Three days before his death, Ed Rawcliffe looked about as lively as all the other puffy-coated travelers who huddled around the Departures board. Each of them surrendered to despair as they realized they wouldn’t be traveling any time soon. They grumbled in place as a single entity, like an ornery ratking too entangled to move. An unmistakable burst of rubbery, Scandinavian profanities erupted somewhere behind them. Then a heel stamped into Ed’s toe, and panic overtook him. How stupid he had been to end up in the middle of this crowd. This catastrophe-in-waiting. He had to escape before something went horribly wrong. He dodged a swinging elbow and hopped over the ankles that slanted across his path. His luggage was still in the middle somewhere, but he wouldn’t need it anyway. Once free of the mob’s gravity, he approached the windows and slumped his head against the frosty glass. The planes on the tarmac were all erased by the annihilating white of the blizzard. He sighed, fogging away his reflection. His eyes burned after a night of insomnia, his feet were soggy and cold from the snowflakes that had collected in his boots, and his heart was pounding against the explosive device strapped to his chest.
A slight delay wasn’t the end of the world, he told himself. Maybe it was actually better this way. Something about dying on a Tuesday had always seemed anticlimactic. He wondered if the 9/11 hijackers had felt that way too. As much as he hated drawing the comparison, he couldn’t help but acknowledge the parallels between them. He’d spent many sleepless nights reassuring himself that even if his plan met the technical definition of terrorism—and literally every definition of murder—many would recognize this violence as a tragic but necessary sacrifice. Someday down the line, people might even consider him a hero. Of course, the 9/11 hijackers surely told themselves the same thing.
Ed peeled his gaze away from the wintry oblivion. He shuffled across the terminal with his hands in his coat pockets, running an index finger across the bulky contraption under his shirt. He thought of the impossible risks that his accomplices—a group of radical Belgian activists known as les héritiers des cendres—must have taken when they smuggled it into the locker yesterday. They’d been plotting the operation for months. Ever since the fossil fuel executives announced their plan to leave the private jets at home and fly to the global climate summit on the same commercial flight. An insultingly superficial display of their dedication to sustainability, which their PR teams marketed as the “carpool to save the planet.” In reality, it was nothing more than a distracting soft-shoe from the billionaires who were trampling entire generations under their carbon footprints. Les héritiers would never get an opportunity like this again. Five of the biggest global polluters all on the same plane, returning home from a docile European airport that would never see it coming. Everything was ready to go. Ed was at the terminal—ticket in hand, explosive on chest—and now this gate-crashing Fimbulvetr was storming in from the fjords to ruin it all.
The irony of a freak snowstorm foiling his plans felt like a cruel practical joke, just a week shy of April Fool’s. Nobody in the airport was laughing though. The multicultural hodgepodge found harmony in the universal human drive to complain. Stranded passengers shrugged off their coats and language barriers as they cursed their shared misery. Americans eager to flaunt their Duolingo skills fumbled through a few desperate phrases before reaching for their translation apps. Rumors spread among the babel, which a PA announcement shortly confirmed. Conditions were treacherous. Nobody allowed in or out of the airport until further notice. Find a comfy seat, because we’re all sleeping here tonight.
Ed felt dizzy. He’d been too nervous to eat this morning, and after spending weeks preparing to die, he’d almost forgotten how to maintain his body’s day-to-day operations. So when he grabbed a barstool at the artisanal pizza restaurant, it wasn’t because he was hungry—it was because this offered the best vantage point for the VIP lounge across the food court. He scanned the lounge’s occupants with increasing agitation. They weren’t there. Was it possible his targets had used their clout to escape the frozen siege? Maybe they were just holing up in the attached hotel. They’d surely have no issue securing private rooms while everyone else played musical chairs with the rockers stationed around the terminal. Ed missed his opportunity to grab one for himself. Nothing else to do except cross his fingers and hope the bastards show.
He ordered a mushroom pizza and a karsk to keep him alert. He checked his watch. If things had gone according to plan, he would’ve been dead within the hour. Now every second of waiting was agonizing. The explosive vest wasn’t intended for long-term use, so comfort was not a priority in its design. It choked him like a thorny corset, interrupting every breath short of its resolution. The plastic strap under his left armpit clawed into his shoulder whenever he moved. And since he couldn’t risk anybody spotting the blocky scaffolding under his shirt, he had to keep his heavy coat on at the bar. Its greenhouse effect trapped in his body heat, forcing him to repeatedly dab sweat from his forehead with the flimsy cocktail napkins. He hated himself for wasting the paper. He was supposed to be better.
When the pizza arrived, he tried to summon an appetite by reminding himself that each meal he ate was potentially his last. The cremini mushrooms stared at him like tiny skulls. He’d always been enthralled by the idea of mushrooms feeding off his corpse one day. Sometimes he even hoped that whatever fungi end up devouring him would be spores descended from a mushroom he’d eaten in his lifetime. Like some kind of ecological karma. He sighed. If his plan could still be salvaged, he wouldn’t leave anything behind that the spores could sink their teeth into. Just ashes scattered across the North Atlantic. There’s no karmic justice in this life unless you do it yourself.
He looked up from the steaming pizza, and there they were. All five of them gathered in a tight circle at the VIP lounge. Ed wished they were as ugly as their deeds, slobbering and porcine like the villains from Captain Planet. But aside from their ubiquitous pink skin, there was nothing hoggish about them at all. They were casually dressed in a tidy and expensive way. All middle-aged with slatish hair and—he was surprised to see—the same broken expressions that the other stranded passengers wore. He realized this must be just as frustrating for them as it was for all the real people in the airport. For a brief interim in their sheltered lives, the Very Important Piggies were vulnerable. Mortal. Maybe even frightened of this violent storm howling outside the windows.
No. He refused to extend even a second of sonder in their direction. They were a rotten, parasitic cancer, draining this world of its vitality all for the sake of their own insatiable growth. He had half a mind to run over there and pull them in for a fiery group hug. End it all right now. But that lacked the sensational panache of a midair explosion. Les héritiers didn’t just want to eliminate the executives, they wanted to send a warning to anybody who dared take their place.
A woman reading at the bar across from Ed looked up from her book and gave him a funny glance. He realized he must have been staring in her direction with a rather manic expression. He pivoted away, causing that jagged scrap of plastic to dig into his shoulder. He winced and tossed some euros onto the counter. When he hurried off, he nearly bumped into a security guard who shouted at him in a thunderous baritone. Ed shrank back, trembling like a baby bird. Despite his plot to kill hundreds of people, he still had a childlike fear of getting yelled at. He apologized profusely and flitted down the terminal.
Throughout the airport, the passengers’ initial despair had subsided, leaving an electric atmosphere in its wake. That nostalgic excitement over a snow day and a slumber party all in one. Families made rudimentary lean-tos of their luggage and winter coats. Couples attempted to spoon while squeezed across rows of narrow seats. Loners sat cross-legged at the outlets, their faces illuminated in the glow of their tablets. Everyone thrummed with the burgeoning anecdotes they would share at dinner parties for years to come.
The excitement was lost on Ed, who would never again attend any dinner parties. He locked himself in a private bathroom reserved for nursing parents. A shitty, selfish action, but as far as he was concerned, he was doing more to help this generation of newborns than any of their actual parents were. He glanced at the mirror, avoiding his eyes. Aside from the middle-class attire, he wouldn’t look out of place mingling with the CEOs he’d been stalking all evening. Neatly dressed, clean-shaven, with his dark hair freshly trimmed. Everything deliberately nondescript.
As gingerly as possible, he removed his coat and inspected the outline of the contraption. The device was designed so that any attempt to remove it now would trigger its detonation. Even the herky-jerky motion of brushing his teeth might be too volatile. He would have to endure this oppressive coffee breath for the rest of his life.
He slumped onto the toilet and groaned. This whole predicament reminded him of the incident with the pepper spray. A few years earlier, he’d been picking up litter in a local park back in Jacksonville when he found a strange canister under a bush. It turned out to be a bottle of bear mace with the cap broken off. A gentle shake revealed that the canister was likely full and thus couldn’t simply be tossed into the recycling. He would have to empty it first, but there was no way to safely do so with the damaged cap. He didn’t trust the police to dispose of it properly either. So he tucked it into a dresser drawer at home, where it became a constant burden on his life. It even followed him during the move to his new apartment after he and Christine separated. In fact, it was still nestled in that drawer right now. Ed laughed dejectedly. That little fucker was going to outlast him.
~
Two days before his death, Ed woke from fitful dreams, surprised to be alive at all. He was a twitchy sleeper and half-expected his relentless nightmares to set off the hair-trigger detonator. When he exited the bathroom, he folded his coat over one arm and held it across his torso, in what he hoped was a natural manner. It pressed the claustrophobic vest even tighter against his lungs.
Many of the other passengers were still asleep. At first glance, their ragdolled bodies resembled corpses in the aftermath of a mass suicide. It didn’t help that half of them looked like extras from Midsommar. He shook the image from his head and glanced outside. Every window was an IMAX projection of dead video static.
He approached a group of strangers whispering with an airport employee. “Any updates?” he asked.
“They don’t know anything,” someone hissed.
The employee spread her hands to placate the mob. “Getting you home safe is our top priority,” she said. “What is your destination, sir?”
Ed walked off without answering. He stood in the coffee line for almost an hour, and when he placed his order, the barista’s eyes seemed to linger on him for even longer. He’d always heard that Scandinavians were a private people, so why was everybody in this airport so goddamn nosy? It’d probably look odd if he left without the drink now, so he hung around in the cafe, examining his torso in the reflection of the pastry case. He couldn’t tell if it was really this misshapen, or if the curve in the glass was creating funhouse distortions. But he worried that putting the heavy coat back on at this point would look even more suspicious.
He spent the morning nibbling on a muffin and idly shredding its wrapper. Then he returned to the pizza place and grabbed a seat at the end of the bar, catty-corner to the VIP lounge. This way he could watch them without looking like he was watching them. Though at the moment, there was nobody to watch. The piggies must still be in their blankets. After a while, the woman with the book from yesterday sat down a few stools away from Ed. Right in his line of sight again. But maybe a friendly conversation would be the perfect camouflage.
“What are you reading there?” he asked, clearing the dust from his throat. He hadn’t spoken a complete sentence in—what—four days now?
She flashed the cover at him. A ragged copy of The War of the Worlds.
“Oh, no kidding! That’s one of my favorites.” He took another sip of coffee, and continued before she could respond. “Or at least it used to be. The ending doesn’t sit right with me these days. There’s that line when all the Martians die from the bacteria. What is it—By the toll of a billion deaths, Man earned his birthright to the Earth? Like, I guess it’s true that our ancestors suffered through a bunch of hardships to earn their place at the top of the food chain, but we haven’t earned crap. Modern generations are nothing but a bunch of debauched trust fund babies burning down the family estate. Just look at what we did to the planet we inherited!”
His voice had risen with every sentence of the diatribe, and he could tell from the stifled panic in her eyes that it had all been too much. But then her apparent dread dispersed with the sudden and automatic facility that only years in the service industry could afford. She offered him a merciful smile and said, “A spoiler alert would’ve been nice.”
“Oh my god, I’m such a jerk,” Ed said through the fingers that now hid his face. “I forget that not everyone knows how it ends.”
“Hey, I’m fucking with you. This book’s a classic. Of course I know the ending.” Her Appalachian accent was surprising, considering how well she blended in with all the Nordic locals drifting about the terminal.
“Still, I’m sorry for the word vomit. Sometimes I get a little too passionate when it comes to the environment.” It was probably safe to let this slip. Many of the people in this airport had just left the climate conference.
“Trust me, I am well equipped to handle a little passion. I was actually just at this K-pop convention where someone almost lost an eye after cutting the line for autographs. Our fandom is basically a religion, and we take it to an extremist level.”
“You don’t say.” Ed shifted to face her, ignoring the explosive chafing his shoulder.
“Honestly it’s lucky you caught me reading a book for once. If my phone wasn’t on the fritz I’d just be sitting here scrolling through fancams, and you’d think I was a total weirdo.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Ed said. “I might end up thinking you’re a total weirdo anyway.”
Her soft laughter was its own little blizzard. Bantering with strangers had never been this effortless for him. He should’ve guessed that all it took to tame his rabid social anxiety was total preoccupation with his imminent death. He figured he might as well enjoy this novel confidence until the piggies arrived. “I’m Ed, by the way.”
“Morgan.”
He ordered another drink. “So I have to admit, I haven’t heard that much K-pop. Aside from that one BTS song.”
“One!?” Morgan looked ready to detonate her own explosive. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“Well, if I’m exposing my ignorance here, I’m happy to be educated.”
“OK, but maybe we should pretend you didn’t say that. Because every K-pop stan is just waiting for somebody to ask for recommendations. I’ve got no less than eight different playlists prepared for this very scenario. Since you’re the tree hugger hippie type, I’m guessing you’re into jam bands? So I’d maybe start you off with some Enhypen or–”
“Actually I’m not much of a jam band guy. Or a hippie for that matter. I’m afraid I’m more of a cryptobro.”
This derailed her entirely. “What? What kind of tree-hugger becomes a cryptobro?”
“It was the other way around. Five years ago, I didn’t give a damn about the environment. I was working for this startup developing an all-in-one crypto tracking app, and we were too small to have a marketing team. So even though I had a debilitating fear of public speaking, somehow I ended up as the person who would travel to all the conventions and promote the app. It made me so nauseous that I’d carry barf bags in my laptop satchel just in case.
“Then one day I was flying to Austin when my phone died, so I passed the time by reading a Nature magazine that somebody left in the seat pocket. It had an article about how the dying bee populations would make coffee a rare luxury within thirty years. Now, I’ve literally got a tattoo of a French press on my bicep, so thinking about a world without coffee got me so depressed that I felt completely dead inside, to the point where public speaking didn’t even faze me. It was the first time I made it through a convention without chugging a bottle of Pepto. From then on, I’d bring books about climate change to every event and read a few chapters to kill my nerves. But it was also killing my soul. Once you start paying attention to what’s happening to this planet, it breaks something deep inside of you.”
Morgan chewed her fingernails, staring past him with her eyebrows raised. “Y’know, most folks with stage fright just picture the audience naked.” She chuckled and added, “Though I guess that could’ve radicalized you in a much more problematic direction.”
Ed laughed. The funny thing was, even as he was locked into an embrace with this homemade explosive, he didn’t feel like he was doing anything radical at all. Only what was necessary. He’d spent too many years scrolling through the news hoping to see that somebody had beat him to the punch. That somebody had finally done something. Instead, all he got were the half-assed hijinks of activists flinging canned soup at paintings shielded behind glass barriers—and the world’s intellectuals writing op-eds about how this utterly innocuous resistance was somehow beyond the pale. Such willful ignorance of the catastrophe awaiting us seemed like madness, so how could his efforts to stop it be anything but an act of perfect rationality?
When nobody else stepped up to do the obvious thing, Ed contacted les héritiers des cendres via the dark web to brainstorm ideas. He’d first heard about the activist group after they’d scattered thousands of lone star ticks around airports and train stations across Europe. The infestation of these parasites caused widespread alpha-gal syndrome infections—an allergy to red meat that effectively rendered its hosts involuntary vegans. With les héritiers’ experience smuggling prohibited items into airports, Ed hoped they could sneak deadlier materials past security as well. They adored his idea. In fact, they’d already been planning to disrupt the CEOs’ flight themselves. Les héritiers could construct the bomb and smuggle it inside. All they needed was a volunteer to wear it, and who better than a disillusioned American with a spotless criminal record and nothing left to live for?
“Anyway, that’s the origin story for my obsession,” he said to Morgan. “Your turn. How’d you get radicalized into the K-pop army?”
She clapped her hands onto the bar. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Just as she launched into her story, the piggies finally made their appearance. Looking over Morgan’s shoulder, he watched them trot up to the lounge. One of them stopped to pick up a cleaning bottle that rolled across his path. He handed it to the custodian with a friendly smile, and something about this gesture infuriated Ed more than if he’d simply stepped over it. That someone could demonstrate basic human courtesy while also casually orchestrating a global extinction.
He had to shift his focus before he ended up doing something he’d regret. When he turned his attention back to Morgan, she was already wrapping up her story. He felt genuinely guilty that he hadn’t caught a word of it.
“And the community’s even better than the music itself. It’s like this massive found family that’s always ready to welcome new members.”
“As long as they don’t cut in line for autographs,” Ed quipped, trying to appear like he’d been listening.
When she laughed, her hand brushed his arm, and his heart drummed against the explosive with alarming intensity. He prayed it could withstand this sudden percussion.
“That sounds nice though. I could really use a found family myself these days.” He didn’t mean to say this last part out loud, but now that he was talking to an actual person again he didn’t remember how to self-censor.
“You got some drama waiting for you back home?”
“Sort of. I’m about a year out of a rough divorce.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, then gave him a nudge. “But I don’t know if hanging out at airport bars and spoiling women’s novels is the best way to pick up a rebound.”
“Ah, so that’s what I’ve been doing wrong…” Ed tried to riff along, but it didn’t take. “But no, I’m nowhere close to the right headspace for that. Not after how things went down with Christine. We’d been planning to have kids for a while, but the more I learned about climate change, the less comfortable I felt about the idea of procreating. I was working up the nerve to tell her this, but then she found the vasectomy brochure in my glovebox. I couldn’t explain how wrong it felt to bring new life into a dying planet, so we went our separate ways.”
“That’s…really bleak. So you weren’t even open to adoption?”
Ed’s mouth hung open stupidly. He shook his head, searching for his voice. “I’m ashamed to say, but that option never even crossed my mind.”
The warmth in Morgan’s eyes suddenly extinguished. She was silent for a while, her face shifting through several different expressions. Then she finally said, “Don’t beat yourself up, Ed. Nobody ever considers it.”
With that, she finished her drink and returned to her book. It looked for a moment as if she was about to say something, but then she exhaled and continued reading.
~
In the private bathroom, Ed unbuttoned his shirt as delicately as one might peel a soft-boiled egg. He placed it in the sink and craned his neck to survey the damage. The strap had carved a shallow, bloody trench across his deltoid. He slid a coarse wad of toilet paper under the plastic and nearly screamed. It was a belt sander against his eroding flesh. Infection was all but guaranteed at this point. If this blizzard lasted long enough, he might even succumb to microscopic saboteurs just like Wells’s Martians.
But the agony of this abrasion was nothing compared to the rupture in his life that Morgan had torn open that afternoon. He’d always struggled with fixation. Any dark thoughts that burrowed in his head would consume him inside-out like a cordyceps infection. So when he’d decided he was no longer comfortable procreating, he simply accepted the fact that his future would be childless and allowed the leaden certainty of this decision to scuttle his marriage. Adoption was an obvious solution in hindsight. It infuriated him that they hadn’t thought of it that night he and Christine screamed their throats raw on the kitchen floor. Where would he be now if they had? Researching adoption agencies side-by-side in bed? Sitting in an easy chair with a warm bottle of milk? Surely not hunched over a sink, scrubbing repugnant pink soap into a bloodstained shirt collar in this godforsaken airport.
He rubbed hand sanitizer over his wound, letting the pain ripple through his body. This is what he got for being so myopic. For ruining Christine’s life. This is the outcome he deserved.
But it’s also the outcome humanity deserved, he reminded himself. If it weren’t for the death of his marriage, he wouldn’t be here to extend the life of this planet. This was the only way forward. This was his purpose. Though he stopped short of calling it his destiny. As fatalistic as he was about the Earth’s future, Ed didn’t actually believe in fate. In fact, he was painfully aware of the role that his own free will would play in the deaths of these people. All 370 of them. 375 if you count the piggies.
Unlike sheep, counting them did nothing to ease him into sleep. Nevertheless, Ed eventually slept, and dreamt he was plummeting down a dark and bottomless sky. And the day before his death was very nearly the day of his death, because when he saw his reflection that morning, he almost ripped the device off his chest. He’d left his shirt off overnight, and at first glance, the plastic rigging around his torso resembled a scaly carapace. In his groggy stupor he thought he’d undergone a horrific metamorphosis. His limbs continued to tremble long after he came to his senses.
With little else to ease his mind, he returned to the bar. The piggies hadn’t shown up yet, and Morgan wasn’t at her usual seat either. He asked the bartender if she’d heard any updates about the flights. She shrugged and gestured to the endless white beyond the windows. He stared at the snowy panorama until he started seeing patterns in its shuddering emptiness. The images revealed to him were unspeakably disturbing, so he turned his attention to the superhero movie playing on the TV overhead.
“Iron Man dies,” a voice drawled in his ear. Ed jolted back with such squirrelly panic that it drew the attention of everyone nearby. Morgan sat beside him. “Now we’re even,” she said.
He took a moment to catch his breath and grapple his heartbeat into submission. “Kinda surprised to see you here. I thought you might’ve been upset with me yesterday.”
“Well to be fair, you probably only thought that because I was.”
He glanced away sheepishly. An arctic silence settled in the space between them. Finally, he looked back and said, “You were adopted, I take it?”
She shook her head. “I aged out.” She hailed the bartender and ordered a hefeweizen. “So I can get a little prickly about the subject. Whenever I hear stories about people getting dangerous operations, or ending their relationships, or considering literally any option over adopting a fucking child, I can’t help but think y’all are a bunch of self-absorbed assholes.”
Ed gave a somber nod. “Well to be fair, you probably only think that because we are.”
Morgan grinned, only somewhat reluctantly. “Tell you what—you get the next round and I’ll forget about it.”
“Deal.”
“But you shouldn’t forget about it. Call your ex and tell her you were an idiot. There’s plenty of kids out there looking for a good home. It’s not too late.”
He nodded sadly, wishing this were true. The plastic boa constrictor tightened its grip on his heart as he contemplated the alternate reality where he returns to Florida and repairs all the rotten damage that he’d wrought with Christine.
“Not to suggest that foster homes are always miserable,” Morgan said. “I actually got really lucky with David and Linda, aside from their super churchy vibes. That’s the only kind of passion I don’t jibe with.”
“They were your foster parents?”
She nodded and told him about how she’d moved into their home after her mother’s car accident. Their huge library. All the beagles. The foster brother who pirated her a copy of FL Studio so she could get into music production. This time, he kept his eyes fixed on her and really listened while she spoke. When he’d first spotted her two days ago, he thought she resembled all the Scandinavians in the background, but now he realized she didn’t look like them at all—or anyone else he’d seen before. There was something elusive about her features, like a murmuration that swirls into a familiar shape and scatters just as quickly. Or maybe the part of his brain that processes faces had simply atrophied over these last several months in which he’d hardly spoken to anyone.
He made up for it now as they spent the whole afternoon throwing back drinks and swapping childhood anecdotes. He felt happy and relaxed for the first time in ages. And when the piggies finally arrived at the lounge, he gave them a cursory headcount, then barely paid them any notice for the rest of the day.
“I was never one to lay down roots,” Morgan said, wrapping up her college years, “so the groupie life was a pretty natural transition for me. And I was already doing so much traveling that becoming a flight attendant was an obvious career choice.”
Ed coughed, as the last sip skidded down his windpipe. “Flight attendant? I thought you said you were a music producer?”
“Yeah, my night job is on SoundCloud, but I make actual money in the actual clouds.”
“Well as far as day jobs go, that still sounds pretty exciting.”
“It used to be. Before everybody got so insane. But now I’m a year into training for my pilot’s license. Mostly because I don’t know how much longer I can keep smiling at these passengers who treat me like garbage.”
“Whoa, I hope it works out, because that sounds miserable. I wouldn’t last a day as a flight attendant.”
“Oh you have no idea!” she exclaimed, grabbing his arm. “I heard there’s gonna be a bunch of evil-ass oil barons on my next flight. You’d pop a fucking vein if you had to pick up their trash.”
And suddenly Ed was plummeting through a bottomless sky all over again, only this time he wasn’t dreaming. He grabbed the bar to keep himself upright, barely even feeling it under his fingers. The icy static had seeped through the windows and into his veins. His head throbbed and his vision flickered, like he was viewing the world through a stuttering zoetrope. His lungs. His heart.
Morgan was talking—or at least moving her mouth like somebody in the act of speaking—yet he didn’t hear a single word. He nodded along until he couldn’t stand it and then excused himself to the restroom, his words a sludgy, guttural sputtering. He had to keep his eyes on his feet while he stumbled off, otherwise he couldn’t be sure they were making contact with the floor. The bathroom stalls didn’t have gaps like in America, so he had to tug at several doors before he found an open one. Then he fell to his knees and vomited a liter of sour alcohol. It sobered him up, but the sobriety only sharpened his dread. Sensations swarmed back into his body all at once. A violent roiling tangled his organs like a fitted sheet in a tumble cycle. If the vest wasn’t swaddling him so tight, his innards might have unspooled between his ribs and spilled across the floor.
With significant effort, Ed recovered his composure and returned to the bar. “Sorry,” he said to Morgan’s forehead. “I haven’t been this drunk since college.”
“Yeah, I’m a bad influence,” she giggled. “But maybe we should call it a night.”
He nodded and paid their tab. When he turned away from the bar, Morgan was standing inches from his chest. Close enough that he could feel the knife edge of alcohol in her warm breath.
“Y’know,” she said, “airline staff have their own hotel rooms. There’s no reason for you to sleep out in the terminal. You must be dying for a hot shower.” She toyed with the button on his collar, then slid her finger underneath the flannel. So close to grazing the trigger mechanism that would make an instant fondue of her flesh.
Ed pulled back with a look of dismay, clutching a hand to his staccato heartbeats. Only a momentary flinch, but enough for the sparks to vanish from Morgan’s eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know what got into me. That was really stupid. And inappropriate and—shit.” Then she spun around and hurried off before he could even call her name.
~
The private bathroom was locked that night. Somebody must have realized the Out of Order sign he’d moved onto the door didn’t belong there. So he wandered through the drowsy terminal, his mind at sea. He always knew there’d be civilian casualties. The piggies and their staff only accounted for a fraction of the seats on a 747. He’d muzzled his empathy these last few months by convincing himself that the remaining passengers would probably be members of the press, who in his mind were all complicit. It was only a couple years ago when a climate activist’s self-immolation barely registered a blip amid the media’s coverage of a scandalous celebrity divorce. Then there was the crew. Two pilots and ten flight attendants. A jury’s worth of innocent people hadn’t felt like enough to condemn the plan entirely. It was nothing compared to the nearly seven million already dying every year from air pollution. The god-knows-how-many that would perish once the coastlines flood. Ed considered himself to be a strict utilitarian. He understood that sacrificing the few justified saving the many. But it’s not so easy to pull the trolley’s lever when you’ve spent all day flirting with the woman tied to the tracks.
As he rode up an escalator, he watched a man his age kneel down to tie his daughter’s shoe. Was it better or worse that Morgan was an orphan with no family to mourn her? Worse, he decided. It felt a lot fucking worse. He imagined her sitting by a window in her foster home, waiting for a family to welcome her—finding only rejection. And now she thought Ed had rejected her as well. Maybe she was lying awake, mentally replaying that moment in masochistic humiliation. If the storm cleared soon, his apparent rejection would be one of the last things she’d ever experience in her life. If he still went through with it. He’d already changed his mind a dozen times in as many minutes.
He was so lost in thought that he stumbled straight into the custodian’s cart, knocking cleaning supplies all over the floor. She snapped at him with words he didn’t understand—though he caught the gist—and he cowered like a child. He apologized and crouched down to help her with the mess. That’s when he got the idea.
He returned all the bottles except for one, which he slipped under his coat. Then he headed to the duty-free shop and downed a nip of whisky, saving the empty container. He patted his pockets in search of his phone, only to realize he couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. Luckily, it didn’t take long to find a charging station where several were left unattended. The travelers had bonded over the course of this ordeal—enough for a community of trust to emerge—so none of them suspected a floundering eco-terrorist might need to snatch their phone to google the lethal dosage of bleach.
The first few results were contradictory, but in any case, it seemed like a nip’s-worth would be more than plenty. He found a secluded seat and attempted to transfer an ounce into the whisky bottle, his shaky hands spilling half the chemicals all over his lap. If he could sneak just a few drops into Morgan’s drink tomorrow, maybe it would hospitalize her long enough to miss the flight without causing her any long-term health problems. According to his hasty research, even a small amount could kill her. But if she boarded the plane, her death would be certain. At least this gave her a chance. Still, the thought of hurting her in any way was enough to make Ed feel like he was the one who’d been poisoned. As he finally drifted off, he wished that Morgan wouldn’t have to feel any pain at all, that the flight would never get rescheduled, that this blizzard would cradle them safely together forever.
~
The sunlight that woke him was blinding. It reflected off the snowfall in a shimmering conflagration that set the horizon ablaze. The icicles melting over the windows salivated like the fangs of a grizzly bear snarling out of hibernation. Ed sat upright and felt the teeth sink into his shoulder. No, it was just his wound scraping against the back of the chair.
It was the morning of his death, and the airport had never felt so alive. Rosy-cheeked employees bustled about, having finally arrived to relieve their beleaguered coworkers. Black stretches of asphalt were already plowed clear on the tarmac. A dawn chorus of excited passengers echoed throughout the terminal—the promise of home so close that they could taste it. Ed was alone in his misery. He lifted his head against a heavy gravity to read the Departures board. His flight was now scheduled for 7:20 that evening. Half a day to save Morgan’s life. Maybe this could work.
He wasted no time in heading to the bar. Of course, nobody was there at this hour. He ordered a coffee and concentrated on the searing pain in his back, using it to distract him from the possibility that Morgan might not show up. The wound pulsated like a second heartbeat. Meanwhile his real heart nearly burst at the sight of every blonde flight attendant who passed by. Each one a false alarm. He wondered how early they had to report for duty. Two hours before a flight? Three? Surely Morgan would have enough time to grab a drink before she left. She’d surprised him yesterday by showing up after he’d offended her. She could surprise him once again.
By noon, he switched from coffee to vodka. Morgan was nowhere to be seen—unlike the piggies, who’d sauntered over to the VIP lounge with a jaunty swagger that left him seething. He’d hoped they wouldn’t show at all today. Hoped they’d taken a limo out of town once the roads cleared. But of course, this was still the fastest way to New York. All he could do now was ensure they’d never make it there. And if it came down to it, he prayed that Morgan’s death would be quick and painless.
Another hour passed. Then another. The minute hand on his watch was spinning faster than his head. The world sped past his peripheral vision in a nauseating rush of activity. Then somebody sat down next to him. Ed reached for the bottle in his pocket and it leapt from his fingers like a grasshopper.
“Fuck!” he shouted, as the bleach got hacky-sacked in every direction by the dizzying foot traffic. Then it vanished entirely.
“Fuck,” he said again. “Fuck.”
It didn’t matter. The person in Morgan’s seat wasn’t even Morgan. Wasn’t even a woman. Just a boorish American complaining to the bartender about their lack of authentic Scotch. It was over. The flight boarded in a few hours. And so what. If Morgan didn’t even have the decency to come say goodbye to him, then she was bringing this upon herself. Ed had given her every chance in the world. Now he had no choice but to go ahead and save the world without her in it.
The American finished berating the bartender and let out a petulant sigh. “I can’t wait to get out of this shithole.”
“You on the 7:20 to New York?” Ed asked him.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Just curious,” Ed snickered. If everybody on the plane was this obnoxious, blowing it up would be even more of a public service than he’d anticipated.
“I dunno about you, but I haven’t had a decent drink since we’ve been stuck here. With the piss they’re serving, I might as well stick to water.” As if to somehow prove a point, the stranger finished the last of his water bottle and chucked it at a nearby receptacle like he was shooting a three pointer. It sailed right in.
“That was plastic.”
“What?”
“You threw it in the trash. It was recyclable,” Ed growled.
The man scoffed. “God, are you another one of those climate freaks? I’ve heard enough from you pussies this week. You seriously still believe the planet’s melting after spending three days in a blizzard?”
“Climate and weather are completely different meteorological concepts.” Ed wasn’t usually a confrontational person, but the civil war between the caffeine and alcohol in his system was just itching for a proxy battle. “You absolute imbecile.”
“I’m the imbecile? I’m not the one out here ranting about how plastic straws are going to destroy the world.”
“Nobody’s saying that! That’s literally a straw-man argument!”
“You want a straw-man argument?” The man grabbed a straw from the bar and ripped off one end. He put it to his mouth and shot the wrapper at Ed’s face like a blow dart.
Ed lunged for his throat. They fell to the floor in a scuffle that had all the dignity of two preschoolers fighting over a Tonka truck. No butterflies or bees here—just drunken slapping and hair-pulling. The stranger got the upper hand when he grabbed Ed by his collar and started shaking him like a snow globe. Just when Ed thought he was going to pass out from the pain in his wound, the man dropped him with a sudden gasp and stumbled backwards. Ed lifted his aching skull and peered down the length of his body. His shirt was torn wide open, exposing the Cronenbergian prosthetic underneath.
“Bomb! He’s got a bomb!”
No.
Not like this.
Nonononono.
Ed scrambled to his feet. The bat-squeak of his boots as shrill as the screams all around him. He couldn’t board the plane, but it wasn’t over yet. If he could just make it across the food court, he could finish this right now. Everybody was stampeding in a maelstrom of panic. He felt like he was running in a dream, knee-deep in syrup. A straight line was impossible in this chaos, so he slalomed past the fleeing bodies in a frantic zigzag. Chairs and tables toppled along the way. He careened ahead like a clumsy halfback, but he was halfway there. He could see the piggies’ faces. He could see their eyes—wide with morbid curiosity, so close to their slaughter. Their fight-or-flight dice rolls had all landed conveniently on a cervine paralysis. He was really going to do this.
And then he saw her. Morgan stood in her uniform only twenty feet away. Frozen amid the turmoil, she stared in horror at the ugly monstrosity bulging from his chest. Time skidded to a halt. Then just as their eyes met, a security guard tackled him to the floor, smashing the breath from his lungs. His head buzzed, ears ringing like a struck bell. He thought he could hear Morgan’s voice above the din, but he couldn’t understand her words. Then more guards piled on, each pinning down a thrashing limb. One of their knees dug into his neck. Ed struggled helplessly. He gasped for air. A frothy confluence of blood and phlegm clogged his throat.
His head was twisted at a painful angle toward the window. The sunlight bouncing in off the snow was dazzling. The way it sparkled iridescently through a thousand brilliant icicles. In the moment before his vision faded, he felt crushed only by the thought of how beautiful it all could have been.
