Kayla woke up to bright light behind her eyelids. Her heart immediately started pounding in her chest.
She scrambled to sit up, only to realize it was just the morning sunlight coming in through the airport windows. She felt heat rush into her cheeks as she realized she’d freaked out for nothing. It wasn’t the Visitors coming back for them.
She combed her fingers through her hair and glanced around to make sure no one had noticed. But everyone around her was either still asleep or just waking up themselves. Maddie was stretched out across a few chairs with her eyes closed, and Luke was lying on the floor using his backpack as a pillow and a sweatshirt as a blanket.
The mood of the crowd seemed noticeably better. Kayla looked around and saw people happily munching on snacks from the airplanes.
She had just stood up to stretch when a woman walked up to her.
“Are you the girl who first suggested we collect the food from the planes?”
Kayla blinked at her, not really sure what to say. “Uh, I guess. I mean, a lot of people helped.”
“I just wanted to thank you. That was an excellent idea.”
Kayla felt herself blush. “I’m sure someone would have thought of it eventually.”
“Well, you thought of it first,” the woman said, smiling. “Smart girl. Please tell everyone who helped that they have our thanks.”
As the woman walked away, Kayla spotted Steph and her friends sitting across the waiting area. They’d apparently heard everything the woman had said. Steph made a show of rolling her eyes to her friends.
Kayla chose to ignore her. She walked a few rows over and found Ms. Pollack in a chair with her head propped on her hand. At first, she couldn’t tell if the teacher was sleeping, but when Kayla got closer, her head popped up.
“Kayla,” she said with a tired smile. “Good morning. I’m sure you’re hungry. Airport personnel brought all the food to the food court. They’re handing it out there.”
Kayla turned around to see Luke and Maddie both sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. “Breakfast?” she asked them.
“You read my mind,” Luke said. Maddie nodded through a long yawn.
A few of the remaining airport employees had volunteered to watch over and distribute the rations of food. They handed each person in line a small pack of crackers, a piece of fruit, and a bottle of juice.
“We need to conserve what we have,” the employee said. “It may need to last a while.”
Kayla and her friends sat at a table in one of the abandoned restaurants. It wasn’t the most filling of breakfasts, but it was a relief to have something to eat at all. They’d forgotten to eat before falling asleep the night before, so they wolfed down the food quickly.
The McKenzie-Rowe airport felt much the same as when they’d entered it—people leaned up against walls or curled up in chairs with a book, just waiting to get out of there. There was one noticeable difference. No one seemed to be sitting near the windows. Apparently Kayla wasn’t the only one who was feeling a little jumpy after the Visitor incident last night.
As if reading her mind, Luke asked, “What do we do if the Visitors come back?”
“Stay inside,” Maddie said through a mouthful of chewed apple. “Hope they leave again.”
“Next time we might not be so lucky,” Luke replied.
“There’s not much we can do,” Kayla said. She fiddled with her bottle of apple juice, hoping her friends didn’t notice the anxiety in her voice. “Without any information, all we can do is wait.”
“We’re trapped,” Maddie said. “We can’t go outside. We can’t fight them. We can’t even find out if someone is fighting them somewhere else.”
They finished eating but were careful not to drink all the juice. They sat around for another half hour before they couldn’t stand watching everyone else nervously sitting around. They decided to walk through the entire airport and explore. On their third lap, they found Orlando where they had first met him. He was working on the mess of wires again.
“Any luck?” Kayla asked him as they approached.
He kept working as he answered, “Not so much. I’ve tried replacing every part of the thing, but it still won’t turn on.” He looked over his shoulder at them. “You kids ever do that science experiment where you make a potato light up a lightbulb?” They nodded, and he tapped the wall with the screwdriver. “I’m about two minutes away from trying that.”
“What happened?” Luke asked. “How did we lose power everywhere like that?”
“Best guess,” Orlando said, “an EMP.”
“A what?” Maddie asked.
“Electromagnetic pulse,” Orlando clarified. “It fries the power. That’s why everything shut off at once. It also explains why I can’t get anything to start working again.”
Before they could ask any other questions, a girl from their choir ran up to them. “You guys need to come back right now,” she urged. “People are talking about leaving.”