Chris Lowry's Blog, page 3

Gratitude Training 101

I woke up kind of a grump this morning. It happens. Maybe I slept on my neck wrong, or maybe my muscles were aching from too hard of a workout. I’ve been a little worried about money, and travel and the kids growing up too fast and missing too many of the little moments in their lives.

I’ve been wondering about my Dad’s fight with cancer and how my brother is doing in LA. I think maybe this damn election, so full of hate and vitriolic from both sides is creating a miasma of ick across the whole damn country, like a fog that clouds the mind of what should be normally rational people. Then I remember that people aren’t rational at all. They are almost all emotion, a tangle of id and ego and tiny tantrums that make four year old’s blush.

That’s all we really are, and we tend to justify the reasons why as we get older.

So maybe I’m just throwing a tantrum, and the gray skies on this gray day have me feeling kinda, well, gray.

Not every day can be full of sunshine once you allow outside forces to affect you on the inside.

This means I should be focused on gratitude and the simple things. It’s hard to be a grump when you are grateful. What’s that old expression? Count your blessings.

There’s wisdom in that wives tale, because once you start to realize just how great your life really is, then maybe the grumpiness goes away.

I woke up in America. Privilege number one. And even if it’s divided, and folks don’t really know which direction to look because of the misdirection being trotted out as if it were fact, it’s still the best damn country in the world.

I woke up in a bed. Too many are denied that simple pleasure.

I was in a house, there was food, and electricity and running water.

I didn’t have a job to rush off to because I am self employed. I had coffee, which in and of itself should make any day worth rising to greet. There was a beautiful woman next to me who says she loves me.

Just focusing on the first five minutes of the day and there’s no reason to be grumpy.

But there’s more.

I clicked on my Amazon account because I am a self employed author entrepreneur and like to check my sales overnight. I put out a new book last week, and so far it’s gotten 5 Star reviews and people are reading it. Not thousands, like I always hope for, but steady numbers of readers are grabbing the book and finishing it, which is itself a victory. I have written a work people like to read. They even ask for more.

So there’s another win.

I got in my car, that’s paid for, and it started. Win.

I went downtown to the library because sometimes I like to work out of the house. My laptop works, it connects to the internet and opens up the entire world to me.

My brain works, and my creativity is something I can tap into on demand. Even if I don’t “Feel” like writing in a zombie book, I have a book about Wizards that’s almost done, or twenty five others with 10k words or more just waiting in line to be finished. I have a notebook full of ideas, and I am an idea creation machine, so much so that I could use three assistants to work on all the different projects I’ve imagined and planned.  I still want to do some collaborations with other authors.

There should be so much gratitude there.

I have a website that people visit and like what I write, and I have a Twitter feed that generates comments and discussion.

I’m connected to my high school friends and my college friends and new friends who enjoy the hobbies I enjoy (hello Ultra Trail Runners) and when I go home, there is food to eat, and clean water to wash clothes in the washing machine and music on the radio.

I had a new project idea today and finished up the outline which is going to help other authors with their marketing next year.  It should be done in a week.

I moved 4,872 words I captured on my phone into the story I’m working on now for November. I wrote it on my smart phone, a computer stronger than my last two desktop’s and I carry it around in my pocket.

So many things to be grateful for, so many reasons to be thankful that it’s hard to stay grumpy.

Annie said it best. I’m grumpy because I miss the sun. But the sun will come out tomorrow. I’d bet a dollar on that.

If you felt like grabbing BATTLEFIELD Z, it’s less than a cheap cup of coffee.

If you like historical fantasy, HOLY WAR is about Templar Knights.

If you like your SCI FI futuristic and in a dystopia, EPOCH is here

or funny then pick up SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSON

You may not be a baseball fan but did you see Game 7 las...

You may not be a baseball fan but did you see Game 7 last night?  Normally I let the boys of summer play out their dreams on their own, but the Cubs in the World Series for the first time in 108 years was too much to pass up.  I switched over after the CMA 50 awards show and caught the last three innings.

What a game.  Drama.  Intensity.  And the curse was broken.  Way to go Cubs.  Peanuts and cracker jack’s all around.

In our lifetime, we’ve seen some amazing things.  Self driving cars.  A man skydiving from outer space.  A colony on Mars by 2025.  And now the Cubs won the World Series.

If you don’t think we live in an incredible world full of possibility just ignore the news and focus on what’s really happening.

Even though I am a glass all full kind of guy, I did write a post apocalyptic science fiction book that’s free today.  Battlefield Z about a father searching for his kids in a zombie apocalypse.  Mostly glib, mostly tongue in cheek, but at times touching you can grab your copy free today  here:

http://amzn.to/2fiDf8c

Take a few minutes and leave a review if you like, or click the tweet to share button.

I’m not an NBA fan, more like a highlights guy but the season kicked off well, and the NFL boys are banging heads through winter.  I ate too much Halloween candy and am mid-prep for my next 100 mile race in Florida in December.  I’m posting more about it on Facebook, so join me there at Facebook.com/Chrislowrybooks and tell me what you think of the pics.

I hope your first weekend in November is awesome.  Turn back your clocks one hour on Sunday and there’s a Super Moon on the 11th that you shouldn’t miss.

 

Thank you. What were you born to do?

Hey you. Yes you. Has anyone told you that you’re a big bottle of awesome sauce today? Well you are. Think about it for a moment. All the serendipity that had to happen to make you. Not just the shit you’ve been through growing up, the stuff you learned, the food you ate and things you skipped. Your life is a happy accident.

How so?

Think about it for just a second. Your parents had to meet, and out of all the other potential suitors in the world they picked each other. Then one night when a mommy and daddy love each other very much and a little bit of grunting you and a million of your brothers and sisters raced to see who could reach an egg first. So you are literally one in a million.

But if you go back even further, not only did your mom and dad have to get together to make you, their mom’s and dad’s had to meet up to make them. More one in a million shots.

Your grandparents had to survive all sorts of crap too. Disease. Malnutrition. Starvation. War. Unless you’re native American, they even had to survive a perilous trip across a dangerous ocean. Keep going back to their parents and their parents.

You don’t have to trace your lineage to the roots of your family tree, but just think about it for a minute. You are the result of generation after generation of survival success stories. Ten thousand years ago two people got together to make the beast with two backs and one of your fore-bearers was created, who then did the same and same, right down the line until ta-da, here you are.

The end result of selective breeding.

You are the best version of genetics that could happen, so you have to wonder if you are living up to the sum of your potential.

I question this all of the time. Am I being the best possible version of me that I can?

The answer is probably not in traffic. But I am aware of the problem and working on my road rage issues.

Sometimes I even write about them, or at least let the story lines play out in my head. Or work it all out on a long run, or hike in the mountains. I look at my three children and know how they got here, the feelings I had for their mother, the irony of them being raised by other men (step-fathers). I think about their make up and personalities, their likes and dislikes and wonder at it all. My son who is lactose intolerant but will end up being four or five inches taller than me. My daughter who won’t top 5’2” but is a brainiac par excellence, or my youngest who is tall and smart and beautiful, with her mother’s temper which makes my road rage look like mild annoyance.

They all won the genetic lottery of being born.

I’ve worked hard to instill in them a realization that they can build the world they want. It’s tough sometimes to fight against all the other influences, so I try to lead by example. Chase dreams. Set huge goals. Be fun and positive and upbeat. Push yourself. Find your limit and extend them. Nothing is impossible.

We live in an amazing world where people skydive from outer space and there will be a colony on Mars in our lifetime. And we’re lucky. We have access to so much knowledge, and so many opportunities that our grandparents and their grandparents did not. Plus it’s all built on top of the genetic make up that got us here. They survived without the internet, and now that we have it, it’s a bonus on top of our potential. The cherry on the sundae of us.

So you are a miracle.

Take a selfie and say it out loud. “I am a miracle.”

To say thank you for being a miracle, do me a solid and go download a free copy of FLASH BANG today on Amazon. It’s a short story I wrote about bad things going on in Syria and the right man sent in to do the job of taking care of it. It’s part of my Shadowboxer series. If you like it, click on the stars and leave a review. Maybe share it with someone so they can download it free too.

And then, keep on being awesome. It’s what you were born to do.

Final Thoughts before a final edit

I was putting together the final touches on an edit, looking over the draft gallies when I stumbled across the last pages of the book. Several pages actually.

I have eight published novels in the Shadowboxer series out in ebook now, with print versions of said same coming out over the next several weeks.

Color me impressed with myself.

I’m allowed you know. It’s not conceited since it really is the result of years of work, laying the foundation for writing, practicing the craft, putting it away and hiding that dream because I needed to be responsible and get a regular normal job in corporate America.

But in September of 2015 I took the plunge and started my own publishing company as an independent author entrepreneur.

In the past year, I’ve written and published those Shadowboxer novels, along with work in the science fiction genre, EPOCH, MOON MEN, SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION and HOLY WAR. I even published 25 books for new writers highlighting everything I’ve learned, experimented and built for marketing and growing my writing career.

Twelve novels in one year, plus short stories, plus how to guides. A total of 72 money earning projects on Amazon.

But it was the SHADOWBOXER series that made me smile. Brill Wingfield came about because I was heavy into reading Brad Thor, Vince Flynn and Florida’s own Randy Wayne White when I first moved to Orlando. On my monthly commutes back to Little Rock there is a small town in Alabama called Brilliant and the green sign for the Interstate exit is paired for another tiny burg called Winfield.

Once while driving at night as the kids snoozed in the back, I passed that sign and it stuck with me. Brilliant Winfield, only I got it as Wingfield after a sportscaster I worked with in television fifteen years ago. As we wound our way down toward Birmingham and across I-20 toward Atlanta, I kept thinking about this character, a retired hitman living in Florida who just wanted to be left alone but kept being pulled back into the game. The oncoming headlights lit up a movie in my mind and the coffee fueled my imagination past Hotlanta and down 75. As the sun popped up somewhere around Gainseville, I had a story mapped in my head, along with some plot elements for other works. I wrote down what I could remember as soon as we got home, then spent the day playing in the pool with the kids at the condo.

That was the genesis of three attempts at the Brill Wingfield novels, along with several others, but as I’ve mentioned before, corporate America beckoned and I served that loveless master for almost a decade.

But when I got fired I knew it was time to dust off the manuscripts and get serious about building a business as an author and publisher.

Brill Wingfield was my first choice for a series.

So far I have eighteen to twenty five stories outlined or in various stages of completion, from 5,000 words up to 20,000. They’re on my publishing schedule to get done and get out there. I want to find the fans of Thor, and Flynn and Matt Hilton and Steve Berry, folks who like a good adventure from a flawed character.

But eight so far in a year.

CONSCRIPTED where I tell the tale of how Brill was made from a seventeen year old wide eyed idealist into a cold blooded killer.

Mission One – Brill Wingfield’s first mission working as a contract killer for Barraque

Flash Bang – Brill crosses the border into Syria to rescue a documentary crew and the daughter of a US Senator captured by rebels

Shadowboxer – Brill is hunted across Mexico by one of the men who taught him how to kill

Decreed – Brill Wingfield wakes up in a hospital after being left for dead and goes into low pay hit jobs in Los Angeles while he hunts for his would be killer

Attache – Brill works with EmBeth Davis in Prague to take down a human trafficking ring connected to the FSB.

Disavowed – Brill is sent into Iran to gather intel on their nuclear capabilities and uncovers a connection to his former employer Barraque

Presumptive Nominee – Brill is hired by a Presidential nominee to find the man blackmailing him and threatening to assassinate him but when Brill uncovers a lead that takes him back to Barraque, he’s the one in the cross-hairs.

Credible Threat – After a bombing in Brussels, Brill is contracted by an alphabet agency to gather intelligence and eliminate the problem, his specialty. But when he links Barraque to the bombings and a plot to reinstate an Ottoman like empire with Turkey, he and Carver are declared public enemy and put on the government’s kill list.

The stories aren’t in order. There are gaps in what happens, but that’s the way memory works sometimes. It’s not always linear. The rest of the adventures will follow over the next year and even as I write this one more has popped up to be told. It could have been a news article about Russian aggression or probably the intro sequence to a James Bond filmed combined with an expose on human trafficking across the US border with Mexico and the sick bastards who buy children for pleasure in the wilds of Texas.

But rest assured, if you like Brill Wingfield he’s going to be around awhile. Just like I hope you are.

Here, I made this…

Here, I made this

I read a blog by Seth Godin about the role some people play in society. They are the makers, the doers the ones who put themselves out there over and over again for judgement and ridicule and sometimes a connection. You might be thinking artist, or a writer like me, but it could be an invention or a product or anything that requires that person make something and release it to the world for judgement.

HAve you ever thought, “I’d like to start a non-profit” or “I’d like to build a house” or “I want to (insert your desire here.)

What stopped you?

What kept you from taking the first step?

Or if you started why did you stop?

Today I’m hosting a book promotion for a science fiction novel I wrote.

You can grab SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION for free and help others find it. If you read it and like it, you can drop a review on Amazon. Thirty words or less.

http://amzn.to/2cXtmyh

Where do you come up with all those insane ideas? Are you crazy?

They put out a warning this week. A cluster of mini quakes has triggered a warning that the big one is on the way. I lived in Los Angeles from 1997 – 2001 and each year that came and went without a quake, the warnings grew more dire. It’s not an “if” its “WHEN” they said. A matter of when. The big one would make Northridge look like a cake walk, and LA isn’t prepared for it. Buildings will tumble, freeways will fall, gas lines will snap and the sparks from fallen power lines will burn the town down. The broken water mains will prevent firefighters from stopping the flames and reporters from AP and social media junkies will capture images of cascading fountains next to a burning building to highlight the futility of second guessing mother nature.

If the quake moves off shore, it could create a tsunami that washes through Venice Beach and Marina Del Rey flooding tens of thousands of residents and forcing them to flee inward. Crumbled freeways and roadways will be impassible and people will roam in giant groups with a mob mentality.

There will be instances of bravery and heroic sacrifices, people banding together to dig small children and puppies from the rubble juxtaposed against the rooting and looting that always occurs when disaster strikes Southern California. Far better to get a new flat screen than save a neighbor. Besides, the electricity will only be out for a couple of weeks.

When I was in LA and pitching to producers, I went through a Science Fiction kick with disaster movies. Hollywood recently put out SAN ANDREAS with the Rock and I thought that was a pretty good depiction of how things might go down.

But it made me remember a story I had in a drawer.

That’s the great thing about having written for so long and just shoving stuff in plastic bins and drawers. I’ve got a huge body of work just waiting to be dug up, polished and released. The platforms finally caught up with me and I wish I hadn’t wasted four years of this in corporate America helping a company grow that ended up laying me off. But you make your choices and you takes your chances. During those four years I still wrote.

I just didn’t publish on Amazon or use the KDP program to its full advantage.

But back to disaster #scifi.

I wrote a script about the #spaceshuttle losing power and hitting the #International Space Station, knocking it into a degrading orbit. But before it crashed into the bay off the coast of LA, creating a tsunami and earthquake word got out and created panic as people tried to escape the basin. There were equal parts DEEP IMPACT in it and I’m not sure if the science was correct, which #geeks can pick on me for using my imagination in thinking the #spacecraft could create that much damage.

I published SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION last week and it got me turned on for some of my sci fi work so I dug the script up and decided to put it on the working list. I literally have work for the next three years if I published one novel every two weeks. Seriously, you should see my Scrivener table in Excel.

The hardest part of the whole process is to not get down on myself for missed opportunities. Like the announcement about the BIG ONE this week. If I had published EVASION prior to now, I could be tapping into that conversation and finding new readers for the work. But I get that a lot. I bet you do too. Have you ever had an idea, but failed to act on it, and then saw a version of your idea somewhere else? You think to yourself or maybe even tell your friends, “Hey, I thought of that.” It happens to me all of the time.

What can you do about it?

Whine? Sure. But that won’t get the job done. The best bet is to be prepared and keep working. Kind of like the folks in LA.

It’s going to happen. Deal with it. Save water. Get easy to prepare food and solar candles. Don’t forget a bucket for a toilet. Have a plan. Follow the plan.

Same thing for writing novels. People are going to have similar ideas. We all watch the same media and get exposed to the same stuff. The key execution and following the plan.

I hope you plan to download SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION. It’s going to be .99 cents starting on Monday. If you sign up at my website, I’ll send you MOON MEN for free and let you know about all my books as they come out.

Maybe it’s in the Top 10 Worst Places to Live because…

I drove down to Pine Bluff to find my grandmother’s gravestone last week. She was buried next to my grandfather in the oldest cemetery in the city, wedged between civil war soldier’s and pioneers. It had been six years since I had been to the graveyard, six years I had roamed the country and world and this was my first trip back “home.”

I drove down Poplar Street before it passed the old Sears Building and the Little League baseball diamond and stopped in front of an old two room building. The white paint was chipped and peeling, the giant plate glass window was duct taped, and the lettering on the sign so faded it was hard to make out the name. But the candy stripe pole next to the padlocked door was the same. The Barber shop.

My grandfather had gone here for twenty years before the Barber got Parkinson’s and couldn’t cut hair anymore. He took my brother and I twice in the 70’s.

For those of you who don’t remember that decade, my mom was a hippie. Long hair, granola and peace man. She let our hair grow out. My grandfather hated it. So when I was seven he took us to the Barber Shop and we waited our turn.

The smell was dusty and antiseptic, a combination of cleaning alcohol he used on the combs and cheap deodorant the barber used. There were magazines from the 60’s and beyond scattered on two tables, and a four foot tall Coke machine that only served 6 ounce bottles. Papaw promised to buy us each a Coke if we were good, and so we were. Coke was a treat we didn’t often get.

The barber finished off a customer in his 60’s, pocketed the folded bill the man handed to him and ushered me into the chair. The cushion was leather and worn, soft from years of sliding in and out, the brown color faded to tan in the impression of derriere. He tossed the sheet around my neck and cinched it tight. I know he made jokes or asked about my plans, because that’s what older people do to young kids to make them feel more mature.

My hair was below my shoulders, parted down the middle and brushed back on both side. He grabbed a buzzing razor and in seconds took it down high and tight.

It was a perfect haircut for a youth from the 50’s. My Papaw loved it.

He sat me in the waiting room chair while I watched my five year old brother get scalped too. I kept staring in the mirror at the strange kid looking back at me, a pale skin of hairline etched around his head.

It was over in less than ten minutes for the two of us. We got our Cokes, the kind made with real sugar and the original formula that so many of us remember and still dream about. Papaw gave the barber two folded bills in a handshake, and two nickels for bottle deposits and we left.

My mom cried when she saw us.

She screamed at my grandfather.

We moved away to Birmingham a couple of months later. Looking back through the lens of time I can see it was punishment for the haircut, for taking the control out of her hands and maybe even a hippie act of rebellion against authority. We moved from there to Atlanta, then back to Pine Bluff again a few more months after that.

Maybe my mom just wanted us out of town until our hair grew back a little.

 

Funny how memories are sparked by a song, or smell or the sight of a dilapidated building on the side of the road. I dropped my car in gear and drove toward the cemetery.

Moon Men Chapter 13

Hitchhiking is a lost art form. When cars hit their golden age and highways criss crossed the land, a daring young soul could stick out their thumb and catch a lift almost anywhere. Then Freeways were built, and cars got faster to keep up with the wide open road. Faster cars meant less opportunity for hitching, and toss in a couple of dyed in the wool serial killers, or at least urban legends about unwary travellers either catching said ride or picking up the killer and the result is a fast moving population who will barely drift away from the shoulder to create enough room to pass, let alone pull to the side to let someone in.

Hitching in the desert was worse.

Open highway stretched for miles as Jodi and Rob marched along the dusty shoulder. The advantage of the emptiness was they could see anyone coming for miles.

It also meant they could see for miles that no one was coming.

“The Gray’s sent an ambassador to make first contact,” said Rob. “We shot down the ship, tortured the survivors.”

“Great first impression, “ Jodi grunted. “Foam dummies my ass.”

“The media always gets it wrong. In 1976, an invasion force was headed our way. We were toast. But they got in a fight with the Nordes instead. It saved us.”

“Who are the Gray’s?

“They send scout ships here all the time. Recon us. They picked me up once, we started talking and they told me all of it.

She glanced at him. He doesn’t look like much of anything.

“Why you?”

“Usually you hear about bizarre experiments-”

“Sex with them. Anal probes.”

“Right. Well, I never had it. I mean, never with them,” Rob sputtered.

“So I gathered.”

She smirked. It drove him a little crazy. It was the kind of smirk he’d seen his whole life, from jocks, from girls in bars, and the bartenders who watched him burn out and fail.

“I mean, I’ve had sex before. Plenty of it.”

Did she imagine him puff out his chest a little.

“ Plenty of girls in the Niagara falls area, right.”

“There was that one trip,” he said.

An old Chevy pick up truck passed them and pulled off to the side of the road a couple of hundred yards ahead. It was covered with a thick layer of desert dust probably from the era when hitchhiking was the norm. Jodi started jogging for the truck. Rob hustled to keep up.

 

If you like what you’re reading and don’t want to wait for the rest to pop up on the blog, you can grab a FREE Copy HERE and find out what happens to Rob and Jodi.  This link takes you to Amazon where you can download your own copy.  Check out the first page where you can sign up to get a copy of EPOCH, my futuristic sci fi thriller just for joining my mailing list.  Then, I’ll send you free stories and updates on my next series in the works; PHALANX, MOONFALL and GALAXY DEFENDERS. I hope you join the party.

 

Moon Men Chapter 12

They hit the Interstate exit and Jodi swung the truck to the East.

“Think we were followed?” she asked.

“They know where we’re going.”

“This might have tracker or kill switch in it,” she said.

He shook his head.

“They would have used it already.”

“What’s going on? How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“The Rambo Terminator action at the airport.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You- killing aliens like some gymnastic ninja alien hunter?”

“Gymnastic Ninja Alien Hunters? I think that was a Z movie on Scify one year.”

She studied him a minute. He wasn’t kidding. Or maybe he was kidding about the movie, but there was something different in the way he held himself. He looked almost deflated.

“What do you remember?

“We were at the airport, the men in black showed up, and-

He stopped talking and stared at her with wide eyes.

“Nordes? Who are they?”

Rob rubbed his face and leaned back into the seat.

“Bad guys. Of galactic proportions. The Bad Guys.”

She waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“It’s happening.”

“What’s happening?

He glanced at her, then looked back at the highway as it stretched behind them.

“I told you I was abducted, a lot. I got picked up by the Grays. That was their ship in the desert. They’ve been visiting since 1947.”

“Roswell?”

He nodded.

“We need to get out of this truck. We attract too much attention.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“Get off this Interstate. We’re too easy to find. That’s our priority.”

“And then?”

 

If you like what you’re reading and don’t want to wait for the rest to pop up on the blog, you can grab a FREE Copy HERE and find out what happens to Rob and Jodi.  This link takes you to Amazon where you can download your own copy.  Check out the first page where you can sign up to get a copy of EPOCH, my futuristic sci fi thriller just for joining my mailing list.  Then, I’ll send you free stories and updates on my next series in the works; PHALANX, MOONFALL and GALAXY DEFENDERS. I hope you join the party.

 

Moon Men Chapter 11

The hanger was a large cavernous space at least a football field wide and two football fields deep. Plastic panels in the roof were spaced every ten feet so to take advantage of the sun and natural light, supplemented by Xenon work lights strung up between the skylights.

Rob stopped halfway through the door.

A large alien spaceship hovered in the middle of the hanger, surrounded by four black F14’s.

Two Troop Transports, Four government issue sedan’s and two Black Suburbans are dwarfed underneath the flying saucer.

“Shit,” he said.

“Is that?”

“Impressed,” said the scarred man. A name patch on his black commando gear read RIGGS, though that wasn’t his real name. It was good enough for this assignment.

“It’s not ours…yet,” he continued.

“It’s real?” Jodi asked Rob.

“Told you.”

He blanched and moved to cower behind her.

“Are you hit?”

Rob nods toward the underbelly of the ship and tries to cower lower.

“Nordes,” he said.

Jodi turned back to the ship as a thin opening spread on the hull. Five tall thin blond humanoids dressed in dull black jumpsuits march in lockstep out the saucer.

Each of them was armed with wicked looking oversized blaster rifles.

They could have been clones since they all looked exactly alike. Not quite Viking or Norse, though she could see why he called them that. There was a Scandinavian leaning to the way they looked.

“What’s a Norde?” she asked.

Riggs grabbed Rob by the collar and jerked him from behind Jodi.

“A Norde is our friend.”

He dragged Rob toward the alien war party.

“And they want to talk to you.”

Jodi reached for Rob, but a Commando grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.

“Don’t move,” he said.

Riggs led Rob out to the middle of the hanger and abandoned him on the concrete floor. The Commandos backed away to line the wall in a single file.

“Crow!” Jodi screamed.

The Nordes float toward Rob and surround him.

The leader raised his blaster rifle and aimed it at Rob’s head.

Rob lept at him and jerked the rifle from his hands.

The laser made a fizzing sound as red bolts shot around the circle. Rob shot two Nordes and leaped over the leader. He landed and blasted a third alien.

Jodi grabbed the Commando holding her arm and flipped him across her back. She jammed a knee into his throat and took his weapon.

Riggs shouted and aimed his rifle at her.

Rob turned the blast rifle onto the Commando’s. He sliced through the men lined up against the wall before they can shoot back. Riggs ran for the open doorway firing over his shoulder as his boots slammed on the pavement. The Norde leader retreated to the hovering saucer.

A Norde popped up and fired at Rob. He sidestepped the blast bolt and shot back, pegged the alien in the chest.

The hanger was silent. There was no one left to shoot, but Jodi scooped up a couple of magazines from the Commando’s slumped against the wall.

Rob grabbed her hand and dragged her up.

“Come on,” he growled. His voice was different, lower.

They ran for one of the Suburbans and he shoved her behind the wheel.

“Drive.”

Rob climbed in the back seat and lowered the passenger side window.

“Where did you?!”

“Go! Go!” he screamed.

The bottom of the saucer split in half and Nordes spilled out like angry hornets.

Rob leaned out of the window and opened fire with the blaster rifle. Each shot fizzed through the air and nailed the target.

Jodi gunned the Suburban and raced through the open hangar doors.

They bounced up the dirt road toward the gate.

“Gate!” she screamed.

Rob dropped the rifle and ducked inside of the truck.

The Suburban crashed through the gate and sent metal flying. Rob climbed over the front seat.

“We may need that rifle,” said Jodi.

An explosion rocked the truck. Jodi gripped the wheel and fought to maintain control.

“Kill switch,” he said.

She nodded and concentrated on the road.

 

 

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