Dark Dragons (31 page)

A half-mile or so later, Pickens Canyon Channel funneled
into a tight concrete tunnel that disappeared under Foothill Boulevard, the
traffic now beginning to grow busier.  Interstate 210 lay a quarter mile
away, Nate’s house just beyond the channel’s overpass above the tall embankment
that bordered the eastbound lanes.  Darren paused for a couple of minutes
to catch a blow inside the tunnel, making sure to aim his weapon back and forth
every few seconds at the tunnel’s ends.  He was still unsure whether more
than one Vorvon could be out there, and the dire thought of being trapped from
both ends lit the fire under his ass, and he quickly hauled it out of there.

He passed through two more tunnels which traversed under a
couple of side streets before he arrived at the last tunnel, this one going
under a street above I-210 that followed the freeway east and west. 
Beyond that, Darren could see that the water channel flattened to a concrete
slab with heavy wire fencing built atop a forty foot wide overpass above the
highway.

He stopped at the opposite end to catch his breath and check
the traffic below——not too busy for this hour of the morning, around three or
so, but there appeared to be a long convoy of semi-trucks heading east. 
Darren could see Nate’s house on the other side, and couldn’t believe his luck
when he saw that most of the lights were on, the only house on the street that
were.

Still, Darren hesitated.  The channel overpass was
rather wide open and perfect for an ambush, too exposed for his comfort. 
The ringing in his ears had never stopped since he escaped from the house,
although it wavered off and on occasionally.  He anticipated the moment
his skin would start to crawl and teeth tingle, the alarms that alerted him of
danger just seconds away.

Checking his left, right and rear, he stepped out from the
tunnel and slowly approached the bridge, his pulse rifle sweeping side to side
on his shoulder, trigger finger ready to unload.  Darren realized he was
slowly “duck walking” in a low crouch just like SWAT officers and special
forces operatives, the perfect forward motion for well-aimed gunfire.  He wondered,
though, if he had learned it long ago or had been programmed with that
information by the alien ship.

Goose bumps!  Darren spun around, dropped to one knee,
and laid down a fierce sweep of laser fire.  The blasts struck the trees
and the concrete walls of the tunnel, but nothing was there.  Then he
heard what sounded like a growl whiz past him and fade away, so loud it sounded
like it had been right in front of his face.  Darren followed the sound
with the end of his pulse rifle and fired but only managed to blow apart a
couple of metal fence posts on the opposite side of the overpass.  A five
foot section of wire fencing fell away and landed on the eastbound lanes
below.  Darren heard tires screech and a car swerving.

At the south end of the bridge, he spotted a figure
materialize from an invisibility cloak, a tall dark silhouette against the
yellow street light behind . . . and floating in the air.

The Vorvon, momentarily staring him down like a Dodge City
cowboy on an empty dust-swept street, reactivated its invisibility and
disappeared.  Just great——a heavily armed alien assassin able to cloak
itself . . .
and
fly.

Darren thought of Scorch and the horrifying taunts the alien
had inflicted upon him before attempting the kill shot.  He was being tormented
once more.  The alien could have lugged him anytime between here and the
house.  The bastard had probably been floating behind him, following
within arm’s length, carefully studying his adversary for weaknesses maybe.

Did this happen to be Scorch himself, pissed that Darren had
thwarted him in his Dragonstar and now desired to slay the puny human
face-to-face?  He wasn’t sure.  Maybe all Vorvons behaved this way
with their enemies . . . perhaps a quick kill was not honorable for some innate
dogma.  Cats chose to torment mice before finally biting their heads off
for a reason.  Because they could.

Darren knew he wouldn’t be able to match the assassin’s
abilities, and the only rational thing he could think of was to do something so
irrational that it would give him a momentary advantaged.  He wouldn’t be
able to outrun a flying alien but maybe he could
out pace
it. 
Darren had been thinking all of this the moment he remembered the eastbound
convoy of tractor-trailer trucks speeding underneath.  The hole in the
fence, however, was not directly above the lane the trucks were using, and if
Darren was going to do it, he would have to go at an angle with as much speed
as he could squeeze out of his legs.

Die here or die there, tomorrow’s universe, shit happens.
  
He was on his feet, slamming his pulse rifle into the magnetic holster clamp so
that he could use both arms to pump himself forward, dashing across the bridge
toward deliverance or doom, hoping he had timed it correctly.  A laser
shot from his right struck the concrete next to him.  Another flashed in
front of his face.

Darren was not scared, his reprogrammed brain running hot,
recalling Tony’s inert reaction to the garter snake slithering beneath
him.  He put one boot on the edge of the overpass and the other into the
air——and hurdled off the precipice, and for one split moment thought he had
jumped too soon.  The semi looked like it was going to smash him into the
grill before he even struck the pavement, but down he fell ten or twelve feet
to everlasting glory and crashed hard onto the trailer’s roof just behind the
cab.

Darren did a couple of painful somersaults halfway down the
length of the trailer, smashing his head and limbs all the way, before skidding
at an angle toward the trailer’s right side.  The speed of the semi and
his own momentum was about to shove him off the edge, and he dug his boots and
gloved hands into the roof to slow himself, feeling unconsciousness beginning
to squeeze him.  Both legs were dangling off the roof when he finally stopped. 
Darren felt wetness trickle into his eyes, knew it was blood, and hauled
himself backward away from the trailer’s side.  He rolled over onto his
stomach and passed out.

*

Why is there wind howling in my room?
  He opened
his eyes, both of them stinging, and the first thing he saw was a large green
sign lit by the truck’s headlights whoosh by overhead——
INTERSTATE 605 SOUTH - THRU TRAFFIC
.  He was still in the
city but where

He squinted from the biting wind and slowly crawled forward
toward the front of the trailer to avoid being spotted by the truck driver
behind him, if he hadn’t already.  Headlights from a passing car
highlighted the cab.  It was painted Army green.  As the freeway
curved gently to the left, Darren saw in the headlights from the cars in the
next lane that he had hitched a ride on a California National Guard convoy of
18-wheeler tractor trailers, 2 ½- and 5-ton trucks, and Humvees.

Up ahead another large freeway sign in the median read:
DEL AMO BLVD - 3 ¼ MILES, KATELLA AVE - 6 ½ MILES, SAN
DIEGO FWY I-405 - 8 MILES
.  He was on the San Gabriel River Freeway
heading for Orange County, a good thirty miles south of home, which meant the
time had to be around four in the morning . . . at least another two hours of
darkness left.

Darren put his face down against the roof and put his hands
over his forehead to shield the burning wind from his eyes.  Was the
Vorvon following him somewhere close behind?  Or in front of him? 
Or
standing on the roof directly behind me?
  Darren didn’t think
so.  The torment session had to have ended back on the bridge.  The
next time the alien spotted him, it would go for the kill.  No more
playing.

Through the uproar of wind and semis-on-pavement, the sound
of helicopters overhead broke through the tumult on the ground.  The
navigation lights and anti-collision beacons of dozens of what could only be
National Guard helicopters strobed across the night sky, some as far back as
the northern horizon.  They were following the semi convoy south,
destination unknown.  A couple of Blackhawk helicopters were so low that
Darren could see from the city lights that they were hauling artillery
guns.  He had seen California National Guard helicopters flying between
L.A. and their bases upstate before but never in extraordinary numbers like
this.  Something was going on.

A half-mile north of Katella Avenue, the convoy began to
slow and pull over to the right shoulder, traveling at around twenty miles an
hour.  It looked like they were getting off here.  Darren scanned the
ground for a jumping off point, but there were too many headlights and not
enough tree cover to conceal himself.  A large strip mall lay on the other
side of the fence, though there didn’t appear to be any hiding spots in that
direction either.

With dread, Darren saw the first ever-so slight wisp of
morning dawn on the horizon.  He didn’t want to be seen wearing an alien
combat suit and armed to the hilt with alien weapons, especially to National
Guard troops likely armed themselves. 
This is going to get really,
really interesting
.

The helicopters were landing close by to the southeast,
maybe a mile away.

The semi-truck began to pick up speed, still traveling along
the shoulder.  A minute later, they were on the circular off-ramp curving
toward Katella Avenue and being waved to the east by a pair of flashing
California Highway Patrol cars holding up traffic in the middle of the street.

Darren had to jump now, even though the semi was picking up
speed, but again there were too many headlights from cars on the on-ramp next
to him and nowhere to go on the right.  He told himself to wait . . .
there had to be a better spot in town to ditch his ride, but the thought of
another painful jump, this time from a speeding semi-truck, made the bruise on
his forehead throb harder.

Darren didn’t know what to do——the helicopters slowing down
for a landing nearby told him that his destination lay very close, and he sure
as hell didn’t want to go anywhere near there.  A cop from another
flashing CHP car ahead was waving the convoy through a red light.  He had
a bad feeling these trucks were not going to stop until they arrived at their
final resting place.  Two more blocks to the east, the convoy slowed and
turned south, again with the assistance of a couple of patrol cars, through a
residential neighborhood until they came to a well-lit gatehouse:

LOS ALAMITOS U.S. ARMY AIRFIELD

JOINT FORCES TRAINING BASE

HQ 40th INFANTRY DIVISION (MECHANIZED)
CALIFORNIA NATIONAL GUARD

HQ SOUTHERN REGION OFFICE OF EMERGENCY
SERVICES

Darren quickly scanned his surroundings for a place to
ditch, edging to the roof’s left side, but the damn truck did not slow
down.  In fact, a soldier waving a light cone next to a Humvee directed
the convoy straight through the open gate. 
What kind of Homeland
Security is this?  A terrorist can just bring in a suitcase nuke on top of
a National Guard truck
?

Further into the base, the trucks turned west up a
street.  On the north side were several buildings which looked like family
apartments, barracks and parking lots; to the south, several support buildings
including the tall control tower, hangars, more parking lots and a fire
station.  Beyond that he could see the multi-colored lights of the runway
and flashing beacons of military transport planes sitting on the tarmac. 
It looked more like an Air Force base than an Army airfield.

Darren checked behind him.  The semi had separated
quite a distance from the one behind it——and there was tree and bush cover up
ahead to the right.  Time to fly.  He slid over to the roof’s edge,
got to his feet and selected a nice patch of hopefully-not-to-hard grass
between the street and the sidewalk.  Darren went airborne again but this
time had his arms wrapped around his exposed head to protect himself.  Still,
it was another hard landing.  He tumbled across the sidewalk right into a
large bush, as he had planned, but now his entire left leg seized up in
pain.  The next truck did not slow down but continued on without
incident.  The driver was probably half-asleep.

He got to his feet and hobbled over into the shadows of an
apartment building away from the street lights.  His leg didn’t appear to
be broken anywhere, but a dull pain in his back thigh told him he might have
tweaked a hamstring.  One would think the designers of this suit, using
technology far beyond humankind’s, would have employed the use of servo-motors
or some kind of muscle-enhancing actuators that reduced the chances of
injury.  The body pains that came with being shot at and jumping onto moving
semi-trucks, however, reminded him that his suit’s primary function was to
serve as an armored flak uniform with a smart computer.  Pilot first,
commando second, he guessed.  Still, it would have been nice to flip a
tank over like Ironman.

He shooed at an annoying fly and brought his gloved hand up
to wipe the sweat from his face.  When he did, he noticed on the corner of
his eye a tiny——something——attached to the back of his left shoulder plate, a
spot where he wouldn’t have normally seen it.  It looked like a sewing
thimble with a tiny red light.

Darren pried it off . . . some kind of resin underneath . .
. examined it closely, and realized how the alien had been able to track
him.  His mind went back to the house, in the kitchen, the alien rising from
behind the couch in the living room with something in its left hand.

Darren couldn’t help but smile at this, feeling like a
cheetah with a radio-collar, a soon-to-be trophy on a poacher’s rec room
wall.  His helmet of course would have warned him immediately the moment a
foreign object had attached itself to his suit.  The thought that perhaps
the alien had down something to his helmet while he slept in front of the TV
crept into his mind.  Did the son-of-a-bitch really go to great lengths just
to play with him like a cat would a half-dead chipmunk?