Read Online Core Punch by Pauline Baird Jones - Free Book Online

trees.
    â€œIt might be advisable to tighten the weather monitoring. Look for smaller areas of circulation within the larger storm circulation,” Joe gritted out.
    â€œCirc—oh. Hook echoes on the radar. Tornados. Great. As if we weren’t already having fun.”
    She muttered something that Joe sensed was expletive in nature. He didn’t mention the high risk of downbursts slamming them into the ground without warning. She’d been watching the news vids, too.
    â€œI will require advance warning of upcoming turns. They are somewhat challenging.” He flashed her a quick look that he tried to make reassuring. It would be the last he dared take. “If you will monitor the large picture, I will endeavor to navigate the small.”
    Her smile was his reward. For her, he would attempt to make the impossible possible. He did not contemplate the larger implications of the realization. All that mattered was the here. The now. He could deny it later, if they survived.
    â€œRight. Big picture.” She turned back to her screen. “We should reach I-10 soon.”
    They must have hit a cross-transit area. The winds tugged fiercely at the small craft, trying to bring it around, and the sounds of debris striking them increased exponentially. They experienced additional lift as well. Thrusters fired as the cross-wind compensators fought to hold their course. The engines protested the battle, and he had to slow their forward progress more to stop it. “I am hoping we will be able to use the wind at some point, rather than fighting it.”
    â€œThat would be good for our fuel supply.”
    The trees and undergrowth pressed close to the former road, narrowing it severely the closer they got to the freeway. The trees provided some protection, but they also increased the risk that a rogue downburst would bring the trees crashing down.
    â€œKeep on straight,” Vi said. “You’re veering right again…that’s better, no too much left…good. Keep doing that.”
    â€œOf course.” He made it sound easy. It wasn’t. The muscles in his arms were on fire. His legs ached from working the pedals. He’d strapped in, but the straps only secured his torso. He knew why Lurch did not dare help him, but it added to his frustration to know that help was out of reach. “I just had a most disturbing thought.”
    â€œWhat’s more disturbing than this?” Vi gestured forward.
    â€œWe might be forced to find out what is contained in those 72’r kits.”
    Silence.
    â€œ Beaucoup crapeau on a cracker.”
----
    â€œ I s it worse when a good plan goes wrong, or when a desperately bad plan doesn’t go right?” Vi finally dared take her attention off the merged screen to look outside and wished she hadn’t. Flashes of lightning revealed and concealed the scrambled piles of broken freeway that used to be I-10. Huge chunks tumbled across the soaked landscape in varying heights, the thick coating of green turning them into jagged hills in the fitful light. Waves lapped against all obstacles, and small eddies revealed currents forming wherever the terrain made that possible. No way to know what hazards were lurking below the rising waterline.
    A gust hit the skimmer. It righted itself.
    Again. Not that she was complaining. Too much. Righting was good. The whiplash? Not so much.
    Had she hoped against hope that they’d find a quicker way to the airport by following the old I-10? Up above, she took the I-10 transit all the time. She’d said more times than she could count that she could do it with her eyes closed. It was seriously freaky how much above had been matched to this furry green slice of the past. She had, she realized, half hoped to at least find the familiar in this alien. Looking at the wild, weather-lashed landscape, hope died with a painful tightening of her chest. Forget using it for transit, how were they going to get