The Walking Dead

It’s waaaay too early to be awake at one of the busiest airports in America. Welcome to Sunday morning at Charlotte International. The Queen City. American Airlines. It’s a long way to Hollywood, but Terminal B looks like a scene from the Walking Dead.

The bar has only one patron, but the coffee shop line is overflowing. Sleepy-eyed, bag-toting zombies walk up and down the corridors, staring into their phones or off into the distance. Bodies of young people lie on both sides of the corridors, attached to wall plugs. They’re either asleep or half-asleep in sweat pants and PJs. It’s raining outside, but some shiver in shorts, crop tops, and Crocs, dressed for the destination and sunnier climes.

The big board says most of the flights are delayed, as wave after wave of sleep-walkers keep coming, and the bodies are piling up. The undead lay on benches, under benches, and fall on every available square inch of carpet. An old lady in a yellow vest pushes a trash can as she sweeps around them.

The silence is broken as one middle-aged man with a mullet, dressed in camouflage and a black rucksack growls at a gate agent. “I’m gonna miss my connection and waddya gonna do ‘bout it! Arrrgggh.” The perfectly coiffed gate agent Denise softly replies and I can’t hear her words, but the body language says “talk to the hand,” as she points out the window to an empty ramp where the plane has not yet arrived.

No one is leaving home and no one is coming home. Everyone is waiting for another plane to take them somewhere else, because this is Winter and this is the gateway to the Southern U.S. and the Caribbean. 

I joined the suited gentleman sitting solo at the bar. We reminisce how air travel has changed. It wasn’t always like the day after the Apocalypse. His name is Ted and he works for a software company. Ted likes Bloody Mary’s and he’s happy to pay $5 for the extra shot of Tito’s. “I remember when the double shot was only a buck,” he sighs. 

We agreed that air travel is not fun anymore. Security used to be a breeze. You could wear nice shoes — and keep them on – through the metal detector. Everyone had a paper ticket, and not an app on their phone. You also didn’t have to cram a week’s worth of clothes into a backpack, because the airlines didn’t make you pay extra for a carry-on bag. In the “good ol’ days” people smiled and laughed and chatted nervously with each other, sharing tales of where they were going and what they were going to do when they got there. The airport was a happy, chatty, energetic place. But alas, no more.

Today the air travelers eye each other suspiciously, like it’s a contest for survival. They inch closer and closer together only to battle with each other before Boarding Group 8 makes its way to the gate.