Eva sat with one booted foot up on the dashboard, her Glock on the floor easily within reach, and watched the desert roll by.
Normally, in the summer, they would have baked in the heat, but gray, ugly clouds covered the sky and she wore her long sleeved shirt over her tank top. They left the roll top down, but the air was cool, like an early spring or late fall day. Mark called it a nuclear winter and said it was being caused by dust kicked up by the meteor strikes.
“It could just be unseasonably cold,” she replied.
“It could,” he said and shrugged.
They didn’t talk for a while. Mark simply drove and Eva stared at the sky and wondered about it. She wondered what the aliens were like and wondered what could be done about them. Her Glock, which felt reassuring in her hands when she held it, seemed like a toy compared to whatever weapons were possessed by beings who could drop meteors from the sky with enough precision to destroy cities.
The sky changed color as she watched it, gray turning to rippled orange and purple, dullness turning into beauty. The sun was setting.
“Gilliam, it’s getting dark. What do you think?”
“I can drive for you, if you need me to,” Eva answered. She was still keyed up after their encounter with the border guards.
“I’m going to take that exit up there,” her partner said.
“Why?”
“Call it a hunch, but I don’t want to drive into Vegas at night.”
“But it’s the city that never sleeps.”
“That’s what worries me,” he said with a grin. “If you think those Utah guys were bad, I can only imagine what they’re up to in Sin City.”
If he was right; if their encounter with the border guards was simply a taste of what was to come, what hope was there? They’d only survived because someone with common sense and decency commanded the unit that had held them. Now Mark had said they should shoot first and ask questions later.
Could Eva do that?
She’d had a lot of training with the Agency. It was intense, deadly serious, and yet fun. A challenge that Eva enjoyed. She had performed well. But most of her assignments since graduation had involved recruiting, as if tall, dark, and handsome, like Mark, belonged on dangerous missions, and young, blonde, and pretty belonged at college recruiting fairs.
The border guards had been dangerous, particularly the one who watched her. Shay. She thought about the look on his face and hoped again she had broken his nose. But what would the next group be like that they came across?
“Is sleeping somewhere going to be any safer?” she asked.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Check this out.”
He took the exit he’d pointed out, turning off the headlights as they went down the off-ramp. That was a good idea, Eva thought. Lone headlights heading down a road in the desert could be seen for miles. Someone might be able to follow them from a distance.
The sun still provided a little light as it reflected off the clouds, just enough to see by, but Mark slowed down nonetheless. Instead of turning right at the bottom of the ramp, towards a few buildings, he turned left, went under the overpass, and then made another left onto a dirt road.
“Where are you going?” Eva asked.
He grinned at her, like he was a kid teasing that it was for him to know and her to find out. She glared back and he must have changed his mind.
“I saw some power cable towers heading off to the hills over there.” He pointed to their right. “I bet there’s dirt roads that go up to them. We’ll probably find a safe place to spend the night. Keep that Glock ready, though, just in case.”
She picked it up, made sure the safety was on, and set it in her lap.
The sky dimmed quickly, the dirt road looking ghostly in the twilight. They passed several abandoned buildings. Mark made a hard right when he saw a path heading away from the freeway.
“Almost missed it,” he said as Eva reached out to grab something to steady herself. The jeep’s wheels ground in the dirt, sending dust clouds high behind them.
“That’s not going to give us away,” she commented sarcastically.
“It won’t. Sure, on a clear, blue day in the desert you can see dust like that forever. But at twilight? And with all these gray clouds? We’re fine.”
Eva wasn’t so sure.
The dirt road curved and started following parallel to a set of railroad tracks they hadn’t noticed before.
They continued along the tracks until they got to a set of power cables. Mark stopped the jeep. Towers stood on either side of them. The one farthest away from the freeway, in the direction he wanted to go, was to their right and sat atop a fifteen foot high bluff. There was no way to get up it and head towards the hills.
“Now what, genius?” Eva asked.
“That’s why I got a four wheel drive.”
“Not even in a four wheel drive are you going to make it up that hill. If you’re going to try though, let me out. I’ll watch.”
They could hike up it, but it was probably just flat desert on top for miles. Plus, she didn’t want to abandon the jeep.
“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.
Another shot hit the dirt behind her, then one hit the concrete.
She lay behind the barrier, hugging as close to it as possible, trying to figure out her options. She didn’t know what had happened to Dornbush or the jeep, and the MP23 lay twenty feet behind her on the ground.
She looked up and down the barrier she hid behind, and there were small cracks between each section. Maybe she could see Mark through one of those. She crawled to the nearest one. Two more shots hit the dirt past her. Whoever was shooting at her knew where she was, but couldn’t hit her. Fortunately he or she didn’t have any micro grenade shells. Eva’d be toast if the shooter had an MP23.
She got to a seam in the barrier, but it was tight. No way to see through it. She crawled to the next one. Her MP23 was now thirty feet behind her.
The barrier bent as the on-ramp turned, leaving a tiny crack she could just peek through. She saw the jeep up on its side, having spun ninety degrees. Mark was still in it, hanging limply from his seat belt. The sniper probably got him while she was settling into the cargo area. Stupid.
Another shot hit the dirt about ten feet behind her and about ten feet back from the barrier. The shooter had a good view of the barrier but didn’t know exactly where Eva was now, and didn’t have the angle or the right kind of ammunition to hit her behind it.
She had to get to her MP23.
Eva crawled slowly along the barrier, heading back the way she came, trying not to kick up any dust that would give her location away. Another shot hit the concrete. Then it dawned on her that the shooter was mostly trying to keep her head down, which meant a second shooter would try to outflank her. The second shooter would be able to dispatch her without breaking a sweat.
If she could just get to her carbine first, she’d show them a world of hurt instead.
But she didn’t feel the confidence she should have from the words she told herself. She was pretty sure now that a second shooter existed, and if she didn’t get some serious firepower soon, she’d be as dead as her partner. All she had was the Glock.
She hadn’t been afraid of Shay, the border guard. He’d been unpleasant, he’d hurt her, but she hadn’t been afraid of him.
She was afraid now. Whoever was behind this ambush wasn’t messing around.
Eva got to where the barrier opened up, staying back from the edge in case the shooter had a little angle on the end.
She waited for two more shots, trying to estimate roughly where they were coming from. She double checked the Glock, put it up over the barrier, and emptied the magazine in the most likely direction while she scrambled to her feet, bent low, and raced for the MP23.
She dove for it, rolling over it, and picking it up, trying to move constantly. Her empty Glock went flying and she didn’t know where it ended up, but the pistol was nothing compared to the carbine.
Miraculously, she had the weapon in her hands and she hadn’t been hit. She started firing it immediately, blindly, in the direction the shots had been coming from.
She had a moment to look as she ran back for the cover of the concrete barrier. There were tennis courts on the other side of the on-ramp and a set of low buildings beyond them. Nothing taller than two stories. The shooter was trying to hit her from about three hundred yards. That was a tough shot even for someone with training. She felt a little better.
Safely behind the barrier, she tried to picture the jeep. It was up on its side and perpendicular to the road. She hadn’t heard anything from Mark.
She checked the pockets of her pants and she had several more magazines. She reloaded.
She had a lot of ammunition, but not if she were firing blindly, the way she had been. It would go fast.
Her pulse raced, she sweated, and she was gulping air. She told herself to calm down. She’d trained a lot, but this was the first firefight she’d ever been in. Agents could go their entire careers without ever shooting at someone or being shot at, but they still trained intensely.
She was grateful for that training. She just needed put herself into fight mode.
She pictured her face looking hard as steel, she told herself she was going to take out whoever was hunting her, and she took a deep breath.
A shot weakly hit the other side of the concrete barrier and she popped over the top. She thought she saw movement on a balcony and she sprayed it. Crouching back down, she switched magazines, loading micro grenade shells. She only had two magazines of those.
Micro grenade shells were a deadly invention.
Someone holed up behind a barrier, like she was, could hold off an entire squad if they had enough ammunition. Micro grenade shells solved that problem. They exploded on impact or at a set range. If a soldier knew the range of a barrier, he or she could fire just over the top of it and the shell would detonate, killing or injuring anyone behind it. Eva would be dead already if her attacker had had those kind of shells. Fortunately, the military controlled them tightly.
She set the range on her magazine and popped up again, firing three of the micro grenade bullets into the balcony she thought the shooter was firing at her from.
She got back into cover again.
“Good shot. I think you got him,” she heard from behind the weird sculpture. She fired a burst of three rounds into it, the shells exploding against the side, pieces of sculpture raining around.
“I’m on your side,” a whining male voice called out when the dust settled.
Eva didn’t want to waste any more of the precious micro grenade ammunition, so she changed magazines back to regular shells. If the guy behind the sculpture had wanted to shoot her, he’d have done it already.
“How do I know that?” she yelled back while she worked.
“There’s a second guy on your left. When you’re facing them. Behind the bus shelter.”
She took a quick peek over the concrete. There was indeed a bus shelter where he said and no return fire from the shooter w
ith the small caliber rifle.
“He’s trying to sneak up around the side of you,” the voice called out. “He’ll probably think twice now.”
“You move and I’ll kill you,” she shouted back. She switched the weapon to the grenade launcher, the real grenades, the ones that made every infantryman his own artillery support. She only had three with her, but one should do the job. She popped up and fired it into the shelter, then ducked back down again, trying to see where the guy behind the weird sculpture was. There were a dozen spots where someone could shoot out from behind the stupid thing.
She heard a satisfying explosion.
“He’s running!”
Eva didn’t ask questions. She popped up again, led the guy like she had been taught, and fired a burst. He went down. She ducked back behind the barrier and trained her weapon on the sculpture.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of the small fire set by the grenade she had fired and the ringing in her ears. She watched every hole around and in the metal sculpture.
She couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. It just looked like fat blobs of metal and some kind of cage.
A pair of hands appeared in one of the openings. She pointed at them.
“I’m unarmed. I promise. You have to trust me.”
“Then come out where I can shoot you, and we’ll see who trusts who.”
“Okay. Don’t shoot.”
A hispanic looking man came out, squeezing through one of the gaps. Once through, he held his hands high in the air and moved slowly towards Eva.
“Stop there!” she commanded. He obeyed.
“Look, ma’am. I’m just a guy that used to have a family. I just want past that gang, just like you do.”
“What’s your name?”
“Juan Nepomuceno Polycarp de la Serda. What’s yours?”
“Polycarp?”
“I’m named after my eleventh great grandfather.”
Eva laughed.
“Listen,” Juan said. “I’d love to discuss my genealogy, but there’ll be more of those guys showing up soon. You got lucky there were only two on duty when you hit the trap.”
“Stay right there.”
Eva stood and walked deliberately over to the Glock, picking it up off the ground, and putting it in her pocket.
“You can trust me,” Juan said.
“I have a lot of firepower and I’m sure a lot of people want it. If you cross me, you’ll be the first to die and then I’ll blow everything up. Your gang won’t get anything and we’ll both be dead.”
“I have no gang, ma’am.”
She stared at him again. He was a big guy, but athletic looking. She was probably being an idiot, but he did look honest.
“How did you get out here?”
“I’ve been hiding in one of those houses over there.” He pointed to some houses to Eva’s left. “From those guys. They own this whole part of town. I ran out of food two days ago. I didn’t know what I was going to do until I saw your jeep heading for the trap. I decided to follow you.”
“On foot?”
“I was desperate, ma’am.”
“Eva. You can call me Eva. Okay. I’ll trust you for now. Don’t try anything.”
“Eva is a pretty name.”
She raised the gun towards him.
“I won’t try anything. I promise, ma’am. It’s clear you have special forces training or something, and I know you can probably kill me with your bare hands.”
Eva doubted that. The guy had at least a hundred pounds on her. But she nodded in agreement.
“Let’s go see just how desperate we both are,” she said.
They headed for the jeep, passing an elevated ramp sticking up out of the road.
“How come we didn’t see that?” Eva asked.
“Piston driven. They funnel you onto it, then activate it from their hideout. It pushes up on one side of the car and usually flips them over. That’s why the concrete was removed where you went through. To give the cars room to flip. Your driver must have been pretty good to keep your jeep from rolling completely.”
“His name was Mark, and he was my partner, not my driver.”
They got to the jeep and she checked on him.
She was stunned to find him still alive.
He was unconscious. His left arm, from the elbow down, was crushed under the side of the jeep. She needed to get the jeep off him, needed to see if it still drove good enough to get them out of there, and needed to get him medical treatment.
Juan must have had the same thought.
“You’re going to have to tourniquet his arm before we try to push the jeep upright. And I don’t think we have much time.”
Eva found the duffel bag filled with medical gear several feet away from the jeep. She rooted through it and found rubber tubing and a metal rod. She knew putting it on meant that Mark would lose part of his arm, but if she didn’t he would probably bleed out. He’d probably die from shock anyway, but she had to try.
She wrapped the tubing around his arm, using the metal rod to twist it as tightly as she could. She unbuckled his seat belt.
“Help me, now,” she said.
Juan pushed on the jeep, relieving the pressure on Mark’s arm. Eva pulled her partner out of the seat and away from the vehicle.
“Stay with me, buddy.”
Mark’s face was gray.
She heard a crash and saw that Juan had succeeded in pushing the jeep back onto its wheels.
“Help me put him in the back seat.”
Juan came over. That was the moment she almost shot him. He moved quickly, athletically for his size, but he grabbed Mark’s legs and helped carry him over to the jeep.
“Get the rest of the gear, then let’s get out of here.”
Juan picked everything up that had spilled out of the back of the jeep. Eva got back into the back. It had probably saved their lives that she had been there, in the back. That, and Mark keeping the jeep from going upside down when the ramp forced the jeep up onto its side.
And the serious firepower.
“You drive,” she said to Juan when he stood there, waiting to be told what to do next. “Do you know how to get out of here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
She thought he was lying, but she didn’t care. She had a new ally.
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