by Isa Marks
“Cat, hurry! I can hear them at the end of the hall.” Daryl warned, worried she would slip into another one of her fits.
She heard it too, a group of guards had followed them and now ran in their direction. They hurried towards the white machine with giant wings that stood against the back wall of the cave. This was it, Cathy thought, their way out.
“How many people can this thing hold?” Murphy asked suspiciously looking at the four plastic seats in the cabin. Two in the front and two in the back, while there were six of them.
“Just get the hell in,” Daryl yelled while Cathy helped him get in the pilot’s seat.
“Well I guess the little girl and me weigh as much as one of you,” Murphy said dragging himself into one of the back seats. “Fingers crossed that it will lift off with this many people inside.”
“If it’s build to fit four Daryl sized men, we will be fine, right?” Murphy tried to convince himself, but no one seemed to be listening. They were all trying their best to get in the machine. Faye sat next to him with Moon on her lap. She tried to fasten the seatbelt that didn’t fit around the both of them. Jake stood beside the glider, scratching his head, there were no more free seats.
“Get in!” Daryl said.
“Where? There’s no space?” Jake said with a high pitched voice. He paced around the plane in panic.
Murphy looked around him, “Get in the back,” he shouted pointing to the cargo space behind the back seats.
Jake tried to squeeze himself in. It was a tight fit, but it had to do. “This is going to be a tough ride”, he mumbled.
“Okay, move over,” Cathy said to Daryl.
“Wait, what?” he said.
“I’ll fly. You can hardly walk and your head . . .”
Well, I can do it,” Murphy said. But immediately grabbed his ribs when he leaned forward. “Or maybe not.”
“We can’t risk it Cat, it could be too stressful for you. We can’t have you . . . you know, zone out again,” he whispered. “I’m fine Cat, I can do this.”
He heard the footsteps getting closer and looked at the double doors. A horde of guards ran towards them.
“Get in here, now!”
He pulled her on his lap and closed the plexiglass cockpit cover. She smelled the sweat on his shirt and her mind drifted to the last time she’d been so close to him. She shook her head and quickly moved over to the passenger seat.
“Here we go, buckle up,” Daryl said. He put the weird looking key that Teagan gave him in the ignition and turned the key. He pushed the green button and the rotor in front of him started to come alive. It turned, faster and faster. The glider started to move slowly forward over the runway. Guards came running up beside them, banging their batons on the plexiglass.
“Faster Daryl, faster!” Jake shouted from the back. He ducked down every time a baton hit the cover beside his head.
“I’m trying,” Daryl said as they got closer to the steep dropping edge at the end of the runway. He hoped the speed would be enough, he had no idea how to increase it further. The guards kept banging and cracks started to form in the plexiglass around them. It took a little while for the machine to accelerate, but it started to gain some speed now. Enough to leave the guards stumbling behind, dodging the wings, unable to keep up with the glider’s pace. Daryl looked back and saw the man in the gray suit standing in front of the double doors.
They held their breath as they crossed the line at the end of the runway and felt the ground underneath them disappear. They had made it out. The glider took a steep drop down into the black sky, toward the glimmering water below.
“Pull up, pull up!” sounded in stereo from the back seat. Moon closed her eyes and screamed.
Daryl pulled the control stick in front of him further towards his chest. The nose lifted slightly, but they were still going down.
“We’re too heavy,” he shouted back.
Murphy looked around him. “Find anything that’s loose, and toss it,” he said, looking at the cracks in the plexiglass. “Cathy, pull that red handle to your right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pull it. Now!”
Cathy pulled the handle and the cockpit cover was ejected from the glider. The cracked plexiglass crumbled to pieces as it got pulled up and disappeared behind them. They were only yards away from the water below. They tossed anything they could find out of the glider. Suddenly the glider leveled and it’s nose started to slowly lift back up.
“Wohooo, we did it,” Jake shouted from behind the back seat. They now glided smoothly through the dark sky.
Cathy felt the wind blow through her hair. A sigh of relief sounded beside her. Daryl put his hand on hers and gave her a smile. He saved her again, she thought, giving him a shy smile back while she squeezed his hand.
“You might want to keep your hands on that stick in front of you.” Murphy said watching them from the back seat.
“Yeah,” Daryl laughed. He didn’t feel like getting into another argument now. They actually pulled it off.
Looking back at the Bunker they could see its lights on the north side, twinkling brightly as if it was something out of a beautiful fairytale. Things were not always as beautiful as they seemed, Cathy thought.
Daryl flew the machine east past red glowing lights of the Field.
Moon sat crying on Faye’s lap. “The scary part is over now,” Faye said. “You don’t have to cry anymore.”
“I’m not scared,” Moon said. “I forgot Cathy’s book, it’s still in there,” she pointed to the mountain behind them. The glowing lights of the runway revealed the contours of a group of people standing at the edge.
“Now I will never know how it ends,” she sobbed.
“Did you read about that part where Jane escaped in the back of a plane, just like our Jake here?” Murphy said.
She looked at him with big eyes, while the glider turned south and skimmed right over the mountain.
“I bet Cathy can tell you all about it,” he said, waiting for his sister to continue where he left off.
But Cathy didn’t hear him, she just stared forward. She looked down at the place where it had all started. The place she had once called her home. The peaks of the mountain seemed smaller now than she remembered. As if they had sunk in the high water. There was no trace of the Hospital, or the Farm House. Not even a glimpse of the Spring Cabin. All around her was the stillness and tranquility of the dark water glittering in the moonlight, and the twinkling islands of light floating in the ocean in the distance.
