Project Airborne

by Johnson, Cassandra

  “Thank you for doing this.” Her voice was low, not that anything she had to say would be offensive to other ears, but she wanted to keep things just between herself and her husband. “I know it’s been difficult for you, staying behind, not doing the man stuff with Logan and Brian or even Kaige for that matter, but if I lost you, I have no idea what I would do without you. I’m afraid I would fail Tobey.” Frowning, she looked down at the kitchen floor for a moment. “The way that I failed Kaige.”

  “Failed her, how?” Tom asked, pulling Meg back by the shoulders to look at her closer.

  “The day she was attacked, when Brian first came to us. I saw the zombie on top of her and I couldn’t do anything. I was literally frozen, I was afraid that if I went out there that I wouldn’t be able to save her or get myself killed in the process or worse, get infected and become one of them myself. I was going to just stand there and let her be killed.” Megan explained. “And now, she has all these wild theories about the government poisoning us and that’s why everyone died and that the zombies were just a side effect of the virus they used on us.” Megan shook her head, quickly scrubbing away the moisture that filled her eyelids. “I’m afraid that she might be losing her grip on reality and there isn’t anything that I can really do about it.”

  “Meg, anyone in your position would have probably done the same thing. You were afraid, no one would blame you for freezing like that and as far as Kaige’s theories, are they really that crazy?” Tom asks her, stroking her shoulders gently to soothe her.

  “But look at all the books she got from the library, half of them are books about conspiracy theories, government experiments on the American public?” Megan crossed her arms holding herself.

  “Meg, are you really afraid of Kaige losing touch with reality, or are you more afraid that she’s right?” Tom leveled his face with Megan’s looking into her eyes as he bent at the knees slightly to bring himself closer to her height.

  “I’m afraid of everything, Tom. Ever since that day when Lauren just died in my office like that, and then seeing how wide spread this thing was? I have second guessed everything that I believed in, everything that I thought I knew.” Her curls slightly bounced around her shoulders as Megan shook her head, rubbing her hands up and down her forearms.

  “Our whole world changed that day Megan, there is nothing wrong with being afraid of that. There is nothing wrong with being afraid of what might have caused it either. I honestly believe Kaige. It might have seemed farfetched before, but in the world of today?” Tom almost laughed when he didn’t mean to, his grandpa had told him it was a sign of their people to feel certain emotions at an inappropriate time. “Yeah, I fully believe those assholes fucked up.” Tom said, pulling Megan closer to him and holding her tight, pressing his lips into the side of her head.

  “I feel like such a wimp.” Megan sighed into his shoulder.

  “Well don’t because you aren’t, and I think we all know that.” Tom told her and kissed her forehead quickly. “Come on, help me get the mashed potatoes going because dinner will be ready soon.” He said, helping her focus on something else, so that Megan could climb back out of her funk.

  “WHAT DID YOU GET AT the library?” Logan asked, leaning against the table in the formal dining room, looking over all the stacks upon stacks of books lining the table's surface.

  “Just books.” Kaige shrugged, separating some of the books she’d picked out from the general fiction from books that took up the rest of the space on the table.

  “Mmm, doesn’t look like just books. Come on, what did you find, Sherlock Holmes?” Logan nudged her side gently as she staked a couple books together.

  “Ok, so I couldn’t find that many books on conspiracy theories that weren’t fiction, but I did find some things about a secret shadow government.” Kaige smiled, taking the books in her arms, preparing to take them downstairs with her into their apartment area of the house. She already knew she would be awake well into the wee hours of the night reading these, if it were at all possible for her to glean any kind of information from them that might otherwise help their situation.

  “Shadow government?” Logan asked, quickly taking the load out of her arms and carrying her books for her. “What does that mean?”

  Turning the lights back, on inside the living area downstairs, Kaige took one of the books from Logan’s arms and searched through it for the definition, while she was sure she understood it, she didn’t want to confuse him.

  “It’s basically a family of conspiracy theories that like our congressmen, the majors, the president, all these people that are supposedly chosen by the public to run our nation are actually just puppets on a string and the people who hold all the power are private individuals who are using those positions to exercise their power so that they can work outside the lines of the institution.” Kaige told him, closing the book again and setting it down on the coffee table, grabbing the rest of them and lining them all up so that she could clearly see all the titles.

  “So, sort of like the illuminati?” Logan asked, sitting down on the couch and looking over some of the books that Kaige brought back home with her.

  “Well, yeah, that would basically sum up the idea of a shadow government perfectly. A group of individuals who have so much wealth and power, that they literally control the world. They even control the way that we think or the way that we tell ourselves we should think.” Kaige said, cocking her head to one side, her eyelids wide with a sort of mock suspicion, she called it her ILLUMINATI CONFIRMED face.

  “Do you think we had a shadow government?” Logan asked her, turning one book over to read the back cover.

  “Well, I can’t say for sure. I loved all this stuff back in the day because it was interesting to theorize, and a lot of stuff did make sense, but it doesn’t always mean it’s true. I grabbed these because I couldn’t find any books about actual conspiracies, that should be a conspiracy. Why can’t I find non-fiction conspiracy books, about conspiracies?” Kaige laughed.

  Logan chuckled, setting the book back down once more, glancing at her.

  “You still want to check out that Walmart, don’t you?” Logan asked her. If there was one thing, he had slowly begun to figure out about the girl that he was certain he was falling for, was that once Kaige got her teeth into something she didn’t let it go, not easily anyway.

  “I do. I really do, I feel like ignoring the evidence will only lead to our downfall. Look at these books, they are a prime example of ignoring what’s right in front of you just so that your comfy cozy life doesn’t get messed up. Life isn’t like that anymore, we don’t have the option to turn a blind eye to what could be some serious facts. If it isn’t true, and all this was just some really fucked up play from the universe then so be it. I’ll come to terms and accept it, but if it isn’t? If any of the people who are responsible for this are still alive then they need to pay for what they did to us because it isn’t fair what happened, none of it is. It’s evil, Logan. We have an opportunity to start over with our world and I want to take the best first step that we can.” Kaige pressed her lips together softly, feeling a little silly after her big speech, which she hadn’t intended to give, but it felt that way. Like she was gearing up to convince others of the truth that she’d found and if this was true, then she didn’t need to convince them, she just had to show them.

  “Why are you blushing?” Logan asked, touching her cheek with the knuckle of his index finger gently.

  “It’s silly. I sound like a zealot, but I’m not crazy. And if I can prove it, then I will feel a lot better.” Kaige said, stretching in her seat slightly, picking up the scent of the food from upstairs. While there was no turkey for them to carve, it sure smelled like Thanksgiving and they had a lot to truly be thankful for, the first being with each other and Kaige was shockingly aware of how lucky she was that she had found them.

  24.

  “I know you disagree, but I don’t think this is a good idea.” Logan began wh
ile Kaige was dressing early the morning after Thanksgiving, otherwise known by the old world as Black Friday. Kaige had never been one to stand in line at four in the morning for a deal. She paid what she paid, maybe she was stupid for doing that, but the money she saved throughout the rest of the year seemed like a fair trade, but today? Kaige was betting on blowing Walmart wide open.

  “I do know and I’m sorry that you feel that way, but I am going.” Kaige said, brushing her hair up into a quick ponytail to keep her hair out of her face. Turning, Logan was standing in the doorway of her bedroom one of his shoulders resting against the frame while his arms were folded, those yellow hazel eyes of his glowing stoically while he watched her.

  “Kaige, if you are right, and these people did take Blake and Charlie’s parents what makes you think they won’t do the same thing to you?” Logan questioned as he stepped into the room and took her by the shoulders, bringing his lips crashing down against hers in a fast and needy way that caused her knees to buckle grasping his waist to keep her balance while Logan wrapped his arms around her back and crushed her against him. Pulling away, Logan pressed his forehead to hers, his nostrils flaring with intensity. “Please don’t do this.” He whispered.

  “I’m not doing it because I want to.” Her blue eyes lifting and looking up at him. “I’m doing it because I have to.”

  “What if I went instead?” Logan urged her. “Me and Brian, we could investigate it and you stay here where it’s safe.”

  Kaige shook her head no back and forth gently as she reached up and smoothed his hair back from his face gently.

  “I have to see it for myself Logan, otherwise I’ll never be able to let this go. If I’m wrong, I need to know, without a shadow of a doubt.” Pressing up on her toes, she kissed him again, hugging his shoulders while their bodies swayed from side to side gently before Logan finally released his grip on her.

  “We’re taking weapons with us, and no one goes off to look around on their own. We stay together. No wandering off.” Logan sighing, he’d tried his best to talk her out of this. Last night after dinner, she’d come down to the basement apartment and spent hours reading the books she took from the library until she was convinced that she couldn’t wait any longer to check out the Walmart where Blake and Charlie heard noises coming from it. He didn’t want to lose her to this because there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Kaige was wrong about this. Logan believed it just as much as she did, but regardless of how he felt, he didn’t want to lose her.

  Getting his clothes on, Logan met Kaige and Brian in the kitchen drinking coffee and smoking their first cigarettes of the day while Brian went over the finer points of gun safety with Kaige again. He did it with all of them no matter how many times he told them, or how many hours they spent shooting down green bean cans in the back yard.

  Grabbing a cup for himself the sun hadn’t even begun to rise and the rest of the house was still sleeping.

  “Should we leave them a note, so they know where we went?” Brian asked, looking over at Logan as he sat down and sliding the communal cigarette pack towards him.

  “That’s probably a good idea, they will be worried anyway, but at least,” Kaige paused, looking around the table, pressing her lips together, unable to finish her sentence.

  “At least if we don’t come back, they will have a heads up.” Logan said.

  “And they can get as far away as possible.” Brian added taking a quick drag of his cigarette before stubbing the butt out in the ash tray.

  “Yeah.” Kaige nodded softly, glancing off out of one of the large windows into the dark backyard. Since they’d come to this house, she hadn’t heard any more planes, but this neighborhood might not have been in their navigation plans. Maybe they were only coming and going one way and that was why she hadn’t heard anything else or that the others hadn’t said anything about hearing some sort of aircraft late at night. Or maybe they thought they had found all the remaining survivors and didn’t need to look for anymore.

  When Kaige thought about it, when she first heard the planes overhead late at night, wouldn’t that have been close to around the same time as when the girl’s parents went missing? Maybe they hadn’t said anything about the girls, but they were still looking just in case and when they couldn’t find anything else, they gave up their search party and went back to their dirty deeds where ever they were doing them and who knew how many others had been captured.

  Stretching in her seat, Kaige finished her coffee and got out a notepad from inside the phone and jotted down a quick note to the rest of the house, if they didn’t come back, they already knew what to do. Pack the kids up and run.

  “I think we are ready.” Kaige said, taking her gun from the table and turned the safety on before she placed it in the holster that Brian gave her and fastened it into her belt.

  “No dragging our feet around this one.” Brian said, getting up and putting it in his cup into the sink and grabbed his coat from a kitchen chair.

  Kaige ignored their comments even though it was simply some good-natured ribbing, her head space was in a completely different state. Kaige was thinking of what they might find if they found anything at all.

  Piling themselves into the Tahoe, Kaige backed out of the driveway and turned on the radio scanning through the channels until she hit the frequency with the white noise from the time before.

  “I want to see if the signal gets stronger as we get closer to the Walmart.” Kaige told Logan and Brian as she put the vehicle into gear and drove down the street.

  “Good idea. We will know if anyone living if around if the signal changes the closer we get, we might even be able to pick up on some conversation.” Brian said, looking out of the window, his green eyes keenly taking in the scene as they passed by.

  With the headlights on everything had an odd ghostly appearance. The world looked empty during the day beneath the light of the sun, but in the still early darkness of the morning the cars and deserted streets made it look like the whole planet was vacated without warning.

  It all reminded Kaige of some sort of alien invasion movie she would have watched, or a scient fiction novel where some day in the future in the year 3035 humans colonized another planet and now, they were thousands of years into the future, returning to earth to study ancient human civilizations. It didn’t just look empty, it felt empty too. Kaige wondered if humans would ever rise to their former glory or would they twinkle out of existence one by one until the day came when they were all gone, just as much a part of history as the pyramids of Egypt. The thought itself was enough to send a shiver down Kaige’s spine as they drew nearer, and the radio frequency gurgled, a high pitched under tone could be heard by those inside the cabin of the SUV as Kaige pulled off onto a back road that was clustered with small townhouse apartments that were back behind the Walmart close to the cheaper apartments a short distance away where Charlie and Blake had hid.

  “Is this where Blake and Charlie were staying?” Logan asked, sitting up in his seat to look out of the glass at the rows of small two-story buildings that were all connected to one another.

  “No, I think they were staying in the ones closer to the front of the store. You remember, they had a Sonic drive-in on the same street, and they all faced the front entrance of the Walmart. I think these are all back behind it. I wanted to park a little further away so that maybe we could sneak up on the building. I don’t know if they have any surveillance, but,” Kaige trailed off, looking at the two men.

  “Better to be cautious and prepare for whatever we might run into.” Brian suggested while Kaige parked and turned the headlights of the Tahoe off, suspending them into complete darkness, the sky a deep inky black above them, the darkness before the dawn.

  Together the three of them sat in the dark looking out of their windows for a good ten minutes, but there was no sign of activity outside the car.

  “It’s now or never.” Kaige finally said and removed the keys from the ignition and pushed them insi
de of her jacket pocket for safe keeping.

  Logan and Brian exited the vehicle and turned on their flashlights.

  The sound of the driver side door closing seemed too loud in the silence, piercing through the veil of emptiness that served to misguide the group, but they knew better.

  “Take the safety off your guns now, we don’t know how quickly we may need to use them.” Brian told the two of them, placing his flashlight down on the hood of the Tahoe to ready his own weapon. Kaige and Logan doing the same before the trio turned the beam of their flashlights on the road in front of them.

  “Let me take the lead, you too. If I need to discharge my weapon stay behind me and if I go down, get back to the car and get the hell out of here.” Brian said, walking ahead of the group, his gun and flashlight at eye level, his eyes busily scanning what was up ahead of them and along his periphery.

  “Do you see any cameras?” Kaige asked Brian, bringing her gun up much the same as he had his, but she kept it pointed away from his back, looking for any sign that might tell them they were being watched, she was certain that whatever was out there had no idea they were here because if they did, they probably wouldn’t have even made it out of the car.

  “Not yet.” Brian replied as they came around the side of the building where the lawn and garden center was located.

  “Look at that.” Logan spoke up, pointing with his flashlight.

  “What is it?” Brian was in full alert mode as he scanned his flashlight around in the darkness.

  “Every store we’ve scouted from for supplies, Lowe’s, Home Depot anyplace that had an outside gardening area with plants and lawn mowers still outside. Look at this place, it’s completely empty.” Logan said creeping up to the gated area that was closed and locked with chains.

  “You’re right.” Kaige said softly, stepping back a couple feet to shine her flashlight above their heads, but there weren’t any cameras, at least none that she could see that is.