The door fell shut behind them with a soft click.
Bethany inhaled slowly—Travis heard her throat constricting as she did. She put a hand to the wall beside the door, and then her knees gave and she sat down on the spot. She made no attempt to hold back the sobs now. Paige sat beside her and held on to her.
Travis took a few steps forward into the space. In the giant sunbeam that filled it he saw hundreds of padded seats, most of them facing out toward the runways and the open ground. On the chairs and on the floor and on the flat benches here and there, bodies lay as densely packed as they had in the hotel corridors.
In this place they were all children.
None looked older than twelve.
They stretched to the end of the concourse, at least a third of a mile away. Thousands and thousands of them.
Everywhere among them were discarded food containers. Foil chip bags, cracker boxes, candy-bar wrappers, pickle jars, bread bags. All of them lay empty among the bodies, which were as gaunt as any Travis had seen elsewhere in the city.
It was clear enough what’d happened. In the end, when the survivors in the town had dwindled to thousands, the adults had made a decision. Maybe the last big decision any humans ever made. They’d put all the kids here and consolidated the remaining food with them. The grownups had sacrificed themselves to give the kids a few extra days, in the guttering hope that the planes might come back in time for them.
Nothing Travis had seen in Yuma had brought him close to losing control. His eyes had moistened in the hotel, but his breathing hadn’t so much as hitched.
It didn’t hitch now, either.
He didn’t get even that much warning.
He simply found himself sitting down hard in the middle of the floor, his hands pressed to his eyes as they flooded, his chest heaving beyond his ability to stop it.
Time went by. Ten or fifteen minutes. The emotions passed and left a kind of vacuum in their wake.
They stood.
They glanced around.
They had no desire to search the concourse. It was hard to imagine what it could show them except more suffering.
Travis tried to think of what part of the city they might investigate next. He was thinking about that when they heard the exterior door open downstairs.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The concourse offered very few hiding places. Even fewer that could be reached within seconds.
The wall opposite the windows was lined with shops that’d once sold tourist items and sandwiches and sunglasses. The shops didn’t have doorways—they simply lacked front walls. They offered concealment from only one sight line—that of someone approaching along the row.
They were also the only option.
Travis waited for Paige and Bethany to move past him. They went forward along the row of shops, avoiding the bodies. He followed, keeping an ear toward the door atop the stairs. The metal treads would give away the newcomer’s approach easily enough, but the monotone recording—much louder inside the terminal—would make it tough to listen for it.
He heard it when they were four shops along. Heavy thuds coming up, echoing in the space beyond the door.
Paige ducked into the fifth shop, which seemed to be a bookstore with all its shelves empty. Bethany and Travis followed. They heard the door open a second later.
Five seconds passed.
The door clicked shut.
A man exhaled.
Then, footsteps. Slow and careful. Coming toward them. Distinct, individual steps. The man was alone.
Travis clicked off the Remington’s safety. He had a shell in the chamber already. He had his back to the shop’s wall on the side the footsteps were coming from. He was two feet in from the edge. He leveled the shotgun and pulled the stock against his shoulder.
The footsteps halted. It was hard to say where. Maybe ten feet short of where the man would’ve come into view. Not much further away than that, Travis was sure. Part of him wanted the guy to continue forward. Wanted a reason to start shooting, even if the sound might draw more trouble onto them.
Then he heard a crackle of static. A walkie-talkie. The only form of long-range communication that would work on this side of the iris.
The static cut out and the man spoke. “Lambert here. Inside the terminal. Copy?”
The static came back. Then a man’s voice spoke through it, just clear enough to be discerned.
“This is Finn. Go ahead Lambert.”
“They were here. There’s paint flakes outside an exterior door. Gotta be recent, or else the wind would’ve blown them away.”
Travis clenched his teeth. Fuck. Careless.
“Any sign they’re still inside?” Finn said.
“No way to tell. I just came in.”
The static hissed for a long time. Then Finn spoke again. “All right. Get out of there. You’ve already found out what we need to know. Come back and help with the camera mast.”