Chapter 9: The Padlock

We went out through the side door into the gray morning, and the guards watched us do it.

One of them started to say something and then looked at Hank's wrench and thought better of it.

Hank stood in front of the chained doors with his arms folded.

"Thirty-one years," he said, to nobody. "My own landlord."

I took one step toward the white truck.

Then I heard engines on the road.

A line of cars came up the airfield drive, then trucks, then a minivan with a crumpled fender.

They parked on the grass in a long row and the doors started opening.

The old man with the white mustache got out of the first truck, leaning on his cane.

Behind him came the woman from Sycamore Ridge with her two children.

Behind her came a hundred more.

They were the families from the gym, and families from the ridge I had never met.

Most of them were still in the clothes they had slept in at the evacuation center.

Every one of them had a phone in their hand.

"We saw the clip," the old man said, stopping in front of me. "We saw her on the news saying you flew. We saw the Sutton boys putting up a notice."

"How did you know about the notice?"

"Your friend's mechanic posted a picture at five this morning," he said, and nodded at the boy behind Hank, who looked at his shoes.

I looked at the crowd.

A woman in the front row held up a sign she had made on the back of a pizza box.

SENTINEL HUNG UP ON US.

Another sign said, FREE THE RESCUE HELICOPTERS.

A reporter's van pulled in beside the minivan.

Then a second one.

A white sedan came up the drive last of all, fast, and stopped at an angle.

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