Hig Tries to Contact the 747s Flying Over Erie

Hig Tries to Contact the 747s Flying Over Erie marks a rare return of powered aircraft to the sky above Erie Airport—and Hig’s urgent, unanswered effort to reach whoever is aboard. A familiar engine sound draws him from the garden; two vapor trails become evidence that people and aircraft may still be moving across the world. The planes pass beyond reach, and when they return in later weeks, the silence persists.

The sighting and its interruption

On or about July 4, Hig is squashing potato bugs between his fingers in the garden. The task is small and repetitive, part of a day in which Cima is away with the families. He hears a sound he knows so well that at first he does not look up. But the sound has not been heard for a long time. He cranes his head against the sun and sees two vapor trails, parallel, one behind the other, while the engines’ distant rush recedes.

The moment turns on that delay: recognition arrives first as sound, then as a sight that seems almost too consequential to trust. Hig checks himself with the blunt thought, “Not dreaming, no.” The aircraft are not an imagined return of the old world. They are real, moving away, and already difficult to follow. The contrast between potato bugs under his fingers and jets high above him gives the scene its sudden scale: ordinary work is interrupted by the possibility that the world beyond the airport has not gone entirely quiet.

The radio call

Hig runs to The Beast, switches on the master power, and turns to the radio. Its Narco scanner cycles through frequencies, but at first there is only static. The scanning numbers circle through the silence until one catches a break in it, and a voice emerges. Hig hears conversation and laughter in Arabic. From the voice and the aircraft’s direction, he understands that the planes are heading west at thirty thousand feet; California seems a likely destination, though that remains his estimate rather than confirmed information.

Before transmitting, Hig makes himself listen. Then he calls repeatedly: “Boeing 747s who just overflew Denver, this is Erie.” The message identifies the planes, the place they have passed, and the airport trying to reach them. From thirty thousand feet, he thinks, Erie Airport would be indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape and its decaying infrastructure. He calls again and again, but receives no answer. By the time the vapor trails fade into a white memory, his voice is hoarse. The effort has established that a voice can still be heard through the radio; it has not established that anyone has heard Hig.

Crossings without contact

A week later, at exactly about the same time, two more aircraft pass overhead. Another pair follows the next week. The recurrence makes the first sighting less like an isolated anomaly: aircraft are crossing the region on a repeated route or schedule, even though Hig cannot identify their destination with certainty. On the fourth week, however, nothing appears. Hig and the others gather on the porch in the afternoon, waiting with the expectant air of people watching for fireworks or a dignitary. The sky offers no explanation for the absence.

In September, two more fly over. Hig calls again, and they never answer. The pattern now includes both return and refusal—or at least the appearance of refusal. Their passage proves neither that the people aboard heard the calls nor that they deliberately ignored them. The radio exchange stays unresolved, and the repeated crossings deepen rather than settle the question of what kind of life continues beyond the airport.

Cima offers possible explanations for the pilots’ apparent immunity to the epidemic: immunity might belong to a race, occur in clusters, or extend through an entire tribe. These are possibilities, not confirmed knowledge. Her speculation gives the flights a human and epidemiological meaning, but cannot bridge the distance between the people overhead and those listening below. The aircraft remain visible signs of movement without becoming a source of news, rescue, or verified connection.

Meaning of the unanswered call

The episode brings hope and uncertainty into the same brief encounter. The 747s are evidence that the sky is not empty and that people may still be traveling across long distances; the unanswered transmissions deny Hig the confirmation he seeks. Even the route toward California is an inference, and the identity or condition of those aboard remains unknown. The phrase “Good or bad?” captures the unresolved value of the sighting: the planes could signal survival beyond Erie, but their passage supplies no assurance about what that survival means.

The scene also shifts from solitary action to shared anticipation. Hig first runs to the radio alone, trying to convert a fleeting visual sighting into communication; later, the four gather on the porch to watch for the next crossing. That change makes the flights a recurring event around which the survivors can wait together, though waiting does not produce contact. Their presence in the sky matters precisely because it stops short of an answer: the old technologies of flight and radio still function, but the human connection they promise remains out of reach.