“That might be a problem. As you know, NORAD is inside a huge mountain. One tanker wouldn’t be enough to kick on the fire alarm there.”
“We’ll worry about it when we get closer. Right now, I’ve got to admit I was wrong. There are some enemies between here and North Dakota. They’re right here, in fact.” Emily pointed ahead. The TV van had parked at the rear of a line of six black SUVs, so he fell in behind the van.
“Dang, I hate it when you’re wrong,” he said, trying to be funny.
A fleet of flatbed tractor-trailers waited at the edge of the intersection about fifty yards ahead. Through the buildings and trees, he noticed the line went for many blocks to their left, as if an armored brigade was lined up for a military parade. Each trailer carried three or four of the mechanical drones they’d seen during their escape the previous day. The horse-drones. The giraffe-drones. More traditional flying types. Plus, there were several other models they’d never seen before.
Wheeled cranes waited at the edge of the gravel parking lot, while others were positioned on a parallel lot across the street. If the trucks moved forward about a hundred yards, their goods could be swept up by the hookers.
The camera guy waved them over. “Come on! We need your help to film the unloading process. This is the most dangerous part.”
Numerous men in black uniforms stood around the cranes with rifles slung over their backs, suggesting he and Emily wouldn’t be out of place. However, no matter how curious he was about their operation, he knew it would be dangerous to get out of the truck.
“We have to go,” Emily said, adjusting her kerchief.
“We do?” he asked with surprise.
“They’ll expect us to hop out and help protect them. At the same time, I think we’ll have an opportunity to get in front of a camera, like we wanted. They’re pulling out the video equipment now. This may be our big chance to become famous.”
He laughed. “Says the woman who will probably end up on cereal boxes and have her name assigned to middle schools across America.”
She cracked up with him. “This is how we strike back, right? Just follow my lead and act like stupid mercenaries.”
“Oh, trust me, it won’t be hard to act.”
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
Back in his cell, Dwight sat on the floor and rolled into a ball under the desk. It was his normal defense mechanism when he was ill. Back home, well, where he called home, he would have hung out in the basement of the high-rise, sleeping the sickness away on his cardboard bed, along with all his cats. In the office prison, he did have a cot, but he preferred being able to lay sideways and curl up. The darkness under there also gave him comfort.
He opened his good eye. Poppy hopped across the carpet, not five feet from him. If he’d been so inclined, he might have been able to reach out and stroke her feathers. However, he couldn’t even lift his arm to coax her closer.
“I’m sorry, Poppy. You can have my soggy cereal. It’s all I’ve got to offer.”
The bird chirped.
“What? I was gone? What are you saying?”
He had a vague recollection of a bright light, but his memory of what happened inside the glow was washed out and vague, much as his eyes still hadn’t recovered from the bright glare. Dwight was certain he felt wonderful when he emerged from the light. Better than he’d been in decades. His arthritis pain was gone. His intestines didn’t have that tight twist, which always made timing his bathroom stops akin to Russian roulette. And he no longer experienced the deep-seated need to have alcohol on his tongue.
But that was hours ago. Or days. He couldn’t say for sure. All he knew was that the euphoria had changed into a laundry list of ailments troubling him at that moment. Hunched over sideways while lying in a ball was the only position that seemed to make him feel halfway decent.
The worst, however, was not remembering what he’d been doing before the light. The last thing he could recall with absolute clarity was a telephone pole falling from the sky and crashing into a dam. Before that, his memory was spotty about living in San Francisco. Walking the streets, looking for handouts. And surviving as a homeless man in a homeless utopia.
The bird cawed.
“No, I don’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday. Why don’t you tell me, Ms. Smarty Beak?”
Poppy cackled as she filled him in.
“A barbeque? I don’t remember anything of the sort.”
He assumed she was lying, as she often did when she wanted him to do unpleasant acts, such as staying away from the hooch for a whole weekend.
“Why can I remember your mean self back in our home, but I can’t remember you this morning?”
Poppy didn’t respond, but he heard her talking. When he looked to where she’d been a second ago, the brightly-colored bird wasn’t there. She’d taken flight and was near the front door. She was talking to someone else. He could barely see her while peeking from beneath the desk.
“Poppy? Don’t talk to strangers. Someone might steal you.”
Eyes already open, he noticed his hand was misshapen. Most of the hair on his lower arm had fallen out, leaving a sallow white layer of skin that was almost translucent. When he turned it to see the padding below his thumb, he was shocked to see a huge boil growing there.
“P-Poppy!”
Scared, he realized the boil was painful to the touch, but it also came to him he had other sores on his body. Those were flaming with extreme pain as well.
He curled up tighter.
Sometime later, he thought he heard Poppy talking nonsense. He listened for a short time, until it became clear one of his ears wasn’t working anymore. At that point, he freaked out—screaming, yelling, and cussing. Sometimes at the white-haired man who’d been there when he came out of the box. Sometimes at the dark-clad men who’d brought him back to his cell. Once he had a vision of a girl dressed in blue. He cursed her for the hell of it.
Poppy kept telling him stories about the white light she’d learned from nearby prisoners, but he didn’t like his bird talking to other people.
“They can’t even see you,” he shouted. “So, how can they talk to you?”
The bird repeated herself over and over. He understood her words as telling him he was in danger of being extremely sick and possibly a candidate to go on a long trip. After the tenth time, he covered his ears—an act which hurt his head and his palms.
“A trip sounds far out. Can I take a few bottles of tequila?” He’d tried to think of an exotic drink, suitable for a journey. Oddly enough, he didn’t want the liquor to get drunk. He’d mentioned it more out of habit. The expert drinking aspect of his memory was solidly intact.
A man’s voice came out of the darkness. It could have been the white-haired guy, or one of the neighbors behind the walls that Poppy kept telling him about. “It’s not a far-out trip, dude. It’s a trip out of your life!”
Poppy flew back to him. He felt the cool breeze of her wings as she arrived, but it left him wishing she wasn’t there. The waves of air beat against his face like barbed-wire whips, causing him to tear up.
“Right now, a trip out of my life sounds pretty good.”
CHAPTER 11
Glendo, WY
Meechum had taught Kyla the proper way to walk as a Marine. She was loaded down with two extra rifles on her back, but her primary weapon was out and primed for battle. Since they were walking into unknown territory, the woman warrior had given her a refresher as they left the cabin. A round was already in the chamber and the safety was off.
“Your finger is the safety, Dudette. Pay attention where you point the barrel and always keep your finger outside the trigger guard, like this.” Kyla was almost sick of being told and shown the safety tips, but Meechum said a civilian like her needed ten times the reminders a typical crayon-eating Marine might get.
After Meechum shouted warning about the two men in the trees, Kyla did as she’d been told. She aimed and fired.
The me
n shot a half-second later.
The AR kicked against her shoulder, and the crack-bang split her eardrums, but she’d had enough experience over the past week to hold the aim steady. An instant later, she lined up a second shot at her target. Without thinking about it, she squeezed the trigger.
“Duck!” one of the men yelled.
Meechum cried out in pain.
Kyla was already behind the truck, relative to the enemy, but she crouched down to give her friend a once-over. “You okay?”
Meechum was still on her feet, which was a good thing, but she hunched over as if the wind had been knocked out of her chest. “I’m fine. I leaned on the butt stock and I think it tore off my bandages it went in so hard.” She looked up, sweating bullets. “Don’t stop firing!”
Kyla dumped the two extra rifles, then scooted along next to the bed of the pickup until she was near the cab. She figured it would be safer to pop up there than toward the back.
The men shot at her multiple times, penetrating the metal of the bed with zings and clangs. Were they going to hit the gas tank? Self-preservation made her duck for a few seconds until the fury died down.
Her heart thumped against her ribs. Blood filled her temples and sloshed from one ear to the other, giving Kyla an intense focus. She didn’t fret about the ten extra pounds that had always bothered her in the old days. She didn’t concern herself with how out of shape she’d been the last few years. None of those things mattered in battle. All she could do in the face of fear was stand back up and fire her weapon, as she’d been instructed. She came up behind the cab, searching for targets.
She knew generally where the men were hunkered down. It was an area of saplings and small bushes—enough to obscure their position, but not hide them. Kyla had to stand on tiptoes to see over the far side of the truck bed, but the ground was flat, and she had the angle. She aimed at the black outfit of the one on the left. After an abbreviated exhale to steady her shaking body, she fired as fast as her finger could pull the trigger.
Thinking she was alone on the attack, Kyla squatted back down. Meechum wasn’t where she expected. Instead of sitting on the ground recovering, she was leaning around the rear bumper, firing like a mad woman.
“Don’t stop shooting!” Meechum yelled without breaking her stride. “You got one!”
“I did?” she said to herself.
Her body was reacting poorly to the encounter. Each breath was ragged, as if six heartbeats demanded air each time she inhaled. It left her lightheaded and shaky.
Again, she forced herself to stand and return fire. What would Carthager and the other Marines back on the aircraft carrier think about how far she’d come? It instilled a bit of pride in her, but she tried to temper herself. Those Marines wouldn’t be impressed if she got herself shot, so she tried to think like one of them.
Don’t stay in the same spot.
Kyla kept herself crouched low and moved toward the front of the truck. She wasn’t tall enough to fire over the hood, so she had to go all the way to the front bumper. When she arrived, it gave her a better view of the second man.
“Got ya!” she whispered.
The man saw her, too. He’d gotten his own rifle into the action, and it seemed like a huge black hole staring right at her.
She looked down the iron sights as Meechum had illustrated several times. Without overthinking it, she pulled the trigger again.
The guy’s simultaneous shot popped the front headlight.
Kyla’s knocked the man over.
“Great shooting!” Meechum yelled.
Kyla retreated behind the bumper to recover her wits. Even learning she’d hit the guy didn’t do much for her mushy insides. “I can’t believe I—” she started to say, until she looked over and found Meechum was gone.
“What the hell?” There was only one place she could be, so she risked a look over the truck.
Kyla walked through the light brush as she repeatedly fired her rifle toward the men’s position. Over the course of thirty feet, she seemingly fired fifty shots. When she ran out of rounds, she tossed the rifle and pulled out a pistol. She fired it at one target, then the other, until she ran out.
The Marine tossed the pistol and pulled another one.
“Geez, how many guns do you have?” Kyla wondered aloud, before remembering she should have been out there helping her partner.
She arrived to find two dead men, each with five or six grisly wounds. While she was proud of hitting the two men herself, Meechum had made sure each of them would never get up again.
Meechum gave her an appraising once-over. “You did the right thing, Dudette. You put rounds on target. Stayed behind hard cover. You didn’t freeze up.”
Kyla pointed. “But you ran out here into the trees by yourself. I should have helped you.”
The woman searched the closest body. “Naw, I used the initiative to run them down before they could tend their wounds. If we’d waited, they might have scrambled to one of those larger tree trunks or called for help. Sometimes speed is its own weapon.”
“I’ll remember it,” Kyla said as if she’d learned a valuable lesson.
“Don’t do anything crazy until you’ve got more training under your belt. Let me take the risks.” Meechum pulled a radio, a cell phone, and a wallet off the dead guy. She also checked out the man’s pistol and rifle but didn’t pick them up.
“Don’t we want more guns?” Kyla asked with surprise.
Meechum picked up the pistol she’d tossed. “Our rifles are better. This is some kind of Chinese shit. You can tell by the messed-up design.”
Kyla didn’t have anything to add to the conversation. The men’s guns were black, with a short barrel and a trigger. It would never be confused with the AR-pattern she recognized, but it was still a rifle. Whether it was better or worse was entirely out of her wheelhouse.
After searching the second man, they took two radios, one of the phones, and none of the weapons. Since they were already in the trees, it was easy to drag them a bit deeper into the dense growth, effectively eliminating the bodies. No one would find them unless they probed the woods foot by foot.
When they got in the truck, Meechum took the driver’s seat. In seconds, she had them speeding back toward the cabin in the woods to gather their remaining food and supplies. The Marine grabbed a drink sitting in the cupholder. “Looks like they stopped at the gas station soda fountain. This thing is a sixty-four-ounce supertanker!” After giving it a once over, Meechum tossed the soda out the window.
Kyla did the same for the companion beverage on her side. She also grabbed some leftover fried chicken and jettisoned it as well. It smelled heavenly, but it was cursed. “I don’t think we want to touch their chicken. It literally got them killed.”
They laughed, easing a little of the tension.
When they returned to the lake house, they jumped out, chucked everything of value into the bed of the truck, then hopped back inside. The truck’s tires kicked rocks all over the cabin’s front porch as Meechum hammered the gas to get them on the road again.
Meechum sped back toward Glendo. “We’ll catch up to them. I promise.”
“I believe it,” she replied.
Minutes later, Kyla noticed a wire attached to the dashboard. The big drinks had been hiding it. Thinking it was the answer to her dead phone, she yanked it and checked the connector. Her excitement was short-lived. “Dang. They have a charger, but it won’t work with my phone.”
Meechum smiled. “You can use the dead man’s phone. He won’t be needing it.”
“Of course,” Kyla replied, before almost choking on her words. She frantically pointed ahead as they neared Glendo. The interstate passed along the far edge of the tiny town, not more than a quarter of a mile away. The roadway had been empty when they arrived, but now it was crowded with cars and trucks. The town was filled with enemy soldiers, too, suggesting the pair they knocked off had been sentries guarding the town’s border.
Men in bl
ack stood in front of storefronts. A man here. Two men there.
Meechum slowed but didn’t stop.
“What are you doing?” Kyla asked with surprise, her heart convulsing almost as bad as it did during combat. She was ready for the driver to peel out and go in another direction.
“We’re wearing their uniforms. They think we’re with them. We have to assume your uncle blended in, too.” To prove her point, she waved at one of the men standing on the roadside. He waved back. “We’ll go where they go.”
Kyla dropped her guard a fraction of a percent. “But where is that?”
The cool-headed Marine guided the truck up the ramp and onto the highway. Hundreds of other vehicles drove south, using all four lanes. She pointed where everyone else was going. “This way.”
Fort Collins, CO
Ted hopped out of the SUV with a rifle in his hands. Emily came out with hers still on her back. “Em, hold your rifle like you mean to use it. We have to act as if we’re merks, like you said.”
She shrugged. “How do I know what a merk does?”
He thought about it while she did as asked. “Pretend we’re your secret service detail. They always had their weapons out when you were in dangerous situations, right?” Ted was thinking specifically of the men and women on Air Force Two after the assassination attempt on her life.
“I’m with you.” She kept her blue bandana over most of her face.
The man with the camera came right up to him. “I’m Todd. My partner getting the rest of the sound equipment is Louis. I’ve got to admit, I never thought this day would come, or that we’d be covering it like this.”
Ted acted like he couldn’t think of a way to care less than he already did. After a pregnant pause, he replied. “What are we looking at here? I see a bunch of cranes lined up to unload stuff, but the trucks are all stopped. What’s so important about this place?” It appeared as if every wheeled crane in the city had been gathered at the intersection. He counted at least twenty from where he was standing, evenly split between both sides of the wide street. Some equipment had already been unloaded onto the gravel parking lot. The new staging area contained a few rows of the enemy’s robots at the far back.
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 76