Page 7 of A Wilderness Within

“Caroline Kelly.”

“Headed to Joplin?” the attendant asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay…” The attendant perused her screen for available flights. The PA crackled, and the voice from earlier came on over the sound system.

“Code Bravo. Repeat, Code Bravo. Employees, please make your stations ready.”

The woman behind the blue-and-white striped counter froze for a split second. Then she very calmly looked up at Caroline.

“I’m so sorry. The terminal is going to be shutting down. Please find a seat nearby. We’ll be making an announcement soon.” The attendant placed aClosedsign next to her post and hurried down the crowded terminal to an office about fifty feet away.

“Hey, what the hell?” the man behind her snapped.

Caroline turned, picked up her backpack, and tried to get around him. He coughed right in her face. She wiped her face with her sleeve, trying not to freak out. Maybe they were closing the terminal for some other reason. She went straight to the bathroom to wash her hands and pulled out a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer. She applied the sanitizer to her hands so she could smear the sanitizer around on her face.

Maybe I’m just being super paranoid.

But she wasn’t. Two hours later, the man who’d been behind her in line collapsed, and everyone at Chicago O’Hare was trapped. The man who had fallen ill had come in on a flight from LaGuardia. When he was carried away on a stretcher, the paramedics wore masks and thick gloves. Police officers, also wearing masks, blocked anyone from leaving after they had removed the ill man. Caroline had collapsed in a corner, clutching her backpack, and pulled out her phone to call home. Her older sister, Natalie, answered.

“Caro, what the hell? Shouldn’t you be on a plane?”

“Yeah, I should.” She sighed, the sound a little shaky. “Is Mom or Dad there?”

“Uh-huh. What’s going on, sis? You sound funny.” Natalie, her older sister by four years, always knew when something was up with her.

“Well, they closed down O’Hare. I’m stuck here.” She tried not to let her sister hear the fear that was radiating inside her.

“What do you mean,stuck? They won’t let you leave?”

“Yeah. No one can leave. A man got sick, and they shut everything down.”

“Caro. Wait…” Her sister paused, her voice lowering on the phone. “Is this connected to the man at LaGuardia? Rick saw it on the news. He and Dad have been glued to the TV all morning.” Natalie’s husband was a news junkie like their father.

“I think so, but I’m not positive. They’re not telling us much.”

“Oh God, Caro, this is so scary. I’ll have Rick figure out what’s going on. He has a friend that works in airport security in Kansas City. He might be able to learn what’s happening up in Chicago.”

“Don’t let Mom and Dad freak out, okay? Once I have a chance to leave, I’ll rent a car and drive.” That was assuming they’d let her leave the airport…and right now that felt like a really bigif.

“Sure, got it. We’ll be waiting. I can’t wait for you to meet Ellie. You’re going to love her.”

Ellie, her sister’s baby, had been born two months ago, and Caroline hadn’t been able to leave work to fly to Missouri and see the new addition to the family.

“Can’t wait,” she said, her throat tightening as she fought off a fresh wave of anxiety.

Everything was going to be okay…wasn’t it?

Caroline woke as the last bits of the dream faded around her. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her head felt foggy, and for a moment she didn’t remember where she was or how she’d fallen asleep. She was warm, not toasty, but she wasn’t really cold. Not like she had been in a long time. It was dark, and when she shifted, she felt a pillow, an honest-to-God pillow behind her head. She moved her hands, which were tucked beneath the thick fleece blanket. She was lying on something soft, and she could hear the cold wind whistling from outside. She wasn’t sleeping outside?

She struggled to sit up and bit her lip as pain shot up her leg. Just like that, the memories from the grocery store came rushing back. Blood pounded in her ears as she turned her head and saw a man lying in bed beside her. His body was more shadow than anything else in the dim moonlight coming through the wide windows opposite the bed.

Oh God, he had drugged her and probably brought her here and raped her. She touched her clothes. Her jeans and shirt were still on. Had he put her clothes back on after assaulting her? Surely that would have taken too much effort.

Her wounded ankle felt cold, so she carefully pulled the blankets back and saw something blue and damp wrapped around her ankle. Some kind of compress. The man had treated it?

Caroline was confused. Why had he tried to help her? No one did that anymore. The kind people, the ones who thought of others, were long dead. They had been the first to go because they had rushed to help the sick or stop the looters. She’d seen many of them killed on the news, either by the disease or by other people who thought they needed to kill to survive. Now only the immune who were violent and tough survived, at least so far as she could tell. But she ran into so few survivors these days, and the ones she did meet scared her. There had to be good people still left in the world. Statistically it had to be possible, right?

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