Page 4 of Star Mates

They had parked side by side and Emmarie raised a hand to thank Sam, then she slid in her car and started it up. The engine idled as she waited for it to warm up enough to provide some heat. Sam lowered his window and gestured for her to do the same.

“Everything okay?”

“Just waiting for some heat,” she replied. “Go ahead, I’m right behind you.”

He nodded and then gave a wave as he drove down the road.

She thought about turning on the radio, but she hated the disembodied voice of the host that segued each song, not to mention the obnoxious blare of the commercials. She leaned her head back, staring up into the starry night sky, enjoying the silent moment as she waited for the temperature gauge to climb. Then she slipped into gear and headed home.

Emmarie carefully drove down the dirt lane that led to the church, mindful of the Chevy’s delicate undercarriage and the several areas of bouncy ground. She had owned the car since age sixteen, and it had been a decade old then. In the ensuing years in her possession, she had babied it, and she was proud of how it still got her from point A to point B safely and efficiently.

The Chevy had been the last present her parents had bought for her before they had died in a car accident a week later. Coming home from a restaurant after celebrating their anniversary, the police had told her usually steadfast parents had imbibed. They had never felt the impact with the tree.

At sixteen Emmarie Tice had become an emancipated minor because there wasn’t anyone else. No siblings, no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and her grandparents had died years before. The local judge had taken pity on her and given her charge of her life instead of forcing her into the state foster system that would have required she relocate to St. Louis or Jefferson City. The locals knew Emmarie, had known her parents, and helped her as much as possible in the beginning. Margaret Burnowski had approached her about singing to her husband’s piano accompaniment at a local wedding, and from that day forward she had herself a career.

Emmarie kept her eyes on the road, but something nagged at her, so she looked on each side of the road. Then she glanced up and saw an unusual triangle of round lights hovering a little in front of her car. Couldn’t be a plane or a helicopter because the lights hung suspended too low in the sky. And as she continued down the lane, she realized the lights were traveling with her and matching her speed.

Drones? she wondered.

She stopped the car and stared up at them, noticing they had stopped with her. She rolled down her window to try and hear a thrum of engines, but the lights were silent, or at least too far up for her to hear anything other than her own engine.

Unease touched her spine and so she stepped on the gas again, rolling up the window as she drove. The strange triangle of lights moved with her once more, and fear filled her. Emmarie pushed the accelerator a little harder and the Chevy immediately jumped forward, her knuckles gripping the steering wheel tightly. She didn’t glance skyward, refusing to focus on anything but getting home.

But that triangle was hard to ignore. Sweat beaded on her skin and she reached over to cut the heater then rubbed her forehead clear of the moisture. Thoughts spun in her mind, but she dismissed them out of sheer reasoning. Those lights simply had to be a spotlight of some kind. Perhaps at the school? Was there something happening at the football field this evening? Emmarie wracked her brain trying to remember if she had heard of any such event.

Perhaps a local warning system had flashed up in the atmosphere when bad weather approached. But how did they get the spotlights to reflect if there weren’t any clouds? And how come she couldn’t see the origin of the lights?

She screamed as a bright white light suddenly shot in front of her car. She twisted the Chevy’s wheels to the left and the car spun one-eighty as her feet jammed on the brakes.

Emmarie threw the car in park and jumped out, turning to see that a red light now pinpointed on the ground, like a laser pointer. She inched around it, looking upward, and realized that it originated from the center of the triangle. Slowly, she backed away from it.

Still, she refused to believe what her mind was screaming at her. Emmarie looked around the dark wheat fields for the perpetrators playing this colossal joke on her because…it had to be a joke. Or have a perfectly logical explanation. She spun in a circle, looking for anything, anyone. Looking for help. But the only thing that greeted her was the whisper of the wind through the stalks.

The light moved toward her. Emmarie turned and ran. Unfortunately, she was not very athletic, and the light moved very fast.

Her mind went blank. Planning, strategy, thoughts of what to do disappeared. Adrenaline pumped out fear and pushed her onward, but no matter how far, how fast, the light caught up with her.

Her last coherent thought registered the searing heat that scorched her skin.

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