Tanya passed several buildings to her left—the radio house, a small school, a generator shed, a utility shack—and jogged to the porch.

The distant sound carried to her then, just as she stepped through the front door, a faint beating hum. She looked toward the sky to see what it was, but all she could see was the bright blue sky and a flock of birds lifting from a nearby tree. She closed the door.

Her father was leaning over a radio he’d disassembled on the kitchen table; her mother was cracking eggs into a bowl on the counter. Tanya strode straight to the refrigerator. The latent odor of kerosene fuel drifted through the kitchen, but she’d grown accustomed to the smell after so many years. It was the aroma of home, the scent of technology in a jungle hothouse.

“Hi, honey,” her father called. “Want to help me put this thing back together?” He studied a coil in his right hand.

“Sorry, they don’t offer electronics in my curriculum. Looks like a mess. I thought you built the toolshed for this kind of thing,” Tanya said, smiling. She opened the refrigerator.

“Exactly,” her mother said. “You hear that, Jonathan? The kitchen table is no place for mechanics.”

“Yes, well, this isn’t some lawn mower or generator here. This is a radio and radios have hundreds of very small, sensitive parts. Half of which I can’t seem to find just now.”

Tanya chuckled and withdrew the pitcher of lemonade.

“But they are here,” he said. “Somewhere in this pile. If I’d torn into this mess in that shed, there’s no telling where they’d run off to. You’ll have your table before supper. I promise.”

“Sure I will.” Her mother winked at Tanya and feigned disgust.

A muffled beating flickered in the back of Tanya’s mind, that same hum she’d heard just before entering. Like a moth caught in the window. She poured the yellow drink into her glass. A breeze lifted the curtain from the kitchen window, carrying with it that moth sound.

But it wasn’t a moth, was it? Not at all, and that fact occurred to Tanya when the tumbler touched her lips, before she’d drunk any of the lemonade. The sound came from large blades beating at the air. She froze there, her arm cocked. Jonathan lifted his head from the radio pieces.

“What is it?” Tanya asked.

“A helicopter,” her father answered. He turned to his wife. “Were we expecting a helicopter this afternoon?”

Tanya sipped at the liquid, feeling the cool juice flow down her throat.

“Not that I was aware of,” Heidi said and leaned to the window, pushing the curtain aside.

It occurred to Tanya that the helicopter sounded somehow different, a higher pitch than the Hughes she’d grown accustomed to. A layered whit, whit, whit. Maybe two helicopters. Or more.

She lowered the tumbler to her waist, imagining five or six of the things hovering to a landing on their back lawn. Now that would be something different.