Read Online Flight by Bernard Wilkerson - Free Book Online Page A

sleeved shirt over her tank top. They left
the roll top down, but the air was cool, like an early spring or
late fall day. Mark called it a nuclear winter and said it was
being caused by dust kicked up by the meteor strikes.
    “It could just be unseasonably
cold,” she replied.
    “It could,” he said and
shrugged.
    They didn’t talk for a while. Mark
simply drove and Eva stared at the sky and wondered about it. She
wondered what the aliens were like and wondered what could be done
about them. Her Glock, which felt reassuring in her hands when she
held it, seemed like a toy compared to whatever weapons were
possessed by beings who could drop meteors from the sky with enough
precision to destroy cities.
    The sky changed color as she
watched it, gray turning to rippled orange and purple, dullness
turning into beauty. The sun was setting.
    “Gilliam, it’s getting dark. What
do you think?”
    “I can drive for you, if you need
me to,” Eva answered. She was still keyed up after their encounter
with the border guards.
    “I’m going to take that exit up
there,” her partner said.
    “Why?”
    “Call it a hunch, but I don’t want
to drive into Vegas at night.”
    “But it’s the city that never
sleeps.”
    “That’s what worries me,” he said
with a grin. “If you think those Utah guys were bad, I can only
imagine what they’re up to in Sin City.”
    If he was right; if their
encounter with the border guards was simply a taste of what was to
come, what hope was there? They’d only survived because someone
with common sense and decency commanded the unit that had held
them. Now Mark had said they should shoot first and ask questions
later.
    Could Eva do that?
    She’d had a lot of training with
the Agency. It was intense, deadly serious, and yet fun. A
challenge that Eva enjoyed. She had performed well. But most of her
assignments since graduation had involved recruiting, as if tall,
dark, and handsome, like Mark, belonged on dangerous missions, and
young, blonde, and pretty belonged at college recruiting
fairs.
    The border guards had been
dangerous, particularly the one who watched her. Shay. She thought
about the look on his face and hoped again she had broken his nose.
But what would the next group be like that they came
across?
    “Is sleeping somewhere going to be
any safer?” she asked.
    “I have an idea,” he said. “Check
this out.”
    He took the exit he’d pointed out,
turning off the headlights as they went down the off-ramp. That was
a good idea, Eva thought. Lone headlights heading down a road in
the desert could be seen for miles. Someone might be able to follow
them from a distance.
    The sun still provided a little
light as it reflected off the clouds, just enough to see by, but
Mark slowed down nonetheless. Instead of turning right at the
bottom of the ramp, towards a few buildings, he turned left, went
under the overpass, and then made another left onto a dirt
road.
    “Where are you going?” Eva
asked.
    He grinned at her, like he was a
kid teasing that it was for him to know and her to find out. She
glared back and he must have changed his mind.
    “I saw some power cable towers
heading off to the hills over there.” He pointed to their right. “I
bet there’s dirt roads that go up to them. We’ll probably find a
safe place to spend the night. Keep that Glock ready, though, just
in case.”
    She picked it up, made sure the
safety was on, and set it in her lap.
    The sky dimmed quickly, the dirt
road looking ghostly in the twilight. They passed several abandoned
buildings. Mark made a hard right when he saw a path heading away
from the freeway.
    “Almost missed it,” he said as Eva
reached out to grab something to steady herself. The jeep’s wheels
ground in the dirt, sending dust clouds high behind
them.
    “That’s not going to give us
away,” she commented sarcastically.
    “It won’t. Sure, on a clear, blue
day in the desert you can see dust like that forever. But at
twilight?