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plane. AMERICAN AIRLINES is stamped along the airplane’s fuselage.

    He leans back in his chair, breathing heavily, a cold sweat cascading down his brow. The nose of the other plane is only thirty feet away. Lights inside the plane’s cockpit illuminate bloody smears over the cockpit windows. He looks down at Richard’s body as he undoes his seatbelt and abandons the cockpit. He steps over the attendant’s body, keeps his eyes on the floor as he moves down the aisles—
    he can almost sense the dozens of lifeless, vacant eyes staring at him in silent mockery as he walks. He reaches the door and cranks it open. The ground is fifteen feet below. He activates a switch on a side panel and an inflatable slide extends, reaching down to the ground. Without looking back, he slides down and glides to a stop at the bottom. He stands, brushes himself off, thankful the earth is beneath his feet.

    VI

    The aching night wraps around him, a heavy blanket pushing him down to his knees. In a rush he loses it once more, curling upon the cold pavement as tears rush down his cheeks in horrendous sobs. How long he lies there he will never know; but soon he is moving forward, abandoning the plane. He looks over at the AMERICAN airliner whose engines are still idling, and in the soft glow of the passenger’s cabin windows he can see nothing except bodies slumped against the windows. What madness has overcome the world, that he is left alone? What cruel fate has severed him from the lifeless destiny of all those whom he can see? These thoughts bombard his mind in a torrent of disjointed questions.
    He climbs onto the wing of the plane, feeling the cold steel beneath his fingertips as he pulls himself up. He moves over the fuselage, feet thudding dumbly on the metal plates. The terminal wing juts out, and he slides down the fuselage until he is on top. He moves along, leaving the plane behind, the bulk of the airport dark before him. Light flickers in the bay windows; the power is Anthony Barnhart
    Dwellers of the Night
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    shorting out, but it hasn’t yet lost its grip. He grabs a ladder on the side of the terminal wing and climbs down until he is beside a door. He twists the knob and kicks it with his foot, then leaps from the ladder and into a maintenance room. Odd equipment and hoses lines the shelves, vacuum cleaners thrown haphazardly to fall wherever they will. He stumbles ahead in the darkness and finds the door; he tries to open it, but it’s locked. He stands alone and frightened, and for a moment he considers just crawling into a fetal position and waiting till morning. But it’s the thought of Kira that pushes him forward. He steps back and kicks at the door. It swings open with a rush, and flickering light floods the maintenance room. He cautiously steps out into the waiting area for Terminal C3 and looks around.

    The terminal is all but vacant. All he sees, upon swiveling his head upon his shoulders, is a single flight attendant crumpled in the corner, head hung low, dried blood crusting over her face. All of the seats in the waiting area by the large bay windows are abandoned. Makes sense , he thinks: Everyone who was here is now on that plane outside. The flickering lights cast oblong shadows against the walls as he moves forward. A motorized security buggy sits crashed against the wall, the driver hunched against the wheel, foot pressing against the gas pedal; the buggy’s engine chugs, breaking the silence, pressing its nose into the wall. The man continues walking. The airport seems abandoned; of course, by the time the—what should he call it? a disease? a virus? a plague?—struck the airport, it was probably 11:30 or so at night. He passes another gate—D3—and sees men, women and children—
    sparse, but present—in the chairs and sprawled upon the floor.
    His eyes fall upon a little girl. Her head is split open, the foot of a chair having been driven into the top of her skull. Her head lies in a pool of blood