Free The Dead Won't Die by Joe McKinney

touched Kelly’s shoulder. “We need to go,” he said.
    She nodded.
    Together, they walked up the driveway and into the bright glare of the afternoon sun. Stretched out before them was Scholes Field, the air travel hub of Chelsea’s world. The rest of Temple, at least the parts he’d seen, had embraced the look and feel of Old World Galveston. He’d seen street after street of wooden houses painted in pastels, vibrant as Easter eggs, and big, blocky government buildings made of dust-colored Texas granite, all relics of a distant, more glamorous time. But he’d seen nothing on the island like the Scholes Field Terminal. It looked like a giant stone octopus rising from a field of coastal grass. Huge, curvy arms, tentacle-like, radiated out from a central building five stories high. Docked up and down the length of the various arms were small aircraft the size of railroad boxcars. Scanning the field, Jacob saw dozens of different designs and configurations. Some looked sleek and fast, their hulls shaped like teardrops and glistening in the afternoon sun, while others looked boxy and powerful, obvious workhorses. And above them, thick as noodles in places, gleaming white trains hissed quietly along monorail tracks.
    But the thing that dominated his attention was an aerofluyt half a mile away, just beginning to lift off. It was magnificent in the sunshine, as huge as the ruined skyscrapers he’d seen in Little Rock. It rose from the field on a shimmering cushion of air. Bright lights shone down its thousand-foot-long flanks, glowing, even in the glare of midday. Just days out of Arbella, back before the Slaver caravan had taken his friends, back when he still held on to the hope that he could do great things, Jacob had seen an aerofluyt like this one glide overhead. It hadn’t made a sound, and yet, every piece of metal, from the window frames of the gas station where he and his party had taken shelter for the night, to the forks and spoons on their plates, to the old-fashioned metal signs on the wall, had started to dance and shake and rise into the air. His teeth shook in their sockets. His stomach had turned queasy, like he was looking down from a great height. He felt small and helpless and terrified.
    He didn’t feel that way now, though.
    Now, watching the behemoth rise from the grassy field, he felt only awe, and wondered how such things could possibly be.
    â€œIt’s your turn,” Kelly said.
    â€œWhat?” Jacob said. He was surprised to find that he’d been holding his breath.
    â€œTo be amazed,” she said. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? How is it that we still have to wash our clothes in buckets, while they can make something like that fly?”
    â€œIt is incredible,” he agreed. He turned back to the aerofluyt and shook his head. “Chelsea, where do you think that thing’s headed?”
    The younger woman was twenty yards ahead of them. At the sound of her name she stopped and turned impatiently. “Who knows?” she said. “They go all over the world. They can stay aloft for twenty years at a time, if they need to. The only reason they ever land is to load and off-load passengers.”
    â€œAll over the world . . . you mean . . .”
    â€œMexico City. Wuchuan, China. Wellington, New Zealand. Salt Lake City. All over the world. Wherever my people have outposts.”
    Jacob shook his head. “Incredible.”
    â€œYeah, I guess,” Chelsea said with a shrug. “You mind if we go now? We’ve still got to find a ride out of here.”
    Jacob nodded.
    â€œOkay. And listen, the two of you need to get your collective shit together, okay? All this, everything you see, it’s all normal. There’s nothing here that my people haven’t grown up with. If you gawk like idiots, you’re going to get us caught.”
    Jacob traded a glance with Kelly.
    She smiled back at him.
    â€œYeah,”