The Rogue World

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “Your uncle’s a tough man,” Luke said.

  “He’s a teddy bear,” Eleanor said.

  “He’s a good man, too.”

  “Yes, he is.” She grinned at him. “And even though you’ve denied it, so are you.”

  Luke tipped his head to one side. “You know, I think maybe you’ve been right about that all along. I mean, if you look at what I’ve done in the past few weeks, I’m practically the hero of this crazy mission.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Eleanor said.

  “I would.”

  “How about we call it a . . . six-way tie.”

  “If that’ll make everyone feel better, sure.”

  Eleanor folded her arms and looked out the windows. “How much longer?”

  “We’re coming up on Greece. Only a few more hours.”

  Eleanor wiggled deeper into the seat, and stayed there as they reached what had once been the Mediterranean. They flew over Greece, and Italy, and then France, before reaching the narrow English Channel. Eleanor had learned in school that it had once been nearly twenty miles wide at its narrowest. But now the waterway had shrunk to less than half that size, and parts of the prehistoric region of Doggerland rose above the water once again.

  Before long, Eleanor could see the edge of the glacial ice sheet in the distance, not yet fully covering the British Isles, but closing in, having driven people south into southern Europe and Africa. The ice had apparently not yet reached Stonehenge.

  “We’re coming up on it,” Luke said. “Do you want to stay up here for the landing?”

  “If that’s okay?”

  Luke nodded. “Of course. It might be bumpy, though. I’m going to have to land in a field.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay then.”

  Eleanor felt her stomach rising, and the pressure squeezed her ears as they dipped lower in the gray afternoon sky. She scanned the horizon ahead of them, looking for a long brown stretch where Luke could take them down. She couldn’t yet see the megaliths of Stonehenge but searched for those, too.

  “Oh no,” Luke said.

  “What?”

  “I’m getting radioed.”

  “By who?”

  “Guess,” he said. Then, into his headset, he said, “This is Consuelo, flight—”

  Luke’s mouth clamped shut. He seemed to be listening to whatever message came over his radio, and the skin around his eyes tightened up.

  “What is it?” Eleanor asked.

  “They’re not playing around,” he whispered.

  Just then, two fighter jets flew up on either side of Consuelo. They weren’t so close Eleanor could see their pilots’ faces, but they were close enough that she knew they meant business.

  “They want us to land,” Luke said. “Or they say they’re going to fire on—”

  “What?”

  “Negative!” Luke shouted into his headset. “We have children on board, over!”

  Eleanor scrambled out of her seat and hurried back into the main cabin. “We have trouble!”

  Uncle Jack raised his head. “What is it?”

  “There are fighter jets out there,” she said. “They’re threatening to shoot us down.”

  “Pretty much par for the course,” Betty said.

  “They can’t,” Watkins said. “That would violate—”

  “I don’t think they care,” Eleanor said. “They just told Luke to land or else.”

  “Ell Bell,” Uncle Jack said. “Come get buckled.”

  “They must have declared the crash site a no-fly zone,” Watkins said, almost to himself.

  “And they definitely know our plane by now,” Finn said. He was trying to sound calm, but Eleanor could see the fear in his eyes.

  “Eleanor,” Uncle Jack said. “Come. Sit down.”

  Eleanor nodded and went to sit next to him, pulling the straps of her buckle tight.

  “Luke will talk sense into them,” Betty said. “He just needs to follow their orders and—”

  The plane heaved sideways, violently, throwing Dr. Von Albrecht’s loose notes into the air, and then the sound of an explosion slammed against Eleanor’s skull. The plane convulsed, and something outside screamed, like Consuelo was in pain.

  “They fired on us!” Luke shouted from the cockpit. “I’m losing an engine! We have to land!”

  “Heads down!” Betty shouted. “Keep them down! Luke will get us out of this!”

  Eleanor believed that. She had to believe it. She ducked her head.

  “I love you, Ell Bell,” Uncle Jack said next to her.

  She seized his nearest hand and squeezed it with both of hers, hard. “I love you, too.”

  The plane’s rapid descent turned her stomach over, and her ringing ears felt like they were about to implode. Then she smelled smoke, the acrid scent of burning plastic, but when she peeked up at the cabin, she couldn’t see any in the air. Across the aisle, she glimpsed the back of Finn’s neck and head.

  “We’re coming in hot!” Luke shouted. “Brace yourselves!”

  “Heads down!” Betty said again.

  Eleanor ducked her head again, waiting, closing her eyes tightly. Uncle Jack squeezed her hands now, hard enough to hurt, but she didn’t care.

  “Impact in five!” Luke said. “Four! Three! Two!”

  The floor of the plane rammed into Eleanor’s legs and feet, and it felt like gravity wanted to pull her right through it. Then they felt airborne again, and Eleanor’s body lifted up as far as her seat belt would allow, before slamming back down again. This time, they stayed down, and Eleanor felt the plane shimmy and shake, jostling her so hard she bit her tongue and tasted blood.

  “Almost there!” Luke shouted.

  The jostling slowly eased up, allowing Eleanor to see straight. She risked looking up again, out the windows, and saw the rough ground flying past them. They seemed to be in a field. There were trees and stone fences in the distance, and Eleanor hoped there weren’t any in front of the plane, but eventually Consuelo ground to a halt and jerked everyone forward one last time before pulling them back into their seats. Eleanor turned to Uncle Jack in the same moment he turned toward her, and they pulled each other into a hug.

  “Everyone okay back there?” Luke asked.

  Betty stood up and looked around the cabin. “Everyone seems to be,” she said.

  Luke emerged from the cockpit, his face a ghostly pale above his beard. “I’m sorry,” he said. “They didn’t even give me time to comply.”

  “I did not foresee this,” Watkins said.

  “It’s the alien ship,” Eleanor said. “People were already scared from the Freeze. I think the ship has pushed the world over the edge.”

  “But we’re clearly not a threat,” Finn said.

  “They think we’re terrorists,” Betty said, looking at Watkins. “That makes us a threat.”

  “If there were something I could do about that, I would,” Watkins said. “But I am likely now considered a wanted man, like the rest of you.”

  “We can deal with this later,” Luke said. “For now, they know where we went down, and they’ll be heading this way immediately.”

  “Then let’s move out,” Uncle Jack said.

  Everyone suited up with what polar gear they had on board and grabbed the few provisions they had left. Then they opened Consuelo’s hatch, and Luke pulled the cord on the emergency slide. A yellow, inflatable ramp burst outward, leading down to the ground.

  “Everyone out,” Luke said. “One at a time.”

  Betty went first, and then Finn. Dr. Von Albrecht pushed up his glasses, and went down clutching his notes to his chest. Watkins took the chute with stiff legs and arms, and then Eleanor went down, feeling the friction of the plastic against her coat. Then Uncle Jack descended, and lastly, Luke.

  “Which way to Stonehenge?” Eleanor asked.

  Luke pointed. “That way.”

  “Isn’t that the way they’ll be expecting us to go?” Finn said.


  “Probably,” Eleanor said. “But what other direction is there?”

  “Away,” Finn said. “Escape.”

  “Then what?” Eleanor said. “The ship is still—”

  “They shot us out of the sky!” Finn said. “My dad doesn’t even know where I am! I don’t even know where he is! I don’t want to die for this, Eleanor!”

  Eleanor turned back to the plane. Consuelo looked broken, sitting there in the middle of an icy field. The grass, brown and covered in frost, bore the deep furrow of her landing. One wing held the charred remains of an engine. The other had broken off at the tip. It appeared as though a giant had taken a sledgehammer to the plane’s body, and even with all her Arctic armor, she looked bruised and battered. Eleanor wondered if she would ever fly again, and that clenched her chest with grief.

  “You don’t have to come, Finn,” Eleanor whispered. “None of you do. You can stay here. If you surrender, I think you’ll be okay. The danger is in going forward.”

  “What about you?” Finn asked.

  “I’m going.” Eleanor turned to Watkins. “And so are you.”

  Watkins simply bowed his head in agreement.

  “Well, I’m coming, too,” Luke said.

  “So am I,” Uncle Jack said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.” Eleanor bit her lip and looked down at the ground. Her body started to shake. “Finn is right. I don’t want any of you to die for this. I don’t even know if this is going to work.”

  “Ell Bell.” Uncle Jack took a step toward her. “We’re going to see this through with you.”

  Luke nodded. “What he said.”

  Eleanor smiled at them. “You left me to do what I needed to do back in the Himalayas. I’m asking you to do it again.”

  “Not this time,” Luke said.

  Uncle Jack stood up to his full height. “Not even an avalanche would change my mind.”

  Eleanor thought about what Badri had said about choices. Everyone had their own to make, and Eleanor couldn’t make this decision for them, as much as she wanted to. She looked at Betty. “You should stay with Finn. You, too, Dr. Von Albrecht.”

  Betty hesitated. She glanced toward Luke, and he gave her a wink.

  “Better stay with Finn,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “I’m holding you to that, Fournier.”

  Dr. Von Albrecht pushed up his glasses. “I would like to see the alien ship.”

  “Is your curiosity worth dying for?” Watkins asked.

  “To me,” the professor said, “this opportunity feels like the validation of my life’s work. Yes, that is worth the risk.”

  Eleanor nodded, and then turned toward Finn.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, staring at the ground. “I just—I left them behind—”

  “I know.”

  “I need to see them again.”

  “You will,” Eleanor said.

  She gave Finn a hug, and then she turned in the direction of Stonehenge and marched forward. The frozen grass crunched beneath her boots, and she heard the others fall in behind her. Uncle Jack and Luke. Watkins and Dr. Von Albrecht. When they’d walked some distance on, she turned and looked back at the plane. From this distance the damage appeared somehow worse, Consuelo more crumpled and broken, but she saw Betty with her arm around Finn, standing next to the wreck, and she drew some comfort in knowing they were safe.

  “How far away is it?” Uncle Jack asked.

  “Seventeen miles,” Luke said. “Give or take. Because of our emergency landing, that’s just a guess.”

  Uncle Jack sighed. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  Eleanor looked up at him. “Your ribs. I don’t know if you—”

  “Eleanor,” Uncle Jack said, “I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to say this, but I’m hoping this is the last. I’ll be fine. You just lead the way and don’t worry about me.”

  Eleanor would continue to worry about him. There wasn’t anything she could do about that, even if she wanted to. But she decided not to ask him about it again, if that was what he wanted.

  “Seventeen miles might prove difficult for me, on the other hand.” Watkins chuckled. “But I shall do my best.”

  “We’ll take it as slow as we can,” Eleanor said.

  They crossed the field they had landed in and climbed over a low stone wall. Eleanor thought she could feel the cold of the gray rocks through her gloves. A few of the upper stones tumbled down after them into the next pasture, and they saw the freeze-dried carcass of a sheep, its wool a loose and decaying rug upon the ground.

  “Listen,” Luke said. “Do you hear that?”

  Eleanor cocked her head. And she heard a familiar whumping.

  “Helicopters,” Watkins said.

  “We need to hurry,” Uncle Jack said. “They’ll figure out pretty quick we left the plane, and then they’ll come looking for us.”

  Eleanor nodded. “We should stay close to the walls and the trees—they’ll give us some cover.”

  They ducked down and scurried along the stone wall single file, listening to the helicopters drawing closer. The cold air tasted of something earthy, and as Eleanor moved along, she thought for a moment about reaching out to see if she could feel the ship’s intelligence from a distance. But she decided that might risk alerting it to their presence, and instead kept her mind as calm and blank as she could.

  “If we can stay hidden until nightfall,” Luke said, huffing, “I think we might make it.”

  Eleanor looked up. Nightfall was still hours away, and they had a lot of ground to cover.

  CHAPTER

  16

  FINN WATCHED ELEANOR AND THE OTHERS GROWING smaller and smaller until they disappeared over a distant rock wall. Betty didn’t say anything. She just stood by him and kept her arm around him. He didn’t need that, but he didn’t mind it either, so he let it be, even though it didn’t do anything to close the pit of guilt opening up inside him.

  “That was a brave thing you did,” she finally said.

  “What was?”

  “Choosing to stay behind.”

  Finn scoffed at that. “I feel like a coward.”

  “I don’t see it that way. You stood up for what’s important to you. Even if that meant you might let someone down.”

  “It seems like I’m always letting people down.”

  “I don’t see it that way. This isn’t about right or wrong anymore. Sometimes, you do what you do knowing what the consequences might be. Accepting those consequences makes you brave.”

  Betty had already shown that kind of bravery. Back in the Arctic, she had burned up whatever credibility she had with the drillers by sending them after a bogus oil well, and she’d done that knowing her career there would be over, to help Finn and the others escape.

  “You’re a lot braver than I am,” Finn said.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I think you—”

  Finn heard helicopters. They both looked up in the same direction. Finn squinted back toward the last place he’d seen Eleanor, hoping they were out of sight from the air, and then told himself not to look in that direction again. He didn’t want to give away where Eleanor had gone. In fact—

  “We need to buy them some time,” he said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. We just . . .” But he couldn’t think of anything they could do.

  They stayed together, watching the horizon, and eventually two black dragonfly shapes appeared. As the helicopters drew nearer, they got louder, and Finn could see their rotors and their skids. Finn blinked in the storm of their landing as they buffeted the ground and churned up the dirt.

  “Hold your hands up,” Betty said.

  Finn did what she told him, and a moment later several soldiers leaped from inside the helicopters to the ground. They wore green camouflage fatigues and the blue helmet of UN peacekeepers. They carried guns, and they rushed toward Finn sighting down the barrels.

  T
hat scared him, but he stayed calm, and when they ordered him to the ground, he complied. So did Betty, and the peacekeepers wrenched Finn’s hands behind his back, where they bound his wrists with zip ties. After that, two soldiers hoisted him back to his feet, and another of the peacekeepers approached him, a muscled man with darkly tanned skin and buzzed gray hair. Finn recognized him from the G.E.T. facility in Cairo. He had been Watkins’s right-hand man.

  “Hobbes, right?” Finn said. “Playing for a different team now?”

  “Where are the others?” Hobbes asked, ignoring him.

  “What others?” Finn said.

  Hobbes grabbed Finn by the collar and yanked him close. “Listen to me, you—”

  “Keep your hands off him!” Betty said.

  “Where are they?” Hobbes asked again, this time close enough that Finn could smell cloves on his breath.

  “Outer space,” Finn said.

  “You think this is a joke, you little punk? In this moment, you belong to me. The rules don’t apply anymore. We have your father.”

  “My—” Finn kept his eyes locked on the guy’s pale blue irises. If that was true, Finn needed to say something that would help Eleanor, but something believable, to protect himself and his dad. “They’re hiding on the plane,” he blurted out.

  “Where on the plane?”

  “I don’t know,” Finn said. “It’s a big cargo plane.”

  Hobbes released him, and then the soldier ordered his men to accompany him onto what remained of Consuelo. Finn looked at Betty, and they both kept their faces blank. The helicopters stayed grounded, which was exactly what Finn had hoped for, though their engines and rotors were still running.

  Several minutes went by. Finn counted the seconds, imagining that each was another step Eleanor and the others took to safety. He wondered if the UN peacekeepers really had his dad, or if that had just been a ploy to scare him.

  When Hobbes returned, he stalked right up to Finn, grabbed him with both hands, and threw him backward. With his hands tied behind his back, Finn couldn’t do anything to catch himself. He hit the ground hard on his tailbone, sending an electrical jolt up his spine.