The Field Trip

by R. T. Martin

  “I doubt you’ll be the last one,” Maddie said. “Everybody’s wound pretty tight right now.”

  “But we’ll get through it,” Kayla added.

  One by one, the students fell asleep. Orlando had first watch. He sat by the front door with his chin propped on his fist, looking outside. Kayla appreciated that he was trying to keep watch, but she wondered how effective of a lookout he would be. She could barely see anything. The moon only provided so much light, and it wasn’t enough for her. They’d have to hope the Visitors’ ships didn’t have a stealth mode.

  She tried to fall asleep, but it didn’t seem like it was going to happen. Even as tired as she was, her mind refused to turn off. It ran through an endless cycle, listing the possible ways this plan could go wrong. The shelter might not be there. We could run out of food. Someone could get injured. The Visitors might—

  “Kayla, you awake?” someone whispered.

  She opened her eyes to see Steph sitting across from her. “What do you want?” she whispered back.

  Steph scowled at her. “I’m trying to say thank you.”

  Kayla’s eyebrows raised in surprise. Steph sighed and leaned back against the shelves behind her. “I guess I sort of panicked back there. People were freaking out. I didn’t know what to tell them, and . . .” She paused, and her voice lost its harsh edge. “You managed to calm everyone down, so . . . thank you.”

  Kayla didn’t know what to say. This was the last thing she expected to hear from Steph, of all people. “Well . . . someone had to do something,” she said a little too harshly.

  Steph crossed her arms. “Hey, it’s not my fault that everyone started freaking out. We knew the shelter was twenty or thirty miles away from the airport. It’s not like we were going to get there in one day. Just because people had unrealistic expectations . . .”

  “Oh, and assuming that if we just keep walking vaguely north we’ll find a magical military shelter with everything we need—supplies and transportation and ways to communicate with the outside world—isn’t an unrealistic expectation?” Even though Kayla had defended her earlier, she was still frustrated Steph for not thinking things through back at the airport.

  “The shelter will be there,” Steph cut her off, standing up and clearly struggling to keep her voice at a whisper. “We just need to go a little farther.”

  Kayla grunted and rolled over so that she was facing away from Steph. “You’d better be right.”

  Chapter 9

  In the morning, Orlando led the way down remote county roads. He said it would be best to avoid the highways because of the all the dead cars that must be clogging them.

  Walking in a loose cluster, the choir kept to the center of the quiet road. By the afternoon, they were surrounded by fields of corn and soy. When they got hungry, they stopped for lunch by a fence where some cows had gathered.

  “You really don’t understand how much stuff runs on electricity until it’s all gone,” Luke said, looking at his dead watch again.

  “What?” Maddie asked, stuffing a few slices of an orange into her mouth.

  “Planes, cars, computers, phones, vending machines, refrigerators, watches,” Luke replied. “We kind of took it all for granted.”

  “I never took planes for granted,” Maddie said. “Even if the lights turn back on, I’m never going on one of those again.”

  “I mean, that was just bad luck. I flew so many times when aliens didn’t attack, and everything turned out fine.”

  “Still,” Maddie said. “I think I’m done with the sky.”

  “Let’s just get home,” Kayla said. “When . . . and if the power comes back, then we can try to get Maddie back on a plane.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Maddie said.

  The mood of the group seemed to pick up as they walked. Maybe it was because they hadn’t seen any evidence of the Visitors in over a day. Maybe they were just sick of silence and hushed tones. But people chatted more naturally and cheerfully now. Except Steph. Kayla watched her walk in silence. Whenever someone spoke to her, she smiled, nodded, and brushed them off.

  Maddie and Luke were on round seventy-three of their game of two-person rock-paper-scissors when Kayla finally decided to speak with Steph. She actually tried to be decent to me last night, she thought. And I was kind of a jerk about it. The least I can do is make sure she’s okay.

  “Hey,” she said when she’d caught up to where Steph was walking.

  Steph eyed her. “What?”

  “Sorry I was . . . short with you last night.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Are you doing all right?” Kayla asked. “You seem anxious.”

  Steph looked around before leaning in and whispering, “It’s just . . . what if the shelter isn’t there?”

  “I thought you were sure about it.”

  “I’m sure there was a plan to create this emergency shelter in the event of a disaster,” Steph said. “But what if they weren’t able to get it set up? What if the military went somewhere else?”

  For a second, Kayla wanted to scold her. She wanted to remind Steph that earlier she’d had no trouble steamrolling over everyone else’s doubts. It was a little late to start second-guessing herself. Before the words popped out of her mouth, though, Kayla thought about how often her own mind had changed in the last couple of days. Steph’s worries weren’t a sign of weakness or bad planning—they were just the natural result of being human, being scared, and not wanting to put other people in danger. Even if those instincts were kicking in a little late for Steph, Kayla couldn’t blame her for them.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she told Steph. “It won’t change the situation. All we can do now is see what we find once we get there.”

  “Maybe we should turn back,” Steph suggested.

  “Turning around is probably the worst thing we could do,” Kayla said firmly. “We’ve covered so much ground—if we give up now, it’ll be a waste. Look, worst-case scenario, we get to the spot where the shelter is supposed to be, and it’s not there.” It wasn’t exactly the worst-case scenario, but Kayla didn’t think bringing up alien abduction would be helpful. “Then we can turn back, or head for the next-closest town and see if the situation’s any better there. But giving up in the middle of the trip won’t do any good. We would just end up back at the airport, wondering if we could’ve made it to safety if we’d kept going.”

  Steph didn’t look much more at ease, but she didn’t snap back at Kayla either.

  “You had a good plan,” Kayla assured her. “You were right—we couldn’t just wait around in the airport. It’s easy to stress about what happens if the shelter isn’t there, but what if it is? Then you’re a hero.”

  Steph finally looked her in the eye and gave her a small smile. “Thanks.”

  Kayla nodded and slowed down, allowing Steph to walk ahead while Maddie and Luke caught up.

  They continued walking all afternoon, over one hill, then the next. The sun was getting low in the sky, and people were starting to talk about making camp for the night.

  “Just one more hill,” Ms. Pollack kept saying. “Let’s cover as much ground as we can.”

  One of the girls ran to the top of the next hill and turned around excitedly. “It’s here!” she shouted, pointing toward the other side of the hill.

  Though Kayla—and likely everyone else—was exhausted, she jogged to the top of the hill to see for herself. There it was on the edge of a cornfield. Dozens of green tents were assembled in a perfect grid, with forest green trucks and jeeps between some of them. There was no question—they were looking at a military camp.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Ms. Pollack said, running a hand over her face. “Let’s get down there!”

  They all started running toward the tents. As they got closer, the students began to slow. Everyone at the front of the group stopped in a line.

  As Kayla joined them at the bottom of the hill, her stomach dropped. There was something wrong with the camp.
There were no soldiers there—no doctors or nurses either. Not even any townspeople. The place was totally deserted.

  Chapter 10

  “Everyone calm down!” Ms. Pollack was trying to regain control of the choir. The students were calling out and running around the camp, searching for any sign of another person. Some of them had even broken down into tears. “Please, everyone just come back here and sit down! We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

  Kayla stayed close to Ms. Pollack, pulling open the flap of the closest tent. The space inside was bare. No sleeping bags, blankets, or pillows. No personal items. Whoever had been here had clearly packed up and left. And if anyone else was still here, they would have heard the group by now.

  It’s like they vanished, Kayla said to herself. Then she thought about the Visitors. Or they were abducted.

  Orlando gathered everyone and brought them back to Ms. Pollack. “This is no time to panic,” he kept saying. But Kayla couldn’t help thinking that this was the perfect time to panic.

  Once they were back in a group, Ms. Pollack addressed them. “We have to decide if we want to keep going or head back to the airport.”

  It was going to be a close vote if they took one. Half the students clearly hated the idea of going back the way they came, but the other half were enthusiastic about it. People started shouting their opinions almost all at once. It got louder and louder until the teacher cut them all off.

  “Sleep on it. We’re not going anywhere tonight. At least the tents are set up, so we’ll stay here until morning, but tomorrow we choose. Everyone pick a tent. That’s where you’re sleeping tonight.”

  Maddie, Luke, and Kayla picked a nearby tent and dropped their bags in it.

  “You guys want to look around?” Maddie asked.

  “Beats staying in here,” Luke said.

  They walked up and down rows of identical green tents, occasionally poking their heads into one to see if any supplies had been left behind. They didn’t find anything. They found Orlando seated on a crate, reading a newspaper that someone must’ve left behind. The headline read: unidentified lights: threat or phenomenon?

  “Nobody had any idea what those things were when this went to print,” he said as they approached. “There’s an interview with some scientist in here. He said they were aliens, but everyone probably thought he was jumping to conclusions at the time.” He folded the paper and tucked it into his bag. “Who’s jumping to conclusions now?”

  “Why save it?” Luke asked.

  “It might be the last newspaper ever printed,” said Orlando.

  “Oh.” Luke looked down. “Right.”

  “What happens if we decide to go back to the airport?” Kayla said. “Would you come with us?”

  Orlando shook his head. “I’ve come this far. My brother’s still farther down the road, and I figure I can get there in a day or two. I think you all can handle yourselves on the way back if that’s what you decide to do.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Kayla said. “Everyone’s about ready to crack.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “And there’s no way to know where we should go. We can’t even look up where we are!”

  “Sure, you can,” Orlando said, pulling something out of his coat. “That store we stayed in last night had a whole rack of maps.” He tossed it to Luke. “You know, when I was a kid, we didn’t have smartphones to tell us everything. Being out here,” Orlando gestured around him, “in the middle of nowhere with all the lights out, it’s not so different from when I grew up. No internet, just the world around you.”

  “Wow,” Maddie said dryly. “Did you have to walk to school uphill both ways too?”

  “No,” Orlando chuckled. “Just one way, and I didn’t complain about it.”

  “Cars worked when you were a kid,” Kayla said.

  Orlando shrugged. “True enough. You know, I tried to rig up one of the shuttle buses at the airport to run. I could have done it too if the thing weren’t so modern. Everything was wired through a computer or switchboard. I would have had to rip most of it out and start from scratch. It would’ve taken forever and I didn’t have all the tools I would’ve needed for a job that complicated.”

  Kayla looked off toward where the others were setting up. Behind them, she could see the silhouette of a large truck with an open back designed to transport big groups of soldiers. “What about one of those?” she asked.

  “Huh?” Orlando looked at her.

  “What about one of the military trucks?” She turned to face him. “The shuttle buses are designed for comfort, right? Military trucks would be designed for efficiency. There’s probably a lot less stuff in there that you’d have to rip out or rewire.”

  Orlando stood up, looking at the truck. “It’s still got a battery, but if I can get it running in the first place, all I have to do is . . .” he trailed off.

  “Orlando,” Kayla said, “do you think you could get one of those trucks running?”

  He smiled. “Give me a couple hours.”

  Chapter 11

  Orlando got to work on the truck right away while Kayla went back to the tent to get some sleep. She had a much easier time drifting off. Sleeping under canvas, it seemed less like they were stranded and more like they were camping. When she woke up, she actually felt rested.

  She found Luke and Maddie outside the tent. They’d split a pack of crackers between them. Kayla noticed several of the others seemed to be sharing food too. She frowned. They would need to find help soon or they would run out of rations.

  “City centers,” Luke said between bites.

  “That makes sense,” Maddie said.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Kayla asked as Maddie handed her a cracker.

  “The Visitors are still here,” Luke explained. “We’re talking about where they’re probably located.”

  “You know,” Maddie continued, “that ship hovered over the airport for a while. Maybe they thought it was a small city from the air?”

  “It’s like they’re . . . monitoring us,” Luke added.

  Desperate to change the subject, Kayla looked over toward the truck. The hood was up, but Orlando was on his back underneath it, arms reaching up into the engine.

  “Have you guys talked to Orlando yet?” she asked.

  Luke shook his head. “I didn’t want to disturb him if there’s even a slight chance he can get that thing running. You hungry? I think I’ve got a few extra packs of crackers.”

  “I’m okay,” Kayla said. “I’ll eat later. I’m going to see if I can help him.”

  “Someone beat you to it,” Maddie said with a knowing smile. Kayla gave her a confused look, and Maddie pointed toward the truck without saying anything else.

  Kayla walked up to the passenger side door. “How’s it coming?” she asked.

  Steph’s face popped up over the open hood. “It’s getting there.”

  Kayla stared at her in surprise.

  “She’s been helping me all night,” Orlando said from beneath the vehicle. “We took a break to get a few hours of sleep, but work goes a lot faster when someone’s handing me all the tools I need.”

  “And even faster when the person handing you those tools has learned which ones are which,” Steph added jokingly.

  “It only took you about an hour.” Orlando continued working as he spoke. “That’s quicker than I learned when I was helping my dad in his shop.”

  “How old were you?” Steph asked.

  “Seven, but take the compliment.”

  The girls laughed before Kayla asked, “Do you think you’ll get it running today?”

  “If all goes well. This is an older truck—it’s not rigged up with all the modern electronics. It’s not going to be easy to get it started, but I think I can pull it off.”

  Kayla felt her heart jump with excitement. If they could get the truck working, they’d be home in a day, two max. She noticed Steph’s eyes had dark gray bags under them, and she seemed to be swaying w
here she stood.

  “You should get some rest, Steph,” Kayla said. “I can take over the tool management.”

  “I think I’m okay on tools for a while,” Orlando said. “What I do need is oil. This thing’s running low.”

  “Oil?” Kayla said.

  “Yeah, motor oil. Can you two try to find some?”

  Kayla and Steph looked at each other. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Steph actually worked together to do something.

  Orlando didn’t seem to notice the tension between them. “Check in the other trucks. One of them is bound to have some extra.”

  “Okay,” Kayla said. After an awkward pause, the two walked off together.

  They searched three trucks in silence without finding anything, but the fourth had a red can in the back. It was too small to be gasoline. Steph put the nozzle to her nose but pulled back quickly. “Yup, that’s oil,” she said.

  “Great. Let’s bring it back.”

  Steph hopped down from the back of the truck, but she didn’t start walking right away. “Kayla, why do you hate me?” she asked.

  “What?” Kayla did a double take.

  “I said, why do you hate me?” For once, Steph didn’t look like she was trying to start an argument. She just looked exhausted.

  “Why do you hate me?” Kayla stuttered back.

  “I guess it’s because I always thought you didn’t like me, and I didn’t know why. It’s . . . frustrating.”

  Kayla’s eyebrows raised. Hearing it out loud made it sound kind of ridiculous. “I guess that’s kind of my answer too.”

  Steph’s tired face twisted—not with anger but with amusement. “Seriously?” she said, shaking her head. “We’ve hated each other since—what—second or third grade for no reason?” She started laughing.

  Kayla couldn’t help chuckling a little herself. “I mean, little kids make best friends and worst enemies all the time for silly reasons. I guess you and I just got into the habit of disliking each other and never grew out of it.”

  “Can we call it even then?” Steph suggested. “Start over?”