“I’m not flying this thing until you put his blindfold back on,” a new male voice said.

Well, at least someone had hope that he was going to get out of this situation one day.

They tied the fabric around his eyes. Everything was dark again.

—

They were up in the air. Lennon was trying to think how much fuel a plane like this could hold. How far could they make it? Did they have a way to get out of the country? The FAA didn’t just let people fly wherever they pleased.

“Now,” the Southern accent said. He sounded nervous, for the first time. “He needs to get out now.”

Get out? Of the plane? They were still in the air.

Someone grabbed him and yanked him out of the seat. His handcuffs snapped off. His wrists screamed in relief.

“You’ve skydived before, right?” another man asked. “I read in an article that you skydived. Real daredevil type.”

His mouth was too dry to speak. “Uh…” He had skydived, once. Strapped to an instructor.

They were attaching something to his back.

“You just pull to open the parachute,” the Southern accent said. “Before you get too close to the ground.”

There had been a lot more instructions than “before you get too close to the ground” when he had gone skydiving. He suddenly couldn’t remember a single one of them.

Several hands pushed him forward.

Wait. They hadn’t been in the air that long. At all.

Wind whipped through his hair.

Someone ripped off his blindfold again. He squinted against the wind. He was at the door of the plane, and he braced both hands on either side. He looked down at the world beneath him. They were flying pretty low to the ground.

He’d seen an aerial view of this place before. The buildings, the homes clustered together.

The quarantine zone in the middle of Texas.

“No, no, no, no.” He tried desperately to move back into the plane. The men held him in place.

“He needs to go now!” a voice shouted.

“No!” he yelled again, frantic. He’d rather go to a foreign country. Literally any country in the world. Throw a dart at a map and he’d go there.

Hands roughly shoved him forward. His grip on the plane began to slip.

“Don’t forget to pull the cord!” a voice yelled.

They pushed him out.

MAISIE

JUST ONCE, MAISIE Rojas wanted people to run away in fear when they saw her coming.

She’d yell after them, “Yeah, you better run!” and they’d cast a terrified glance over their shoulder and, of course, keep running. Because she was so terrifying.

Instead, the two men standing in the empty loading dock smiled as she approached them.

Joe spread his skinny arms wide like she might want to hug him. “Maisie!”

For fuck’s sake.

“I liked your broadcast yesterday,” he continued. “Very informative.”

“Where is the truck?” She’d meant for the words to come out angry, but she just sounded worried. She’d never been very good at masking that particular emotion.