Dean paused in front of a bar called Carson’s Place.
“Whatcha got?” he called to Darla.
“Nothing,” Darla shouted back.
“And we’re sure this is the place?” Ainsley asked. A heavy wind rushed down the street, throwing dust into miniature cyclones.
“This is the place,” Darla said with authority. “These were the coordinates. This is the city. Ethan and I talked about it all the time—” she trailed off, remembering that Teddy was not the only thing they had lost that day. Ainsley looked at the ground and dug her toe into the dirt road, and then she looked up into the sky. It was a deliberate sort of quiet that blanketed the street.
“This is hardly the type of place that is housing some sort of vast terrorist cell,” Ainsley muttered. “We’re missing something.” She peered through the darkened windows of the bar, wandered down the street, and kicked small tumbleweeds underfoot as she walked. Stopping, she paused and spun around. “Where’d Dean go?” she asked, scanning each area, rotating her head back and forth and looking perplexed.
Darla stopped and looked around. “Dean!” she called. “Dean!” she called louder when he didn’t reply to their shouts.
Ainsley started walking out of the main area, past the church and the school. The rolling Sand Hills of Nebraska spread out all around them. Behind the church, there was a small knoll, and atop it, she could see Dean’s figure standing, looking out and beyond at something out of sight.
“Up there!” Ainsley called back to Darla and she took off toward Dean, who remained unmoving on the hill. As she approached from behind, she laughed. “You disappear for like one minute and I think we all think you’ve been abducted or shot,” she said.
“I had to take a leak,” Dean replied without turning.
“Oh.” Ainsley froze mid-step. She turned. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Dean said. “I’m done. No...come here. You should see this.”
She turned around and could see Darla following her route up the small hill, past an American Sycamore tree with branches full of richly green leaves. Following Dean’s command, Ainsley perched herself beside Dean and looked down into a valley below. She gasped, bringing her hand up over her mouth. Silently, Ainsley turned to him, her eyes wide, and Dean smiled.
Darla approached and slid up next to Ainsley; she put her hand above her eyes to shield the sun and peered outward. She whistled loud and low.
Stretched beneath them were rows upon rows of solar panels, like little metal worshippers all lifting their bodies up to their sun god. And sitting off to the side, angled against the hills so the flat plains were in front of it, was a medium-sized passenger airplane sitting on a short black tar runway. A staircase was pushed up to its side and the cabin door was open. The three of them looked at the plane and the panels and then at each other.
“Well,” Darla said with an authoritative nod. “That settles that. We found the right place.”
It was Ainsley who spotted it first. As they wound their way down to inspect the plane, they found Ainsley peering through a thick pane of glass imbedded in the ground. She tapped on the glass with her foot, and then jumped up and down to test its strength. She turned to the group and called them to her.
Darla laid herself across the skylight and cupped her hands to see, and Ainsley crouched down beside her on her haunches. They half expected someone to peer back up at them, but the space below was unoccupied and still.
“A kitchenette. And some chairs. Books.” Darla sat up. “It’s like a little apartment.”
“They’re underground,” Ainsley said. “Like Hobbits.”
“Don’t Hobbits live in trees?” Dean asked.
Ainsley just stared at him and blinked.
“There must be a door somewhere. Come on,” Darla said and she went off wandering back toward the town, staring at the ground as she went, leaving everyone else in her wake. Ainsley jogged to catch up: pumping her arms and letting her curly hair fly.
“Wait!” shouted Dean. “What about the plane?”
“I don’t care about the plane,” Darla called back without turning. “I want to find the people who are getting on that plane.” She held her gun out from her body and scanned the buildings and kept a watchful eye on every darkened corner and behind every tree.
“What are we looking for?” he called to Darla. She rolled her eyes at him in annoyance.
“Just look for anything,” she shouted back.
“Anything is a tall order!” he called back. But he listened to her and began to wander and inspect the ground beneath them and every tree as though it held the secret entrance to the terrorists’ underground lair.
“Darla?” Dean called after a few minutes.
She turned.
Dean sighed, dropped his arms, and sped up to her. “This doesn’t feel right. And it doesn’t feel safe,” he said in a whisper.
“No, it’s not safe. They’re here. We found them. And we have the element of surprise. This town? It is deserted. The people we want are down below.”
“How do we even know that?” Dean asked. A look of concern crossed over his face and he put his hand out and touched Darla lightly on her forearm. “We have one gun. And we know they are armed...”
She hadn’t wanted him to bring the truth to her hunt. She felt the energy drain out of her like she was a slowly deflating balloon. Darla lifted her head to the sky and tapped her gun against her leg. “We can sit back and we can wait for someone to show themselves...which could be minutes, hours, days. Or we can do something. I just spent time trapped in someone’s basement without the ability to save my boy. That wasn’t me, Dean. That was a shadow of me. I’m here now…I’m where I need to be…I’m where Teddy is. Don’t tell me I can’t do anything about it.”
He pointed back over the hill to where the plane was hidden. “That plane is wide open. We won’t wait days. And—” he hesitated, “it’s not just Teddy we’re looking for. Can’t you see that? Please, Darla, I’m really asking you: can you see?” He stepped into her line of vision and forced her to look at him. Darla’s chin quivered and she blinked.
“I can’t wait,” Darla said. “But you don’t have to come with me.”
“You’re no good to Teddy dead, Darla.”
“I’m no good to him up here, either. My son is down below and that’s where I’m going.”
From behind them, they heard the sound of feet rushing toward them. Ainsley had popped her head into a church on the hill and now she rushed out, and carried herself straight up to Dean and Darla. She paused and took in deep gulps of air.
“Bones,” she said, out of breath. “They’ve been dead a long time...way before the virus. Completely deteriorated.”
They all paused and took a collective breath and let that information sink in.
“I’m thinking there has to be a hidden staircase in a building. Easier to hide. Come on, let’s check each place together, no more splitting up.” Darla readied her gun and marched forward. “One end to the other. Come on, troops.”
The first building was a library. Its door was wide open and it drifted back and forth in the wind. They walked inside and froze, each of them noticing in turn that the entire back wall was gone and exposed. In its place were the thick metal doors to an elevator. Dean looked at Darla and Darla couldn’t help but smile as she stalked forward.
“Lucky us,” she said.
“It’s about time,” Ainsley added.
Darla looked at the elevator doors and pondered their next move. She put her ear to the door and listened, puzzled, and then without hesitation she pushed the button to the side. There were no telling clanks and rumblings of a machine coming to life, and Darla pushed the button again. Then she put her ear to the doors again and listened intently.
“I think I hear it coming. But it’s far away...must be a long way down,” she said. She took a step back and motioned for Dean to join her, and assumed a leveled stance, her gun raised.