He didn’t think of revenge at first. He couldn’t think about much of anything at all. Like an animal he rushed to get to his nest—the driving urge was that primal. O’Hare had been a mess—everyone seemed to want to get somewhere else. He’d stood in line for hours, swore he’d packed his bag himself. Lines stretched out the door and around the block, departures monitors were flickering with changes, 10 MINUTE DELAY, 30 MINUTE DELAY, LONG DELAY. There were rumors that the TSA would shut down every airport in the country. There were people who thought that would be a good idea, especially the talking heads on the CNN screens at every gate. “The virus spreads person to person, if you have people crammed inside coach class breathing on each other—” he heard as he rushed down a moving walkway, his backpack slapping against his side. At the next gate: “—brought this on ourselves, in a way, in previous centuries diseases spread slowly and tended to self-localize,” he shook his head, it didn’t mean him, it wasn’t about him, he was flying toward what they were already calling a Plague Zone, not fleeing from it, at the next gate, “—wonder what the Spanish Influenza of 1918 would look like with 747s and Airbuses to move it around,” he blanked it out, shut his ears to it. Other people, people who were sick, shouldn’t be flying, certainly, but he was healthy. He was clean.

FLIGHT 709 SEATTLE/TACOMA 1 HOUR DELAY****PLEASE CHECK-IN AT GATE B5. He stared at the screen for a long awful while and wondered, wondered whether the plane would take off at all. Wondered how long it would take that hour delay to turn into something worse.

On CNN an astronomer was talking to Wolf Blitzer. “I’d love it. Absolutely love it. Airplane contrails destroy clear viewing, absolutely destroy it. After September Eleventh, when they grounded all the flights, we recorded more data than we would in a normal year. Absolutely amazing.”

“Fuck you,” Tim said to the television. A middle-aged woman clucked her tongue at him and covered her baby’s ears with her hands. Tim apologized but he was already moving, already headed to the next gate.

The departure monitors flickered again. BOSTON 1 HOUR DELAY DETROIT CANCELLED LOS ANGELES 2 HOUR DELAY MIAMI 2 HOUR DELAY NEW YORK CANCELLED PITTSBURGH CANCELLED SAN FRANCISCO 1 HOUR DELAY.

Tim reached gate B5 to find it packed with people, people shoved two in a seat, people camped in the aisles. There were no clerks at the desk, no one to give him any information. The screen listing flight information just read FLIGHT 709 SEATAC PLEASE STAND BY. He tried asking a few people what was going on but they had no more information than he did. They were parked where they were, just hoping to get on the plane, afraid that if they moved they would lose their spots in line. Not that there was an official line.

Across the corridor at gate B7 people were filing onboard a plane to Houston. The ticket clerk was feeding their boarding passes through a turnstile and almost pushing them forward, hurrying them on. He started dashing across the way, waving to get her attention, but she just shook her head at him and went back to what she was doing. A phone was ringing somewhere, just ringing and ringing and no one picked it up.

CNN whispered over his shoulder, “—reports of infection in Portland, Oregon, and as far east as Spokane. The Governor of Washington has declared Seattle an official Disaster Area, which is going to mean several things for local residents—”

A flickering light in his peripheral vision made him turn his head. ORLANDO CANCELLED CLEVELAND CANCELLED MEMPHIS STAND BY SARASOTA CANCELLED, more and more of them scrolled by, they weren’t even in alphabetical order, they must be coming up as soon as they were officially grounded. He couldn’t find SEATAC anywhere on the monitors, but SAN FRANCISCO PRE-BOARDING was only three gates away.

“I need to change my flight,” he said. The clerk rolled her eyes but he slapped his boarding pass down on the desk.

“You have checked baggage,” she said, pointing at a code on his boarding pass he couldn’t begin to unravel. “It’s already on the plane.”

“That’s fine, they can forward it to me, or, or I’ll just—I’ll buy new clothes in California,” he told her. “I need to get out there, somewhere, as close as I can.”

“Sir, that’s quite impossible—”

Tim felt panic bubbling inside of him, felt it come surging up his throat.

“You’ll need to step back, sir, so I can help the next person,” the clerk told him.

“My wife is fucking dead! My son is dead! Get me on this plane,” he screamed. The clerk stared at him wide-eyed, but then she reached for a rubber stamp. He pushed his boarding pass toward her and she gestured to the gate.

“We begin boarding coach passengers in five minutes,” she said.