Erie airfield is both a working refuge and an exposed outpost in the post-collapse landscape. Its runway, hangar, powered buildings, and access to water make sustained life there possible; its position on open ground makes those same advantages visible to hostile survivors. For Hig, it is not merely a place to land. It is the home he shares with Bangley, the center of their defensive routine, and the place to which he returns after a long absence to discover how fragile their settlement has become.

Setting and Strategic Position

Nine years after the flu, the airfield sits within a broad, largely open plain. Hig describes eight miles of open ground between the settlement and the first trees at the mountain front. That distance forms a natural warning zone: he patrols it as part of his work, watching the approaches before danger reaches the buildings. In most other directions, the high plains extend for roughly thirty miles, while the mountains lie only a few hours’ walk to the west. Bangley’s defensive thinking takes this geography into account, concentrating attention and firepower toward the west, where the terrain offers the quickest approach from the trees.

The airfield’s isolation is relative rather than absolute. A group of families lives about ten miles to the south; Hig says they do not trouble the two men. The settlement’s surroundings therefore include both a watched perimeter and a nearby community with which Hig has an ongoing connection. From the air, the landmarks that define this territory include the river, a high cutbank that functions as a moat, the limited ford across it, and the berm. When Hig later takes Pops on a circuit in The Beast, he explains the roads, distances, and nearby families as parts of a practical map for living at Erie airfield.

Infrastructure and the Work of Staying

The airfield’s resources help explain why it attracts people. It lies beside a substantial creek and offers water, fuel, and buildings; the houses have solar panels, while the FBO—short for Fixed Base Operator—runs mostly on wind power. Hig recognizes that a site combining water, fuel, an airport, and sustainable power would be conspicuous to anyone assessing where to survive. The settlement’s technological usefulness is thus also a source of exposure.

Power is maintained at a modest, household scale as well as through the airfield’s larger facilities. Hig has four sixty-watt panels on a house where he does not sleep, enough to keep a single LED light burning through the night. In another practical form of maintenance, he teaches Bangley how to water the garden: how to direct water from the header into the marked furrows, clear them, and distinguish crops from weeds. Bangley admits that he had sworn never to be a farmer, but the work has become necessary at the place they share. The garden’s orderly irrigation later gives Hig a precise way to judge the damage caused by his absence.

The runway and aircraft make the airfield more than a defensible homestead. Hig serves as the aerial observer in the partnership, while Bangley supplies the armed defense; Hig’s patrols let them see beyond the buildings and assess the wider terrain. The functioning navigation equipment reinforces this dependence on technical knowledge: the Garmin GPS in the aircraft still receives satellite signals and warns when the plane approaches high ground. Erie airfield’s security rests not just on structures and weapons but on the ability to operate, maintain, and interpret the systems around it.

Perimeter, Threat, and Shared Routine

The airfield’s strategic value brings danger to its doors. Survivors arrive singly or in groups, sometimes at night, carrying hunting rifles or knives. Hig leaves a porch light on, and intruders come toward it. The pattern makes the buildings feel less like an unquestioned home than the inward edge of a contested perimeter. Hig responds by sleeping on the ground because of the attacks, while daily patrol becomes part of his assigned responsibility.

The division of labor between Hig and Bangley is shaped by both their skills and their limitations. Hig has the plane and acts as the eyes; Bangley has the guns and provides the muscle. Their dependence on one another is practical, but not frictionless: Bangley regards activities that do not directly serve survival with suspicion, while Hig continues to value flying and going into the mountains. From Erie airfield, those excursions offer information about wind, trees, and creeks as well as a reprieve from the demands of defense. The base therefore holds two different measures of usefulness: Bangley’s emphasis on security and Hig’s attention to the living landscape beyond the perimeter.

The Changed Landscape

The mountains accessible from Erie airfield are a source of food and a record of ecological change. Hig goes there to hunt and fish, but the trout have disappeared as streams have warmed. He turns instead to suckers and carp, learning to prepare fish he once disliked and sometimes fishing for carp at the surface. The change is not a single loss. He fears the creeks themselves may be lost, especially after winters when the peaks hold little snow, and notices that even the replacement fish are affected by altered water temperatures or food supplies.

These journeys connect the airfield to a wider geography of environmental grief. Hig chooses stretches of forest that remain green or are beginning to recover, carries his fishing equipment past stands of dead trees, and pauses beside running water. The places he seeks are not incidental scenery: they preserve a sensory link to the world before the collapse, even as familiar species vanish. From Erie airfield, the mountains remain reachable by plane or on foot, but access cannot restore what has disappeared. The contrast between the base’s functioning machinery and the declining streams makes survival at the airfield feel provisional rather than secure.

Destruction and Return

After more than six weeks away, Hig approaches Erie airfield across the Continental Divide and recognizes the prairie, the airstrip, and the tower they built together. His return is charged with the realization that Bangley has become family. That feeling is quickly unsettled by what he sees from the air: houses burned to their foundations, and one side of his hangar torn open and burned. Bangley’s house is still standing, but its windows have been shot out, scorch marks surround a damaged dormer, and a large hole gapes in the roof.

Some signs of the settlement’s former routine remain. The garden is still in place and water continues to run through part of its irrigation system, but weeds have filled the dry channels and climbed the ridges of earth. Hig lands, shuts down The Beast, and runs to Bangley’s open-fronted house; when Bangley is not there, he rushes to the hangar. Inside, among the familiar couch, workbench, and cooking counter, he finds Bangley behind the heavy red tool chest, with his grenade launcher nearby. The airfield’s survival has depended on keeping its equipment and defenses working; now its damaged buildings and overgrown garden record the cost of an attack during Hig’s absence.

After Bangley is recovered, Erie airfield again becomes a place from which to orient others. Hig takes Pops up in The Beast, points out the tower, river, cutbank, ford, berm, roads, and surrounding families, and shows him the territory from above. The return does not erase the destruction, but the flight restores a shared practical map of the place. Erie airfield remains home not because it is intact or safe, but because its landscape, routines, and surviving relationships can still be gathered around it.