V 11 - The Texas Run Read online

  “I’m glad we helped someone.” Rick bit at his lower lip and drew a calming breath before giving the two a thumbnail sketch of the Visitor trap they had walked into the previous night. “Mind if I ask what cargo is so important to risk your necks on a night flight out of the L.A. area?”

  “Drugs,” Joe Bob answered.

  “Drugs?” Rick’s head snapped around. He couldn’t believe he’d heard the man correctly.

  “Drags,” Sheryl Lee repeated, her angelic smile beaming.

  “The whole damned world is at war and you’re smuggling drugs?” Rick tried to contain himself, but he couldn’t. He exploded. “What are you carrying back there? Panama Red? Colombian coke? Or maybe you’ve got heroin. Jesus! I can’t believe this! Nazi lizards from outer space are overrunning this planet, every one of them eyeing us like we were grade A prime ribs, and you two are flying drags into Dipstick, Texas. This can’t—”

  “Dallas,” Sheryl Lee cut in. Her eyes narrowed to fiery points of green. An Arctic cold front howled in her voice when she spoke again. “We’re flyin’ into Dallas.”

  “Don’t get riled, honey. The boy’s made an honest mistake.” Laughing, Joe Bob reached out and patted Sheryl Lee’s shoulder. “Wanda Sue and me have made more than one low ran across the Mexican border with Mary Jane as a passenger. ” The pilot glanced at Rick and winked. “However, this time we’re strictly legit. Nothing but legitimate pharmaceuticals in those boxes.”

  “Antibiotics and medical supplies for Dallas and Fort Worth. We took these from a L.A. warehouse three nights ago,” Sheryl Lee added, icicles still dripping from her words.

  Rick’s gaze rolled to the floor of the C-47 in embarrassment. He had read about the medical-supply theft in the newspapers. The Visitors had, of course, blamed the break-in on the Los Angeles resistance. At least they had gotten the resistance part correct, although they missed the city and state by about fifteen hundred miles.

  “The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is in dire need of any and all medicine they can get their hands on,” Sheryl Lee continued.

  “All of Texas is,” Joe Bob added as he glanced at Wanda Sue’s instruments. “The Visitors have hit us pretty hard. Ain’t like it is in Los Angeles. A Texan would rather bed down with the devil himself before he’d play house with the snakes.”

  The last remark jabbed at Rick like a finely pointed needle. Los Angeles with its provisional government must appear like a city of traitors to the rest of the country, he thought. “I guess I jumped to a hasty conclusion. How bad is it in your part of the country? The only contact we have with the rest of the world is the World Liberation Front and what we see on the Freedom Network.”

  “This should give you an idea, Rick.” Joe Bob waved him forward, then pointed to the cockpit window on his left. “Take a gander down there.”

  Rick ignored his throbbing thigh as he scooted behind the pilot’s seat and craned his neck to see below. Rose and gold light of a new morning bathed the endless miles of flat farmland that stretched beneath the transport plane. “All I see is . .

  He swallowed the remainder of his sentence. The shattered remains of what had once been a city slid into view. A network of streets and avenues was discernible amid the rubble of buildings and homes. Here and there the twisted frameworks of structures pushed toward the sky like tortured skeletons of steel.

  “It has a name—or had one,” Joe Bob said. “Lubbock, Texas, it once claimed to be the hub of the southwest plains. That was before the lizards paid it a visit.”

  Rick’s gaze searched the ruins for any sign of life; he saw none—only destruction. Wide swaths of black ran through the debris, testimony to the Visitors’ energy weapons and their awesome power.

  “Why here?” Rick asked, unable to drag his eyes from the honor below. “I’ve never even heard of Lubbock before.”

  “There was an air force base just outside the city,” Sheryl Lee explained. “The snakes couldn’t tolerate a human military base so close to the edge of their free zone. When they hit, they destroyed the whole city to make an example of it for the rest of Texas.”

  Rick was familiar with the “free zone” the redhead mentioned. Los Angeles was within the zone. When the resistance had released the red bacterial toxin into the earth’s atmosphere, it had driven the Visitors from the world. However, the toxin needed a sustained period of cold to reproduce. In the tropics and the subtropical areas of the world, the poison was totally ineffectual, creating a free zone where the Visitors could live without harm.

  The majority of Texas was in that zone, and under alien control.

  “Believe it or not, there’s people still alive down there,” Joe Bob said. “They’re tryin’ to rebuild a part of what they once had. To the north, in the panhandle, it’s even worse.”

  “North?” Rick turned from the window as the Wanda Sue flew eastward, leaving the Lubbock ruins behind. “What’s in the north?”

  “Amarillo used to be,” Sheryl Lee answered as Rick returned to the navigator’s seat. “Every nuclear warhead in the United States was assembled in Amarillo. You might have seen the piece they did about it on television a few years back.”

  Rick shook his head. All he knew about Amarillo, Texas, was that it was mentioned in Chuck Berry’s rock and roll classic “Route 66.”

  “The Visitors sure as hell couldn’t leave that much human power lay in’ around.” Joe Bob eased the nose of the airplane downward. “Amarillo’s nothing but a cinder now. Another example of what the Visitors intend for the human race.”

  Rick’s chest heaved as he sucked in a long breath, then let it escape through his teeth in a disgusted hiss. He had thought the Visitor suppression in Los Angeles was bad. Los Angeles hadn’t even glimpsed the atrocities the snakes were capable of committing.

  “It’s been bad for most Texas cities.” Sheryl Lee stared out the front of the plane for several moments before beginning again. “Most major Texas cities were home to military bases. San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, Corpus Christi, Killeen—the Visitors struck and struck hard. Opposition had to be eliminated fast.” “And the snakes play dirty.” Joe Bob kept the Wanda Sue in a steep downward glide. “They’ve tried to blast us back into the Stone Age.”

  “You’re not going to land us down there in the middle of nowhere, are you?” Rick’s gaze focused outside the plane on the desolate plain that seemed to be rushing up to meet them.

  “Don’t you worry about Wanda Sue or me none. ” Joe Bob chuckled. “We’ve both flown low enough to cut the tops off of cactus and managed to fly another day. I’ll level off at fifty feet or so.”

  “We’re inside the Visitors’ strike perimeter,” Sheryl Lee said, turning back to their passenger. “The only way to slip by the lizards is to come in low and fast to avoid their radar, or whatever they use instead of radar. We’ve got another two hours before we reach Dallas.”

  The altimeter dipped to thirty feet before Joe Bob leveled the ancient transport. Rick glanced from the window. The flat, featureless plain still raced by below the craft.

  “Dallas . . .” Rick started, “is Dallas as bad as Lubbock?”

  Sheryl Lee nibbled at her full lower lip and nodded. “It used to be a city of gleamin’ glass and steel skyscrapers. Now it’s mostly debris. Some of the residential areas and the suburbs haven’t been hit as hard. But Dallas and Forth Worth are sittin’ right on the boundary of the free zone. There were too many people in the Metroplex for the Visitors to let the cities just sit there.”

  “Fort Worth was hit harder. There was a Strategic Air Command base there.” Joe Bob explained that Fort Worth was situated thirty-five miles west of Dallas and that sprawling suburbs connected the two Texas urban centers.

  The tv/o then outlined resistance efforts to shuttle residents north into Oklahoma and other states still protected by the Visitor-killing bacteria. It was a task that became increasingly dangerous with alien squad vehicles constantly patrolling the skies above the sister cities.

>   “Still, we manage to get carloads out every night,”

  Sheryl Lee said. “It’s not many people, but each man, woman, or child we run north is one less the lizards can butcher.”

  “Meanwhile, you’ve got to keep the ones still in the cities alive.” Rick nodded his head toward the back of the plane and the boxes of medical supplies stacked there. “It sounds like an ambitious project.”

  “You’ve got a talent for understatin’ the obvious,” Joe Bob answered with a shake of his head.

  “But it’s workin’,” Sheryl Lee pressed, hope filling her words. “All we need is time. In another six months we can evacuate the whole Metroplex. That’s what the resistance is fighting for—time. One day we might be able to fight for our cities. For now, we just want time to save our people.”

  Rick shook his head and smiled sheepishly. “And I thought you were running coke and heroin.”

  Sheryl Lee shrugged. Her lips opened, but she never got the chance to speak.

  “Sheeeiit!” Joe Bob’s drawl dragged a simple one-syllable curse into three syllables.

  Rick and Sheryl Lee turned to the pilot.

  “Trouble, my friends,” Joe Bob hissed through gritted teeth. “Cornin’ at us smack dab out of the sun!”

  Rick glanced up and squinted as he peered out of Wanda Sue's cockpit into the dawn. Nothing! He couldn’t see anything but a blazing, yellow autumn sun.

  A bolt of sizzling blue-white burst from the middle of the fiery orb. Rick’s heart tripled its pace. The blast of energy ripped through the sky and sliced harmlessly past, mere feet above the C-47’s right wing.

  “Sky fighter!”

  Sheryl’s voice drew Rick’s attention back to the nose of the plane. The source of the energy bolt was now visible—the blunt-nosed, compact form of a Visitor combat craft.

  “What kind of ordnance are you carrying, Joe Bob?”

  Rick asked with the sudden realization the subject had gone unmentioned.

  “This.” The pilot reached under his seat and a second later tossed Rick the missing Uzi. “And the forty-five I’ve got strapped to my waist.”

  “What? You’re flying this old crate without any defense?”

  Joe Bob jerked the transport’s controls to the left as another beam of energy flared from the skyfighter’s snout. The blast cut the air beneath the plane’s rising wing.

  “Wanda Sue was designed for haulin’ cargo, not combat. ” Joe Bob reversed his maneuver, swinging his ponderous metallic lover to the south in time to dodge a third bolt from the snakes’ ship. “In this baby’s heyday there were fighter escorts to protect her.”

  The Visitor fighter shot over the ancient World War II transport in the next instant. Rick’s stomach sank. In a few seconds the skyfighter would swing about and fly up their tail. This wasn’t World War II; there were no fighters escorting the rickety old war-bird.

  Wanda Sue dipped and swerved beneath Joe Bob’s guiding hands. A pulse beam of five energy bolts lanced by the plane’s left wing and disappeared into the rising sun.

  “Got to make it to the edge of the Caprock,” Joe Bob managed to grunt while he swung the transport back to the north. “The canyons there might give us cover.”

  Caprock? Canyons? Rick had no idea what the aging hippie was talking about. Nor did he have time to question the pilot.

  Wanda Sue lurched violently. From the comer of an eye, Rick saw three energy blasts tear into the tip of the plane’s left wing. Shards of jagged metal ripped through the morning sky as the transport plunged toward the ground below.

  Chapter 4

  Garth savored a sense of self-satisfaction as the squad vehicle skimmed over the rains of downtown Dallas. This was the first time he had actually visited the city since the armada of Mother Ships had returned to Earth.

  The month of daily and nightly attacks he had ordered from the Houston Mother Ship had left the city’s skyscrapers seared piles of shattered concrete, brick, glass, and steel. In truth, he realized, whether human cities were razed to the ground now or later didn’t matter. All would eventually be removed when this water-rich world was conquered and the Great Leader came from the mother world to reign over his new domain.

  The squad vehicle banked, and the pilot seated beside Garth motioned to the right with his head. “There is the sports stadium the humans call the Cotton Bowl. Dallas Processing Center One operated there—until last night.” Garth pulled his gaze from the still-smoldering jumble of blackened rubble at the center of the oval stadium. “I’ve seen enough, Sergeant. Proceed to the second processing center.”

  The squad vehicle banked and shot northwest over the city toward an abandoned speedway on the edge of Dallas’ northern suburbs. There Visitor teams still worked around the clock processing human captives for transport to the Mother Ships, where they would be

  placed in cold storage until there was need of their body protein.

  Surely they must know it is futile, yet still they fight! Garth’s self-pleased smile faded. How many ships had he sent against the Dallas-Fort Worth region? He had lost count of the numbers over the past months. And still they fight!

  The stubbornness of the human mind eluded the Houston Mother Ship commander—especially these obstinate humans who called themselves Texans! Once under torture, an old, gray-haired man had spat into his face and shouted, “Remember the Alamo!” before his death screams had filled the interrogation chamber.

  The Alamo? Garth was still uncertain of the significance of this Alamo. The human captives he had questioned since had only smiled and said that Texans would always remember the Alamo.

  And that made even less sense to the Houston Mother Ship commander. After all, the humans themselves had destroyed the old mission when his troopers had retaken the city of San Antonio. Of what significance could there be in remembering a pile of blasted stone?

  Garth’s eyes drifted to the stump that ended his left arm. His surgeons had offered to replace the missing hand with a bionic transplant. He had refused. The missing hand was a constant reminder of a mistake he had once made—underestimating the determination and bestial desire for survival that burned in the human breast.

  It had been in this very city, during the Visitors’ first appearance on Earth, that he had lost his hand. Ten humans, including the female leader of Dallas’ resistance, had been captured in an attack on Visitor Security Headquarters. Garth had chosen to personally interrogate the human bitch.

  Even now he was not certain how the fiery-haired female managed to liberate the pistol from the holster on his hip and turn it to him. His laughter mocking her futile efforts had cost him a left hand—neatly burned away at the wrist by his own weapon—that day. The bitch not only freed herself from security headquarters, but took the rest of the conspirators with her.

  Since that day, Garth had never underestimated the consuming willpower of his human enemies. Nor had he forgotten the redheaded she-demon who had robbed him of a hand.

  The smile crept back to the comers of Garth’s human-disguised mouth. Until now the means to repay the bitch in full had not existed. Yvonne’s duplication of Diana’s experiments with humans and Visitor genetic engineering had placed the tools of his long-dreamed revenge in his hands.

  The bitch demon-spawn will pay. Oh, yes, she will pay dearly! The satisfaction that viewing the Cotton Bowl had leached from his spirits gradually returned to warm him.

  The woman would not only bear the humiliation of serving those she fought against, but her womb would give birth to the child who would lead Garth’s forces to victory.

  My child—and hers! The sweetness of his scheme was intoxicating! His head reeled with drunken delight. Oh, how the bitch will pay for all she did to me!

  “Commander,” the pilot’s voice intruded into Garth’s euphoria, “we approach Dallas Processing Center Two.”

  Garth nodded. “Inform the center’s commanding officer of our arrival and my desire to meet with him immediately. ”

  “To
meet with her," the sergeant corrected. “The base commander is female. She presently uses the human name Lisa.”

  “Whatever.” Garth waved the pilot away and shook his head.

  That was one problem with the Earth campaign over which he had no control. The Great Leader placed far too much weight on the abilities of simple-minded females. All one had to do was look at how Diana had botched the first invasion to see his point. Yet that damnable scientific commander was still allowed to retain her authority over the fleet.

  Garth gnashed his dual set of reptilian teeth. There were some things a career man had to endure for his Leader and race, no matter how trying they were.

  The white laboratory rat wiggled and squirmed, pink feet vainly clawing the air as Garth held it in the air by its tail. The Mother Ship commander tilted his head back. He lifted the rat so that it struggled but an inch above his face.

  Gradually Garth’s lower jaw extended, stretching the elasticity of the human mask he wore to its limit. He lowered the twisting rat into his gaping mouth and carefully closed his jaw. With a small finger, he poked the rodent’s writhing tail between his lips and swallowed.

  He felt his throat expand and constrict as his muscles worked the still-struggling rat down into his stomach. Lifting a hand to cover his mouth, he burped as politely as possible.

  “Thank you, Captain. A light snack was just what I needed. I left Houston without breakfast this morning.” Garth eyed the two other rats waiting in a wire cage. For a moment he considered popping both into his mouth, then decided against the rodents. A large meal would leave him lethargic, the one thing he didn’t want to be this day. Not with vengeance so near. “Have you examined the photograph?”

  “Yes, Commander Garth. This is the same woman captured during the resistance raid last night.” Lisa handed the color glossy back to her superior officer. “Are you certain you wouldn’t prefer a meal that is a bit more substantial? My chef is waiting to prepare you anything you might desire.”