Yeah, at first I was thinking why would you have the wire in the windows of a school bus, that's just for...oh!
(and he does, he has a square head!)
When Gail Green says I'm so sorry I didn't know your mom was in Denver [paraphrase} and he says she wasn't, she was in Atlanta that was a much more original way to drop in the information that it was happening elsewhere, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't our military doing some exercise gone wrong---and give the characters new directions. Such economy in the writing, yet more realistic and not clunky exposition.
Yes, the birds thing is screamy for me too!