kind. A second later, he knows it’s one of the two-legged.
He feels a sense as strong as his. Different, yet strong. It was just a light brush but enough for him to become aware of it. He feels confused and intrigued but of worry also surfaces. Michael finds it strange that he can sense one of the two-legged even if just for a moment. He waits for another sensing but nothing appears. The vibration and rumbling fade into the distance. Tiredness from the night’s hunt takes hold once again. He lays on the carpeted floor and falls back to sleep.
Rising with the setting of the sun, he stretches in the dark and readies himself for another night of hunting. Eagerness spills into his eyes. He lives for the hunt and the thrill of the chase. With that feeling inside, he ventures out like he does every night and tests the air for scents. The night has more moisture than those previous. This is good news as the moist air will carry the scent of prey better. He lifts his nostrils to the cloudy night sky. The remembrance of the touch on his mind surfaces and he glances quickly to his left towards the large two-legged lair.
He stands a moment and, although he is eager to be off on the hunt, he knows it will have to wait. The intrigue of that brush speaks louder than his desire for the chase. With a move so quick that it would startle most humans, one minute standing still and the next moving, he lopes toward the lair he has avoided so far.
He keeps his presence and ability to sense others in the back of his mind yet keeps alert as he draws closer to the tall walls. He expects the feeling of the two-legged one he felt to return as he nears. The ability is limited by distance. Not knowing why he sensed a two-legged one, he thinks the distance may limit it even more. He senses nothing as he draws cautiously to the walls. The smell of the two-legged prey behind the walls increases. Their scent is strong in the air, especially seeing they have been there for a length of time.
He looks to the walls. He can’t see any way to scale their heights. He doesn’t hear any of the two-legged ones so throws caution to the wind and takes a running leap in an attempt to reach the top but falls several feet short. He looks down the wall’s length, stretching past his vision, seeing no change in the height. Michael backs up farther and tries again but with the same result. Looking carefully for any hand holds he missed on first glance, he sees nothing he can use. He looks to the ground and begins to dig where the wall meets the tall grass. He manages to get a foot down but has to stop as the soil becomes too hard. The wall follows his path downward. There’s no way under.
Feeling frustration at not being able to sense whatever brushed his mind during his sleep nor gain entrance, he lopes along the wall looking for any change. He circumnavigates the entire boundary without finding any. Picking up the scent of additional prey behind the seemingly insurmountable walls, his frustration increases. The trip around has taken a large part of his time for hunting. The smell of prey is tantalizingly close but he can’t get to it. He knows he must be off if he is to feed tonight. With a shriek of frustration and rage, he lopes into the night to use the last few hours to find food.
The sun vanishes behind the upper layer of clouds as we begin our climb. I ask Robert to keep us down low and give our sanctuary a low pass; kind of a farewell if you will. He levels off and descends slightly turning further to the south, picks up I-5 and follows it. We are only around five hundred feet above ground; not too low but not terribly high either. The changing weather brings the occasionally choppy turbulence but Robert handles it fine. The walls of the sanctuary come into view and we head directly for the green roof of Cabela’s. Well, not directly at it as that would entail smacking into it. That’s not the optimal idea. Any move in that direction would most definitely garner my undivided attention. We more fly towards it.
As we approach the tall gray walls surrounding the compound, I feel a sudden intrusion into my mind. It’s not like the other night runner’s I have felt. This one is, well, it’s hard to describe, but I would say there is a greater strength to it and, as odd as it sounds, it’s more aware. It’s just a feeling and I only feel it for a moment. As fast as it came, it’s gone. I look immediately out of the left window where the feeling emanated from. Several large stores and strip malls are across the highway from Cabela’s but I pinpoint exactly where the sensation came from.
There is a Safeway store nestled in a large strip mall a little ways away. That’s the same Safeway where I had that strange vision, I think wondering exactly what it was, or is, that I felt. It felt like a night runner but not exactly. I store the episode in the back of mind. Part of me wants to cast forth to see what it was, to see if I can sense it again, but something holds me back. Perhaps I don’t want to know.
We fly over the walls and the parking lots slide underneath. Robert gives a rock of the wings, puts the power up, and begins to climb into the morning sky. I give a last look at the Safeway as it slides past our wing. I store the presence I felt in the back of mind to ponder over later. We have a flight to make.
An Answer is Found
We continue our climb with the high clouds drawing closer the higher we go. I notice the images and sense of the night runners, which I’ve placed in their own mental compartment, dissipate and vanish altogether as we gain altitude and distance. Mount Rainier slides by our wing and we fly above the brown fields of central and eastern Washington. The Columbia River comes into view soon after. We draw even closer to the clouds and it is apparent we won’t be able to reach our planned altitude of flight level 200 — 20,000 feet.
“Robert, level off here,” I say as we approach 17,000 feet. “I want to keep a visual reference with the ground.”
“Okay, Dad,” he says into the intercom.
I plugged into the navigator station with the longer crew chief cord so I can walk around and be close to Robert just in case. He has handled himself well but if something happens, I want to be close. He levels off and powers back to a normal cruise flight setting. I get Bri’s attention and nod to McCafferty. She gets my meaning and slides out of her seat allowing McCafferty to take over the flight engineer duties. We begin broadcasting on both the UHF and VHF emergency frequencies and plan to do so every half hour.
The clouds vanish as we head across the northeastern part of Oregon and Robert climbs to our originally planned altitude. The forested hills of the Blue Mountains slide quickly past and before long we see Boise off our nose. I check the inertial nav with ground references. It’s right on which alleviates that stress to a certain extent. The sky is clear as the city slides just off the left side. There isn’t a smoke line drifting skyward from the city. Although we are at altitude, there doesn’t appear there is any movement either. The crisscross pattern of streets lies empty.
There is one exception. A mess of rubble lies close to the center of town blocking the streets. We pass over the empty city knowing that when night comes, the streets will be full of activity. It’s as if the city is holding its breath during the day and is itself fearful of the night setting. All cities seem to have this aspect. The age of mankind as we knew it is just a memory; held in the walls and streets of mankind’s structure.
Mountain Home tells pretty much the same story. A few spirals of smoke from still-smoldering fires drift lazily above the base located there. There is more rubble in a parking lot where it looks like the BX or some other larger building is. Military aircraft of all types sit on the silent ramps. Each town we fly over gives off a feeling of loneliness but perhaps that is ourselves missing the world we once knew. Not much is said as we pass over the brown plains of Idaho.
I notice a movement from McCafferty next to me as she reaches up to switch tanks. My heart almost stops in my chest as I realize what she is doing and, in the moments as my hand races towards hers, I’m hoping I will be in time. Both of her hands are reaching for the fuel switch panel, one on each side. She is attempting to switch the tanks on both sides at once. That’s not the issue though. She is about to do it in the wrong sequence. I’m not sure why I looked but I’m grateful I did. I manage to grab her hand before she turns the switch closest to me and hope it will stop her from switching the other. As my hand grabs hers, she stops all movement. Or perhaps it was me yelling “No” in the intercom. All eyes turn quickly to me startled as if expecting the plane to come apart at any moment.
“You have to switch the pumps on, open the valves on the tank you’re switching to first, and then close the valve to the tank you’re feeding from,” I say after my heart starts beating again with a mighty pound in my chest. “If you do it the other way, there will be no fuel flowing to the engines and that’s a less than optimal situation. Plus, do one side at a time.”
“Okay, sir. Sorry,” McCafferty says and proceeds to do it in the correct sequence.
