Raging Inferno: A Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Children of the Elements Book 3)

by Alexa Dare

  “Huh?” The man blinked.

  Nora smacked the man with the base of her sapling-staff. “Were the young ones with them?

  “I reckon there were kids.” The man flinched away.

  What the… Brody waved his arms and called out to Uncle Merv and the others, “No, don’t come up here. Stay back.”

  Nora swung the staff.

  Brody reeled aside, came close to tripping over the stone mound.

  “They have the gifted children.” Nora jabbed the stick in swishing swings. “We want them, and they’re bringing them straight to us. Too bad the fools haven’t learned to sacrifice the one for the many.”

  “Like you sacrificed your son.” He ducked to the side.

  Nora’s head snapped back as if his words slapped her across the face. “I kept my son safe.”

  “What kind of mother let’s her son be farmed out to kill?” Keep her busy, and the others might have a chance to get away.

  “I did the best I could.”

  “Your best? You couldn’t have caused Vincent more harm had that been your plan all along.” Brody hefted the rock. If he attacked—

  The singing started again, moved closer.

  No.

  “They’re here.” The scout’s wistful voice matched the dreamy slackness on his dirty face.

  Like pied pipers, Irene in the lead, Merv, Hannah, and Darcy Lynn strode into the midst of the crowd of people. Clothes dirty, hair tangled, and faces smudged, his uncle and friends, moved to stand beside him.

  Despite the pain, Brody’s heartbeat surged. If only they were sitting down to the imagined feast. Hadn’t he seen pecan pie and vanilla ice cream?

  What had Nora’s group called them? Stoners?

  What were they holding? Rocks. Like the one Brody held. As if they were precious stones heaped in their arms. Stoners. Even with a formerly boosted brain, he was at times slow on the uptake. But was he still enhanced?

  The so-called stoners and other survivors faced one another.

  On and on, Irene sang, her voice dipping low and throaty.

  Even Nora, along with the members of her group, stood in the rising mountain fresh breeze with slack, happy looks pasted on their haggard faces.

  Merv wrapped Brody in a lifted-off-his feet hug.

  “Feels as if your heart’s been, I don’t know, reset. You’re as healthy as a mule and just as stubborn.” Merv boxed Brody’s chin.

  The big man’s caring and wide smile sprang tears in Brody’s eyes.

  “Irene couldn’t sing a note at first after the blast. Her power’s not like it was.” Merv squeezed Brody’s upper arm. “What I’m trying to say son, is that when she stops singing, they’re going to stone us to death, so you best come up with a solution right quick.”

  Dead certain he was no longer better than average, Brody stared into his Uncle’s kind gaze.

  Let the chaos begin.

  Chapter 24

  Ruined dead bodies, gray-skinned and black gore-smeared, piled like jumbled stacks of fire logs. Scattered corpses littered the town’s street, parking lots, and sidewalks. Abe’s muscles ached so hard his legs wobbled.

  This was his second trip down the rocky slope, with one hike up in between.

  Up top on the ridge peak, the glass and metal building stood skeletal under a sky as black as road tar. Red flashes jutted in the clouds like gravel in asphalt.

  In the day turned night, wind slashed and thunder boomed.

  Beneath the black canopy, energy crackled. The tips of Abe’s hair lifted and tingles spread under his skin. Even the insides of his ears hummed with static-type noise and his tongue prickled metallic.

  He raised a leg and stepped over a body. His boot sole crunched finger bones. He winced and hopped ahead a step. Amid dead reek, he mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Opening his mouth invited an ashy, rotten aftertaste to take up residence on his tongue.

  He shuddered and trotted toward the church.

  It was Wednesday, so people might be inside.

  Wind swept from the sky in swirls, like rushing mini twisters lashing into a bad storm.

  Glad that the zombie mess was over, he had no idea how he came to be in town.

  The last thing Abe recalled was Brody falling down and dying. The gadget guy’s eyes rolled back in his head, his skin paled green then gray, and he dropped.

  Never to move again.

  “All my fault.” Abe must have trekked down the bluff, but his thready memory held no recollection of the trip. What had he been thinking, leaving Brody behind? “I’ll go back. Give him a proper burial.”

  If Abe hadn’t given the power surge a boost, Brody would be alive and the growing storm wouldn’t exist.

  Black replaced blue in the morning sky as if building into the biggest storm ever known. Except for fallen clumps of ash sifting into the gusts, nothing in the entire Main Street area moved.

  He hung his head. No tears formed. He couldn’t even cry for the long-lost friend, dead because of Abe.

  How stupid of them to have left Merv, Irene and the kids behind.

  If only he knew his sister and the others were okay.

  “Merv and Brody, like all adults, didn’t give us kids a vote.” Eyes as dry as the ash blowing around like snowfall, Abe arrowed his spine and hiked across the parking lot.

  The least he could do was help those he could.

  He stepped over rotting torsos, arms, and legs. Lifting his weary feet high, just in case.

  Might the hands twitch and grab at his ankles?

  The dead stink hung hot around him like skunk spray in August. On the small porch stoop, after tiptoeing over bodies, he gripped the door handle and pushed the latch thumb release.

  Locked.

  With all the zombies, the folks inside must be scared to even take a breath, let alone come outside.

  He jiggled the handle, jabbed at the thumb lever again.

  “Hey, anybody in there? Open up. I’m alive. All of them are dead. Really dead. It’s safe out here.” For now. He knocked, banged on, then kicked at the wooden double doors.

  No sound came from inside.

  Crowbar? Ax, maybe.

  Abe eyed cars and pickups. Getting to them meant climbing over and walking over the dead again. A shiver of revulsion tightened the muscles in his jaws.

  With a heavy inhale of dead funk, he went in search of a prying tool.

  Three crowbars and a hatchet later, found not in the cars, but a nearby utility shed around the back, Abe returned to the front doors.

  He piled the tools against the door and dragged body after body from the stoop to make room to work. After the third body, he stopped swiping his hands on his jeans legs and shirtfront to get the gunk off his fingers, no use smearing black sticky stringy stuff with more of the same.

  “Hey, if you’re in there, say something. Bang or yell. Anything. I’ll help as much as I can to clean up. We’ll burn your dead and give them a proper goodbye.”

  “Help,” a voice moaned from inside. “Please.”

  Abe placed his ear against the wood. “Can you unlock the door?”

  A click snapped the lock.

  He waited. A not-right tingle chased up the middle of his back. Even though the power of the stink eased as he got used to it, he breathed through is mouth, cringed at the off flavor, then held his breath.

  The knob turned, then twisted back to in place.

  Abe’s long sigh drew out uneven and thin. “What’s wrong. Are you hurt?”

  “They’re asleep and in the way.”

  Asleep or dead? Some kid trapped. He glanced at the piles of dead in the gloom. Poor kid.

  “Can you, uh, pull them aside, so one of the doors will open?”

  Movement brushed and shifting sounded.

  “Hey,” Abe asked through the wooden door, “what’s your name?”

  “Brittany.”

  “Mine’s Abe. Can you come out now?”

  The door opened a few inches and a little g
irl’s pale thin face appeared. Between Darcy Lynn’s and Hannah’s age, she squeezed her shoulder in the crack and wedged her body through. “They all fell down and wouldn’t get up. We ran out of food this morning. We even drank the last of the grape juice and at the offering wafers. The creepers were out here.” With big brown eyes, she took in the mess. “Oh, oh.”

  “It’s okay. They’re not going to hurt you.”

  More shifting noises rose from inside the church.

  “Oh, they’re waking up.” She pushed the door farther open.

  “No wait.”

  Brittany slipped back inside.

  What if the dead didn’t stay dead? They’d tear her apart.

  Abe grabbed for the largest crowbar. The metal of the tools clanked. He held the bar in a two-handed grip across his chest.

  “Brittany?”

  The church door opened inward.

  The girl, a woman carrying a toddler, and three other women, followed by a few men emerged. Dirty and ragged, their everyday clothes torn and filthy—not as bad as Abe—they walked out as if climbing from caves into daylight. The stink of zombie gore smears ramped sharp from unwashed bodies and sickness.

  A thin woman wearing a baggy dress and sandals held Brittany’s hand.

  As people exited, they milled into the lot.

  Stun and shock twisted their faces.

  “They’re truly dead?” asked the woman that was either Brittany’s older sister or mother.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Abe said. “Least ways, I hope so.”

  “We have been delivered from evil.” A man in jeans and a plaid shirt threw his hands and shouted. “Whoo-hoo.”

  The rest of the group clapped and held up their hands toward the sky.

  The man who’d first yelled nudged the nearest dead body with his boot. With a grunt, He pulled his leg away and kicked the body. He kicked hard enough to knock himself off balance. He tipped backwards and bumped into a trio of women.

  One of the woman, dressed in a gray business skirt and jacket yanked the man’s hair.

  “Hey, wait a minute. I know this is bad, but—”

  The second of the trio, a woman dressed in red pants and top, punched the guy in the nose.

  The third woman, wearing pale green hospital scrubs with yellow smiley faces on them, rubbed at the blood splatters on her top, then licked her fingers.

  Other fights broke out.

  A skinny man hopped astride a second man’s back and rode him the length of the porch. Skinny Guy pulled the man’s ears and gouged his eyes until both of them pitched off the tiny porch onto the heaped dead bodies.

  What was wrong with them? Had they lost their minds?

  As if forced to choke down Hannah’s rubbery overcooked boiled eggs, Abe swallowed, snatched Brittany’s hand, and yanked the little girl off the stoop. Tugging her along, he vaulted over dead body after dead body.

  She fell.

  He lost his grip, went back for her.

  “What’s wrong? Why are they so mad?” Brittany, tears streaming, asked.

  “Don’t know. Come on.”

  “It’s them. The kids in the big drawings. They caused this.” The group rushed toward Abe and Brittany.

  “Mommy,” she held out her arms for her mom even as Abe jerked her backwards.

  The girl’s mother, a slight woman in a loose flapping housedress, stood on the porch. Her head drooped to one side and a string of drool clung to her jaw.

  “Your mom’s not herself. She might not mean to, but she’ll hurt you.” He pulled the little girl along.

  “No. I want my Mama.” Brittany grabbed Abe’s arm and bit.

  Pain lanced from his wrist to his elbow, so he let go.

  The kid climbed over dead bodies back to her mother.

  Abe set the bodies between the girl and the people on fire.

  Only he didn’t.

  He thought it, stared with keen eyes at the corpses. No smoke, no flames, no sizzling zombies to keep Brittany from returning.

  The man that kicked the zombie punched a woman in the jaw and barreled down the stairs.

  “Brittany,” Abe said. “No.”

  “Get ‘em. We have to rid the world of them before more harm is done.” A farmer’s lips pulled back from yellowed, crooked teeth.

  Brittany’s mom stood and drooled.

  Abe charged toward them, swinging the crowbar, as he ran.

  “Get him. We’ll burn them at the stake like the witches they are.”

  “Freaks of nature.”

  Both church doors swung open, and more people spilled out of the church, fighting one another, with some running at him and the girl.

  Abe glared at the steeple. His unblinking eyes stung and watered. Back to the zombies, his squinted gaze failed to smoke, let along ignite a flame.

  No longer Master of Fire, nor of anything, Abe hit the big man lunging at Brittany across the temple.

  The man fell like a ten-ton boulder.

  Others trampled the fallen man.

  Abe swung again and again, until he hit an especially hard skull. His elbow sending out numb pangs, the crowbar spun away. He fought to get between Brittany and the crowd. The man grabbed him, punched him, and pulled his hair.

  Hitting and scratching until the guy turned loose, Abe ducked down and crawled.

  Knees collided into him. Shoes shot toward him, hitting his ribs.

  One seized his foot.

  He kicked out, the sole of his shoe hitting her in the face.

  The lady in the suit’s nose smashed in a spurt and gush of blood.

  “There’s another one,” a woman yelled.

  Part of the group veered toward a blonde teenaged girl holding a chubby-cheeked toddler.

  Face heated with shame and eyes dry as bone dust, Abe rolled in the putrid gore on to his back. In long shoves of his feet, he slid backward. He used a spare zombie arm to hit and jab with the jagged broken bone.

  Unable to bring about fire, a normal kid for the first time ever, in a whole world gone crazy, he escaped and raced toward the woods. In the trees, he fell atop a pile of heaped brown leaves. His upper body arched to force more air into his heaving lungs.

  No fire.

  No way.

  He’d always been able to burn, to become the flame. All his life.

  Brittany might have been hurt—killed—because of him.

  More than likely the toddler and his mother too.

  Might the group have turned mad anyways?

  Brody would know, but he was dead.

  Abe’s fault. For getting in a hurry and trying to help in too massive of a way. He stared at the strange sky, then made out a shape on the rocks between swaying trees.

  Near the ridge base, black lines, as if drawn with soot, drew across the whitish gray stone. Great, more of Nora’s son’s drawings.

  Hannah was so right about the guy.

  On his feet, Abe dragged one foot forward and made his way farther from the rock face. On the next slope, he swiped sweat from his eyes.

  Even blocked by trees, the lines came together. Nora, a crown atop her head, stood among drawn figures of zombies. At the bottom, the artist—Vincent, no doubt—wrote, Queen of the Dead.

  The lift of his brows fought the stretch of the outer corners outward as if shock and sad and doubt screwed his face into a trick-or-treat mask.

  From above, carried on the rising pine- and cedar-filled breeze, an angel’s song reached.

  He lifted his gaze to Rocky Top.

  From the ridge high above, Irene sang.

  No wonder there’d been so much peace in their house. Longing to be a kid again, back in bed, listening to her sing him and his sister to sleep, seethed deep in Abe’s chest.

  If only those back in town might hear…

  Up top, were the others with Irene? Where were they putting Brody to rest?

  Did she sing a burial hymn?

  What a mess he’d made of everything.

  Hannah would rub his fac
e in it and force-feed him ash by the spoonful every day for years if she could.

  No longer able to rule fire, heavy-hearted and lost inside, Abe hugged his sore ribs and once again made the trek to up to Rocky Top.

  Chapter 25

  Outside Rocky Top Observatory that served multiple public and private sector needs set within the rolling hills of Tennessee, in a part of Nora’s mind the woman’s singing failed to reach, two thoughts struck Nora.

  One was if she didn’t have her powers, the children didn’t either.

  Two, the boys, Junior and Abe, were missing.

  The aspect of herself lulled by the enhanced woman’s voice ringing out over the mountain wanted to stay in a happy warm place tucked inside Nora’s head.

  In her mind she poured sugar into a boiling pot, while her mother stirred the mashed strawberries to make jam. In a second pot, apples stewed so they might cook them down for apple butter. A third…

  Diversion. Trick.

  Not going to happen.

  The real ever-on-edge Nora struggled, as if swimming against the direction of the hot, lazy flow of reality, toward a far-distant surface.

  Her words slurred, she said, “Grab them.”

  Fellow survivors, not too bright to begin with, blinked. Some stood with mouths opened, others gazed upon the redheaded siren with rapturous smiles sliced across their lower, flaccid faces.

  Nora curled her fingers, created a fist, and swung. Her knuckles—stupid move, no gloves—connected with the bearded guy’s temple. She yelled, “Do something.”

  The three-hundred-pound bearded man went down.

  “My lands, she’s killed him,” said the ponytailed woman.

  “No, but she dang well knocked some sense into me.” On his knees, the man grabbed his temples and clawed at his thinning brown hair. “Stop the woman from singing. She’s a witch and is spelling us with her voice.”

  “Leave her alone.” Darcy Lynn backed way, raising and waving her hands to control the wind.

  The speed and strength of the rising breeze remained steady.

  So…

  The wide-eyed child wiggled her fingers. “You’ll be torn apart like paper dolls and blown away.”

  With a disgruntled grunt, the bearded guy lowered his pistol. “We want them alive. Can’t shoot no young’uns.”

  The singing, redheaded witch took Merv and Brody’s hands.