Offworld (30 page)

Chris tapped the gas, rolling slowly away from the oncoming
jeeps through the impossibly dark, black maze of strange shapes
jutting out in every direction. He edged the van a little faster as the
jeeps closed in.

"Look out!" Trisha gasped.

But it was too late, and the front end of the van broke open a
narrow pipe, sending a shower of white, hot steam rushing straight
down in front of them.

"Oh no ... " Trisha whispered. Instead of pure darkness, now
they were blinded by clouds of steam.

The windshield of the van was covered in moisture; Chris had to turn on the wipers to wick it away. He dared to go faster, to clear
the steam, but when they emerged, six black jeeps were closing
in on them on every side. He stopped the van. Their high beams
pinned Chris' van and Owen's truck in harsh light. Once more they
were stuck.

"STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLES," said the same growling, mechanized voice they'd heard on the bridge.

Chris responded by turning on his own headlights. Another explosion rocked the refinery, this one only two hundred feet away. Chris
turned his head to see it out of his side window. There, on the far
edge of the distillation columns, he saw something straddled between
two of the tall towers. A large oil fire had been ignited by the last
explosion. It was burning just ten feet above the ground inside a
short, squat boiler. An avenue of escape could be seen beyond the
fire, but the boiler blocked the narrow path between the distillation
columns.

Near the boiler was a bulky transport truck that had once hauled
barrels of crude oil. It rested empty, its flatbed still winched up high
as if it had been recently unloaded. Low, fencelike rims surrounded
the bed on the sides and near the cab, but Chris thought the rims
looked pretty weak.

He looked closer now and saw the vehicle's hydraulic tubes
that powered the bed winch. He rolled down his side window and
extended Terry's pistol through it, aiming at the truck.

"STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLES NOW!" demanded the voice.

"Commander," came Owen's voice through his earpiece. "What
are you doing?"

Chris took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

His shot struck gold, nailing the hydraulic tubing dead-on. The
built-up pneumatic pressure began leaking fast, and the back end of
the truck bed was lowering steadily toward the ground.

`Jack be nimble," Chris said, clasping his hands tight around the
steering wheel and jamming the accelerator down. He made a quick forty-five degree turn, donuting the van, and dug a straight line toward
the flatbed truck and the boiler.

`Jack be quick," Owen replied, catching on.

Both vehicles gunned it at a dead sprint for the truck bed, which
was still coming down. A pair of jeeps advanced on them from either
side of their path to the boiler, intending to block them in. Chris managed to just clear them, but Owen scraped both sides of his truck
against the two jeeps, squeezing through noisily.

The van hit the back of the big flatbed truck just as its rear settled
on the ground, and the bed became a ramp, launching the van over the
high-burning flames of the boiler to the other side. The van slammed
onto pavement, its wheels grinding up black clouds of smoke, but
Chris didn't dare stop. Just a few seconds later, he saw Owen's truck
soar through the flames in his rearview mirror and crunch against
the ground right behind them.

The minivan and the pickup truck passed beneath a mammoth
white pipe suspended above them, and Owen threw open his side
door as they passed, colliding with one of the rusted support beams
that held the pipe up. The old pipe broke apart without giving much
resistance, and hundreds of gallons of oil poured out onto the ground,
pooling and snaking until it reached the boiler that was on fire.

"Scorched earth," Owen said over his transmitter. The fire would
make it more difficult for the jeeps to follow, though it wouldn't deter
them forever.

Chris drove until he was back on Highway 10, headed west once
more, and he pressed the van to hasten them away from the refinery
as fast as it was capable of going. There was little point in trying to
hide or stop now.

All they could do was try to reach Houston before they were
captured.

Half an hour passed and the two vehicles crossed the state line into Texas. He and Trisha didn't dare talk over the radio with Owen
for fear of being overheard. But Owen was having no trouble keeping
up with Chris' breakneck pace.

"Do you think we did the right thing?" asked Trisha, blurting out
the question as if she'd been holding it in for hours. "Leaving Terry
behind?"

Chris clenched his jaw. This was not a conversation he wanted to
have right now. "He left its behind. It was his decision, not ours."

Trisha looked away, and he knew the unspoken words filling her
mind, the feelings of hopelessness and concern and helplessness.

They had to get to Houston. It was the only thing that mattered
now; the only thing Chris could let himself think about. Chris' experience as a fighter pilot was screaming at him that the endgame was
upon them. There was still very little about any of this that he understood, but his every nerve ending was electrified, his blood pulsing
so hard he could feel his neck bulging with each thump.

Trisha was becoming increasingly haggard with each mile they
drove. As the sun began to break the horizon, Chris considered the
number of hours they'd been driving, trying to escape capture or
worse, and his thoughts drifted back to the toll this was taking on
her.

"Chris," called Owen through his earpiece.

At first Burke didn't think it wise of Owen to use his name over the
radio, but he knew that whoever their pursuers were, they almost certainly knew the identities of Chris and his crew of astronauts already.
They would very likely not know anything of Mae, however.

He didn't have to wait for Owen to explain why he'd radioed;
a mile off to their left, the tail end of a jumbo passenger jet was
sticking up out of the ground. The white plane looked as if maybe
it had only just taken off from a nearby airport when D-Day struck,
everyone onboard vanished including the pilots, and down it went.
Now it was jammed into the ground at a sixty degree angle, its rear end sticking up into the air more than two hundred feet, looking like
the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Chris shook his head slowly at the sight, which nearly took his
breath away. He glanced at Trisha, and she was equally awed and
frightened by the downed jet. It was a monument, frozen in time,
commemorating whatever tragedy had caused Earth's inhabitants to
vanish instantaneously.

"Commander," intoned Owen, his voice as grave as Chris' thoughts,
,,our youngest crewmember has requested a pit stop."

Much as Chris hated the thought of stopping, they'd been on
the road for hours and even he could use a bathroom break. Not
to mention how stiff his arms and legs were from driving at such a
relentless pace. He couldn't imagine how sore Trisha must've been
from sitting, tensed up and rigid, for so long.

And then there were the vehicles, whose electric batteries were
in danger of winding down soon.

"Okay, Beech. We'll stop at the next available opportunity."

"Copy that."

The city of Beaumont was approaching. It was on their exact
route so it wouldn't be hard for anyone to find them there. On the
other hand, taking the time to detour elsewhere would only put more
time between them and their destination.

Chris would make it a brief stop.

The sun shone high over the city of Beaumont as the van and
the truck turned off the highway and came to a stop at a modest and
rather dusty fairgrounds. There were a handful of large buildings,
but a few smaller ones nearest to the road caught Chris' attention,
including a snack shop and a pair of restrooms.

The cars pulled to a stop in a small parking lot, where everyone
piled Out.

Mae walked quickly toward the bathrooms while Trisha followed slowly behind, rubbing her lower back. Chris was about to make his
own way there when Owen approached.

"How's Trisha holding up?" he asked.

Chris was scanning the road, wanting nothing more than to be
back on it. "She's having a rough time. Sitting in one position for so
long leaves her pretty stiff." Chris switched to the more urgent subject
at hand. "Who are these people, Beech?"

"I don't know," Owen replied, shaking his head and following
Chris' gaze toward the road. "But you're assuming they're from around
here. Are they even human? We haven't seen a face yet. One thing
we do know is that they're trained in war operations."

"Yeah, I noticed. Could they be connected to this `Waveform'
you told me about? The whatever-it-is you were sent to Mars with
us to uncover?"

"It does seem likely, though I don't see how that knowledge helps
us right now. One observation: they seem intent on our capture-I
don't believe they mean to kill us. They've had several opportunities
and did not take them."

"I don't know," Chris replied. "I don't think they were interested
in a simple handshake back at the refinery. Or on that bridge." He
paused, glancing at Owen, then looked away. "You killed some of
them. The ones on the bridge."

"They were the first to demonstrate aggressive behavior," Owen
explained, his manner calm, "when they attempted to collide with us
in that parking lot. I believe they were trying to take away our ability
to escape by damaging our vehicles beyond repair. I countered by
letting them know that with the survival of the world being at stake,
such aggression would not be tolerated."

`But to just kill them outright, when we don't know anything
about them?" Chris asked.

"I could have killed them all if I'd meant to."

Burke looked at his friend again, his eyebrows raised at such a bold yet casual claim. He realized that so far he had no reason to
doubt it.

"I'm going to find something to drink," Chris said.

Owen nodded. "This parking lot holds other vehicles that have
batteries compatible with what we're driving. I'll trade them out so
we won't have to stop again until we reach Houston."

"Don't you want to take a break? Use the bathroom, grab a snack,
rest for a minute?" Chris asked.

Owen was already walking away. "No need."

Mae stood at a sink in the bathroom, washing her hands. She
didn't bother looking in the mirror. Never occurred to her really.

Trisha, two sinks over, couldn't be more different, picking at her
hair, running her hands through it and trying to put it into place.
Then she splashed water on her face, using a paper towel to scrub at
her eyes and nose and cheeks. She seemed particularly concerned
with her eyes, which were dark and sunken. Trisha frowned at what
she saw, then turned and walked toward the door.

Mae merely stood there, taking it in. She suspected that Trisha
knew she was being observed, but neither of them had said a single
word while inside the restroom.