead and burning nausea gurgled in his throat. He blinked and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, his gaze cleared. He entered a code, an alpha and numeric combination he must have read in the booklet that he didn’t realize he read.
The outer beams and inner dome lights dimmed.
“Forced System Reboot. System Reboot. Re—” The robotic voice cut off in an extended tone.
The lights blinked out.
Chapter 2
Wary, Abe peeked out into pitch black. How much time had passed since the Am-Sub’s computer shut down and the vehicle dove to crash along the rocky bottom sludge of the Holston River?
The temperature of the plastic- and leather-fumed cab had shot up several degrees.
“Turn the warmth factor down, Abe.” His sister shifted in the floorboard next to the driver’s seat.
Eyelids once again braced closed to prevent his fire-starting glare, Abe grasped the useless steering wheel. “You okay?”
“Bumps and bruises,” Hannah said. “Brody?”
From the floor, a little farther out and behind the front passenger seat, the techno-geek groaned.
“Is he okay?” Abe shoved upright. The stale air left a flat flavor in his nose and mouth. From worse to worst, in ten seconds flat…
All because of me.
“I don’t know. I can’t see a thing.” Hannah shuffled within the darkness.
“Why are you so calm?”
“Because,” she said, “I know that you and Brody will get us out of here.”
Brody muttered, “It even hurts when I breathe. I’m one big lump of epic pain. Pain is me. I am pain. Is this what my life has come to? We’re stuck in a sardine can like an egg at the bottom of a boiling pot. Except there’ll be no deviled eggs to be made. We’re scr—”
A sound of skin smacking skin shot through the cabin.
Cheeks ramping hotter, Abe worked his mouth for a second before he could form words. “You hit him.”
“It’s okay.” From within the rustling sounds of a struggle, Brody said, “Hey. No need to smack me again.”
“Just checking.” Hannah’s voice edged closer to Abe. “Someone had to jolt you out of your rant.”
“Oh, man.” Brody moaned. “For a girl, you sure do pack a wallop.”
“Darcy Lynn,” Hannah said, “I bet you held on real tight.”
The usually chatty little girl didn’t speak up.
“When we crashed, I heard her scream.” The tightness of Abe’s clenched jaw herded his breath into harsh pants.
“No wind stirring, but then there’s not much air left to stir.” Brody called out, “Darcy Lynn.”
Abe stretched his eyelids upward, as if he could get a peek at what was going on even through the darkness without fully opening his eyes so that he wouldn’t fry-daddy up the place. “Hannah?”
“Right. No problem. I’ll crawl on my hands and knees to check on her.” Hannah’s words dripped of sister snark. “In the meantime, you two get to work.”
“A tad bossy, isn’t she?” asked Brody.
“Be glad you’re not her brother.”
“I heard that, you goofballs .”
“She just called us a name.” Brody chuckled.
“I don’t think she can help herself.” Abe, eyelids still pressed shut, wedged against the seatback. “At least, we brought the sub down upright.”
A mewling whimper sounded from the back.
“I found her.” Hannah yelped. “Ouch. Bite me again, and I’ll pinch off your nose.”
“I want to go home.” Choking, intense sobs burst out of the little girl. Her weeping seemed to suck the rest of the fresh air from the cabin.
“We have to do something.” Abe needed to get himself under control and rein in the slow burn. Hard to do when he had to block out his vision and listen to his haughty-but-nice sister boss people around.
“There’s no home to go to.” Darcy Lynn sobbed.
“Hush, now,” Hannah said. “We’ll make our own home. The Children of the Elements plus the enhanced, new-and-improved Brody. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“No.” The little girl wailed. “You’re mean. You hit Brody.”
“Brody needed to be hit,” Hannah said.
“No wonder Junior went somewhere else,” Darcy Lynn said. “You better be glad he made the earth rumble hard enough to send the mud.”
“You think Junior had something do with the mud shoving us along?” asked Hannah.
Was it possible? Junior was smarter than he looked, so—
“Of course he did. We’re his family.”
“Darcy Lynn,” said Hannah. “You can’t know that.”
Darcy Lynn yelped. “Don’t pinch me.”
“If you don’t want to be pinched, then don’t bite.” Hannah super sighed.
“She’s only a little kid, Hannah.” Where he had been fighting to keep his eyelids closed, Abe now struggled to keep them shuttered. “Brody, how do we reboot the all-terrain in the dark?”
“By feel.” All of a sudden, Brody’s tone sounded like he might be ready to tackle the world. “Eyes closed, dude. Keep your blazing gaze to yourself, and your hands on the wheel.”
“Sure.” Sweat slid from the hairline at Abe’s temples and over his jawline. Fever burned in his cheeks from inside out as if trying to melt his flesh to find an exit point.
“From what I remember from the manual, you need to feel along the steering wheel’s upper edges.” Brody said from right beside Abe. “Imagine your hands moving to about the ten and two o’clock positions on a clock face.”
“Like on an old-fashioned grandfather clock?”
“Exactly. You should find slight indentions, and if you explore those dips, you’ll locate the seams of two inset buttons.” Brody’s movement shifted farther along the length of the dashboard.
Abe peeled his fingers from the wheel. Grip eased, he felt along the upper molded edges. Dipping the edges of his fingernails into grooves, he fingered the curved shape.
“You kno
w, I’ve never studied a foreign language before, just self-taught computer code, so I can’t explain it.” Bumps of Brody patting his way across the dash panel echoed in the cab.
Abe fingered a rectangular seam in the right side of the steering wheel. He rubbed a dip in the upper edge. “I found the two o’clock button.”
“Wait until you scope out the other. You’re going to push both of them at the same time as the first step of the reboot.”
Abe focused on the second side of the steering wheel’s slope. He stroked a second indention. A thrill zinged warm beneath his ribs. “Okay, I have both.”
“Keep your fingers at the ready.” Brody suddenly lowered his voice. “Listen. Our oxygen’s running out. If what you and I are going to do doesn’t work, you may need to melt our way out. Once the water rushes in, maybe Hannah can get us to the surface.”
“That’s your backup plan?” Like a searing flash, his heart drummed in his chest and his taste buds coated with ash.
“What’s supposed to happen is that when you press the buttons, an emergency battery system will activate so we should have at least a small amount of light.”
“Supposed to?” Abe squared his jaw. His fingertips twitched on the buttons. A rivulet of sweat dripped from his brow as he squeezed his eyelids together hard enough for pressure to pang in his eyeballs. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Press both buttons and hold.”
In sync, Abe jabbed both inset dips.
Bluish light flickered across his closed eyelids.
“Yay!” said Darcy Lynn.
But it didn’t last. The blue glow outside his upper lids dimmed, then disappeared.
“Oh no.” The little girl wheezed in quick gasps.
“This is so not good,” said Hannah.
“We’re missing something. What is it?” Sighing, Brody asked. “Hannah, you can’t make the current lift us?”
“Once I get cold, I don’t think I can keep us on top of the water. Also, with the indoor rain thing, I might drown us before I could raise us.”
“We’ll have fresh water to drink,” Brody said.
“Too bad she can’t rain suckers and lollipops,” Darcy Lynn said. “I like the red ones.”
“Hannah, can you get a sense of what’s close by in the river?” Abe leaned against the steering wheel, aiming his face toward the windshield. “If you could move a log or something to three or four yards out in front…”
“You want to start an underwater fire?” Hannah’s voice grew closer.
“You got any better ideas?” It could work. Had to.
“I’ll look for a flashlight.” Darcy Lynn’s knees thumped the floor as she crawled.
“I sense something large and wooden. A floating stump, I think.” Hannah’s voice trembled as if the cold that hit her when she used her powers set in. “Are you sure about this?”
“Have you ever done this before?” asked Brody.
“Nope, but we’re going to burn baby burn.” Abe gulped. “You need light. But there’s not enough oxygen left in here to support a small fire.” Or us. “We can’t risk fire damage.”
Tools clunked as Darcy Lynn tossed the non-flashlight items aside.
Hannah snorted. “You’ll only find the same ones again, silly.”
“I’m not silly,” said Darcy Lynn. “Shoot.”
“So you can sense what’s in the water?” Brody asked Hannah, his voice rasping dry.
“Once I connect and become. I was nine years old before I realized not everyone else could.” Hannah placed her hand upon Abe’s shoulder and gently squeezed.
The cabin cooled, and his sweat chilled against his fever.
Hannah sniffed. “I miss Irene and Louise.”
Sure, his sister had to use her emotions to join with the water, but did she have to pick at Abe’s hurt like scratching at an itchy scab?
Water plopped on his bare arms, and a mist brushed his skin. The cool covered his lips like the lightest of touches and he sucked in the freshness.
“No,” Darcy Lynn said, “not the inside rain again.”
“I did it. The stump is out in front,” Hannah whispered in a tear-filled tone. “Sort of like at the one o’clock notch on Louise and Irene’s grandfather clock.”
“How far out?” Abe tried to swallow again. Couldn’t.
“Five or six yards. I didn’t want to bring the root so close in that it rams us.”
“We can do this.” Eyelids peeled open, Abe peered out into complete black, aimed his gaze to the right, and focused several yards ahead.
Burn. Burn.
He imagined the soggy wood heating. The inner gases would burn when the wet wood might not. Despite Hannah’s cold cloak, energy coalesced inside him and his flesh warmed.
The water resisted him, worse than trying to burn the bonfire in a rain. Heat shoved against water until bubbles roiled and churned.
Out in the brown murkiness, a glow the size of his fist appeared.
Abe squinted at the yellowish light.
The glow expanded, brightened.
“Hotter, hottest, hot.” He panted to cool his lungs. “Brody, get ready to read. I don’t know how long the wood will burn or how soon before the water boiling spreads.”
The ball of the stump flared. Gnarled black roots tentacled out from the flames.
In the shadows, toward the back of the vehicle, Darcy Lynn clapped. “It’s a brush pile fire inside the river. If it’s already under water, how will you put it out?”
Abe’s brow and face flushed red-hot. “I can maybe snuff it out, but if not, Hannah can let the current take it away.”
“Are we going to get all soppy wet from her sad, pouring rain all over again?” Darcy Lynn groaned.
“The current is holding steady. So far.” The cold seep of Hannah’s hand lanced like ice through Abe’s shoulder. In the rearview mirror, her pale face shone wet, and her wide eyes glinted with fear. “The water is warming. Hurry.”
“Enough light. Good.” A wide -eyed Brody flipped pages. He went through one booklet, dropped it, and paged through the second.
Gurgles of heated water pinged against the front glass.
Brody turned page after page. “Okay, Abe, press both buttons and hold for ten seconds. Then, once the backup system for the Am-Sub comes on, I need to enter a code.”
Bubbles formed and rolled against the hull.
“The heat’s scorching the glass.” Hannah’s fingers dug in.
Abe rose toward the jab of her fingers and absorbed her shared chill. Panting from fever, he lipped the salty beads of sweat around his mouth.
“I hope you got what you need, because I’m s-s-sending the stump away.” Hannah’s hand shook.
The burning stump drifted upward and over the vehicle. The yellow-orange, under-the-water fire floated down river.
The sparse drips from Hannah’s conjuring and mist along the ceiling faded.
A glow shone from the rear of the Am-Sub.
“Keep the light there. Fluffy Dog’s doesn’t like the dark without a nightlight.”
“The back glass is tingeing brown.” Hannah sighed. “I have to send it on.”
Abe snapped his eyelids shut.
“Okay, push the buttons and hold,” coaxed Brody.
Abe pressed the inset buttons.
“One little minute,” Hannah counted down. “Two little minutes. Three little minutes.”
“Stop,” Darcy Lynn said. “You’re worse than the talking car. Besides, you better quit bringing the rain.”
“What rain?” asked Hannah.
The lift of Abe’s brows pulled at his upper lids. “Where’s it raining?”
“The back window,” Darcy Lynn said. “Rain’s leaking down.”
Blue blinking light skimmed Abe’s eyelids.
Quick beeps sounded as Brody messed with the controls. “You can release the buttons.”
“I’ll go check the rear of the cab,” said Hannah.
“I haven’t found the
light.” Darcy Lynn’s yodel of a yawn echoed in the quiet of the cabin . “And I’m getting awfully sleepy.”
Abe’s heavy eyelids resisted his attempts to lift them over his eyeballs. Maybe if he rested a bit. The new smell of the vehicle seemed more plastic-heavy all of a sudden.
“Low oxygen levels present,” said the robotic voice.
More shrill beeps sounded from Brody’s way as he punched in numbers.
“You read both manuals that fast?” asked Abe.
“Yeah, I can really get into this enhanced thing,” Brody said. “No side effects. Yet. I’m working it. I’ll take care of us, man, like I always do. After all, what’s a brother for?”
“Brother?” A knot fisted in Abe’s stomach.
“No worries, Cantrell. I got this.”
Did the place get warmer?
“Brody, I’m Abe, the kid who fires things up. Not Cantrell.”
“Of course, you are. For a bit, I, uh, um, got mixed up.” Brody zipped through the various pale glowing menu screens with the speed of a skilled gamer.
“The heat must have damaged the seal.” Hannah’s voice pitched high. “We have a leak along the upper rear window.”
“Ooh,” Darcy Lynn’s said, “it’s all wet back here.”
A scorched potato taste smeared Abe’s tongue extra thick. Despite being a Master of Fire, sitting at the Am-Sub helm, he didn't dare open his eyes.
Chapter 3
In the nighttime woods, lush verdant shades of green defied brown and gray ground cover. Crowding close, two dozen rogue militia group members moved in on Scientist Nora Hicks.
Below snarled slashing branches, the mostly male survivalist’s faces varied from hopeful to damnable.
Which was why Nora avoided gazing at the area where the body of militia leader had lain. The same spot from which Brockton Yates’ corpse went missing. Right after Nora murdered the man who was the father of her son.
The outdoor woodsiness of only a few hours earlier was overtaken by burnt leaves, wood, and human flesh smells drifting from the militia camp.
Just out of reach, the group braced against rising winds. Stinging gusts surged around them. The cyclone bellows echoed from the next ridge. After-tremors shook the ground.
A few flashlights fought the shadows.