There were boxes and boxes of bottled water to drink.
We stood there, a little lost. People bustled around in every direction.
I scanned the faces passing by, hoping to see one of our parents. If I could find them in time, they’d make someone go back for you.
But it was useless. There were thousands of people milling and pushing past.
‘Look!’ Sahalia said. She pointed up to a big board.
It had numbers listed in batches, along with hours of departures and gate information. Like 7,989–8,425 Gate B7 11:45 a.m.
Our numbers weren’t even on the board yet.
‘Let’s get food,’ Niko said. He was carrying Max on his back, piggyback style. ‘Then I’m going to get you guys to the gate.’
‘What are you going to do then?’ Sahalia asked, sounding edgy.
‘I’m going to go find someone and organize a rescue.’
I looked at Niko. I couldn’t read any emotion on his face.
‘Do you mean it?’ I said.
‘Of course.’
Before I could get excited, Max threw up. It was pure bile – a weird neon-green colour. His eyes rolled in the back of his head and he started to shake.
People around us screamed and made a commotion.
A big guy helped Niko to get Max down onto the ground but Max was still shuddering and shaking.
‘We need a medic!’ someone shouted. ‘We need a medic here!’
Grown-ups were all over us now, and we were getting pushed apart.
‘Clear back!’ shouted a woman. ‘Clear BACK!’
She was a reservist – we’d seen lots of them on the inside of the airport. Their uniforms were a little different from the regular Army soldiers.
She pushed the adults back with one arm and with the other she escorted an overweight medic. He had a satchel full of medical supplies and a red cross painted on his uniform.
He removed a syringe of some kind and shot it into Max’s arm and the quaking stopped.
‘He’s going to be okay,’ the medic said.
‘All right, you heard him. The boy’s going to be fine. Everyone get to your gates. We need to get you out of here as soon as possible, folks! This is an evacuation, not a sideshow!’ the reservist bellowed.
She had grey hair pulled back in a bun and was much shorter than the other soldier, but she was clearly the boss. She wore camouflage fatigues and had the three bars of a sergeant on her arm.
Then Ulysses asked something in his heavy accent.
His eyes were wide and he was pointing at the lady.
I couldn’t believe what he was saying and I turned to see the lady reservist’s face.
Ulysses repeated, ‘Mrs Wooly?’
And it was.
It was Mrs Wooly, Dean!
It said it right there on her uniform: WOOLY.
She looked at Ulysses blankly for a moment. Her face just wiped clean of all emotion and then she shouted, ‘Ulysses Dominquez?’
She looked at him, at Niko, at me and Max and Sahalia, and then she gave a kind of screech. A giant, triumphant screech!
And she hugged Sahalia, nearly lifting her off the ground. And then she hugged me and Niko and Ulysses.
‘These are my kids, Goldsmith!’ she shouted to the medic. ‘These are the ones I’ve been telling you about!’
‘No kidding,’ he said, already at work bandaging Max’s feet. ‘Really? From Monument?!’
Ulysses got down next to Max and was trying to wake him up, to show him we’d found Mrs Wooly.
Max’s eyes fluttered open.
‘Look!’ Ulysses crowed. ‘Mrs Wooly!’
Max looked up at her. He started to cry. ‘Why didn’t you come for us?’
‘Oh, Max, I tried,’ she said.
‘We waited and waited!’ Max wailed.
Mrs Wooly pressed her hand to Max’s forehead.
‘I tried to come for you, buddy. I put in a request with my CO but that didn’t look like it was going to pan out. So I’ve been asking every chopper pilot I meet if he would just sneak me over to go and look for you but none of them would do it for me.’
The medic finished wrapping Max’s feet. He patted Mrs Wooly on the shoulder and headed off.
Sahalia was looking at Mrs Wooly with an emotion I couldn’t read. Anger? Contempt?
‘We needed you!’ Sahalia said accusingly. ‘We lost… we lost people. Brayden got shot! If you had come…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t really need to.
Mrs Wooly pushed some hair out of Sahalia’s face. She took Sahalia’s hand in hers.
‘Oh, Sahalia, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that whatever happened happened. It must have been horrible, honey,’ she said in her gravelly voice.
‘I made it to the high school and I was trying to get a hold of a bus to come for you guys and there was this little kind of riot there and then this alert came over the radio. I had to report for duty. That’s how it is for us. When called to serve, we gotta serve. But I swear to you I’ve spent every moment trying to figure out how to get you rescued. But none of that matters. You’re here. You made it.’
‘Niko said you were coming in a Kia minivan,’ Max said.
‘A Kia?! No way, honey. I only drive Subarus. And school buses.’ She rustled Max’s hair. ‘You should see the Airbuses, kids. A whole fleet of A380s. Loading and flying and loading and flying. You’ll be on the next one out. I’m going to see to that!’
‘Are we going to Alaska?’ Max asked.
‘But Mrs Wooly—’ I said.
‘You might,’ she said. ‘But they’re going all over. Lots of flights to Canada. Vancouver, Ottawa, BC.’
‘But Mrs Wooly—’ Niko tried to interrupt.
‘They got hit much less hard than we did and have been really amazing. This time tomorrow, you guys will be safe. Maybe somewhere sunny even.’
Max and Ulysses looked at each other and smiled.
‘But Mrs Wooly!’ I yelled. ‘We have to go back.’
‘Go back?’ she said, puzzled.
‘Dean and Astrid and Chloe and Caroline and Henry are still at the store,’ I said.
She went white and said, ‘Hell.’
Mrs Wooly grabbed the first reservist she saw. He was a young guy, chewing gum, and had a long neck and the kind of head that bobs a lot. She took him off to the side and gave him a bunch of directions. She looked serious. He looked half-irritated, half-amused.
Then she came back to us with the guy.
‘Kids, this is Frank. He’s going to get you on the next plane out of here.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘No!’
‘I’m going to do the best I can to get your brother and the others. But look,’ she told us, leaning in closer. ‘You gotta get out of here now. It may not be safe for much longer.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sahalia asked.
‘What’s happening?’ Niko said.
‘Just go with Frank!’ Mrs Wooly ordered. ‘He’ll get you guys on the next plane out of here. I have to go!’
And with that she started running – running away from us.
