We made it back to the others, deactivating our invisibility cloaks when we were only a few feet away. As a result we accidentally scared them.

“Jesus!” Jack yelled as he stumbled back. “Can you please not sneak up on us like that?”

“Sorry.”

“What if my ninja training had kicked in and I’d accidentally killed you both?”

“Shut up, Jack,” Maria said.

Kenji then appeared from his hiding spot. He seemed to be able to become invisible without the aid of a special suit. I guess he was sort of like a real life ninja. He’d definitely had a lot of training from his father. I was always amazed at how much stuff he knew when he used to teach me in his basement.

“So what happened?” Kenji asked. “Did you make contact?”

“No,” Daniel answered. “It looks like they’ve abandoned the airport. No one’s home.”

Jack threw his hands in the air. “Why am I not surprised? Of course it’s abandoned. They’ve been gone for awhile now. We’re totally on our own here. Why do you think no one came to the aid of that convoy at the SCG?”

“So, what now?” Maria asked.

“I say we go in,” Daniel said. “We could find another hiding place. We could find supplies. Ammo, food. Maybe even a car. If there’s a chopper or any sort of aircraft, I can fly us out of here.”

Jack and Maria’s faces lit up. There’s nothing like hearing a piece of good news in the midst of absolute horror to lift your spirits. Although Kenji didn’t seem too phased by this revelation. Maybe he thought all the usable aircraft would’ve been taken.

“But even if we can’t find any choppers or vehicles,” Kenji added in an attempt to bring Jack and Maria back to earth. “Like Daniel said, we should be able to find a place to rest up for a few days.”

And rest was valuable, I thought to myself. We had been running for our lives non-stop. We needed to rest. The human body can’t be this jacked up on adrenalin for this long without crashing.

Kenji looked through the scope on his rifle in the direction of the airport. “All right guys, lead the way.”

We trudged back through the long grass and the muddy water of the swampland, to the perimeter fence. Daniel and I led the way. Kenji brought up the rear. Jack and Maria were in the middle.

When we arrived at the perimeter fence, Kenji and Daniel briefly checked the closest machine gun bunkers to see if there was any spare ammunition for their rifles. But there was none. All they found were empty bullet shells and dried blood. No bodies though.

We were starting to realize there were never any bodies.

The red dust seemed to be less oppressive out here. Visibility was pretty good. The sky still had a weird red tinge to it, like we were on Mars, but it wasn’t as thick. We could even see the sun as it began its descent over the western horizon. The sun looked weird, like a blue orb instead of its normal orangey yellow color.

We slipped underneath a hole in the fence, and made our way past the helicopter tour place and through the huge parking lot of what we assumed were rental cars. We were walking through row after row of small cars and mid-sized cars and large family cars, when suddenly, way off in the distance, we heard the buzzing noise of a propeller engine. A small aircraft was flying towards us. It was coming in fast.

Kenji heard it first and motioned for us to get down. “Take cover underneath the cars!” he said. “All the way underneath. Make sure your arms and legs aren’t exposed.”

Jack and Maria dived under a large family sedan. Jack had his arm around Maria, pulling her close into his chest. Kenji and I hid under the car next to them.

But Daniel had remained standing. He quickly activated his cloaking device and moved out into the open. He moved away from the Toyota we were hiding under to see if he could get a better look at the jet or airplane or whatever it was.

“Can you see it?” Kenji asked.

“Yeah. It’s a drone. Looks like a Predator.”

“What’s a drone,” I asked.

“It’s an unmanned aircraft,” Kenji answered. “Mainly used for reconnaissance missions.”

“So there’s no pilot in that plane?”

“No. It’s all automatic. It has sensors that...” Kenji trailed off like he’d just thought of something important. “Daniel. I think you should get under the car. The Predators have infrared sensors. You’re not invisible to infrared!”

“It’s fine,” Daniel replied. “The suit reduces the heat signature of the wearer. It can’t see me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive. Besides, it’s not even looking over here. It seems to be doing a wide, low circle of the airport terminals. Definitely a recon mission. Looks like it’s checking out the airplane hangars.”

“The hangars?” Maria asked. “What’s it looking for?”

“Not sure,” Daniel said. “Maybe the military want to see if it’s safe to return?”

“So they don’t know we’re here?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “I don’t think so.”

“So what the hell is it doing here then?” I asked.

“Maybe it’s not looking for us,” Maria offered. “Maybe it’s looking for something else.”

Eventually, after a few minutes, the noise of the propeller faded off into the distance.

“It’s heading back out to sea,” Daniel said.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

In front of us was nothing but wide open space for at least several miles. Off to the right was one terminal and off to the left was the other. I guess the smaller one was the domestic terminal, and the bigger one was the international terminal.

The domestic terminal was a bit closer, not by much, but we decided to go there first. The only problem was once we started to cross the runways, we’d be totally exposed. If another drone or spy plane or whatever decided to come back we’d be screwed.

We talked about how maybe Daniel or myself should go first with our cloaking devices activated. But we figured there was no point in waiting any longer. Now was probably the best time to go for it. The drone had obviously flown back to an aircraft carrier somewhere off the coast, probably to refuel. This meant that while it was flying back and refueling, we had a small window of time.

So we ran for it. We stuck close together in our little diamond formation.

We ran fast.