There was a moment later in the day when Clark blinked and realized he’d been staring into space for some time. He had intimations of danger, that there was hazard in allowing his thoughts to drift too loosely, so he tried to work, to read over his 360° reports, but his thoughts were scattered, and also he couldn’t help but wonder if the target of the 360° and all the people he’d interviewed were dead.
He tried to reread his newspapers, on the theory that this required less concentration than the reports, came across Arthur’s New York Times obituary again and realized that the world in which Arthur had died already seemed quite distant. He’d lost his oldest friend, but if the television news was accurate, then in all probability everyone here with him in the airport had lost someone too. All at once he felt an aching tenderness for his fellow refugees, these hundred or so strangers here in the airport. He folded his paper and looked at them, his compatriots, sleeping or fretfully awake on benches and on carpets, pacing, staring at screens or out at the landscape of airplanes and snow, everyone waiting for whatever came next.
43
THE FIRST WINTER in the Severn City Airport:
There was a frisson of excitement on Day Two, when someone recognized Elizabeth and Tyler and word spread. “My phone,” Clark heard a young man say in frustration. He was about twenty, with hair that flopped in his eyes. “God, why won’t our phones work? I so wish I could tweet this.”
“Yeah,” his girlfriend said, wistful. “You know, like, ‘Not much, just chilling with Arthur Leander’s kid at the end of the world.’ ”
“Totally,” the man said. Clark moved away from them in order to maintain his sanity, although later, in a more charitable moment, it occurred to him that they were probably in shock.
By Day Three all the vending machines in the airport were empty of snacks, and the battery on Tyler’s Nintendo console was dead. Tyler wept, inconsolable. The girl who needed Effexor was very sick by then. Withdrawal, she said. No one in the airport had the drug she needed. A raiding party went through every room, the administrative offices and the TSA holding cell, everyone’s desk drawers, and then they went outside and broke into the dozen or so cars abandoned in the parking lot, pawed through glove boxes and trunks. They found some useful items in their searches, extra pairs of shoes and some warm clothes and such, but on the pharmaceutical front they uncovered only painkillers and antacids and a mysterious bottle of pills that someone thought might be for stomach ulcers. In the meantime the girl lay across a bench, shivering and drenched in sweat, and she said her head sparked with electricity every time she moved.
They called 911 from the pay phone in baggage claim, but no one picked up. They wandered outside and stared at the snowed-in parking lot, the airport road disappearing into the trees, but what could possibly be out there aside from the flu?
The television newscasters weren’t exactly saying that it was the end of the world, per se, but the word apocalypse was beginning to appear.
“All those people,” Clark said to Imaginary Robert, but Imaginary Robert didn’t reply.
That evening they broke into the Mexican restaurant and cooked an enormous dinner of ground meat and tortilla chips and cheese with sauces splashed over it. Some people had mixed feelings about this—they’d obviously been abandoned here, everyone was hungry and 911 wasn’t even operational; on the other hand, no one wants to be a thief—but then a business traveler named Max said, “Look, everyone just chill the fuck out, I’ll cover it on my Amex.” There was applause at this announcement. He removed his Amex card from his wallet with a flourish and left it next to the cash register, where it remained untouched for the next ninety-seven days.
On Day Four the food from the Mexican restaurant ran out, also the food from the sandwich place in Concourse C. That night they lit their first bonfire on the tarmac, burning newspapers and magazines from the newsstand and a wooden bench from Concourse A. Someone had raided the Skymiles Lounge. They got drunk on Skymiles Lounge champagne and ate Skymiles Lounge oranges and snack mix. Someone suggested that perhaps a passing plane or helicopter might see the fire and come down to save them, but no lights crossed the cloudless sky.
The realization, later, that that had possibly been his last orange. This orangeless world! Clark said to himself, or perhaps to Imaginary Robert, and laughed in a way that prompted concerned glances from the others. That first year everyone was a little crazy.
On Day Five they broke into the gift shop, because some people had no clean clothes, and after that, at any given moment half of the population was dressed in bright red or blue Beautiful Northern Michigan T-shirts. They washed their clothes in the sinks, and everywhere Clark turned he saw laundry hanging to dry on the backs of benches. The effect was oddly cheerful, like strings of bright flags.