“Kind of what?”
“Power. Engine. You said your scientist friend thinks its geothermal. So they must be drilling down to release the heat.”
“Yeah, so?” asked Jack.
“That means that the drill or the engine, or whatever, its creating heat. Every engine must dissipate the heat or it’ll seize. Burn out.”
“You might be onto something,” he said. “How do you know?”
“I’ve replaced the radiator in my ‘65 Mustang four times. The coolant system sucks. The tubes wear out or get damaged and then the engine overheats.”
“You’re fucking brilliant!” Jack pranced around Maya, his fist in the air.
“You don’t have to take destroy the generator, Jack. Just damage the coolant system. But I have no idea where, or how, or if it’ll even work.”
“I don’t care. I’m going to get you out of here and to your kids even if I die trying. Literally.”
Maya smiled and brushed a tear away from her eye.
“You need to get to the edge of the dome. Give me exactly two hours to get to the obelisk.”
She nodded and checked her watch while Jack did the same.
“Stay alive. I’m going to bring that fucker down. You be ready to run when the dome drops. Two hours from now.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she said, hugging him.
“One more thing. Promise me a ride in that Mustang when this is all over.”
“Cross my heart,” Maya said, refraining from mentioning the rest of the old saying.
47
Maya didn’t look back.
She knew Jack would most likely die in vain and the dome would still be here, keeping them trapped like zoo animals. She didn’t have the heart to crush his hope, but something told her to see this plan through to the end—to head for the dome’s perimeter while Jack made a run at the obelisk.
The city had fallen apart around her, and yet she still thought of her children—like most mothers would. She’d lost time in the warehouse, but it had been worth it. She now knew how to kill these things, and Crazy Jack just might get the dome to fall.
But the question Carly had raised was an important one.
Even if they could destroy the dome, how were they going to kill all of the aliens?
Without the internet or modern mass media—both of which seemed to be disabled by the dome—getting critical information out could be nearly impossible, so there was no way to tell people that it was just the masks keeping them safe from light, even once the sun’s rays were available to finish the job. Also, she had no idea how far the invasion had spread. What if the aliens had knocked out the power grid and internet, globally? If hitting them in the face with light killed the aliens, where was that light going to come from, and how could they mobilize it into a weapon of galactic mass destruction?
Maya would have to worry about all of that later. Right now, her main objective was to get to the dome and hope Jack could do what he’d said he would.
However, that could be challenging, given the chaos and darkness caused by the dome and the subsequent alien invasion. Maya felt vulnerable running through the streets as people died all around her. The only light beneath the dome came from explosions, house fires, and burning automobiles. Perversely, it was the light from the destruction which would have to guide her from the warehouse district to the dome’s edge. Jack had aimed Maya in the right direction, but that had been as helpful as telling someone to hold their nose as you pushed them into a lake—blindfolded.
She kept running, though, and she didn’t stop until she heard a scream nearby. Maya ducked beneath the low-hanging branches of two oak trees, kneeled, and observed her surroundings. The scream had come from a woman not more than forty yards away. She’d crashed her car into a brick mailbox and four aliens surrounded the wreckage. One of them pulled the woman from the front seat as she thrashed about.
Maya’s instinct and experience made her want to help her, but she knew she couldn’t. One of the aliens took aim and blasted the woman. Her body exploded into ash. Maya turned away, realizing that the alien that had toyed with her in the warehouse had probably been an anomaly, a single creature with a streak of curiosity among one of the thousands of creatures dropped from the ship’s hatch. Everything she’d seen since that time supported the theory that the dome had been dropped for one reason, and one reason only—to exterminate all humans beneath it.
Her foot slid forward and pushed a handful of dry, crinkled leaves against the trunk of the tree. She peered around the tree and saw the aliens looking in her direction. Maya held her breath, trying not to make another sound. After a few seconds, the aliens looked the other way and headed down the street, away from her.
Maya sighed. She stood up, careful not to rustle anymore leaves.
She’d taken a step out from beneath the branches when she heard snarling behind her. Maya spun around and saw two aliens approaching, only thirty yards away. And they were coming right at her.
Run.
She leaped into a full sprint, no longer worried about making too much noise. They had seen her, and were now in close pursuit.
This was Maya’s first encounter with the aliens in the open. Fighting them in the tight confines of the warehouse, she’d had no idea how fast they could move. For all she knew, the aliens could be as fast as horses, and she didn’t want to turn around to find out. Sprinting through almost complete darkness and through a heavily-wooded area, she had to pay close attention for obstacles that might trip her up.
Finally, though, Maya couldn’t stop herself. She had to turn around and see where they were. The aliens had gotten to within fifteen yards of her, but it seemed like they struggled to maneuver through the trees. With so many branches, it also explained why they hadn’t used their self-propulsion jets to fly toward her, as she had seen them do when they’d first entered the dome.
She saw a concentrated beam of light hit the ground to her right, followed by the now-familiar hum of the alien’s blaster heating up the molecules as it sliced through the air. She cried out and turned away as if that could protect her from the violent destruction wrought by the laser.
The concentrated beam blasted a trunk to her right, cutting through the massive tree and dropping it, rattling Maya’s teeth. The force of the old-growth tree slamming to the ground knocked her off balance and she landed on her side, slid across a leaf-strewn slope, and then went tumbling down a steep hill.
Maya couldn’t control her fall. She rolled and tumbled, her injured shoulder throbbing with new pain. Without any light, Maya had lost all sense of direction, rolling head over heels and hoping she wouldn’t slam into a tree head-first. And then all motion ceased. Her back had slammed into something hard and unmoving, her ears ringing, and a knot formed in her stomach that made her feel like she needed to vomit. Maya had leaves in her hair and blood dripping from several cuts on her arms and legs. She put a hand on her shoulder, where fresh blood seeped from the wound she couldn’t seem to keep closed. Maya rolled over, pushed herself up onto her knees, and turned to look up.
The aliens stood at the top of the hill, black silhouettes cut from the orange, backlit sky. Billowing smoke from fires raging across the city of Nashville floated in the air like angry rain clouds. The aliens above her screamed, piercing the air and most likely alerting other alien invaders of her location. Maya had to get to her feet and run.
She remembered the penlight in her pocket and pulled it out, happy to see that it had survived the tumble down the hill. The end piece had broken off, but it worked when she flicked it on and off quickly.