by R. T. Martin
While Luke and Maddie caught their breath, Kayla approached Orlando. “Are you okay?” she asked. “That—that wasn’t your fault.”
Orlando sighed. “I didn’t realize things were that bad,” he said quietly. Then he shook his head. “That’s a lie. I knew things were bad—I just . . . I didn’t want to have to deal with it.” He looked at her through his reflection and gave a sarcastic smile. “I told myself it’s not my job to worry about that. I thought if I just kept fiddling, trying to figure out a way to bring back the power, it would be enough . . .”
“Hey,” Maddie said, joining them by the windows. “Like Kayla said, it’s not your fault. No one knew how to prepare for something like this.” Kayla was surprised to hear Maddie, the sarcastic pessimist of their group, offer comfort to a stranger like that.
Orlando turned around. “I guess,” he mumbled.
“Let’s not worry about that right now,” Kayla said. “Let’s focus on figuring out what we can do.” She looked at Orlando. “I’m Kayla, and this is Luke and Maddie.”
“Is there anywhere near the airport where we can find food?” Luke asked. “A grocery store or something?”
“Closest one’s a few miles out,” Orlando said. “But I don’t think anyone here is itching to walk around outside when the Visitors could show up at any moment. Besides, in a situation like this, my guess is the place has already been emptied.”
“Is there anywhere else there might be more food?” Kayla asked.
“You’re asking the wrong guy,” he replied. “I’m just trying to get something electrical to start working again. I figured I’d start with that keypad back there and work my way up to one of those.” He pointed to the dead planes.
Kayla stared out the window, desperately trying to think of a solution, but all she could see were the dead aircraft. Then, something came to her. “Can you get into the planes?”
“Yeah, sure . . .” Orlando said. “If a plane’s power goes out, the emergency doors unlock. If I grab a ladder, I could get you into one of those in five minutes. Why?”
Kayla turned back toward her friends. “Let’s go talk to Ms. Pollack. I’ve got an idea.” She looked at Orlando. “You’re coming too.”
Chapter 3
“It’s not a permanent fix, but it should hold us for another few days.” Kayla spoke to Ms. Pollack, but she was aware that others were listening. Several other people who’d been on their flight were still sitting nearby. “Even if we can’t eat the frozen meals, Orlando says that a lot of the food stored in the planes is non-perishable.”
A woman wearing a flight attendant outfit cleared her throat. “I’d like to help. I can find where the food is stored. We’ll just need help carrying everything.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Steph was seated a few rows away. “We have no idea where the Visitors are or what they might see. What would you do if they spotted you?”
“Run back here.” Kayla shrugged. “Or we could sit here, do nothing, and go hungry, if that’s what you prefer.”
“It’s dangerous,” Steph spat back. “We’ve been staying inside for a reason. Some evil race of alien freaks is out there, and if one sees you on the ground, it’s going to vaporize you or something.”
“You think it’s safer to just stay inside and run out of food?” Kayla crossed her arms.
The sound of glass shattering cut through the conversation, and everyone snapped their heads toward the hall between gates. A man had just wrapped a towel around his hand and punched through the front of a vending machine. He slowly removed the shards of glass that remained, letting them drop to the floor. Once a big enough hole was open, he reached in and pulled out as many candy bars and bags of chips as he could carry.
“Yeah,” Kayla said sarcastically, turning her head back toward Steph. “It’s a lot safer in here.”
Steph’s eyes narrowed, but she stayed silent.
Ms. Pollack looked hesitant. “I can see how it would be worth the risk. But I don’t think you kids should be the ones who do it. Why don’t we gather any adults who are willing to give it a shot and—”
“Ms. Pollack, I know we were your responsibility during this field trip,” Kayla cut in. “But things have changed.”
“You’re still minors,” her teacher insisted.
“But we’re not little kids, and treating us like we are will only make things harder. I’m not going to sit on my hands if there’s a chance I can be useful. I’m going out there.”
“Me too,” said Maddie quickly.
She and Kayla both looked at Luke. “Uh,” said Luke, “me three I guess.”
“Well I’m not going out there,” Steph said loudly.
“No one asked you to,” Kayla snapped. “In fact I’m sure Ms. Pollack will be thrilled that you’re staying put.”
Their teacher sighed. “All right, that’s enough. Anyone who wants to go can go—but please be very careful and listen to the adults.” She gave Orlando an intense look. “Don’t let anything happen to these kids.”
He nodded solemnly.
A cluster of people, including several other students from Kayla’s choir, gathered around one of the gates. Orlando led the way through the airport.
“The hangar has some storage areas that have food for planes in them, but it’s farther away, across the tarmac,” Orlando said. He walked quickly, forcing Kayla and the rest of the group to jog just to keep up. “We can start with the closest plane—see what’s still on it.”
When they reached the gate that held the closest plane, Kayla expected them to just go through the jet bridge like passengers usually did to board. Orlando explained that those doors were operated electronically. They would have to go outside, up, and across the wing to enter the plane.
They took a service entrance down from the gate.
Orlando quickly found a ladder and propped it against the wing, instructing two of the other choir members to hold it steady. He, Kayla, Maddie, and the flight attendant climbed up. Using a lever on the outside of the door, Orlando managed to pop it open. The flight attendant went in first, heading straight for the back. Kayla and Maddie followed. Orlando opened a few cabinets and what looked like a fridge, revealing packages of snacks and fruit. There were beverages too.
They formed an assembly line, handing stacks of food to each other, moving it all toward the terminal. As people inside the airport saw what the group was doing, more ventured out and began pitching in. The assembly line got longer and faster. They emptied the first plane, then the second, then the third, gradually moving farther along the tarmac.
Even with their progress, Steph hadn’t been completely wrong—Kayla found she didn’t like being outside. She kept glancing nervously at the sky and thinking, Please, please don’t let them appear now. The farther they got from the terminal, the stronger her fear became. She felt very aware of how far she would have to run to get to safety. And it wasn’t just her. She saw other people darting their heads in every direction, no doubt looking for the same strange circles of light that she was.
Once they’d emptied all the planes, Orlando led the group to the hangar with the food storage containers. People began wheeling carts of food across the tarmac to the airport. Kayla was one of the last to grab something.
As she picked up a box, she thought she heard something—voices shouting in the distance. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Orlando stepped outside to see what the commotion was.
“Come on!” Orlando came running back into the freezer. “Leave it! We have to go—now!”
Kayla didn’t ask why. She already knew what was wrong—it was the Visitors.
Chapter 4
Kayla didn’t waste any time. She dropped the box and ran toward Orlando. He waited for her to reach him, and together they raced back toward the airport.
People were shouting all over the tarmac, but they were so far away that Kayla couldn’t make out what they were saying. In the dark of dusk, she could only make
out tiny silhouettes sprinting as fast they could.
She was holding Orlando back. It was obvious he wasn’t running at full speed. She was about to tell him to go on without her when she noticed he was watching something over the top of her head.
She shot a quick glance behind her and saw a circle of pulsing white lights coming through the clouds. They were moving far too quickly to be planes . . . or anything human-made. They were headed right toward the airport.
Kayla pumped her legs faster until they felt like they were going numb. She looked back at the hangar. They’d come a long way, but the airport still seemed farther than she could run.
The lights were getting closer.
She stumbled and felt one foot catch on the other. Before she hit the ground, Orlando’s hand grabbed the back of her shirt and righted her, preventing the fall. “Keep going!” he shouted.
The airport was getting closer, but the lights were nearly over them, much bigger and brighter now. We’re not going to make it, Kayla thought.
“Truck!” Orlando shouted to her. He pointed at a truck with a cylinder on the back, the type that was usually loaded with gasoline.
When they were close enough, Orlando got down on his hands and knees, crawling underneath it. Kayla did the same, just barely getting under as the lights in the sky reached the edge of the tarmac.
They lay on their bellies beneath the truck as the lights slowed and started to hover, moving over the airport at a snail’s pace.
The truck was definitely filled with gasoline. The smell was so strong it was making Kayla light-headed. She became painfully aware of how flammable it was. What if the Visitors had weapons and decided to fire on the airport? The truck could blow up at any second.
The lights stopped. They hovered above the gasoline truck, creating an artificial and eerie daylight. Kayla held her breath, anything to prevent the lights from knowing where she was.
As quickly as the ship had shown up, it left. The lights moved slowly at first, then picked up speed and sped off into the distance. Kayla and Orlando stayed under the truck until the lights had completely vanished over the horizon. Even then, they stayed for an additional minute just for good measure.
When Orlando finally nodded to Kayla, they crawled out slowly as if a sudden motion might summon the light back. They quietly hurried toward the airport. A few others came out from hiding beneath planes, service trucks, even inside a luggage cart. Maddie and Luke emerged from inside a shuttle bus as Kayla and Orlando passed.
No one said a word until they were back in the safety of the airport, but once they were inside, the whole building was filled with the sound of people anxiously whispering to one another. Kayla and her friends, along with Orlando, made their way to the gate where Ms. Pollack was nervously pacing back and forth by the windows.
“Oh my god,” she breathed as soon as she caught sight of them. “Are you guys all right? I saw what happened.”
“We’re fine,” Luke said. “Really.”
Ms. Pollack gave them a quick squeeze before turning to Orlando, who had slumped back into a chair and thrown an arm across his face. He was still breathing heavily.
“You said you would keep them safe!”
“Hey,” Orlando panted, “they’re back and all in one piece, aren’t they?”
“He did keep us safe, Ms. Pollack,” Kayla said. “When the lights showed up, he made sure I found a spot to hide.”
Ms. Pollack’s face softened. She nodded quickly and wiped at her eyes, trying to collect herself. “I’m just glad everyone is okay.”
“I hope you’re happy.” Steph, who had been sitting in a row of chairs behind Ms. Pollack, leaned over the back of her seat to face them. “You put all those people in danger.”
“Everyone made it back, didn’t they?” Kayla said, exhaustion coming through in her voice. “And we have enough food for a while now.”
Kayla collapsed in a chair on the other side of Steph’s. “I told you it was too risky to go out there,” Steph said. “What if that thing had taken you all?”
Kayla shrugged. “It didn’t.”
“It could have,” she spat back.
“Did you see how big that thing was? It could have vaporized the whole airport if it wanted to,” Kayla said. “At least we did something productive instead of sitting here waiting to be rescued.”
“Sure, go ahead, play the hero. That’s all you really wanted anyway.”
Kayla closed her eyes, feeling far too tired to get into a confrontation. “We have the food we needed. If we have to go outside again, we’ll deal with that when it happens. Hopefully, we won’t have to.”
Steph didn’t reply, but Kayla heard her angry footsteps on the carpet as she walked away.
Kayla kept her eyes closed and began to doze off to the sounds of everyone around her speaking quietly. That night she slept better than she had since they’d gotten to this airport.
Chapter 5
Kayla woke up to bright light behind her eyelids. Her heart immediately started pounding in her chest.
She scrambled to sit up, only to realize it was just the morning sunlight coming in through the airport windows. She felt heat rush into her cheeks as she realized she’d freaked out for nothing. It wasn’t the Visitors coming back for them.
She combed her fingers through her hair and glanced around to make sure no one had noticed. But everyone around her was either still asleep or just waking up themselves. Maddie was stretched out across a few chairs with her eyes closed, and Luke was lying on the floor using his backpack as a pillow and a sweatshirt as a blanket.
The mood of the crowd seemed noticeably better. Kayla looked around and saw people happily munching on snacks from the airplanes.
She had just stood up to stretch when a woman walked up to her.
“Are you the girl who first suggested we collect the food from the planes?”
Kayla blinked at her, not really sure what to say. “Uh, I guess. I mean, a lot of people helped.”
“I just wanted to thank you. That was an excellent idea.”
Kayla felt herself blush. “I’m sure someone would have thought of it eventually.”
“Well, you thought of it first,” the woman said, smiling. “Smart girl. Please tell everyone who helped that they have our thanks.”
As the woman walked away, Kayla spotted Steph and her friends sitting across the waiting area. They’d apparently heard everything the woman had said. Steph made a show of rolling her eyes to her friends.
Kayla chose to ignore her. She walked a few rows over and found Ms. Pollack in a chair with her head propped on her hand. At first, she couldn’t tell if the teacher was sleeping, but when Kayla got closer, her head popped up.
“Kayla,” she said with a tired smile. “Good morning. I’m sure you’re hungry. Airport personnel brought all the food to the food court. They’re handing it out there.”
Kayla turned around to see Luke and Maddie both sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. “Breakfast?” she asked them.
“You read my mind,” Luke said. Maddie nodded through a long yawn.
A few of the remaining airport employees had volunteered to watch over and distribute the rations of food. They handed each person in line a small pack of crackers, a piece of fruit, and a bottle of juice.
“We need to conserve what we have,” the employee said. “It may need to last a while.”
Kayla and her friends sat at a table in one of the abandoned restaurants. It wasn’t the most filling of breakfasts, but it was a relief to have something to eat at all. They’d forgotten to eat before falling asleep the night before, so they wolfed down the food quickly.
The McKenzie-Rowe airport felt much the same as when they’d entered it—people leaned up against walls or curled up in chairs with a book, just waiting to get out of there. There was one noticeable difference. No one seemed to be sitting near the windows. Apparently Kayla wasn’t the only one who was feeling a little jumpy after the
Visitor incident last night.
As if reading her mind, Luke asked, “What do we do if the Visitors come back?”
“Stay inside,” Maddie said through a mouthful of chewed apple. “Hope they leave again.”
“Next time we might not be so lucky,” Luke replied.
“There’s not much we can do,” Kayla said. She fiddled with her bottle of apple juice, hoping her friends didn’t notice the anxiety in her voice. “Without any information, all we can do is wait.”
“We’re trapped,” Maddie said. “We can’t go outside. We can’t fight them. We can’t even find out if someone is fighting them somewhere else.”
They finished eating but were careful not to drink all the juice. They sat around for another half hour before they couldn’t stand watching everyone else nervously sitting around. They decided to walk through the entire airport and explore. On their third lap, they found Orlando where they had first met him. He was working on the mess of wires again.
“Any luck?” Kayla asked him as they approached.
He kept working as he answered, “Not so much. I’ve tried replacing every part of the thing, but it still won’t turn on.” He looked over his shoulder at them. “You kids ever do that science experiment where you make a potato light up a lightbulb?” They nodded, and he tapped the wall with the screwdriver. “I’m about two minutes away from trying that.”
“What happened?” Luke asked. “How did we lose power everywhere like that?”
“Best guess,” Orlando said, “an EMP.”
“A what?” Maddie asked.
“Electromagnetic pulse,” Orlando clarified. “It fries the power. That’s why everything shut off at once. It also explains why I can’t get anything to start working again.”
Before they could ask any other questions, a girl from their choir ran up to them. “You guys need to come back right now,” she urged. “People are talking about leaving.”