Departure (11 page)

I'M A NEW WOMAN. LITERALLY. MY HEAD IS
clear, my skin is smooth, and my muscles feel supple and strong. There's no hint that I was on my deathbed twelve hours ago. (I guess it was technically my death lie-flat seat—in first class, no less—but never mind that.) The bottom line is, those suited
things
that invaded the crash site healed me. And did a bang-up job. It's quite a mystery, given how the meet-and-greet started.

I don't remember anything after the shimmering monster stormed into the cabin and shot Sabrina, Yul, and me with what must have been a sedating device. I awoke the next morning on a narrow bed. My eyes focused just in time to watch the steel hoops above me retract, letting the plastic roof take flight, drifting into the woods. I thought it was snowing at first, but I soon realized that tiny bits of leaves and limbs were falling, as if a grinder were shredding the treetops. The sound of explosions in the air assaulted me next. Two ships hung unmoving in the sky, firing relentlessly, the booms of their guns like thunder in my chest.

And then Nick was there, rescuing me once again, though this time I was in far better shape than he was. He looked a fright, his face covered in dirt, grime, and caked blood, his eyes sunken, his cheeks gaunt. Scared me worse than the bombs bursting in the air.

He and Yul returned from the nose section a few hours ago with Yul's carry-on and, in my opinion, a far less valuable piece of baggage: Grayson Shaw.

“He's coming with us,” Nick said when the three of them rejoined Sabrina and me, and no one's said a word since. The five of us have simply marched through one forest after another, avoiding the fields, our pace steady but not quite brisk, for Nick's sake. He's in the worst shape of all of us. He's been holding his right side—his ribs, I'd guess—and breathing hard almost the entire way.

When we finally stop for water, I beg him to rest for a bit, but he insists we go on. Sabrina tries to have a look at his injuries, but Nick won't hear of it.

“They're hunting us.” He motions to Yul's bag. “And whatever's in there.”

Yul stiffens.

“We'll talk about it when we get to the farmhouse we saw on our way to the glass structure.”

“The structure?” Sabrina asks.

“It was . . . nothing,” Nick says, still trying to catch his breath between sips of water. “We'll talk about everything at the farmhouse, when we're not out in the open.”

A FEW HOURS LATER THE
five of us stand at the edge of a forest, eyeing an old stone farmhouse in the middle of a rolling green field. It looks deserted. There are no cars, no road or drive of any kind, for that matter, just three small stone buildings.

Nick instructs us to stay under the cover of the trees as he and Grayson set out to search the house. I want to ask whether Grayson Shaw, who's apparently come away from the crash site with a handgun he found in one of the plastic tents, is the ideal partner with whom to storm our only potential place of refuge, but they're halfway across the field before I can object.

I wait anxiously as they slip through the wooden door, guns drawn, crouched like the Metropolitan Police raiding a terror suspect's apartment block.

Beside me Sabrina and Yul stand in tense, awkward silence.

No one says a word about what I heard back at the plane. The two of them know what's going on here. They're part of it—they've known since the beginning. I wonder if they're dangerous. What a fix to be in: Grayson on one side, Sabrina and Yul on the other, and some mysterious army hunting us.

Nick and Grayson trudge back through the green field, handguns stowed.

“It's empty,” Nick calls. “Come on, quick.” The second the wood door closes behind us, he says, “Stay inside and away from the windows.”

He lays the last bits of his food on a simple wooden table. “We split it five ways.”

Nick doesn't eat his share, though. He just staggers away, exhaustion finally overtaking him. I follow him into the bedroom, where he climbs into the narrow bed and lies facedown, not bothering to remove any of his soiled clothes.

I close the door, walk around the bed, and squat down, facing him.

“Where are we?”

“Future,” he murmurs, eyes closed.

The future. How? It's a shock, but it explains the suited figures, why rescue didn't come.

“What year?”

“Don't know.”

“What was in the glass structure?”

“Stonehenge.”

“Stonehenge?” I whisper, half to myself. So we
are
in England.

Nick's drifting off. I touch his shoulder. “Sabrina and Yul—I think they may be involved in whatever happened to the plane.”

“Yeah. Gotta rest, Harper. Rough night. Don't let them leave. Get me up at sunset.”

“Okay.”

His breathing slows, and just when I think he's gone to sleep, he whispers, “Harper?”

“Yeah?”

“Glad you're okay.”

Before I can answer, he's gone, out cold.

I settle onto the floor, looking at him, thinking. Then I rise, roll him onto his back on the bed, and take his shoes off. His socks are soaked through. I peel them off, freeing his waterlogged, swollen, blistered feet. I almost gasp as I unbutton his shirt, revealing more of his injuries. Dark bruises cover his arms, chest, and ribs, as if he rolled down a mountain. What happened to him?

We need real help. Rescue. But for now, I'll do what I can for him.

I PULLED THE CURTAINS CLOSED RIGHT AFTER I
got Nick settled, and now through the thin white fabric I watch the sun setting over the green fields, the serenity a sharp contrast to the turmoil inside me.

Nick hasn't moved a muscle for hours. The blankets covering him are yellowed with age—who knows how old they are—and his wet clothes hang over the edge of the white tub in the bathroom. I sit in the corner, on a wooden rocking chair that creaks loudly if I make the slightest movement. It's been a kind of concentration test—move and the alarm goes off, and Nick wakes up. I've passed so far.

These silent hours in the small farmhouse bedroom have given me time to think, to wrap my head around everything that's happened since Flight 305 crashed in the English countryside. Since then it's been nonstop, with people's lives—including my own, or at the very least a limb—on the line. Now, as Nick sleeps, I can't stop thinking about the passengers who perished in the crash, as well as the people who died in the days after, seemingly of old age, and those who fled
the crash site earlier today, who I imagine aren't as warm and comfortable as I am right now. I wonder what happened to Nate, the kid from Brooklyn who will never see his mother again; about Jillian, the flight attendant who became so much more in the chaotic aftermath of the crash; about the girl in the Disney World shirt. I wonder where they are right now, if they're safe and happy.

I am. Despite my fears about what might come next, I'm sublimely happy. I'm happy that Sabrina didn't have to take part of my leg off to beat the infection. I'm happy that I can walk on my own two legs. And more: I'm happy that I survived the crash, and that Nick did, too, and that he's here, alive and relatively healthy. I feel . . . extraordinarily lucky just to be alive and well. I've taken that for granted, just being alive and healthy. It wasn't until I was at risk of losing my life or my leg that I fully appreciated how lucky I've been.

Why is it that we only appreciate things we're at risk of losing?

Here and now, I feel a strange mix of near euphoria and profound guilt—for surviving, for not having done more for the other passengers. At any turn, things could have gone differently, and they did for a whole lot of folks. My actions determined the fate of some, and for the past few hours I've replayed every event and decision, until I can't take it anymore. I'm caught in a circular mental loop with no answer, no resolution.

I have to get out of here, do something.

Maybe it's the turbulence in my mind, but I'm not that hungry. Or maybe those camouflaged figures fed me somehow, or gave me an appetite suppressant. Another mystery.

I slowly rise from the wooden rocking chair, cringing as it cries out, but Nick doesn't stir. In the kitchen, roughly two-fifths of the food waits on the table. Strange: for all the secrecy and mistrust between the five of us, there's honor in the dining department. I take the remaining food back, place it on the bedside table, and leave the room again, closing the door behind me with care.

I set about searching the small stone farmhouse. We definitely need more food, and that's my goal, but I can't help taking in each room, looking for clues to when or exactly where we might be. There's dust everywhere, bugs here and there, but no animal tracks. The former owners locked it up tight.

The bookshelves in the living room are almost bare, save for a few photo albums and a Bible. Not exactly bullish news for printed book sales. There's no sign of a TV, although a large, slightly frosted clear plastic film on the wall, like a giant piece of tape, indicates that people still watch something.

The kitchen cupboards contain no food, only mugs, utensils, and the like.

I descend the steep, narrow wooden staircase to the cellar, the light from above growing weaker with each step. I start to go back up for a candle, but stop. Yellow light glows at the bottom of the stairs—a candle on a sconce. Someone's down here. I hear banging in the distance, at the end of the cramped stone corridor.

I step toward the noise. Cabinets slamming. Yes, maybe there is a pantry in the cellar—and one of the others had the same idea. I see a candle burning atop a shabby bar-height table in the room ahead, a black object lying beside it. I clear the threshold to the pantry and pause. Grayson straightens up. It's hard to read his face in the flickering candlelight, but I see him glance quickly at the table, at what I can now see is a handgun.

I open my mouth, hesitate for a moment. “I was just looking for food.”

He turns back to the shelves, pushing jars around, peering behind them. “Haven't seen any. Anything edible, at least, but I'm not looking for food.”

I walk to the nearest shelf, which is filled with jars of fruit and jam that look as if they spoiled a long time ago. “What
are
you looking for?”

“Something drinkable.”

“They may have given up drinking in the future.”

“Doubtful. Drinking's the only solution to some problems.”

“You think it's the answer to your problems?”

“It's the only thing that's ever worked.”

“Is it the only thing you've ever tried?”

Grayson finally faces me. “What do you know about my problems, Harper?”

“Enough.”

“You know what
he
told you. His side.”

“True. But I've seen your situation countless times. I've been writing about families like yours my entire career.”

“So I'm told. Did he tell you what I intend to do?”

“He did.”

He returns his focus to the shelves, rummages around, and finally finds a bottle. Scotch. “Wonder how old this is. A hundred years? Two hundred? A thousand? Can't wait.” He uncorks it and inhales deeply, a smile spreading across his face. “The irony is that my book'll be a boon for your career. My tell-all will probably send sales of your ‘officially authorized' biography through the roof, make you a millionaire. You'll never have to work again, thanks to me.”

I hear footsteps on the stone floor behind me, and Nick appears in the narrow doorway, looking a good bit better. He's still gaunt, but his color is back, and so is the calm intensity in his eyes.

“You okay?”

Grayson answers him before I can, the sneer returning to his voice. “Yes, Prince Charming, she's okay. Her head won't explode if she talks to me.”

“We need your help,” Nick says flatly.

“With what?” Grayson asks, his eyes returning to the bottle.

“Yul and Sabrina. They know something about the crash. You and I have the only guns.”

“No, we don't. Yul found a hunting rifle upstairs,” Grayson says absently, still inhaling the aroma from the uncorked bottle.

Nick's eyes meet mine, then he focuses on Grayson again, his tone calm, matter-of-fact. “We need your help. We need you at your best.”

Grayson's eyes flash as he glances up. “You telling me not to drink, Dad?”

“No. I'm just telling you that we need your help. And that's all I'm going to say.”

Nick walks out of the doorway, and I follow him down the hall. I'm about to ask him the plan when he pauses and nods to another narrow stairwell that lies at the end of the corridor, past the stairs I descended. Voices, faint, drift up. Yul and Sabrina.

“Wait,” Grayson says as he closes the distance to us. “They've been down there the whole time, working on something.”

I whisper quickly, telling both of them what I overheard back at the nose section—Sabrina and Yul's hushed conversation behind the closed cockpit door, her accusations that Yul knew the plane would crash, that he had a hand in it, her theory that their actions before the flight had led to the plague that aged the survivors in the days after the crash.

Both men listen in silence, nodding in the cramped, candlelit passageway.

“How did the conversation end?” Nick asks.

“It didn't,” I whisper. “The camouflaged invaders showed up.”

“Okay,” Nick says. “We don't leave this house until we know what's going on.” He turns and leads us down the stairwell, even deeper underground, into a large room with concrete walls. What I see shocks me.

Yes, Yul and Sabrina know what's going on here.