by Alexa Dare
“Not my doing. At least not in the past few minutes anyway .” Abe steered toward the shore.
“Get the tracks down and get us on the bank.” Brody’s face drew taut.
Hannah pressed her cheek to the glass. Ice crystals formed on the pane from her breath. “We can’t help them. It’s not safe.”
Men flailed. Their mouth-gaping screams failed to reach inside the Am-Sub.
“We’ve done a very, very bad thing.” Darcy Lynn stared at everything and nothing at the same time.
Abe’s eyes stung. He wanted to—needed to—shut them.
Alongside, men swam and burned and boiled.
Glad for the canned scents of sealant, glue, and leather with new car fumes, Abe cringed at the idea of the outside burning hair and flesh and scalding, boiling coppery blood.
A red-haired young man, Brody’s age, hung on to the Am-Sub’s side.
“Hurry. Please.” Hannah rushed to the other side of the cabin. She matched her palm to the man’s hand on the glass.
The man’s eyes grew wide.
Abe ripped his gaze from the mirror, which tinted a scorched brown from the effects of his gaze.
Tracks in place, he drove toward shore.
Hannah sobbed. “We can’t stop. We mustn’t…”
“The guy just fell away,” Brody said, “back into the water.”
Into the fiery depths. Abe’s doing.
The river burned.
Deep heat ignited inside Abe where an ember of restless anger raged.
Chapter 6
Chaos Wins. His brother’s final message, in blood and mud, washed away by the Holston River. Yet turmoil, in the form of a barge with a dying crew in a fiery river, jabbed at Brody’s brain.
The mist inside the ATV cabin swelled into a steady ozone-filled rain.
Electric sparks shot from the console.
Tension rolled in Brody’s belly.
“Hannah.” Abe drove the Am-Sub toward the riverbank. “Please.”
“Can’t have rainy weather without rain.” Hannah’s voice held the deepest, most forlorn sadness that Brody ever heard in his entire life.
In the moonlight and firelight, bodies bumped against the Am-Sub’s hull. The sound echoed in Abe’s head as he kept trying to get closer to solid ground. Greasy urps, as if from around a mouthful of overcooked beef jerky, stretched Brody’s tonsils.
Outside the vehicle, in the churning reddish brown current, dozens of men flailed in boiling water topped with tall erupting flames.
“I have to hear. Need to hear.” Abe flipped on the speaker sound.
The rising shrill of the screams of the dying blasted through the cabin.
Darcy Lynn slapped her palms over her ears.
“Abe don’t.” Hannah scooted toward an aisle seat and pulled her feet up into the seat. Hugging her knees, she curled into a ball.
If only they might be able to shut out reality just a flip of a switch.
“Turn off the sound.” A truckload of dread filled Brody’s guts.
Abe’s flushed face blanked and his eyes glazed. “Because I caused this, I need to hear their suffering.”
“This is not your fault. Nora and Yates pushed the balance of nature too far.” Brody wanted what he said to carry over to what he’d been forced to do to his brother. Yet no words upheld having to choose between one’s own kin and the lives of children.
A wild-eyed squeal rose out of Darcy Lynn. She removed her hands from her ears. Gaze stretched, she smacked her palms over her mouth to stop the shriek. With a spin, she lifted her arms and wiggled her fingers.
A cutting gust rushed from the front of the cab to the back. The three-inch-thick repaired rear windowpane blew outward. The glass splashed into the water, and the pane sank to scoop the flailing crew of the ship like a graveyard shovel into the depths.
“Seat belts,” Abe called out.
Fighting the urge to hurl, Brody planted his bony butt in his seat and clipped the belt in place.
Abe took hold of the wheel. “Heading for shore.”
Within the limits of the seatbelt, Brody reached for Darcy Lynn.
The tips of his fingers grazed the sleeve of her blouse.
The ATV’s crash against the shore jerked Brody’s angled upper body into the wall near the door. His right side slammed the inner bulk of the doorway, while his left side chest ached as if his heart tried to pry apart his ribs and escape.
Arms waving, Darcy Lynn’s jogging legs rushed her back first down the aisle.
Panicked, Brody grabbed her wrist.
The Am-Sub’s tracks dug into the mud. The vehicle heaved up the riverbank.
The force of the lurch yanked the seven-year-old from Brody’s grip.
“Take the pilot seat and drive, Brody.” Abe’s horror-filled eyes trapped Brody’s gaze, then Abe bolted. “Hannah, do your thing.”
With a yelp, Darcy Lynn threw out her arms. Her lower body hit the back wall. She pitched head first out of the rear window. “Eep.”
Under Abe’s laser gaze, the fire along the back doused out.
“Cool water. Cool, cool water.” Hannah, tears wetting her cheeks, rushed down the aisle.
A cool mist, as fresh as a mountain spring, sprayed Brody’s face in Hannah’s wake.
He stood as if stuck in mud in the space between the pilot and copilot seats.
Steam, as if from boiled cured ham, rose from behind the Am-Sub.
Throw-up spewed into the back of Brody’s mouth.
Arms pinwheeling, Darcy Lynn fell into the thick rising mist with a loud splash.
Slogging into motion, running, he spat yuck between his feet and charged to the rear of the cab.
“Stay there,” Abe said. “Be ready to get us out of here.”
Brody reeled back, tripped, and fell on his butt. Hard. The butt hit closed his lower jaw with a click. He tripped over his own two feet, so how did they expect him to drive? The kids didn’t get it.
Aw, heck.
A dripping Darcy Lynn lifted, like the very water itself raised her, into Abe and Hannah’s capable hands.
“The…the…the men grabbed me.” The little girl kicked her feet and cried.
The twins hauled her back into the cabin.
Brody crawled into the driver’s seat. Behind the wheel, he froze at the sight in the rearview mirror.
From the outside, a pair of hands draped across the bottom edge of the frame. Meat sagged. Strips of skin hung from the fingers to flap in the chilled putrid gusts.
A weeping Hannah hugged Darcy Lynn.
Darcy Lynn clung to Hannah. The little girl bawled as if pure evil nipped at her heels.
Kicking the hands away, a boyish, primal yell erupted from Abe’s gaping mouth.
“Hold on.” Brody stomped what he hoped was the gas pedal.
Under the lurch of the ATV, the kids pitched to the floor. As a pile, they banged into the lower rear wall.
The Am-Sub tracks spun, then caught in the muddy bank. The vehicle shot forward, and Brody’s keen unmanly scream melded with theirs.
“Hush. We’re okay. Loose skin. Oh, gag. Caught on your ankles and tennis shoes.” Hannah gasped. “For a second I thought—”
“Zombie’s rise out of a river of fire.” Flat on his back, Abe held stiff arms up and out. “Grrr. The dead, boiled and skinned, walk the earth.” The boy wrapped his arms across his belly. He writhed on the cabin floor in a fit of wild, barking laughs.
On solid ground, the Am-Sub jerked to a stop.
A honking laugh flashed hot and thick, like projectile vomit, up and out of Brody’s throat. He choked. Coughed. No way would he admit what he feared. That the dead walked. Whooping like a hyena, he swiped at tears spurting from under his closed eyelids.
Zombies. Of all things. What could possibly happen next?
Some sort of mental hiccup. He’d just lost his brother. Maybe some part of him wanted to think that his brother could come back. Brody’s mirth bled into crying. He pressed his lips closed ti
ght. His cheeks puffed, but he failed to hold back the wails.
Stress release.
“I did it for them,” he said in a choked whisper. “Had to. To keep the kids safe.” Like Cantrell had told Brody to do. “Man, how could you do this to me?”
“He’s here,” said Darcy Lynn. Her low, flat tone jerked up Brody’s spine worse than any scream.
He jumped and bumped his head on the steering wheel. “Cantrell?”
“Your brother died.” Hannah’s cold and wet hand patted Brody’s arm. “There, see, out front, Vincent’s riding on top of a tank.”
“That’s the old military tank from outside the veteran’s meeting hall.” Brody shook the dazed shock out of his noggin. Rain flicked from his hair that was in desperate need of a cut.
Like a charging monster, the tank popped and broke burning trees under the car-wide tracks.
Grating thuds joined the ramped roar of the motor. Sparks and black smoke belched from under the tank’s belly. The olive metal hulk, three times as big as the Am-Sub, ground across the slope. One of the tracks, made up of linked metal plates, might crush the ATV in one pass.
Nora’s son held on to the cannon gun base and waved.
At the top hatch of the gun turret, the plate raised and opened with a clang. A gray-haired man’s head rose from the beast’s belly.
“Uncle Merv.” Brody’s hands ached from his rigid grip.
Friend or foe?
Did this thing have a reverse?
A flaming river full of bodies blocked the rear.
“Your uncle!” Hannah gasped. “He’ll help us?”
“The cannon’s aimed right at us.” Abe knelt next to Brody. “Good guy or bad guy?”
“The head of the bad dudes said Merv was one of them.” Brody tipped out of the seat. “Better you be at the wheel if we have to make a break for it.”
“Why doesn’t this one have a big old gun?” Hannah asked.
The bigger tank’s topside cannon aimed at the Am-Sub.
How much more might Brody be forced to take? “No Chinese cuisine, like duck sauce and spring rolls, but how-to manuals. Kids that rule the elements. Secret projects. Rogue militia group. Both out to get us. Nature’s whacked out, with flash fires, killer hail, and savage winds. At least the earth’s stable—”
“Junior! Oh, please,” Darcy Lynn spoke from far, far away. “Let’s hurry. He needs us.”
“Vincent led them to us.” Clutched in the coils of the chaos, Brody’s heart flubbed and missed a beat. He clawed his chest.
Nora Hicks injured his heart. She’d only saved him from death to be betrayed by his only living kin.
“Uncle Merv really is one of them. How’s that for chaos, Cantrell?” He gripped the curve of his aching, burning left ribcage and collapsed.
Chapter 7
Despite the darkness, too warm wind chafed Nora’s face. The slapping gusts ripped her screams from her throat and away.
Around her, the elements toll on the environment—burning alternated with freezing, to crust, crumble , and destroy the surrounding forest along the ridgelines and mountains made for a bleak sight.
Beneath the moon glow, black and desolate, skeletons of once green trees reached toward charcoal clouds to break like parched twigs before the onslaught of the rushing wind. Splits in the earth tipped trees up by their roots, and wind funnels blared closer across the gentle slopes near the militiamen encampment.
Her screams let out decades of pent up rage and pain.
Her aftermath headache pounded like the steady blow of a sledgehammer in her temples, and the rawness of her throat left her drained and gasping.
The smell of ash and baked dirt replaced the fresh spring growth so strongly that they might have been her last meal. The bitterness in her mouth shuddered, like unripe raspberry juice, through her jaw, yet her swallow only spread and increased the thick layer coating her tongue.
From the charred ashes, the phoenix that was her life would rise.
Through the sparse treetops, the silhouette of Briar Patch Mountain no longer rose in rocky hulking dominance.
An entire mountain, her home for so many years, gone.
Good riddance.
Oh, yes, she was free for the first time in decades. The squeeze in her chest eased, and she took in a deep breath as a free woman.
Was it possible the mountain had fallen onto the fault line? Was that why only aftershocks thrummed through the ground?
If so, the rebellious, backwoods boy who created earthquakes was much smarter than she’d given him credit for.
Gloved hands shoved, rather than grabbed, at her, as if the militia members, dressed in their body-odored finery, surrounded her but feared actually capturing her.
No shock or electromagnetic field disruptor control collar circled her slender neck, which meant no one could control her.
Not ever again.
On her knees, Nora raised her arms as if to embrace each of her captors in turn.
“Look out,” a woman screeched.
A man yelped and yelled, “Don’t let her touch you.”
Men and woman jumped back and scurried from her like sheep discovering a wolf in their midst.
“Somebody grab her,” another male drawled and prodded her with a gun barrel.
Not one pair of hands reached for her.
Arms extended out to the side, and palms up, Nora lifted her face skyward. She spoke steadily and slow, “Silence.”
Sudden quiet fell, as if the approaching tornado had snatched the two dozen militia members away. The sheer power of nature in a rage hummed around them.
Inside one of the tornadoes on the far hillside, fire slashed within the funnel.
A few feet to the left, a camouflaged and bearded heavyset man dropped to his knees. “Like the good book promised. A pillar of fire.”
Others knelt.
“Armageddon,” one muttered.
The woman with scraggly gray hair wailed into the wind.
“If we stop her and those creepy kids,” the big-bellied man asked, “reckon this horror will come to an end?”
From a fissure two or three yards ahead, a green-tinted gaseous cloud seeped from the earth and rose into the rising gusts. The whip of a strong breeze blew the cloud in the direction of the group.
“Hold your breath.” Roderick covered his lower face with a big hand.
"Use your arms, clothes, whatever you have to protect your eyes, nose, and face." Determined to undermine death, Nora tucked her face into the bend of her elbow.
Someone off to the right hit the ground like a gunnysack filled with potatoes. Another thump issued from behind Nora.
Two down.
Not good when she needed every able-bodied man and woman to search for the children.
When a stubborn exhale seeped from her lungs and she was forced to breathe, a chemical odor like a mixture of bleach and ammonia clung to her, yet no one else collapsed.
The poisonous ground vapor sucked toward the locomotive boom of half-a-dozen tornados on the next ridge over. As if a giant lawnmower chopped thin blades of grass, the twisters carved zigging paths through the forest with equal ease. One of the cyclones raced downslope, as if getting a running go at the ridge where Nora and the group gathered.
“We need gasmasks and possibly hazardous material gear.” Roderick sliced the tail of his shirt and crammed the cloth over his lower face. Through the shirt material, he said, “Might be some back at camp if the earthquakes didn’t swallow the stockpile .”
“Several had a stash of doomsday supplies,” a thin man with watery, bulgy eyes accused everyone within sight with his judgmental gaze. “Rations, pork skins, and such, as well as bottled water.”
More nearby smoldering treetops caught fire again. Smoke, thick and oily, blended with the low-hanging rainclouds.
The immediate temperature around them spiked.
Drops of sweat leaked from Nora’s hairline.
“Forgive us our sins. Ahhhh
h.” The bug-eyed man threw his arms wide. His torso convulsed and his eyes rolled back so that only the whites filled the space between his fluttering eyelids.
The whiteness of his eyeballs congealed and shrank like egg whites sizzling in a skillet. A heated meatiness steamed from the man’s pores.
“Get back.” Nora bolted to her feet.
The group herded away from the man in the throes of some unknown affliction.
White smoke, turning to gray, wafted waxy and hair-singed from the survivalist’s ears and nose. The ends of his brown hair lifted, and his eyeballs sizzled.
“Cooking from the inside out.” Roderick muttered. The group backed up a couple of yards, but not too far, as if they feared they might miss something.
Someone shoved a pistol before Nora’s face and demanded, “You stop this. Now.”
“I’m not causing or driving this.” Nora welcomed flesh-to-flesh contact. She glanced around, gauging distance and the group’s expressions of intent.
“Nature’s fighting back.” Roderick stepped before Nora as if he intended to facedown the group.
Hope, like warm honey, flared in Nora’s chest.
“Huhn. Huhn.” Smoke belched out of the bulgy-eyed man’s mouth. With a sizzle and a rushing whoosh, the most recent victim of the haywire elements burst into flame.
The man stood in place, flapping his arms, a burning effigy to the warped turn of nature. The fire took out his throat early so his screams shot out as a torch of far-reaching flames.
The crowd gasped and shuffled farther into the trees.
“Burning alive,” blurted a falsetto voice.
“Spontaneous combustion.” Roderick shook his head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
The burning man fell like a tree splintered by a lightning strike.
“End of times,” a bearded man muttered.
Ever the instigator, Nora added, “The elements are out of control.”
Heated wind smacked at them as the aptly described pillar of fire raced their way. Only yards out, trees and brush sucked into the funnel ripped apart to be cremated into ash. The black of ash swirls joined the orange flames to send an ominous warning of the twister’s approach.
“We must get to safety.” Nora took a step and water splashed.
