16
The searchlight sweeps over the tall grass around us, barely missing the structure that surrounds Stonehenge. I jump up, Mike at my heels.
Bob tries to push up, but collapses back to the manicured grass.
“Stay here, Bob!” I yell.
Mike and I rush to the glass wall, to the partition that opened, allowing us in. We stand impatiently as the glass slowly rises from the bottom, the computer voice barely audible above the rain and the engine in the distance. “Thank you for visiting the Stonehenge interactive exhibit . . .”
Outside I spot the searchlight’s source: an airship, or that’s what I would call it. It’s shaped roughly like a helicopter but much larger, and it has no rotors, top, or tail. Yet it hovers somehow, moving slowly forward. I’m not even sure how it hangs in the air.
I step forward, shouting and waving my arms, but it’s already moving past us, back toward the crash site.
I start through the field, still waving. “Stay here,” I call over my shoulder to Mike. “They could circle back.”
Behind me, he begins shouting and waving his arms too.
I run flat-out through the damp green grass, wind-driven rain pelting me. At the top of the ridge, I stop. The airship is almost out of sight, and it’s making good speed. I scan in every direction with the binoculars, but I can’t see another searchlight. The sun has set, and it’s getting darker by the minute.
I jog back to the structure, where Mike’s standing, his short hair and Celtics T-shirt drenched.
We walk back into the glass octagon in silence. Inside, Bob is hunched over, coughing. He looks up at us eagerly, but I shake my head as I try to squeeze some of the water out of my clothes.
“Looked like it was headed for the crash site,” he says.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You have to leave me,” Bob says. “You promised you would, Nick.”
He’s probably right. If the wind and rain have extinguished the fire by the lake those airships could miss the crash site. On the other hand, if another ship is close behind that one, we won’t make it to camp to restart the fire in time. Staying here is our best shot at being seen and maybe Bob’s only chance of survival.
“You promised, Nick,” Bob says, his voice growing weaker by the second.
“The odds are that another ship will pass. This landmark and field are our best chance of getting spotted. What if they miss the crash site? And marching back in this storm would be foolish. We’ll wait here for a break in the storm or another ship, whichever comes first.”
“You need to get back, Nick. If it’s scenario two—if somebody brought us here—that may not be the rescue we’re hoping for. They may be hostile.” Bob coughs again, wiping the blood away quickly.
“We don’t know that.”
“We have to assume it. Those people will be taken by surprise. You and Mike have the upper hand. You have to move now.”
“We wait. That’s the decision.”
Bob is dead. Mike and I were napping in short shifts, trying to conserve energy for the hike ahead. I awoke to coughs, and looked over at Bob in the dim light. His breathing was shallow, his face even more wrinkled, eyes sunken and yellow. His hands trembled slightly as he drew one last breath, shuddered, and went still.
It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, the way he deteriorated over only a few hours. He’d been fit enough for a twenty-mile hike twelve hours before. Something is very wrong here. What could have killed him that quickly? A contagion? A bug he caught here at Stonehenge when the glass parted? Could the structure have sealed a virus or bacteria inside for all these years? I glance at the bones in the short, manicured grass. Is that what killed these people? Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to have affected either Mike or me—at least, not yet.
Looking down at Bob’s still body, I can’t help but think he would have liked passing away here, in a place devoted to science, technology, and history, a monument that has represented those things for thousands of years.
We feel we should do something with Bob’s body, give him some kind of ceremony, but the reality is, we don’t have the time or the tools for a proper burial. In the end we lay him close to the other bodies and fold his arms over his chest.
At the edge of the structure, I pause. “We’ll have to move fast, for our sake and the camp’s. We only stop to rest when absolutely necessary.” Mike nods, and we step under the glass door into the field.
We’ve marched all night through the wind, rain, and cold, but we have to stop, try to warm up and rest, to prepare ourselves for whatever awaits at camp. We’re exhausted, hungry, and freezing, but we’re almost home. We’ve seen no sign of the airship, but we’ll know whether it found the crash site soon. And whether it’s a friend or foe.
As the first faint rays of sunrise paint the treetops, I climb a ridge a mile from the crash site, draw the binoculars from my jacket, and scan the distance until I find the camp by the lake. The fire’s long extinguished; I can’t see the faintest trace of smoke. Blue blankets dot the muddy bank, all empty, not a soul in sight. That’s either very good or very bad.
I pan left, searching for the nose section of the plane through the dense forest, but something else swims into view through the lenses first: three long tents, plastic stretched over arched metal supports, like round style greenhouses. What is it? A field hospital? A lab? Beside the tents, white body bags are stacked in neat pyramids like firewood. There must be fifty of them. My mouth goes dry, and I scan more quickly, searching for a clue about what’s going on.
The door to the nose section is open, and there’s no movement inside.
I pan out farther, searching. The airship I saw at Stonehenge—no, two of them, in a clearing. They’re huge, three times the size of the plane’s nose section. The ships’ outer doors are closed, and there’s no sign of movement around either vessel.
I run the binoculars over every inch of the forest, but I can’t see any movement. Whatever’s happening is hidden by the trees or the long plastic tents. We’ll have to get closer.