The earthquake thankfully didn’t damage my house, though I did break a flatscreen and knocked over some more fragile gaming things. Thankfully mom and my girlfriend helped clean up. She was used to these sorts of things back in Asia, but had gone out of town for a college orientation.

But it was worse at the regional airport. They had shut the place down. And the main 11000’ runway had been wrecked; apparently the ground split the runway apart, and the chasm was at least forty feet across and went down over a hundred feet. Not a safe place to take off or land.

So why was I hearing planes still landing after 10PM?

It was 2AM, everyone was mostly asleep. I myself was in my bed. But there it was, that dull roar of a heavy going in for final. Deciding to fight my laziness, I sat up in bed and looked out the window.

For the most part, I could sometimes see if an aircraft was headed by. In the pitch suburban black not much was visible, but I did make out the marker lights of an aircraft.

Well, that was interesting. The lights were more forward up the fuselage. And the nose beacon was a lot lower than the wing marker lights; it seemed to have a good bit of weight to it. It wasn’t a nimble regional, It also wasn’t those 737 puddle jumpers.

Something did click in my head. Only two classes of aircraft had those kind of wings, and one was too small for it.

This was military.

Why the hell was the military flying in air transports to the airport? It could be relief for sure, but nobody was at the airport since it was shut down. There was no proper place for them to land in the first place. On top of that, it wasn’t like the entire city was in a disaster area; local services could certainly handle a wrecked airport.

I watched the plane until it was obscured by another house, flopping back into bed. What was going on?