Departure(29)

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.





17





About a hundred yards out from the three clear plastic tents, I draw the binoculars again and focus them, trying to make out the blurry objects inside. They’re narrow beds, evenly spaced, some empty, some occupied by bodies. Beyond the tents the forest suddenly erupts in a burst of heavy footsteps and cracking branches.

I scan with the binoculars, quickly spotting the source: figures in what look like bulky space suits, barreling through the dense brush. The suits’ large helmets indicate that they’re built for total containment. Strange. From here the suits’ inhabitants appear taller than normal humans. Or are they human at all? They could be machines, or . . . who knows. It’s obvious why I didn’t spot the figures before: as they move through the woods, their suits briefly take on the browns and green of the trees and fallen leaves. Adaptive camouflage. They flicker as they move, the suits struggling to keep up with the colors and patterns around them. No rescue team needs suits like that. It’s equipment for the military, or for those who need to operate in secret. If they’re here to help us, why would they need to hide from us?