We zoomed out of the mechanic’s shop and out into the busy street. There were hover cars of every description all around us making it hard for us to go as fast as we possibly could. I zoomed up above the crowd of hover cars until we were higher than the rest of them. I pushed the pedal to the floor and we began to move so fast that the g-forces pushed us both back in our chairs. Unfortunately, we caught the attention of a police hover car below us. It zoomed up to our level and began to chase us.
“Damn it, we’ve got company,” David yelled.
I threw the car into a higher gear and we left the police man far behind us. Now we only had one more block to go. I could see the crowded town square just a short distance away. Before I could safely land us there, I would need to shake the police car. I directed the hover car back down into the traffic below us and the police car passed, still above us in the lane that we had been in. I brought the hover car to a halt just a hundred yards from the town square. I saw a huge platform that had been set up in the dead center of the square. A large rope with a noose hung from a pole on the platform.
“Hurry, there’s no time to lose!” I shouted as we got out of the hover car.
Chapter Nineteen
Jessie
The cuffs around my hands were starting to hurt my wrists. The policemen treated me roughly, pushing me along the walkway as soon as they got me out of the hover van. I looked up and scanned the crowd for any sign of rescue, but saw only unkind faces. There had to be a thousand people assembled around the town square where a huge platform had been erected just for this occasion. I looked high up above me at the noose that was hanging down from a tall pole. The more well off people in the crowd were dressed in their garish suits, but even the commoners that cleaned the streets were gathered there. It seemed that the only thing that brought together the different classes was a public execution. As I looked out over the angry faces and fists that people were raising in the air, I thought of how little progress we had made as a society compared to some of the planets I had visited. Sure, we had hover cars, jet packs and high-speed hover trains that could go from New York to Los Angeles in two hours, but we were still a brutal and divided society. The people dressed in suits were all huddled together towards the front while the commoners were all on the fringes, just like they were in every other aspect of society. I shook my head and wondered if these people would really want to see my head in a noose if they knew my story. All that they had been told was that I was a traitor that deserved death and that was enough to ignite their bloodlust.
I looked to my left and several security guards and policemen armed with laser guns began to escort the main judge out to a remote microphone attached to his expensive-looking, outlandish suit. In the years, since my childhood and on, the members of the upper classes had gone out of their way to make themselves stand out even more from the increasing number of poor people with brightly colored, specially-made suits made from rare materials. The sight of them disgusted me because I knew that their opulence had resulted in the increasing desperation of the majority of people. When the judge appeared, everyone began to cheer for him. I was later told that this judge had his own virtual reality program that was one of the most popular shows at that time.
The judge put his arm into the air to get everyone’s attention. The crowd stopped its deafening roar to hear what this virtual reality star had to say.
“As you all know, I am Judge Randall and I have been asked to come here today to pass judgment on a revolting traitor that has turned her back on her country and her comrades!” As soon as he said this, the yelling and booing returned. I looked away from the scowling and jeering people, hoping to catch sight of my rescuers, but I didn’t spot them.
“She was tasked with finding and bringing Karkastians to justice and instead, she chose to injure her own comrade and go AWOL, helping an enemy combatant and then stealing a space pod to make her escape!”
“BOO! Down with the traitor! Hang her!” they yelled.
I loved how the judge left out certain parts of the story like how James nearly killed Yahn when his orders were to capture him. The judge knew what the crowd wanted to hear and he was going to continue to play upon their bloodlust.
“Let her execution stand as a symbol of our continued unity and desire to root out all known evil in the universe, even when it resides amongst us.” When he said this he cast a judgmental gaze in my direction. I looked at him indifferently to show that his words did not affect me. Deep down I was scared out of my wits- scared of dying when I was so young and had so much left to live for.
“Alright, boys, the time has come. I Judge Randall find the defendant guilty of treason! Her punishment is death by hanging!” The crowd went wild, and it chilled my blood to think of all of these people that desired my death without knowing the full story. I was also shocked by the primitive nature of executions. It seemed that painful, old-fashioned methods of execution had come back into style to act as a deterrent against those that would rise up against the established order.
The guards pushed me forward and led me to the stairway that led up to the high platform where the gallows awaited me. My heart began to pound faster in my chest the higher up we climbed. When I reached the platform, I gazed out over Washington at the tall towers, hover dwellings and glass walkways. I looked at the crowded hover ways above what used to be roads and thought that it looked ugly compared to the forested mountains of Padure or even the swirling gasses of Neutomia. We had created a civilized monster compared with many other planets. One of the guards pushed me over the collapsible floor and placed the noose around my neck. I closed my eyes and sought out Yahn one last time.
Goodbye, my love. I will always remember the precious times that we spent together. If there is another plane of existence, I will wait for you there.
No need, we are here and we are going to save you, Jessie. Yahn answered me. I looked through the crowd and noticed a loud commotion over to the right of the platform.
“Stop this brutal execution right now or these men will meet their fate!” David shouted. I looked hopefully over in the direction of his voice and saw Yahn on one side of a group of policemen and David on the other with their guns pointed at them.
“What is this?” Judge Randall said indignantly into the microphone.
“This is your chance to save your men and give up the prisoner!” David shouted back. The crowd began to chat amongst themselves in confusion.
Some of the judge’s advisors, including the chief of police, came up and began to whisper to him.
“I said release the prisoner!” David repeated. The judge looked up at the guards, reluctantly and gave them an order.
“Go on and do it. We will not risk the lives of our men. However, these men will not get away with their attempt to usurp our divine system of judgment!” the judge said, indignantly.
One of the guards removed the noose from around my neck and they led me down the stairway, pushing me when I didn’t move fast enough to suit them. I breathed a sigh of relief as they brought me over to David’s side. The crowd began to shout at us as we slowly began to back away from the scene. David and Yahn had four officers with us that they ordered to get into the back of their hover car. I got in the front with David and Yahn. Yahn took the wheel. The armed policemen closed in behind the car, with their laser guns drawn.
“Allow us to escape or we will execute your precious officers, immediately! I am not joking!” David said. Yahn threw the car into a high gear and we took off over the crowd. Almost immediately a whole fleet of police hover cars began to chase us.
“Hold on!” Yahn said as he put the pedal to the floor and the hover car jolted forward. We began a jarring chase through the city. Yahn would take sudden turns and dips as the policemen began to reach us. Luckily, they had gained access to one of the fastest hover cars on the market and we were able to stay ahead of the police cars so that they couldn’t surround us.
“Look!” David shouted as he to
ok out the owner’s manual from the glove compartment and pointed to a red knob to the left of the steering wheel. These new models are equipped with a cloaking device! Just hit the red button and we should be able to give them the slip.”
“It will help, but they will still be able to pick us up on radar,” Yahn said as he pushed the red button. Seconds after we became invisible, Yahn took a sharp right turn and guided the car up above the main traffic lanes and above the clouds. He turned on the hyperdrive and put the pedal to the floor. The car went so fast, we were pressed against our seats, unable to move due to the g-forces. The combination of our invisibility and Yahn’s quick maneuvering had helped us lose the police. We stayed up above the clouds until we reached the outskirts of the city. We saw police cars everywhere, so we stayed where we were until we were far out in the country. We stopped at a fueling station on a hover platform and turned off the invisibility device.
“Alright, I think it’s safe to release the prisoners now,” Yahn said.
“You heard him, out of the car!” David said. The four policemen frowned at us and got out of the back seat. They were still handcuffed to one another. A fuel station worker looked at us and the officers in puzzlement.
“Have a great day!” I said to the worker as we turned the cloaking device back on and left the station. Seconds later, several police hover cars arrived on the scene, but we were long gone.
I leaned over and kissed Yahn as my eyes grew watery. I became emotional thinking of how close I had come to death.
“I didn’t think anything was going to save me. I really thought I was going to die,” I said as Yahn took my hand.
“I wasn’t going to let that happen, my dear. You are safe now, but we need to think of our next move,” he said.
“I know. My uncle used to have a cabin deep in the woods about twenty miles from where we are. I’m sure it’s still there.” I pulled up the hover car’s navigator and typed in the location.
“There, to the northeast just south of Grinder’s Creek,” I said. Yahn nodded, looked at the navigator and we began to head in that direction.
I looked down and saw the small cabin, surrounded by forested hills and memories of my childhood came streaming back. My uncle owned about fifty acres of woods and fields. Private land holdings such as these were becoming a rare thing because the government was buying up more and more land for development.
We landed the car in a field outside the barn. We kept the cloaking device on and turned the car off. Now that the car wasn’t running, the police wouldn’t be able to track us. We quickly got out of the hover car and walked over to the cabin that sat on the edge of the woods. The door was locked, but I knew that there was a key around the back under a brick, so I went and got it and opened the door. Yahn and David were amazed to see an old fashioned door that opened with a key rather than a retina scan door or an electromagnetic key like the doors of the prisons.
“I haven’t seen a building or a door like this in many years,” David remarked.
We got inside just in time as a police hover copter scanned the area and then moved on.
“We should be able to hide out here for a while safely,” I said and sat down in a wooden rocking chair that my uncle had made himself.
Chapter Twenty
Yahn
Jessie told me that we were far enough away from everything and that we would be able to rest here, at least for a while. Nonetheless, we did not let our guard down and took shifts patrolling the area around the cabin. Luckily, there were hundreds of acres of remote wooded land around her uncle’s property that was still intact because of a paper company’s holdings and a National Forest just a few miles down the road. After a couple of days of quiet came and went, we began to relax a little bit.
One evening while David was on his shift, I went up behind Jessie and began to kiss her neck. With everything that had happened recently, we had very little time alone with each other. Jessie sighed, turned around and began to kiss me. Of all of the ways to show affection that were different from the Karkastian way, this was one of my favorites. I put my arms around her as our tongues began to intertwine. Slowly, I slid her clothes off of her and began to kiss her from her neck down to her breasts. She pulled me down on the bed on top of her and we began to make love. It was fast and furious and I had to close my eyes to keep it from being cut short. Jessie looked so gorgeous with her eyes rolled back in her head and her large breasts bouncing up and down. Karkastians didn’t have breasts, and I had never realized what I was missing out on when I was with females of my own kind. As I watched her writhing with pleasure, I thought of how gorgeous she was. I knew that I was falling deeper in love with her, a feeling that I wasn’t aware of until I met her.
After we finished making love, we sat together in bed talking and enjoying the sounds of the evening in the forest coming from the open window in our bedroom.
“Do you think there will ever be a time when we will not be on the run?” Jessie asked me.
“Of course, I do. I know it’s hard to believe because we’ve pretty much been on the run since we met, but I still believe we will find a place for us,” I answered.
“’Somewhere, a place for us,’” she began to sing. “That’s an old song that my mother taught me from a very old musical called, West Side Story. It’s about two lovers who are from two groups that are considered enemies of each other,” she said.
“Sounds like us. What is a musical?” I inquired.
“It’s like a show where there are actors and actresses, but it is set to music. I would love to be able to take you to one someday, but since musicals take place in cities on Earth, that’s not likely to happen,” she said, sadly.
“I love the song you were singing. Would you sing some more of it?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, taking my hand. She sang the entire song and I felt even more in love with her, listening to the sound of her singing voice, which was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. As I listened to the words, I felt as if they were about us, though I knew that they had been written long ago about fictional characters.
We fell asleep in each other’s arms soon after she finished singing, not worrying about the police or any of the others who wanted to find us. The next morning, we had a serious discussion with David about our next move.
“We have remained here long enough. We will need to leave soon before they find us,” David stated.
“They have already searched the area and haven’t found us. I say we can remain here for as long as we can. It’s relatively safe and there is plenty of wild game in the forest to keep us fed,” Jessie argued.
“I disagree. It’s only a matter of time before they find us here. We’re like sitting ducks. I say we find a town, steal a space cruiser and leave Earth again. We could head back to Padure again. Oh, how I miss the vast forests of Padure. This place reminds me a lot of it, but it isn’t safe for the long term,” David argued.
“I have to agree with David,” I stated. Jessie gave me a disappointed glance when I said this.
“This is my home, and it’s hard for me to give up on the idea that I could one day live here again,” Jessie said.
“I understand. I had to give up my home and my people if you remember. David too has given up his home planet and now considers another one to be his home. This is the way of things, and the sooner you resign yourself to this, the better off you’ll be,” I said, softly, holding her hand. I could tell that she agreed with me, but it was difficult for her. I comforted her the best I could. Soon, we had to turn our attention to other matters. We agreed that we would leave fairly soon, but in the meantime, we needed to replenish our food supplies, which were dwindling.
Jessie and I went into the surrounding forest to hunt for game. She said there were plenty of wild animals around, including strange creatures that she called deer and bears. She told me that bears were very large, hairy creatures with sharp teeth and claws. This made me nervous and made m
e think of the Maramoks back home, which were similar in description to bears.
Suddenly we heard some movement in the forest. We began to move in the direction of the sound. Suddenly, a man came out of the woods with a laser gun pointed at us. He had an outfit on that was green so he could blend in with the surrounding forest. I assumed it was to provide him with camouflage for hunting purposes.
“Freeze! Hold it right there!” he said. He was tall with dark hair and dark eyes.
“Please don’t shoot, we are just hunting,” Jessie pleaded.
“Hunting with a Karkastian? You are two of the fugitives they’ve been talking about on the news, aren’t you?” he said. “There’s no use lying about it because there aren’t any other Karkastians besides you, are there?” he said.
“Look, sir, we just want to live in peace and find some food. We don’t mean anyone or anything any harm,” I stated.
“None of that means anything to me. I just want the reward that they are offering. If I bring you in, I will receive fifty million dollars. That’s enough money for a country boy to live quite comfortably,” he answered.
When it became obvious that this human had no intention of letting us go, I used my telekinetic powers to take his gun from him.
“What the...?” He said as his gun slipped out of his hands and into my own. Jessie and I both pointed the guns at him and he began to take off running through the woods.
“Come on, after him! We can’t let him get away!” I shouted. We took off after him through the woods, not knowing exactly what direction that we were heading in. Finally, we saw a small cabin beside a stream in a tiny clearing just up ahead. The man ran inside the cabin and seconds later, he began to fire a laser gun at us through an open window. We took cover behind some trees and returned fire. This continued for some time without either of us being able to shoot the other.
Yahn: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 4) Page 12
