by Alexa Dare
Smashed noses and lips spewed blood, while people pulled hair and yanked strands out in hunks.
Those that weren’t in the fray of the fight, edged toward Uncle Merv and Irene who stood backed against the scenic view overlook railing. Merv, like a big burly bear, shoved Irene behind him and faced the mob.
Others clutching rocks crept toward Brody who ducked down behind a pile of stones on the other side of the lot.
With no idea as to why or who was on which side, Abe climbed on top of a boulder halfway between the piled-rock mound and the ledge. “Stop this.”
Not one person stopped fighting or even noticed Abe.
Junior thought he could do this, so he could, right?
Sure.
Before he’d made a mess, now he’d fix the mess he made.
Abe set the backpack atop the rock.
From the plastic bag, he poured a bit of powder on a rock in front of him. The white powder sifted into a fist-sized heap. Ignoring the screams and yells and groans and moans of the clashing fights, in quick stabs, Abe struck flint and the metal striking stone together.
Snick, snick. Each click sent sparks flying to hit stone inches out from the pile. Hands shaking, he moved to within less than an inch of the powder, tried again. Sparks flew and fire flared in a quick, acrid puff of smoke.
In a whoosh, heat flashed his fingers and face. He flinched away, and wagged his brows, amid a singed-hair stink, uncertain if they curved above his eyes. Tossing a thumb-sized hunk of the special wood into the fire, he scooted back.
The rising wind sent the flames sideways. Cupping some powder, Abe blew the white grains across the orange and yellow blaze. The fire swished and crackled outward toward the fighting adults.
Squeals replaced screams.
“The boy that controls fire.” A woman, her hand fisted in a man’s shirtfront, glared.
“Thought they couldn’t use their gifts.” Wearing camo, a man, his nose spurting blood, swayed on his feet. He smeared blood with a swipe of his wrist and blinked heavy lids.
Abe, his foot on the backpack strap, stood and spread his arms out as if he commanded the width and strength of the burning. “Go back to your houses. If there’s no house left, find or make a new one. We gotta get on with our lives.”
“Ain’t got no electricity. No cars.” A gray-haired bearded man with black plastic-framed glasses said, “No jobs. No wrestling on television or buttered microwaved popcorn. Even the starter on the tractor’s new-fangled, so even our farming equipment won’t start.”
Near the scenic overlook cliff, Merv held a crumpled and crying Irene in his arms.
The bitter flavor of dread overtook Abe’s tongue.
To Abe’s right, Brody, with a dazed and confused expression, huddled behind the rock pile.
“Just because he plays with fire,” a woman with a ponytail so tight her eyebrows lifted said, “don’t mean he can’t be harmed.”
Abe stooped. The heat warmed his cheeks and forehead. Opening the baggie , he blew more powder through the flame.
Fire flashed.
With a backward jerk, he whipped his head aside. Burnt hair stink filled his nose. He ducked down and patted his eyebrows and the shaggy black bangs of his hair.
Loose powder clinging to his fingers flashed. Blue-tipped orange flames danced over his hands as if he actually performed magic and manifested fire. Except, he had no gel or lotion rubbed into his skin to prevent the heat from searing his flesh. In an instant, his burning hands reddened in breath-stealing, stabbing hurt.
He stared. The powder burned instead of snuffing out. Hold up. No staring out flames, not anymore. But I do know fire.
Chugging in gasps to get past the pain, he yelled, “Be on your way.”
A thrown rock smacked his upper thigh.
His leg smarting, he acted unhurt and swung his arms across his body in what he hoped was a grand threatening gesture, directly across the top of the flames.
Due to the draft of the movement, flames stretched and appeared to shoot from his fingers.
People screamed and fled.
Abe rubbed his hands together to knock the powder free. Hands aflame, he yanked the aloe plant out of a pack pocket. He squeezed the plant, wiped away the residue, and then snuffed out the flickers on his skin with the thick milky liquid. A scorched ashy taste coated his mouth, and his blistering hands stung.
“Play with fire, you gonna get burned.” He tossed the smoke-plant leaves into the flames. Ce the leaves hit the flames, a skunk smell stung Abe’s eyes and sent him flailing backwards. He banged his behind, but breath held, he crawled to the pack. From an open pouch, he pulled out the correct leaves and tossed them into the blaze as well.
Like scurrying mice, people cleared the area. Smoke hid the others from him.
“Let go of me,” Junior yelled from behind.
With his handcrafted fire raging, in a crouch, Abe spun on his heels.
“Stop what you’re doing and come down from there.” A man held Junior off the ground. “Remember me. I’m the one that got away in the tunnels. You burned my good friends to crisps.”
“His leg’s broken.” The words choked Abe and leapt like hot, coals from his throat. “He’s just a kid. Don’t hurt him.” He held out his hands, palms up.
“Abe.” Junior opened his hand. A blue marble with white stripes dropped out. From the other hand, he dumped all sizes of colored glass balls to ping and bounce on the rocks.
“Name’s Roderick, and we’ve no time for kid’s games. Your water-controlling sister and the little girl that rules the wind are waiting for you. With any luck, Nora will play nice until we get there.” Roderick shifted Junior into one arm and clamped around the ten-year-old’s chest.
Abe gauged the distance.
Junior elbowed and kicked the man with his good leg. The ten-year-old pulled the small baggie from his front pants pocket. In one motion, he opened the bag and swung the contents into the bad guy’s face.
The tall man jerked back. His eyeballs shot red and tears gushed from his eyes. “Ahhhhhh, I can’t see.” He took a half step onto the marbles. His feet scissored in a backwards run, and he toppled backwards toward the ledge.
Abe rushed the man, and, in frantic grasps, grabbed.
Fear-widened eyes set in a dirty, freckled, little boy face trapped Abe as Junior and Roderick fell.
Chapter 27
Huddled behind the rock mound of his brother’s grave on the far end of the Rocky Top parking lot, Brody ducked in what must be his thousandth oh-crap moment in the past few days.
Everything, except the pulses overhead, faded in the gloom. The greens of the tree and grass leaned toward gray. Even his ideas as his spit sat bland and his sense of smell dulled toward pure ash.
Fighting continued all around him and yet the orange cloud orbs blinking faster and more brightly drew his confused gaze. The change in the glowing pulses indicated…
“There’s one of them,” someone from the lower part of the lot yelled and veered Brody’s way. “Behind the rock pile.”
Brody crawled, not the combat creep crawl his ex-military brother taught him, but in a hurried, on-hands-and-knees sprint. Feeling as if his brain had been drained, he stumbled toward the fire. A thrown rock bashed his shoulder. Sharp pain blasted his gunshot wound. Another hurled fist-sized stone clipped his upper hip.
Angled away from the overlook, he dove. Cutting through the bushes and briars, he banged into a ground nowhere as welcoming as a thick pile of fall leaves. His elbows and knees burning, he slithered low and stayed on the move.
More rocks flew overhead to thud into tree trunks or to smack through leaves to drop to the ground and roll. Stoned to death at such an early age. Unable to finish all the gear I intended to design.
Leaping to his feet, he ran full out, ducking behind one tree, then the next. He kept the sound of yelling over his right shoulder, but soon the voices faded. He collapsed somewhere in the woods, struggling to breathe, in a wor
ld where he didn’t belong.
Cantrell had been right.
Chaos wins.
Every damned time.
The storm overhead, electric and magnetic in nature, brewed stronger. The surge of extra electricity. Probably. Right? Below the clouds, white lightning cracked and flashed overhead, and the black-clouded storm, filled with orange flickering orbs, continued to spread.
“Local-yokel preppers hoped for an apocalypse. Now they have one.”
How many people had the actual blast killed because they wore pacemakers and such? How many went insane and murdered others?
The layering clouds expanded both heavenward and toward the horizons.
How much damage might a mega magnetic storm ravage?
His ability to think seeping slowly back into his skull, he muttered, “Too much.” Trees all around, all looking the same closed in like bars on a cage.
Which way?
Leaves swayed in strong breezes and shut him in from above.
No bird or insect noises sounded.
He glanced upward.
No birds flew beneath the thick bank of clouds. None perched in trees. Yet strange colored leaves piled in open spaces and beneath trees.
Not leaves, feathers. On the forest floor, crows, red-breasted robins, sparrows, and other birds of all kinds lay dead. Among the birds, butterflies and moths rested as if pinned for eternity to specimen boards.
Something thumped against the ground near his fingers.
He pulled back.
Instead of the grayish brownish rock or another bird that rocketed out of the sky, a deep blue aggie marble sat among the moss and leaves.
He whispered, “Junior? Is that you?”
A bright yellow marble landed, a yard or so away, on shimmering feathers of a dead crow’s wing, and rolled toward Brody.
“Abe?”
No one answered.
The smoke from Abe’s fire on Rocky Top merged too well with the darkness of the clouds. Which way out? He had no idea. On which side of the tree did moss grow? Kind of like that left and right-hand thing—which way, for the moment, eluded him.
Enhanced his skinny ass. Without his brain boost, he could wander for days, and maybe never find his way out of these woods.
Farther along, a red marble dropped near the base of a towering oak.
“Whoever you are, this is no time for games,” he whispered, yet, like a lamb being led to slaughter, Brody followed the trail, collecting the brightly colored marbles as he went.
After several minutes and with a handful of marbles collected, Brody called out in a low hushed voice, “Look, if you’re leading me into trouble, I’ve had plenty of that in the last few days.”
“Hold it down. They’re all over the place,” Abe spoke from a leafy bush. “Merv sent me to fetch you, but he wanted me to do it quietly, so I borrowed Junior’s marbles. We need help.”
Another marble plunked on the ground.
“Cute.” Brody scooped up the red striped shooter.
“Come on,” Abe crawled from the brush and crouched to lead the way.
Back at the peak, dead stench-bloated bodies topped the blood-blackened parking lot pavement like roaches gassed by a bug bomb.
On the overlook edge, Merv lay flat on his belly.
A silently weeping Irene, her red hair loose and whipping around her, held fast to the big man’s belt.
“I tried to reach but couldn’t,” Abe said.
“Glad you stayed safe. In a crazy world like this…” Merv, his beard flapping in the breeze, glanced Brody’s way. “Nephew, we are in dire need of your expertise.”
Belly crawling over the rough rocky edge, Brody squinted against the stinging gusts, and, with a swish of vertigo, peered downward.
Below, a kid lay with his upper body on a ledge. Body hanging over the rock shelf, Junior clung to the sharp edges.
“No rope.” Merv gripped the stone next to Brody. “With his busted leg, I don’t think he’s able to climb on his own. Don’t know how he’s hanging on.”
“Just like I know fire,” Abe said. “Junior knows rock.”
Brody handed Abe the marbles. “He’ll want these back.”
Abe’s held up his blistered palms.
Irene held out her hands and accepted the clinking glass.
“Mighty fine show you put on, Abe. You two boys got some smarts about you.” Merv grinned. “If we were able, I’d buy you both a hot fudge sundae with cherries and whipped cream on top.”
“Minus the chocolate sprinkles that look like ants.” Abe beamed from his uncle’s praise.
Brody eyed the drop off and glanced beyond. A long, wide-opened space stretched to the valley below. “Uncle Merv, I’m a klutz, remember? If I go after him, what if I freeze and can’t climb down or back up?”
“No need to get worked up, son.” Merv hefted his bulk backwards and eased into a crouch.
From far below, a man’s booming voice shouted and echoed, “We’re coming after you. You’ll not get away this time. We’ll make you children pay for what you’ve done.”
“The people from the church in town. They’re not right in the head.” Abe cupped his hand over his eyes as if he wished to fry them like chicken strips.
“The altered EMFs can sometimes cause mental instability.” Brody said.
Abe grunted and said, “He’s got his smarts.”
“Maybe my brain’s kicking in gear again.” Brody rolled a shoulder. Or not.
“Let’s divide and conquer. Irene and I’ll go inside the building in search of some rope. We’ll lower Abe down since he’s the lightest, and then the three of us can pull Junior and him, one at a time, back up.” Merv lumbered upright and stood. “Once I eat an extra bit, I’ll heal Miss Irene’s throat, and she’ll once again sing as pretty as a blue jay.”
Through her tears, Irene smiled a weak, sad smile. Did she realize their powers, at least for now, were gone?
Ears tipped hot, Brody’s thoughts sort of dragged slow, like his brain shifted into low gear. “The fancy rope used to divide the visitor lines is too weak, but we can, uh, use the wires from the fuse box?”
“Good thinking. I’ll pull as many feet of wire as I can.” Uncle Merv patted Abe then Brody on the shoulder.
He squeezed tight. “You can do this, Brody. I’ve always believed in you boys. I’d have never agreed to have them experiment on you had I not wanted the best for you.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.” Right, what good was his best when even his top-of-the-line effort never made the good-enough level?
Merv, the man who stepped up in the role of Cantrell and his father so many years ago, took Brody’s hand in his and gave a quick man-to-man squeeze and a firm shake. “I know you will. You boys have always made me proud. I reckon I did the best I was able to for you and your brother, even if my choice took us down the wrong path.”
At a fast clip, he and Irene headed toward the building.
“Ahhh,” Junior shouted out from down below. The ten-year-old slipped inches lower, and his eyes stretched impossibly wide. “Can’t hold on much longer.”
“I’m going down. You can lower the rope. That way we’ll save time.” A man looked out from Abe’s gaze rather than a boy. “We can’t wait. Junior doesn’t have the time. I can help steady him, then you pull us up the rest of the way.”
The pressure around his heart and the lump in his gut… Like when Cantrell went out to confirm one of his wild-assed conspiracy theories.
“We’ll find some sort of rope. Doubt bore dep in his gut and dread ramped the pain of his injuries. What if I let them down? Just as I did to Cantrell…
Chapter 28
Deep in the woods as the shadows stretched beneath a marred sky, Nora knelt near the bottom fronds of a giant pine tree and waited for Roderick to return with the boys. Beneath fragrant boughs that shared sticky resin, Nora touched Darcy Lynn’s hair and smoothed her brow.
The girl’s damp hair capped her head in golden
curls.
The tendrils of Hannah’s hair slid like fine silk between Nora’s fingertips.
While Darcy Lynn’s tiny face held a fragile innocence, Hannah’s teenaged brow creased. Her full lips tensed into a pout.
If only Nora had been able to comfort and hold her son.
She caressed the strands the teen had pulled into two pigtails on each side of her crown. Nora stroked the length of her upturned nose.
Hannah moaned and her perfect mouth formed a deep grimace.
“You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?” Nora settled between the girls on their bed of leaves and moss. She held each of their hands. Her thumb traced the curve of Darcy Lynn’s nails and the tips of her fingers, while her seeking fingers settled on Hannah’s wrist.
Nora closed her eyes and inhaled slow and long.
Others cared for her son, after she almost killed him merely by holding him to allow him to nurse. The one and only time she cradled her son in her arms, she nearly ended his life.
Her so-called gift was more in line with a curse.
Beneath the pad of her thumb, Hannah’s pulse drummed strong and steady. Nora willed the rhythm to slow yet found the beat of her heart melding with the pace of the teenager’s youthful, strong heart.
Her arms ached to hold him, then and now. She crossed her arms and hugged the memory of her son close. The baby fragrances of him dwelled in her sensory memory even today. Pine and outdoor scents did not chase away the sweet-sour baby powder and formula aromas only babies exuded.
“I failed you, Vincent,” she mumbled. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“My, you look rather cozy.” Vincent, down on one knee, watched from a few yards away. “Odd that you might bed down with two little girls who are your captives.”
“Vincent.” Nora scooted from beneath the tree branches and hurried to her son. “You found us.”
“I could not let things remain uncertain between us.”
A caring she thought no longer existed ached in Nora’s chest. “In time, the storm will pass. We’ll regain our abilities. Be better than we ever were.”
