I Hope You Find Me (4 page)

“They were standing over there, watching us.”
I pointed at where they had been, holding hands. “When you pulled
me out, I saw them but I don’t know where they went.”

Connor looked up and down the handful of
docks, scanning the shore and turned back at me, shrugging his
shoulders. “Why would they leave?”

“I don’t know.” I sat down hard on the pier
to put my socks and shoes on. Zoey seemed anxious to get away from
the water but didn’t appear to be suffering from the cold anymore.
Despite the dry clothes, I was
still
shivering. My muscles
were trembling in painful waves, making my entire body ache. It
felt like I would never feel warm again. I pulled my brush out from
my pack and tried to work through the knotted ends of my wet hair
before giving up and pulling it all back into a messy bun.

“Well, we could look for them…if you want.”
He said it almost like a question.

“We?”

I looked at him curiously as he shifted
uncomfortably and ran a hand through his wavy hair, obviously
trying to pick his next words carefully. His face showed a wide
range of emotions, his gestures almost familiar.

He shifted around a bit and then turned his
body away from me. He stood with his hands shoved into his back
pockets, and asked, “Are you leaving the City?” He nodded at my
pack and added, “It seems like you’re carrying a lot in there for
just a day trip.”

I blinked, unable to answer him at first, “I
came here to look for someone.” I paused long enough to wrap my
arms around my waist, “And now I’m heading to the airport. I don’t
know what I expect to find there though.”

“The airport is full of the dead.” He said it
with no emotion.

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything better to
say.

I knew I still had to go there to at least
leave a note, to keep my trail fresh for anyone looking for me, but
I hadn’t thought of where I’d be going next. I knew in the back of
my mind I had hoped to find other survivors. Now that I had, I
didn’t know what to do.
Now what?

The week before the power went out; I had
called one of my closest friends, who lived in Las Vegas. She was
bed-ridden when I talked to her. She was lucid one minute and
confused and vomiting the next. She hung up after saying she was
going to call her father. He died seven years ago from cancer. When
I called her back an hour later she didn’t answer. There was no one
else left for me to look for, but the urge to keep looking was
there. The desire to be found was stronger than ever.

I blurted out, “Will you come with me? To the
airport, I mean. There’s something I need to do there.” I didn’t
want to be alone again, with all these dead people and nowhere to
go, no one to find.

His pale blue eyes seemed to pierce through
me and I was certain he would say no. That small voice inside my
head warned me not to trot off into the distance with a strange
man, no matter how attractive and nice he seemed to be, but I
refused to listen. It somehow seemed worse to be alone when I knew
others were around, than if I was the only person left standing.
Besides, the dog was comfortable around him, which at the time, was
enough for me to trust him.

“Okay.” I felt the muscles in my shoulders
relax after he agreed.

He turned, and started up the pier toward the
land and for the first time I noticed a large backpack leaning up
against a crate near the entrance of the dock. He slipped his arms
through it as Zoey and I jogged to catch up with him. A sigh of
relief escaped from my mouth.

Walking side by side, we left the marina and
crossed an empty parking lot to reach North Harbor Drive. We passed
the USS Midway and the Maritime Museum, following the street as it
curved to the west until the tarmac was in sight.

An explosion that sounded like a sonic boom
erupted from somewhere nearby, blowing the glass out of a nearby
building and shaking the ground beneath our feet. I landed on my
knees, holding tight to the dog’s collar. I pulled out Zoey’s leash
and clicked it into place, not ready to chase after her again.
Confused, the three of us huddled there for a moment, kneeling on
the pavement. When Zoey barked it was muffled, I felt deaf but I
could hear the tinker of glass falling to the ground. It reminded
me of wind-chimes and for a second it sounded almost beautiful.

Connor and I looked at each other wide-eyed,
and then back at the sky above as it started filling with clouds of
smoke.
Did a plane explode?
Neither of us spoke right away,
there wasn’t much to say, especially if for the moment neither of
us could hear well.

After making it to our feet, Connor told me
he had heard a similar explosion earlier in the day, and saw smoke
in the sky. He was downtown to see if he could find the source of
the fire. We stood together, staring into the distance where the
airport stretched out before us. If the runway was on fire, we
might have a chance of making it to a terminal, but only for a few
moments. What I thought we might find there, I didn’t know. But I
couldn’t turn back. I had nowhere left to go.

***

The road leading up to the airport was a
complicated web of chaos. A blood-orange glow pulsated from some
distant and unseen part of the runway where a fire was burning
fiercely. Dark rolls of smoke twisted and bellowed upward,
obscuring the view of any structures behind it. Vehicles were
everywhere; on more than one occasion we had to slide over roofs
and trunks to make it through the entwined metallic mess. The
military had attempted to block access to the airport terminals but
it was obvious the public had forced their way in. As we carefully
climbed around the collapsed military temporary fencing blocking
the entrance, we saw more and more vehicles riddled with bullet
holes. In the end, the military had turned on the civilians.

A fine layer of ash had settled on mostly
everything, leaving a trace of our footprints behind us and messy
skid marks on whatever we climbed over. It smelled of fire and fuel
and something organic.
People
. Connor gestured for me to
cover my mouth with my shirt sleeve. I nodded that I understood and
we clamored our way through the disaster until we reached the
terminal’s first set of double doors but they were completely
barricaded with suitcases and trolleys. We followed the glass wall
as it angled on towards set after set of doors that we couldn’t
squeeze through. My eyes were stinging, and my head hurt from the
burnt and toxic air I was breathing. I was just about to give up
when my hands reached a bent piece of window frame where the glass
had been completely blown out. Connor pulled me inside behind
him.

There wasn’t much to see. The halls were dark
where smoke had filled the upper half of the lobby and the air was
rotten. I understood it would be pointless to wander around. It
wouldn’t be hard at all to get lost in the hazy air.

Connor stood before me, and gripped my
shoulders. Dark rings were starting to form around his nostrils,
his eyes were watery and bloodshot and his hair was dotted gray
with ash. He held me firmly as he asked loudly, “Do you see? Do you
see? There is nothing –
no one
, left here?”

I nodded but still he did not let go of my
shoulders so I uttered a weak, “Yes.”

His hands finally dropped, and he pushed past
me, back outside the broken window into what little fresh air was
left. The smoke billowed greedily out after him, escaping the
confines of the building. Zoey had stayed outside and was watching
anxiously, sneezing every so often. The smoke was too much, we
couldn’t stay anywhere nearby. Even if there were answers, we
didn’t know what we were looking for or where to find it. Another
massive explosion could level the whole place.

This was a mistake. Why did he come with
me, when he knew we would find nothing?
I thought to
myself.

I turned to follow Connor when something
brushed gently against my back. I stopped abruptly, my feet sliding
along the bits and chunks of fallen glass but after looking over my
shoulder, I saw no one. Staying absolutely still, all I could hear
with my partially damaged eardrums was the sound of fire hungrily
eating its way through the building toward me. My eyes were
watering, and even though I had my arm across my mouth, every
breath I took was heavy with soot.

“Hello?” I called out between my fingers, but
only the whistle of the oxygen being sucked out of the room
answered.

I ran outside, unsure if it was the fire or
the lingering feel of a hand on my back that spooked me. I rushed
past both the dog and Connor and stopped at a red pick-up truck to
catch my breath.

Connor came up beside me, heaving, and for a
moment all we did was lean against the truck and watch as flames
licked at the back of the building. A series of small explosions
shook the ground, rattling the frame of the truck. Without
discussing it, the three of us retreated to the barricade. Our
tracks in the dust and ash were the only signs we had been
there.

***

We headed back the way we had come in
silence, half walking, and half jogging. Other than our labored
breathing and the fire raging on the runway, there wasn’t anything
else to hear. My ears popped a few times and though my head hurt,
it seemed my hearing wasn’t permanently damaged. I could hear the
cracking of glass behind us, the collapsing of walls and the
rushing of fire. It sounded like a distant waterfall.

We went back toward the bay, leaving the
airport behind us, but before we left the intersection I panicked.
In our rush to leave the airport I hadn’t considered a place to put
my next message. Exhausted, I sat down on a bus bench and scanned
the street. By morning there wouldn’t be much of the airport left.
With no one to put out the fire, it could burn down half of
downtown, or worse.

Another series of booms erupted somewhere out
of sight and the fire cloud above the airport doubled instantly.
The ground beneath us trembled and Zoey cowered behind my legs. The
rational thing to do would be to go back to the bus depot and leave
a note there. I had no idea what I would write but at least it
would be proof that I was still alive, if anyone was looking for
me.
If anyone is left.
I thought to myself.

I closed my eyes and leaned into the bench,
with Zoey slumped between my feet, panting heavily. Connor sat to
my right, riffling through his bag. I heard him open a zippered
compartment and the unexpected crunch of plastic made me jump. When
I opened my eyes he was holding out a bottle of water and gestured
to Zoey.

“Wash her face off, and make her drink.
Hopefully we didn’t inhale too much of that smoke.” He said. His
voice was hoarse, thickening his accent.

“Thanks.” I replied, my own voice just as
strained.

I watched him settled up against the bench,
his hands gripped together behind his head. Without thinking I
blurted out, “I know it might seem weird but I feel as if I’ve seen
you before.”

He leaned forward slowly, putting his arms
onto his legs and lowered his head, running one hand aimlessly
through his dark hair.

“Guess I have one of those faces.” He
mumbled, with a flick of his hand in the air, as if to dismiss the
topic.

So change the topic I did.

“What do you think happened? At the airport,
I mean?” I asked him, after Zoey had lapped up half the bottle of
water from my cupped hand.

I downed what was left in a few gulps, not
realizing how hot and dry my throat really was till the cold water
passed between my chapped lips. Connor finished his own water,
before he rested his elbows onto his knees and put his hands to his
head. From that position he looked almost juvenile, small and
fragile. I immediately felt embarrassed by this thought. Based on
the little amount of time I had spent with him, there didn’t seem
to be anything weak about him. Despite his young looking frame, his
face showed his maturity; not in an aged way, but in a wise way. I
guessed he was in his early thirties, somewhere around my age.

I flinched when he sighed loudly and sat up,
rubbing the back of his neck and looking at me as he said, “I don’t
know what happened. The fire wasn’t burning yesterday. Someone
could have set it.” He said the last few words carefully,
deliberately, as if he wanted me to consider them.

I sat up straighter. “Why? Why would someone
try and blow up an airport?” I asked him, a hint of incredulity in
my voice.

“Who the hell knows? But obviously we aren’t
the only people out here.”

“No, I guess not.” I went silent, and it
dawned on me that being alone might not be as bad as finding more
people alive. The idea that someone would deliberately set the
airport ablaze made me nervous. Was someone trying to keep those of
us left from leaving…or keeping someone else away? I remembered the
voice on the street earlier that seemed to whisper in my ear, the
old couple on the shore that disappeared before offering to help,
the touch on my back that seemed to belong to an invisible hand.
None of it made sense to me but it was obvious we were
not
alone, not completely.

“Well, look,” I said, as I stood up and began
brushing ash off my new clothes and out of my still damp hair, “We
can’t stay here, not in the City anyway. It’s obviously not safe to
be anywhere near the airport. It’ll get worse before it dies out.
Maybe it will even catch these buildings on fire as well.”

“I agree.” He said with a feigned grin on his
face, “So, what’s your plan?” He shook the ash out of his hair and
quickly dusted his arms and legs off. “You’re not thinking of
taking another dip in the ocean, are you?” He grinned at me.

My knees weakened slightly and I frowned, I
didn’t like the fact that my body seemed unable to control itself
around him. I planted my hands on my hips and glared into the
distance. Less than an hour before I was clean. Sure, I was wet and
freezing, but clean. And now here I was, covered in soot and ash
and smelling of fire. Stinky again. I was more than a little
irritated at the irony.