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.”
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.”
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 tipped past 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. Once 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 stopped at what would have been rush hour on a Monday morning. It was now thick 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 t
he 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 probe was close. The whirring of its blades suggested it was at the end of the alley, but it had stopped. The MSD truck was parked at the other end. Was that enough to get its attention?
It continued to hover nearby for ten or fifteen 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 ran 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 held waved them in, the automatic doors opening for them.
“Thanks,” she huffed.
“Welcome,” the sanitation worker replied with a tip of his Blues hat.
Gus was already inside, hunched over like he’d run himself out of oxygen. She was winded, too, but not to such an extent. The two boys appeared fine, but Audrey seemed as exhausted as the old man.
“You okay?” she asked the girl. “You need your meds?”
“I’m fine,” Audrey replied.
“Anyone know where to go?” she asked.
Vinny pointed the way. “When we did our work, we went down this hallway, past the sound booth.”
It was unnaturally quiet in the building, though there was a low hissing sound coming out of the speakers, like they were supposed to be broadcasting but no one was at the microphone.
Vinny and Gus went into the cheery hallway filled with broadcasting awards and posters of famous events in the city’s history. She hardly recognized any of them, except for the giant poster of the Stanley Cup, which the Blues had recently won. Hockey wasn’t her thing, but Dad had repeatedly told her about it the past few weeks.
Vinny touched the poster of the trophy, then pointed through tall glass windows to a big room with numerous cameras angled toward a desk with the number 5 on the wall behind it. “Right in there.”
Tabby pushed through the double-doors, glad they were unlocked. She strode up to the desk but paused when two sets of clothes caught her eye. The news anchors had been in the chairs behind the desk, like they’d been live on the air when things happened.
She continued marching forward and went to the set of clothing for a woman. Tabby pulled the small lapel microphone out of the blouse, then pushed the rest of the ensemble onto the floor.
“Hello? Is this thing on?”
“I hear you!” Audrey shouted. “Your voice is coming through the speakers outside.”
Tabby looked at the big camera pointed at her. She thought of how far she’d come since missing that elevator in the mine shaft. Would Mom and Dad see her on television? Were they watching safely in some motel outside the disaster cordon? She had to believe they were.
“Say something,” Peter cajoled.
“Here we go…” she exhaled.
CHAPTER 16
Poor Sisters Convent, Oakville, MO
Sister Rose sat in the front seat of the van, unsure what to do. The floating machine had asked for her name, but she didn’t feel comfortable interacting with such an unusual piece of technology. It could be dangerous.
“Are people still alive?” she asked it. “Can we get to safety?” She’d considered that after listening to Tabby swear how help was out there and took off to go find it, but Rose didn’t believe it was true. Couldn’t believe it. Now there was potentially a second source who could confirm it.
“Please state your name,” the machine requested.
Rose glanced over at Deogee. She had her head cocked to one side with an ear perked up. The dog seemed to be confused as to whether this was a threat or not.
“I’m Sister Rose,” she said in a mouse-like squeak.
“Please increase volume when speaking.”
It was the oddest feeling for Rose. It was like talking to the order-takers in a fast-food drive-through, but this time, there was no human being around. Was it really a computer or were people somewhere nearby? She had to know.
“Can you tell me where you are?” she asked it.
“This is the Poor Sisters Convent, in Oakville, Missouri.” The machine gave her the address and included what it called GPS coordinates. It appeared to be very thorough about listing every detail for her location. She figured out during this data dump the white copter was responding with precision to the question she’d asked.
“Please state your name,” the computer said in the same patient tone as before.
“Sister Rose. My given name is Becky Hatcher. I’m a novitiate nun in the convent. Who are you?” She kept her voice pleasant and courteous. Whatever it was, it would do no good to be rude to it or whoever controlled it.
“Please confirm social security number,” the box requested.
She hesitated for twenty or thirty seconds because she’d always been taught not to give out that information for anyone unless you were sure it wouldn’t be used for identity theft. This strange device
could be controlled by criminals.
“I’m afraid I only give that out over the phone.”
The floating box spun around, but the orb underneath remained stationary from her perspective. It was almost impossible to read the mood of the little aircraft, but she imagined it was upset with her.
“This area has been designated as inhospitable due to an industrial accident. Social security ident requested to ensure proper dispatch of emergency services extraction vehicle. Please confirm social security number to ensure speedy recovery.”
The voice showed no signs of impatience or anxiety, but she began to feel both. If someone was coming to rescue her, that would be wonderful, but talking to the computer woman didn’t make her feel comfortable about it.
Deogee seemed to pick up on her emotions, because she got up on her seat and walked in a circle. Then she sat on her haunches while facing the menacing box floating outside.
With great reluctance, she gave her social to the computer woman. No matter how bad she felt about it, she wanted to be totally sure rescuers could find her and her new dog. She’d also tell them about the other dogs nearby. Maybe now she didn’t need to go to the pet store to buy food for them, if rescue was close.
“How long will I have to wait?”
“Computing travel time… Approximately seven minutes.”
“Wow! Okay. I need to get my stuff. Thank you so much for telling me.”
“The St. Louis County Police Department thanks you for your cooperation.”
She breathed out a sigh of relief. If it would have told her up front it was with the police, she wouldn’t have had so much trepidation about it.
“You’re welcome.”
Rose pulled the keys out of the ignition, feeling a lot better about the exchange. The little drone rose in the air and waited at the edge of the parking lot. She thought there was a new window open on the side of the little machine’s frame, but it was hard to be sure in the daylight. It almost looked like a little beam of red light pointed at the convent’s front door.
“Sorry, Deogee. We’ll get food for you when we get to the police station.”
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