No Return

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A distant boom echoed faintly across the hills.

Wes Stewart peered at the sky. He recognized the sound, but it was one he hadn’t heard in years.

“What the hell was that?” Danny DeLeon asked. He was holding the second camera.

“Sonic boom.”

Danny still looked confused, so Wes added, “You know, when a jet breaks the sound barrier.”

“Really?”

Wes squinted toward the western horizon, then raised his arm and pointed. “There. See him?”

Danny shaded his eyes. “I don’t see anything.”

“Flying south, just a little bit above the mountains.” Wes’s finger tracked the movement of the jet.

“No, I don’t.… Wait. It’s like a white dot.”

Wes nodded. “Yep.”

“That thing’s moving fast.”

“It’s a fighter jet, Danny. That’s what they do.”

“Damn.”

While it was novel to Danny, for Wes it was a reminder of a time when he would have barely noticed a sky full of jets.

“You guys set?” Dione Li, their producer/director, asked from behind them. She was leading a group of three others over to the base of the rock formation. The look on her face was pure Dione: ten percent annoyed, fifteen percent pissed, and one hundred percent determined. “We got a lot to do today, and I don’t want to mess around.”

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