Red the First (19 page)

The hatred smeared across Nate’s face
dissolved into tears of frustration. He punched the air, wiped his
nose on a sleeve, took a jagged breath, and quickly regained his
well-rehearsed composure.

“
All right, Bossman,” he
said. “What do we do now?’’

“
How about cutting me
free?

Nate rummaged through the dead aliens’
stuff, looking for anything that might be of use. Most of the
Celerun instruments had been destroyed by the surge, but he found a
blade and used it to cut away Red’s bindings.

“
We got to get out of here
fast,” Red said. “We passed some houses along the way. If we’re
lucky, we can find a car with gas in it.”

“
Unlikely,” Nate said. “But
there are perfectly good Celerun vehicles a hundred feet
away.”

“
No way,” Red said shaking
his head.

“
It’s the only way,” Nate
assured. “The nearest house is two miles away. I could make the run
in fifteen minutes? Can you? Even if you can, Bossman, do we have
that much time to spare?”

“
Okay, okay, you made your
point.”

They ran across the field to the
hovercrafts.

Red cautiously sidled up to one and
caressed the warm glittering metal at the base of the seat. The
hovercraft reminded him of a jet ski on estrogen—not bulky, but
smooth and feminine. Thin metal running boards made up the base of
the hovercraft. Every part was streamlined, except where a slightly
elliptical cylinder rose out of the base. He had seen the Celeruns
ride standing, straddling the cylinders, but they also used the
cylinders as seats. Red guessed that whatever powered the engine
was housed inside the cylinder.

Even when parked, the hovercrafts
hovered a foot above the ground. The one he chose dipped an inch
when he stepped on the running board. He swung a leg over the
housing cylinder and took a seat. The top of the cylinder was
coated with a cushion of gel—very comfortable. He glanced over at
Nate, who was already seated on his hovercraft of choice, checking
out the controls.

The steering wheel was shaped like a
V. A windshield also served as the control console.
Semi-transparent buttons of lights, marked with alien symbols,
spread across the bottom third of the windshield like the
instruments on a dashboard.

Red and Nate randomly touched the
icons on the dash. Nate’s craft suddenly rose two meters into the
air, but would ascend no further, and came down with a swish of air
and a gyrating bump. Red pushed an icon with a symbol that looked
like an old-fashioned car antennae. Instantly, a rod rose out of
the seat just in front of his crotch. “Whoa, this is a bad
idea.”

“
Celeruns may have caught
the caravan by now,” Nate reminded Red. As he spoke, Nate’s vehicle
lurched forward five feet. “I got it, Bossman! The button smack in
the center of the windshield is Drive.”

Red hunted for it and saw a symbol
that looked like a rider leaning forward on a hovercraft. He
pressed the button and twisted the handle forward. The vehicle
moved forward. He twisted the handle toward him, and the vehicle
moved backward. Simple enough. He discovered squeezing both sides
of the housing with his knees made the craft slow and
stop.

“
This is so much like a
motorcycle, it’s not even funny,” Nate remarked.

“
Good design is universal.”
Red said. “I like it.”

Nate swished a hand. “After you,
Bossman.”

“
Try and catch
me.”

Red accelerated softly until he got
the feel of the craft between his legs. It didn’t take long. He
leaned forward, increasing speed, swooping over the ground, feeling
like a young stag leaping over the meadow. The engine purred like a
kitten, barely audible, and the aerodynamics of the windshield were
so refined the wind barely made a sound. A guy could get used to
this…he closed his eyes for a minute, and pretended that he was in
a different world, sailing on a sea of glass toward
paradise.

Chapter 18

Hewego’s mayor and its drag racing
champion drove full-throttle on the alien hovercrafts for twenty
miles, slowing at a place where thick branches hung over the road,
creating a living hallway of oak trees. Nate brought his craft to a
stop, motioning for Red to do the same.

“
Do you hear
that?”

Red strained his ears. Pop, pop, sounds
bounced off the trees.

“
Is that gunfire?” Nate
asked.

Red’s mouth went dry. That could only
mean one thing. “The caravan’s in trouble.”

They raced ahead, not slowing down
until they spotted the fleet of yellow buses at the side of the
field, surrounded by other familiar vehicles. A huge structure, a
corporate cattle barn made of gray cement blocks and sheet metal,
stood in the distance. The sign was still out there, Pringle’s
Corporate Dairy. Before the plague, he’d passed this place at least
a dozen times, never giving it a second thought. If only he’d known
it held the kind of secrets that conspiracy theorists drooled over.
The main entrance to the Galatians Bunker was hidden inside that
barn. The secondary one, two miles away, was marked by a fading
billboard.

Over seventy Celerun hovercrafts were
parked along the road at the edge of an overgrown meadow. The
general’s plans had mentioned that if military fleets arrived ahead
of the Hewaygoans’s evacuation down into the bunker, the humans
would have hundreds of thousands of Celeruns to deal with, and once
the mother ship arrived, millions. The low number of hovercrafts
was a good sign that the mother ship hadn’t touched down on earth
yet, and that the military fleets were still in space.

A long drive led to a wide gravel
parking lot that appeared to encircle the barn. Celeruns were dug
in behind small rises in the land, up and down the lane and the
surrounding fields. The aliens had positioned spotlights to shine
on the barn, turning the gray of dawn into full
daylight.

The not-quite-set moon, one day past
full, illuminated the field with a silvery glow, making it more
difficult for both humans and aliens to conceal themselves. Red
watched two Celeruns hiding behind an old Allis Chalmers tractor.
Their demeanor seemed casual. They talked freely to one another,
like two women on a lunch break, totally unaware that someone in
the weeds was contemplating their deaths. If he had his gun, he
would take them out in a second.

On the short side of the barn, beneath
the peak of the roof, were double-wide doors. Knowing the
building’s true purpose, Red figured the government had brought big
equipment in and out through those doors over the years. Smaller
garage doors were spaced in even intervals along the long side of
the building.

Red’s heart sunk at the sight of seven
charred human bodies smoldering on the ground outside the barn. He
saw Nate’s expression twist and darken as he struggled with the
sight before his eyes. Neither of them said a word, praying that
their nearest and dearest weren’t among the dead. They ditched the
hovercrafts to crawl through the overgrown meadow on hands and
knees, hoping to get a better look.

Suddenly, a round of shooting came from
inside the barn. The two aliens by the tractor stopped talking to
fire their orange lightning guns.

Red recognized the portly form of
Farmer Morningside as he stepped out from one of the side doors to
get a clear shot at the invaders. A Celerun crouched in the grass
caught a bullet in the forehead. She slumped to the grass on one
knee. Yellow blood dripped down her face, filling her nostrils, but
she was still alive. A human would have died on the spot, but her
comrades reached out from the grass to pull her into the cover of
the field.

Farmer Morningside wasn’t through. He
sent a spray of bullets over a group of Celeruns who slunk deeper
into the grass, before he ducked back behind the door. A survivor
from Last Haven flung open the loft door above the large-equipment
sliding door, showering the Celeruns from on high, forcing them to
retreat further into the field where Red and Nate were
hiding.

The Celeruns rose out of the weeds long
enough to return fire, but their beams were ineffective against the
porous cement-block fortress. Where the concentrated light hit the
walls, nebulous glowing blobs burned for two seconds, spreading
throughout the brick, and then harmlessly dissolved.

“
I don’t understand,” Red
mumbled. “Why hasn’t Elizabeth taken them through the secret
entrance?”

“
And why are the aliens’
guns so lame?” Nate asked. “What kind of game are they
playing?”

“
General Moore said that
landing the mother ship would be a drain on the Celerun power
supply. That’s why we timed our evacuation to coincide with its
arrival. Even though it puts us in a time crunch, for a while it
levels the playing field.”

“
Mayor Wakeland?” An
unexpected voice from the weeds made him jolt. He reached for his
gun, but the Celeruns had taken it. The dark face belonging to the
voice was that of Dr. Patel.

“
Doc?”

“
Mayor?”

A second voice exclaimed,
“Honey!”

It was Elizabeth. Something akin to joy
bloomed in his chest, but it quickly wilted in the presence of
fear. What was she doing out here, exposed in the open, separated
from the barn, far away from the doorway of hope?

She crawled to him, practically
tackling him as she straddled his torso and lavished anguished
kisses on his face, alternating from cheek to cheek, not letting up
until Michael appeared on the scene to squeeze between them. The
boy clutched Red tightly and placed a soft cheek on his
chest.

“
Dad,” he said sweetly. “I
thought I’d never see you again.”

Red stroked his soft hair. “You’re a
good kid, Michael,” he said, fighting the urge to turn tail, run
away with his family, and say the hell with everybody else. The
thought of losing his second family so close on the heels of losing
his first was too much for any man to endure. If only God would
come out of His gold box and lend a hand.

“
No matter what happens.”
Michael squeezed him tighter. “I want you to know that I think
you’re a great dad.”

That hadn’t always been true. Red had
many regrets. In his pre-plague life, he had hardly paid any
attention to his children or his wife. The business had taken all
his time. Michael and Elizabeth were his second chance. It was
bittersweet knowing he’d done better with Michael than he had with
his biological children.

Michael squeezed out from between Red
and Elizabeth to scamper through the weeds. “Zena, girl, where are
you?”

“
Get back here,” Red called
after him.

“
Red,” Elizabeth said. “God
knows you have enough on your mind, but I rethought my decision not
to tell you.”

“
Tell me what?”

She was still straddling him when
bullets rang out against metal. She flattened herself against his
chest and whispered in his left ear. “I’m pregnant.”

He could feel the strength drain from
his body.

She wasn’t thinking straight if she
thought this was good news. This baby was doomed to die by the end
of the day or live its years out underground in some dark dank
bunker. This was horrible, no matter how she sliced it.

Elizabeth rolled off him. Deep
disappointment was reflected in the sag of her expression. She
could read his thoughts, so there was no hiding how strongly he
resisted the idea of bringing another child into such a miserable
world. How many regrets could a man hold inside him without tearing
at the seams and leaking away?

Nate ended the awkward silence by
rudely sticking his head in between them. “Uh, the Celeruns are
getting closer to the barn. What do we do?”

“
Nate—is that you?” A voice
came from the weeds. Everybody turned to see a young blonde woman
in a pink sweater crawling commando-style over clumps of clay. Red
noticed the way Nate’s breath quickened at the sight of Blanche and
the way Blanche’s eyes danced at the sight of Nate. He didn’t know
if the two young people had ever pursued anything beyond
friendship, but it was clear that they cherished one another. It
saddened him to think they might not get the chance to allow their
relationship to grow into something more.

“
What’s this—a party?”
Blanche said when she saw so many people crouched in the
field.

“
How is it that you’re all
out here, while everybody else is in there?” Nate pointed to the
barn.

“
The mayor’s stupid dog,”
Blanche informed, casting Red a disgusted glare. “In the scramble
to get inside the barn, we lost track of Zena. Michael panicked.
Instead of making a bee-line to the barn, he darted into the field.
Elizabeth tore off after him. Doc and I tried to help, and that’s
when the Celeruns arrived.”

“
That was really dumb of
you, running off like that just now,” Nate told Michael.

Michael said defensively, “I had to
find Zena.”

“
Did you find her?” Red
asked worriedly.