Eva despaired as Juan took the jeep under an overpass, then turned left, heading west on the Oran K. Gragson freeway.
“What are you doing?” she yelled from the back.
“Getting us out of here, ma’am.”
“We can’t go that way.”
“We can’t go back.”
Eva reviewed her options. If she remembered the map correctly, they could leave Las Vegas in the direction they were headed, but they’d have to go around a mountain range and maybe even through Death Valley to get to Palmdale. She didn’t know how long Mark would survive, but it wouldn’t be that long.
They had to get back onto I-15.
“We have to go back,” she yelled forward. “On I-15.”
“No, ma’am,” he shouted back.
“Juan, I’ll blow your head off.”
He slowed the jeep to a stop and put his hands in the air. He turned to face Eva.
“Why did you get off the freeway, ma’am?”
“Concrete barriers blocked the road.”
“Yes, ma’am. How are we going to go back that way?”
“Those were the southbound lanes. We go south on the northbound lanes.”
“Aren’t those going to be blocked also, ma’am?”
“Maybe,” Eva offered.
“I’m afraid, ma’am. I’ve been afraid since the first day those aliens started dropping big rocks on us.”
“I’m afraid, too, Juan.”
“How could you be afraid, ma’am? You’re a highly evolved robot that’s been transported from the future to the here and now. I just don’t know if you’re here to destroy the world or to save it.”
Eva laughed. It felt good. It relieved the tension.
Then it was time to put her game face back on.
“Turn it around slow, Juan. We’ll go the wrong way on the transfer ramp to the northbound lanes. That’ll put the freeway between us and the bad guys.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He did so, and she got ready in the back, making sure the grenade launcher had it’s complement of three high explosive grenades and she had a fresh cartridge in her rifle. As they approached the transfer ramp she took a quick peek at Mark’s ashen face. No change.
The ramp took them high in the air, and she looked down at the scene of the firefight. Smoke still billowed in the air from the bus shelter and it looked like two or three people were running around the area. She and Juan had gotten out just in time.
“Are you sure you’re on the right ramp?” she called out.
“I think so, ma’am. The signs aren’t designed for people going the wrong way.”
The ramp they were on towered over the others and Eva felt exposed. Of course, she also had the high ground, which was supposed to be a military advantage, although she didn’t see how it would help her there. Speed was the advantage she needed.
She looked at the signs behind them and guessed they were probably on the correct ramp to get to the northbound lanes. She yelled at Juan to drive faster.
The ramp merged onto the northbound lanes and Eva saw the concrete barricade on the other side. Their side looked clear. She also saw men on the roof of a police building on the opposite side, near the the barricade. She mentally urged Juan to drive faster, and she kept her head low in the back, but didn’t say anything for fear of distracting him. He was afraid enough as it was.
Some of the men may have pointed at them, but they were long out of range before anyone could react.
A minute and a half later and they passed an on-ramp. There was no sign of pursuit.
Another minute. A sign on the opposite side of the freeway for Sahara Avenue.
Eva didn’t want to relax. Couldn’t relax as long as they were still in the city. If the place had become completely lawless, she needed to stay alert.
Another minute. She couldn’t see the speedometer, but if Juan were driving ninety, each minute meant a mile and a half away from their ambushers. And less time for someone else to react to their presence.
Until they got to the Strip.
They passed an off-ramp and went under a highway. Eva turned around in the back of the jeep, watching every spot where someone could shoot at them, her MP23 ready.
“Keep moving,” she yelled to front of the jeep.
“Pedal to the metal, ma’am,” Juan yelled back. Eva noticed he had a hispanic accent at times, but at others he didn’t. She guessed it came from living in two cultures, but asking him about it would have to wait until they got out of town.
She had never thought a freeway could feel so dangerous.
Eva saw the first tower on the Strip and felt vulnerable until a sound barrier appeared on their left. It was essentially a ten foot high brick wall.
“Hug that wall,” she yelled and Juan dutifully steered into its protection. Eva hoped it would last a long time. It didn’t.
Another overpass with on-ramps and off-ramps. With no cars on them, and traveling the wrong way down the freeway, it was hard for Eva to keep track of which lane would lead where. As long as they kept going at break neck speed down the road, it wouldn’t matter, she decided.
Then came another sound barrier, and Juan moved into its protection without any prompting from Eva.
“I’ve heard stories about the Strip, ma’am,” Juan yelled back over his shoulder. “Please be ready.”
Eva didn’t reply.
As long as she couldn’t see over the barrier, no one could see them.
But this barrier ended too soon also, and she could see high rises ahead and to their left.
“Just keep driving as fast as you can,” she yelled over the wind noise. She was being beaten up in the back by the ninety mile an hour wind. “A moving target is a tough target to hit.”
Juan raised his hand in acknowledgement, keeping his eyes focused on the empty road ahead.
Eva had been to Vegas, years earlier. It was always crowded, especially around the Strip. Everybody from all over the world wanted to come here to see what it was all about. She, too, had been caught up in the wonder of it, but hadn’t liked losing three hundred dollars gambling on her first night. She thought she’d be better at it and was disappointed in herself. She let her friends do all the gambling the rest of the trip.
Was she gambling now? Should she have let Juan take them the long way around?
That would have been gambling with Mark’s life, although he was probably going to die anyway. But he had rescued her from the safe house, and she owed him. Besides, the first set of ambushers would be alert and upset, so it made no sense to head back that direction. She pitied anyone else who might come down that same freeway today.
They went under another highway overpass and two men with binoculars stood on it.
Spotters.
“Keep moving,” she yelled and turned around to watch behind them. The spotters had run to the side of the overpass they had just crossed under and one of them looked like he was on a radio.
Eva had time for one more thought before the ambush hit.
It was the end of the world. Didn’t people have anything better to do than prey on others?
The attack came from the Bellagio parking garage. At first it was small arms fire falling short, but then someone with a high caliber sniper rifle took the headrest off the passenger seat. If Eva had been in that seat...
Juan slowed down.
Eva swore at him.
But then she saw the method to his madness. He pulled up under another overpass, just off the freeway and behind a concrete buttress. He dove out of the jeep and onto the ground.
Eva followed him, her MP23 in her arms and carrying a bag of ammo and grenades.
She moved next to him, lying in the shelter of the concrete.
“Don’t give up on me now, Juan.”
“No, ma’am. This seemed l
ike the best thing to do.”
“For now,” Eva agreed. “But it won’t take long for them to get to this overpass and drop grenades down on us. We can’t stay here forever.”
Juan’s face turned green.
“I’m gonna go see what’s going on. If you get into that jeep and try to ditch me, I’ll put a grenade from this launcher into it before you know what happened.”
He stared at her.
“You believe me, right?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You’d better. You’ve got my back and I need you to cover me. You shout if you see anything.”
He nodded, but he looked more like he wanted to throw up.
She moved forward to the end of the buttress and looked up. Bullets sprayed around her in greeting. They were coming from a steep angle, which was good. It’d take someone a few minutes to get down to the overpass they were under, and Eva hoped to have a plan by then.
She peeked out again, this time behind a blaze of MP23 fire. She could tell they were on top of the roof of a parking garage, but they didn’t return fire until she was under cover again.
Good. It meant they weren’t professionals. A little bit of firepower might keep them down.
She discarded her magazine and reloaded.
She switched to grenade launcher and popped out just enough from her cover to fire. They say, ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’ in training, but in combat it was more like, ‘Fire, Fire, try to Aim, Fire’.
The first grenade crashed into the side of the structure, exploding as it fell back towards her. She tried to adjust and the second grenade went up over the top of the garage and probably landed harmlessly on the other side. The third went wide to the right as Eva came under fire again. She ducked back completely into cover.
The high caliber sniper rifle caught up with the firefight, and the gouges in the concrete and roadway around her were bigger now.
She reloaded grenades and thought.
The sniper could keep them pinned until someone could get onto the overpass. At that point, they were dead meat. Instead of fear, Eva was a little surprised that all she felt was frustration, like she was losing a game or something.
She prepared to jump out again and try to take out the sniper when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped.
It was Juan.
“Don’t do that to me!”
“Sorry, ma’am. Can you shoot at them for ten or fifteen seconds?”
The MP23 fired a lot of ammo in fifteen seconds.
“Maybe. Maybe just ten.”
“Okay, ma’am,” Juan said. “Can you show me how to use these grenades?” He had an armful of them.
“Oh my gosh, Juan. Not now.”
“Please, ma’am?”
“Juan, you could never throw them far enough. It’s at least a hundred feet to the garage and it’s another hundred feet high.”
“Piece of cake, ma’am.”
She shook her head. It was his life.
She gave him a ten second crash course on how to pull the safety, pull the pin, and throw the grenade. Half the ones he held were smoke grenades, and she pointed that out.
“We have smoke grenades, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“These explode, and these ones let out smoke?”
“Yes,” Eva replied in frustration.
Juan grinned.
“I have a plan, ma’am.” He explained it to her.
“Okay,” she said. It was better than anything she’d come up with. And if it didn’t work, well, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Eva wouldn’t get to save the world, but she would go out in a blaze of glory.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” she said. The fire had gotten heavier from the rooftop. Five or six shooters up there now. She wondered how many were on their way to the overpass.
“Now, ma’am!”
She stuck her weapon around the concrete and blindly fired up towards the garage roof. She had to move a little out of cover to get her second hand on the weapon, then she launched her three grenades in quick succession, just trying to get close to the shooters. After the last grenade, she emptied her clip.
In the meantime, she watched Juan out of the corner of her eye take two grenades and drop them right on top of the garage, right in the corner where they expected the shooters to be. He dove back into cover with her, but there was no return fire.
“No way,” Eva exclaimed.
“Should I put two more up there to prove myself?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
Two more grenades went onto the parking garage roof and they ran back to the jeep. Juan tore off like a madman and Eva dropped smoke grenades behind them, covering their escape. She added a few more cartridges of fire from the MP23 for good luck, aiming first up at the garage, then at the overpass when she saw a white pickup truck drive onto it.
Then the smoke obscured her vision and she let the growing distance be their cover.
They got safely past the Strip and fifteen minutes later were in the open desert. Las Vegas was a strange town, Eva thought.
Feeling somewhat safer, there was likely no reason for roving gangs to hunt passersby in the desert, Eva crawled over Mark and into the passenger seat with its missing head rest. She checked on him and he hadn’t taken any hits. He still looked terrible. They had to get him help as soon as they could.
She wasn’t sure how far it was to Palmdale (if only her phone had signal!). She tried to look at her map, but it was impossible to unfold it in the ninety mile an hour wind. The windshield on her side had been shattered, and she had to duck and sit to the side to reduce the wind buffeting.
She eventually crumpled the map up and shoved it in the glove box. A few hours was her best guess.
“When you get a chance, we should probably get over to the correct lane,” she suggested. They were still heading south in the north bound lanes.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How did you learn to throw like that, Juan? Military?”
He grinned.
“Baseball, ma’am.”
“No one can throw that far. That was like almost two hundred feet.”
“You’re not very good at math, are you ma’am?”
Eva gave him a quizzical look.
“Mind you, it was up, so I had to throw it like it was about three hundred feet, but that’s no problem for me, ma’am. But according to the Pythagorean Theorem, I estimate the actual distance was about a hundred and fifty feet.”
“Either way it was a long throw.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Juan said. “1957, Glen Gorbous threw a baseball four hundred and forty-five feet, ten inches. That record stood until three years ago.”
“You beat it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, ma’am. Four hundred and forty-six feet, three inches.”
“You didn’t beat it by much.”
“I still hold the record, ma’am.”
“So you’re a famous baseball player. Why haven’t I heard of you?”
“I expect you don’t have much time to follow baseball, ma’am. And I’m not that famous. Nobody’d ever heard of Glen Gorbous either, until I broke his record.”
“Do you still play?”
“No, ma’am.”
Eva waited for more. Juan sighed a little, shifted in his seat, then explained.
“Have you ever been the absolute worst at something, ma’am? I don’t mean bad at something, I mean the worst. You know, like the doctor who graduates at the bottom of his class in medical school or the lawyer who gets the lowest possible score on her exam, but still passes? That kind of worst?”
He grinned.
“I was the worst hitter in the minor leagues, ma’am. Not just once either. Three years in a row. The only reason I k
ept a contract was because I could hit the cut off man from anywhere on the field, and from a lot of places I could place the ball right in the catcher’s mitt. Not a lot of people can do that.
“But there were plenty of guys who could throw half as good as me who could hit twice or even three times better. And I’d move to another team.”
“Ouch,” Eva sympathized.
“Yes, ma’am. It hurt. But I never gave up. Finally, a club took some pity on me and hired a special hitting coach. He worked with me like no one else ever did, and I finally got it. I could finally hit the ball like I’d never been able to hit it before. I dreamt of big league contracts. I was going to make it. I had my best year ever.”
He paused for effect, grinning, and giving away that there was a punch line.
“I wasn’t the worst hitter in the minor leagues that year. I was fifth from the worst.”
“Oh no.” Eva genuinely felt sorry for him.
“Yes, ma’am. That did it for me. I was done. But fortunately for both of us, I’ve kept in shape and I can throw a grenade just like I can a baseball.”
“Thank you, Juan. You saved our lives.”
“I’d say we’re even, ma’am, but I don’t actually think that. I think that now we’ve saved each other’s lives, we are inextricably bound together.”
Eva laughed. She liked Juan.
“You can call me Eva.”
“No, ma’am. I’ve seen what you can do. I will treat you with nothing but the respect you have earned and deserve until my dying day.”
His words saddened Eva. Now that they were out of danger, his words reminded her of exactly what she had done.
She had probably killed more than one person that day, but she’d only seen one of them. The shooter running from the burning bus shelter.
In the heat of the moment, he had felt like a threat. The jeep was still on its side, Mark trapped in it, and Juan was an unknown hiding behind a statue behind her.
But the shooter hadn’t been much of a threat. He was running away. And in the moment she pulled the trigger, she also knew he hadn’t been old. Sixteen, twenty, twenty-two, fourteen. She had no idea. He had a slight build and ran awkwardly. She almost hoped he had just been a gangly eighteen or nineteen year old, but she was afraid he was younger than that.
She wanted to tell herself it wasn’t her fault. He had engaged her in combat. He had been part of a treacherous ambush. He had injured her partner who lay gravely ill in the seat behind her.
But he had seemed so young.
She steeled herself against tears.
She had killed an enemy combatant who had attacked her unprovoked. It was as simple as that. He wasn’t running from her, he was withdrawing to a more defensible location and may have been seeking reinforcements. That’s the way it was, and she had to accept it. She had done what she had to do to stay alive and to save her partner and her new friend.
She felt better when Juan interrupted her train of thought.
“Do you got any food, ma’am?”
“You want a protein bar?”
“Ma’am, look at me. I’m a big guy. I haven’t eaten in over two days.”
“Fine. Two protein bars. And a bottle of water.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
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