It was my turn to ask: “Why Memphis?”
The soldier looked around conspiratorially. “Officially? Because it’s as far south as you can get without crossing the Screechers’ border, and its far from the coast, so no danger from the rogue when it arrives. Unofficially, because our illustrious leader has booked herself a ticket to Mars. Word is that she and that billionaire are in cahoots and they’ve known what’s coming for years. They’re both holed up at the launch facility with a few thousand of our boys patrolling the perimeter.”
Chapter 45
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but not because of the rumors that the president was fleeing Earth. This soldier had unwittingly validated the very reason we’d left San Antonio.
“Are you sure Akron Massey is there?”
“Oh yeah. Hell, I don’t even blame him. His company built the rockets. He’s got to feel some sense of ownership.” The soldier snorted. “Of course he built them on tax payers’ dollars, but who’s counting, right?”
Cars flowed by beside us, horns honking, and drivers shouting out their windows at each other. A pair of soldiers were directing traffic and watching our backs with their guns.
“What time are you leaving in the morning?” I asked.
“Oh six hundred. If you want to come, I suggest you get some sleep.”
I checked my watch and grimaced. It was four in the morning. San Antonio and Oklahoma City were on the same time zone, so that gave us exactly two hours to sleep. “We’ll join you. How do we find you?”
“Hey!” a driver shouted out his window to catch the soldiers’ attention. “You guys have any idea where we can park?”
The soldier speaking to us turned and glared at the man. “Do I look like a traffic cop, to you? Move along!”
The driver’s head popped back in, and the soldier’s gaze swept back to us. “I’ll swing by here before we go. Make sure you’re ready to leave.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
“Good. No more shootouts, you copy?”
“With what guns?” I asked. We still had plenty, but he didn’t need to know that.
The soldier smiled crookedly at us and turned to leave.
“What’s your name?” I asked before he could get away.
“Corporal West. Or KW if you prefer.”
I hesitated before offering my own name. West. The soldier was black. KW? Kanye West popped into my head, and I wondered if it was racist of me to make that connection.
“Before you say anything—yes, that’s what KW stands for, and no, I am not related to the man.”
One of the corporal’s troops snickered, followed by—“How’s Kimmy and the kids, KW?”
“Can it, Fields!”
I smiled at the exchange. “I’m Logan. This is Harry.” I pointed to my wife. “That’s Kate and Harry’s wife, Deborah.”
“Nice to meet y’all. See ya in the morning,” he said. “Squad, move out!” he said in a parade ground voice, and started jogging back the way they’d come.
I heaved a weary sigh and looked to Kate. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“Roger that,” Harry said.
* * *
Beeeep. Beeeep. Beeeep.
I woke up with a pounding heart and a thousand aches all over my body. Every muscle felt torn. My head seemed like it was stuffed with cotton. I fumbled sleepily for the Beretta I’d hidden in my side door. It was still dark out, but the first blush of dawn was on the horizon.
I sat up and righted the driver’s seat. Seeing that the only threat in sight was the alarm Alex had set on his cell phone, I relaxed and put my gun away. I found the cell phone and shut off the alarm with an angry swipe of my finger. It hadn’t woken anyone else. Alex and Rachel were still fast asleep in the back, somehow both sharing the bench seat as if it were a twin mattress. Alex was half on, half off, his legs bent and dangling over the improvised footrest that was our cooler.
I turned to Kate, but she was sleeping too, curled up against her window in a fetal position. I rubbed my aching eyes and tried to stretch in the small confines of the truck. I saw the people in the car next to us sleeping, too. The urge for me to go back to sleep was almost overwhelming.
Coffee. I would have traded all of our fuel and guns for just one cup. Maybe we’d be able to buy some along the way.
I heard a door slam and saw Harry getting out in my side view mirror. With a sigh, I grabbed the Beretta and opened my door. The cold hit me like a gut punch, and I gasped. It seared my exposed skin and made my nostrils stick together. I was awake now.
I jumped down and slipped my gun into the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back. I didn’t want Corporal West to see it and confiscate it, too.
“How’d you sleep?” I asked, stopping in front of Harry. He was blowing into his hands and rubbing them together vigorously. I began to do the same. We couldn’t wear insulated gloves and still fit our fingers through the trigger guards of our weapons, so we’d opted not to use them. I had a feeling that pretty soon we were going to have to give in and wear them anyway.
“Not good.” Harry glanced behind him and shook his head. “Where are they?”
I checked my watch. “It’s still five minutes to six. They’ll be here. We should re-fuel while we wait.” Harry nodded and went around the back of his SUV. I went to the back of the truck and untied one corner of the tarp at the back to pop my head in.
OneZero was in the exact same position I’d seen him in when I’d checked on him last night before going to sleep. I waved a hand at him to catch his attention and make sure he was still alive—or powered on, in his case.
OneZero raised a hand and waved back.
“You need to stay out of sight,” I said.
He cocked his head at me like a dog trying to figure out what his master was saying. The language barrier was about the same as it would be with a dog, but we still hadn’t properly established which one of us was the master.
“Just keep doing what you’ve been doing,” I said, and grabbed two jerry cans full of diesel. Setting them down at the back, I went around to my side of the truck and pulled the lever to open the gas tank door.
The tank sucked down all ten gallons, and there was still plenty of room for more. I was about to reach in for another jerry can when I heard rumbling engines and men’s voices. Booted feet came clomping toward us, and I heard Harry speaking to someone. Footsteps approached me at a steady clip. I threw the empty jerry cans in the back with OneZero and spun around to face whoever was headed my way.
It was Corporal West.
“All set to go?” he asked, nodding to me.
I nodded back, slowly, fumbling for a reply in my suddenly dry mouth.
“Good.” His eyes tracked past me to the open gas tank door. “You’ve got spare fuel with you?” His gaze found mine again.
“Yeah,” I managed.
“Diesel?”
I nodded again.
“Can you spare some? We’re running on fumes.”
“Uh...” I glanced at the back of my truck. If I reached in to get more fuel, the corporal might see OneZero. How would he react to that? A vision of a shootout that ended with our army friends drowning in their own blood flashed through my head.
“Oh, I get it,” the corporal drawled. “You want our help but you think it’s a one-way street.”
“No, that’s not it.”
West shrugged. “Then prove it.” Corporal West took a step toward the back of my truck, but I moved to block his way.
“You got something in there you don’t want me to see, Logan?”
My mouth popped open, but no sound came out. I needed to come up with a good excuse and fast.
West touched something on his uniform and yelled, “Fields! On me! Over,” into a radio that I couldn’t see.
Think! Damn it!
Chapter 46
Another soldier came running. Fields, presumably. I heard a door opening, followed by, “Logan?” It was Kate.
“Step aside,” Corporal West said, his eyes on me.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” I said and stepped aside reluctantly.
“We’ll see about that.” Corporal West nodded to Fields as he arrived. “Open the back.”
“Yes, sir.”
I watched, frozen with terror as Fields stepped forward and peeled open the tarp. He recoiled in a hurry and his rifle swept up. “Woah! Contact!”
Corporal West’s rifle snapped up and he joined his squad mate aiming into the darkened back of the pickup.
“Wait!” I said. “My kids are in the back!” If they fired their guns at OneZero, the bullets would shoot straight through into the cab.
“Scratch that,” Fields said. “It looks to be offline.”
Corporal West peered in and then rounded on me. “You brought a Screecher with you?”
I shrugged, my eyes darting to see that OneZero was doing a good rag doll impression. “It’s dead.”
“Yeah? And what if the others want to bury it or something? What if they’re tracking you?”
I frowned. “Then they would have confiscated it by now. We were flanked by Screechers the whole way from San Antonio. If none of them figured out we have one of theirs in the back, they’re not about to figure it out now.”
Corporal West sighed. “Still. You should ditch it.”
“We should study it,” I said. “Imagine what your division commander will say when you deliver this to him. You’ll probably get a promotion.”
“My division commander is dead.”
“Well, show it to whoever else is in charge, then.”
Corporal West seemed to consider that. “All right, but keep it hidden. Fields, grab a can of fuel—you too,” he said, snapping his fingers at me.
I nodded and waited for Fields to withdraw a blue water tank full of diesel, and then I grabbed the last two jerry cans full of fuel, grimacing as I did so. There goes our last fifteen gallons.
“We’re going to need to find more fuel,” I said as we lugged them over to the soldiers’ vehicles. I was expecting to see a whole convoy, but there was just one Humvee waiting behind Harry’s SUV, along with the other two soldiers we’d seen before going to sleep.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
Corporal West smirked. “You were expecting the cavalry or something?”
“I saw at least a dozen military vehicles pull in here last night.”
“I bet you did, but they’re all out of fuel. Assuming they haven’t gone AWOL, they’re probably still siphoning civvies’ tanks. Regardless, we can’t wait around for them. And speaking of waiting, are you going to do something with that fuel, or what?”
I nodded and hurried over to pass the jerry cans to Fields, who was busy trying to figure out how to pour diesel from a five gallon water jug. I solved his dilemma by passing him one of the funnels from the jerry cans. As I did so, Harry came over and whispered to me. “How much do you have left?”
“Not enough to get to Memphis,” I said, and winced at the pins and needles coursing through my frozen hands.
“Neither do we,” Corporal West said, proving that he could still hear what we were saying. “But we just need enough juice to get us to the next working set of pumps.”
Harry and I traded glances. With so many people pouring out of the South, I had a bad feeling we weren’t going to find any gas stations that still had fuel—and here I was dumping the last of mine into an even less efficient engine than Richard’s old F350.
When we were done, we piled into our vehicles. Richard and I reversed out of our space and followed Corporal West’s Humvee through the parking lot. Fortunately, almost everyone was still sleeping in their cars, so we didn’t run into any trouble getting out, but beyond the shopping complex I could see that the interstate was still clogged with bumper to bumper traffic. We inched along, wasting precious fuel. I fantasized that Corporal West’s Humvee was a tank and that he could just push everyone out of the way. Instead his Humvee just sat there, idling away its fuel the same as us. I wondered who would run out first. We’d given them fifteen gallons, and I’d only re-fueled with ten.
“We’re never going to get out of the city,” I said, shaking my head.
Kate’s hand found my arm and squeezed. “At least we’re alive.”
I caught her eye. She was smiling, her blue eyes full of hope. I marveled at how she managed to keep her spirits up in the middle of all this. Something tight unwound inside my chest, and I smiled back.
Traffic seized up completely and we sat there for fully ten minutes before one of the soldiers jumped out and came over to my door. I lowered my window. It was Fields. I recognized him by his freckly face, yellow teeth, and the weathered creases around his eyes.
“The interstate is blocked for miles,” he said.
“But we’re not even on the interstate!”
“This street leads straight to the on-ramp,” Fields replied, pointing way off into the distance. “We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Chapter 47
“We could ride down the curb,” I suggested, and pointed to a snow-dusted grassy slope beside the road that led down into a concrete ditch for run-off.
“That might work,” Fields said. “Let’s try it.” He ran back to his vehicle. Moments later we were kicking up clods of grass-covered dirt and racing past the frozen traffic. A few people caught on and pulled out behind us.
We had to ride up and over the turnouts into parking lots, pushing through traffic along the way. Coming to a set of traffic lights, we turned right, still rolling down the curb. Off-roading like that wasn’t hard for either the soldiers or us, but I felt bad for Harry. He had a two-wheel drive, not four. If he got stuck along the way, they’d have to pile in with us.
We drove by a McDonalds, and my stomach growled. “Do we have any food back there?” I asked.
“Let me see,” Kate replied. “Alex! Wake up!”
He groaned. “What? What is it?”
“Get a sandwich for your father, please.”
In the rear-view I saw him sit up with a grumpy face and start digging through the cooler. A moment later, he passed a sandwich to Kate. She unwrapped it and passed it to me. I ate one-handed, trying not to bite my tongue as we jumped over the concrete abutments at the side entrance of the shopping center where we’d spent the night.
Up ahead, I spotted an oddly-shaped water tower, all white metal, with a bulb at the top and Moore scrawled across it in blue letters. To the left of that was a Shell Station. I grabbed my walkie to tell Harry.
“I saw it. You think West did? Over.”
“I think so. It’s hard to miss.”
A few seconds later, the Humvee rolled to a stop in the grass and everyone but the driver got out. Fields came up to my window with the other two—Baker and... I noticed that the fourth soldier looked Chinese, but I couldn’t recall hearing his name.
“Time to fill up,” Fields said as soon as I lowered my window. I nodded and jumped out to get the empty fuel cans from the back of the truck.
Harry did the same, carrying two of his own empties over to us. We each grabbed two containers, except for the Chinese soldier.
“Chong, watch our backs,” Fields ordered. “Let’s move out!”
We crossed traffic together to reach the station. The sun was rising over the top, staining the sky crimson.
“We’ll have to make several trips,” Harry said, and hefted the two jerry cans he was carrying.
“Assuming they have any fuel,” I replied. But there were lots of cars lined up at the pump. I took that to be a good sign.
When we got to the station, Fields raised his voice and said, “Everybody stop what you’re doing! We have priority.”
I heard people grumbling and cursing as we approached. Chong held his gun at the ready, eyes scanning for threats.
But to my amazement people stepped away from the pumps and let us fill up first. We never would have gotten away with that if
it weren’t for our army escort. Even the station manager facilitated, keeping a record of the purchases for reimbursement, but not charging for them.
It took us half an hour to fill all of our empty containers and our tanks. By the time we were done, my back was aching and my arms were shaking, but we had enough fuel to get to Memphis.
Getting back into our vehicles, we started down the curb again, jumping over abutments and pushing through traffic on the side streets. As the buildings thinned out, so did the traffic, and pretty soon we were back on the road.
Hope swelled in my chest as I saw that we were making forty miles per hour. If things stayed that way, we would be in Memphis by nightfall.
“Dad, I need to pee!” Rachel said.
“So do I,” Alex put in.
“Why didn’t you go while we were fueling up?”
“Mom wouldn’t let us,” Alex explained. “She said it was too dangerous to get out, and you weren’t there to ask.”
“Use the cups!” I suggested, and flashed a grin in the rear-view mirror.
I had to laugh. We were in the middle of an alien apocalypse and our biggest problem was relieving our bladders.
But then I remembered our other problem. We had an alien soldier in the back of our truck, and we were escorting him through enemy territory. We could be arrested as collaborators, or shot and killed in a shoot-out with our own military. Not to mention, what was OneZero after? Why had he joined us, and where was he trying to go? It was reassuring to ascribe benevolent motives to the machine, but what if I was wrong?
* * *
I had to hand it to Corporal West. He really knew how to navigate. He managed to avoid traffic and slow-downs by sticking to country roads. It was only when we started running low on fuel that he took us into the little town of Ozark on the Arkansas River, where we stopped to refuel, eat, and use the gas station’s restroom.
That had been almost seven hours ago. Now it was long past sunset and we were stuck in traffic on the I-40, waiting our turn to cross a bridge over the Mississippi River and into downtown Memphis.
Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller Page 22
