Ding-dong. The pilot’s calm voice filled the cabin.
“Thank you, everyone, for your patience as we adjust to our new schedule. We appreciate your cooperation. We should be touching down at PDX in twenty minutes or so, assuming our instructions don’t change. When we land, we will be employing our emergency protocol. Those of you in emergency exit seats, please review your instructions on the seat card provided. And passengers, please note your nearest exit.”
It was an odd juxtaposition—the calm demeanor and delivery of emergency procedures.
“Emergency exits?” Grace questioned.
Darla shifted and watched as the woman behind them was ushered from her seat and half-carried to the front. A lady in the same row as the elderly man was instructed to move, and then they dumped the woman next to him. Darla watched as the sourpuss placed a navy blue blanket over her body.
“I think you’re right,” Darla said with equal parts fear and excitement.
“What?”
“I think they’re…” she looked at Teddy and then whispered, “dead.”
“That one?” Grace thumbed back toward the now-unoccupied seat. “No way.”
“Can you get on your phone?”
“Who’s dead?” Teddy asked without looking up.
“No one, Teddy-kins. Keep playing,” Darla said. She checked his seatbelt once more and ran her fingers through his hair; her hands were shaking, and she pressed them against her thighs to stop.
Grace rummaged in her purse and pulled out her phone. She hit the icon to her Facebook and waited for it to load. She shook her head.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on… is there anything here you can tap into for service?”
“Nothing, Darla, means nothing. There’s nothing.” Grace threw the phone back into her purse and rested her head back against the blue and white striped seat fabric. “I’m scared. This is scaring me. Emergency landings in Portland… the people on this plane. The… effing… turbulence.” Darla knew Grace would swear like a sailor if it weren’t for their boy between them. She felt a swell of love for her wife at the momentary restraint despite the circumstances. “What’s happening?”
“I’ve been on this flight with you. Everything I know, you know,” Darla said. More and more people were ringing the call buttons, and only now was Darla completely dialed into the faint hum of energy in the cabin. There were people getting out of their seats and people yelling for attendants. Many people, however, stayed rooted in place and only craned their necks to get a better glimpse of the drama.
The captain spoke to them again.
“We are asking you to please stay in your seats. We will be landing shortly. Please sit with your seat belts fastened. It’s a crowded runway area today, folks, so be prepared for a quicker and bumpier landing than you may be used to.”
“Oh no,” Grace groaned. She peered out her window and pointed to the city below. “We’re coming in fast, Darla.”
“You see anything down there?”
Grace shook her head. “Just the world. You know. Houses. Cars. Just what you see from the air… normal.”
“This isn’t normal.”
“I’m not ready to die.”
“Hey—” Darla cautioned.
They didn’t ask for people to stow their technology, so Darla didn’t dare attempt to divert Teddy’s attention away from his game; as long as he was fully engaged, it was better for everyone. She kissed the top of her son’s head and felt his hair against her cheek. Her fear was not for herself, but for her son, and while she was aware that Teddy must have felt the stress around him, she hoped he stayed only absentmindedly cognizant of what was happening.
“Kiddo,” Darla whispered. “The plane is going to land soon… and we get to go down a slide.”
“Fun!” Teddy exclaimed. “Like a big, bouncy slide?”
“Yes, actually. And I’m glad that sounds exciting. But I need you to stay close to Mommy and me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Darla… I don’t feel so hot…”
Darla felt a spike in her blood pressure, and she was dizzy; her heart pounded in her chest, thick and deep like a bass drum, and it hurt to take in a deep breath. She looked at Grace, who had started to sweat, and grabbed her hand. She wove her fingers into Grace’s and said, “You’re fine.”
“It’s a….” Grace took in a shaky breath and all the color drained from her face.
“Mommy?” Teddy asked.
“Panic. Attack,” she eked out between gasping sobs.
“It’s okay, Teddy. Mommy’s okay. She’s okay,” Darla cooed. She stood up, moved Teddy to the aisle, and put herself beside her wife. “You’re okay. It will pass. It’s going to pass… just take big, deep breaths and think of the ocean. What is your favorite thing about Los Angeles? What do you miss the most about home?”
Grace rolled her eyes. She sucked in air through clenched teeth and blew it out straight at Darla. “Nothing. My car.”
“We totally should have road-tripped this,” Darla agreed. She continued to hold Grace’s hand until her breathing started to regulate, and spots of color appeared on her cheeks. But when she turned to check on Teddy, she noticed him in the aisle, his wide-eyes fixated on something in the back of the plane, the iPad by his side.
Darla barked his name, but Teddy didn’t turn.
“Teddy!” she called again. “Back in the seat. Now.”
The engine rumbled and grew louder, and Darla looked out the window to see the green, towering trees of the Pacific Northwest growing larger by the second. The ground, the highway, the Columbia River approached in fast forward. In an instant, the wheels touched down on the tarmac at PDX, and the thunderous roar of landing filled the cabin. It was sudden—no warnings, no calm expressions of a ride well managed—and a smattering of people clapped, as though it was the landing they had been most afraid of.
Without pulling to a gate, the plane came to a stop, and immediately the passengers erupted into a flurry of activity. A middle-aged man in a Boston Red Sox hat pulled down on the exit door and deployed the slide, which inflated and landed softly on the ground. Darla watched as people lined up, holding on to purses and computers, and waited their turn. While the air buzzed with energy and confusion, panic and fear, no one pushed or shoved. An elderly woman demanded her carry-on bag and refused to part with it. So, a teenager with giant headphones got the floral suitcase out for her and even carried it forward to set by the slide.
If it was against the rules, no one said a thing. There were no further instructions from their pilot and no gathering of flight attendants to tell them where to go next; there was only the steady stream of passengers disembarking at four distinct exit points. Babies cried, Teddy grew restless by Darla’s side, and Grace seemed to wobble, still weak from her panic attack.
“Our turn,” Darla said. They’d checked their bags, and only Grace carried a small crossbody purse that she was already clutching to her chest. Darla grabbed Teddy’s backpack, threw the iPad inside, and began to make her way toward the exit. It was then Darla noticed the number of people unmoving on the plane. Whole rows of passengers slumped together under blankets or exposed, their eyes wide open, vomit and blood staining their shirts. Some still wore airline-issued headphones or clutched cell phones, but all of them were dead.
She didn’t have time to ponder the implications. Her thoughts went to a grim place. They had been on some Ebola plane or been the victims of some sort of viral terror attack. They’d been in a communication blackout since boarding in Los Angeles, and now she realized that in the short time between takeoff and landing, the world had exploded into chaos.
The chaos mattered less to her than protecting her son.
Darla positioned herself beside Teddy to shield him from the gruesome images, but the child was too aware. He caught a glimpse of one body and his arms went rigid, and he turned to look at his mom, his eyes wide and full of tears.
“Keep walking, bud,” Darla said, all business.
“Mo-m—” Teddy started, but Darla gave his upper arm a squeeze.
“Keep. Walking.”
“Mommy,” Teddy said, and he turned toward Grace.
Grace pushed him slightly ahead, and they reached the slide. Even with no one pushing to get ahead of them, Darla felt pressure to hurry and rush. But before she could arrange herself and Teddy, she looked up and surveyed the airport in front of her. Planes sat everywhere with slides deployed or stairs pushed up against their sides. People marched in organized lines off the tarmac, which was littered with abandoned suitcases, articles of clothing, and bodies.
Off in the distance, where Darla could only assume was a residential neighborhood, a plume of fire and smoke shot up into the sky.
It was the bodies that kept Darla rooted firmly to her spot on the edge of the plane, poised to tumble. She would be unable to protect Teddy from seeing the carnage, and her insides twisted with a sickening realization that her son’s exposure to these things might affect him for life. PTSD or buried anxiety, inability to love fully, exposed in some psychologist’s office when Teddy would sit there, picking at the threads of the couch, and say, “You remember that awful day when all those people died on airplanes? I was flying that day. Can you even believe that? I was one of the people who was stuck at the airport.”
His adult life forever marred by Darla’s inability to protect him.
“Teddy,” Darla said, her voice calm. She was aware of the people at her back, getting anxious, but she didn’t care. “When we get off the slide, I need you to stay close to me. I’m going to pick you up, and I want you to put your head right here.” She patted a spot on her chest between her right breast and collarbone. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Teddy agreed.
The three of them slid and bounced to the tarmac below. Then they hustled off to follow the crowd of people lined up to enter the terminal. Teddy did as he was told and buried his head into Darla’s chest, and she kept him there, tight and taut against her body. When the line slowed, she reached and grabbed Grace’s hand.
“What is this? I…just…what’s happening?” Grace asked to no one in particular.
But a man snapped his head at them, his eyes wide, and took a step back to answer. “What’s happening?” he asked them, dripping with incredulity, as if no one on earth would be so dense.
Grace didn’t catch his condescending tone, or she ignored it, and she nodded and clutched the crossbody a bit tighter.
“No one told you about the dogs?” he pushed. His breath reeked like onion and garlic; he had an old stain on his jeans, yellow and deep.
They didn’t have a dog. And they had been so busy prepping for their trip that they had not seen the news. Of course, they had caught snippets on their way to the airport and seen the sensationalist headlines on the newspapers, but at no time had anyone communicated that it was unsafe to fly.
“We heard,” Darla said in a flat, terse voice. She needed answers, but she didn’t want them from this man. “Excuse us—”
She pulled Grace away from him and wandered to a second line, both of which led into the airport.
“Is it linked? To the dogs?” Grace asked in a whisper.
Darla shrugged. She positioned them in line and then got a waft of garlic and spun. The man had followed them to their new line, and he stood next to them with his arms crossed.
“Judgment Day. The Reckoning,” he spat in a gravelly voice.
“I have a child. Do you mind?”
“For all the sinners of the world.” He looked down squarely at Grace and Darla’s intertwined hands. “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
“Thank God,” Darla replied with a forced half-smile. “I haven’t murdered anyone… yet.”
Teddy lifted his head and stared straight at Darla, squinting in the sunlight. “What’s murder?” he asked.
This, she thought as she looked around the airport. This is murder. But she said, “Shhhh… Teddy. Shhhh. Head down. Quiet game time. No more questions until we know where we’re going. Okay? Shhhh. Shhhh.”
If outside the airport was a madhouse, inside was worse. TSA agents and armed military personnel blocked the exits, and people lined up at empty counters to speak to non-existent representatives for the airlines. Families sat huddled together with their luggage; people wailed and fought, but the guards stood idly by and let the violence erupt. They stared straight ahead, like the guards of Buckingham Palace, unmoved by the scenes in front of them, and if people asked questions, they were encouraged to stay seated and wait for an announcement that never came.
Grace tried calling her parents. Speed dial. Over and over again, she pushed the button, tried to get her call through, and then hung up. Sometimes, she got a busy signal and sometimes, she got nothing but dead air.
“They’ll be worried. If they don’t hear from me. They’ll panic if they’re just waiting at the airport—”
“They’ll know we’ve been rerouted,” Darla replied. She rubbed Grace’s back as she slipped into tears. “It’s fine, Gracie. It’s good. We’re off the plane, we’re here together. Give it some time and then we’ll figure it out. We’re good.”
“This is good?” she replied, and she threw her hand across her body in a quick scan of the world around them. “This is a total nightmare. This is a war. This is annihilation.”
They’d been avoiding the news so Teddy wouldn’t hear, but they could see the tickers running across the screen and they weren’t naïve to the realities of what was happening outside of the airport. Darla hadn’t been too far off when Ebola dangers crossed through her mind—only this particular virus was like Ebola on steroids. And the news said scary things like: Infected water supply and airborne. Darla tried to keep calm, but she watched Teddy like a hawk. He didn’t have a fever, and every time she reached over to rub the back of her hand across his forehead, he’d bat her away.
Darla had never felt so impotent.
She’d never felt so lost and incapable. Darla was a doer—propelled in every part of her life into action when a situation called for it—but here she was, marooned into total inaction. She felt punchy, itchy, and on edge. It was clear that people handled trauma in their own myriad ways—calm, stoic, panicky, angry. The waylaid passengers in the terminal had their own distinct looks, and they either handled the news of the widespread virus with shock or on the verge of meltdowns. Some went straight to anger and others wrapped themselves up in defeat and sobbed their way through the morning.
“I’m thirsty,” Teddy said.
Infected water supply. The stores in the terminal were closed. People knew better than to flaunt that they had water or juice.
“You have to wait, Theo,” Darla said to her son. What if he was infected? What if the last thing he’d remember was her inability to provide for him. She took in a shaky breath and shifted on the hard floor.
There was a man by himself and he paced the length of the people mover, dragging his suitcase behind him and muttering to himself. There was an elderly woman in a wheelchair and in her lap a pre-school aged child. The woman was patting the child like a pet, her withered hand tapping out a tempo against the child’s arm. They were alone, and Darla couldn’t imagine that the trip had started that way. How long had they been sitting there? Ten minutes? Two hours? Darla’s ears began to ring; she closed her eyes and tried to block out everything.
“We should drive,” Grace mumbled.
“No one is going anywhere. Freeways are closed,” Darla replied.
“Just get us out of the damn airport,” Grace continued.
“They aren’t letting us out of the airport.”
That was the truth. Rerouted passengers were crammed into the terminal like cattle. No one was getting out. It was easier
to contain the doomed inside than to have them take their chances outside, and Darla couldn’t blame the system for its lack of a plan. There was no infrastructure anymore.
When Darla looked up from her people watching, she saw the color drain from Grace’s face and her hand go limp.
“Grace?” Darla said, and she rotated herself and bent down to see her face to face. “Grace? Talk to me.”
Grace’s eyes rolled back.
The ringing in Darla’s ears grew in volume and intensity, and suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. A gasp caught against her ribcage and lodged itself there, unmoving.
Grace moaned.
“Is Mama okay?” Teddy asked, and he was watching his mom now, too. He stood no more than two feet away, his little face soaking in every part of Grace’s sudden sickness.
Darla didn’t have time to think. She exhaled and grabbed Teddy and rushed him over to a nearby garbage can. “You stay here. You put your hand on this,” she put his hand on the can, “and don’t move.”
Teddy called after her, but she didn’t respond. When she turned to look, he was still there, his little hand on the garbage can, just like she’d asked. He’d jammed a finger into his mouth and his eyes were wide with fear and brimming with tears.
“Grace, Grace, Grace,” Darla repeated, and she wiped away a small string of spittle that dangled from her wife’s mouth. “Can you hear me?”
Grace nodded with a feeble attempt, her head bouncing this way and then the next. “I’m going to die,” she said. “I didn’t get to call my parents.”
“I’ll call them.” Darla wanted the offer to sound comforting, but as the promise left her lips, she wondered if it sounded defeatist. Maybe she should have said something more optimistic; she should have told Grace she wasn’t going to die and she could call them herself. That was what she was supposed to say.
“Can you call them now?”
“I can’t, Grace. I can’t.”
Darla didn’t want the last things she told Grace to be a lie.
The last things she told Grace. How had the morning started? A piece of peanut butter toast and a tender kiss during a rushed ride to the airport. Grumpy machinations in the security line as they juggled their carry-ons and child. Had she stopped at any point to really look at her wife and see her for her personhood? Had she paused to take in her beauty, her humanity? If she had known. If only she had known, then every last second could have been cherished.
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