Hell on Earth (27 page)

Albert grunted as he turned the difficult pressure hatch; we heard the gratifying sound of metal grinding against metal. He didn't open the portal a moment too soon.

Looking back, I saw imps, zombies, and one bony. That answered the question of who'd been firing rockets. Bringing up their rear was either
another
fire-eater or the one Arlene had sprayed with the foam. If the latter, he'd be looking for payback.

Arlene stepped up, fire extinguisher pointed, ready for round two. I suddenly remembered something from my raucous high school daze. “No!” I shouted. “Get back! Get through the hatch right now!”

She got.

Coming out last, I slammed the hatch shut and spun the wheel. “That's not going to last,” said Albert.

“Won't need to,” I said, backing away. “Everybody, get
way
back!”

Albert's face was a mask of puzzlement; then it dawned on him what was about to happen.

“Hope you all
really
like barbecue,” I addressed the troops. “Hey, Arlene. Remember when they built the L.A. subway?”

“Yeah . . .” she said, scowling, still confused.

The mother of all gas explosions rocked us off our feet, blowing the hatch clean off its hinges; the flying metal could have killed any of us in the path.

I staggered to my feet. It didn't take a lot of nerve to go over and check on the results; just a strong stomach. Nothing survived that explosion, not even the fire-eater.

As I peered into the maw of hell, I saw nothing left of the alien pursuers except shreds of flesh and a fine mist of alien blood. And of course the lingering odor of sour lemons.

“What happened?” asked Jill, stunned. At least, I assume that's what she asked; all I could hear was a long, loud alarm bell.

I'd counted on the fire-eater; thankfully, it was hot enough to set off the methane.

Jill was completely recovered from being stunned. She jumped up and down and shouted something, probably some contemporary equivalent of yowza.

We old folk were still a little shell-shocked as we continued along the sewer. After several twists and turns, it dawned on us we were lost.

Arlene had a compass, and now was the time to use it. “We've got a problem,” she said; I was just starting to be able to hear again. “It shows a different direction every time.”

“Electric current in the pipe switches,” I said. “Take averages, figure out a rough west.”

No matter where we were and what was happening, the watchwords must be “Go west, go west.” We'd find the computer in L.A., so the President had told us; hope he knew what he was talking about. There, we guaranteed a reckoning the enemy would long remember.

W
e continued westward until we finally emerged several klicks from where we'd entered. Night was falling again. We'd had a busy day.

“Transportation,” Albert pointed out. We beheld an old Lincoln Continental, covered in some kind of crud halfway between rust and slime, making it impossible to determine its original color. It probably had an automatic transmission; the mere thought made me shudder.

Albert went over and opened the unlocked door. There was no key. “I'll bet it still runs,” he said, lying down on the seat so he could look up at the steering column. He did violence to the crappy housing and started fiddling with the wires. A moment later the engine coughed into life.

“You hot-wired the car,” said Jill, impressed.

“Sure,” he said.

“I'm surprised you'd know how to do that,” she said.

“Why?” he asked, getting out of the dinosaur.

“Was that part of sniper training?” Jill wanted to know.

“Part of my troubled youth.”

“I wish more Mormons were like you,” she told him.

“The Church was good for me, Jill,” he told her. “It turned my life around.”

“Which way were you facing?” she asked jokingly.

“Toward hell,” he said.

“You're still facing that way,” observed Arlene, “every time you take a step.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but now I'm able to fight it. I'd rather blast a demon than give him my soul.”

We'd had this conversation before. I preferred opting out this time. Arlene didn't mind a dose of déjà vu, apparently, but then, she was sweet on the guy. “They're aliens,” she said.

“Sure,” he agreed. “But for me, they're demons too.”

One man's image of terror is another man's joy ride. Speaking of which, the old Lincoln was enough of a monster for me. I was half sorry it still ran. A quick look at the gas gauge told the story: half a tank, plenty to make it to Los Angeles.

One thing about an old family car: there was plenty of room for our family, including Ken propped up between Jill and Arlene in the backseat. I was happy to let Albert drive. I rode shotgun.

Albert flipped on the lights in the twilight and triumphantly announced, “They work!”

“Great,” I said. “Now turn them off.”

“Oh, right,” he said like a little boy caught playing with the wrong toy. We drove along without lights, heading toward the diminished glow of Ellay.

“Do you have a new plan?” Arlene asked.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw that Jill was sleeping. “Of course,” I said. “Always. I think we should hijack a plane, elude any pursuit—”

“Yeah,” Albert interrupted. “I wonder if they have any aircraft? I haven't seen any.”

“Maybe they're using zombie pilots,” Arlene
commented hopefully. Zombie pilots would not have fast reflexes.

“So, as I was saying,” I continued, “we take our plane and hot-tail it to Hawaii. There we find the War Technology Center and take them Ken. With help from Jill, we plug Ken into the bionet and crash the whole, friggin' alien system.”

“Good plan,” said Albert.

“Ditto,” said Arlene.

It was good to be appreciated. With a proper respect for Yours Truly, I might yet help Arlene to find God. I was certain that Albert wouldn't mind that.

“Wonder if there'll be monsters at the city limits,” said Albert at length.

“Don't see why they'd have that much organization,” I answered, “after what we've seen. What do you think, Arlene?” I asked, glancing into the rear-view mirror again. She'd joined Jill in the Land of Nod. Given the condition of Ken Estes, the backseat had become the sleeping compartment of this particular train.

“The girls are taking forty,” commented Albert with a touch of envy.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“Driving in the dark without lights keeps the old adrenaline flowing.”

“I know what you mean. But if you can use some relief, I'll spell you.”

He risked taking his eyes off the black spread of road long enough to glance over. “You're all right, Fly. I see why Arlene respects you so much.”

“She's told you that?”

“Not in so many words. But it's an easy tell.”

We both tried to discern something of the road. The horizon was bright, in contrast to the darkness right in front of us. It was that time of day. I rubbed my eyes, suddenly starting to lose it.

“Why don't you take a nap?” he suggested.

“No. Should at least be two of us awake, and I want to make sure you're one of them.”

“Right.”

Exhausted but too wired to sleep, we made it into Los Angeles at night. We didn't run into any monster patrols on the way. Maybe they were saving up some real doozies for us at the Beverly Center.

At the outskirts of the city, zombie guards shuffled back and forth in a caricature of military discipline. Even a zombie would have noticed our approach if we'd had the headlights on. Score one for basic procedure.

Albert took a side road, but we ran into the same problem. “How long do I keep this up?” he asked.

“All night, I'd say, if I hadn't prepared for this.”

“How?”

“I didn't throw out the lemons we didn't get around to using before. I wrapped them in plastic wrap from the MREs. We still have them with us.”

“To borrow from Jill, ick!” he said. “Who's been carting around that rotting crap?”

“You, Bubba!”

“Just for that, Fly, you get to wake the girls.” The man knew a thing or two about revenge.

We parked and I woke up Jill first. Then I let Jill risk tapping Arlene on the shoulder. Some tough Marines you wake with kid gloves—or better yet, with a kid. Arlene came to with a start, but she was good. Very good.

The night air felt pleasantly cool. As we spoiled it with spoiled citrus, Jill asked, “What about Ken?”

“Lime and lemon him too,” said Arlene. “We've all got to be the same to the zombie noses.”

“So, walk or ride?” asked Albert.

“Don't see any reason to give up these wheels before we have to,” I said, amazing myself,
considering how I regarded the old Lincoln. “With the windows down, we ought to pass.”

“I look dead enough to keep driving,” said Albert. We all piled back in, thought rancid, graveyard thoughts, and rolled.

As we approached the first zombie checkpoint, I started worrying. There hadn't been any other cars around. But we'd seen a fleet of trucks with zombie drivers back in Buckeye. I'd have felt a lot better if we weren't the only car.

Suddenly we were rammed from behind. A truck had hit us. It didn't have lights. One good view in the side mirror revealed a zombie driver. “Don't react,” I hissed to everyone, fearing a volley of gunfire at the wrong moment. Everyone kept his cool.

“We weren't hit very hard,” I said. The truck was barely tooling along, at about the same slow approach speed we were doing. “Everyone all right?” I asked quietly.

While I received affirmatives, the zombie driver demonstrated some ancient, primitive nerve impulse that had survived from the human days of Los Angeles. The fughead leaned on his horn. All of a sudden, I completely relaxed. Getting past the checkpoint was going to be a cinch.

“Shall I take us in, Corporal?” asked Albert, obviously on the same wavelength.

“Hit it, brother,” I said.

The truck stuck close to our bumper through the totally porous checkpoint. After that, we just drove in typical L.A. style, weaving drunkenly between zombie-driven trucks, leaning on our horn, all the time heading for the ever popular LAX. I wanted to give the airport the biggest laxative it had ever had with Lemon Marine Suppositories. Cleans out those unsightly monsters every time!

W
e dumped the car in one of the overcrowded LAX parking lots. Lot C, in fact. There was real joy in not worrying about finding a parking place, and an even greater pleasure in not worrying about remembering it.

We only had to hop a single fence to get where we were going, in the time-honored tradition of hijackers, and Ken didn't weigh very much. A thought crossed my mind. “So, uh, one of us knows how to fly a plane, right?”

“Better than flying it wrong,” Arlene said.

“No time for jarhead humor,” I said. “Gimmie an answer.”

“Funny,” said Arlene, quite seriously, “but I was about to ask the same question. Really.”

We both looked at Albert. “I'd been planning to take lessons, but I never got around to it,” he admitted sadly.

“How hard can it be?” I asked, recalling the words of an old movie character.

We infiltrated the refueling area for the big jets, and I found the perfect candidate: an ancient C-5 Air Force transport, which could easily make it all the way to Hawaii. Assuming somebody could drive it.

Everyone was already doing a good zombie performance, although I still thought Jill was overdoing it. Ken was propped between Albert and me, and we were able to make it look like he was stumbling along with us. We prepared to tramp up the ramp, joining a herd of other zombies.

A pair of Clydes waited at the entrance. Damn the luck! We could pass for zombies among zombies, but I wasn't at all sure about these guys.

They were disarming each zombie as it entered the plane. It was a perfectly reasonable precaution, considering how zombies acted in close quarters when they were jostled, pushed, pulled . . . or damn near anything else. I couldn't blame the Clydes for not wanting the plane to be suddenly depressurized, but the idea of being disarmed was not at all appealing.

We did some shifting around, then hit the ramp with myself in the lead, the other four right behind me, four abreast with Jill and Ken on the inside. Jill did as good a job as I had of keeping Ken's end up. This makeshift plan could work if the Clydes were bored.

Sure enough, they barely paid attention as we simply took our heavy artillery and tossed them on the pile outside the plane. Bye-bye, shotgun. This left us with nothing but the pistols hidden inside our jackets.

We stuck close to each other, lost in the zombie mob, as the plane started to taxi; then we worked our way up front. The Clydes were in the back, huddled and talking about something. By the time the plane lifted off, giving me that rush I always get from takeoff, we were close enough to the front that we could duck behind the curtain leading to the cockpit door. I took it on myself to give it a gentle push.

The door opened inward, revealing a pair of imps
hovering over a strange globe, another product of alien technology, bolted to the floor. The monsters appeared to be driving the plane through the use of this pulsing, humming, buzzing ball. It gave me a headache just looking at it; biotech made me need a Pepto-Bismol. The glistening, sweating device was connected to the instrument panel.

The imps' backs were to us. They were so preoccupied with their task, they didn't even turn around when we entered. I closed the door quietly and locked it.

From the cockpit I saw Venus . . . we were going the wrong way, due east!

This simply would not do. I pointed at the imps, and then at Arlene. She nodded. We stepped forward, pistols in hand, and the barrels of our guns touched the back of imp heads at exactly the same instant.