The Journey of St. Laurent, Chapter 24

Author’s Note: For those of you who haven’t read any of the Journey Of St. Laurent before: You are now reading an online serial pulp novel. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you may want to do so. Chapter 1:  Down By The Bay. This serial is the sequel to my first novel, Oasis.

Thanks to Sati, DarcKnyt, a flyin hobo, girl, Ballsack McNasty, Jordan Johnson, Silk trousers, Satha, Fadly, & Toothy, who stopped by to comment on thelast chapter.

Chapter 24 – In a Hurry

We raced back toward the house.

They’re going to destroy it. It’s my fault.

London turned around and groped underneath the back seat.

Just a few more blocks, then we can evacuate…

The UFO stopped.

It must be directly over the house.

Angry lights danced on the bottom of the silvery ship.

London ripped the gun from its box, and wheeled back around. “Corbin, stop the car.”

“But we need to warn-”

“No time! Stop the car!”

She’s right. I slammed on the brakes.

London’s weight shifted forward and she almost fell out of the Jeep.

The lights on the UFO danced faster and it started making a high pitched whirring noise.

No, no, no. Don’t let it… My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Shoot it!”

London took quick aim and squeezed the trigger until the gun clicked empty.

My mind raced and my heart pounded. I don’t even remember hearing the shots.

London fiddled with the magazine release mechanism. “Michael, grab me a clip!”

I turned back. Michael’s eyes were wide and he wasn’t even blinking. It’s too much for him. I twisted and grabbed one of the loaded clips that we had tossed in the box.

“Clip, Clip!” London slapped my shoulder.

In the back of my head, I knew this was all probably futile. There was no way we were going to take down a ship that size with one Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. I wasn’t even sure we could get the craft to notice us.

A red-gold disk of light formed underneath the UFO.

I thrust the clip at London.

The whirring noise got louder and louder.

Come on, get out of the house, guys.

London slapped the clip into place.

The lights flashed faster and faster. The disk got brighter.

Five more shots rang out. The little clip was empty.

The lights on the UFO stopped flashing. The glowing-light-disk-thing stayed put.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

The disk flashed downward.

The ground shook and a heat wave washed over the Jeep. The thunderous clap of an entire block of houses and apartments collapsing rattled my teeth.

A heavy nausea latched on to my gut. This is my fault. I looked over at London.

Tears rushed down her face. I was temporarily too deaf to hear what she screamed at the alien craft.

I glanced back at Michael.

He vomited all over his own lap.

My hands shook. My ears rang with the sound of impact. Fear and guilt clawed at my senses. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t move.

The UFO started to move in our direction.

The angry lights flashed on again.

Not all nurses are cut out for work in the emergency room. Some nurses wait for specific instructions from a doctor before doing anything, and then they follow those instructions exactly. That works and is essential for long term recovery and treatment. Not so much for emergency care. Being a nurse in an emergency room is a job that requires faster decisions and an even stronger stomach than most other floors of the hospital. You often don’t have time to look up side effects of a drug, read a seven page patient chart, or wait for the doc to make his next round. You have to recognize and perform appropriate action immediately or people die. Some nurses will sit and stare, frozen with indecision while a patient bleeds to death rather than think to grab a hemostatic or a tourniquet.

Years of snap decisions in the ER had embedded in me a reflex to start acting no matter what was happening.

Now, there was no gunshot victim on a gurney. Instead, there was a giant spacecraft moving directly over me. It was arming its extremely powerful weapon. In a matter of moments, it would incinerate me and my passengers and probably a dozen innocents who were cowering in their nearby homes.

My conscious mind was paralyzed with fear.

But my body knew to act.

My hands cranked the wheel. My foot stomped on the gas.

London fell back in her seat.

My hands and feet shifted gears.

The UFO gave chase.

Have to keep moving.

London fumbled around for another clip and hurled all manner of obscenities and vulgarities at the alien craft.

I checked the rear view mirror. Michael did not look well.

The UFO was easily keeping pace with us, but at least the angry lights had turned off.

London got the new clip in and started loading the empty ones. “So what do we do now? Keep shooting until we’re out of bullets?”

“I don’t know. Drive, maybe. At least until we’re out of gas.”

“Yeah, great pla- Corbin, you’ve got to see this.”

I grabbed the rear view mirror and aimed it up.

A door opened on the bottom of the UFO. Something appeared in the doorway. I checked the image in the mirror as often as I could without running into any telephone poles or fire hydrants.

“It’s behind us!”

I looked in the mirror again, but the door on the craft was closing. I readjusted the mirror and looked again.

Behind us was a thing I could only describe as a hovering-metallic-half-avocado-with-the-seed-left-in-mini-UFO-thing. It was about the size of a wheelbarrow and it kept pace with the Jeep but stayed about thirty feet behind.

The sight of the craft startled me and I jerked the wheel to the side.

London put a hand on my shoulder to keep from falling in my lap. “Would you stop that?”

“Can you hit that thing?”

“Can you stop swerving?”

I looked in the rear view mirror.

A puff of blue smoke spat out of a hole on the front of the metallic space avocado and I heard something to my left shatter.

The mirror portion of the driver’s side mirror was gone. In its place was a hole about the size of a marble.

“Its shooting at us!”

“Well, shoot it back.”

“I can’t shoot it while we’re moving. Stop the car!”

“Not until we’re clear of the rest of these houses.”

I hit the gas and made a turn. The freeway was in sight.

A pop rang out behind me, followed by a hiss.

“Corbin, we don’t have time.”

She’s right. The next time it fires it could kill any one of us.

I slammed on the brakes. The Jeep screeched to a halt.

The lights on the UFO overhead started dancing again.

London sighted in the space avocado of death thing and pulled the trigger five times.

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Keep Reading! Chapter 25 is here.