Night Zero- Second Day

by Rob Horner

  The airport!

  She’d been at work in the dusty little municipal airport serving Greenwood, Mississippi and its rural surroundings, just a desk clerk with access to the booking software for a half-dozen major airlines. They might not be able to take you where you wanted to go, but they could get you to Jackson and coordinate your transfer to any other destination from there.

  She was at the airport and…

  It all came back in a rush. The facility manager ran screaming into the open area which served as lobby and gate waiting area, yelling about a “big one coming in” with some sort of medical emergency. They had a PA system, and here the manager was acting like a New York trust-fund baby who’d just seen his first rat. But it stuck in her memory and served as sensory proof that she hadn’t dreamed it. The man’s voice cracked as he yelled. He tripped over a small duffel bag sitting on the floor, stumble-staggering a few steps before catching his balance. Then the plane landed, and all hell broke loose.

  They hadn’t suffered a medical emergency, past tense. The passengers and crew were smack-dab in the middle of one, and now they’d brought every employee of the airport along for the ride.

  Kim tried to be helpful, fetching cots and sheets and pillows, even going so far as to bring a bucket of water to a pretty lady with blood in her eyes. Nothing she did was good enough for the woman, though, and the only thanks she’d received was a bone-crushing hit to the face from the very bucket she’d given her.

  That was the last thing Kim remembered before waking up…

  “Where?”

  One of the flight crew nurses mumbled something back but Kim didn’t hear it.

  In the space of a second, everything changed.

  Her headache disappeared.

  Her face still felt…wrong. There was a crunchy kind of grating around her left eye when she opened her mouth, accompanied by a sensation of incomplete motion, if that made any sense. The left side wasn’t moving as much as the right.

  But it didn’t hurt.

  Her arm still burned like fire, but it was tamped down, glowing coals rather than a roaring blaze, the welcome heat of a radiator on a cold day as opposed to accidentally touching a hot stove with a bare hand.

  “I think she zonked out again,” Jake said.

  “No,” Kim answered, opening her eyes. For a wonder, the light didn’t hurt. “I actually feel a lot better.”

  Chapter 2

  Jesse yawned, stretching his arms as much as the cockpit would allow. He was making good time, trying to approach John C Tune from the south rather than the west. He’d kept his course more easterly than northeasterly during the first few hours, anticipating the blindness of a rising sun. Now, just coming into Nashville’s radio circle, he adjusted airspeed and altitude, eyes wide and grainy, watching for the speck in the distance which might grow into a full-sized heavy in a matter of seconds. Now was no time to be flying exhausted.

  He kept staring, sunlight like a laser beam drilling into his head from the right, both hands gripping the yoke and ready to react.

  It took him a full minute to realize something was wrong.

  He had to be closing in on Nashville. On the city, not just the airport’s flight path. Hell, he ought to be in the thick of their traffic.

  But there was nothing.

  No silver birds in the air.

  No chatter on the radio.

  Wait. That made no sense.

  Even if the airport was shut down because of a bomb scare, there’d be voices all over the radio, waving off flights, arranging diversions.

  Maybe his radio was malfunctioning?

  He keyed the mic.

  “Nashville tower. Nashville tower. This is Charlie Sierra 1-2-Niner private. Over.”

  There was a change in the dead air in his headphones when he keyed the mic. The change signified an open channel, a lessening of the nothing.

  “I repeat. Nashville tower. Nashville tower. This is Charlie Sierra 1-2-Niner private requesting SitRep. Over.”

  Still nothing.

  His logbook showed the Nashville tower’s radio frequencies. He checked the channel selector. He was on 118.6 but was getting nothing but dead air. Maybe they had the radio malfunction?

  All airports run multiple radio frequencies, both as redundancies and to shift communications out of an open channel. It was a management tool as much as a safety net. Glancing at his book, he altered the radio to frequency 257.8. The dead air remained, but there was something, a low-pitched whine just at the edge of audibility.

  “Nashville tower. This is Charlie Sierra 1-2-Niner private requesting SitRep. Nothing but dead air on Primary Comm. Over.”

  As before, there was nothing.

  Leaning to the side, Jesse stared out the window. He was high, but nowhere near as high as the commercial jets flew. He could make out the broad swathes of green and gray where country met city, the ribbons of concrete which were the meeting, merging, twisting and twining Interstates, and, far off to his right, shadows which might be the western edges of the Appalachians. He couldn’t see the teeming life moving below him, but it had to be there. One crazy night in Mississippi and Oklahoma hadn’t erased everything.

  Had it?

  Sweat popped out on his forehead as he tried both primary frequencies again, calling out for a report of the situation on the ground.

  He tried the approach frequencies with the same results. He wasn’t supposed to talk in the departure channels, but he tried them anyway.

  Silence. Nothing.

  At the bottom of the Nashville page was the emergency frequency, another channel he was supposed to steer clear of without an emergency to report or manage.

  Flipping to 121.5, the dead air was replaced with a male voice…

  “—to all incoming and outgoing air traffic—”

  …a recording, broadcasting a repeating message.

  “Due to unforeseen circumstances, Nashville International Airport will be closed to all incoming and outgoing air traffic until further notice. This message will repeat.”

  It didn’t make sense. The people in the Greenwood airport and the hospital in Oklahoma—one wasn’t his fault but the second might be, since he’d brought Ragan from one to the other. But how could the violent outbreak in Mississippi be affecting Tennessee?

  Stupid, Jesse thought. Shake off the fog and think.

  The craziness in Greenwood didn’t start in Greenwood. That plane came from Atlanta.

  Up until then, Jesse had hoped the—whatever it was—was confined to the people on the plane. Call it a mass psychosis or a terrorist biological attack, if it only affected the passengers on a single plane, it wasn’t as frightening.

  He’d known, though. Or at least he’d suspected. Otherwise, why was he planning on taking the CD with Ragan’s CT report straight to DC, rather than back to Atlanta?

  So, think bigger.

  Not a single plane, but perhaps an entire airport gets exposed to…something. Now it’s not one hundred-plus souls but a hundred times that many, going to a hundred different locations. How many were short hops to Nashville? What would have happened to the airport if multiple aircraft disgorged passengers at a half-dozen different gates, none of them quite full gone yet because the flight was much shorter?

  His exhausted brain had no problem providing the answer in a flickering series of silent images—raving lunatics rushing out of gangways, rampaging through the gate waiting areas, tearing into groups of people patiently waiting for the newly arrived planes to refuel.

  Wait. Back up.

  No, it wouldn’t have been a scene out of a horror movie. It would’ve been something out of a medical drama. That’s how it started, right?

  A dozen or so planes disgorging hundreds of sick people, way more than the airport could handle.

  How long until someone concluded there was an epidemic, a super stomach flu? Would that have been enough to shut the airport down?

  Maybe not at first, but once the sick people became vio
lent, or contaminated those who didn’t have the stomach symptoms…how long then?

  Jesse tried to focus on the timing, but it was hard.

  It wasn’t the what-ifs and assumptive multiplication.

  How long had it been since the plane landed in Greenwood, Mississippi? How long had he been running on adrenaline and industrial strength, hospital brand coffee?

  It couldn’t have been more than eighteen hours. But it had only taken three hours for the shit to hit the fan in Greenwood. Four, if you figured the plane from Atlanta flew an hour before making its emergency landing.

  Think, man. Do the math. This is important.

  Let’s say the plane landed at four-thirty. That sounded about right. By seven-thirty, the sick people were dying, and they’d managed to turn the non-sick into stark, raving lunatics. He lit out of Greenwood then, taking little Ragan with him on a westward run. He hadn’t known she’d been…infected.

  Did you notice the infection in her arm? It seems to be coming from a scratch on her hand.

  No ma’am. I hadn’t noticed. I was more worried about her seizure.

  We’ll get a scan of her head. Get some blood work and start an antibiotic. It’s possible the infection could have triggered the seizure. We’ll know more in a few hours. Is she allergic to any medicine that you know of?

  Ragan flipped in the CT room.

  No, that wasn’t right. Ragan flipped in the plane before they landed in Oklahoma.

  She died in the CT room. They called a code. All those doctors and nurses rushed in and started CPR.

  Then she woke up, and all hell broke loose.

  Jesse shuddered, unwanted memories flooding his mind, nurses being bitten, blood falling to the floor. Even if they got her restrained, how many did she infect? Would it continue to spread from person to person?

  Remembering Ragan attacking him from the back seat of the Cessna, Jesse was sure it would.

  The sickness had perhaps as much as nineteen hours to settle in Nashville.

  He didn’t have the brainpower to properly visualize how far it might have spread after that.

  Was there even a chance the smaller airport to the north was still operational?

  Should he power on? There were dozens of private airfields to choose from. Perhaps he should look for one outside any major flight paths. He had more than an hour of fuel left. That should be enough to…

  “—ears on? I repeat, is there anyone out there with their ears on?”

  Jesse clapped his hands to his headset, surprise etching his features. The radio dial read 122.7, one of the universal communications channels. He’d been spinning the control while working through the problem.

  The UNICOM channels were used to provide air to ground communications for smaller airfields, a way for private locations to manage air traffic, coordinate services, and even allow pilots to communicate with each other when no tower was present or it was unmanned. Many larger airports also utilized UNICOM frequencies, and Nashville was no exception.

  The channel was familiar to Jesse, though he didn’t immediately recall whether it was one of Nashville’s or belonged to another airport. Working on the AM band allowed for long range communication, even in a small plane like his.

  Once again, Jesse keyed his mic.

  “Unknown tower? This is Charlie Sierra 1-2-Niner private outside Nashville. I read you. Over.”

  “Oh, thank God!” the voice said. “Thank God for you. Please. You have to help me. Over.”

  Suddenly more awake than he’d been in hours, Jesse replied, “Charlie Sierra 1-2-Niner private requesting location and SitRep. Over.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry. It’s just…it’s been—” The voice trailed off, but the line remained active. Jesse pictured a tower employee in some airport holding the mic keyed while he tried to calm himself. As exciting as it was to hear a voice on the radio, Jesse schooled himself not to get his hopes up. The mysterious voice could be calling in from just about anywhere, though the clarity of sound argued for someplace close.

  “This is JCT Airfield, C-S-1-2-Niner private. I repeat. This is John C Tune Airfield calling C-S-1-2-Niner private. Over.”

  Jesse’s heart skipped in his chest. He scanned his controls. He was in Nashville airspace but hadn’t reached the city yet. A quick shift of the yoke angled him northwest and tilted the nose down. Maybe this would work out after all.

  “I read you, JCT,” Jesse replied. “But I’m not getting anything from Nashville. What’s your SitRep? Over.”

  “The situation is bad, C-S. I need your help. Over.”

  “Define ‘bad.’ Over.”

  The John C Tune radio operator keyed the mic again. Jesse heard a sigh come over the line. “I’m trapped in the radio room, C-S. There are…people…trying to get in, trying to get to me. They’re crazy or…I dunno…sick…or something. Please. I need your help. Um…over.”

  You need to get this to the CDC.

  Atlanta to Greenwood to Oklahoma. Atlanta to Nashville to…God only knew where. How big was this…outbreak? How many people had been affected?

  Jesse had been given a job to do. Maybe it was the most important thing he’d ever been asked to do. It hadn’t seemed so, not when it was just a couple of crazy people in an airport. But this was so much bigger than one plane.

  He had a job to do.

  There was enough fuel in the Cessna to keep flying east, put another seventy-five to a hundred miles between him and Nashville, then look for a private field away from a major airport. Maybe he’d get lucky and find some out of the way place where the craziness hadn’t reached yet.

  Maybe.

  And maybe that was just the kind of thing Jesse Franks couldn’t do.

  “I read you, JCT. Please advise: have you been injured? Over.”

  The response was immediate. “No, Charlie Sierra, but not for lack of trying. A lot of others have been, and it seems like the sicker they get, the crazier they act. But I’m safe, for now. Over.”

  “Please advise a clear landing site with access to fuel. Over.”

  * * * * *

  The landing on runway 2 went smoothly, and within minutes Jesse was coasting toward a mid-sized hangar outside a pilot’s parking area. There were a lot of small planes like his, aircraft for the weekend hobby hoppers who enjoyed the ability to get away under their own power. Several larger planes occupied spaces like kings, given clearance all around them as though all others were peons and their collective poverty might be contagious. Jesse didn’t begrudge the owners of the sleek aircraft their wealth or privilege, though he couldn’t resist a longing stare at a beautiful, black Cessna 680 Sovereign, the same type of luxury plane owned and flown by Harrison Ford.

  The morning air was still and silent as he climbed out of the aircraft. Too silent, he thought, considering he was only a few short minutes away from a major metropolitan area. There was no road noise coming from the nearby highway, no sound of men joking around as they performed preflight inspections on some of the other birds, and no roaring buzz as another private pilot warmed up his expensive hobby.

  A few small cars and pickup trucks lined the runway, though at a distance of several meters away from the concrete. It wouldn’t stop an out of control plane from crashing into one of them, but those kinds of things didn’t happen at a place like John Tune. There were no flight schools operating out of this airport.

  At least I’ll be able to hear anyone coming.

  Grunting and tugging, Jesse maneuvered his plane closer to the gas pumps. He’d gotten the radio operator’s phone number before killing the engine. Now, he keyed the number into his smartphone.

  “All right, I’m down. Going to fill up first in case I can’t later.”

  “So that was you I just saw landing?” the man asked as the call was connected.

  “That’s me. I’m Jesse. Jesse Franks.

  “Steven Crawford. Steve is fine.”

  “Okay, Steve, I’m down. Where are you?”

  “You see
the low building about midway along the runway?”

  “Yes. Is that where you are?”

  The building in question looked like a prefab construction of steel, plopped down at the midpoint of the runway. It didn’t make sense as a control tower or waiting area, since it had only a single dirt driveway leading to it from around the back end of the property. Another building sat at the far edge of the runway, abutting the street. Larger and with more glass than siding, it made a more logical place for a terminal.

  “No, it’s the maintenance office. I’m in the big building at the other end.”

  “Okay, so why point me to the other building?” Jesse asked.

  “Are you carrying?”

  The inference should have been simple, but Jesse was still running on fumes, despite the second wind Steve’s voice had given him. His first reaction was offense, to think this guy cared if Jesse had drugs on him. Thankfully, it clicked before he said something stupid.

  “No, I’m not armed.”

  “Didn’t think you would be, though some guys carry pistols in their Oh-Shit bags.”

  Jesse remembered wishing for one during the attack by Ragan, though of course he couldn’t have shot a little girl, no matter how crazy she acted. Still, Steve was right. There were a lot of guys who ignored concealed carry laws and brought along a pistol, just as there were any number of men and women with loaded guns in their glove compartments. More often than not, a guy or gal would prefer the option to defend themselves and answer for it later than not have a chance at all.

  “That building is our combination break room and parts depot. As luck would have it, I picked up a brand-new Walther chambered for .380 rounds from Rick’s Stick ‘Em Up on my way in…God, was it yesterday? Yeah. Picked it up and two boxes of shells. Got them in my locker.”

  “You think I’m going to need that?”

  “I don’t think, good buddy. I know it. Can you hear that?”