“Copy.”
The static flared again and then clicked off for good. Travis waited for the footsteps to retreat, but for a moment they didn’t. Lambert was just standing there, no doubt gazing around at the spectacle of the concourse. Whatever the man felt about it, it didn’t reduce him to tears. After a few seconds he retreated to the door, and then he was gone.
Travis relaxed his grip on the shotgun. He turned to look at Paige. She was looking in his direction, but past him. Staring at the big windows, thinking about something.
“It’s probably about five o’clock here,” she said. “I don’t know when the sun sets in Arizona during October, but eyeballing it I’d say we’ve got an hour.”
Travis followed her stare. He looked at the angle of sunlight coming into the terminal. It shone as harshly as it would have at midday, but it fell at a long slant. An hour was probably about right.
“We need to get out of here right now,” Paige said. She sounded on edge. “We need to get out into the desert and go back through the iris to the present. We can walk to the Jeep from there.”
Travis had an idea of what was spooking her.
“This camera mast they were talking about—”
Paige cut him off. “Yes. We need to be scared shitless of it. And we need to get moving. I’ll explain on the way.”
She stepped past him, out of the shop. He took a step to follow and then realized Bethany hadn’t moved yet. He stopped, turned back to her. Saw what she was staring at.
In a little wastebasket just visible behind the shop’s counter, there was a scrap of newspaper. Maybe the top third of the front page, torn roughly from left to right. It was stained with ancient blotches of mustard, like it’d been used to clean up the remnants of a sandwich on the counter. Glancing around, Travis saw no sign of the paper it’d been torn from. For that matter, there were no newspapers of any kind in the shop. A tower of wire shelves in the corner had clearly once been stocked with them, but it was empty now, like every bookshelf in the place. Except the scrap in the trash can, not a single piece of paper remained in the store. Travis turned his eyes to the concourse and saw the reason within seconds: the kids had burned the paper to stay warm. Ash piles remained in various stone planters among the bodies. As hot as this place would get during the day, it would cool down fast at night. The big glass wall would bleed away the heat in no time—especially in December.
Bethany stooped and took the piece of newspaper from the trash. Filling most of the space was the paper’s title: The Arizona Republic. Below that was the date: December 15, 2011. And beneath that was the lead headline and the top few rows of the story’s text—a single column beside a giant photo—before the torn bottom edge cut it off.
The photo was impossible to make out. Only the top inch of it showed: a defocused background of a crowd somewhere.
The headline read, former president garner assassinated in new york city.
Paige let her urgency fade for the moment. She stepped back into the shop.
Bethany spread the paper on the counter so all three of them could see it. Despite age yellowing and the mustard stain, the fragment of article text was easily readable:
New York (AP)—Former United States President Richard Garner was shot to death at a gathering in Central Park yesterday evening, Wednesday, December 14. Garner had for several days spoken publicly against the mass relocation to
That was it. It reached the bottom edge and there was no more. Bethany flipped the scrap over, but the other side featured only an advertisement for a local restaurant. She turned it back over to the headline.
Travis stared at it. Read the story text again. Thought about what it implied.
“We think bringing everyone to Yuma was some kind of panic move,” he said. “The official response by those in power—those behind Umbra—even if they knew it couldn’t actually save everyone. And Richard Garner called them on it, at the end. Even opposed it, publicly. Any question that’s why he was killed?”
Paige’s eyes narrowed. She saw where he was going. So did Bethany.
“Garner’s not in on it,” Paige said.
Bethany looked back and forth between them, hope rising in her eyes. “But he probably knows a hell of a lot about this stuff, right now in the present day. He only resigned the presidency two years ago. Up until that point, he had all the top security clearances. He had to have known about Umbra, whatever the hell it is.”
For a moment none of them spoke. The recording droned over the concourse.
“We should pay him a visit,” Travis said.
Paige nodded again. Then she blinked and looked around. “We need to get the hell out of Yuma first. Come on.”
She turned and led the way out of the shop, back toward the door they’d entered through.