Free Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion by Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant

she’d been able to avoid the worst of the panic traffic. She’d moved slowly for a bit, dragging for a few hours beyond that as traffic thinned and inched, still filled with assholes manning their own wheels instead of letting the cars do their jobs.  
    After dark, as she’d moved into less populated areas, staying off highways for the most part, Heather’s pace had picked up substantially. She had her phone’s GPS on for curiosity (the one built into the Prius didn’t have a wide view and had a bitchy English accent), but she’d never have wanted to try the tangle of roads she’d taken on her own. But what did she care? The car could make those decisions. All she had to do was sit back and smoke.  
    But it got boring. She lived in movies and wanted none of them. She had all sorts of old TV shows loaded into the Prius’s juke, but she’d already watched four episodes of Three’s Company and five of her hands-down favorite, Friends . She’d had enough watching for now. And really, they’d probably do nothing but watch Friends when she got to the bunker. It was one of the things she and Piper shared, even though Piper was young enough that she almost had no right even knowing the classics. It was infuriating. Part of Heather wished Piper was a brainless bimbo — a midlife crisis seized upon by a forty something man to follow his failed marriage. But Piper was hard to hate. Impossible, really. It would suck spending forever underground alongside her, knowing that guilt about sleeping with Meyer would prevent her from doing it in such close quarters.  
    She let the thought go. Tried dialing again and was told that she couldn’t have her way … but that she should try again later. She gave a little cheer for nobody to see. Phone-related car game: won .
    For the past hour or so, she’d been seeing signs for Las Vegas. At least that was some variety to look forward to.  
    Part of Heather was excited. She’d played Vegas a dozen times in the past few years (her last three annual specials were filmed there) and Vegas was always a good crowd. She arrived by air, never by car, never through hills and mountains. Still, the hook was strong. It was something she knew. She had fond memories there. And right now, after a night alone in a stupid little car with nothing to look at, the idea of being somewhere familiar — some speck of the life she’d so recently loved — was undeniable.  
    She should probably avoid Vegas proper. It was a big city, and even during the best of times it was packed with crazies. Crazies and old people. No good could come of that as the five-day countdown (now down to four days; the radio loved to remind her) neared zero.  
    Aliens in Vegas? Hell, they could turn that into a show on the Strip. Charge admission. Sell shitty souvenirs and nine-dollar bottles of water.
    She’d asked the car to avoid 15 in a nice big halo around the city itself, if the car was thinking of getting back onto 15 at all rather than staying in the hinterlands. But Heather wanted to get close enough to see the lights, assuming they were still on.  
    But when Vegas appeared on the horizon, the lights were somehow different.  
    The city was on fire.

CHAPTER TEN

    Day Two, Morning
    Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  

    Lila felt sick.
    She hadn’t had time to read up on pregnancy specifics while trying to pretend the microscopic bun in her oven didn’t exist, so she wasn’t sure if it was normal to be sick this early. Morning barfing was one of the first signs of TV pregnancy, but sitcoms (from contemporary to the oldies her mother and Piper both liked) also showed birth as taking approximately fifteen seconds from the onset of pushing to the baby being out and totally clean. But one day in Los Angeles, because her mother had been a bit tipsy and thought it was hilarious and wrong, Lila had seen the video of her own birth. It had gone on forever. “Like taking a dump for days,” Mom had said.  
    TV didn’t get