Flight (9 page)

“I’m not that much of an idiot,”
he said with a smile. “But there’s gotta be a place where the
ground levels out, and we can go up it and see if we can follow the
power lines. Just keep your eyes open.”

It was getting tougher to see. The
sun had almost completely set now, the gray clouds blending with
the grays of night, distance becoming impossible to discern. Eva
wished she’d brought night vision goggles.

She did the best she could while
Mark focused on driving in the dark.

“There,” she called out suddenly,
pointing to a spot ahead where she thought the bluff ended. “Cross
the tracks just up ahead,” she said.

He slowed, squinting in the
direction she pointed. When he thought he saw what she meant, he
downshifted, switched the jeep to four wheel drive, and
turned.

The jeep easily cleared the hill
up to the railroad tracks, and then they were up and over them and
onto the backside of the bluff. They could see power cables and
several towers heading off to the hills. Mark tore off through the
desert, not even worrying about looking for a road.

They jounced over scrub brush
until they got even with the power cables again and found a dirt
road.

“Just like I expected,” Mark
bragged.

He turned on the road and they
followed it several miles in the dark, without headlights, until it
ended deep in a box canyon. Eva used her flashlight with the red
filter to look around as they drove slowly.

“This is the kind of place where
the bandits ambush you,” she said.

“No one knows we’re up here. We
should be safe for the night.”

He drove until they got to another
power line tower. He parked the jeep behind it, backing them
between the tower and the canyon wall, facing outwards.

“There. We’re safe here,” he
declared.

Eva shone her red light up the
steep walls and around the canyon. There was nothing. And it was
completely quiet. Even the tower didn’t hum. It was as if the
electricity had stopped flowing through it. Which was a real
possibility.

Would someone come back up here to
fix the tower? Had she and Mark been clever enough, turning the
lights off on the jeep as they headed up here, to keep anyone from
detecting them? Would random hikers simply stumble across them? She
didn’t feel safe.

“We still should take turns
sleeping,” she suggested.

“I agree. And we should load up
that cannon you brought. By the way, I didn’t bring any sleeping
bags or pillows. Sorry.”

“No problem,” Eva said. She didn’t
expect to be comfortable “We shouldn’t light a fire,
either.”

Mark frowned. “No roasted
marshmallows or singing ‘Kumbaya’? It’s gonna be a fun
night.”

Eva took the first watch. She
wasn’t ready to sleep.

Her new partner sprawled out on
the back seat of the jeep and fell asleep instantly. One of the
mantras of Agency training. Sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom when
you can, where you can, because you never know when you’re going to
get another chance. She envied those who could fall asleep on
command.

She loaded the MP23 quietly, in
the dark, feeling good that she had practiced with a blindfold on.
They all had, in training, timing each other field stripping,
reassembling, and loading weapons without being able to see. If
they ever had to use them in combat, they had been taught they
needed to be able to think about their tactical situation, not how
their weapons functioned.

She wandered around a bit. The
canyon dead ended, the tower reaching high enough that the power
cables continued higher than the rim, off to wherever they went. A
small, metal box sat under the tower, protected by a chain link
cage with a locked gate. Probably more to keep critters out than
people.

Their surroundings explored, Eva
sat in the front of the jeep with the MP23 next to her. It looked
bulky, almost awkward, with the grenade launcher attached. She’d
loaded that also.

She leaned back in her seat and
looked up. Even on a ‘cloudy’ day in the desert, the night sky was
amazing. She remembered camping with her father and seeing a
million, billion stars. He told her stories from his grandfather,
who had been a carpenter in Ireland. Her great-grandfather had said
that God was a carpenter also, and what carpenter would build a
million homes and not populate them?

She believed that as a child, but
when she went to school she learned that even if there were a
billion Earth-like planets in the galaxy, the odds of evolution
were so low that the likelihood of life evolving on even one of
those planets was non-existent. Earth was the anomaly.

She believed that also, until the
aliens showed up, proving that Earth wasn’t the anomaly. Had her
great-grandfather been right the whole time? Had God really
populated the Universe with lots of people?

She wished for the child-like
faith she once had but settled instead to stare up at a blank sky,
myriads of stars hidden by thick clouds.

By early afternoon on their trip
south away from Utah, the dull gray clouds had covered the sky,
blocking the sun, and now those same clouds blocked the stars and
the moon. Eva was glad she had gotten sun earlier in the day, when
she could.

If what Mark had heard was right,
and the clouds were caused by dust from meteor strikes, the
equivalent of a nuclear winter could set in. Temperatures would
cool and food growth would be impacted. They wouldn’t see the
sun.

Eva mourned the sun, if that were
the case. She liked sun. Even her hair liked sun. It had recently
started turning dark when she didn’t get enough sun, and she liked
her hair blonde. If a nuclear winter did set in, her hair would get
too dark, and she’d have to bleach it.

She wanted to check the time and
immediately reached for her pocket. But her phone wasn’t there.
They had no signal and she’d left it in her backpack in the cargo
area of the jeep. It was almost worthless now. If the entire cell
network were down nation-wide, it would be completely worthless.
She looked around the jeep for the keys so she could look at the
clock, but instead found an old style watch Mark had left in the
cupholder. She checked it. She’d only been on watch an
hour.

When the time finally came to wake
Mark up, she was exhausted. She’d solved all of the world’s
problems and won the interstellar war against the Hrwang while she
sat in the front seat of the jeep.

She and her partner traded places
and Eva didn’t even remember falling asleep. Before she was aware,
a dim sunrise reflecting on the walls of the box canyon woke her
up. Mark was asleep in the front seat. She smacked him on the back
of the head.

“What? I’m awake. I was just
resting my eyes.” He looked embarrassed.

“Daylight enough for you?” she
asked.

He nodded.

They took turns hiking away from
the jeep to take care of business, then ate protein bars and drank
water for breakfast. They double checked all of their weapons,
making sure everything was loaded and spare magazines were ready.
Eva filled her camo pants pockets with them.

They topped off the fuel tank with
gasoline from the jerry cans.

With the Glock at her side and the
MP23 carbine in hand, Eva boasted, “If border guards stop us this
time, they’ll never know what hit them.”

“That’s the spirit,
Gilliam.”

It was easier finding their way
along the dirt roads and back to the freeway with light to guide
them. Everything had looked eerier, spookier, in the
dark.

In the daylight it was no big
deal, and Eva enjoyed the ride.

Back on the freeway, they only
traveled a few miles before they passed the old Las Vegas Motor
Speedway. They couldn’t see the speedway itself, just signs, until
they got up on an overpass. She wondered if it would ever be used
again, and for some reason the loss caused by the alien attack
struck her hard. She started to cry. Twice in two days she cried
(had it only been a day since she had been trapped in the Agency
safe house?), and Eva felt weak.

Perhaps that’s why her boss always
sent her on recruiting trips. He knew she was too weak for anything
else.

If Mark noticed her crying, he
kept his mouth shut, and she quickly recovered her composure. She
didn’t say anything to him. She just kept watch.

A couple of miles later and Mark
pointed off ahead of them and to the left.

“Nellis. I was told not to look
for any help there, though. The Air Force had to abandon all their
bases.”

“How could these aliens be so
powerful?”

“Who would have thought meteors
could be used as weapons? Do you know we landed a space ship on an
asteroid once? It took ten years to catch it. The Hrwang somehow
caught hundreds of the things and then used them to attack us. How?
That’s what I want to know.”

“Do you think the Skunk Works will
still be there?”

That’s where they were headed; the
Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. Space ship
development went on there, and the Agency was using it as one of
its rally points for agents. At least it had been a rally point
when Mark received his orders. Edwards Air Force Base was also
nearby, although Mark said they expected that had been hit by the
Hrwang also.

“If not, we’ll find some way to
fight E.T.,” he replied.

“How do you fight meteors?” Eva
asked. It bothered her. What could two people with a fancy rifle
and a few pistols do?

“They’re human. Which means they
can be shot.”

“Unless they have some kind of
super alien armor or something.”

“Speaking of which, I wish you’d
had some body armor in that safe house. Snipers could be up on
these buildings,” Mark said.

They were into North Las Vegas
now. Eva had been watching at street level and realized she needed
to watch the rooftops also. There were no other vehicles on the
freeway, but the buildings didn’t look completely abandoned.
‘Hunkered down’ felt like a better description.

They passed a major freeway
exchange. Eva saw several vehicles in the distance, heading east on
the other freeway, away from them. But it was still good to see
life.

“Who is Oran K. Gragson?” Mark
asked.

“Why would you ask
that?”

“That’s the name of the other
freeway. See?” He pointed up at a sign. Eva looked up at the sign,
then was flung forward when Mark slammed on the brakes. He
swore.

She looked in front of them and a
row of concrete barriers blocked the road.

Mark started driving slowly
forward, and Eva watched all around them for snipers.

“We can take the on-ramp, go back
that way,” he suggested.

Eva wasn’t listening. Watching all
the buildings, the overpasses, and along the edge of the freeway
consumed all of her attention.

Mark made a u-turn down the
on-ramp.

The on-ramp split, with the right
side also blocked by barriers.

Mark took the left ramp
down.

“Dornbush, doesn’t this feel like
a trap to you?”

“Nah. Probably a bridge or road
out, or something.”

There were low warehouses to their
left and Eva watched them, scanning along the roofs, in the
windows, everywhere a gunman could be hiding. She wanted to have
Mark’s confidence, but didn’t feel it. The concrete barriers felt
like a trap. Why else would they be forced down an
on-ramp?

“I think we should turn around,”
she said.

“We’ll be all right. Just keep
your eyes peeled,” Mark replied.

The on-ramp became a tight turn
around some weird abstract art sculpture. It offered dozens of
places for a shooter to hide. Eva twisted in her seat to track it,
almost hitting her partner with the barrel of the carbine as she
did so. He ducked out of the way and the jeep swerved a
little.

“Watch it, Gilliam.”

“I’m going in the back,” she said
and unbuckled her seat belt. She crawled over the seats, feeling
exposed with her rear end high in the air and unable to watch their
surroundings. She got into the cargo area and felt
better.

“Right or left?” Mark called back
to her as they approached the intersection at the end of the
on-ramp.

Eva felt a bump. She was suddenly
flying through the air, part of the weird sculpture filling her
vision. She struck the ground with her knees and arms, trying to
tuck into a roll. The MP23 carbine went flying.

She tumbled once, hitting the side
of her head on gravel.

She tried to look up and yell at
her partner for his lousy driving when she heard a distinct whine
and a ping. Dirt puffed up nearby. Someone had fired a small
caliber weapon at her. She scrambled for the nearest cover from the
direction of the shot, part of the concrete barrier that ran
alongside the on-ramp. It had been open where she was thrown from
the jeep, but continued again after that.