He grabbed its throat, trying to push it away. It clawed and writhed. He couldn’t keep hold of its blood-slicked fur.
About to tear into his throat, it suddenly stopped and stared be- yond his face. The blood on its muzzle reflected churning lights. With a yelp, it spun and raced into the darkness.
Raleigh struggled to his feet and staggered forward. The impact of falling had knocked his headphones off. The flow of blood had loosened his earplugs. Without their protection, he heard a hiss-crackle- hum behind him.
And something else.
The motor of an airplane.
Of all the stories his grandfather had told him, the one that haunted him the most was about how Raleigh’s great-grandfather had flown a World War I biplane toward the dark horizon in an effort to learn the origin of the lights. As a boy, Raleigh had imagined that biplane going farther and farther away, getting smaller, receding into the distance, becoming only a speck.
Vanishing.
My great-grandfather.
Turning, he was nearly blinded by a wave of lights speeding toward him. In the distance, grassland was ablaze, the flames adding to the glare, the smoke reflecting it. He gaped toward the twisting colors, the dominant hue of which was orange and reminded him of the sun.
Something moved inside them.
A biplane swooped into view, its orange at first indistinguishable from that of the flares around it. The biplane had two seats, one behind the other. In the rear seat, a young man worked the controls. He wore a uniform and goggles. Even at a distance, it was obvious that he was handsome.
He had a mustache. The tail of a scarf floated behind him.
Before Raleigh understood what he was doing, he started along the old airstrip. He knew he ought to run toward the road, but ever since the age of thirteen, all of his thoughts had been about the lights and their secrets.
When he was eighteen, he’d come to this airbase and searched it, finding a way into the underground facility. Like his grandfather, he’d joined the Army with the purpose of rising through military intelligence. At last he’d gained the authority he needed to track down his great-grandfather’s reports about the lights, to follow clues that led him to his grandfather’s reports about the lights.
The biplane swooped nearer.
Without warning, the engine stopped.
The biplane disappeared. It was instantly replaced by a small, single-wing aircraft, a Cessna, the engine of which was silent, its propeller fluttering uselessly. Raleigh saw a man and a woman through the canopy. Their faces were twisted with fear.
The plane was about to crash.
79
One moment, Page was trying to guide the Cessna over the Badlands and onto the murky grass. The next, swirling colors enveloped the plane. If time had seemed prolonged during the gliding descent, it became even more so now.
The Cessna appeared not to be moving.
A beam of light shot from the colors that pulsed on the right side of the aircraft. It produced so much illumination that he could see the collapsed hangars of the old airfield. The beam of light streaked into one of them and angled toward the northwest in the direction of the observatory.
In the distance, the beam surged into the sky, deflected off something-a satellite, Page guessed-and rocketed toward the ground even farther northwest.
“I hear an engine!” Tori shouted.
“It isn’t ours!”
A shadow passed through the colors on his left.
“Another plane!” Page yelled.
Not just another plane. A biplane of a type that dated back to World War I. A young man with a mustache and goggles was behind the controls in the rear seat, the tail of a scarf fluttering behind him.
Other images swirled within the colors: a man herding cattle, a woman on horseback riding along a dark road…
A handsome young man-James Deacon-leaning against a fence, staring toward darkness.
A teenager on a motorcycle racing across a murky field.
Soldiers holding their heads as if they feared their skulls would explode.
Edward Mullen shooting toward the lights, then firing into a crowd.
Tori sitting on a bench at the viewing area, gazing spellbound toward the shadowy distance.
At once all the images vanished, including the biplane. Its engine could no longer be heard.
The Cessna resumed its glide. The lights, which were now behind it, provided enough illumination for Page to see the weeds and dirt on the old runway.
“We’re coming in short!”
The ground rose swiftly.
“Someone’s ahead of us!” Tori yelled.
“What?”
“There’s a man staggering along the runway!”
Page saw him then. Wavering, a man gaped at the Cessna, his head and clothes soaked with what had to be blood.
“Tori, get your door open!” Page yanked up the lever on his own door and pushed. He saw rocks among the weeds before the runway.
The Cessna couldn’t stay in the air any longer. He pulled the controls back, raising the nose, hoping to keep the front wheel above the rocks. The left wheel struck and collapsed. He felt the plane drop on that side. The left wing dragged along the ground, then buckled. Snagging, it caused the fuselage to twist to the left.
The propeller struck earth, a blade breaking off and flipping away, the torque yanking the engine out of its housing. Dust billowed over the canopy. As the fuselage kept tilting violently to the left, Page found that he was lying on his side. The snapping and grinding of metal was matched by the crunch of the plane skidding over dirt. The shock of stopping would have slammed Page’s chest against the controls if his seat belt and shoulder harness hadn’t been tight, but even so, the snap of his chest against the harness made him feel as if he’d been punched.
He had trouble breathing.
“Tori,” he managed to say, “are you all right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Tori?”
“I think I’m okay.”
Thank God, Page thought. “We need to get out in case there’s a fire.”
His door was wedged against the ground. In pain, he managed to free his seat belt and harness.
“Climb through your door!”
With the fuselage on its side, Page was able to half stand and help Tori unbuckle her harness. He pushed at her hips, helping her get through the door on the right. Wincing, he pulled himself up, squirmed through the open door, crawled over the side, and dropped to the ground.
His chest ached, but the pain hardly mattered when he smelled aviation fuel.
“Run!” he shouted. But Tori didn’t need encouragement. She charged forward onto the old runway. Flanking her, Page ran as hard as he could.
Ahead, the man they’d seen on the runway had collapsed. Without hesitation they knelt beside him, turning him onto his back. Even with all the blood, Page knew he’d seen this man before. On the previous night, he and Tori had driven past the abandoned airbase. A man in his forties, bald and sinewy, with rigid shoulders and an air of authority-he’d been unlocking the gate.
“Can you stand? Page asked. “We need to get you out of here.”
The man mumbled something that sounded like “great-grandfather.”
Page and Tori lifted him to his feet, guiding him along the old run- way. The beam of light continued radiating through one of the hangars, streaking toward the northwest, soaring into the sky, then angling down toward something on the far horizon. The air was filled with a hiss-crackle-hum that smelled like an electrical fire. Page felt his hair standing up.
Struggling to get the man to the road, Page looked over his shoulder, and was stunned by how much brighter the lights were. Explosions tore up ground in the distance: bombs from long ago. The grass fire spread toward the runway. When the flames reached the Cessna, the fuel tanks erupted, sending a fireball into the sky.
The hiss-crackle-hum became unbearable. As heat from the beam of light threatened to set Page’s clothes on fire, the sky was abruptly filled with what seemed a gigantic skyrocket, higher and farther away than any fireworks could reach. It sent huge trails of sparks flying in every direction.