The Air Force was back.
NINE
“Everybody inside!” Chris commanded. “Move! Now!”
The entire crowd scrambled for the building where we had been safely sleeping below ground. What had been a barracks would now have to serve as a bunker. It wasn’t a full-on panicked rush. There were no screams but plenty of pushing and shoving.
I went for the cables that were powering the Christmas lights, but Olivia grabbed my arm.
“Where are you going?” she screamed. “Get inside!”
“I’m coming,” I said. “Get out of here!”
She hesitated, as if not wanting to leave me, but Kent yanked her away. The two ran for safety. Jon abandoned his DJ table and was right behind them.
The musical sound of the incoming planes grew louder.
I found the main plug for the lights and yanked it loose, breaking the connection to the generators and plunging the courtyard into darkness. When I turned to head for the building, Tori was there, facing me.
“Does this change your answer?” she asked.
“Can we talk about it later?”
We took off, running for safety.
The courtyard was nearly empty. It had taken only seconds. Tori and I would be the last ones to get inside. We ran to the back of the crowd that was jammed up near the door and had to wait while everyone squeezed through the opening.
I looked skyward, and my knees went weak.
“There they are,” I said, barely above a whisper.
It was a cloudless night with no moon. With Boston dark, the sky was alive with stars. Their sparkling light is what allowed us to see the silhouettes of the dark planes.
“My god,” Tori said.
There were hundreds of them. This was not a search for stragglers; it was a full-on assault.
Tori and I stood paralyzed, staring up at wave after wave of planes that appeared from the west. They flew in perfect formation, wing-to-wing and row after row.
“They look smaller,” Tori observed.
“Not smaller, higher,” I replied. “They’re way up there.”
The doorway was clear. Everyone was safely inside.
Tori and I stood frozen, staring up at the spectacle as the planes kept coming.
“This isn’t about us,” I finally declared. “They’re not here to attack, they’re going somewhere else.”
“They’re headed out over the Atlantic,” she said. “They could be going to Greenland, or England or any one of a thousand other countries.”
We continued to gaze up at the massive fleet, no longer afraid for ourselves but thunderstruck by what this show of force might mean.
“Who is commanding them?” Tori wondered aloud, as much to herself as to me. “What is their mission?”
“Hopefully it’s to wipe out SYLO,” I offered.
She tore her gaze away from the planes and looked at me.
“How can you be so sure that would be a good thing?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure of that at all, but I wanted SYLO destroyed and didn’t much care who did it. I answered her with a noncommittal shrug and kept my eyes on the sky.
The trailing edge of planes finally passed over us as the entire force continued east, headed for some unknown destination and unthinkable mission.
“We have to tell the others it’s safe,” I said.
Tori snickered. “Seriously? It isn’t even close to safe. But at least they can all get back to their fun.”
We entered the building and announced that we weren’t under attack. The news traveled quickly, and the tension was soon gone, though nobody felt much like going back out to dance. The party was over.
Tori and I went to our bunks to find Kent, Jon, and Olivia already there. Nobody was in the mood to discuss what had happened, which was fine by me. All I wanted was to fall asleep and get the image of those planes out of my mind. Instead, I saw something that only added to my anxiety.
“Where’s Jim?” I asked.
The mattress on his bunk was rolled up, and his suitcase was gone.
“Was he at the dance?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him,” Jon said. “But I was busy.”
“He could have been,” Kent said. “It wasn’t like I was looking for him.”
I lay down on my cot but couldn’t relax. Where could Jim have gone? He might have moved to another cot, but that didn’t seem likely because most were occupied. I couldn’t let it go, so I got up and walked the length of the building, scanning each of the cots with the light from my headlamp.
Jim was definitely gone.
When I got back to my own cot, Tori was awake and waiting for me.
“Maybe he decided to leave,” she offered.
“No chance. He was here for the long haul. He told me so every chance he got. I can’t believe he’d just take off. He didn’t even say good-bye.”
“Then he must still be around somewhere,” she said. “We’ll find him in the morning.”
I put my head down on the pillow, but there was no chance I was going to fall asleep quickly. Jim was a fixture at the Hall. He helped to organize it. He had no family left and nowhere else to go. Why would he change his mind and leave?
I eventually drifted off to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning I knew exactly what I had to do, which was the same thing I had done most every day. I was going to see who was leaving on the morning bus.
I tried to get out of my cot without disturbing anyone, but when I stood up, Tori was waiting there, fully dressed. “I’m going with you,” she whispered.
“You don’t even know where I’m going.”
“You want to see if Jim gets on the bus.”
Enough said.
Soon we were walking together in the gray dusk of the chilly Boston morning. I didn’t miss the fact that she was clutching her gym bag.
“People leave every day,” she said. “Why is this bugging you?”
“Because he didn’t want to leave. If he’s getting out, something happened to change his mind, and I want to know what it was.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“It means there’s hope for you yet.”
We didn’t say another word until we reached the end of the long building and the spot where I’d watched the bus load up and pull out every morning.
There were no deliveries being made that day. There was only the big bus, empty, with the motor running, waiting for its passengers.
I led Tori to the same spot I’d gone every day, behind a large green dumpster that was tucked up next to the opposite building. From there we had a clear view of the bus and the building it was idling near.
“Why are we hiding?” Tori asked. “If this is all legit, we should go over there and bid the people a fond farewell.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “But if it’s all legit, why do they take off at the crack of dawn? They could just as easily pull out at noon.”
“You’re even more paranoid than I am,” Tori said.
“I’m not,” I argued. “I’m just logical, and there’s something illogical about this.”
The door to the building opened, and the same procedure began that I had been seeing every morning. The pretty cowboy named Ashley came out with a clipboard and stood by the bus. She was soon followed by a line of people that shuffled past, offered whatever information she asked for, then continued onto the bus.
Though it was still fairly dark, I could see everyone. The loading process went normally. One by one the people filed by the girl, she checked something on the clipboard, and they boarded. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until the last guy came out of the building.
It was Jim.
I grabbed Tori’s arm. I’m not sure why.
“I don’t believe it,” I whispered.
“Guess he didn’t love it here so much after all,” Tori said.