The Doomsday Device by Darrell Pitt Read Free Book Online Page B

created the flying wedge I had formed a hundred times before. I saw it perfectly; an arrowhead of shimmering air that would support us as we soared up into the sky. I had made it so many times it even had its wings angled upwards to aid it in flight. As a flying machine it truly was a thing of beauty.
    But it would not come into being.
    We stood in the dark with the house blazing behind us as I focused on creating the flying machine.
    Nothing happened.
    “What’s wrong?” Chad asked.
    “It won’t happen,” I said. “I’ve been having some problems -.”
    “On the airplane,” his eyes shone with realization. “When the bomb exploded -.”
    “I couldn’t create a shield,” I admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
    “Could you have told us?” he asked angrily. “You’ve put all of our lives at risk.”
    “There hasn’t been time -.”
    “Forget it!” he snapped. “We’ve got to go the old fashioned way.”
    “You mean -.”
    Moments later we were in the campervan barreling down the road. We reached the highway. The night was still and dark. I saw an animal scurry off into the roadside scrub. A car drove past us. Probably some late night partygoer from the city.
    Far away in the distance we saw a vehicle moving away from us at high speed. It turned off and changed direction.
    “Where does that road lead?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” Chad said. “I think there are some abandoned properties down there.”
    “There are.” I remembered. On occasion I had flown around this area early in the morning before people were out of bed. There was an abandoned homestead and airfield. It had not been used for years. “They must be taking them by plane somewhere.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “No,” I said truthfully. “But using a plane would be the fastest way to escape.”
    “Okay.” Chad pushed his foot down even harder on the accelerator. “We’ll do it your way.”
    We sped through the darkness in silence. One part of me was worried about what might be happening to the others. The other part of me wondered how all this came into being. And then there was the whole business about the vampires.
    Vampires were real. Really real. How had they survived all these centuries without being discovered? And who had planned this? And what on earth would a bunch of vampires want with a group of super powered kids?
    Chad turned off onto the side road and now he increased speed again. The vehicle was bouncing badly all over the road. A hub cap flew off one of the campervan’s wheels. We were moving at a terrible speed. He needed to slow down otherwise we wouldn’t survive the car journey.
    “We need to slow down,” I yelled.
    “Do I tell you how to drive?” he yelled back angrily.
    “No, but -.”
    I spotted a row of lights in the night. As we came up over the crest of a hill I realized we could see the takeoff lights for the airfield. A plane – some sort of cargo plane – was starting to taxi down the runway.
    “There it is!” I yelled.
    “I see it!”
    Chad braked. Swerved. Accelerated again. The campervan hit a dip in the road and flew straight up into the air. It hit the road again. I heard something snap on the underneath of the vehicle. Somehow it kept moving.
    The transport was directly ahead of us, but accelerating away at high speed. Chad slammed his foot down on the accelerator and we tore down the runway after it. I glanced over at him. If I’d known he was such a good driver I would have let him take the wheel more often.
    We were getting close now. Fifty feet. Twenty feet.
    “What’re you going to do?” I yelled.
    “Ram it!” he yelled back.
    “What?”
    He shot me a look. “We’ve got to stop it now or we never will!”
    He seemed to urge one last piece of energy out of the van and it accelerated again. We drew ever closer to the tail of the transport. A couple more feet. Ten feet. Five feet. I gripped the door and waited for the collision.
    It never happened.
    The plane