by Alexa Dare
Despite her protest, several militiamen scurried like mindless unquestioning soldiers into the woods. Hatchet hacks from blades whacking against sapling wood echoed through the forest.
“Roderick, you can’t keep me here. I won’t allow it.” Back rigid and shoulders tensed, Nora backed away from Yates’ former right-hand henchman.
“Lady, we can.” Roderick scrubbed dirt-stained hands over his face. He tented his fingers, tapping his index fingers to his lips, as if readying for a prayer. Or a confession. “You didn’t see what I saw. We’ve gotta stop those children and put an end to this before things get worse.”
“What exactly did you see?” Unease crept up her back. Nora glanced behind her, spun on her heels.
Solemn-faced group members crowded together, closed ranks to circle all around her again.
Nora bolted, stumbled. Her boot tipped, but the high-top leather kept her ankle from turning. Swaying, in a wide-legged stance, she held out her hands and faced Roderick. Her fingertips tingled.
“Untold tales.” Wild-eyed, he wagged his head, and his ruddy face chalked to gray. “We’ll track the kids down and round them up. Hold them until we fetch you, then we take care of them.”
Nora, even though her electromagnetically boosted awareness faded, could hear the drumming of each group member’s heartbeat. How many would have to die for her to ensure her son, the others, and her survival? Her excitement ramped as their heartbeats raced.
“We need the children,” she said.
“You want them for some sort of grand plan. We don’t, not with Yates missing in action. If you’d seen… I reckon you’d realize why we have to stop them. All of them.”
Nora glanced to both sides to get an idea of where everyone stood within her peripheral vision. “I don’t like the sound or the feel of this.”
“Not for you to like.” One brow kicked heavenward, Roderick glanced over Nora’s left shoulder.
Directly behind Nora, a twig snapped.
A slam banged against the back of Nora’s head.
Stunned, she fell.
As she lay, cheek to moldy ground leaves, her vision faded in and out on blurred boots walking on leaves in a thousand shades of brown.
Her awareness zoomed in and out with a flare of daylight.
Trapped and imprisoned, once again.
***
Hours later in the day on Wednesday, an odd, out-of-it sensation blossomed and spread around Nora’s lips and mouth. The greasy cornmeal fritters slicked her fingers and left a rancid bacon aftertaste as she flicked the remaining crumbs from her fingertips.
She crouched in one corner, swiping grease on to the thigh of her khakis as Roderick and his cohorts approached.
Silent and with gloved hands, part of the group yanked sapling spears from the ground and dragged a struggling Nora to her feet. In rough, bruising tugs and grabs, they dressed her in a long-sleeved canvas shirt and shoved a pair of gloves on to her hands.
“By the time we got there,” Roderick said, “only our two men were in the tunnels. I should have never left them, but if I’d stayed…” The haunted glaze in his eyes set in hollows that weren’t there when he’d left only a few hours ago to retrieve the boy. “I saw firsthand what your son did.”
Thoughts spinning, Nora blinked. “What about Vincent?”
“I said that I knew what he did.” Roderick leaned close, sharing the stink of mud and sweat. “He brought…” The grown man looked around like a child hiding underneath the bed from imagined boogiemen. “…back the dead.”
Had her head injury addled her more than she discerned? Perhaps a concussion, although she didn’t feel truly disoriented or nauseated.
Through a dull pounding in her skull, she said, “There’s a logical explanation for what you think you saw.”
“That’s what they say in the movies before the hairy, clawed hand reaches out from the shadows, grabs them, and rips out their throats.” Roderick lined a bright orange knitted cap with aluminum foil. He tugged the makeshift hat down over her hair and stood back as if to admire their handiwork. “That ought to keep them from homing in on you.”
“The stress of losing Doc Halverson and Brockton Yates, uh, going missing, must be overwhelming.” Nora squinted against the dull throbbing behind her eyes. The foil? Her injury? The aftermath of using her ability only hours ago? Through the pain, she said, “What with the chaos of the out-of-control elements thrown upon us—”
“Doesn’t have squat to do with what happened in those caves.” Roderick, hands on hips, lowered his voice. “The others thought we were performing mercy killings of two burned and suffering militiamen. You and I know better.”
“I don’t get what you are saying.” Nora took a step forward, but a jab of a rifle barrel shortened her step. “You’re not thinking clearly. My son suffers from mental confusion, if we could just talk this out.”
“Nothing to jaw about.” The self-appointed group leader tipped back on his heels. “We tracked them a ways. They’re traveling in an old military tank. Turncoat Merv Thackett’s with them. Your son is as well, but you probably knew already and didn’t tell us.”
Nora’s thoughts skittered like the earthworms squeezing out of the heated earth to writhe and die on the leaves a yard out from where she, Roderick, and his henchmen stood.
Roderick tapped her nose with his gloved index finger. “You’re good at talking the talk, so that’s what you’ll do. We move out soon. We’re going to go to them, and you’ll convince them we’re better off working together than being enemies.”
“There’s a mob of folks, more than likely survivors, moving toward us from the river where the barge crashed and burned.” The gray-haired woman and two men tromped out of the woods. “The tank’s between us and them.”
“We’ll recruit them. Heck, we can use every able-bodied man we can get.” Roderick nodded and smacked the canvas of his work gloves together in a loud clap. He called out, “Mass up, gather supplies, and get ready to move out.”
“Roderick, look, if I’m going to do this, I need to know you’re not going to harm any of them.” Nora needed time to think, to set a plan of her own into motion. “Their abilities are worth more than their weight in gold.”
“More like platinum. Leastwise, that’s what Commander Yates said.” Roderick pawed his chin. “You talk them into giving up, and we’ll keep them safe.”
“I have your word?”
“You do.”
Right, Nora gulped against her tongue’s greasy corn and bacon film.
Roderick’s word…
***
With supplies gathered, by noon, a three-mile trek in the direction of where Briar Patch Mountain once stood, weariness dragged at the bunched muscles in Nora’s aching calves and thighs.
A sooty coating chafed her face, and the heavy, hanging smoke left a gritty trace on the tip of her tongue.
Every few yards as they hiked, they encountered ruin.
Though sweating from a rapid temperature spike that had everyone crouching and scoping out which copse of trees might burst into flame, she shivered.
Wary glances stretched by fear, the militiamen members spread out as if expecting fire to consume the person next to them in deadly engulfing heat.
“You persuade Merv and the kids to join us, or we shoot them in their tracks.” Roderick crouched beside Nora in a shielding thicket of pines.
Nettles stabbed at Nora through her thick sleeves and scratched at her glove’s leather as she pressed aside a branch, yet she welcomed the musky aroma that wrapped her like a blanket.
Nora eyed her black glove holding aside the pine bough.
If she took out Roderick—
“Like it or not, Nora, you and these kids are going to be the ones to lead us into the new world.
“Don’t hurt them.” Calculating how she might gain an advantage, Nora edged from the brush toward the bank of a room-sized pond.
Bigger than a small tobacco barn, the former v
eterans’ memorial tank parked next to the water. A large man with a beard that reached to his mid chest, half in and half out of the hatch, lifted containers of water handed to him by the twins. Like a jack-in-a-box, he hauled the jugs into the tank’s hull.
“Whatever you think Vincent seems to have done, it can probably be fixed. He halted the plague that made Brody’s brother sick. So what is done, can possibly be undone.”
In the rising wind, a bough thrashed. Nettles flapped and scratched her cheek.
Ignoring the sting, she said, “I need a white cloth if you intend for me to surrender and negotiate with them.”
“Spare T-shirt. It’s clean.” Roderick handed her a T-shirt from one of the men.
White faded to grubby gray, the material felt rough and natty in her hand. Nora waved the shirt over her head. “Don’t shoot. It’s Nora. I’m glad I found you. Thank goodness you are all here and safe.”
“Ain’t no place safe.” From the gnarly nest of mountain-man’s beard hair, Merv’s lips stretched into a solemn line as he watched from his perch. “You of all people should know that Nora Hicks.”
“Merv, I realize you and Yates were friends all those years ago… We haven’t seen each other in years, but—”
“Nora, it’s been a while.” Merv tapped the brim of a faded and tattered autumn leaf-decorated baseball cap. “Your kid claimed Yates might be dead. You responsible?”
Nora didn’t dare cast a glance at the no doubt trigger-edgy crouching militia at her back. Too many gun barrels aimed from behind her as it was.
Nora held out the T-shirt and edged closer to the tank parked near a small crystal-clear freshwater pond. “After the elements went haywire, Yates went missing. We don’t know his whereabouts or what might have actually happened to him.”
Silence.
Gazes accusing, Brody and three normal-looking children, the twins and Darcy Lynn, their incredible abilities not apparent, filled two five-gallon, orange containers in the water.
“The surviving crewmen of a sunken barge on the Holston River are headed this way,” Nora said. “There’s safety in numbers. We can all join together to stop this chaos.”
Yates’ old friend stared at Nora long and hard, then the bear-of-a-man Merv motioned for the children to board the tank.
The tank’s motor rumbled to life.
Exhaust, heavy with fuel and motor oil, spewed thick and harsh enough to choke Nora. Rather than gag or spit, Nora shuddered, lifted her chin, and faced the tank.
Over the vibrating, eardrum-jarring engine roar, Merv said, “Can’t let you get your hands on them. Brockton Yates figured out when he met you what kind of woman you were. You’re ruthless when it comes to getting your way. That’s why he and old Doc Halverson picked you.”
Heat, not of the warped weather’s making or Abe’s who stared mostly at the smoking ground a yard in front of his feet, rushed up her chest and into the tops of her ears. Unrealness floated across her gaze. She opened her mouth, yet no words formed.
“No comment?” Merv chuckled and shook his head. “You didn’t know. He chose you for your conniving genetics. Yates always was a wily fellow.”
“I didn’t realize why I had been chosen.” Anger livened her breathing until the surface of her skin tingled. “Honestly, I’m honored.”
“Bet you are.” Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes, and his moustache and his beard at his chin twitched.
How dare he find humor in her humiliation.
The children piled onto the far side of the barn-like vehicle.
“Where is my son, Merv?”
The tank’s metal tracks creaked and shifted into motion. The tank inched forward.
“You get them to give themselves up,” Roderick said from the brush, “or we start shooting. Don’t forget you’re in the line of fire.”
Merv’s mouth moved. With a shrug, he puffed out his chest and cupped his hand, and called out, “Don’t figure you can hear over this armored shell’s engine. Come a bit closer, why don’t you?”
Nora edged a yard or so nearer to the weapon of another era.
“Yates said you were smart, Nora. One of those people who thought three steps ahead. Was he right?”
Squeaks and thumps of the turning tracks ground as the tank moved forward, with Brody and the children, minus Vincent and Junior, used the vehicle as cover.
A tingle trailed her spine, and she reached to finger a control necklace no longer there. Hand at her throat, a phantom flavor of the metal cupped her teeth as the taste had when she tapped into her power in the past.
In edging steps, Nora moved farther into the sparse clearing.
“Far enough,” Roderick said. A pistol hammer clicked.
In a whoosh, a fire flared behind her. The heat rushed at her, but a gust of wind slashed directly into her face and beyond to possibly shove the flames away from her.
The children.
Tears welled, and Nora blinked.
Behind her, squeals and screams cut through the day like the howls of a coyote pack on the run. The sound of scuffling and thumping footsteps scraped a few feet behind her.
“You got your chance, Nora. You gonna take it?” Merv motioned her forward, then ducked inside the tank’s hull.
Adrenaline sang through her veins.
Inhaling smoke and coughing up courage, Nora bolted.
In the daylight, a gunshot blasted.
A bullet slammed into her left shoulder.
Shoved forward by the force of the hit, Nora fell.
Rocks cut into her palms.
Thrilled, for the first time in a very long time, about something other than killing, she pushed upright and ran.
Chapter 12
At high noon, behind the tank, along with Abe, Hannah, and Darcy Lynn, Brody clutched the edges of the tarp and waited behind the hull. Chosen because he was the tallest—big whoop with no peanuts and soft drink to celebrate—his job was to wrangle the deadly woman to the ground.
His heart banged louder than the motor chugging out what had to be toxic black and white smoke and echoed in his torso in lurching, pounding thrums.
Where had Vincent gone? But then again, would the teen have helped subdue his mother?
Nora charged around the tank’s rear.
At least she was mostly covered.
Another touch from her and—
Gripping her shoulder, blood spurting through her clasping black-gloved fingers, she ducked behind the bumper.
With a closed-mouth yell—okay, squeal—Brody tossed the blue tarp over her head. Through the thick plastic, he trapped her arms by her sides. Her elbows raked his ribs, pain was once again flaring his chest in a raw burn. With his forearm across her upper chest, he pinned the scientist against the idling tank.
Gunshots boomed.
“Keep down,” Merv yelled from within the inches-thick plates of iron. “Every one of you’uns.”
Hannah and Abe, wearing farming work gloves, wrestled Nora’s arm upward.
“You little ingrates.” Nora said from beneath the cover, “I’m here to help you, and I’ve been shot because I tried to join you.”
“Grab her near the elbow.” Brody shoved her with one arm and braced against elbow jabs and kicks. “The gloves and shirt are too big and her wrist is exposed. We can’t touch her skin.”
Guns banged and bullets pinged off the tank’s metal plating.
Once the twins held Nora’s arm up, Darcy Lynn handed Hannah a length of rope.
“Let go of me.” Nora twisted away from the digging metal of the upper track and slammed her knees in an uncanny aim at Brody’s crotch.
A half-hop saved his man parts. Barely.
From the ground, Abe and Hannah worked to tie Nora’s flailing wrist to a handle.
“Let me,” Darcy Lynn climbed up and crawled out onto the track.
“No, don’t—” A graze of Nora’s knee sent Brody, leading with his butt, one hopping step back.
In a rattle of plastic
, she fought to free her other hand.
“Like tying a fish hook on the line.” Within seconds, the little girl looped the rope on Nora’s wrist, wound the length around the handhold, and pulled. As she pulled the rope’s end, both the noose and the knot drew tight.
Abe pumped his fist, urging on Darcy Lynn’s efforts.
Above them, the turret turned, aiming the big gun toward the woods.
Flashes of pistol and rifle gunfire roared, until the cannon-type barrel lowered in machine oil-perfumed creaks and aimed directly at the shooting men.
Pulling the tarp from above and off Nora’s head, Darcy Lynn shoved the blue aside and crouched.
“Wait.” Wide-eyed and arms held out, Brody released Nora to catch the girl. “Aw, heck.”
Darcy Lynn leapt and landed directly in his arms.
Booooom.
As if the shot slammed into him, the little girl hit him directly in the chest.
Toppling back, he held on to her. His behind crashed, banging his tailbone. Pain speared through his torso as he flipped flat on his back. Throbs blasted up his spine from his butt to fear-tinged molars. Was there any part of him that didn’t hurt?
“Let me go.” Nora twisted her upper body. “I came to you, remember?”
“Use the tank as a shield until it’s safe to board,” Merv called out in a muffled yelled. “We’re moving out.”
“Untie me,” said Nora.
Abe slipped on the dingy T-shirt Nora had waved. “Thanks for the duds.”
Spittle shot from her lips. “You’ll regret this.”
“We already do.” Hannah helped Darcy Lynn to her feet. “You’ve enough rope to walk beside. Careful of the bit metal track.”
The twins pulled Brody’s arm.
One mega dose of hurt and on his knees, he swayed to his feet and walked bent-kneed behind the metal behemoth until his knees and hips ached in sharp pangs of protest.
The tank had parked behind a pile of rock and rubble… Surely that was not what was left of Briar Patch Mountain?
Uncle Merv climbed out and down the hull. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he strode over to Nora.
Brody wilted to sit on a knee-tall boulder and hung his head. Sliced foot hurts like a booger. Check. Shot shoulder throbs as if reamed by hot fire poker. Double Check. Heart feels like a cherry bomb firecracker exploded under his ribs. Triple Check. Grief for his missing brother—murdered by Brody’s own doing—not in check at all.