Travis heard something.
He grabbed Paige and Bethany and pulled them almost off their feet, into a narrow channel between houses. They flinched and stared at him. He put a finger to his lips.
They stood in silence.
The breeze moaned under the eaves of the houses.
Then it faded again, and all three of them heard the sound.
It came from somewhere south of them, maybe within the airport grounds.
It was a woman’s voice, speaking calmly, saying something they couldn’t quite make out.
It took them only a few seconds to realize what they were hearing. The woman’s voice was pleasant and monotone and had a distinct reverb to it. It was a recording, playing over some kind of PA system on the airport grounds.
They cocked their heads but couldn’t discern any of the words.
Then the breeze picked up again and they lost the sound altogether.
They stepped out from between the houses and continued south. They stopped at the corner of the last home before the fence line, twenty yards farther on. Beyond the fence there was easily a quarter mile of open space before the nearest terminal building. Anyone watching from a high perch in the city would see them. There was no shorter path across the space on any side. There was nothing for it but to run.
The fence was ten feet high. Simple chain-link. No razorwire looped across its top. All it offered as deterrents were signs every dozen yards threatening harsh legal penalties for trespassing.
Travis tried to resolve the recording again. It was no good. It was still too far away, coming from somewhere near or within the terminal.
They traded looks. They nodded.
They ran.
They crossed the fence with no difficulty, and a few seconds later they were sprinting as hard as they could across the vast reach of the airport. Travis wondered if the distance had played with his eyes. Wondered if it was a lot more than a quarter mile to the buildings. It didn’t matter now. He ran. The wind streamed past his ears. It was impossible to hear the recording, even though he was much closer to it now than before. His own pulse against his eardrums became loud enough to match the wind after the first thirty seconds.
He was fifty yards from the terminal, with Paige and Bethany matching his speed, when he began hearing the monotone voice again. He still couldn’t make out what it was saying.
The three of them reached the corner of the building. Its long side planed away to the east, three hundred yards or more. Its short side was maybe fifty yards in length, leading south to another corner. They followed the short side, sprinting along it without stopping. Travis was acutely aware that they were still visible from town. More visible than ever, in fact—against the blazing white metal of the terminal’s outer wall, they’d stand out like ants on china to anyone even glancing this way from downtown.
They reached the south corner and rounded it. They stopped and stood hunched over catching their breath. For the first time since leaving the hotel they were visually shielded. The entire bulk of the town lay north and west of the airport. Their position on the south side of the terminal building, even a few feet in from the corner, hid them completely.
Travis walked off the pain in his legs. Took a last deep breath and felt his heart rate begin to fall off. As it did, he finally heard the message in all its clarity—which wasn’t a lot.
The woman’s voice sounded like it was coming through a cardboard tube with wax paper over the end. It took some concentration to piece the words together. Travis looked up and saw the speakers, tucked far under the ten-foot overhang of the building’s roof. They had to be wired to solar panels up top. The recording itself must be stored on some kind of solid-state media—a flash drive, probably. The whole system might have no moving parts except the electrons passing through the wires, and the vibrating diaphragms of the speakers themselves. For all that, it was amazing that it still worked, even in a place like Yuma.
Travis saw Paige and Bethany straining to catch the words along with him. He realized the message was repeating every twenty seconds or so. By the fourth pass all three of them had deciphered it:
PLEASE BE PATIENT. PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THE YUMA GATHERING SITE. ALL ERICA FLIGHTS WILL RESUME SHORTLY. BE SURE TO HAVE YOUR TICKET AND PHOTO I.D. WITH YOU FOR BOARDING. INBOUND FLIGHTS WILL BRING FOOD AND EXTRA WATER PURIFIERS FOR THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO WAIT. PLEASE BE PATIENT . . .
They listened to it one more time. Travis was certain he hadn’t misheard any part of it.
“Erica flights,” Paige said. She looked at Bethany. “I wonder if those are anything like the Janet flights out of Vegas.”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Bethany said.
Travis looked from one of them to the other. “Pretend I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”