I turn to the front to estimate how close we are to the airport. I see resident cars turning left to the airport entrance. The soldier comes down from the sunroof.
I look back again. The last Saviors car slows down to extend the distance between our vehicles.
“Thank you!” I say to both soldiers while we are turning to the airport entrance. Resident cars parked on the side follow us to the runway.
I hear the C-17’s four engines roaring. We cut off the middle of the runway moments after the plane loses the breaks and moves toward us.
The pilots stop the plane as soon as they see our SUV and resident cars. We drive around the plane to get behind the cargo door. It goes down slowly while the red light is flashing on both sides.
Everybody gets out of the cars except the soldier in the driver seat of the SUV. I jump on the cargo section once the door is lowered enough.
The captain welcomes me with a warm smile. “Just like your brother… Always late!”
I glance toward the ground while shaking my head. “Does this thing can carry all of us?” I ask.
“It can’t if we don’t get rid of some weight,” he says.
We don’t onboard the SUV we came with to be able to take all the residents with us. They all agree to go to the West instead of staying on Saviors land.
I walk to the cockpit between cars in the middle and people on the side. Leyton is blindfolded and cuffed while sitting in one of the SUV’s backseat with a soldier next to him.
I enter the cockpit and have a seat next to the captain behind the pilots. I watch the plane taking off to the blue sky. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Mission accomplished. I can finally relax. We will be off the Saviors border soon.
“Check SSR to make sure,” the captain pilot informs the co-pilot. He pushes buttons and rotates a roller. From their fast moves, I can feel that something is not going well.
The captain pilot turns his head to us.
“We are tailgated by two planes!” he says.
“What kind of planes?” Captain Burn asks. The pilot takes a closer look at one of the screens in front of him.
“Thermal signatures suggest fighter jets,” he says. I have no doubt that Saviors possessed military jets along with their pilots who managed to survive.
“They locked onto us!” he says. An annoying tapping sound starts playing continuously.
There is probably not much a cargo plane can do when it’s chased by two fighter jets. I close my eyes again. We have nothing to do but pray. Maybe Barry has already sent F-16s to take us out from here safely.
The alarm-like sound stops after about a minute. I look at the pilots to figure out what’s going on.
“Yes, sir. Roger that,” the captain pilot says. He turns to me. “Jets went back… Mr. Highland wants to speak with you.”
I feel like a student who got caught red-handed by the school principal.
I pick up the headset attached to my seat.
“Matt…” My brother says.
“It was you?” I ask.
“Yes, I saved your life…again. I just got out of a call with the Congressman. He agreed on not taking revenge if I accept a meeting with him and Paizen this week… He also asked for some cash and minerals, but anyway…”
“Thank you… I know it’s a lot for you to accept a meeting with him... and that company,” I say.
“We will talk about details later… I wanted to tell you something else.” His voice gets lower and deeper. It reminds me of our childhood days when we played a first-person shooter game, and he changes strategy to turn the game around.
“About Toshi’s family?” I ask. I told him about my friendship with Toshi and his unfortunate faith. I tried to reach his parents in Japan, but the communication channels were completely down. My brother asked his intelligence team to find out about their whereabouts.
“No… I haven’t heard from the team yet. There is something else.”
“Listening.”
“We found mom…” he says.
“What? You found mom?” I ask, hoping I heard him right on this noisy radio
“Yes…”
A day in the post-apocalyptic world couldn’t get better. I try to restrain my excitement. The way he started the topic tells me that there is more to the news though.
“She is… different,” he says.
“What do you mean? Stop giving one part of the information at a time,” I say impatiently. I pull out the photo with my mom from my pocket and stare at it. “She speaks a language I don’t understand…nobody around here understands. We found her with a dozen other people who speak the same thing. They keep walking around and acting weird...”
I can hear the tension unexplainable things can cause. I have no idea what happened to mom. Is this a joke?
“…and she didn’t recognize me… She doesn’t seem like she knows what she’s doing. They all act like they are following orders they are getting from somewhere,” he says.
“Like, where?”
“I don’t know… Doctors can’t tell what is wrong with them. It’s something they haven’t seen.”
“A new kind of virus?” I ask.
“No… I think…they are taken,” he says.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The world is a better place thanks to these friends who provided significant support for the publication of this book. The logistics wouldn’t have been easy without your generosity. Thank you!
(In alphabetic order)
Ana Sterc
Deise Miller
Deniz Halilov
Flaminia Sechi
Hakan Evircan
Ozan Can Cakman
Sean Greenhalgh
Shayla McMurray
Victoria Gorbacheva
Yigit Pala
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ned Sahin is a software engineer living in Charlotte, North Carolina.
His love for writing started the moment he developed his first website while in middle school. He shared his experience with computers on his website and wrote several articles that were published in computer magazines. After graduating from computer engineering as the first in his class, he wrote three technical books. He has been actively blogging about technology since 2004.
Ned
