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

  Contents

  Raging Inferno

  Copyright

  Books by Alexa Dare

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Raging Inferno

  Children of the Elements, Book 3

  by

  Alexa Dare

  About Raging Inferno

  When nature refuses to be controlled, can mankind endure?

  Savage winds forged their path...

  A scorching post-apocalyptic adventure, Book Three of the Children of the Elements series by Alexa Dare, features an injured teenage technology guru and a band of supernaturally gifted children targeted and forced to fight for their lives.

  Dire rumblings shook the mountains to their core...

  Seventeen-year-old Brody Thackett confronts an obsessed project scientist. By partnering with a thirteen-year-old that rules fire, he and the children race to escape persecution and save their mountain community.

  Chaos rages, and the fire burns, burns, burns...

  Against Scientist Nora Hicks’ interference, Brody, volatile Abe Jenkins, and their group struggle to survive zombies roaming the earth and Abe’s losing control of the ominous, supernatural raging inferno blazing the land.

  Raging Inferno

  Children of the Elements, Book 3

  By: Alexa Dare

  Copyright © 2018, Towering Pines Publishing LLC

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Edition: October 2018

  Books by Alexa Dare

  ~~~Post-Apocolyptic/Dystopian Adventure~~~

  Children of the Elements Series

  Savage Winds (Book 1)

  Dire Rumblings (Book 2)

  Raging Inferno (Book 3)

  Unrelenting Tide (Book 4)

  Merciless Void (Book 5)

  ~~~Fated Mate Paranormal Romance~~~

  Knight Fever Series

  Where love and the supernatural collide.

  Wolf’s Pursuit (Book 1)

  Sorcerer’s Conquest (Book 2)

  Shifter’s Need (Book 3) (Coming Soon!)

  ~~~Adventurous Timeswept Romance~~~

  Hidden Cove Trilogy

  Three women, three timeswept paths to destiny.

  From the Mist (Book 1)

  Of the Deep (Book 2)

  On the Edge (Book 3)

  Hidden Cove: The Complete Series

  For information about new releases, sign up for Alexa’s spam-free newsletter. Subscribers will also receive special offers and access to exclusive giveaways.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Introduction

  THE CHILDREN OF THE ELEMENTS

  POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN ADVENTURE

  In the five-book epic post-apocalyptic adventure, brainwaves altered by a covert government project based out of the Secret City of Oak Ridge, the Children of the Elements are brought together and tested as weapons of mass destruction. Their struggle to free themselves and survive in the hostile East Tennessee mountains creates massive chaos and threatens to bring about the destruction of the human race.

  When nature, put into the hands of children that rule wind, earth, fire, water, and the void, refuses to be controlled, can mankind endure?

  Savage Winds (Book 1)

  Dire Rumblings (Book 2)

  Raging Inferno (Book 3)

  Unrelenting Tide (Book 4)

  Merciless Void (Book 5)

  Chapter 1

  Three Children of the Elements and one scared-spitless, allegedly enhanced, seventeen-year-old huddled inside an enclosed, all-terrain vehicle diving far below the East Tennessee Holston River’s surface.

  Hanging on to the outer edge of the all-terrain vehicle’s, or ATV’s, leather-upholstered seat bottom until his fingers cramped, Brody Thackett dared not swallow in case the fear- and glue-smell-tinged dryness forged a way back up his throat.

  We are so fucked.

  “9:00 PM, Tuesday. Dive testing ongoing,” from inset speakers, an automated female voice said. “Current oxygen level eighty percent.” Filled with a new car smell, the high-tech government ride went from traveling on tanklike tracks over roads and rough terrains to a boat and now to a submarine.

  “Only three days since this mess started,” Shudders crawled like a fleeing roach along Brody’s olive T-shirt clad shoulders.

  Plate-sized bubbles rolled against the ATV’s outer hull.

  “The water around us is boiling.” Wearing over-sized borrowed military clothing and boots, thirteen-year-old Abe Jenkins gripped the steering wheel and closed his eyes. “You should take over.”

  “I can’t drive.” His voice burst out of his throat a full octave too high. “We need to check the storage area beneath your seat cushion. I must get my hands on the instruction manual or how-to book, or we’re sunk.”

  “Why do we need a book? Tell me!” Blond-headed Darcy Lynn, dressed in smudged and dirty white, gripped tan fur and cotton stuffing and clutched a pair of coat button eyes in a fierce hug.

  “To get us out of the water, silly.” In the eerie blue light, Abe’s twin, Hannah, her raven pigtails swinging, tipped forward in the seat behind her brother. The girl canted her upper body to the side. “The numbers on the gauge are falling. We’ll run out of air.”

  “Oxygen Level 75 percent. Testing protocol proceeds,” said the womanly, metallic voice.

  “At least, we smashed the tracking device.” He gulped a raspy click.

  “Brody?” Abe’s elbows shook in nervous bounces.

  “You can do this.” He grasped his chest and willed the pain to ease.

  “But I’m heating the water just by looking at it.” The teen, eyelids closed, turned his face toward Brody. “Something’s wrong with the new collars you made.”

  “Raise as much as you can off your seat.” Brody worried his lower lip between his teeth. “The waves of your brain may have boosted far beyond the control collar’s capacity.”

  “In other words, the collars aren’t working anymore,” said Hannah.

  “Is there way you can control the water?” Brody calculated how much of their energy spike might be from the collars and how much the environment might have been affected—

  “Oxygen level,” the audible warning said, “seventy percent.”

  “Make the lady be quiet,” Darcy Lynn y
elled. Hunks of cotton stuffing, the pieces of her once cute stuffed dog toy, flopped in her arms.

  “You’re being at the steering wheel is just what you get for sneaking and learning how to drive.” Hannah shoved Abe’s butt from the seat. “Instead of me taking a chance of crushing us like an empty soda can, we need to find the stupid book.”

  Outside the mostly glass upper hull, silt floated in the liquid sludge. The mud brown tinged water continued to suck them down.

  Might he see his brother’s floating corpse again?

  Man, I hope not.

  “Dragged all over these hills. Abducted. Chased. Bullied. Used. My heart damaged by the dragon lady, who can stop or burst a man’s heart in a single touch. I died, for effing real, and Nora brought me back. We… I killed my own brother so that we could escape. What if the chaos never ends?” As he rocked in his seat, his lungs fought to catch up with the rhythm of his words.

  Gentle pats on his cheeks brought his gaze to Darcy Lynn. His vision focused on her round little girl face, with her perky upturned nose and blond curls. She stood before him and cupped his cheeks. “We’ll find your book.”

  “They said I was enhanced. What does that even mean?” Brody rolled his shoulders. “I’m just me.”

  “And we’re just us, silly.” She giggled.

  While Hannah helped Abe balance with his butt off the seat, Darcy Lynn dropped to her knees and tugged the seat bottom up. “All the bad things will get better.”

  “What if it doesn’t? What if—” Thoughts flew faster than the bullets aimed at him while he was back at Briar Patch.

  “There’s lots of papers. But I don’t know what they are. Hannah’s going to teach me and Junior to read though.”

  “I wish Junior hadn’t bailed out of the ATV to go after Vincent.” Abe peeked at the water ahead. “Nora meant to control us all. Do you think she’ll use Junior to cause more quakes or Vincent to make people sick?”

  “The shaking has settled.” Hannah joined Darcy Lynn and pulled out several booklets and envelopes from beneath Abe’s seat. “You don’t suppose that Junior—”

  Darcy Lynn bobbed her chin. “He’s taking good care of us.”

  Out front of the vehicle, bubbles the size of ping pong balls blooped as water heated and boiled against the curve of the front glass.

  Gasping, Abe closed his eyes. His butt banged the cushion down.

  “Watch out. You almost got our fingers with the seat,” said Hannah. The girls piled papers on the right front row. “You have to keep your eyes open, Abe. You’re driving. After all, you’re the one that knows how.”

  “Brody, do you suppose there’s an autopilot?” Abe seemed to struggle to control his ragged breaths.

  “You’re doing fine.” Brody helped to sort the stuff into three stacks.

  “Sit down, open your eyes, and keep driving, Mr. Doom and Gloom.” Hannah handed two manuals of some sort to Brody. In a clamping grip, she grabbed Brody’s wrist. “The pages are written in some sort of weird symbols .”

  “There has to be an English version.” Only there wasn’t. Brody flipped from the front to the back of both booklets. Then he ruffled the pages back to front. No English, only tiny symbols. “We have to escape this sinking sardine can.”

  “Are there pictures?” Panic pinched Hannah’s features.

  Three pairs of fear-widened eyes pivoted in Brody’s direction.

  “There are a few diagrams.” Brody gulped. His damaged heart vaulted in his chest. How could he tell three children they were doomed?

  “Fifty percent oxygen level. Testing process on schedule.”

  Darcy Lynn crammed her fingers in her ears and stomped her foot. Her face flushed a delicate pink. “Make. It. Shut. Up.”

  “Brody, there’s an envelope with Nora’s name written on it in black marker.” Hannah, grinning and lifting her brows, held up a large manila envelope.

  Darcy Lynn shook her head. “We’re not supposed to open other people’s mail.”

  “She’s not here, is she?” Hannah ripped open the envelope. “There’s a leather-bound book and a notebook. Ooh, and a regular-sized sealed white envelope. Let’s take these and look at them.”

  “Then you’ll sew Fluffy Dog and make him all better?”

  “We’ll look at these while the guys get us out!” The thirteen-year-old girl flounced with Darcy Lynn to the rear of the vehicle.

  “Oxygen levels at forty percent,” said the unreal voice. “Leveling inner hull pressure.”

  “The voice is in English. You got the computer readouts to show stuff we could read.” Abe stared far out ahead, as if gauging the distance of the heating water. “There has to be directions in English. Right?” Abe glanced at the rattle of papers in Brody’s hands. “All I see are marks and slashes.”

  “Chinese, like before.” Brody sucked inhales that grew more and more stale by the breath.

  The fluttering page edges browned, curled, and smoked.

  “Watch out.” Brody patted the manual against the outer thigh of his borrowed khaki military pants. “But for all the help they will do us, we might as well burn the pages.”

  “Sorry.” Abe set his gaze yards out. “Hang on.”

  The front hull rammed a sunken log. The log bounced along, rolled over the top of the vehicle, and floated away.

  “Oxygen release expedited,” said the ATV computer.

  “Faster?” Abe panted. His elbows flapped like the wings of a hen settling on a nest. “We’re in red hot trouble here.”

  Left to right, Brody scanned the text. He studied the diagrams and pictures. “Only days ago, I left my gadget shop to follow my brother and keep him out of trouble,” Brody squinted and focused harder. “This time the conspiracy stuff was real.

  “A little girl who plays with the wind to make tornadoes, for Pete’s sake. A ten-year-old boy who creates quakes. And twins who control water and fire. Not to mention the sixteen-year-old son of the project scientist who claims to be the Master of the Void and brings sickness about by drawing pictures. Nature’s gone screwy and is out of control and—”

  The flow of text drew his gaze from right to left. The right-to-left glance sort of made sense, as did his running his finger along the lines.

  Why the heck bother?

  Yet some aspect within the shapes clicked. He could not quite read the directions, yet a grasping of sorts swelled between his temples. “There’s a way to take us out of demo mode. Are you up for it?”

  “You figured out how to read Chinese?” asked Abe.

  “No. Maybe. Close enough. It’s sort of like liking eggrolls and egg-drop soup. You don’t know exactly what’s in them, but—” He shrugged his unhurt shoulder, favoring the bullet wound in the other. “Your job is to steer and stay calm so that you don’t heat the water, okay?”

  “Is that all? Drive and don’t boil us alive. I’m a thirteen-year-old.” Abe white-knuckled the steering wheel. “A kid.”

  “I’m not much older than you. Sometimes we just gotta do what we gotta do. All of us.” He punched a button to raise a laptop monitor-sized screen from out of the dash.

  “We’re getting warm.” Abe’s feverish face flushed rosy.

  “Yeah, we’re getting there. In the meantime, think happy thoughts or whatever you do to keep from turning me into human toast, and I’ll work on getting us out of here.”

  “I can help.” Hannah returned to stand behind the driver’s seat. “My standing here will bring his fever down.”

  “Yeah, it seems warmer in here to me.” Brody wiped his brow on the upper part of his T-shirt sleeve.

  “I wasn’t kidding,” said Abe, “about us getting warmer.”

  Hannah placed a hand on her twin brother’s shoulder. She closed her eyes. An odd sheen of moisture appeared on her exposed skin, as if she became part of the medium over which she had control.

  The cabin temp lowered and cooled in seconds.

  If only an outdoor fresh breeze…

  No, scr
atch that. They didn’t need Darcy Lynn’s talent inside the ATV.

  “You said you didn’t know Chinese.” Sweat dripped down Abe’s temples as he propped his chest against the steering column.

  “I don’t. Must be that boosted/enhanced thing. Or my brain has hit tilt, and I’m going the way of my brother. Either way, we will survive this.” He held open a page and studied the graceful strokes of the foreign symbols. As his gaze moved down the page, he kept up the right to left motion of his eyeballs.

  “But your brother—” The forlorn look in Hannah’s eyes would haunt him for the rest of his days.

  “I meant before... Well, you know.” Dragging his glance back to the manual, Brody’s fingers moved, urged by some sort of insight of the text’s meaning. Using the mini-monitor, he raced through menus and submenus until screens flashed in quick blinks.

  “Now you’re cooking.” Abe grinned.

  “Let’s hope not, though, if we were at a restaurant, I’d order extra crunchy noodle things.” A twitch lifted the corners of Brody’s mouth, and he slumped into his seat. “Am-Sub, out of the demo-mode.”

  “Am-Sub?” Abe asked.

  “Amphibious Submersible All-Terrain Vehicle.”

  “If you can’t read the words…” Hannah’s brow hitched.

  “No clue. What they did to me, I guess. The enhanced stuff. No wonder I took to software coding like a duck to water.” He pawed at his weary eyes.

  The ATV’s front dipped. Abe plopped his butt onto the seat’s edge. “What I said about having an auto-pilot? We just went all-out manual.”

  Brody knelt on one knee in front of the screen and scrolled through menus.

  “Thirty seconds to ground,” intoned Am-Sub.

  “Shut up, Amy Sub!” shouted Darcy Lynn.

  Hannah wrestled to help Abe steer.

  “Oxygen level, thirty percent.”

  “Brody!” Hannah yelped.

  Fingers unsteady, he backed up a menu—if only it was the kind to order Cashew Chicken—and took in the options. He went into the second choice, checked a list, backed out, and went on to a third. “What am I missing?”