Route 91
It’s taken me a long time to write about Route 91. So much has happened since then. One week after there was a devastating fire in my home county, then a shooting in New York, then one in a church, then one at a school. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m hyper aware of it now, but we seem constantly surrounded by tragedies.
This was hard to write, but not for the reasons you may think. As I tried to put my thoughts on paper I started to worry. Even when it was only a week after I worried that it was past time for talking about Las Vegas. Now over a month later, I wonder if it’s time to just move on. I worry I am being selfish wanting to talk about what happened to me in the wake of what has happened and keeps happening to so many others. I worry I am only writing this for attention. I worry what I have to say isn’t even important. I worry I will never find the right words. I worry it is too late for them.
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My weekend in Las Vegas was supposed to be a quick trip with some of my best friends for a country concert we’d been looking forward to for months. Now it seems almost impossible to look back on the day before the shooting and the moments leading up to it. What should have been happy memories now feel like they don’t belong to me.
Sunday October 1st began as a beautiful day. We spent the morning on the strip with a friend from town with the goal of convincing her to buy a ticket for the last night of the festival even though she hated country music. I remember laughing and cheering as we scrounged enough cash together to pay the man we met on craigslist who offered to sell us his wristband.
It was a good day. We made fools of ourselves line dancing at the silent disco, drank out of coconuts and pineapples and took silly photos, listened to music, bought too many tall cans of bud light for $14, and reveled in my friends look of pure disgust at just how god-damn country it all was as Big and Rich played God Bless America.
After a festival people usually ask you if you had a good time or what the best band was, the two questions I got the most in the following days after Vegas were, How did you get out? and Are you okay?
I wish I had better answers than Luck and I don’t know.
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At 10:04 on Sunday October 1st I text my friend about the song Jason Aldean is playing. It’s ‘Any Ol’ Barstool’. It’s a break up song and it makes me cry. I don’t know it at the time, but it’s the last full song he will sing that night. I’m surrounded by my friends, there are 6 of us, we are singing along, beers in hand. We are near the left side of the crowd because we had just walked out of the makeshift Malibu Rum Bar when he started playing. We hadn’t gone farther into the crowd because a man had been smoking a cigar and the smell made us all nauseous. All of this seems like nothing at the time, but looking back it might have been everything.
In the middle of his next song a loud popping sound rings out. I turn to my friends wondering what it is, a girl in front of us turns as well. I’m not sure which of us says it first but everyone agrees it must be fireworks. There is no reason to think otherwise, the music continues unhindered and although I wonder why someone would set off fireworks in the middle of a crowd, it’s just a passing thought.
Then it happens again. For a moment, everyone around us is unphased again. I think it might even be part of the show.
Then Jason Aldean runs off the stage. The sound and lights cut out.
I don’t know which one of my friends actually says the words out loud but immediately we all know we need to leave. I remember thinking there is no way this is real, it’s all just some prank gone wrong and he’ll come back out in a second and we will feel so dumb at the exact same time I was thinking those shots are coming from the center of the crowd someone has a gun in there we need to get away. I don’t remember hearing anyone say get down, and maybe this is one of the things that saved us, we didn’t wait, we just moved.
We are among some of the first to leave and it's’ still easy to get through the crowd. I remember weaving through people with my friends and wondering why no one else was moving and if we were overreacting. As we head through the Malibu Rum Bar someone yells at us to remain calm and not to run but soon after that the chaos starts to unfurl. In the aftermath the facade of the rum bar would be all but torn down by people trying to escape the same way.
Route 91 only had one entrance and exit and it was all the way across the festival; we would have had to go through the entire crowd to reach it. Instead we went for the nearest edge of the crowd, back toward the Malibu Rum Bar stand. I think we headed for the bar because we thought it would be some sort of immediate cover, but also because we knew you could get out the other side and into the security and vendor staging area. But maybe it was just on instinct since we’d spent so much time there.
We run through the bar and to the narrow space behind it, there is chain link fence surrounding the entire festival so we turn left, the passageway is narrow and we try to squeeze behind the VIP toilet trailers and the fence. More and more people start to pour out that way and it starts to bottleneck, a few people start to jump the fence. My friends are going forward along the fence line and I start to lose them. I know we need to get out of the festival, but not towards the entrance with everyone else or it will be a stampede.
I remember thinking I’ll see how hard it is to get over the fence and then help my friends but I barely remember climbing it by the time I’m on the other side. I run along the fence to catch up with my friends and call their attention. I try to get them to jump over but no one is sure if they can make it. I can tell they are thinking about turning the other way and going with the crowd, we lock eyes as the crowd starts to push them away from me. Frantically I wonder if I should climb back over. Around me people are jumping the fence but it starts to sway as more and more people funnel into the area and try to squeeze by. I realize it’s going to fall. I pull on my side of the fence, and it starts to come down. I worry someone will get trapped under it as it falls but when it’s on the ground I scream for my friends frantically to come back and we all make it onto the same side.
We are on a road now and we all almost get lost again in the crowd. We round a corner and I look back into the festival, I see a man running with a machine gun and for a split second I think he’s a shooter, I freeze, but he isn’t firing so I think he must be security, I keep going. Maybe this actually happened before we hopped the fence. I’m not sure anymore. We get separated from one of our friends, the one we had forced to buy her ticket earlier that day. We’ve tried to piece together when it happened but no one is sure of the exact moment
We come to another chain link fence and people are splitting two ways - left (towards the strip and the front of the festival grounds) and right (down the street to the back of the festival behind the stage area). I don’t want to go either of these ways. I remember taking cover behind a car, unsure which way to go, and afraid of losing my friends if they make a different choice than me. It’s chaos around us.
There have been so many gunshots I am afraid it is not a lone shooter and that we may run into people waiting to gun us down as we are escaping if we turn a blind corner. Instead of going left and right my friend and I start to push down the fence with a group of people. It falls fairly fast. It comes crashing down into the parking lot on two cars and I remember feeling bad for whoever they belonged to. I didn’t realize the extent of the damage to come. Despite how scared I was I think there was a part of my brain that didn’t accept what was actually happening.
Our goal is to get as far away from the grounds as possible. The crowd starts to spread out through the parking lot, ducking behind cars and running from one to the next. Every time the remaining 5 of us start to get split up we manage to spot each other again. My friend drops her charger and she turns back to grab it, I stay with her, later she will tell me she felt stupid going back but also thought we might have to hide out and need our phones. It’s crazy how fast you can think in a split second.
We see men hiding behind big dumpsters. We take cover behind one as well. I think this is when we call our lost friend, we tell her to just keep running and stick with the crowd. There is no way to find her. Several people jump up and fling themselves into the bin, hiding in the heaps of trash. I wonder if we should do this too. I am constantly running through our options in my head. Cars are starting to drive out of the parking lot and I worry we will be hit. Someone wants to just jump in a random car. I say no. We have to stick together. We don’t know where the cars are going and we don’t know where the shooter is.
We keep running through the parking lot and end up back out on the streets. I think we are heading towards the airport, I like this idea, I think they will at least have security there. People start to group together again, running along the street. Cars are tearing out of the parking lot and a lone girl runs up to a random car and pounds on the window, begging strangers to take her with them. We all yell to let her in. They do, and speed off.
Every time the gun-fire stops I try to remind myself and my friends to walk and breathe. We don’t know how far we have to go and we need to conserve energy. I feel safer in the large group of people but don’t want to be in the front or left in the back. It feels like the shooter is chasing us.
It’s around this point that I finally call my mom. We are in some back alley street behind industrial buildings and it’s dark, people are still panicking but we are out of the immediate area of the festival. I’m on the phone when machine gun fire starts up again. I tell my mom I love her and I’m not sure what else. I think she can hear the gunfire in the background. Looking back I can’t imagine how scared she must have been and how much she held it together for me. I think possibly the only thing worse than being in danger is to be helpless while a loved one is in danger.
The crowd rounds a corner and we hit a dead end. Another big chain link fence. A few people start to jump over this as well but I realize that beyond that fence is the airport tarmac. People are blindly fleeing across the runway in the pitch black. All I can think is how they’re running out in the open with no cover. Then we notice the crowd start to enter a building to the right, someone is holding the door open and we think they’ve come out to rescue us. It’s not till a few moments later when we realize a group has shattered the glass at the ground floor and broken into the building.
Running up the stairs with hundreds of people is pure chaos, people are shouting that it’s a bad idea and we should turn back, that it’s a dead end and we will get trapped. We emerge from the stairwell into a deserted office building corridor, full of conference rooms. People are running around trying to hide, or turning back to go out the other way or down to different floors. The air is full of panic. We continue forward.
We go through an office kitchen and someone has opened the fridge. We take as many waters as we can, urging everyone who passes to take one and drink. I’m afraid of what will happen when the adrenaline wears off. From the kitchen we bust through a door into an airplane hanger. It’s extremely eerie, with one lone plane and at least 20 fancy cars. We are on a rampart above it and a few people are down on the floor also trying to figure out where to hide. Two of my friends run to the end of the rampart to check the door. They say they see a security guard. We feel safe for a moment, he must be holding the door for us. A stranger we are with asks us if we are sure he is legit. Did we see his ID? Another friend calls out to him but he doesn’t move. We approach him and we realize that it’s a wax figure. We are all pretty shaken and now the building starts to weird us out a bit. At this point we decide we cannot stay on the rampart of the hanger because it is so exposed and we are all expecting a shooter to burst in at any moment.
We go back to the corridor full of conference rooms but they are all glass walled. At one point there is a girl with us who lost her friends, we try to get her to hide with us but she leaves in search of them. I hope she found them. We finally find a small office with a wooden door and only one small window. The five of us get inside. At this point the hundreds of people we came in with have all run off to different places and it’s growing quiet. Inside the office we barricade the door, and hide behind the desk.
This is the moment when the first bits of panic start to hit. We are no longer running. We are hidden but we don’t know if we are safe. The sheer scope of what happened has only just started to hit us.
It’s the most cliche thing to say, but it all happened so fast. Our heads were going a mile a minute as we were fleeing. It feels like an eternity but also only like seconds. Between running out and arriving in the building some things are a blur and then some moments are seared in my mind. I can’t quite create a perfect timeline. Even later after getting together and talking it through with my friends we will still find gaps and places where we are unsure how exactly things happened.
In the office we try to call 911 and get a busy signal. It’s only been 10 minutes since I texted my friend about Jason Aldean’s song. I text her that there were gunshots and we ran. She lives in Vegas and my text is the first thing she hears about the shooting. It hasn’t hit the news yet. We turn to twitter for information. She turns on the police scanner and starts to text us any information she can find. We all reach out to friends and and loved ones but none of us are able to talk on the phone for long, we have to be quiet, in case the shooter comes in the building. I get a twitter message from a friend who is afraid to text me in case I am hiding out somewhere and my phone isn’t on silent. It’s not the only message I receive like that.
None of us even know where we are hiding, Google maps can’t pull up an accurate address so we search the office and find a business card. We must have run almost a mile in our cowboy boots but none of us thought of our feet at the time, being tired or in pain wasn’t an option. Later we will be thankful for many things, including that our friend opted out of her heeled boots for tonight.
We finally get through to emergency services and they tell us to stay put, and ask if we have something to defend ourselves. We are finally able to check in with out lost friend and find out she is safely hidden in an airplane hanger nearby. The guy from craigslist who sold us the wristband also texts us to make sure we are okay. We haven’t heard anyone else in the building, but every time there is a sound we think someone might break in. We are scared to venture outside the office. Everyone is on edge. We know we are just as likely to get attacked by another scared refugee if we go creeping around in the dark. In my own head I am planning what I will do if someone tries to come in the office. A friend's text reinforces what I am already gearing up to do. Run, Hide, Fight. In that order. We all forget to ration the water we took and wonder if we should go out for more but we decide to wait until we really need it. Right now it isn’t worth the risk.
Then the news starts hitting around the world - we watch as our lives become part of a hashtag. #PrayforVegas.
We hear reports of multiple shooters. All the hotels start to report shots fired as if the shooters are moving north across the strip. Reports of deaths and the extent of the gunfire start to pour in. We finally learn a shooter is in Mandalay Bay. We hear reports of multiple shooters, in the Aria, in New York New York, maybe even in Tropicana, then others about a bomb in the Luxor. Some reports say they’re trying to take over the strip. We huddle in our office. I am still in survival mode and running off adrenaline and the exhaustion and fear won't fully hit me until we are out. But one by one it starts to creep in. It’s starting to get very warm in the office. I start to get antsy just sitting still. No one wants to sink too deep into their own thoughts. We tell each other that we have to keep it together. That we’re so proud of each other for getting out. We try to keep each other's spirits up. One of my friends falls asleep, I think our bodies are just exhausted. But no one cries. I know we laugh at some points, we have to to keep our heads somehow. We take care of each other. Then air conditioning finally kicks in. I don’t know if we have a savior to thank in the building, or just an automated system.
It’s not till a little after 11 that we learn one suspect is down, we’ve been in there for almost an hour. We begin to grasp exactly how close we were as we look at pictures of the same Malibu Rum Bar trampled to almost nothing with bodies in the background. Everyone tells us to stay put. They think there are other shooters.
I have to stress that these were some of the most terrifying moments. Looking back now and knowing there was only one shooter I am tempted to feel silly for remaining there so long and the extremes we went to. But I can’t fully explain how it felt in those moments. We had just witnessed something that would forever change all of us. We had just run for our lives and we were hiding for our lives. In the office we were helpless, our phones, friends, and twitter were our lifelines to the outside world and what was going on as we tried to figure out what was happening and stay vigilant and level headed and not let fear take over. Everyone who texted me during that time helped me keep fighting.
Around 11:40 our lost friend tells us that they took her and everyone in her hanger on a bus to UNLV and our friends picked her up. Around midnight I fire off an email to my work letting them know I’m not sure if I’ll be in on Monday. It’s maybe the first sign I’m not thinking clearly and exhaustion is setting in. I probably didn’t need to worry about my attendance or worry my co-workers by telling them I was hiding out from an active shooter.
After being in the office for 2 hours we finally start to think about moving. We start to worry that no one is coming to get us even though we were told to wait inside. The police reports are finally saying there is no longer an active threat but some of us think we should still stay till morning. The office has been our safe haven for so long it’s hard to leave. We have tons of people offering us help with rides and places to stay. The only problem is that we can’t get to each other. The roads are closed all around us.
We finally leave the room, some more reluctantly than others. We are unsure what we will do once we get outside. We creep through the now empty building and down to the exit where we see another couple on the level below us. The guy say he sees someone outside and tells us to wait while he checks it out. Everyone is still on edge. He goes outside with his hands up and calls back to us saying it’s the police. We start to hurry downstairs and I say we should probably put our hands up as well. They usher us across the road and into another open hanger, telling us to move quickly but not to run. They ask us if there is anyone else in the building. We aren’t sure. The hanger is empty but there is blood all over the ground. Outside there is bus full of people and it’s about to leave. I want to ask everyone on the bus where they were hiding and I wonder if they were in the same building or if they were outside, I want to know their stories as well. I stay quiet.
When we get off the bus at UNLV there are people asking if we need rides and someone has brought cases of water and is offering them to everyone. I’m reminded of the look for the helpers quote from Mr. Rodgers. Already people are coming together to help. In the wake of the devastation this show of compassion almost makes me cry.
It’s around 1am and we have several rides waiting for us at Thomas-Mack but we aren’t sure where to go. At one point the idea of being driven back to LA is offered, and having the hotel ship our stuff home. We run through a lot of options. I don’t want to sit in a car for four hours. No one is sure if we can get back to the hotel, but mostly no one is ready to go that close to the strip. We decide to go to our friends house in the suburbs. Our friend’s roommate we don’t know drives me and my friend. He’s listening to the police scanner. They’re still clearing the floors in Mandalay Bay. We arrive at his house and seconds before opening the door he warns us they’ve decorated for halloween. He opens the door to a GIANT scary clown hanging from the roof. It’s just one more thing that feels surreal.
We sit on the couch as the rest of our friends arrive in other cars. I eat a hot pocket. I can’t stop drinking water. Someone puts on Broad City. I shut my eyes on the couch wrapped in a blanket. I can’t quite sleep though. I finally mark myself as ‘Safe’ on facebook. An hour or so passes this way. Conversation drifting around me. It’s when everything finally slows down that I feel the worst. I’ve been going non-stop and my body isn’t sure how to rest despite it’s exhaustion. My mind turns to people I love, I hope they know it. I wonder why some people haven’t checked in with me yet and I immediately feel selfish. At 3am the conversation turns to our flight, it takes off in just 3 hours. The airports are open again and it’s on schedule. We decide to be on it even though it feels daunting.
It’s windy, still dark and eerie on the drive to our hotel. They’re checking everyone who comes into the hotel and the security guard looks at us and see’s our cowboy boots, our shorts, our scraped knees and tired faces and I can tell she knows. We share an elevator with a family just checking in. We don’t speak but I wonder if they know. We scramble to pack our bags and are in and out of our room in less than 10 minutes. We arrive at the airport a little before 5am. We all force ourselves to eat croissants. On the plane I think I sleep but I’m not sure.
At LAX we have three different rides. One friend’s mom has come to get her. My roommate’s boyfriend is here for her, and so is another friend’s boyfriend. It’s not till everyone hugs their family and significant others that I finally feel the tears. I want to crawl into someone's arms as well. I ride silently home. I lug my suitcase upstairs and I crawl into bed.
I answer a few texts, and am floored by the supportive comments on my facebook from people from all times of my life offering love and support and anything I need. The problem is I don’t know what I need. At some point I sleep. I expect it will all feel real when I wake up again. But it doesn’t work that way.
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It never stops feeling surreal. Not even as we pour over all the news reports and photos, or as I read through the ever growing list of names or as Vegas lights go dim, and as memorials go up. Not even as I write these words. I tell the story over and over but my voice feels numb. I know that no one really knows what to say. People tell me I don’t have to talk about it but sometimes all I want to do is talk about it. I don’t want to be alone but I don’t know how to ask for comfort. I don’t want to feel like I’m playing victim for attention or sympathy. I spend a lot of time just sitting with my friends.
In the immediate days after one of the things that makes it feel real are the messages of support and love and thankfulness from friends and family. So many people tell me they’re so thankful I’m okay. I appreciate every one, even though sometimes they’re what make me cry. I still read through them sometimes. From the guy I met years ago at a bar in Ireland, to people haven’t spoken to since we were kids reminding me to take care of myself, to my best friend telling me how scared and proud she was. Someone tells me afterwards that they expect that I must have a lot left to give the world. This message burrows down deep in me afterwards. I really hope they are right. I hope my survival wasn’t a waste. I feel desperate for a purpose. To make my life matter.
It doesn’t take long for survivors guilt to sink in. I recognize it as what it is, but that doesn’t make it go away. I feel guilty for not being okay and for my own emotions afterwards. Sometimes I think I don’t deserve so much sympathy. I didn’t see anyone hit, I didn’t lose anyone or even get injured. I feel guilty for being okay when I laugh and smile afterwards because there are so many people who are not okay and who can’t do that.
I can’t stop thinking I didn’t do enough. I feel guilty for running when I hear stories of everyone who stayed and helped. People who held tourniquets to the wounds of strangers, or saw their friends shot in front of them and still went back to help. What did I do? I pushed over a few fences and hid in an office for two hours.
It’s hard to process that the only reason we are alive is really just luck. We ran away from the shooter and not towards him because we were on the left of the crowd. An hour earlier and we would have been at the silent disco. On the other side in the line of fire. People try to tell me everything happens for a reason, or I have a guardian angel. But what about everyone who was injured and who was killed? There is no reason for someone to get shot at a concert.
Over and over it hits me how close it could have been. 20-maybe-30 feet from us people were sprayed with bullets.
I don’t feel afraid of everything or haunted but I cry for no reason a lot in the days after. There is a fine line between moving on like everything is fine without facing anything head on and hiding in my house and forgetting to live. I learn I have to face the hurt head on, and move forward when I can and not feel guilty when I have good moments and understand that sometimes bad moments will come out of nowhere.
Right after it happened I took monday off because I was numb and exhausted and hadn’t slept. Tuesday I spent unpacking, cleaning, and exercising. I felt useful. I felt productive. I felt okay. But I couldn’t sleep alone so I slept on a friend’s couch. The first day back at work I remember feeling almost fine. I remember retelling my story several times. I felt weird that people wanted me to go to therapy. I felt okay. It wasn’t until someone would hug me or really ask if I was okay that I cried and realized I wasn’t. I spend a lot of time at first staying home with my friends who were there. We are a group who usually loves the Halloween holidays, we have a very quiet October.
It’s impossible to not feel helpless. I registered as a donor, I signed up for bethematch.com, but it’s not enough. I’ve started to speak louder about gun control even when it means arguing with long time friends. I feel I owe it to those who no longer have a voice to at least use mine. But again, nothing changes. The news moves on to other shootings and we send thoughts and prayers to the new victims.
And that is perhaps the hardest part. The first week when the country is grieving with you, you can feel the love and support. Everyone is as upset as you are. There is support from all angles. There are constant friends who want to talk and offers to help with anything you need. After something like this it seems like your whole life should change, and some things do but a lot don’t. All your old problems are still there, they just seem different now. After a week or so the world goes back to normal. We have to move on and people are ready for you to be back to normal. People want to hear you’re okay and you want to make them feel better. You don’t want them to feel helpless like you so you say yes. Because what else is there to say. You’re here. You’re alive. You’re unhurt. You’re okay. You are lucky.
Sometimes I go on a run and I feel invincible, like nothing can stop me, and then a half a mile later I almost have a panic attack because I see a dog running in the shadows. It all comes in waves. It’s hard to watch my friends struggle with the same things. To spook at loud noises, to look for the exit first in a crowded room, to be unable to enjoy things we used to as easily.
My friends and I survived a huge mass shooting and it’s weird to be considered a victim now. I’ve been shot at, and I’ll never forget that sound. I don’t know how you can fully process and understand something like this. Everyone has such a different experience, I’ve been seeking out whatever accounts I can. It’s unlikely but maybe I’ll find someone who was in that same building. I’d love to find the people who broke down that glass and let us into the building and thank them. We finally figured out we were in the VideoPoker.Com building. We even reached out to the woman whose office we hid in on linkedin, it felt important to connect to her. We’d left her a note thanking her and apologizing for breaking in. We just thought she should know her office helped keep us safe. She told us they’re going to frame the note we left her.
A month or so later Vegas still comes up in passing each time there is a shooting but I feel like I’m exploiting people's sympathy when I bring it up. Route 91 will fade out from the news and the minds of most people, it’s already started. But it will always be a part of mine, and a part of history in a way.
It is interesting how it seems to linger in my life. A week or so after my friend and I attend our first big sporting event since Route 91. One of us brings up Vegas in our Uber on the way home, we have a hard time not bringing it up the first few weeks after. It turns out our driver lost a friend at the concert, it’s good for us to talk. Another night at a bar a guy I’ve just met jokes about how much he loves Coachella, he thinks it’s a great bonding experience for a team, just drop them off in the middle of a music festival and tell them to survive. He goes on and on and all I can think about in my head is he doesn’t know the first thing about surviving a festival or how unfunny his joke is to me. Just a week ago I was interviewing a girl at work and asked her about her hobbies. She told me about how she loves concerts and went to a Chance concert a day or so after Vegas and how tense it was. I never know if I should just stay quiet in moments like that. It’s not that I mind talking about it so much as it is I feel like I’m bringing it up for attention and no one really knows what to say afterwards. I worry about making people feel guilty and I am conscious of not using what happened as a crutch. But I also feel like that sometimes limits me from talking about it. I won't say I never have bad days but I don't want people to feel like they have to reach out to me because I am sometimes sad. That is not my intention here.
I wrote all this because I needed to tell the story. For awhile it felt like the only story I had to tell. But I don’t want this to define me forever and I know it won’t. I know it will fade for me too, it’s already started, but it will leave it’s mark in some ways too. I think a lot now about how quickly life can just be over and how pointless that makes things feel but at the same time how important it makes it to really live.
I haven’t done enough yet.
All 6 of us on Sunday before the Festival