The Autumn Aircraft: Avery's Recruits (2 page)

“So wait!  You’re telling us this and it might not even save our lives!  What the fuck!  Why even bother?”

It was a female who had spoken.  She was an Asian girl with a blue scarf around her hair.  Her face was tear streaked, but Avery hadn’t heard the expected quiver in her voice.

“You have to think bigger picture,” Avery said, pressing his finger to his temple.  “And if your life is really of the value that you
obviously
think it is, then show me.  Show the people who work with me and perhaps one of the lives you save may be your
own
.”

Avery scanned the room, taking in as many expressions as he could.  Most of the students had their eyes on him now, but at least a third of the room still had their attention on the frozen security guards, piled on top of each other and motionless like some special-effect from a movie.  A few of their legs jutted out, dagger-straight.

“Yeah,” Avery said, nodding, a small smile on his face.  “Hard to think I’m crazy when you’re staring at a bunch of frozen motherfuckers.”  Avery shook his head.  “I really wish I could tell you more.  I do.  But I have to go.  I have things to do.  As far as the demonstration I had planned, well…that’s just going to have to wait until later.”

“How the hell did you get them like that?” asked a jock in a football jersey.  He was at a table full of jocks.  “How’d you make them still like that?”

“That,” Avery said, bending down and picking up his backpack, “is beside the point.  It’s for another time.”  He slung his backpack over his shoulder and looked around at all the fearful in the room.  Their fear was a potent thing.  Avery could practically smell it.  “Anyway, the last meteor will hit in November of 2026 and this one will be three times the size of Texas.  There will be…nothing after that…”  He took a few steps back, rubbing his palms together so they made a swish-swish sound.  He watched everyone, listened to their silence, his lips pressed together.  “Now, I have cell that can’t be traced.  By anyone, anywhere.  Trust me when I say our lying as government doesn’t have the capability.  Dial my full name on your phone.  Yes, letters, not numbers.”  He smirked.  “And trust me, with what I can do, I’ll know within two minutes if you’re setting me up.  Needless to say, you won’t get another chance at life.”

“If you’re interested in having a shot at getting off this rock—with this project we might be able to save up to one million people—than get in contact with me.”

“So we just dial your name and we’ll be able to get to you, it’s just that simple,” the Asian girl asked, her voice thick with skepticism. 

“Yes,” Avery said.  “Now, I’m not announcing this to every school.  Only telling the people here because this is the school I attend.  Or
did
attend, up until a few months ago.”  Avery started toward the hallway.

“You’re not lying about this?” the jock shouted.

Avery looked over his shoulder at him, clearly reading the unease on the boy’s face.  “There’s no reason for me to lie.  It wouldn’t serve me and would only help to hurt what we mean to build.”

From the Asian girl, “What do you mean
to build
?”

Avery, in a voice that was weary and quiet, but somehow managed to carry. “
The Autumn Aircraft. 
You let everyone know…that it’s all about
The Autumn Aircraft
.”

He snapped his fingers and the security guards became unfrozen, then he strolled into the hall and yanked the bladeless knife from the other security guard’s throat.

At least in person, that was the last time anyone in the cafeteria ever saw Avery Johnston again.

2

             
“What’s the point is all I wonder?  We have the best weapons in the world, Alan.”

              “It’s how I calm myself.”

“But for hours, man?  You could be putting that time to better use.”

“Like what, Danny? Fucking girls?”

“Ah, whatever.  You’re never going to see where I’m coming from.”

Alan chuckled.  “You’re sure right about that.”

A protest is what Alan noticed and he headed in its direction.  As expected, parents were going to react, spouting off crap about school safety when, in fact, school officials—and that included security—were only running out the clock so there wouldn’t be chaos before everyone kicked the bucket.  Alan was willing to guess that teachers, school security, and countless others were told a whole host of lies to help keep the masses calm.  Probably some bullshit about how it was all a lie or about how they would be given a chance to live if they just followed orders.  When the soldiers started showing up (Alan thought they’d have the better part of the decade long countdown to start worrying about that) was when there’d be trouble.  For now, all Alan had to do was confirm the truth about the word spread by Avery, and collect recruits wherever he could. 

“So you must’ve heard,” Danny said as they came to a stop just outside the crowd of protesters.

“About Antarctica?  Yeah, I heard.  It will be as painful and as brilliant a location as they come.”

“Any idea when we’re heading out?”

Alan pulled out his special issued smartphone and looked at a text that had come through.  He furrowed his brow and shoved it back in his pocket.

“January next year, I think,” Alan said.  “I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

“No, I heard.  Just forget.  A lot going on, you know.  Hard to retain all of it sometimes.”

Alan nodded.  “Yeah, that’s understandable.  Anyway…I just received a text from who is soon to be America’s most wanted man.”

“Yeah?  And…”

“We have to attend a party tonight.  Apparently, he thinks it’s a way to have his finger on the real pulse of the city.”

“Will he let us drink?”

“No.”  Alan looked at Danny with a slight frown.  “Even if you could, you said you didn’t drink, so why do you want to?”

“I just never reached that age where I needed to drink.  But I want to get myself ready for when I do.  Remember, I’ll be twenty one in just over four years.”

“And millions will be dead by then and the world will have changed dramatically.  Somehow, I think your priorities will be a little different when that time comes.”

Alan and Danny fell into silence and listened as the crowd used the beautiful weather to protest in front of Montview High.  They held picket signs, they jumped up and down, and they tried out a variation of chants, seeming to try to catch lightning in a bottle.

You guys will never find the magic words,
Alan thought. 
Because you’re on the wrong side of history.

“There’s a lot of people here,” Danny said.  “It makes no sense.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No one was even really hurt.  Protests like these, with four hundred or more people, are for the real school tragedies.  When a freshman brings a gun into the school and shoots up a bunch of kids and it’s discovered he’d been making threats and turning in papers with questionable content in English lit,
that’s
a tragedy.”

“Okay?”

“It’s a tragedy when a kid commits suicide because he was bullied so much and the teachers did nothing, and the parents had failed to teach their kid about the importance of standing up for themselves.  Those are tragedies because people get hurt when the situation could’ve been avoided.”

“Okay?”

“What do you mean okay?  Do you think it’s fair for our boy to be getting all this attention right now?”

              Alan chuckled and clapped Danny on the shoulder.  “It’s only going to get worse, man.  And not just for him but for us as well.  You’re worried about this Danny.  Okay, I want you to remember back to 2010.  You would’ve been about ten, I think.”

              “What about it?”

              “There was a man, with a turban on his head and a beard thick like old Saint Nick.  Man had a clique, man had support, and the man was the most wanted in America, he was a goddamn prick.”

              “The rhyme’s doing nothing for me, hate to tell you.  What are you saying?”

              “A fortress is where he resided and for a while, it went under the radar.  As least symbolically, he was still at large.”

              Danny said nothing, just looked at him.

              “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

              “Osama bin Laden, right?  What’s your point?” Danny was showing a hint of irritation.  Directly in front of him, a man in an army jacket was jumping up and down with a poster board held in both hands.

              “If the U.S. government was able to get to him, imagine the hell they’re going to reign down on us and Avery when they learn we have the only way out.  So my point is that you need to get used to the discomfort, because, my friend, it’s only going to get much worse.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.”

“I say prison time for the asshole who broke into the school,”
shouted the man in the army jacket.  Danny rolled his eyes.

“If we didn’t have the tools we had,” Alan said. “We’d reach the point where we wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call without sending half the American authorities to our front steps.  That may not come but that kind of situation is fast approaching.  No bullshit, Danny.  It’s all coming.  Phone taps, assassins, spies.  We might as well accept it so we’re not shocked when it’s here.”

“Are you listening?  That asshole broke into the school!”

“No one broke into the school,” Danny said.  “He walked in during broad daylight, right through the front door.  Not a break in.  Get your head out your ass.”

The man looked over his shoulder at Danny and furrowed his bushy brow into a frown before turning back to face the front.  He continued to jump up and down and repeat the lie.

              “Fucking asshole,” Danny muttered.

              “What the hell you say to me, boy,” the man said, casting a cold look back over his shoulder at him.

              “Whoa, you shouldn’t be talking to me like that,” Danny said, putting his hands up in a mock gesture of defenselessness.  “After all, I’m just a kid, motherfucker, so watch your mouth.”

              Alan chuckled, putting a closed fist over his mouth as if holding in a cough.

              “How are you not taking this seriously?” the man asked, his face reddening.  “Don’t you care about the safety of the schools you go to?  Goddamn ingrate.”

              Danny nudged Alan, smiling.  “Did you hear what this old guy called me?  Did you hear him, Alan.  An ingrate.  He called me an ingrate. Do you know what the means?”

              Alan shrugged, his arms folded.  “No.”

              “You two need to go find something else to do with yourselves,” the man said.  “If you’re just here to make trouble, instead of trying to do something meaningful to change the way the schools are run, then no one—”

              “Are you aware that you and your family are going to be nothing but ashes in the next ten years?  How do you feel about that?”

              Alan forced Danny away from the crowd before the man could react. 

              “What the hell are you doing,” Alan said, clenching Danny’s shoulders painfully with both hands. 

              “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

              “In broad daylight, in front of this kind of crowd, you want to be saying that?”  Alan lowered his voice and leaned in.  He was close enough to smell the gum on Danny’s breath. 
“We’re supposed to be keeping our cover. 
We’re Avery’s key soldiers.”

              “If Avery can do it, so can we.”

              “He’s supposed to be a distraction, dumbass, so we can keep working under the radar.”

              Danny waved a dismissive hand.  “Oh, that’s a small part of it, Alan.  Besides, we have to talk about the shit anyway!”

              Alan grabbed the front of Danny’s collar and yanked him forward.  “There’s
fucking
TV cameras here, man.  Come on, get your goddamn shit together.  We don’t want to be all over the news!”  He let him go.  “Damn, at least give us time to gather our troops.”

              Danny seemed to finally have heard him.  He blinked once, put his head down, and shook it.  He touched his brow with one hand.

              “Shit.  All right, yeah.  You’re right.  My bad.  Sometimes I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking, man, you know?”

              Alan shook his head and laughed.  Clapped him on the shoulder.  “It’s all good, man.  Just be more strategic.  It’s not the kind of thing I want to come back to bite me in the ass, and the same goes for you.  Anyway, just ask questions like a concerned individual.  Not like you know something that everyone doesn’t.  Remember, in this setting, we don’t want to bring too much attention to ourselves.”

              Danny nodded and the two boys headed back toward the crowd of protesters.  The man in the army jacket had his sign lifted in the air again but noticed when both boys reappeared behind him.  He regarded a cool-faced Alan briefly and then turned his attention back to a stone-faced Danny.