He looked both ways on the street, frantic to find evidence of a car that had lost its driver.
“We want a ride, right?” she asked, apparently catching on.
He ran toward the intersection at the end of the street. “We have to get out of here fast. They’re coming.”
If he’d planned to make a stand, his best bet would have been to shoot into the plane as it landed. However, the Predator drone usually traveled with two Hellfire missiles. There could also be a hundred drones behind that one. His priority was escaping that to get Emily out of danger, not to inflict casualties on the enemy.
They made it to the end of the street. To the right, the road went underneath the highway. To the left, it went into the suburban neighborhood. There were several cars on the side of the road, or in the yards of nearby homes.
“That one!” he pointed to a boxy sedan parked against a hedge nearby. After a short run, he hopped inside, but it wouldn’t start. “Out of gas. It must have run dry idling since yesterday. We need a stick shift.”
“Why?” she pressed.
“When drivers, uh, went away, they couldn’t work the clutches. The motors would die when the RPMs got too low. That’s our advantage right now.” He saw a sporty car about a hundred yards away. “Go for that one!”
They hopped back out and ran along the sidewalk. He only checked back once to make sure she was on his tail. He had the heavy backpack, so he was sure she could keep up with him.
The hum of the Predator came from all around them, as if the sound waves bounced off the roofs and walls of the houses. There was also the whir of a helicopter in the distance. He was sure of it.
“They’ve got all kinds of gear after us,” he remarked.
Emily breathed heavily as she ran alongside him. “Are we going to hide?”
It was tempting to go into one of the houses close by. Several had their garages open, and probably their doors; people had been hanging around outside when the event took their lives, but he didn’t diverge from his goal.
“Not yet. We can’t stay around here. They’d eventually find us.”
She stumbled with an “oops” but quickly regained her footing. The sidewalk was a little older on this wider street, and some of the cracks had grown quite large.
“You okay?” he asked with a quick glance over his shoulder.
“Right behind you.”
They made it to the black sports car. It had run up on a curb, but otherwise seemed unharmed. He yanked out a woman’s slacks and a shirt. The former owner wouldn’t need them anymore.
Emily slid into the leather passenger seat a moment later.
“This feels familiar. We keep getting chased.”
He noticed she didn’t have anything over her face, so he cracked open his door and picked up the woman’s blouse. “Take this. Use it to make a mask. We have to hide your identity for as long as possible, and I don’t think you can do your Dracula thing while holding a rifle.”
“What about you?” she asked with concern.
He depressed the clutch and started the engine, since the keys were already in the ignition.
“Please make one for me, too.”
As he said it, the Predator drone appeared from the same direction he’d seen it before. It cruised low and slow, like it was searching for something to shoot. He knew an operator was sitting in a faraway room looking at live video feed of the neighborhood around them. He and Emily might already be designated as a target.
“Get down!” he ordered.
San Francisco, CA
Dwight was drunk as a skunk, but he’d found his new home.
“I declare this Dwight’s Hideaway!” he cried out.
The blue shipping container had some foreign characters on the outside, and it was slanted a little because the back part was at the lower part of the beach, but he figured it was almost the perfect place to live. It had four cots bolted to both walls toward the front. There was a small cupboard in the middle of one wall, and that was filled with canned foods. A toolbox was latched onto the floor next to it. About fifteen seats stuck out of the floor toward the back, making three neat rows. At the very rear, a curtain blocked off a five-gallon bucket used for sanitation. He could live in there for a month.
For a short time, he lounged on a low cot, but eventually, he had to try the four on his wall. Then he tried all of them on the other side, certain one had to be better than the others.
“They’re not all the same,” he said to Poppy.
The bird laughed at him, causing him to give up his research. Instead, he sat in one of the plastic seats and started on his last wine bottle.
Once he’d made good headway, Poppy stared at him as she liked to do.
“Not this again. You saw it out there; the whole city has left us.”
He remembered thinking about what might have caused it, but his liquor-addled brain couldn’t remember the details. However, Poppy wanted to know.
Dwight leaned his head over the back of the chair and stared at the lone bulb tied to the ceiling. “I once met a guy who worked for the Air Force. Said he was part of a secret department that worked in New Mexico somewhere. I—”
He turned to Poppy. “No, I don’t remember where. It’s not important.
“Anyway, he always said aliens were real and the rest of us would know they were real when they finally chose to make an appearance. He said it would be big and impossible to miss. I’m calling it: the whole city got into an alien spaceship.”
Poppy was silent, which he took as an insult.
“You think you know better?”
He hopped out of his chair. “We need to secure this home against invasion! Aliens. Dinosaurs. I don’t care what. Nothing can get through that door if we lock it.” It had a latch to hold it shut, but he wanted a better way to block it.
Dwight scoured the inside of the container for something he could use to bolt the door, but there wasn’t much in the way of resources. The toolbox had a small hammer, some screwdrivers, and a can of orange spray paint. Nothing to brace both doors together.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he said with defeat. “If the world has been invaded by aliens, I’m sure they can get inside one last shipping box, don’t you?
“What?” He studied the blank spot on his shoulder, where the bird sat. “You think that would work?”
He picked up the can of spray paint and shook it. The rattle-can ball echoed inside the confinement of the shipping container. After a suitable amount of time, he pushed through the doors to the outside.
It took him several minutes to get all the words on the side of the container visible from the beach, but when he was done, he was proud of his efforts. Dwight ran up the sandy bank toward a nearby road. He laughed out loud when he saw the results of his efforts. “Poppy, you’re a genius.”
He’d painted Free Candy Inside.
He snickered, knowing it would scare every normal person away. It was impossible to know what the aliens would think, but it was a start.
“All right, Poppy, you got me outside to do this one thing. Now I’m going back inside to sleep off this nightmare.”
He walked with determination back to his home, but he was a little more sober than he was the previous time he’d gone in. Now, it was evident there had been people inside the box before him. A long line of heavy boot prints started outside the container and went up the beach.
Dwight stood there for so long, he lost any sense of time. It was as if his brain turned off, then came back when it wanted to.
“No!” he yelled to Poppy. “I’m not going to follow those tracks.”
CHAPTER 15
Newark, NJ
“Don’t move,” Ted advised as the drone crossed over the street about a half-mile away. He turned off the motor, hoping the heat signature of running it for a few seconds wouldn’t give them away. “They can’t look everywhere, but they’re almost for sure going to be looking at roads closest to what’s left of our plane.”
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Emily tucked herself into the floorboard but leaned over the center console toward him. “Are you sure we should get in a car if they’re looking for us this hard already?”
The Predator drone soon went out of his line of sight, though the engine purr indicated it wasn’t gone for good. He’d never piloted one of those drones, but he assumed they’d fly in a regular pattern and search the streets with some semblance of order. Once he and Emily got into the car, they’d be committed to getting out of the hot zone. To do that, he’d need to go somewhere they could get lost.
“Those men landing in the plane are going to track us on foot. The guys above are going to be there when we’re found. Something is happening around here, and we’ve got to get clear of it before they search every house.”
He pointed east. “Our best bet is to get lost in New York City.”
She breathed hard from their run, but still managed to chuckle. “Sounds like a love song.”
Ted let himself smile. “The drone won’t be able to spot us as easily, and they’d need an army to check every building where they thought we were. Besides, as long as they don’t know who you are, I think they’ll simply let us go if we make it that far.”
Emily blew some fallen bangs out of her eyes, making him briefly acknowledge her as a pretty lady, rather than his boss. She looked right at him. “No offense, but that doesn’t sound likely.”
He shrugged, getting back to business. “It’s the best I’ve got. We can’t fight a whole army with two rifles and some matches. We need to get around them. This is the best way to do it.”
Ted listened for the drone engine to grow quiet, but it hung around over the suburban neighborhood close by. He slowly started the engine again, as if the act of turning it on would alert the world.
“I think the nearby highway goes into the city. One of the signs we missed during the landing said it was thirty miles away.”
She got back into her seat. “That sounds far.”
Ted put the car into gear and enjoyed the rumble of the powerful motor. Much as he did with the stolen plane, he looked over the controls on the dashboard.
“We’ve got more than enough fuel. All we have to do is avoid detection and we should be in the city within thirty minutes.”
She scoffed. “Have you never been to New York? Thirty miles could take you all day back when traffic was cooking.”
“I have, lots of times. I guess I’m an optimist. But yeah, well, let’s see.” He stepped on the gas and the raw power of the Camaro shot up his leg as the car rolled off the curb and into the street. The black color would hide them a bit and he immediately went to the far side of the road, in the wrong lane, to better keep the houses between him and wherever the drone flew in that direction. At the first cross street, he sped through the intersection, but he slowed at the next one because it had the shield-shaped sign for the interstate.
“Almost there,” he whispered.
Ted slowed as he took the turn but punched it on the next stretch of open surface road. The throaty roar of the big-block Chevy gave him a false sense of confidence he found hard to squelch. You can never have too much horsepower, his dad used to say back in his muscle-car years during the 1980s. Ted believed he could outrun anything.
The interstate on-ramp beckoned him toward danger, but he passed the on-ramp, went under the highway, and turned onto what was normally the exit ramp for westbound traffic. Two giant red ‘Wrong Way’ signs faced him as he started up the hill.
“Here we go,” he said dryly.
“Should I have my rifle ready?” she asked. “I’ll shoot down a plane if I have to.”
He shifted through the gears and eased them up to seventy-five without much effort, and he was close to ninety when he got up the ramp and onto the wide highway. A few cars faced them, reinforcing how they were going the wrong way.
“Do you see anyone?” He took a chance going in blind, but if they stuck around until they saw the Predator again, they’d risk also being seen in return. If the drone was searching for them a mile or two away, they’d be hard to spot. Plus, the highway was lined with tall trees, giving them a bit more cover.
“Not yet,” she said while looking all around. “My god, these windows are so small. I can barely see out the back and sides.”
“Let’s keep notes,” he deadpanned, “so we can tell the salesman when we bring this back to the dealership.”
“Agreed,” she said distractedly, continuing her search.
He kept his eyes on the road as the speedometer went beyond 100 miles per hour. There weren’t a lot of abandoned cars on the highway, and they were easy to avoid.
The little Cessna 172 burned on the same highway a couple of miles back, and the men of the Piper Cherokee were probably spread out, still looking for them. The Predator drone was the only threat he had to worry about right now, however, because it could catch up to them.
The interstate went into a long, sweeping right turn, and he took it at fighter-pilot speed. He stayed toward the inside median because the cars had predictably stacked up on the outer edge of the curve. The motor purred like a champ, and the tires held the road with no slipping or squealing, suggesting there was a lot more power left under the hood.
As the highway straightened out again, the number of wrecked cars grew a bit. They’d come to a rest in all different lanes, and on the shoulders, which required him to slow down and weave through. A few miles later, he had to slam on the brakes in order to fit between a semi-truck and the barrier along the median.
“We better not hit too many of those,” he suggested. The other side of the highway was going into downtown Manhattan, and it had been stopped at what would have been rush hour on a Monday morning. It was choked solid with wrecked cars. Their side, going out of the city, was all right, but they still had twenty miles to go.
Ted shifted through the gears back to a hundred, but Emily pointed ahead. “Toll booth!”
He cruised into the toll plaza and went for the express lanes, which was one of the few without at least some cars facing them.
“Piece of cake,” he said, keeping his voice even and calm as he gunned the motor again.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” Emily replied.
They’d gone through the toll plaza with no issues, but once they got back up to speed, the interstate left the trees and houses and went into a cleared area. The twists of the highway made it hard to see how close they were to the Newark airport.
Now he knew.
The edge of the property was next to the highway.
“I hope you have your seatbelt on,” he said without a hint of humor.
St. Louis, MO
Tabby’s eyes were drawn to the floating white drone hovering in the middle of the street. It was likely the same one she’d watched float by at the other end of the alley, but it had come around the building to this side.
“Hide!” she ordered.
They all piled behind a couple of garbage cans, but when she realized there wasn’t enough room, she pulled Donovan away from the scrum. “C’mon. We’ll go over here.”
The two of them hastened to the front edge of a dumpster. Tabby didn’t worry about what was inside, she just hopped up and pulled herself over the lip. Donovan followed her lead after chucking his shotgun in ahead of him.
“Oof,” he gasped when he landed on the full trash bags.
The lid was propped all the way open, so it leaned against the wall of the building. There wasn’t time to pull it shut.
“Shush,” she ordered.
The two of them creeped down into the trash, trying to put something between them and the probe.
“Is it coming?” he asked after a short time.
“Quiet!” she whispered.
The machine was close. The whirring of its blades suggested it was at the end of the alley, but it had paused. The MSD truck was parked at the other end. Was that enough to get its attention?
It continued to hover nearby for ten or f
ifteen seconds. Tabby held her breath, mostly because of the stench inside the dumpster. However, she froze her entire body when the fan wash came into the trash with her.
The machine went by like it had been lit on fire.
Almost immediately, someone called her name at a little more than a whisper. “Tabby!”
She stuck her head up. The drone was almost at the sewer truck.
“Tabby!” the voice repeated.
It was Peter. He’d come out from his hiding place and pointed at Vinny and Gus. They’d taken off to cross the next street.
She turned again to see the drone, but it was now on the other side of the truck, probably running the plates on her car.
“Dammit. We’ve got to run.” She turned to Donovan. “Let’s get out.”
He didn’t argue. The boy hopped out of the stinky dumpster and immediately took off after the two men. Peter and Audrey ran with him, but lagged behind, as if to give her time to catch up. She climbed out, but couldn’t resist wiping her legs and arms, sure some trash was stuck to her. A couple of seconds later, she checked one more time for the drone, then sprinted after her young friends.
“Are they still going to the TV station?” she asked when she almost caught up.
Peter waved her on. “Yeah, they said it’s on the next block.”
Vinny and Gus ran diagonal to the alley, so the drone was no longer in their line of sight. That solved their immediate problem, but as they went along the wide downtown avenue, they were visible for a quarter of a mile in each direction.
The kids made like they were going to pause at a parked car along the side of the street, so she urged them on. “Keep going! Don’t stop.”
The four of them ran around a corner and along an even wider avenue. This one was miles long; they could be seen from any point along the length of it. However, they ran next to the cars in the parking lane to make themselves harder to spot.
As promised, the station was on the next block. They had to cross one more street before running up to the glass front doors. Vinny waved them in, the automatic doors opening for them.
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 33