Read Online Lone Star Renegades by Mark Wayne McGinnis - Free Book Online

reached the surface. Collin found he was wrong when he’d thought the spaceship was filled to the max. There was a lot more stuff jammed in now than there was before. Mountains and mountains more stuff! But that wasn’t what captured Collin’s attention. Two football fields’ distance away was something that could potentially change everything.
    It was a small spacecraft of some kind—small only in the sense that it was a fraction of the size of the craft they were trapped in. Cigar-shaped, it was about the size of a naval submarine, but the similarities ended there. It was drab brown and had multiple thrusters around its circumference, midway along its fuselage, and two bigger ones at the tail end of the ship. The other thing keeping Collin’s eyes glued to the spaceship was that it was apparently trying to take off.
    “That thing’s beat to shit,” Bubba exclaimed.
    The vessel was only able to lift off another mountain of metal by ten feet or so before conking out and dropping back down.
    “Let’s go … that might be our ticket out of here.” Collin moved as quickly as he could while maintaining his balance over the rough terrain.
    It wasn’t long before the spacecraft ceased trying to get airborne. Good , Collin thought. It would do them little good if it took off and left them behind. Halfway to the vessel, DiMaggio abruptly stopped. Bubba careened into his back and both toppled over.
    “What is it?” Collin asked.
    DiMaggio got back to his feet and pointed off to the side. Collin was surprised he’d missed it. He could have thrown a rock and hit it.
    “The other bus,” Bubba said in a near whisper.
    No one had talked about it—not one student had mentioned it. Perhaps it was just too unimaginable to go there … there had been two buses coming back from the game away. This one, nearly identical to the one they had been riding in, held the younger freshmen and JV kids, as well as the four coaches. The three teens stood, deflated. The bus was crushed—flattened to less than half its previous height. Collin scanned the line where the row of windows used to be.
    The sound of the spacecraft again attempting to gain altitude brought them back to the job at hand. Collin ushered them forward. “Come on, we’re almost there.”
    They were close enough now to feel the effects of the ship each time it crashed down onto the metal mountain below it. “One thing’s for sure,” DiMaggio said, “there’s an idiot alien driving that ship. Repeatedly crashing down like that can’t be good. Asshole’s going to wreck the damn thing before we can even steal it.”
    For some reason that struck Collin as funny and he laughed out loud. The other two chuckled as they all cautiously approached. Collin and Bubba unslung their automatic weapons. Collin flipped the safety off and watched as Bubba did the same. DiMaggio had his Glock out and the three of them hesitated, cringing as the ship clattered down once again, twenty yards ahead. They took cover behind the haunches of a giant statue of a horse and its uniformed rider. Collin was pretty sure it was Civil War era.
    The ship sat stationary again, heat emanating from the now-quiet rear thrusters.
    “What do we do now?” Bubba asked. “It’s not like we can just knock on the door.”
    There was no reason to respond. The ship’s pilot had ventured outside and was now standing, with his hands on his hips, staring back at the ship. Much as Collin, Bubba and DiMaggio were doing.
    “Is that your wolf man, Frost?” DiMaggio whispered.
    Bubba looked at Collin with a furrowed brow.
    “I saw this guy when we were crawling around outside the jetliner. Wasn’t sure then if I was seeing things.”
    “You definitely weren’t seeing things.”
    They continued to watch the furry creature as he now strutted around the outside of the vessel. He wore no clothes and the likeness to a wolf man was less so, now that Collin saw him standing in the dim green light from