With the chaos at O’Hare slowly receding behind them, Holly turned to Johnny. She found the banker staring at his hands in disbelief, tears streaming down his soft, moisturized cheeks. Dillon regarded him with the cool, deliberate quality of an extraterrestrial observing a strange new planetary species.
“What exactly happened to Doug?” Holly finally asked, trying her best not to replay in her mind any of the disturbing scenes they’d all just witnessed.
“A couple days back, he and a group of twenty TSA people were sent to Terminal Four in order to quell what they thought was a simple disagreement.” Manny’s voice was on the high side. He was also a fast talker, rattling out one word after another like a machine gun. “But when they arrived, the team was jumped.”
“You weren’t with them?” she asked.
“Hell, no. Look what I’m wearing. I used to plow the runways. Keep them safe for planes to land. A few of us got coopted to help the TSA guys after the situation got serious, but not me. I opted to help retrieve and parcel out rations to the folks trapped in the airport. One of the reasons I’m still here.”
“A sense of duty,” Holly said, touched by Manny’s selflessness.
“Well, by the time the snow got too high, I figured I was stuck here. Was only when the situation got desperate that Doug and I hatched the plan to book outta here on one of the cats.”
Her mind returned to Doug. “And after the ambush? What happened then?”
A dark shadow filled Manny’s face. “They killed half of them outright. The rest were kept as hostages, bargaining chips the group hoped to use in order to demand greater rations. When their demands weren’t met, they started killing the agents one by one. Doug was in the last batch and it tortured me there was nothing we could do to save him. You see, they accused us of hoarding food for ourselves. Said we’d emptied every shop and restaurant in the airport and that we were storing it inside some airplane hangar. I’m not sure how, but they’d also managed to convince themselves that Terminals One, Two and Three were somehow getting preferential treatment. Of course, I won’t lie. There were a few cases of abuse and mismanagement here or there since the lights went out. How could there not be? I will say this, in the seven days I spent there I never saw any kind of systematic abuses.”
Dillon laid his head on Holly’s shoulder. “It wasn’t really about any abuse,” she said, running the tips of her fingers through his hair, a move he loved. More importantly, one that almost always soothed him. She hoped it might help him fall asleep and forget everything that had happened.
“Let’s be real,” Johnny cut in, not shy about being crass, “those animals were out for blood. Angry the powers that be weren’t giving them any answers. Under normal circumstances when the lights go out for a few hours most people set out some candles, get a romantic mood going. Know what I mean?” He winked at Holly as if to emphasize his point. “In our case, after a day or two went by and the novelty wore off folks started to wonder how long it would last. After a week, looks like worry turned into full-blown panic and then rage.”
Manny agreed, reaching down to flip on the windshield wipers. “That about sums it up.”
“We still don’t know how far the power outage extends, do we?” Holly wondered.
“I’ve heard rumors,” Manny admitted. “Some say the whole city’s gone dark. A few have even suggested it’s state-wide. I will say I sure don’t put a lot of stock into much of what I heard. I mean, without any working communication―at least that I know of―how could anyone say for sure how big this is?”
“The entire country’s offline,” Johnny exclaimed with unwavering confidence.
The cat lumbered through a hardened snow drift, tossing them around inside the tight cab. Holly reached out to stabilize herself. “Where’d you come up with that?”
“I just know,” Johnny said.
“You think you know,” Manny corrected him, smirking. “There’s a difference.”
Johnny rested his head against the frosted doorframe and closed his eyes. “You’ll see.”
Holly turned her attention back to Manny. “Do we know where we’re headed?”
“Into the city,” he replied without an ounce of concern.
His answer made the muscles in her chest tighten painfully. “You sure that’s such a good idea?”
He glanced in her direction, rocking back and forth in his seat as the cat struggled over a patch of tough terrain. “Where else would you suggest we go? Out into the countryside? Unless you know some place that still has power, we won’t last the night. Besides, my folks live in Pacific Heights and don’t have anyone to protect them.”
“You’re an only child?” she asked.
“Nah, got two siblings. My older brother’s in the Army, stationed in South Korea. My younger sister’s going to college down in California.”
“Lucky her. Least she’s not freezing her tush off like we are,” Johnny quipped, his eyes still firmly shut.
The banker had a knack for finding silver linings and then wrapping them around someone’s neck.
“What about you and your boy?” Manny asked. “Where are you headed? Assuming it isn’t too far, maybe we can drop you off. The cat doesn’t have a huge range, which is why I strapped a bunch of gas cans to the chassis. Should be enough to get us into town.”
“Originally Dillon and I were headed for a place called Byron,” she began, her face souring.
Manny laughed, flicking his chin at the window. “Good luck with that. Byron’s more than sixty miles west of Chicago. No way you’ll get anywhere close.” It wasn’t entirely clear if his dire prediction was due to the insane weather or the never-ending power outage. Or maybe both.
“What’s in Byron, anyway?” Johnny asked, his eyes still closed.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she answered without a hint of sarcasm. “My mother had a dying wish, a letter she wanted delivered to someone I assumed was a friend of the family. A guy named Nate Bauer.”
Johnny straightened. “What’s it say?”
“The letter? I don’t know,” Holly admitted, a little embarrassed.
Manny glanced over at her with surprise. “You didn’t read it?”
“She asked me not to, but I have my suspicions on what it says.”
“Suspicions?” Johnny asked, arching one eyebrow as though he had an idea where this was going.
“I think at some point my mother might have had an affair with Nate’s father.”
Johnny snickered. “Knew it. And had you as a result?”
“Goodness, no. A child from adultery would have been too much, especially for my parents. They were very religious. I’m not sure it was consensual. Nate’s father might have done something very bad to my mother. I’m only guessing, but I suspect she wanted him to know she forgave him.”
“You saying what I think you’re saying?” Johnny asked, eager to clarify.
She grew quiet. “I hope not. Anyway, it’s just a theory.”
“You could solve the mystery right now,” Johnny told her, staring intently now. “Just pop that letter open. Something you should have done long before you got on a plane to come here.”
Holly frowned. “I didn’t come here only because of the letter. I came to get away from someone who was threatening me. This was just a stop along the way, I suppose.”
“Still,” Manny said, “if you’re right, that’s a heavy message to deliver. I don’t envy you.”
Holly nodded. “For all I know, it’s something totally benign.”
“I doubt that very much,” Johnny said, nuzzling back into his coat. “Your mom wouldn’t have sent you all the way from Seattle if it wasn’t important. But rape? Geez Louise.”
“It hardly matters anymore,” she said. “Not after all this.”
Holly went silent after that. Her mother had died more than five years ago, her father four years before that, and in all that time the letter had sat in a dresser drawer, waiting for the hand delivery her mother had insisted on. But she couldn’t deny that the others were right. The timing of Holly’s trip couldn’t have been worse. She had fled from Travis fearing for her life and the life of her son. And since then she’d spent a week living in an international airport, narrowly avoiding various forms of assault on a daily basis. She’d even been forced to take lives when that starving mob had tried to kill them. Now she found herself riding in a high-tech snow plow, praying they had enough fuel to reach somewhere safe.