Earth Alert! - Kris Ottman Neville (reading women TXT) 📗

of telling how near Walt was; or what moment and from what direction death might strike. She did not believe that he could reach out through space to snatch her life; if he tried teleportation, she was steeled to resist. The lifeless, glittering windows, the dull glare of overhead and curb lights, the shuttle movement of traffic, the heavy, motionless air—all these combined into bristling menace. Her foot strained against the accelerator; her muscles ached over the wheel.

She hoped she had confused him. Now she streamed for the open highway. She settled the car into a traffic slot on the north-bound coast super-highway. She switched the car on automatic and tried to relax.

The road curved gently toward the west to pick up the coast line. Soon the moonlit breakers hissed on white sand beaches. The ocean lay dark and mysterious toward the far horizon.

She prayed that Walt would not guess for long minutes that she had left the city; that he would lose more precious minutes locating the super-highway.

San Francisco was six hours ahead of her.

Walt was continually losing himself in a maze of Los Angeles streets. Ones that seemed to promise to deliver him cross-town to interrupt Julia in her erratic course twined away in improper directions. Occasionally he neared her. But she darted away each time: as if with the primeval instinct of a hunted animal.

At last he stopped the car and cried to a pedestrian across the street: "Is there any place I can get a map of the city?"

"Ask inna filling station."

Walt snarled. And five minutes later he found the map. He memorized it carefully; it required scarcely more than a minute. During that time, he let his body rest and relax. He threw the map onto the driveway. He grew increasingly more confident of catching her as the information settled into his brain. He visualized the map.

He was ready for her now.

She was already on the super-highway. He left the filling station. He was in no hurry. He was waiting for her to return.

It soon became apparent that she would not.

He grunted and spun his car in her direction.

He lost several minutes in a traffic jam downtown. He got on the wrong lane in a clover leaf beyond the city limits. He had now passed beyond the boundaries of the map he had memorized. He took the ridge super-highway instead of the one Julia had taken. After twenty miles, he realized his mistake and had to cut over. He bounced along an east-west road that was so rough-surfaced he had to reduce his speed.

When he finally arrived on the proper highway he was almost an hour behind Julia.

He concentrated on understanding the physical assembly of the engine in front of him. He could teleport parts from it; he could hold other parts more tightly together by using the same power. But the engine was so very complex. There was (he could tell) something there—in the engine itself—that kept the power from being utilized. He could not locate the block.

He increased the speed by tightening the valves. But the required concentration was too great to be long maintained. It exhausted him and forced him to rest for a few miles. Then he tightened the valves again. The car moved forward in a sudden burst of speed.

In San Francisco Julia stopped long enough for a sandwich—long enough to gulp hot coffee—long enough to buy a box of "Wide-awakes." She checked airline schedules by phone.

The eastern flights were held up by weather over the Rockies. The next strato-jet to Hawaii was due to leave in thirty minutes; but she would have to wait to see if any reservations were canceled before she could be assured of a seat. There would not be another plane south for an hour and a half. One was leaving just then.

She told herself that the airport would become a cul-de-sac unless she could time it perfectly; she could not risk it.

She cruised the city until she had been there over an hour. She was loggy and exhausted.

She was afraid to remain any longer. He might head her off; he might trap her in a dead end street. Once on the straight of way, there was—at least—no danger of that. She left the city and headed north again.

Walt arrived ten minutes before she left. He came to a stop at an all night lunch. Invisible, he slipped through walls into the kitchen. He stole food, returned to his car with it, ate it. He drove to a gas station, keeping her position sharply in mind.

"Gas," he ordered the attendant.

The attendant began filling the tank.

"All the way full," Walt said. "I want a map of the city when you finish."

The attendant brought the map. Walt unfolded it.

Julia had left the city. Walt was not going to be fooled this time. But he wanted to memorize the city just in case she did double back.

"Is there ... a larger map? Of this whole area?"

The attendant brought him a California map. He memorized that one. He picked out Julia's route. He verified it.

"Pay up, now," the attendant said. "I gotta car waitin'. It's five sixty-seven altogether."

Walt reached through the rolled down window and seized the man. He jerked him forward and down; and, with the same motion, slammed his own weight against the inside of the unlocked door. The steel top of the opening door cracked the attendant across the forehead; he went limp. Walt let go of him, closed the door, and drove off.

By the time he sighted her car ahead of him on the highway, in the mist and fog of dawn, nearly eleven hours had elapsed since he had begun the pursuit. It had been only a half an hour before that he had located the governor and teleported it out of the engine.

CHAPTER IX

Julia saw the bright lights behind her. They blinded her in the rear-view mirror until she knocked the mirror out of focus. She glanced at the speedometer. She was going as fast as the engine would permit.

She was weary from the beat of the motor and the ache of steady driving. Her body was drained of energy. The "Wide-awakes" seemed to be losing their effect. In spite of herself, she nodded. Too tired to think of anything else, she was thinking—almost dreaming, almost in half-slumber—of a steamy bath; of perfumed heat caressing her body; of soft, restful water lapping at her thighs.

Even the prospect of invasion had receded into some dim, dumb corner of her mind; it no longer concerned her. The demands of personal survival had pushed it aside; personal survival and the knowledge of her own incapacity to prevent, forestall, or counter it. And at last exhaustion had overcome even the demands of survival.

The brilliant lights behind began to pain upon her fatigue-soaked eyeballs. They shimmered in the windshield; they—

She realized they were gaining on her.

A car without a governor.

A crazy, reckless driver.

Walt!

Suddenly the fatigue vanished. Fear alerted her. She stiffened. Her heart pounded. She glanced behind her, squinting.

There was a sickening wrench at her body; she felt herself twisting, being sucked out of space.

Teleportation!

She grabbed the wheel. She was almost too weak to resist. She fought off the terrible, insistent fingers, she shrank away from them; she moaned.

Walt ceased the effort.

She was limp. She struggled to marshal her resources. Her will was not yet depleted so much that she could not fight back.

She concentrated on being where she was, in the car, on the highway. She felt a futile but exhilarating surge of victory.

Her hand trembled when she switched off the automatic-drive. The wheel under her hands began to vibrate. The car was sensitive to her control. It was alive and deadly and hurtling like a rocket.

I can't outrun him now! she thought. He has too much speed!

... I've got to get off the highway. I've got to take a side road toward the mountain. There'll be curves and twists and turns. They will cut his speed down. Maybe I can out drive him.

Side roads slipped by to her right and left.

She prepared to brake the car for the next cut-off slot.

It appeared far ahead; a dark slit on the left outlined by her rushing headlights.

She depressed the brake; the tires screamed.

The car skittered and fishtailed. She clung desperately to the wheel, battling the great chunk of metal with every ounce of her tiny body.

And somehow the car hurtled through the slot, across the other half of the highway, onto the hard topped, farm-to-market road that climbed toward the distant crest.

Walt's car, braking shrilly, hurtled past her and was lost in the night.

Julia stamped the accelerator viciously. Her car plunged forward.

Lonely trees and brush stood like decaying phantoms in the splatter of her headlights. Far ahead, winking down the mountain, she saw the headlights of another car—crawling toward her slowly, like twin fire flies, indolent after a night of pleasure. The road was pitted, and the car beneath her jolted.

It was then in the loneliness of the seldom traveled farm road that she noticed the gasoline gauge.

The gas remaining in the tank could not be sufficient to take her another ten miles. The peg rested solidly on the empty mark to the left.

She began to cry.

The tears almost blinded her; she jerked the car back, just in time, from a ditch. She held it toward the fearful darkness ahead. Dawn that purpled the east seemed lost forever from this road and this life.

The road climbed slowly; then steeply.

Behind her now the bright lights like great flames crept closer, burning everything. The lights had pursued her for only half an hour; it seemed an eternity. The road began a great bend around the first sharp thrust of mountain. She slowed.

The headlights were gaining.

She wanted to give up.

The motor coughed.

Walt was almost upon her; elation throbbed in his being. He had been driving on manual; he dared not risk automatic-drive, not since his wreck. He was not quite as alert as he might have been. The strain was beginning to slow his reactions.

The curve was sharper; ahead, a hair-pin turn. Walt swung out to pass her and force her to stop or plunge over the side into the deepening valley. It was the maneuver he had seen the policemen perform.

The headlights of the early farmer with a heavy load of milk suddenly exploded at the curve.

Julia gasped and slammed on her brakes.

Walt jerked his eyes from Julia's car an instant before the crash.

"Crazy God damned fool," the farmer said as he crawled painfully from the wreckage of his pick-up truck. "Crazy God damned fool!" He clutched at his arm; it was broken and bleeding. "Passing on a curve! God damned fool, passing on a curve!"

Julia had stopped her car. She ran toward the two wrecks.

"Any kid knows better, any two year old kid," the farmer said; he stared, unbelieving, at his arm. He sat down and was sick.

It was growing lighter. Mist lay over the valley. The air was damp with fading night.

Julia's feet made harsh clicks on the road.

At Walt's car she stopped. The farmer watched her with mute pain behind his eyes.

Reaction set in. She thought she was going to be sick, herself. She leaned against the wrecked car.

"We better get him out," the farmer said dully.

Julia nodded.

Between the two of them, they forced the door open and lifted Walt out to the pavement.

"Easy," the farmer said.

Julia stood over Walt's limp body. His jaw was broken and twisted to one side. His chest was bloody; blood trickled from his nose; his hair was matted with blood.

"He's still breathing," the farmer said hoarsely.

He looks so boyish, she thought. I can't believe ... he doesn't seem a killer. I hate whoever made a killer out of him.

Walt's chest rose and fell; his breath entered his body in tremulous gasps.

She wanted to bathe his face with cool water and rest his head on her lap. She wanted to ease his pain.

She