In the gift store of the National Museum of Natural History, the team agreed that Kato and Ty would venture out to search for answers about what was going on while Nora and Maria stayed with the unconscious pilot.
Outside the gallery gift store, Kato switched off his flashlight, and he and Ty moved through the museum with only the aid of the dim moonlight filtering in through the entrance from Constitution Avenue. The doors to the outside lay directly ahead, past the T. rex skull and a row of Moai, the monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island.
The entrance at Constitution Avenue had long ago been broken in. Kato ventured out tentatively, his rifle held at the ready, listening.
As they crept forward in the moonlight, Ty considered what the quantum radio had brought with them: seemingly everything attached to their bodies, such as their clothes, thankfully, and the items they held. It was as if a bubble had formed around the four, one that encompassed all the items attached to them. He noted that fact for the future.
Kato crouched, listening. Ty assumed he was waiting for the sound of the plane to return. But it was utterly silent.
“Did you see the flag on the man’s uniform?” Ty whispered. “I did. It’s very curious.”
Kato rose and crept forward, rifle at the ready. They were a few feet from the entrance to the National Museum of American History when they heard clacking on the broken pavement of 12th Street, which ran between the two museums. Kato spun toward the noise, bringing the rifle to his shoulder.
Ty’s heart thundered in his chest.
The clack-clack-clack grew louder until the source emerged from behind a large limestone building that Ty recognized as the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
It was a family of deer. Four of them, led by a buck with tall antlers ending in ten points. They stopped and stared at Kato and Ty, as though they had never seen a living person before. They didn’t know to fear humans, which told Ty something very important about this world.
Inside the National Museum of American History, Ty snapped on the flashlight and Kato held the rifle at the ready, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. The museum had changed radically. Gone were the exhibits Ty remembered from his youth and even from the past few years when he had been home to visit his mother and sister.
Ahead, a large sign hung with an arrow pointing to the right. The large block letters read:
