Flight 3430, стр. 35
“You talking about doing a sort of king pin in the apocalypse sort of thing?” Gabe asked.
“Maybe … I always wanted to start my own business.”
Gabe laughed. “Let me think on it.”
“We’ll ask your brother. Speaking of which …”
Gabe saw it on his father’s face. The pleasant look dropped fast and Gabe spun around.
Owen moved quickly to them.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked.
“She’s gone.”
“Who?” Tom questioned. “Who is gone?”
“Delaney,” Owen said. “I went to wake her and she wasn’t there.”
“She’s probably in the bathroom,” Tom said.
“I knocked.”
Tom huffed. “There are a number of rest rooms, Owen, she probably went to one for privacy.”
“Dad, she’s not here.”
“She’s here,” Tom stated and stood. “We’ll just look for her. But trust me … she’s not gone.”
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“She’s gone,” Trevor the flight attendant said. “I looked in every bathroom.”
“We called her name over and over,” Gabe said. “You don’t think someone did something to her, do you?”
Jeff looked down at his watch. “As much as I hate to say this. We have spent twenty minutes looking for her. We need to go.”
Owen looked at him. “We have an hour. We can look some more.”
“That is only an estimate,” Jeff argued. “Right now we’re safe. Who knows when things will go bad again.”
“I get that,” said Owen. “I do. But she has been a huge help. We can’t just say, ‘we can’t find her, oh, well, let’s just go and abandon her.’”
Gary spoke up. “We have spent a lot of time searching this airport. Has anyone thought about the possibility that she left the airport?”
“And go where?” Owen said. “She’s not from around here. Who does she know?”
“Oh my God,” Tom said with discovery. “I know where she is.”
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Jeff looked torn. He scratched his head and grumbled. “What do you want me to do?”
“We have an hour,” said Owen. “Give me forty-five minutes to see if my father is right.”
“You really think you can go out there, find her and get back here so we can take off in forty-five minutes?”
“Yes.” Owen nodded.
“Son, it’s not feasible,” Jeff said. “It’s a hundred degrees, one hell of a walk for you unless you find transportation and even then, forty-five minutes. You want me to put the lives of a hundred and forty people at risk so you can find this woman. She left. I know it’s cold, but she left on her own accord. So … she should be on her own. Did it occur to you that maybe she doesn’t want to be found?”
Owen looked at Gabe. “She’s not in the right frame of mind. She lost her family, like all of us. I can’t … I can’t abandon her.”
Trevor the flight attendant spoke up. “After losing everything, I am willing to bet she wants to be left alone. Let her go. This is the destiny she wanted.”
“I can’t accept that,” Owen said. “Again, she’s not in the right frame of mind. She can’t be.”
“You don’t know her,” said Trevor. “None of us do. None of us know anyone. Why do you feel so strongly about a stranger?”
“A survivor,” Owen said. “Something fucked up happened to this world and there aren’t that many of us left, I am not giving up on anyone. I’d look for you.” Again, he faced his bother. “Gabe?”
“I go where you go,” Gabe said. “You want to look. I’ll go with you.”
“Me, too,” said Tom.
“I’m in,” Gary stated.
“Fine.” Jeff tossed out his hands. “But I tell you this, I have too many lives counting on me to get them to Gainesville. You aren’t back in forty-five minutes, I take off.”
Owen nodded. “I understand.”
“Good,” Jeff said. “You have forty-five minutes. But son, please, don’t let your attempt at valor be your death sentence. Like you said, there aren’t that many of us left, your life matters, too.”
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Naval Operations Support Center - Billings, MT
Hearing Wiley utter the words, ‘I think our threat has passed.’ Didn’t make Gene feel any better, he had other things on his mind.
Tom and his sons.
“Focus on Vegas,” Gene told Wiley. “We need to focus on Vegas and that region.”
The truth was, both Gene and Wiley both knew it was a matter of time, less than an hour or two before another eruption. More than likely it would be the last, but would they get out of Vegas in enough time.
Eventually the world would release all the pent of methane it had been harboring. Some areas faster than others and Gene already saw that in his own readings near Billings. After the final eruption, the high levels were gone. They showed no signs whatsoever of returning to the prior climbing levels. Everyone in Billings but him and Wiley were gone. At least from what he could see and hear.
The dead silence confirmed Billings was a dead town.
Gene put the warning out, but too many didn’t reach for oxygen, they reached for their car keys thinking they could outrun it.
There was no outrunning it, just like Gene tried to tell Tom.
For as much as Gene cringed and disagreed about the move to go search out a woman the Foster men had met on a plane, chastise them about the irresponsibility of their heroic efforts, he couldn’t. Because it didn’t surprise him one bit.
He didn’t put it past Tom, nor did he put it past his lifelong friend to tell his sons to go.
Knowing the boys, they weren’t leaving their father.
Gene told them to be careful and make a plan, find a way that if they couldn’t get out of Vegas before it turned dangerous, they needed to find a way to breathe.
There was a