by Alexa Dare
The light beam swerved to a rockslide blocking a tunnel.
“Can you wash the boulders and rocks away and free Junior?”
“Hurry. Hurry. Please.” A whimpering Darcy Lynn bounced on her heels, going to her toe tips as if to peer out of the windows. “The meany Vincent’s with Junior.”
Hannah shoved the foot-long flashlight barrel again into Brody’s hands and positioned the poor guy’s arms so that he held the light toward the attacking men.
Head buried in her hands, her shoulders heaved as she slumped into the copilot seat and cried. With no more electronics to worry about, Abe welcomed the steady cooling drizzle that fell heavier in the cabin’s interior as she wept.
Two-handedly, Brody gripped the flashlight, yet the beam trembled in quick jiggles. He said, “Darcy Lynn, you have to look out the back window.”
Abe’s vision blurred and doubled.
Now six guys ran at them.
Yes, it’s probably best that Darcy Lynn not see.
“Watch to see if anyone else is coming.” Brody’s voice rose a notch or two, and for a second, he sounded as young and lost as thirteen-year-old Abe instead of seventeen. “Look out for us behind the ATV and plug your fingers in your ears.”
“You’d be helping us out a lot,” Abe croaked out.
“Fine. If I have to.” The little girl turned about and shoved the tips of her index fingers into her ears.
Face heated by fever and the sear of shame, Abe stared at the men barreling through the underground gloom.
No going back.
Before his igniting gaze, a white burnt-cotton smoky mist rose from the men’s bodies as if sweat evaporated from their clothing, hair, and skin.
As he tapped into burn mode, the cold rain, drop by drop, inside the ATV served to balance out, if not lower, his fever.
“We’ll think of some other way,” Brody said. The light beam looped across the men. “Don’t do this.”
“Got to.” Eyes watering, Abe glared as if he never had looked at real live breathing people before.
Bad guys.
Insides shaking like one of Junior’s quakes, Abe blinked and stared harder.
Hot, hot, hot.
The mud caked on the men’s faces dried to a lighter tan and their movements slowed as the stiffened layer on their clothes hindered the motion of their limbs.
“Wait. Let’s use common-sense reasoning. Isn’t there something we can do to scare them off?” Brody, breathless and his voice uncertain, he asked. “What if—?”
A few yards ahead, one of the men smacked at his chest. Swats resounded and shook the rolls of his stomach, he teetered and squealed. “Oh, oh, oh.”
Despite Brody’s attempt to stop Abe from crossing the invisible line to the dark side, Abe narrowed his eyelids and zeroed in his gaze.
Burn.
The man, tallest and lankiest of the three, veered off to the side. In a blink, arms waving, he stumbled out of sight and disappeared.
The remaining two men staggered.
As if they were candlewicks, flame sputtered and sparked, like the flash of a lighting match, to engulf them in orange, red, and yellow stretching two- and three-foot-high streaks of fire. Their shovels dropped with clangs as crackling flames swarmed them from head to toe . Arms and legs flailing, the men screamed.
In their next breaths, searing heat inhaled to the insides of their lungs and cut short their screams. The big-bellied man on the right shuffled in a circle and flapped his arms. The hairs in his beard rather melted along with his face. Like a lump of candlewax, he fell to his knees and flopped on to his belly.
The other broad-shouldered fellow grabbed at his throat. His wiggling blackened tongue stuck out of his gaping mouth. Gasping to bring air into lungs seized up and no longer able to fill, he collapsed like a harvested tree trunk.
Breath held, Abe hung his head and took three steps back.
“Yuck.” Darcy Lynn gagged.
Ear tips so hot…might he finally catch aflame, he stared at the liquefied breakfast biscuit. The liquid bubbled. The stink worsened, until the rubbery chemical stink overtook the sourness and the floor matting gelled and covered the mess.
Nose held, Brody blinked watery, red-rimmed eyes. “Oh, man, that’s bad.”
“Time for fresh air.” Hannah’s lips were blue in the backlit glow of the flashlight beam. Her arms and shoulders shook from the cold generated when she made it rain. Her jaw quivered and tears streamed the sharp angles of her face. “Water’s flushing away the cave-in blocking the tunnel. The water may be seeping inside where Junior is. Let’s go.”
The light swayed toward where water streamed from between jammed rocks in spewing fountains. Rocks dislodged and tumbled to clunk against other scattered chunks of stone on the tunnel floor.
Dizziness looped behind Abe’s eyeballs.
Brody turned to Hannah. “You being all wet can be a good thing.”
Heaving several breaths, she taunted, “Bite me.”
“Bite,” Darcy Lynn repeated. Shoulders lifted to her ears, she sucked in a wheeze and pointed into the dimness. “Bite. Bite.”
Heat infused Abe’s earlobes.
In the cavern, dark shapes moved in the wavering beam.
“Hold the light steady.” Lightheadedness whirling like a spinning top in his temples, Abe rubbed his eyes with the warm backs of his hands. “I’m, uh, um, seeing things.”
“Biiiiiitttteee,” yelled Darcy Lynn.
The crispy-critter men—oh gag, the sweet meaty stink—their skin and clothes charred like black armor plating, opened their jaws wide and clamped then closed as if chewing at the shadows.
On the cave floor, their legs and arms jerked in scrambling motions as if the men struggled to get to their feet. Thankfully, stiff, fused joints prevented the bodies from crawling or standing upright.
“They’re dead,” Brody said in a choked whisper.
“Good and dead,” Abe repeated. “Burned to a crisp.”
“Only they’re not.” Shudders jarred Hannah. Eyes locked out front, his twin sister shoved the flashlight barrel out at arm’s length.
“Vincent did this.” Darcy Lynn, her eyes hollowed and sunken by the ghoul-making shadows in the paler light of the beam’s edge, breathed out the words in the lowest thing to a whisper Abe had ever heard. “Like he did with the squished beetle bug.”
Something hit and banged against the Am-Sub’s hull.
Arms overhead, Abe ducked. He stared up, ready to melt the metal of the hull, hoping he didn’t have to because the more he controlled the element of fire, the less chance Hannah’s rain had of bringing down his spiking fever.
The four of them darted frantic glances at one another.
Was his face as pinched and his eyes as saucer-wide as Brody, Darcy Lynn, and Hannah’s?
A wheeze of an inhale, and Darcy Lynn screamed. Unsure of who joined in next, Abe’s scream joined theirs until, their piercing yells echoed as if their fright bounced wall-to-wall in the underground passages.
Ready to fight whatever with the heat of fire, Abe whirled and crouched to face the open rear window.
The flashlight beam stabbed black and settled on dug out walls and the stretch of the tunnel.
Hannah, her voice choked and trembling, whispered, “What? Where?”
Abe glanced over his shoulder and shrugged.
Brody, looking like he’d just discovered an earthworm at the bottom of his soft drink, pointed upward.
From the roof, a crawling shifting prickled Abe’s arm hair and robbed him of his breath.
A length of steel cable snaked over the windshield.
In an exhale to rival one of Darcy Lynn’s massive gusts, Brody said, “Uncle Merv sent us an escape cable.”
Exhaling in a drawn-out whoosh, with the redirection of light, Abe turned toward the front of the useless vehicle once again. A cottony warmth circled Abe’s ears. “Hallucinations. Fear feeding my fever. Mega high temperature. Seeing what’s not
there. That’s all.”
Yet, captured in the returned light, one of the burnt men—not zombies, zombies were for television and books and graphic comics—stumbled upright. His right leg snapped at the knee, and he fell again.
“Eeeeee.” Wild- and wide-eyed, Darcy Lynn popped a hand over her mouth. Her rising squealing became “Mmmmmmm.”
“Be brave. We’ll get Junior.” One hand clutched over the left side of his chest, Brody grabbed Hannah’s hand and hauled her out the Am-Sub door and around to the rear.
Water chugged from the top of rocks stopping up the tunnel. In rushes of water, boulders washed away. Rocks spilled out into the larger cavern like a toss of Junior’s glass marble collection.
Heads ducked low and with the light swinging across the ground, Hannah and Brody ran toward the mud and rocks flowing away from the cave-in.
The sounds of his and Darcy Lynn’s breathing filled the cabin like a dump truck load of dirt.
“They took the flashlight,” said Darcy Lynn.
“To find Junior.” The fever drained him so much he could barely stand. He dropped into the nearest seat.
“But…” The seven-year-old panted. As if she breathed hot and fast on his neck, a shiver raised the hairs on the nape. “We’re in the dark. The sick doesn’t stink so bad anymore, but the burned not-really-dead men are here. With us.”
A dizzy haze swirled his temples. He yanked off his T-shirt, twisted the material, and held the wad of cloth in his cupped hands. At his stare, the scent of heated cotton and wisps of smoke drifted into his face.
Woven threads smoked from the seared cotton, then flickered orange.
He stumbled forward and placed the shirt on the dash. Before his stare, with a whoosh, the wadded-up T-shirt burst into flame.
As he backed away, he looked ahead over the flames.
Three or four yards in front, the men crawled and reached.
For them.
Back of his legs bumping the first row of seats, he sat.
Running in place and waving her fingers, Darcy Lynn opened the door. At the steps, cowering, she stood and shoved out her hands.
Abe yelled, “No. Watch out for the fire!”
A rushing gust faltered the flames and fanned their pitiful fire.
In the dying light, the windblast lifted the things and slammed their bodies against a cavern wall. The burned bodies crunched on the rocks and slid to the ground leaving oily, sooty drag marks behind.
The one-legged man dragged his body by walking his arms to the missing limb. Lifting the severed leg, he gnawed the calf as if eating a chicken thigh.
“Can’t be real. Can’t be.” Gags gouged Abe’s throat.
The backlash of the gust against the rock wall shot into the cabin. Amid the bad-meat stench, the inch-high wavering flames of the small fire that used to be his shirt fizzled out.
Weak and knees wobbling, he shoved the door closed.
On the two-seater front right row, Darcy Lynn cuddled up to his side. She buried her face against him. “You’re burning up.”
“My body heat comes from causing the flames.”
Against his chest, she nodded as if she might have truly got what he meant.
Face hidden in her sweaty curls, he closed his eyes.
Nothing ever stays the same.
For a while, the two of them, breathing shallow and soft, held on to each other.
A scraping noise sent Darcy Lynn climbing up his frame like she intended to climb him to the surface. Her elbows and knees scrubbed his ribs. He tugged at her to keep her from banging her head on the ceiling, while fending off—
A bright light fanned the doorway.
“We’ve got them.” Hannah poked her head and upper body inside. “Vincent had already dug Junior out.”
On her knees in the seat beside him, Darcy Lynn hopped a happy dance. “Is he okay? Where is he? I want to see.”
“He’s okay, but he suffered a broken leg.”
“Wait.” Abe jiggled his head. “You said Vincent?”
“No Junior’s the one hurt.” Hannah huffed. “Mister Ever-surprising Vincent helped rescue Junior.”
The yucky taste stuck in Abe’s mouth like baked soil. “Vincent’s the one to blame for the zombies.”
“How silly is that?” The outer edge of the light rimmed Hannah in half shadow-and-light glow. “They’re not zombies, just men that haven’t died yet, that’s all.”
“Their nerves are seared so they aren’t in any pain.” Brody didn’t sound so sure. In the single beam, paleness drew Brody’s face tight, while two quarter-sized dots blushed pink high on his cheeks. He lifted Darcy Lynn. “Uncle Merv made hanging loops on a metal cable. If we hold on to the rope and put one foot in the loop, he’ll pull us up.”
“All of us?” asked Darcy Lynn.
“With the old tank.” An out-of-it-ness swished across Abe’s brow. He talked like it was just another day, even after the, er, burning.
“Better hurry. Miss Nora’s coming fast.” Darcy Lynn smacked everyone’s hands away and hurried outside in the tunnel where Vincent propped Junior upright. She threw her arms around Junior, nearly knocking the three of them over.
Though mud-smeared and as pale white as a winter snowfall, Junior clutched the grungy marble bag tied to his belt loop and grinned a dopey one-sided grin. “About time you guys got here.”
Despite the fever heat inside, Abe stepped out of the Am-Sub into the tunnel’s smoky dampness and returned the smile. Leaning toward Junior, he reached out to pat the kid on the back.
Vincent, however, propped Junior upright. A weak wormy smile, as if his lips didn’t know how to do anything but smirk, kinked across Vincent’s mouth.
“You helped Junior.” Stopping after a faltered half step, Abe’s sharp tone accused rather than asked. He didn’t care. “You helping doesn’t mean anything because you and your mother caused all of this in the first place.
“You two can be best buddies later.” Hannah’s cold hand wrapped Abe’s wrist. “Right now we need to go.”
Overhead, the rumble of the tank motor revved. The steel cable hauled the six of them, even Vincent, clinging to one another, upward.
Zombies. Sure thing.
Sweat dripped from Abe’s hot, hot brow.
Yet, below—just a feverish delusion, had to be—amid the swinging spotlight of Hannah’s flashlight, one of the not-dead men gnawed his own severed leg, while the other chewed stretched-like-raw-chicken tendons of the second man’s neck.
Chapter 11
All five children are in one place.” Nora, along with her scraggly band of misfits, minus Roderick and the two men he’d recruited to go with him to retrieve Junior, scavenged what supplies they could and trekked out of the ruined camp and into the hills.
Amid sunrise and lifting ground fog, the woods, lush with sturdy trees and dense brush in spots, shared the welcome scents of pine and cedar, as if all were normal.
“The fellows will bring them all in.” A man tugged a camo cap low over his brow. “Roderick’ll see that we do Yates proud.”
“I get a sense Brody might be with them as well.”
Only she didn’t…
She had no clue if the geeky traitor joined the rebellious children or not. She had no sense of the young man’s whereabouts at all, yet, with each passing moment, her ability of tracking the Children of the Elements faded.
What a fool she had been to part with her electronic collar.
Yes, the collar had reined in her power to give her more control of her heart-stopping touch, but it also boosted her capabilities.
Too late because she’d tossed aside the necklace hours ago, before the group tracked her down, long before she sent Roderick and two of the other men after the trapped boy.
Regret tasted like gone-to-vinegar wine and set just as heavy in Nora’s upper belly.
“If they’re all together,” the man with the ragged long beard asked, “what’s happened to Lester, Roderick, and Darry
l?”
“If you can tell where they are,” the ponytailed woman shifted the backpack on her back and said, “then they know you are coming after them.”
Nora studied the disapproval and cunning lining the dozen and a half or so members of the militia.
“Quiet.” A man whispered, “One of our own headed our way.”
“We don’t have time for sleep or to wait.” The tug toward her son prodded her onward yet continued to fade by the moment. “If anything, we should pick up our pace if we’re going to catch up with them.”
“Nothing doing.” The man said, “We stay put until our men meet up with us.”
Tension crackled as if spontaneous combustion was the least of Nora’s worries.
Longing for a simple life surged to the forefront.
She and the rest of the world needed simplicity in its most basic form. If her plan played out, she, with the children’s help, might gift humankind by bringing the rat race to a halt and taking the population back to basics.
No, she wasn’t greedy or maniacal in wanting to take over nations like Yates and his band of not-so-merry men.
Nora wanted a better life for her son, the children, and her willing followers, and of course, herself. To share a simple life with a world that imprisoned and used both Vincent and her—yes, the idea pleased her. Nora stood in the East Tennessee forest, free for the most part.
Better not bitter.
With the stealth of a mountain lion, a mud-smeared Roderick emerged from the woods. Alone.
“You failed.” Nora inhaled the clay-laden earthiness and narrowed her eyes.
Roderick’s gaze darted at everything yet settled on no one or no one thing. “The other kids showed up to rescue them.” He slipped a .380 Walther from a side holster. He pointed the pistol and aimed the barrel directly at Nora’s chest.
The muscles of her heart kinked.
“Build a holding cage,” Roderick ordered. “Cut some saplings and hammer them into the ground around her. We need to keep her here. If they somehow figured out the boy that makes the earthquakes was underground and where, then they can probably decipher this scientist lady is on their trail.”
“No way are you locking me away,” Nora held up her hands.