Wrecked cars, bodies and some form of destruction are noticeable on almost every street they pass. The driver expertly swerves their own damaged vehicle through the wreckage on the road.

“We’re good, Everett,” the driver calls back.

“What does he mean we’re good?”

“The bridge ahead is clear. We didn’t know if we could make it across the bridge into Eugene to get you to the airport, sir.” The driver shakes his head to stop the question he believes the representative is going to ask. “I didn’t think it was necessary to worry you and your wife that the bridge might be out, and honestly, we didn’t have the time to lay out our plan.”

“You need to warn us about the possibilities in case we have to leave the vehicle and run for it.”

“With all due respect, sir, you live here as well as we do and know the way to the airport. Any potential roadblocks that existed before are still there and in all seriousness, if we have to leave this vehicle before we get you to the plane, we aren’t going to make it.”

“Like a plane is going to help you!” Weak-sounding sarcasm is coming from the recovering agent in the front. His words are filled with depression and anger.

“What is your problem?” Evelyn asks.

“You know what my problem is. My family is out there, and in a few blocks, I’m getting out to go help them. I’m not in the Secret Service and you aren’t the president or his wife. All I care about right now is getting back to my family. As for you two going up in a plane, we aren’t even sure if aircraft will stay in the air anymore.”

Agent Everett shakes his head and turns to Greg and Evelyn. “Planes have been falling from the skies since this blue light arrived. It is possible that it’s affecting them structurally in some way, but more likely, it is children that have mutated while onboard planes that have brought them down.”

“How many planes have crashed?”

“I don’t have an exact number. I believe there are about three to four thousand planes in the air at any given time. We can assume any flight that had a child onboard who changed will crash so it is likely in the thousands.”

“Thousands?”

“Yes, thousands. And those thunderous sounds you asked me about earlier were most likely planes crashing around Eugene and Springfield. Although I haven’t seen any come down, I don’t know of anything else in this area that could produce such a tremendous explosion.”

“We might have one up ahead,” the driver mentions, indicating a huge column of black smoke off to the left.

They all crane their necks to look at the flaming debris among the remnants of houses as they drive by. A piece of a wing sticking out of a flaming building three blocks away confirms the tale of devastation. A medium-sized commercial plane went down on the subdivision, and it wasn’t a controlled crash. The breadth and depth of the destruction makes it look like the plane started rolling before or after it hit.

There are no firefighters or fire trucks battling the blaze and no police in the area cordoning off a safe zone around the accident. Anyone that survived when the plane crashed and caused the spreading fires are left to fend for themselves in the chaos the city has found itself in.

“I wish we could stop, I feel like we should help.”

“We should, but we can’t. You can see there is nobody standing around out there trying to help. Everyone is running for their lives like we are or they’re in hiding.”

Two minutes later, the SUV pulls over and the man riding shotgun gets out. He shakes glass from his jacket and pants and without a word or acknowledgment that the others exist, he runs across the road and disappears around the corner of a house on his attempt to make it home. The SUV continues on.

“That’s the third plane crash we’ve seen,” Evelyn states as they move beyond their view of another smoldering crater of wreckage in a field. “I can’t imagine what is happening around the country right now if this many planes have crashed just here in Eugene.”

“Be thankful we aren’t trying to take you to Portland International,” the driver offers. “The area around major airports will have the most concentrated crash sites. Everett, we’ll be there soon, you should start to fill them in.”

Nodding silently at the suggestion, he scans out the windows in all directions before beginning.

“We have a pilot and a group of armed DHS officers waiting on you with a small government jet.