The Road to Roswell, page 33
“No—”
A sudden flicker of lightning lit the clouds from within, outlining their piled-up shapes. “Maybe it’s the lightning Srennom’s after,” Francie said. “It’s a source of energy. Maybe they need it to power their ships.”
Wade shook his head. “If they’re advanced enough to have come here, they’re advanced enough to have harnessed electricity. Indy’d hardly need to get power from a thunderstorm.”
“But maybe his electricity-generating thingie got damaged in the crash, and he needs to get electricity from somewhere else. Or maybe he needs it to power himself somehow.”
“Then why didn’t he hook himself up to your car battery?”
“Maybe it takes a special kind of electricity that only thunderstorms have.”
“Electricity doesn’t have kinds. And where does Srennom fit into all this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe—” She stopped, staring blindly at the thunderstorm ahead. “I just thought of something. I saw a thunderstorm on my way down to Roswell the day Indy abducted me. It was west of Highway 285, near Vaughn.”
“When was this?” Wade asked.
“About four o’clock, three hours before Indy abducted me. What if the reason Indy’s looking for a thunderstorm is because he saw Srennom land in that thunderstorm, or try to? They’re notorious for having crosswinds and downdrafts. What if he saw Srennom crash and abducted me to try to go find the crash site? And that’s why he wanted me to go north toward the thunderstorm.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Wade said. “You realize what that means, don’t you? It means he didn’t realize thunderstorms move. Or dissipate. That they’re temporary phenomena. He thought it was a stationary object, like a mountain or a river, and when he couldn’t find it, he thought he’d gone the wrong way. That’s why he hauled us all over the place. He was convinced it, and Srennom, had to be somewhere. But if Srennom did crash, he and his ship are where that thunderstorm was, not at this one.”
“And we’re going the wrong way,” Francie said.
“NO NO NO NO NO,” Indy, who’d been seemingly ignoring their conversation, suddenly scrolled. “RIGHT WAY SRENNOM TSURRISPOINIS.”
Francie shot a look at Wade. “Indy, did you see Srennom land in a tsurrispoinis, a thunderstorm?”
“NO.”
“He didn’t crash?”
“NO NO NO SRENNOM HERE INDY COME.”
“We know you’re coming,” Wade said impatiently. “How do you know Srennom’s here?”
“That’s not what he means,” she said. “Indy, you came because Srennom was here?”
“YES YES YES SRENNOM TSURRISPOINIS INDY COME FIND.”
“Why did you come to find him?” Francie asked.
“SRENNOM TSNIBITAI INDY HELP WARN CLAY WARN CAT.”
“Well, that’s as clear as mud,” Wade said.
“Shh,” Francie said to Wade, and she asked Indy, “You came to find Srennom and warn him, just like Clay Boone did in Cat Ballou when he came to tell Cat that the sheriff and his posse were coming?”
“YES YES YES,” he scrolled, and then, after a minute, “MONUMENT VALLEY.”
Monument Valley? Francie thought. “What do you mean, Indy?” but he didn’t respond. He just kept scrolling, “TSURRISPOINIS HURRY SRENNOM HURRY.”
“My guess is he thinks of Monument Valley and thunderstorms as the same thing,” Wade said, “since that’s where it was in the movie.”
But it can’t be, Francie thought, because he didn’t want to go there—he freaked out at the sight of it—and he wants to go to the thunderstorm. “Indy, what—” she began, and the alien thrust his tentacle in front of her face, scrolling, “HURRY HURRY HURRY.”
“I am hurrying,” Francie said, and looked over at Wade. “Do you think I dare go faster?”
“Yeah. Gun it.”
“Are you sure? What about the Highway Patrol?”
“If they stop us, we’ve got Indy,” he said, and she put her foot down hard on the pedal.
“Don’t worry, pal,” Wade said. “We’ll get you there.”
Maybe, Francie thought, watching the storm, still far ahead of them. In spite of her speeding up, they didn’t seem to be gaining on it at all.
She glanced at the gas gauge. It read a little over three-eighths of a tank, but the storm was still a long way away. “Maybe we should stop and have Indy switch the car to his no-gas-needed mode.”
“No, there’s no time,” Wade said, and glanced behind them again. “Thank God we’re not in Joseph’s RV.”
“Western trail wagon,” she said automatically. “Speaking of Joseph, you said he and Eula Mae were creating a diversion to help us get away. What kind of diversion?”
“Eula Mae’s showing the agents how she managed to hack the slot machines at the Tropicana. And Joseph’s unleashing his corporate lawyers on them, threatening to sue for false imprisonment, unlawful confiscation of property, assault, and everything else under the sun. He—”
“Wait, where did Joseph get corporate lawyers?”
“They work for him. It turns out Cowboy Joe isn’t just any old retiree. He’s J. P. Pangborn.”
“J.P.—the head of StudioPanorama?”
“Yep. And number four on Forbes’ list of gazillionaires.”
“But he said he had to sell his house to buy his RV—”
“Western trail wagon,” Wade corrected automatically. “And he never said that. Eula Mae just assumed it. According to Agent Sanchez, he’s got mansions in Beverly Hills, the Hamptons, Tuscany, Hong Kong, and the Caymans. And a team of lawyers that would terrify even Lyle’s Reptilians. They’re in there promising lawsuits and Senate investigations and threatening heads will roll, which means the agents are focused on keeping their jobs and not on Indy, at least for the moment.”
“And all three of you were lying about who you were,” Francie said. “What about Lyle? I suppose he’s not what he seems, either. What is he? A famous UFO debunker?”
“I wish,” Wade said. “Unfortunately, he’s exactly what he seems to be—a raving UFO lunatic who’s been spilling his guts ever since we picked him up.”
“Oh, no! Couldn’t you—?”
“Stop him? You’re kidding, right? He’s waited years to tell the government his theories.”
“But I thought you said he was creating a diversion.”
“He is. He just doesn’t know it. Don’t worry. He’d already told Sanchez about the aliens’ invasion plans and the ley line transfer zones and was starting in on their secret underground bases when I left. And when they were bringing you in, I told Lyle, whatever happened, not to tell them about the Reptilians.” He grinned. “Or the Grays at Area 51.”
So even if he does tell them about Indy’s scrolling and the tsurrispoinis, they won’t believe him, Francie thought.
“With luck, he’ll keep Sanchez busy for hours.”
“We may need it,” Francie said. “We’re still not gaining on this storm.”
“MONUMENT VALLEY HURRY HURRY HURRY,” Indy scrolled.
“I’m already going eighty,” Francie muttered and took the Jeep up to ninety, and gradually they began to catch up to the storm. Its clouds towered above them, blindingly white in the sunlight, and so tall they could no longer see the top, and the wind picked up, blowing dust across the road.
“The storm’s moving to the south of us,” Wade said, peering through the windshield. “We’re going to have to turn off,” and pointed at a dirt road off to the right and half a mile ahead.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Francie asked. “In rain, it’ll be muddy.”
“GO GO GO!” Indy scrolled, pointing at it.
“You’re the boss,” Francie said, and turned onto the road, and before she’d gone a mile, the sky had turned overcast, and the temperature began to drop precipitously. Francie turned on the Jeep’s lights.
A few miles later, she started to smell the sharp, clean scent of wet sagebrush, and rain began to spatter the windshield. “Okay, we’re at the storm,” she said. “Now where am I supposed to go?”
“SRENNOM,” Indy scrolled, his tentacle pointing ahead. She kept going, and the drops turned into a steady rainfall and then a downpour, and a lightning strike flashed ahead of them, lighting the underside of the clouds and a huge expanse of rain-flattened grass.
Wade leaned forward, scanning the desert ahead.
“Did you see anything?” Francie asked him.
“No. Indy, where’s Srennom supposed to be?”
“TSURRISPOINIS,” Indy scrolled.
“This is the tsurrispoinis,” Wade said. “Which part of it is Srennom in?”
“TSURRISPOINIS.”
“What does that mean?” Francie asked, struggling to deal with the muddy road and the wind that was battering them and to see through the increasing downpour. And to be heard over the increasing din of rain hammering on the car roof.
“It means he doesn’t know,” Wade shouted.
“Then what should I do?”
“Aim for the storm’s center.”
“Which is where?”
“I don’t know. Where the rainfall’s heaviest, I guess,” Wade said, and when a zigzag of lightning slashed through the rain directly in front of them, followed almost immediately by a crash of thunder, “and where there’s the most lightning.”
She spared a moment of keeping her eyes on the road to look incredulously at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Don’t worry. We’re completely safe in here. The car acts like a Faraday cage. It conducts the electrical current around the outside so anything inside is safe. Trust me. Just drive toward where the lightning strikes and the rain are the heaviest.”
“That would be here,” Francie said, looking out at the driving rain. She could no longer see the road. Wade swiped at the inside of the windshield with his hand, as if to clear it, but after a few more yards, the rain began to sluice across the windshield in sheets.
“I can’t see a thing,” Francie shouted over the din. “I’m going to have to pull over.”
“NO NO NO NO NO!” Indy scrolled, his tentacles flailing.
There was a blinding flash, and then, right on top of it a deafening crash of thunder that shook the car. “I’m sorry, Indy,” Francie shouted over it. She pulled over to what she hoped was the side of the road. “We’ll have to wait till it lets up a little.”
Indy wasn’t listening, even if he could have heard her through the banging and crashing all around. “SRENNOM!” he scrolled, grabbing at Wade’s hands and pushing them toward hers as if to make him force her to start the car. “GO GO GO GO GO!”
“We can’t,” Francie said, “we—” and Indy abruptly let go and pointed out the driver’s window, through which nothing could be seen except rain.
“THERE THERE THERE,” he scrolled hysterically.
“Where?”
“THERE!” and he rolled himself out the door and across the field.
“Indy!” Francie cried, leaping out into the pelting rain after him, but she couldn’t see which way he’d gone, couldn’t see anything at all through the blinding, all-encompassing rain. “Indy!” she called, trying to wipe her wet hair out of her eyes. “Where are you? Come back!”
“Francie!” Wade shouted, suddenly beside her. He was soaked, his drenched shirt plastered to his arms and chest, his hair and face dripping. “Get back in the car. We can’t stay out here in this!”
“I have to get Indy!” she shouted back. “He doesn’t know what lightning is. He doesn’t know it can kill him!”
“It can kill us, too!” Wade yelled, grabbing her arm and pulling her back toward the car, which she couldn’t see, either. “Do you know how much voltage there is in those lightning bolts? We have to—”
“No!” she said, yanking herself free. “I’ve got to find Indy,” and suddenly saw him, or, rather, the words on his tentacles, bright orange against the gray of the rain, as bright as a neon sign. “Look!” she shouted, pointing at the red-orange letters.
“Indy!” Wade shouted, splashing toward him. “Get back in the car!”
“You have to wait till the storm lets up, Indy!” Francie called. “The lightning’s dangerous!” and Indy stopped long enough for her to read on one tentacle, “SRENNOM” in red, and on another, in neon orange, “FIND!” and then he rolled off again, his tentacles a revolving blur of orange-red.
“No!” Francie shouted, splashing through the now-muddy grass. “The lightning can kill you! Like the rattlesnake, only faster. And faster than you!”
“A hell of a lot faster than you!” Wade echoed right behind her and, as if to demonstrate, a bolt of lightning zigzagged down within yards of them, so close Francie could see it sizzle and smell the sharp acridness of ozone and then see the purple afterimage of it.
“See?” Wade shouted, and was drowned out by the eardrum-shattering clap of thunder that followed almost instantly. “The next one’s going to come down right on top of us,” he warned, and Francie looked up fearfully.
“Oh my God!” she murmured.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Watch the skies!”
—The Thing from Another World
Francie clapped her hand to her mouth. Suspended in the foggy air far above her in the pouring rain was a tumbleweed. It was flailing wildly, its tentacles lashing out in all directions.
“Indy!” she cried, and looked down at where she’d seen him rolling off into the rain, afraid he’d somehow been swept up like a kite by the wind, but he was on the ground, far ahead, and still scrolling.
She looked up at the suspended tumbleweed again. She’d been wrong. The tentacles weren’t flailing blindly like Indy’s had been when he was panicked. They were moving with a quick sureness, like someone weaving or typing, and she caught the glitter of something shiny gripped in the curled ends of its tentacles.
“Indy!” she called to him, pointing up at the tumbleweed, but he’d already seen it and was rolling back to her side.
He stopped a few feet from her, and his still-scrolling tentacles shot up into the sky and wrapped around one of the tumbleweed’s appendages, and her comparison had been apt. He pulled it down exactly like a child yanking on the string of a kite.
Srennom—it had to be Srennom—resisted, scrolling something in bright green that Francie couldn’t make out but that looked furious, and then, when he realized who was tugging on him, let himself be pulled down to Earth with a muddy splash.
Indy grabbed him, Srennom grabbed back, and they embraced each other, their tentacles twining and entangling like a French braid that had gotten out of control, both of them scrolling too fast for Francie to make out any of it, especially through the rain, which was coming down harder than ever, but they were obviously saying the alien equivalent of “What are you doing here?” and “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” and “Come on, we’ve got to go before the posse gets here!” but this time it was Srennom resisting, arguing, explaining, saying he wasn’t finished.
“We’re all going to be finished if we don’t get in out of this storm!” Wade shouted at Indy. “The lightning—”
“NO NO NO,” Indy scrolled and went back to talking to Srennom, this time apparently telling Srennom who Wade and Francie were and what they were doing here.
“You can explain all that later,” Francie said, looking nervously at the lightning flashing everywhere. “We need to go.”
“NO NO NO,” Indy scrolled. “SRENNOM HAS TO DONE.”
“He can do it after the storm,” Francie said.
“NO NO NO,” Indy scrolled. “SRENNOM TSINIBITAI BBHBINIITS.”
“Don’t stand here arguing with him,” Wade shouted. “Every minute we’re out here, we increase the chances of getting killed.”
“NO NO NO,” Indy scrolled.
“Yes yes yes,” Wade said. “You don’t understand, lightning’s dangerous! It—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence. A blue-white flash, so bright it hurt, exploded around them, sending Francie sprawling.
This is it, she thought, we’ve been struck by lightning, and braced herself against the killing shock, the searing pain, that had to be coming.
It didn’t come, and when the thunder did, a nanosecond later, it sounded like a faraway rumble. “What—?” she said, wondering if the thunder had made her deaf, and realized she was no longer out in the rain.
She looked up. She was under some sort of transparent shelter that was protecting her from the rain. And the thunder. No, not an umbrella, a tent. The see-through material extended all around her. She could see the wet mud and grass underneath her hands and feet, but what they were touching was completely dry, and as she scrambled to her feet, she saw she was completely enclosed in a sort of transparent bubble.
And alone. Where were the others? “Indy! Wade!” she called, peering through the side of the bubble, trying to see them, but the glow from the lightning had faded, and all she could see was rain, sluicing down its sides like it had over the windshield.
And I don’t have windshield wipers, she thought, and heard Wade distantly calling, “Francie! Where are you?”
“Here,” she called back. “I’m in some kind of—”
“Giant soap bubble?” he said, his voice muffled, and, tracking the sound of his voice, she could just barely make him out in a second bubble of his own ten feet or so away from hers. “I was wrong, Indy was faster.”
She could barely hear him. “What?” she said, cupping her hand to her ear.
“I said Indy was faster,” he shouted. “Than the lightning.” Wade pointed at the bubble. “I think this is a giant-size repeat of Indy’s rattler trick.”
“You mean we’re inside one of his tentacles?”
“Either that, or we’ve landed in Oz, and we’re in one of those things Glinda floated around in,” he said, trying awkwardly to move his bubble closer to hers and nearly falling in the process. “Though frankly I don’t see what she saw in them.”
