Commune of Women (3 page)

The place is like one of those computer-generated animations of subatomic particles in an accelerator. People are rushing in every direction, totally randomly.

She dodges a little pod of Japanese tourists, as she tacks left, and then some Americans. She can tell by the huge suitcases they’re hauling. American travelers always think they have to pack their entire closet with them. Then, there’s an African couple in marvelous, brightly dyed fabrics, their faces glowing like oiled rosewood. And...
oh my God!

Oh my God!

She can’t breathe.

Adrenaline shoots through her in one pure bolt of lightning.

Men in black ski masks! Guns!

Oh my God!

She turns to her right and pushes through the crowd, blindly.

Sophia’s getting a little worried about missing her bus. She thinks she’ll just start ambling out of the terminal toward the bus stop. Maybe grab a
latté
at Starbucks on the way out.

This place certainly hasn’t lost its fascination for her. Maybe she’s been living in the hills too long! A couple just passed her, speaking a language that’s so foreign that she can’t place it anywhere in the world. Could it be some form of Slavic? Mayan? Malay? It’s impossible to tell by looking where the two of them are from. They’re that wonderful
café-au-lait
color that could be from anywhere or everywhere.

They also seem to be in love. They’re holding hands, smiling that certain smile.

Oh! One of them fell down! The man. She’s bending to help him and...

Goddess!

The young woman’s blown backwards and crumples at Sophia’s feet and a squall of blood droplets peppers her face!

People are screaming all around her.

She’s standing there like a goose. What the hell is happening?

Then, she hears it.

POP! POP!

My God!
Someone’s shooting inside the terminal! Immediately, Sophia hunkers down, wiping the girl’s blood from her face with the back of her wrist. All around her, people are scattering.

Through a break in the crowd, she sees the opening to the concourse, just a few feet to her right.

She makes a break for it, running full out, her Red Wing boots really taking flight.

She passes people squatting in the hallway, hands to their faces.

Sorry folks...that won’t save you!

She leaps over a body that’s sprawling across the floor, then another one.

In her peripheral vision, she can see clots of plaster spurting out of the walls. She’s running through a hail of bullets.

Just ahead, two people are disappearing through a doorway. If she can just get there, she’ll take cover in there, too.

Her back seems to have eyes – looking for the bullet that’s going to paste her, dead through her spine.

Somehow, she gets to the door and slams into the doorframe, wrenching the knob, twisting to get through.

Just as she’s crashing forward, a body hurtles into her arms; a young black woman with blank eyes and a twisted mouth. What seems to be a red rose corsage proves to be blood gushing from her shoulder. Sophia heaves her into the doorway and shoves forward.

Then, something hits her from behind with tremendous force.

Now there are shots, just steps behind Ondine, and people screaming.

She sees the looming tunnel of the concourse, breaks free from the crowd in Reception and runs for it.

She pounds down the hallway, pushing people out of her way, her powerful dancer’s legs pumping, her long auburn hair flapping about her like panicked wings.

More shots and the steady rattle of automatic weapons.

Screams.

Ahead of her, a door magically opens. Some people are trying to fit through, all jammed together. She hits the back of the snarl like an NFL tackle and they all pop through the door like a cork flying out of a bottle of champagne.

Erika’s listing diagonally, caught in a web of arms and backs and shoulders, all being carried sideways. Feet are trampling her feet. Someone’s hard sole grazes her ankle, knocking off her shoe. It’s excruciating and she screams out in pain.

She’s in a cyclone of body parts and gravity is having its way with them. Together, they’re toppling into a heap.

The pain in her left shoulder is unbearable. Everything goes black.

Sophia topples through the door, enmeshed in arms and legs, dragging the injured woman with her. They stagger and stumble forward. Someone’s on the floor and she trips over her legs. Then, as one body, they collapse into a heap.

She can’t get her feet under her. She’s leaning into all of them.

Forward momentum carries them a few steps and then they all go down like dominos.

Before she can get Heddi up off the floor to see if she’s been shot, the door blows open and a knot of people falls through. They topple in a mass and fall – right on top of Heddi!

Betty’s reaching down to help her off the floor when the door flies open and a snarl of people crashes in, all tangled up in each other. One of them trips over Heddi. They all fall. She feels like she’s being crushed in a landslide.

Someone is screaming – and Heddi suspects it may be she.

Pearl’s just driftin off when, next thin she knows, theys a big ruckus. She sets up jes in time ta see bout a half dozen folks, layin in a heap on the floor, thrashin around, screamin.

Now, what the Hell do you make a
that?

An theys this great, fat gal, lak a blue an red ball, bouncin round the heap. Fatty slams the door shut, squints at the knob, an pushes the little button in. They’s people startin ta hammer on the outside a the door, but the lock holds.

X feels triumphant exhilaration, as her black-clothed group races into the terminal, shooting as they run. At first, she knows Jamal is by her side, but then she becomes unsure. The ski masks make the Brothers unrecognizable, even to her, and the crowd is chaotic. Despite the gunfire and the maelstrom of screaming people, a strange quiet settles inside her brain, then, punctuated by wails and the steady pop of automatic weaponry that are eerily distant. Bodies topple over like puppets tossed down by careless children after play. She observes it all in slow motion, as if from a great distance.

Just beyond the reception area, a fat man steps through a doorway, straight into the path of the oncoming Brothers and, shot, is blown backward, staggering back a few feet into his room.

Apparently, one glance tells Ibrahim the importance of this little room because, without hesitation, he grabs X by the arm and slings her in, shouting, “You stay here and monitor things until we return.
Do not leave!
”

With a wave of his arm, he summons the others onward.

X stares wild-eyed at the small room where Ibrahim has flung her. An entire wall gazes back at her from the cold blue eyes of banked video monitors. She takes in the uniformed man, bleeding from a gaping wound directly through the center of his back and slumped on the counter-like desk beneath him. She slowly turns to take in the remainder of the cramped little space, with its rolling chair, small metal desk, beige file cabinet and large wall-hung map of the facility. With a hand still stiff from clutching her weapon, she slowly and deliberately closes the door and locks it.

They did it! They are in!

She expected to die, but she did not.

She does not mind dying for an ideal. This she committed herself to do. It is just that the body is like some balky animal being dragged down a chute to the depths of an
abattoir
. It resists what the mind accepts.

Palpitations and sweat assailed her, loose bowels, panting, and shakes so severe she could not aim her gun. She just had to shoot scatter-shot method and hope she hit something...someone.

So, the Brothers have put her in here to monitor things, while they go charging off to glory! This is supposed to be libratory, this day. Why does she suddenly feel that she is just a female – nothing but a bothersome weakling, a girl, at this moment of triumph?

Maybe she cannot shoot an AK-47, but she is very good with computers. It does not take her very much time to figure out how this entire airport terminal is monitored with cameras, or how each screen relates to a geographic spot on the airport map.

The biggest problem is reaching the computers because X is only five-two and this very fat dead man – along with an enormous lunch box open by his side – makes about three of her. She thinks she may throw her back out, dragging his huge body and his monster food box out of here into the hallway.

The screens show the carnage. Passageways are filled with bodies; waiting areas are running with blood. People are crawling, or flapping like birds with their feathers ripped out. People hold each other like lovers, but bent at odd angles and unnaturally still.

She knew there would be death; hers, theirs. She just did not expect it to be so...agonized. Thank Allah-God there is no sound accompanying these images. She can see by the contorted faces of the still-living that there are sounds being uttered that no ear should have to hear.

She must give credit to the Brothers. They are very efficient. On one screen, she can see a little group of the enemy, huddling behind a bank of chairs. Then, suddenly, some of the Brothers rush up and take aim. The people go into odd postures. They shrivel up like banana slugs sprinkled with salt. Their arms go up to shield their faces. And then the guns jerk and the people go limp. It’s strange how fast it happens – like a plug is pulled and the machine just stops dead.

She stares and stares at that frame, long after the Brothers move on. From the corner of her eye, she sees them flickering across the wall of monitors. They stop. They shoot. They move on, popping up on another screen, and then another. But she keeps staring at that first one, as if something more would happen. But nothing does. They just lie there. There is not the flutter of an eyelid or the tremor of a finger. They just lie there, like trash blown into a corner by the wind.

Where did that line come from: “For once, then, something.” Wordsworth? Robert Frost? Something from an English class? She cannot remember. But this day, this now, is
something
. It redeems a thousand yesterdays of uselessness and helplessness.

For once, then, I am.

Since Betty’s the only one left standing, she’s going to have to be the one to sort this heap of humanity out, like so many pick-up sticks.

There are several legs kicking, none of which seems to belong to a pair. Also, none that looks like Heddi’s.

On top of the heap, already wiggling off to the floor on the right, is a slender woman in a beautiful aquamarine pants suit. She has long reddish hair that seems to have come undone from an up-do. Half of it is hanging across her face and chest. The other half is still rolled up at the back of her neck.

Anyway, she seems to be doing fine on her own, so Betty bends to the next person, who’s got a big, broad, jeans-clad butt in the air. Her feet are kicking but she can’t get a purchase on the floor because of everyone else underneath her.

“Wait!” Betty says. “Wait. Let me help you.”

She pushes aside a leg that she doesn’t recognize, in snagged taupe nylons and no shoe, with a huge purple bruise on the ankle bone. She makes a place for the big woman’s knee. Then, she runs around to the front and supports her elbow, while she slides backward off the pile onto her knees.

Betty helps lift her, as she staggers onto her feet. She can’t believe her eyes. This woman’s a giant! She’s not fat, just large – well over six feet tall, with shoulders like Paul Bunyan.

She looks at Betty, wild-eyed, and rasps, “Thanks. Thanks for your help.” She looks down, then, and sees the mess still writhing on the floor. “Oh my! Let’s get these others up.”

Together, they reach for the next person, the one with the bruise – a pencil thin black woman in a perfectly cut navy suit and with close-cropped hair. When they turn her over, two things are clear: she’s ravishingly beautiful and she’s out cold.

The reason for that is plain enough. There’s blood streaming from her left shoulder. This woman’s been hit!

The giant lifts her off the heap and carries her over to a sofa that sits against the wall, with Betty trailing along, ineffectually supporting the uninjured ankle.

There, they find another surprise – a wizened little person like an apple doll, staring up at them like they’re aliens that just landed from Mars.

“Lady, you’ll have to get up,” the giant says through her teeth, because she’s straining. “This woman needs to lie down.”

There’s a flurry of what looks like gray rags and a movement that’s ferret-like in its quickness. And there she is, standing beside them, saying, “It’s all yers,” in a voice like ravens croaking.

The giant deposits her unconscious burden onto the couch, careful to place her outside leg, which dangles onto the floor, beside her, before turning back to the others.

Only there’s just one more – Heddi. She’s lying there, groaning. She looks like a flower that’s been trampled – all crumpled and bruised. The redhead is squatting beside her, holding her hand.

The giant and Betty take Heddi by both armpits and hoist her to her feet. There’s an orange Naugahyde armchair next to the couch, so they guide her over to it and lower her into it. She’s dazed and mutters, over and over, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The redhead comes to hover, so Betty turns away and takes a look around.

They’re in a small, beige-painted room. Vending machines line the wall near the door. There’s a Formica table against the back wall with two molded plastic chairs around it – one green and one white – the sofa, the orange chair, and nothing more, except another door opposite from the one they all just crashed through.

She goes to investigate and finds a little restroom with the toilet jammed in the corner next to the sink. It’s about the size of a coat closet.