On the Wing by Eric Kraft Read Free Book Online Page B

held, across his lap, at the ready, a shotgun. He wasn’t driving. He was ‘riding shotgun.’ And here am I riding shotgun for you, so that you can concentrate on your driving, secure in the knowledge that if any bad guys come galloping up beside us with evil intent—I will scare them away with the handsome leather folder of maps that I have lying across my lap, at the ready.”
    â€œThat’s my guy,” she said.
    What I hadn’t told her, what I am telling her only now, in this sentence, on this page, is that the guy riding shotgun for her was on the alert for signs of flyguys in the sky, and if he saw them in the rearview mirror or heard the ominous sound of their blades chopping the air, he meant to use his handsome leather book of maps to suggest evasive action—a sudden side trip to someplace hard to spot from the air. He would insist. If necessary, he would plead. If it came to that, he would take the wheel.

Chapter 5
    Once Bitten
    Ladies and gentlemen,… I … hardly know where to begin, to paint for you a word picture of the strange scene before my eyes …
    Carl Phillips, radio commentator, in Howard Koch’s adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds
    THE DAY WAS NEARLY PERFECT for traveling: clear and cool and still. As I pulled onto the road, my heart was full of the mad hope that Spirit might on this promising day take to the air and fly me to my next stop.
    â€œLet’s go, Spirit, ” I coaxed her. “Let’s rise up, leave the hard pavement below us, and soar into the clear, cool air. Come on, let’s go!”
    â€œOh, please,” she said with a yawn.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    â€œIt’s so early.”
    â€œBut it’s such a wonderful morning. Don’t you feel the urge to get up and go?”
    â€œNot at all. I’m still tired from yesterday. All that traveling! I’ve never done anything like that in my life.”
    â€œNo,” I said, reluctantly admitting the truth of it, “I guess you haven’t.”
    â€œCouldn’t we just take it easy today and kind of glide along at a nice easy pace? On the ground?”
    â€œOkay,” I said, but I didn’t try to hide my disappointment.
    â€œIf I have an easy day today, I might be able to get up into the air tomorrow.”
    â€œIf you’re making a bargain, I’m going to hold you to it,” I said.
    â€œOf course. I’m an aerocycle of my word.”
    So, off we went, at an easy pace. I realize now, in retrospect, that, for the sake of my account, I should have stopped one night in Manhattan. If I had, this chapter might have included some Manhattan adventures. At the time, though, the city seemed an obstacle that stood in the way of my real journey and my real adventure, which lay beyond New York, in the West, so I pushed on through without stopping at all, and we traveled without adventures for the entire day, pleasantly and uneventfully, if slowly, stopping once for gas, and once for lunch, and briefly now and then so that I could stretch my legs and she could rest, until we found ourselves deep in New Jersey, late in the afternoon.
    As the shadows began to lengthen and I began to turn my thoughts to dinner, I began to feel that something was odd, though I wasn’t quite sure what made me feel that way.
    â€œ Spirit, ” I whispered, “there’s something strange going on.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI don’t know—it’s hard to put into words—I’ve just got a strange feeling.”
    â€œYou’re not giving me much to go on.”
    â€œWell, it feels as if people are watching me—watching us.”
    â€œI suppose it isn’t every day that a kid comes flying through these parts on a graceful and gorgeous aerocycle. Of course people are watching.”
    â€œYeah, but this is more like—surveillance.”
    â€œYou’ve seen too