| I awoke, groggily, on the floor in a bathroom cubicle. Quickly, I leaped to my feet and pressed my body against the door, fumbling with the lock. It opened easily, and I caught a reflection of myself opposite, ghostly white even in the mirror’s flattering beige tint. My sleeves were soaked in vomit, my sides as well, but I had no change of clothes with me, and I realised with no enthusiasm that I would have to cope until I got my luggage back. I wondered, then, how long I had been out, suddenly afraid to look at my watch, worrying ‘what ifs’ and placing my faith in the power of denial. Faith is fleeting though, even in times of duress. The watch said five hours. Five hours. But surely that was wrong. Five hours? And nobody checked on me? Nobody thought to look? Five hours couldn’t be right, how could I be out that long, and I thought maybe there are missed calls on my phone, maybe it reads a different time, but it was the same, 7am, and no messages, no nothing. I swallowed several handfuls of foaming water and marched with haste out into a long corridor. I still didn’t feel well, and the anxiety only knotted my stomach the more. The lighting seemed obnoxious and made me sicker, so I shielded my eyes as best I could and headed towards baggage reclaim, bent over, one hand tamely clutching my midriff. I felt very sorry for myself at that time, and was eager to find somebody who could help me, who could take the responsibility for fixing whatever had happened to me off my hands. Anybody would do, anybody official, but I couldn’t see anyone. In fact, I couldn’t see anybody at all. I was beginning to feel less queasy already, I don’t know why, I suppose I had just needed to get moving and to stop lying in a pool of my own sick. I moved quicker, stood up straight. I skipped down two flights of stairs, a short corridor in between, and I was at baggage reclaim. My flight was still on the screen, saying go to number 8 to collect, which was strange. Five hours later. Perhaps I really had got the time wrong, but then I noticed there were no people here either. Not a single human being. There were stationary trolleys crowding expectantly around carousels, some with a few suitcases stacked on board. In front of them, baggage idled its way around the courses. No people. Something was not right. Then it struck me that this could only mean one thing. Terrorism. There must have been an attack while I was busy dozing in bile. I ran to carousel 8. All the luggage was tagged from Boston MA, my flight, untouched for five hours. Fuck, I realised, half in shock, and half excited at being a primary witness for the first time in my life. They must have hit very soon after I went to throw up. It was clear to me that I needed to get out of the building as soon as possible, for my own safety of course, but also to find out what the hell they had done. The runways were still when I had passed them earlier, and there were certainly no signs of emergency crews anywhere. There was no sign of anything at all. It had to have been out front, maybe they hit the check-in, or the car-parks, or perhaps a departure lounge, probably with a bomb, or they could have opened fire, or were they keeping hostages? How big was this? It must be huge, I considered, if everybody had been forced to evacuate so suddenly. It felt strange, though. There was no sign of blood or struggle, no indication that passengers had hurried to get away or been taken against their will. Everything seemed like it had simply been abandoned, and me along with it. It was useless to speculate, though. The answers were outside. I jogged through customs declarations, past the last-chance duty free shops, up a slope, towards the exits. I tried the door to the pick-up point, but it was locked, completely immovable. Outside, nothing moved. Then the lifts, but they didn’t respond to my calls. The doors to the car-park were stuck solid. Was there another exit? I attempted to get out through the shops, I rattled the doors again, I kicked the lifts, each one in turn, and in frustration I tried to smash the glass panels in the doorways, tried to smash the windows, but there was no give, and not so much as a scratch. Every exit was impenetrable. I was locked in, and apparently too weak to break out. Could the glass really be that strong? I had another go, hurled a chair, another, but nothing. I began to panic. |
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