CHAPTER 21

            Jack and Harold awoke to the sight of Hyde warming a tin of beans over a small fire. The sun was just starting to rise but they still saw more shadow than light within the thick of the forest. It had been decided that camping in the woods for a night before entering the airstrip was the right decision. The men were tired and had lost their edge. They needed the rest. They needed to be sharp for whatever lay ahead. Plus, the airstrip was almost devoid of any light at night, other than a few scattered guidance bulbs on the runway and a lamppost or two beside the sealed hangars. A stakeout in the woods would restore some of their strength and give them an opportunity to observe the strip before entering.

            “Sorry, it’s not very hot,” Hyde said as he jimmied the can open with the blade of his knife. “Didn’t want to make a big fire. They’d probably spot the smoke.” He jabbed a spoon into the can and handed it to Jack, who mumbled a word of thanks and spooned down a few ounces of breakfast.

            “Let’s hope they’ve got some food in there,” Harold said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know how much longer I can live on beans and water.”

            The others nodded solemnly and finished the meager meal in silence, their thoughts focused on their next move.

            “We should probably take a look inside the hangars first,” Jack said. He could tell from the others’ expectant expressions that they had assumed he would be taking the lead from here on out. “It’s likely they’ve got some sort of storage area where they keep non-perishables.”

            Hyde and Harold nodded.

            “Before we go, I say we empty our packs of anything that’s not absolutely essential. We need to be light and mobile in case anything happens. We can always come back and grab things after we take a look there. We can bury everything under some leaves or something.”

            “What if someone finds it?” Harold asked.

            “It won’t matter. If they find our stuff they’ll probably find us. Anyway, we need to have the space available in our packs if we come across more supplies.”

            “Then what?” Harold asked.

            “I want to get a closer look at the planes. I couldn’t see anything last night when we were on the trail, but the wingspan seemed unusually large for a prop plane. And it was quiet. I’m not sure I’m familiar with the aircraft, so I’m very curious what’s in those hangars.”

            “Ok, so we consolidate our items, nab some supplies, and inspect the aircraft,” Harold summarized. “Sounds simple enough.”

            The three nodded and got to work. The clothes were the first to go. They’d been fresh and crisp a week ago when Harold and Jack had first fled, but now they were filthy and reeked of sweat and smoke. Jack also removed the small glass sphere that had been given to him by the Asian woman in the bazaar. He briefly thought back to the encounter, the woman’s uncomplicated generosity, and wondered. Then he stuffed it with the other items beneath a pile of dead leaves.

            They moved silently in single file with Jack leading the way. He’d briefed them on military body signals and now cycled through them as they walked, making sure his team could work in absolute silence. He bent his arm at the elbow and clenched his fist straight in the air. The footsteps behind him stopped. Good. His hand flattened, he gestured twice forward. The footsteps began again. Good.

            They stopped at the edge of the forest line, approximately thirty yards from the end of the runway. It definitely wasn’t military. No armed vehicles. No barracks. No guard towers. Not even a chain link fence lined with barbed wire. In fact, the only thing dividing the airstrip from the forest was a waist-high wooden fence, which Jack assumed was intended more to keep animals off the runway than enemy intruders.

            Jack was tempted to hop the fence and walk straight onto the runway but decided to play it safe. “Let’s keep to the woods and walk the perimeter,” he instructed, hoping to make his way around to the hangars without forfeiting his tree line cover.

            They walked at a laborious pace, their eyes constantly locked on the hangars, half-expecting an army of soldiers to emerge at any time. But ten minutes later they had arrived without incident at the back of the hangars, where a small gravel road jutting from the double doors led up the hill and out of sight.

            Jack scanned the buildings for signs of an alarm system. There was nothing. Not even surveillance cameras. At least, not visible ones, Jack reminded himself. But why hide the cameras? It didn’t make sense. Then again, nothing had made sense since Jack had first woken up in the strange wooden room and been told by strangers that he’d come back from the dead.

            Cautiously, Jack moved towards the back door of the hangar. He reached out his hand and tried the handle. It was unlocked. Jack cracked it open and tried to get a visual on the hangar interior, but it was too dark. That was a good thing. It meant that likely the room was empty. Satisfied, Jack signaled to the other two, who plodded out of the shadows and joined him.

            “Ok,” Jack whispered. “I think the building is empty, but just in case, I’m going in to check it out. I want you to stay here. If anything happens, we’ll meet back at the spot we buried the items, understand?” Both nodded, but looked terrified. Jack knew the expression well. He’d seen it a hundred times on the faces of soldiers about to be thrown into lethal situations. He’d seen it in the mirror, too.

            Hyde unclipped the folding knife from his belt but Jack reached for his arm. “No knives. I don’t need you stabbing me or yourself. If anything happens, don’t fight. Just run.”

            And with that, Jack was gone, slinking into the darkness before Harold or Hyde could say another word.

            Jack crouched beside the doorway for a few moments, willing his eyes to adjust to the blackness engulfing him. He brushed his fingers against the wall, feeling for a light switch but found nothing. Shapes were beginning to form in the dark. There were workbenches and a few chairs, surrounded on some sides by rolling blackboards covered in papers. Jack continued slowly along the inside of the wall, scanning the room for any movement.

            Satisfied he was alone, he stood and extricated his small flashlight from his pack. He clicked it on and nearly gasped. There, in the center of the hangar, towered an immense, black aircraft. Jack drew closer, examining the oddly-shaped fuselage and massive wings flanked out on either side. It wasn’t like anything he’d seen before, and in his fascination he almost forgot about the two men waiting outside. Moments later he’d returned with Hyde and Harold in tow. Jack finally located the light switch and the bulbs overhead clunked on.

            “Wow, that thing’s huge!” Hyde exclaimed as he entered the building and stared at the gleaming wings that nearly spanned the entire length of the hangar. “It didn’t look nearly as big when it was in the sky.”

            “Doesn’t look military,” Harold said with evident disappointment.

            “It isn’t,” Jack confirmed. There were no mounted guns, missiles, or bombs. From its slim design, he doubted it could would even be able to take off with the added weight of ammunition. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jack stood at the nose of the plane and glanced to either wingtip. “I’d say she’s over one hundred twenty feet wide,” he said, shaking his head. “Strange.”

            “Why’s that?” Harold inquired.

            “Take a look at the fuselage. It’s tiny. I’d bet it only seats two or three, maybe four at the very most. You shouldn’t need a wingspan like this. They make Cessnas and Pipers that seat more with about a fourth of this wingspan. And she’s got four engines, as well.” Jack stepped around to the plane’s tail and noticed the name Madeline stenciled in a flowing, blue script.

            “Looks pretty futuristic if you ask me,” Hyde said. Jack nodded, and asked him to look around for food supplies.

           Jack climbed up on one of the worktables and scanned the top of the aircraft. Spanning the top of each wing’s surface were strips of reflective black material, like a kind of tinted glass.

            “No way,” Jack said with admiration. “She’s electric. And I think she runs purely on solar. Futuristic is right.”

            “Solar? You mean it doesn’t need fuel?” Harold asked.

            “Yeah, that’s what it looks like. And that would explain the wingspan. Maximizing the surface area allows for more space to fit solar panels. And that’s why she doesn’t make any noise: the engines don’t run on combustion. Very quiet.”

            “Looks like this isn’t the only airstrip in these mountains,” Harold said from a few yards away, where he stood staring at a set of charts pinned to one of the rolling blackboards. “There are half a dozen on this map. The nearest one looks to be only thirty or so kilometers away.”

            “Interesting,” Jack said. He jumped from the table and poked his head around the side of the aircraft, looking for a door handle. He found it, and the door yawned open. Jack climbed inside and took the pilot’s seat.

            The cockpit was small, but not cramped. The gauges, switches, and indicators on the instrument panel were unlike anything Jack had encountered. Back in the Air Force, Jack had been used to flying F-16s and F-22s, jets with instrument panels that took months of training to learn to monitor and control properly. There were gauges for oxygen pressure and targeting systems and weapons handling, switches for anti-icing and anti-Gs and fire control, and of course all the other knobs and dials required to keep a pilot alive and effective in a one-point-five million dollar machine.

            But this, this was refreshing. The primary panel had only the bare essentials: airspeed, attitude, and altitude dials. Besides that there were only minimal instruments including a UHF radio, warning lights, and of course a battery cell readout.

            “So, what do you think?” Harold asked, suddenly standing next to the open door of the plane. “Can you fly it?”

            “I think so. It’s an amazingly uncomplicated design. Looks like a car dashboard in here,” Jack said, toying with the throttle, a single stick that jutted from the floor of the cabin between his feet. “The only thing that makes me nervous are the wings. I’ve never flown anything so big before.”

            “Bad news,” Hyde said, joining the others by the plane. “There’s nothing here but tools and machine parts. No food or water.”

            Suddenly there was a loud noise from the far end of the hangar. The three men froze.

***

            “Come in, Gervis ground. This red eagle oh-niner. Gervis ground, do you copy?” Crackled a voice mixed with static from the far side of the hangar. At a small desk, a radio receiver hung from a wooden peg. The other end was plugged into a black metal box with an LED screen that now lit up with a yellow-green glow.

            Jack, Harold, and Hyde stared at one another, unsure what to do.

            “Where is the radio operator?” Harold hissed at Jack, as if he ought to know. Jack shrugged, then added, “You don’t have to whisper. They can’t hear you on the other end.”

            “I repeat, Gervis ground, does anyone copy? Are we clear for landing?” There was the crackle and whine of radio interference and then another pause.

            “Why isn’t someone here?” Harold asked insistently. “Shouldn’t there be someone on that radio?”

            “Maybe the strip isn’t used daily. Or maybe the guy just left for a break,” Jack suggested, as Hyde and Harold shared a panicked glance. It was at this very moment that they heard the sound of heavy footsteps jogging up the gravel path outside the hangar. More panic.

            “Hit the lights, Hyde,” Jack snapped. Hyde raced for the wall and threw the switch, plunging the room back into darkness. The footsteps were louder now, just outside the door.

            Jack hefted Harold and Hyde into the raised cockpit of the solar plane and lunged in, closing the aircraft door just as the hangar door swung open. A portly man with a brown mustache stumbled through the entrance with a large wooden crate in his arms. He hoisted it onto one of the workbenches with a crash. The radio burst in again, startling everyone.

            “Gervis ground, this is red eagle oh-niner coming in for a scheduled landing at ten hundred hours. Is anyone there?”

            The man wiped his brow diligently and charged over to the UHF radio, lifting the transmitter without sitting. “Gervis ground to eagle oh-niner, read you loud and clear. You are clear for landing. Repeat, clear for landing.”

            A pause.

            “Hey, Gervis, good to hear your voice. Red eagle oh-niner beginning descent. See you soon. Over and out.”

            The man breathed a heavy sigh of relief and tugged at the chest of his short sleeved shirt to air it out. He scratched his head and wandered back to the workbench, where he began removing tools from the crate.

            “I hope he isn’t planning on doing repairs on this plane,” Harold whispered into Jack’s ear.

            “Keep your mouth shut, Harold. I’m trying to think,” Jack whispered back. At least the windows were tinted, he thought gratefully. It was common for smaller aircraft to have tinted windows to protect the pilots from sun blindness, and it certainly worked in their favor now. They could observe from their elevated spot in the hangar without being noticed. Well, so long as no one did anything stupid.

            The man brushed his mustache with the back of a hairy arm and began making notations on a paper attached to a clipboard. A checklist, perhaps? When he’d finished he walked to the wall nearest the radio and pulled a long, red-handled lever. A powerful, mechanical groan erupted from overhead. Jack tried to crane his neck upwards to see what was happening, but from within the cockpit it was impossible. But moments later, as the hangar flooded with a warm, morning light, Jack realized that the main rolltop hangar door was cranking open behind the plane.

            The man whistled and trotted towards the plane. The men had stopped breathing. Then there was a bump, and they realized the plane was in motion. The wall in front of the craft was pulling away, the room appearing to grow smaller as the plane moved backwards out of the hangar.

            “Uh, guys…” Hyde said from somewhere behind Jack. But Jack didn’t hear it. His mind was racing, trying to figure out his next move. Surely it was only moments before the door would be opened and they would be discovered. And what then? If they were wanted men they’d surely be recognized and arrested and taken to prison, or faced with whatever form of punishment existed in these mountains.

            The plane began turning gradually to one side as the tail rotated away, bringing the airstrip fully into view. Ahead, a red blur in the sky was silently drawing closer. Within three minutes it had settled down quietly on the runway and whizzed past them with little more than a whoosh of air and the walloping of tires on the pavement.

            “Jack, I don’t mean to pester you, but we really’ve got to make a decision here,” Harold said gravely.

            “I get that, Harold,” Jack snapped back.

            “Maybe we should just run for it,” Hyde suggested weakly.

            “No, they’ll spot us. And from here it’s a long run across the runway to the woods. And we’ll never have time to get the things we hid. Without any supplies, and on the run, we’ll be stuck.”

            “What if we fly out?” Harold said. Hyde turned to glare at him with a horrified look but Jack kept staring straight ahead.

            “Yeah, I’m considering it,” Jack said.

            “Wait a sec,” Hyde said, holding up his hands in protest. “This is the first time you’ve even seen this plane. It may not even work right!”

            “It works fine,” Jack said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have pulled it out to the runway. He’s prepping it for a flight. And I’m pretty sure this is the same plane that flew in last night.” Jack had noted that the wingspan was the same as the width he’d approximated of the plane that they’d seen the night before, judging from the wingtip strobes.

            “But what about landing? We don’t even know where we’re going!” What if we crash?”

            “Unlikely,” Jack said. “This plane is essentially a glider. It won’t take much speed to get her in the air, and once we’re up, even if we ran out of juice we could just glide for miles and find a place to touch down. A runway would be ideal, but even a large grassy plane would do. This isn’t a jetliner. Anyway, Harold, you said you saw a map with other airstrips, right?”

            “Sure, but I can’t recall–“

            “Then you’re our navigator.”

            Their rushed conversation was silenced by a loud banging on the outside of the plane’s hull.

            “She’s a beaut,” said a loud voice from somewhere outside the tail of the fuselage.

            “Yessir,” said a second voice, that of the mustachioed man. “Just in from Germany. She’ll do two hundred knots at full throttle. Flies like a bird.”

            “Yeah, so I hear. You’ll have to take me for a spin sometime.” The men laughed and then the voices faded off into the distance as they departed.

            “Alright,” Jack said affirmatively as he twisted in the pilot’s seat to look at Harold and Hyde stuffed in their small seats in the passengers’ seats at the read. “This is our window. It’s now or never. Take to the sky or run back to the woods.” Worried glances were exchanged. Jack imagined them weighing the options. As fearful as taking to the skies in a foreign aircraft were, they had been battered and worn by their time in the woods. Their faces and hair were laced in dirt and grime. It was clear after a moment that no one really wanted to go back to the woods.

            “Fine then,” Jack said, turning back to the controls. “Flight it is.” Jack flipped a switch and the dashboard flickered to life. Gauges spun and settled, as if woken suddenly from sleep. Jack fed power to the engines and felt the fuselage tremble slightly as the propellers began to spin. He was again struck by how quiet the craft was. You could actually carry on a conversation in here without using headsets.

            Jack released the brakes and the craft immediately eased forward. Jack winced, bracing for what would inevitably happen next. Sure enough, within moments there was the sound of rapid footsteps slapping against the pavement behind the plane.

            “Hey! Stop! Who’s in there?!” A voice screamed. Jack did his best to ignore the pleas but felt the guilt welling in his stomach. Here he was, stealing someone’s new plane. What had he become?

            But it was too late. The plane’s four propellers bit firmly into the air and wouldn’t let go. The ground fell away and the cabin filled with sunlight as Madeline nosed up and glimpsed an endless, cloudless sky.

***

            “So, how are things going with Adrina?” Sophie asked. She watched her mother’s expression carefully, knowing it might reveal more than her words. Naomi sighed. The two stood in the open field behind their cabin, hanging laundry on a series of cords strung between two T-shaped metal poles.

            “It’s hard to say, really. Sometimes we have good days, and other times I feel like she’s far away,” Naomi said.

            “Well, for the record, I think she’s come the farthest of the four,” Sophie said reassuringly.

            “Yes, perhaps. Then again, perhaps our expectations have been unreasonable.”

            “How so?”

            “I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling I get. When I talked with Adrina the other day, some of the things she said really struck a chord with me. She’s still carrying around a lot of guilt from her past life. She lacks confidence, self-respect, and so on. I realized that those were feelings I dealt with too, when I was raising you.”

            “Oh?” Sophie said. It was the first time she’d heard her mother mention anything about her childhood in years, perhaps decades. She knew they’d had difficult times before, during, and after the adoption, and she sensed that discussing the topic brought her mom shame.

            “There was just so much pressure on me, and on our family, in those last days. Then you hit your teenage years and I almost lost my mind. I thought you were going to leave the truth.”

            I almost did, Sophie didn’t say.

            “Now, looking back at it all, the pressures we faced seem so petty. Trying to pay the mortgage on our house, for example. The house that was destroyed in a fire years before we finished the payments. Or scraping together the money for health insurance, which now seems like a completely alien concept. Or worrying we’d get sick and the insurance we did have wouldn’t kick in because the company found some way around us. Every day it was a battle to just survive. And we forget this, you know? Here we are living in paradise, between a beautiful lake and a majestic mountain, with all the friends and love we could ever ask for and it seems normal and natural, but in those days it barely seemed possible that things could ever change.”

            Sophie nodded without fully understanding. She’d been only a child at the time. The pressures of a fully-grown adult with grown-up responsibilities and anxieties was something she never faced.

            “I keep praying that Jehovah helps me to understand what Adrina must be going through–or Liping, Harold and Jack, for that matter. I mean, to them, that Old World was a reality just a few days ago, before they woke up. What would that feel like? To die in a wicked, old system and suddenly come to life in a new and perfect one? I can’t even imagine.”

            “And they’ve been here only a couple weeks,” Sophie said, beginning to catch on.

            “Exactly. What are a few days? How long did it take us to adjust to this life? Months? Years? I know it wasn’t easy for us, at first. We were all so happy that the Old World was gone, but then reality set in and we had to figure how to survive without running water and electricity and cellphones...”

            Sophie giggled as she remembered that surprisingly trying aspect of paradise. For some reason she’d never considered that she wouldn’t be able to get coverage with her iPhone X on the other side of Armageddon. She’d eventually abandoned it, only to discover a few years later with regret that a team of tech-savvy brothers had found a way to retrieve old photos and videos from mobile devices.

            “Maybe they just need more time,” Naomi concluded, hanging the final linen on the clothesline.

            “You’re doing a good job, you know,” Sophie said, looking at her mother. Her face was still fresh and youthful, the ephemeral beauty restored, but she seemed tired.

            “Thanks, Sophie. I guess I never thought it’d be this tough.”

            “Yeah, well, you and me both.”

            “Have you talked with Liping?”

            Sophie nodded. “Lirui called last night and they were together. We talked briefly. She seems to be enjoying her time there.”

            “That’s good. One day at a time,” Naomi’s voice trailed off as she glanced towards the lake and set her fists on her hips.

            “Yeah, one day at a time.”

            Naomi smiled at her daughter and hoisted the emptied basket to her side. As she turned to head back to the house, Sophie spoke.

            “Mom, have you told Adrina yet?”

            “About?”

            “About her son.”

            Naomi paused. She turned slowly to look at her daughter. “I...I haven’t. Not yet. I just... I think it’s too soon.”

            “Ok. Just curious,” Sophie said, feeling the stab of regret as her mother looked at her with uncertainty. “One day at a time,” she said simply.