The Field Trip

by R. T. Martin

  Copyright © 2018 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Martin, R. T., 1988– author.

  Title: The field trip / R.T. Martin.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2018] | Series: Attack on Earth | Summary: Kayla takes the lead when she and her fellow high school choir members are stranded in an airport during an alien invasion, hundreds of miles from home, with little food and no electricity.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017053115 (print) | LCCN 2017061159 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541525849 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781541525733 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781541526273 (pb : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Survival—Fiction. | Airports—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M37346 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.M37346 Fie 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053115

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-44557-35488-2/12/2018

  9781541531123 mobi

  9781541531130 ePub

  9781541531147 ePub

  For Doug N.

  On the morning of Friday, October 2, rings of light were seen coming down from the sky in several locations across the planet. By mid-morning, large spacecraft were visible through the clouds, hovering over major cities. The US government, along with others, attempted to make contact, without success.

  At 9:48 that morning, the alien ships released an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, around the world, disabling all electronics—including many vehicles and machines. All forms of communication technology were useless.

  Now people could only wait and see what would happen with the “Visitors” next . . .

  Chapter 1

  “Twenty-seven hours.”

  Kayla felt her jaw drop a little. “Seriously?”

  “Yup,” Luke said, rolling a pair of dice and moving his piece forward on the board. “Our plane was grounded at, like, nine thirty yesterday morning, and it’s twelve forty-five now. That’s twenty-seven hours—a little more, actually.”

  “This is the longest I’ve ever been in an airport,” Kayla said as she scooped up the dice.

  “I feel like this is the longest I’ve been anywhere.”

  “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” started Maddie, who was sitting to Kayla’s left on the carpet. “That was the first and last time I will go on a plane. Humans were not meant to fly.” Kayla and Luke rolled their eyes.

  “This doesn’t usually happen,” Luke said quietly. “I don’t know how many times I’ve flown. This is the first plane I’ve ever been on that was grounded.”

  “Yeah,” Kayla added. “Besides, how were we supposed to know . . .” She trailed off.

  “That aliens would attack?” Maddie finished for her.

  The game stopped mid-play as Kayla and Luke both stared at her. “What? That’s what happened.”

  The entire time the three friends had been in trapped in the airport, they’d avoided talking about the events of yesterday morning. There were enough people around them doing that anyway, all of them afraid. Since the power had gone out, no one had any new information—just wild guesses, nothing productive. In Kayla’s mind, discussing their fears of what might happen was pointless, and no one was talking about what they could do yet.

  Maddie looked at the board. “You owe me thirty bucks,” she said to Kayla.

  Kayla counted out thirty dollars in colorful, fake money and handed it to Maddie. “At least we weren’t in the air when it happened,” she said.

  “Agreed,” Luke said.

  Kayla and her friends had been flying home from a trip for their choir to perform in New York City. It had seemed like a normal morning until the captain had suddenly announced they needed to make an emergency landing. At the time, he’d told them there was nothing to be worried about, but Kayla distinctly remembered noticing the looks of alarm on the flight attendants’ faces as they rushed back to their seats. About twenty minutes later, their plane was landing at the nearest airport—McKenzie-Rowe, apparently located in the middle of nowhere.

  Once they were on the ground, Kayla and her friends took out their phones to alert their families of the stop. That was when Kayla’s mom called her. She’d heard news of something strange going on—lights in the sky at different locations around the world.

  They’d only been on the ground for a few minutes when the real trouble started. Their plane had been rolling toward a gate. Kayla had been in the middle of assuring her mom she’d call her again as soon as they figured out what was going on when her phone suddenly went dead. And it wasn’t just her phone—everyone else’s phone, tablet, or laptop went dark. The plane stopped moving and the lights went out. It seemed as if all electronics were suddenly dead.

  There had been an initial surge of panic—people were shouting questions, wondering what was going on. The noise level in the dark plane rose until a flight attendant got everyone’s attention. She instructed everyone to exit the plane through the emergency slide.

  The slide had reminded Kayla of one she had been on at a county fair when she was a kid. The difference was that at the bottom of that one, her parents had been waiting for her. At the bottom of this one, there was only the concrete of the tarmac and a stranger wearing an orange reflector vest holding out his hand for her to catch.

  Everyone was corralled into the small airport. For the first few hours, airport staff told everyone it was only a delay and they’d give out more information as soon as they had any. Kayla doubted that. She figured the airport staff was buying their time until they figured out what was going on.

  People continued to ask when the power would come back and when the flights would resume. But Kayla had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon either. And, even if everything did suddenly come back on, it would be a logistical nightmare to reload all the airplanes with luggage and people. It would take hours, if not days, before everything got organized again. Kayla knew they were going to be stuck at McKenzie-Rowe for a long time.

  That was probably the worst part—McKenzie-Rowe Airport. They were only about four hundred miles from her hometown. If they’d been able to continue flying for just forty-five more minutes, they would have made it home.

  It was probably best that we didn’t keep going, she reflected now. She didn’t want to consider what would have happened if their plane had still been in the air when all the computers, the autopilot, and the emergency systems had all suddenly turned off.

  She touched the phone in her pocket without thinking about it. After about ten hours, she’d given up on checking it to see if it had somehow come back on. By this point, it seemed like everyone had accepted the power wasn’t coming back on—at least not anytime soon. Kayla was glad she�
�d been able to talk to her mom before everything had happened, but they hadn’t gotten a chance to say goodbye.

  “Well,” Maddie said, bringing Kayla’s thoughts back to the present, “I’m bored with this game.”

  Kayla chuckled. “I got bored with it an hour ago.”

  They gathered up the pieces into neat piles and put them back in the box. Kayla took it back to the family they’d borrowed it from—other stranded travelers. She thanked them and walked back to join her friends.

  They walked through the terminal to gate nine, where their twenty-member choir was camped out with the other passengers from their grounded flight. The choir director, Ms. Pollack, was staring out the window at the motionless planes littered about the tarmac. She clutched her dead phone in front of her as if it were about to turn on any second.

  “We’re gonna look for some food,” Maddie said as they approached her.

  Ms. Pollack turned her head. “Sounds good. If you hear anything, come straight back and tell me. I’d like to get us out of here as soon as possible.”

  “What?” Maddie said. “You don’t want to spend another fun-filled day at the McKenzie-Rowe airport and resort? I’m having a blast!”

  “Sarcasm isn’t going to get us home any faster, Maddie,” Ms. Pollack said, turning back to the runway. “Steph, Josh, and Erin went to see if that Italian place by gate three has anything left. Maybe you could go join them.”

  They nodded and walked away from the gate.

  “How about we go anywhere but the Italian place by gate three?” Kayla muttered as soon as they were out of hearing distance.

  Luke looked at Kayla. “Have we ever discussed why you and Steph hate each other?”

  “She’s just . . .” Kayla struggled to come to just one answer. “She was—I don’t—She’s just the worst, okay?”

  “I love how constructive and specific you are with your criticisms,” Maddie said.

  “We just don’t like each other. That’s all.”

  She noticed Luke and Maddie eye each other, but they didn’t say anything else about it. Kayla started walking a little faster.

  Food choices had vanished with the electricity. Much of the food in the restaurants was frozen or had to be made with some form of power. Employees had been kind about handing out their perishable foods, but once the power had been out for a few hours, they started abandoning the shops and restaurants. Some of them closed large metal gates at the storefront. Others simply turned the lights off and hung up hastily made “closed” signs. A few seemed to have simply walked out of the stores without a second thought.

  For a while, the stranded passengers waited outside the businesses for someone to tell them they could go in and get something to eat. But when that didn’t happen, people began going in and grabbing whatever they could. The airport was so small there weren’t many security guards. The handful who had stuck around tried to keep some order around the airport, but after more than a day of being stuck like this, they all seemed to have given up.

  By now, Kayla didn’t see many airport employees at all. She figured that made sense though. Most of them probably lived around here. If it had been her, she would have run home as soon as she could have.

  “Let’s check that burger place,” Maddie suggested.

  “Mei went there last night,” Luke said. “She said there was nothing left besides, like, a few heads of iceberg lettuce and raw burger meat. She ended up eating candy bars from one of the newspaper places. They might still have some chips or something.”

  “Worth a shot,” Kayla said.

  When they reached the little shop, they found it had been pretty picked over. The store sold mostly newspapers, books, and magazines, with just a few shelves for snack items beneath the checkout counter. The only snacks left were five bags of dill pickle chips and some room-temperature sodas.

  They stared at these options for a moment before Luke said, “Better than nothing.” They each grabbed a bag of chips and soda and headed over to sit on some chairs by one of the gates.

  Maddie winced at the scent that came out as she opened her bag of chips. “There’s a reason these were all that’s left. Even in the apocalypse people don’t want dill pickle chips.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Luke finished his chips and stared at the bag. “How much food do you think is left in this place?”

  “I would guess a lot,” Maddie said. “There are plenty of restaurants in here.”

  “Yeah, but how much food is left that can be eaten raw?” he replied. “We can’t cook anything, and the refrigerators shut down, so that food is probably spoiling pretty fast. How much can possibly be left?”

  “And what happens when it’s gone?” Kayla added quietly. She’d drunk nearly half her bottle of soda already, and her stomach churned as she realized they should probably start rationing their food.

  Chapter 2

  “We’ll cross that bridge when and if we get to it,” Ms. Pollack said after Kayla told her their concerns. “The odds are good that everything will turn back on before the situation becomes that bad.”

  “But what if that doesn’t happen?” Luke asked, his eyes wide.

  “You guys are being paranoid.”

  Kayla rolled her eyes as she heard the voice. She turned to see Steph and her friends walking over to where they were standing. “Ms. Pollack is right. If we run out of food, they’ll just ship more here.”

  “Using what?” Kayla shot back. “Trucks and planes don’t work. How will they get the food here, Steph? Besides, why would they send food here first? If food’s getting distributed, it’s probably happening in town.”

  Steph folded her arms across her chest and wrinkled her nose at Kayla. “Someone will figure something out. It’s their job.”

  “Whose job?” Kayla asked. “You really think someone out there has just been waiting for us to get attacked by aliens?”

  “Girls,” Ms. Pollack tried to intervene.

  “Well it’s definitely not the job of a high school choir,” Steph said back angrily. “Someone else will figure it out. You’re just making everyone panic. If someone needs a group to sing with perfect pitch, we’re the people for that job.”

  “I’m not trying to make anyone panic,” Kayla said defensively. “I’m just worried about what happens when the food runs out.” She narrowed her eyes at Steph. “And it will run out. I’m trying to solve the problem first so that people don’t panic.”

  “Girls, stop!” Ms. Pollack shut down the conversation. “Kayla, if it would make you feel better, see if you can find a security guard and ask if there are any updates. I’m sure that they’ll tell you someone is already working on a solution. Steph, if you’re not worried, fine, don’t be worried. But acting snippy is not helpful. We all need to stay calm right now.”

  “I agree,” Steph said, looking right at Kayla. “We should be calm.”

  “Go find a security guard,” Ms. Pollack said to Kayla, Luke, and Maddie, but Kayla could tell she meant, please walk away from this. The three of them headed for one of the security checkpoints to see if any guards remained.

  “You know, they’re probably right,” Luke said. “It’s hard for me to believe that no one has a plan for damage control.”

  “Even if there is a plan,” Kayla pointed out, “there’s no way to communicate with the outside world. It’s not like someone can just make a call and request a supply shipment or something.”

  They reached the security checkpoint only to find that it was empty.

  Kayla sighed in frustration. “So much for that . . .”

  Then she spotted a man wearing an orange reflector vest. He was fiddling with a mess of wires dangling from a square hole in the wall. He looked to be one of the only employees left in the airport.

  “Excuse me,” Kayla said. The man turned around and blinked at them. “Do you work here?”

  “Yeah, I’m a mechanic.” He pulled the shoulder of the vest to one side, revealing a nametag th
at read Orlando. He turned back to the wires.

  “So you wouldn’t happen to know how much food is left?” Luke asked. “Or if there’s more on the way?”

  He shrugged. “No, and I’m not sure anyone would know.” Without looking back at them, he gestured in a circle with the screwdriver in his hand. “This kind of thing isn’t exactly standard procedure for anyone. To be honest, I’m a little surprised the food hasn’t run out already.”

  “What?” Kayla said, panic creeping into her voice.

  “We’re almost out of food?” an unfamiliar voice asked. A man sitting in the nearby waiting area had overheard them. “How much is left?”

  Orlando flushed. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “So we’re going to starve?” the man shouted. Within seconds, other people were standing and joining in, asking questions.

  The voices came from every direction, getting louder and louder. People were angry, scared, and just getting more so as they worked themselves into a frenzy.

  “I’m just a mechanic!” Orlando shouted to them, holding up his hands defensively. But the people weren’t listening anymore.

  Two security guards pushed their way through the crowd of people. They held out their hands, trying to stop the questions, but more and more people were adding to the panicked surge of noise. It was clear that they didn’t have any reassuring information to share.

  This is gonna turn into a riot, Kayla thought. “Let’s just get out of here,” she hissed to her friends.

  With people focused on the security guards, Kayla, Luke, and Maddie snuck off down the hallway. They broke into a run, only stopping when they couldn’t hear the echo of angry voices anymore. Luke and Maddie slumped into chairs in a deserted boarding area, breathing heavily.

  “Well, that was terrifying,” Maddie said.

  Luke nodded. “I’ve never seen people so angry before.”

  Kayla looked back the way they’d come and noticed Orlando, the mechanic, standing near the bank of windows. He must’ve sneaked away from the angry crowd too. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and Kayla could see in the reflection that he was scowling.