Departure. A. Riddle G.
“I haven’t seen anyone.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I assure you I’m not.”
Human interaction just isn’t Sabrina’s bag, which is probably why she’s not a practicing physician, whatever that means. But that’s not the biggest mystery at the moment.
Maybe the rescue teams are camped out at the nose section. The plane crashed almost twelve hours ago—they have to be here by now. In the confusion last night, I left my cell phone in my pocket. I verify what I already knew: it’s dead and not coming back.
“I’m gonna check the other section, get some food. Want anything?”
“Yes, please. A half-liter bottle of water and a full meal, ideally a thousand calories—fifty percent carbohydrates, thirty percent protein, and the remaining twenty percent fat. Preferably unprocessed with minimal additives.”
“Great.”
“I can add further parameters if it would be helpful.”
“Nope, nope, I’ve got what I need. Be back.”
I trudge through the woods, following the path Harper and I ran last night. She was already winded then. I should have known better—and I should have never asked her to join me and the guys in the plane. I think back to last night and realize I looked directly at her when I called for volunteers, practically without thinking. I shamed the people complaining with that speech I gave, and I can’t help but think I did the same with her. I twisted her arm, put her on the spot in front of everyone.
If she dies or is permanently disabled from the rescue, that’s all on me.
Guilt presses on my shoulders like the weight of the world, dragging me down.
Ahead, I hear shouts. Two dozen people are crowded around the gray emergency chute that leads up to the door just right of the cockpit.
“It’s our food!”
I know that voice—the drunken jerk in 2D. He’s standing at the bottom of the chute, shouting and pushing people.
“We paid for it.” He jabs his finger toward the face of the man in front of him. “Our tickets bought the food in first and business classes. Eat the food you paid for in economy. I hear it’s back at the lake.”
I don’t give much thought to what I do next. It’s nice to have an easy decision.
I push through the crowd without a word.
“You—” 2D says, snorting … before I punch him in the face as hard as I can.
He falls straight back into the chute, bounces up halfway, and lands again awkwardly. Then he’s pushing up, lunging at me, throwing a fist at least two feet short. I catch him with another shot to the face, and he flies back, at an angle this time, rolling off the edge of the chute onto the ground.
Every movement hurts, but God, it feels so good. That’s the first time I’ve hit someone since I was ten. I hope it’ll be the last punch I ever throw—but it’s worth it. Easily.
From the ground, 2D’s eyes are daggers. “I’ll have you arrested for assault when this is over!”
“Really? How?”
“I’ve got two dozen witnesses.”
“Do you?” I glance back at the crowd, who are all smiles, some shaking their heads.
“And I’ve got proof,” 2D says, pointing to his bloody face.
“Of what? Being in an airplane crash?”
I turn to Jillian, whose eyes are wide. “How much food is left?”
“Some. I’m not sure.”
“Start bringing it out. Take two people to help you.”
The mob swells forward, but I hold up my hands. “Wait. We need to stay down here. The plane could be unstable. Let Jillian bring the food out, and we’ll divide it evenly, okay?”
There’s some grumbling but no real pushback. After all, I just punched some random guy in the face, seemingly apropos of nothing.
Behind me, Jillian is struggling up the chute with the help of two guys. It seems a waste to build a stairway when we’ll be rescued soon, but someone’s likely to get hurt if we don’t. I walk over and talk with the three of them about what we might use, everything from luggage to the serving carts. We agree that that will be the next priority, after breakfast is served.
What next? The mob is still here, massed like concertgoers waiting for the show to start. We need real help. Rescue.
“Does anyone here have a working cell phone?” I ask.
Voices around the crowd call out.
No, no service.
Battery’s dead.
Been trying all night, nothing.
Nobody has, I’ve been asking.
That’s odd. No, it’s unbelievable. Out of two hundred passengers who crash-land in England, no one has a cell signal? Something’s wrong.
The crowd seems to be thinking the same thing. A man wearing a tweed blazer over a Doctor Who T-shirt and jeans steps out of the crowd. “It’s obvious what’s happened, isn’t it?” He pauses, waiting for the group’s attention. “It’s started—the Third World War. They’ve taken out our communications, all electronics. The invasion’s begun, that’s why they’re not bothering with us lot. They’ve got bigger problems than rescuing us at the moment.”
Groans erupt, as well as murmurs of concern. A short, bald man wearing a black sweater and tiny round glasses takes up the dissenting position, speaking with that Down East Maine accent, slowly, deliberately, like a professor dressing down his least-favorite student. “That, sir, is far-fetched to the point of absurdity.”
“Is it now?” the Doctor Who fan retorts. “What do you know about it?”
“A great deal, actually. I used to work for Northrop Grumman.”
“Oh yeah? Big whoop.”
“If this were World War Three, we’d be hearing explosions. Planes would be flying overhead. We’d probably hear tanks and troop carriers in the distance. Anyway, I doubt World War Three would start in England.”
“Maybe they’re saving England for last. It’s the perfect launching place for an invasion of Continental Europe—history’s proved that.”
“It is,” Northrop Grumman guy counters. “And that’s precisely why nobody’s conquered it in almost a thousand years.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t that kind of war. Your lot always assumes the next war will be just like the last, tanks and planes right up to the end, but it’s the technology that’s the real key. They’ve taken us back to the Stone Age. They’ll wait us out, let us start starving before they invade. They probably got us with a series of EMPs. That explains the crash—the phones, too.”
“It does not, sir,” Northrop Grumman drawls condescendingly. “An EMP wouldn’t have fried our cell phones, but it would have knocked out larger electronics. I just saw a man on the plane with a working laptop.”
A middle-aged woman in an NYU sweatshirt speaks up. “The Internet went out during the flight. I was reading e-mail. That was at least an hour before we crashed.”
“True,” says a tall man beside her.
“Maybe it’s just a problem with the satellites.”
Northrop Grumman turns to the NYU woman. “A satellite failure could have contributed to the crash, true, but it doesn’t explain the