Leon just shook his head.
“So we take what we can.”
In the end, they loaded up three backpacks with some of Leon’s clothes, a solar charger, bottles of water, a loaf of bread, cheese, four cigarette lighters, two packs of cigarettes, an ounce of marijuana, rolling paper, and a flashlight.
James added a package of cookies and an apple to the supplies. “That should do it,” he said. “Let’s go up to the roof.”
“But what about blankets?” Vito asked. “Or hats? What if it gets cold? I hear it gets cold in the mountains.”
“Shut up already,” Leon said, not unkindly, clapping one hand on Vito’s sweatshirt clad shoulder. “It’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out.”
Climbing the stairs to the rooftop, they finally emerged through the doorway. The afternoon was breezy. They set down their packs, and set up around Vito.
“You can do this, right?” Leon asked.
Vito nodded. He had his ancient Motorola out on his lap, tapping the keys on its tiny physical keyboard. “I got the ware from a guy whose brother’s girlfriend worked at UPS. The login codes were bad when I got them, but I found some valid login codes on a Chinese website. I read a story that the Chinese hijack drones headed out of Japan, and X-ray all the packages looking for prototype electronics.”
Leon remembered reading the same story. Ever since the Embargo of 2018, few electronics manufacturers would manufacture in China. A few too many intellectual property rights violations caused the major electronics companies to complain to the World Trade Organization. And then a decade of human rights violations and intellectual property theft all came crashing down at the door of the Chinese government. The Chinese government addressed the three month embargo the way they usually did, which was to ignore it. When the embargo was lifted three months later, the big electronics companies had already set up new solar powered manufacturing facilities in Chad. Ample sunlight, air drone transport, and cheap labor made Chad the new Shenzhen. Not to mention the social kudos for providing jobs in Chad. The high value research was still done in Japan and the United States. Now China was reduced to hijacking drones.
Leon peered over Vito’s shoulder at the screen of his phone. Vito had up a map displaying the flight patterns of the active package drones overlaid on their location.
“We need to find something that has a scheduled stop nearby,” Vito said.
“No,” James said. “Don’t worry about detection. Anybody who is monitoring the drones has got to be over eighteen, which means that they don’t have a computer to do it with, right? I just want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
Leon nodded his agreement. “Just go for something with enough payload space for three of us.”
Vito grumbled, but went ahead. Flicking his thumb over the drone icons onscreen, he checked the payload capacity of the nearest drones. He smiled to himself as he found one only a few miles distant.
Working the phone with both hands, he opened up the navigation panel for the selected drone. He inserted their GPS coordinates into the flight path for the drone. The flight control software tried to reject the coordinate as invalid, since it didn’t correspond to a known package drop-off or pickup location. Vito thought, then changed the flight classification to “experimental”. With the new flight classification, the software accepted the coordinate, and the map updated to show the flight path with a stop at their current location. The flight path was marked with the expected flight time.
“Should be here in two minutes,” Vito called out. “Coming from the northeast.”
Leon was impressed. They all had their strengths. He could write the best MechWar algorithms, but he couldn’t have hacked the drone. Everyone wanted something they could be good at, and Vito was the best hacker of their group, even if he never used it for anything beyond practical jokes and fun. And now, of course, for fleeing a burning city.
All three boys stood scanning the sky, hands shading their eyes. A minute later, James called “I see it.”
They all watched as the drone approached the rooftop. They could see the props turning vertical. The drones were vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that looked like a lightweight, aerodynamic version of the old Boeing Osprey.
As the drone approached, the downdraft kicked up gravel from the roof. They covered their faces with their hands and arms.
“Why the hell do they put gravel on roofs?” James yelled over the noise of the props.
“It’s so your feet don’t sink into the tar on hot days,” Vito yelled back.
The drone landed, and the props shut down. Vito hit a few more keys, and the package compartment door opened. “Let’s go,” he said.
Leon’s heart was pounding as they headed for the drone, a mix of fear and excitement. He carried Vito’s backpack and his own, as Vito was still pecking keys, keeping the drone on the ground.
Leon glanced at the fire one last time before boarding the drone. It had spread now, maybe two miles in diameter, roaring through residential neighborhoods. Dense smoke poured up, obscuring the interior. They were too high, too far to see the details, but Leon imagined people fleeing the area. Or worse, staying to fight with garden hoses. He couldn’t imagine anything could stop the fire. He couldn’t think about Pamela or her mother.
“Leon, come on!” James yelled.
He ran for the drone, through the open loading door.
Inside the drone, it was quiet, clean, and calm. Brown cardboard boxes were strapped neatly into orderly stacks on the walls, leaving room in the center of the floor. They threw the backpacks down, and sat. Leon scooted over to one of the tiny maintenance windows to look out. Vito entered a few more commands, the door closed, and the props started up again. Moments later they felt the drone lift off.
“Effing wicked, I’d say,” James called out, thumping Vito on the back. “A rooftop drone getaway.”
Vito smiled in spite of himself.
Leon clapped him on the back too. “Awesome, dude, just awesome.”
As they took off, the incredible weight of the responsibility Leon felt dropped away, and for a while, he took pleasure in the joyride. They passed the apartment building fires quickly and then flew over Staten Island. Everything looked normal from this high up. The maintenance window was tiny — perhaps only six by six inches, and for twenty minutes the three just took turns looking out the window.
Vito kept a map display of their current location up. The cargo bay fortunately had a ceiling light for loading and unloading the cargo. Vito delved deep into the plane configuration controls to override the automatic rules, and keep the light turned on.
“Where to?” Vito asked “Don’t forget we can only go to sunset, give or take a bit. We’re heading northwest right now, crossing New Jersey. Solar collection falls off around four PM, and batteries should keep us going to six PM at most.”
The three looked at each other.
“Can we make Niagara Falls?” Leon asked.
“Why there?” James asked. “We’re trading one city for another city.”
“There are massive data centers there, to take advantage of the cheap electrical power,” Leon explained. “Maybe there would be some people we could talk to there. I could explain what’s going on.”
James looked doubtful. Leon called up a map on his phone to look at the Niagara Falls area.
“Look at this,” Leon called, showing them his phone. “There’s a state park here. We could put down there, and then still be within reach of Niagara Falls.”
James looked oddly at Leon. “It may look close, but that’s because you’re looking at a four inch screen. It’s got to be fifty miles apart.” James put his hand on Leon’s phone to show him.
“Hey guys,” Vito interrupted, “how are we able to get map data? I mean, I know you said the virus doesn’t infect our phones because we’re under eighteen. But how are we still able to communicate with anything?”