by Laura Pohl
Only one thing has kept me alive all this time: moving. I have to keep moving, to keep trying to find something else.
In a way, these people have given me hope. I found them, so maybe I can find others. Maybe all I have to do is look harder. I can make that my next objective, now that I know I’m not alone in the world.
I wait, breathing hard.
“I don’t want to go out there any more than you do,” I admit. “But as far as this place goes, it’s nothing like I imagined it would be.”
“Yeah. The world ended and people still suck.” She shrugs. “That’s the way it is. People don’t miraculously get nicer just because the world ended. We keep on being who we are.”
Rayen is brutally honest. She states everything with a simplicity that leaves no room for masking things with flowers and perfumed lies.
“We’ve been here for a long time, Clover. The outside isn’t better. Human contact isn’t necessarily better, either. But it’s what you’ve got right now.”
She has a point.
“I can’t give you a good reason to stay,” Rayen says. “But at least you know that this is what you’ll get. If you choose to stay, you choose this.”
“Choose what?” I ask, my voice biting in anger. “There’s nothing to choose here.”
Rayen gives me a sad smile, which tells me she knows I’m only putting up a front. She reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. It’s the smallest of touches, and I freeze in place from her compassion.
“The chance to not feel alone anymore,” Rayen says. She slowly turns away from the door, making her way back inside.
I don’t reply. If I stay, it means dealing with all this. We’re each individuals, but we’re either together or we’re alone. That’s what she means.
I have a choice to make. Either I walk out of here right now, take Sputnik, and go, or I stay. Stay and give them a good reason to wake up. A good reason to fight, to break free of this apathy and hopelessness that has overcome us all. We can’t just keep waiting until the day we turn to dust.
I can’t leave them.
Not yet.
Not without giving it my best shot.
And I know what I have to do.
Chapter 18
I find Adam in the garage the next morning, working on the car that I rendered useless. His big hands are covered in grease, and I watch him intently as he works underneath it.
“I thought I destroyed that thing,” I say, and Adam jumps, hitting his head pretty hard against the metal. “Sorry. Should’ve knocked or something.”
He gets out from under the car, massaging his head.
“You busy?” I ask.
“Not really,” he says, gesturing to the wrecked car. “Why? Are you planning to bring in more cars?”
I laugh. “No.” I pause and choose my next words carefully. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
He wipes his hands on a towel, looking at me. “That’s okay. It was all in the heat of the moment.”
I nod, biting my lower lip, trying to finding my way around this conversation.
“Brooklyn told me to find something that I like to do,” I say casually. “And I hear that you’re the one to see about airplanes.”
Adam’s face lights up. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “Let’s see what we have.”
I almost feel guilty as I follow him, the wheels of a plan turning in my mind.
Almost.
We walk through the halls of Area 51, dark and silent. This place is supposed to be welcoming, a refuge, but it’s nothing of the kind to me.
“Is there something specific that you’re looking for?” Adam asks, looking back at me. “I mean, I’ve only been down here once. I’m not sure what all the models are.”
I shrug. “Not really. I just want to see them again,” I tell him. “Just to remember.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth, either.
Adam stops in front of a huge gate. It’s different from the other doors in the building—triple the size, built to fit vehicles larger than a small truck. My heart beats fast when I look at the huge door, as if I can sense what’s behind it.
He puts his hand over a panel, and it blinks green.
The doors slide open, and I take in the biggest underground bunker I’ve ever seen. Just ahead of me are rows of military trucks, loaded down with weapons.
I don’t realize that I’m running until I feel the adrenaline rushing and my heart hammering against my chest. And then I stop.
Beyond the trucks, more rows of machines await. Machines I know. My heart breaks when I think about who would love to see this right now. But Abuelo is dead—and I have to enjoy this for the both of us.
Rows and rows of planes sit beyond a yellow line. I can see Lockheed A-12 prototypes that should’ve been destroyed years ago. Rows of F-15 Eagles greet me like old friends. There are MiG-31 Foxhounds, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22A Raptors and an F-111 Aardvark, exactly like the one Abuelo used to fly in the air force.
I don’t hesitate.
I approach the nimble Aardvark and touch my fingers to the metal. And it feels like I’m home again.
* * *
This is a stupid idea and I know it. Adam stands in the other corner of the bunker, oblivious to what I’m about to do.
I leave the Aardvark and head for the plane that I know will get the job done, a legendary, unbeatable jet. It’s a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Major General Eldon Joersz and Lieutenant Colonel George Morgan broke all speed records with it in 1976. Only a total of thirty-two were ever built. The program was terminated in ’89, due to Pentagon politics, not because the craft was obsolete. It was reopened briefly but shut down for good in 1998. Some of the models ended up in museums and some were lost. I’m not surprised to find one of them here, stashed away in the biggest collection of fighter jets that I’ve ever seen.
Abuelo took me for a ride in an F-15 Eagle at Malmstrom last year, for my sixteenth birthday. I’ve never been in a Blackbird. But I have to believe that this is going to work.
Hanging on the wall near the plane is a G suit, which I quickly put on—the plane isn’t pressurized, so I’ll need the suit to handle high altitudes. I climb my way into the cockpit. Settling inside it, I turn on the comm unit and start up the plane. Adam has clearly realized what I’m up to—I see him waving his arms and shouting—but I can’t hear him over the roar of the engines.
This is my only chance.
I put on the helmet and test the controls. A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. I place my hand on the joystick and don’t let myself think as I maneuver onto the runway.
Adam’s yelling frantically now, but in a few seconds, he’s lost from sight.
I let go of the joystick for an instant and allow a squeal of glee to escape my lips. I press the button that opens the bunker’s sky hatch. The plane flies through the hatch in the ceiling unscathed. I have this under control.
The hatch closes behind me. I risk a look from the window and, seeing the whole area covered in dust, I’m impressed by how well the camouflage system works. If I didn’t know better, I would never guess that there’s a hatch there.
The plane easily breaks the wind. I can feel its power beneath my fingers, power that can only be wielded if you know how to do it. I can’t help but think about how much I’ve wanted to fly one of these and how different these circumstances are from what I always imagined.
The wind rushes past and I cut through the air, spinning. An orange button starts blinking on the instrument panel, and I open the intercom channel, preparing myself for the outrage that awaits me on the other end.
“Clover!” Adam hisses. “What are you doing?”
“Testing something.”
“Get back here, or God help me, I’ll…”
I grin. Being in the sky again makes me feel like I can def
y the whole world. “You coming to get me?”
Another voice chimes in over the intercom. “Who the hell is in that plane?” asks Andy.
“It’s Clover.”
“Holy Mother of Sweetened Peas,” she says. “Those planes are supposed to fly with a pilot and a navigator!”
“We’re a little short-staffed.”
“Bring that thing down, now!” she orders. “Are you crazy?”
I look at the radar. There’s nothing yet. My fingers grip the joystick, and I breathe in and out.
“I know what I’m doing,” I tell them. I do, I tell myself.
“The plane hasn’t crashed yet, so I hope you’re right,” says Adam.
“I’m tracking you,” Andy says.
“Don’t!” I shout and the plane shudders. “Don’t! They might track the signal back to you.”
Andy mutters a curse on the intercom. Adam is silent.
This is taking too long, and I’m starting to wonder if my theory is wrong.
“Oh my God,” Adam says over the intercom, and I can guess what he’s seeing.
“I’ve got you on screen through a satellite,” says Andy. “Are you insane? Come back!”
“Andy, shut up and look at the screen,” says Adam.
Another curse follows. This is a stealth plane, but it doesn’t manage to evade the aliens’ attention. I can feel the force of an incoming shot, and I dodge it with a quick dip of my wing. The laser beam hits the ground with a boom, and I dive as low as I can, practically grazing the desert.
“Clover,” Andy mutters. “There are two of them on your tail.”
I look at my radar. “Yep. I can see ’em.”
“You can see them? Is that all you’re going to say?”
I should be afraid, but all my fear is gone. I’m back where I belong. They can’t take this feeling away from me.
The two spaceships on my tail confirm what I’ve suspected. Any plane that tries to fly will be taken down. I could drive a car for days on end, but they’ll go after a plane, or anything airborne, within minutes. Why? Why do they want to take down our aircraft so badly?
I don’t have time for questions. I need to dodge the aliens first. I pull up and gain altitude. They’re trying to pick up on my contrail, but their ships were made for the stars. My plane was made to fly here on Earth, on my planet. And they’re not going to beat me on my own turf.
I speed up, rising to the clouds. The Blackbird can reach an insane Mach 3.3, but I’m not crazy enough to try that without a navigator. And although I can’t shoot the aliens, I can slow them down. It’s time to play a game.
I open the missile hatch. Adam and Andy will want to murder me right now. I press the button anyway and grin as the missiles lock on their target.
They’re right on my tail now, so I release a burst of chaff, which hits the air like metal confetti, to confuse their radar. Their guns start shooting at me and I make evasive maneuvers—spinning around two, five, seven times—as the plane climbs higher.
The two spaceships keep chasing me through the endless, empty sky as I go up and up toward the stratosphere, turning the plane over so many times that I don’t know up from down.
They accelerate and boost their engines as they prepare to cross the stratosphere—they think that I’m heading to outer space. They’re catching up, and I wait until they’re almost on me.
I breathe.
I kill the engines.
The plane hurtles toward the ground in a full-blown dive. The spaceships can’t do the same—the aliens are saner than I am. I have nothing to lose.
I count to ten. Breathe in, breathe out. The plane continues to fall.
And then, just when I think I’m going to lose it for good, I turn the engines on. The response is immediate, and the plane is back in my control. Roaring and fighting to stay alive, just like I am.
I accelerate as fast as I can.
“I’m heading for some caves I saw up ahead,” I say over the intercom. I press a button and send over the coordinates. “Come pick me up.”
Chapter 19
It takes a few hours for my ride to arrive. I’ve hidden the plane inside one of the caves. I lean against the metal hull of the Blackbird, sweating, my gun at my side.
I recognize the war truck when it arrives, but I keep my gun raised until I get visual confirmation of the driver. Adam gets out and walks over to where I’m standing.
He doesn’t smile.
“Put it away,” he says, nodding toward my gun. All friendliness has disappeared from his voice. I shove the gun in the back of my pants. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that we have an advantage over the aliens,” I say, not backing down. “I needed to find a reason to stay and fight. I have it. Right here.”
“They could’ve killed you!”
“They didn’t.”
He shakes his head, and his face is a deep red.
“What did they say back at the base?” I ask, carefully.
“Do you even care?” he replies, his tone harsh. I don’t say anything to contradict him. “Violet is furious. Rayen and Brooklyn think you’re Christ reincarnated. Avani wants both your head and your personality tested.”
He shakes his head again. The others’ reactions don’t surprise me. But I’ve disappointed Adam, and I do feel bad about that.
“You could’ve put us all in danger.”
“I know,” I say, meeting his eyes.
This is all part of the plan.
He sighs, his shoulders sagging. “Just help me attach this to the back of the truck.”
We work in silence. Adam is pretty strong and so am I. We wrap metal cables around the plane, and I wheel it forward to the platform of the truck. Once we’ve finished attaching it, I hop in the front of the truck next to Adam.
We drive in silence for a long time before Adam finally speaks. “Violet said that you knew exactly what you were doing when you asked me to show you the planes. Is that true?”
I don’t even blink. “Would it make you feel better if I admitted that I’m a manipulative bitch?”
He laughs, in spite of himself. “Yeah. Yeah it would.” He glances at me. “You could have just told me what you wanted to do.”
“You wouldn’t have agreed to let me do it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re too nice, Adam.”
He doesn’t say anything to that. I have to tread carefully with Adam.
“What were you even thinking?” he asks, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “One wrong move and it would’ve been over. All of it.”
“I wanted to test something.”
“Something worth risking your life for?”
What life? I want to spit back at him. What we’re doing isn’t living. Not really.
“Yeah,” I finally say. I cross my arms, eyeing the road.
A few minutes pass, but Adam isn’t one to give up. “So what did you want to test?”
I hate explaining stuff to people. I can never find the right words. “You’re driving this truck, right? And you’ve been doing it for forty minutes.”
Adam nods, furrowing his eyebrows.
“Notice any spaceships following us?”
He tenses up and his hands grip the wheel even harder.
“There aren’t any—you can relax,” I tell him, and he does so, visibly. “But it took me less than ten minutes in the air—in a stealth plane—to get two of them on my tail.”
“So you knew that they were going to come after you, and you took off anyway?”
I nod, my face serious. “Avani said that we don’t have any advantages,” I begin, finding my voice even though my throat is parched. “That we don’t know anything about the aliens. That there’s no point fighting back be
cause we can’t win. But I knew that if I went out there in a plane, they would come after me.”
I pause for a moment, letting Adam process my words.
“They’re predictable,” he says.
I nod. “Look, I understand. I understand that no one wants to fight back. I understand that it’s going to be hard and that it might cost us our lives. But I can’t live like this. We aren’t living, Adam. None of us are.”
He stays silent for a long time. I watch the road and the desert, the rock formations on the horizon. I miss Sputnik’s company.
Just when I think that we’re going to spend the rest of the trip in complete silence, Adam speaks again. “So what are you suggesting?”
I look over at him. “I’m saying that we can find a way to fight this.”
He nods slowly. “So that’s your plan?” he asks. “Use yourself as bait to draw them out?”
“Yeah. I just needed to test the theory.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“They never go after cars. I drove across the country, and they never attacked me once. But the second I got an airplane off the ground, they came after me,” I explain, adding, “I like to actually drive the vehicles before I render them useless, you know.”
He laughs at that, and the tense atmosphere begins to dissipate. “Quick thinking. Crazy, but quick.”
“Yeah. I always know what I’m doing.”
He narrows his eyes. “Always?”
I nod. “Pretty much.”
“No emotion involved?”
I smile, then shrug. “Call me calculating, but yeah. I think stuff through.”
“That sounds like a harsh way to live, though,” he says after a while. “Don’t you think it’s sad?”
The truth is that sometimes I do. But at the same time, this is how I’ve survived.
“Not really,” I say. “I guess it’s what’s kept me alive all this time.”
“What do you mean?”
I don’t know how to put it into words. So I launch into another bad explanation. “It’s just… Anyone who is too emotional wouldn’t survive out there.”