Looking Backward in Darkness. Kathryn Ptacek

by God—and Chato was relieved he wouldn’t have to fly all the way to Nevada with him; with his luck, the guy would have sat next to him and bitched the whole time.

      Now that he knew he didn’t have to rush for a connecting flight, he took time to study his fellow strandees. They were a mixed bag: young and old and in-between, a few in wheelchairs or with canes, a fairly equal combination of Anglo and black and Hispanic, with a handful of Asians. Knots of businessmen in anonymous gray suits and look-alike leather briefcases, and several elderly nuns in old-fashioned habits, a Dallas matron with bouffant hairdo and too much eye makeup, a black kid with gold chains and a gold front tooth to match, two little girls in matching pink and lavender outfits each clutching a stuffed animal, a tall Sikh in all white, and more, dozens more. These people didn’t seem to know where they were going, only that they didn’t want to stay here, didn’t want to stay in one place for too long. And beneath the anxiety and disorientation....

      He felt...it.

      He supposed he’d been vaguely aware of it before this; perhaps it was what had troubled him when he first arrived. But now that he stood there, not moving, he felt it, felt that touch of something else, of somewhere else.

      He had had several close brushes with the supernatural before, and he knew its caress.

      An Apache shaman, he’d trained with his teacher long ago before leaving home; for a long time he had turned his back on his discipline. But in the past few years he’d gone through a lot, and his instruction had come in handy.

      There was more here than just the explosion out on the runway. God knows, that would have been enough for most places, but not here. There was more...much more.

      Blood had been spilled here, he could smell it, and could sense, too, that something had awakened with the spilling of the blood.

      He felt as if something shifted under his feet, but when he looked back he saw nothing but the innocuous gray tile.

      Sunny, he thought suddenly. He had to get to a phone and let her know that he was okay. He checked his watch. 6:15 here, which meant 4:15 at home, and she’d be expecting him in a few hours. Only he wasn’t going to be at McCarron in a few hours.

      Mechanically he moved toward the phones, then stopped when he saw the lines there. They snaked back away from the handful of booths, back toward the waiting area.

      Determined, he walked into another gate area, but the situation was the same there. At the newsstand no one stood behind the register. Several customers waited patiently to pay, if only someone would appear; one guy was busy reading the Wall Street Journal, not even aware of what was going on around him. Behind him a short Hispanic woman stood with a magazine in her hand.

      As he studied the area, he realized that since he’d arrived he hadn’t seen a single airport employee. No one manned the ticket desks at the gates, nor had there been any announcements about incoming flights or departures. There was nothing but the damned Muzak inanely playing some cheerful mishmash of a Beatles’ tune.

      He had the feeling someone was watching him, but when he looked around he saw that everyone else seemed occupied in their own little drama. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling. The hair at the back of his neck prickled, and he rubbed the area. He tightened the band holding back his long black hair, then sighed.

      Puzzled, he took the escalator to the lower level where the barrage carrousels were located. The carrousels moved, all right, going around and around, but no luggage shot out of the chutes. He checked the rental car desks; no one. No one stood behind the ticket reservation counters, either.

      In fact, except for hundreds of panicked passengers the airport was deserted. He looked outside and saw no taxis waiting along the curb. There were no porters, either.

      Where were all the airport employees? Off somewhere having a union meeting? On a mass coffee break, perhaps?

      Or had they fled?

      He thought he smelled burning french fries drifting down from the upper level, and he hoped that someone would go into one of the restaurants and investigate before the whole place caught on fire.

      The music system was now playing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” God, how he hated bouncy tunes like that. It was all so...pasteurized.

      He went outside and winced as the oppressive heat of the Texas summer afternoon hit him. Then all at once he smelled the acrid fumes from the bombed airplane. He watched now as one of the ambulances he’d seen earlier swung around the building and shot out toward the highway. The vehicle abruptly began swerving back and forth; suddenly it flipped over onto its side and burst into flames. The second ambulance, following some distance away, stopped with a squeal of brakes, and the side and back doors flew open and the emergency crew raced away, just seconds before the vehicle exploded.

      For a while Chato had thought about taking one of the rental cars—he couldn’t call it stealing in an emergency situation like this—and getting the hell out of this weird place, but seeing what had happened to the two ambulances made him change his mind. Maybe it was just a coincidence, he told himself. And maybe not.

      Maybe something didn’t want anything or anyone leaving the airport area.

      It wasn’t a thought he wanted to contemplate for long.

      He studied the countryside surrounding Dry Plains International. Well, whoever had named it had certainly gotten that name right. He didn’t see anything except a flat brown expanse stretching off to the horizon, and above it a murky faintly blue sky, almost as if there was a haze. No mountains, no rivers or lakes, no buildings, no trees or bushes or strange cacti, no landmarks whatsoever. It was as if a tabletop had been swept clear and this airport plunked down in the middle. He had seen some desolate places, but man, this beat ‘em all.

      Comforting, he thought, real comforting. Just where the hell was this place?

      To further increase his apprehension a dry hot wind howled around the corner of the building, and in the wind he thought he heard voices, strange voices that seemed to whisper his name.

      Quickly he went back inside through the automatic doors before the electricity decided to go off and strand him outside. He wasn’t sure which was worse: being stuck outside or in. As if something had read his thoughts, the lights overhead flickered momentarily, and somewhere there was a high-pitched scream.

      He decided right then and there to go where there were people. Safety in numbers? he could hear Sunny tease him. Damned right, honey. This level was far too deserted for his liking. Again, he felt like something was watching him, but again when he looked around, he saw no one.

      The escalator stopped halfway between floors, and he was getting ready to walk up the rest of the distance when it started up again, only this time it went backwards. He managed to turn around before he got to the floor, then stood and stared at the slow-moving steps.

      Well, he’d take the stairs now. Damned if he go on an elevator or try the escalator again.

      As he walked toward the staircase, he thought he heard a sound like a moan. He stopped. There was no one near the escalator. Still no one at the car rental desks or airline counters. All that was left were two doors, each with its bland symbol symbolizing a man and a woman. He entered the men’s restroom first.

      “Hello?”

      No answer. He checked all the stalls. Nothing.

      He went next door to the ladies’ restroom.

      “Hello?”

      He heard a movement in one of the stalls, and pushed open the door which hadn’t been locked. A young blonde woman—she couldn’t have been much over eighteen, he decided—huddled there. A very pregnant young woman, he thought, when she shifted.

      “Do you need help?” he asked gently.

      She nodded. When she looked up at him, he could see that tears had left mascara smudges down her cheeks.

      “Let me take you back upstairs where there are other people,” he said.