“Go on, honey,” she encouraged him. “You’ll like it.”
Dillon regarded her with uncertainty. He was hungry, she could tell, and yet that still couldn’t overcome his strange suspicion of dark spots on his food.
“Quite a setup you’ve got here,” Doug said, looking around. Gate C-25 housed fifty people, which was fairly empty by current standards.
She hadn’t known Doug long, but it was clear by the funny look on his face that he was hiding something. Several things in fact.
Holly took a break from the muffin for a second. “What is it?”
The puffy features on Doug’s ruddy face tensed. “My friends in the TSA tell me there were nearly fifteen deaths yesterday. And only two of those appear to have been from natural causes.”
“That’s a lot more than yesterday,” Holly said, feeling a hot flush of concern rise into her cheeks.
“Sixty-six point six six six six percent more,” Dillon clarified, his sky-blue eyes suddenly alight.
“It’s already dangerous enough as it is without folks killing one another,” she said, unable to fathom how little it took for people to revert to being animals.
“Right now, it’s mostly about food,” he explained. “The staff has been rationing out what’s already at the airport. But someone’s always going to want more.”
“Sure, although I can see that’s not why you’re here, is it?”
Doug’s dark brown eyes met hers. He leaned in and whispered: “The food’s nearly all gone. I mean, we’ve cleaned out every restaurant and snack shop in the place. Hell, we’ve even cracked open any vending machines that haven’t already been vandalized. In two days we’ll have nothing left.”
A silence descended between them. With the heat off, the airport was chilled, no doubt, but suddenly Holly could feel threads of ice creeping into her bones.
“A buddy who does runway maintenance for the airport thinks he can get access to a snowcat.”
Her head did a little dance. “Snowcat?”
“Yeah, they’re used to clear the runways. His plan is to drive it into the city center.”
“But aren’t the roads blocked?”
“Cats are tracked vehicles. If anything can push through it’s one of those babies. Now, there’s only four spots. He and I and maybe you two. I’m gonna see what I can do, no promises.”
Holly clenched her hands as if in prayer. “Oh, Doug, I can’t thank you enough.”
He suddenly became serious. “Don’t thank me just yet.”
That had been two days ago. True to Doug’s prediction, on day five, the food rations the remaining airport staff were handing out had been cut in half. And this morning, they hadn’t come by at all. Shortly after first light, Holly had seen the agitation building in those around her at Gate C-25 and all along the concourse. Hunger had a funny way of doing that to people. Even the gentlest of dispositions could be transformed by the gnawing pain of an empty belly. What made things worse was that there were no more stores to loot, no secret stockpile to swarm.
Here she was, six days and counting since the lights had gone out, waiting in line to use a cesspool of a washroom. Holly shifted from one leg to another, trying to ignore the older woman in front of her, intent on further polluting the space about them with a never-ending litany of complaints. She was telling anyone who would listen that her husband was a high-powered lawyer and how he was going to sue the pants off the airport and every airline within it. Holly couldn’t help but roll her eyes and do what she could to tune the woman out. The way Holly saw it, this woman should just be thankful she was still alive, a state of being she had largely taken for granted.
The shriek that came at them from down the corridor immediately snapped everyone’s attention in that direction. Then other voices joined in as two figures emerged from Gate C-25 scuffling. One was an older man in a blue tracksuit holding something in his hand and the other was smaller, younger. A boy. The man hit the boy, throwing him to the ground. That was when Holly saw who it was.
“Dillon!” she cried, breaking from the line and running toward them. Weak with hunger, her muscles were fueled by anger and adrenaline. She fumbled the keys from her pocket and stuck the largest through her two middle fingers. The man in the blue tracksuit was hovering over Dillon, his right leg pulling back to kick her son, who lay on the ground. Possessed with the rage of a mama bear, Holly lunged at the man from the side, striking him in the face with the serrated key. He recoiled, a puncture wound in his cheek which quickly began oozing blood. But rather than stop, Holly kept swinging, shouting at him to leave her son alone. The man tried to block her incoming blows, but not before his face looked like it had been dragged down the side of a cheese grater. He wound up and kicked at her, striking Holly in the stomach. She felt the wind snap out of her lungs. At last, others standing nearby finally intervened, pulling the two of them apart, the man still trying to get in a few final licks. His face bloodied, he broke free and swore at them before running away.
Holly went at once to Dillon, who was only now starting to stir. His cheek was red from where the man had hit him. She searched him for any other visible wounds. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head, even though his cheek was already starting to swell. “I want my muffin back.”
Dillon had saved some of what Doug had brought them two days before. When he was alone, some sick predator had tried to steal his food. She hugged him, relieved it hadn’t been worse. People were being killed every day for access to food and water. Others were doing what they could to bribe or threaten the airport officials in charge of doling it out. That only meant the little there was had often been diverted to those with the best bribes. Thankfully a man like Doug had taken pity on them, a woman and her young son who had little to their names other than the suitcases they’d arrived with.
She brought Dillon back to their spot, more aware than ever that the clock was now ticking. Counting down the hours, maybe even the minutes before any semblance of civility at the Chicago O’Hare airport gave way to wholesale murder and mayhem.
Chapter 4
Back on the trail, Nate and Dakota soon found themselves in a whiteout. The blowing snow had reduced their visibility to but a few feet past Wayne’s bobbing head. The severe conditions not only slowed their pace, it was also making it difficult to navigate.
According to Dakota, her uncle Roger’s cabin was ten miles outside of Rockford nestled along the banks of South Kinnikinnick Creek. In the good old days of internal combustion engines, a trip like this would have taken no more than fifteen minutes. But much like the trek from Byron to Rockford, ten miles in wintery hell could take the better part of a day.
They would push on until three o’clock. If they hadn’t reached their destination by then, they would peel off from Highway 76 and make camp.
Seated behind him, Dakota had her arms wound tightly around his waist, her head pressed against his back to shield herself from the merciless gale. He was grateful for it in a way, since every little bit of contact helped keep in the warmth. A tiny outcropping of snow had collected along the horse’s crest and Nate began batting it away with one hand. He was sure there was something metaphorical in what he was doing. If you stopped long enough, you were likely to be buried alive. It gave a whole new meaning to ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss.’
Gradually, the blowing snow began to ease up, revealing more of the landscape they were passing through. Mostly it was made up of flat farmland dotted with small stands of trees. In the summer it was beautiful. Nate remembered as much the few times he’d driven through the area. But what had once been green, vibrant and filled with life had since been interred beneath a thick blanket of white death. The trees, rising from the frozen ground, looked more like skeletal fingers than anything living. That they were barren of leaves only helped to magnify the rather macabre impression.