The Gone

3. If a tree falls in a woodland and no one is there, does it make a sound?

Gasping, my hammering heart slowly starts to beat normally. What the hell is going on? Unbending I look back. The corridor that I ran down is very light, as if the plane were gone. Walking to the wall of windows I can’t see the plane. I can’t see any planes. There is just a vast expanse of tarmac. Normally I’d expect to see some movement, even if it were just people, but they are as absent as the plane.

I turn and I am on my own. Gate whatever is abandoned and the ever present tinned voice from the speakers is quiet. Maybe in the distance I can hear a child cry, but that is probably the family I was sitting next to. I have come out to find the gate abandoned, although there is normally someone from the airline around.

“Hello?”

My voice is too tentative.

“Hello?”

Louder but no response. One last look out of the quiet window and I start down the walkway toward the terminal. The moving walkway isn’t working, but then I have known it not work. I just can’t shift my unease. The silence is worrying.

Walking into a larger space I can see the baggage turntable. It isn’t moving. No one is there. I don’t stop and briefly I wonder if the airplane has taken off with my red suitcase inside. Not that it is filled with anything but dirty clothes. I will be sad to not see my nightie, although it is really a man’s t-shirt with a faded image of the tardis on the front. That I would miss.

Customs is abandoned but I can hear people in the background. A fair amount of shouting, so pushing my tiredness to one-side I walk out into the terminal. Where are the customs people? I have never known them be missing. Not now, not in this modern and fearful age.

 The terminal is empty but down one end I can see a group of people clustered around a semi-circular desk. They are yelling at someone.