Slowly, the two of them back up, Darlene saving Klein’s life. For now.
They disappear into the shadows of the closest hangar.
Thirty-Five
By the time Norm, Abby, and Herb reach me. Darlene and Klein are gone. They’ve taken this crying man’s plane, this man on his knees in a pool of Father Michael’s blood.
I am helpless. I can do nothing but watch their plane take off into the blue sky. I’ve never felt so…hopeless.
As they flew off, I swear I could see Darlene’s face in the window. I swear.
“That bastard!” Norm yells. He’s fuming, his chest rising and falling.
“Oh God,” Abby says, turning away from Father Michael’s body. She grabs Herb and leads him off. But Herb already saw and he’s crying. The sound seems so far away.
I’m kind of just standing here, in shock.
Jack.
Jack.
“JACK!” Norm screams. He’s now in front of me.
“We have to get them.” I say. “We have to get Darlene back.”
Norm gives me a look like it’s too late, but I won’t accept that. I’m not going to give up. I’m not.
There is a long span of time that passes that I don’t remember. I’m numb. I’m pacing. I’m frantic. I’m screaming. I’m crying. I’m covering up Father Michael’s bloody corpse. I’m on the ground.
God, help me. God, help Darlene. God, help us all.
Thirty-Six
“Jacky, is Darlene gonna be all right?” Herb asks. His face is an ashy color.
I don’t answer at first. He pokes me. The sky is very bright. My head throbs. I don’t think I’ve left the general vicinity of where Darlene was taken hostage in hours. Or it could be minutes since they flew away. I don’t know.
Then I answer because I have to snap out of it. I have to be strong. I can’t lay down and let Klein win. “She’ll be fine, Herb,” I say. “We’ll get her back.”
“Doc won’t hurt her. He’s a nice man. He’s jus keepin her safe,” Herb says.
I try my best to smile, knowing this is not the truth, knowing damn well Darlene could already be dead.
Then Herb points at my arm which is bleeding. He says, “I have Band-Aids.” His big hands dig into his pockets. “They’re real pretty. Have flowers on ‘em. Darlene gave ‘em to me — oh, man, where are they?” He pulls his pockets inside out. The only things that fall from them are a couple of shiny pennies and lint. He looks very disappointed, which for some reason makes me even sadder. His innocence is what does it. How can you be innocent in a world where you have to kill to survive? In a world where the saviors — the smart, upstanding men and women of this world — end up being the abominations we’re taught to fear? Or in a world where a holy man lays dead at our feet? Where a man’s true love is taken from him? You can’t. Yet, somehow Herb is. I envy him for that.
“You all right?” Norm asks the fat man sitting near Father Michael’s corpse.
“Yes, yes, I’m all right,” the fat man says. “I’m George. Father Michael w-was my friend.”
“We know,” Norm answers.
Then something changes on George’s face. He goes from scared and sad to blood-red furious. “That son of a bitch,” he says. “That son of a bitch killed my damn near only friend and he took my goddam plane.”
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself say. I really am, too. I’m sorry for it all. For everything.
“Tracker!” George says. We all look at him like he’s crazy, sitting there in Father Michael’s blood, teary eyed and sweaty. “Tracker on my plane. I can get him. I can get that rotten son of a bitch.”
I gasp. “You mean it? Trackers?”
George nods.
I look to Norm to see what his expression is. Usually Norm can tell the crazies and he knows all that technobabble about planes and stuff, being in the military and all. But he’s giving me no sign that this man is spouting nonsense. I feel my chest, very hesitantly, fill up with hope.
“Trackers,” George says again. He gets up, blood dripping off of him and heads to the other shuttered hangar.
I find myself following. Again, trying not to get my hopes up. As I’m walking I hear Abby scream and instantly I know what that scream is about.
Zombies.
Always.
I snap my head in that direction, seeing Norm get in his battle stance, and Abby race across the tarmac to drag Herb away, crying.
I see the first signs of the horde spilling out from around the corner. Mangled limbs. Bloody. Tattered clothes. And those eyes. Always those yellow eyes.
Hell has vomited up on earth and we are drowning in its puke.
Thirty-Seven
No, we can’t fight this horde. The odds are not in our favor.
Norm aims at the lead zombies about fifty paces away.
“Don’t waste your ammo,” I say. We aren’t going to be able to circle back to the car where the rest of our weapons and ammunition is. What we have on us — which is not much — is all we have. The thought alone is a punch to the gut.
Norm understands and lowers his pistol, shaking his head. Tough luck. Real tough luck.
“The hangar,” I say. We need to move and we need to move fast.
Abby and Herb reach us, breathing hard and fast. She has a look on her face that says, Please don’t tell me we have to keep running. But we do.
“C’mon, Herb,” I say. He stands looking at the coming wave of dead with wide eyes, shaking. “We are going to be okay. We just have to move.”
As hard as it is right now, I can’t think of Darlene. I have to get to the plane and get everyone to safety.
The sounds of the zombies fill the air. Seem to drown my voice out.
We turn and start moving. The hangar is a ways down from the hangar Klein escaped from. I scan the surrounding area quickly and don’t see any zombies. But who knows what’ll be inside of the place. I really doubt all that will be in there is a plane. Call me a pessimist. I’ve just seen too much shit in this world to think otherwise.
We move across the runway. My legs are burning and my arms are even worse. Dimly, I’m aware that I’m in the lead. The sun beats down on us overhead. Summer is close, but the zombies are closer and that’s all that matters.
Norm slingshots ahead of me, his pistol gleaming in his hand. He moves very gracefully, checks the narrow alleyways between buildings with a once over and then grabs the hangar’s sliding door. He heaves it open. Inside is a plane that gleams about as bright as Norm’s gun in the sunlight. It’s not very big, but it’s bigger than the one Klein took off in.
He motions us inside of it. At first glance, this aircraft doesn’t look like it’s going to be able to fly very far at all, let alone carry all of us. I mean, Herb alone accounts for probably seventy-five percent of the plane’s weight capacity. I move forward anyway.
George climbs into the front seat and starts hitting switches. The engines kick on with a revving type of whine. Propellers blow papers all over the inside of the hangar. Norm crawls in next and reaches out to grab me. I take his hand.
Then Norm disappears into the small fuselage for a moment and comes back as Herb and Abby are climbing up the three steps. He looks beyond me while George is screaming over the roar of the engines for us to hurry our asses up. Norm’s tan face drains of all color and I don’t need to turn around to know what the cause is. Because I can hear them. I can actually hear them over the propellers and whirring machinery.
I do look over my shoulder just for the hell of it. I quickly wish I hadn’t because what I see nails me to the ground. My bones feel like they have simultaneously turned to steel and jelly. This is not the horde from the road — well, it is, but it’s more than that. It’s as if that horde teamed up with three more hordes. It’s as if D.C. has followed me to the smallish town of Butain. They are so many, they move like one collective mass, all rotten and gummy and petrified. Their yellow eyes glow brighter than the sun and they search us out. Fresh meat.
>
It’s only as Norm grabs me harshly by the collar that I move from the doorway.
I slam the door shut.
The dead are moving faster than they should. They must be pushing each other forward. Some kind of zombie support system, something like that. I hear a beeping coming from the cockpit. The door is open and George’s hands move with lightning speed, going from button to switch to button.
Then the plane lurches forward and the sounds of the engines seem to go quieter. The sun comes in through windows. We are now out from the shade of the hangar.
“Hold on to your dicks!” George shouts over the intercom. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
My heart is beating hard. I look out one of the twelve or so passenger windows and see that the runway is littered with zombies. Seriously, you can barely see the concrete, and the bits of tarmac that you can see are stained with blood and ooze and guts — dripping from the shambling corpses. Seeing this is really a punch to the groin, I’ll tell you. What is even worse, what is a full-fledged dick punch, is seeing the crowd piling over Father Michael’s body some distance away. Seeing the zombies swarm and fight over bits of his flesh and guts. Seeing him disappear.
I look away. I have to.
Then I’m almost thrown to the floor as the plane lurches to the right. I feel a spike of fear. We aren’t supposed to turn right. The runway runs a long way to the left. Surely, we’ll need to pick up speed before we can get airborne.
I use the wall to climb my way up to the cockpit. George sits in a chair. Norm hovers over him, pointing to screens and gadgets.
“What are you doing?” I shout.
“Ain’t gonna make it,” George says.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Abby says. She’s since come up from the fuselage. I glance over my shoulder and see Herb sitting with his head in his hands.
“Not what I meant, little lady. You wanna ride through that,” George says, cocking a thumb to the left at the swarming mass of zombies, “you be my guest, then.” He pulls his Stetson hat down over his ears and tips it back so it’s level with his hairline.
Abby doesn’t answer.
“Now, go sit down. Buckle up tight. I think this is gonna be a bumpy one,” George says.
Norm sits down in the passenger seat, starts buckling himself up. He doesn’t look too concerned. I guess that’s comforting, but me — well, I’m about as calm as a fish out of water on a scorching hot day.
George turns around as he realizes we haven’t gone back to our seats. He must see my face and I must look really bad because he says, “Ooh, boy, where’s that calm demeanor at?”
It’s like he’s turned into a different person once behind the controls of a plane.
“I left all of it out there,” I say, trying not to think of Darlene or Father Michael.
“Well, I’d say go back out there and get it,” George says, “but, you know…”
I look out the window. I tell myself I shouldn’t. It’s like a person who’s afraid of heights telling themselves not to look down when they’re on the top floor of a skyscraper. But like that person, I look anyway. They just keep coming from the road which is about a quarter mile away from the runway. Take them one versus one and they’re nothing, unless they catch you by surprise; take them like this, and it’s a disaster.
“Go buckle up!” George says. He flips something above his head and the engines whine again. “No need to worry, honest. This here’s a Pilatus-PC-12. It can turn on a dime and’ll practically take off like a rocket, let me tell you.”
I look to the small stretch of runway to our right, the complete opposite of where we are supposed to take off from, and at the end of the strip is a forest. The trees look like skyscrapers, and I can’t help but feel like we’re going to end up getting cut down by the branches like hands swatting at flies.
George feels it necessary to add in, “Don’t hold me to that.” The verbal equivalent to an asterisk.
Abby tugs on my sleeve. “Come on, Jack,” she says. I look at her, but beyond her I see Darlene with her wide eyes and pasty face in my mind. The image of Klein grabbing her hair and yanking. Hearing her scream. God, I’m shaking with anger, with fear.
With revenge.
I go back to the fuselage. The plane lurches again and I nearly fall on my ass. I scramble to a seat and try to buckle in.
From a side window, the horde of zombies seem to fade away. I can almost breathe a sigh of relief. We are pulling away. The G-force starts to settle into my bones, pushing me against the seat. Herb has his eyes jammed closed, hands gripping the armrests. Abby looks out of the window.
George talks over the intercom despite the plane being small enough for us to hear his real voice anyway. “Hold on tight!” he shouts. “I’m puttin her into overdrive. Han Solo, motherfuckers!” He trails off laughing, and just as I’m starting to breathe that sigh of relief, the plane stutters. We are knocked off course.
The propellers sound as if they are eating something.
It’s horrifying.
A wave of blood soaks the windshield. It drips down slowly, almost as if its mocking us. Then, the little of that beautiful day I was so happy about earlier inverts and the sounds of metal scraping concrete rakes my eardrums.
The plane is basically in the air and on the ground at the same time. A horde of zombies are slowly lumbering toward us. Each moment we waste here is another moment Darlene and Klein get farther away from me.
Thirty-Eight
The plane isn’t in the air. It should be, but it’s not. It’s stopped on the runway because a zombie got caught in the propellers, causing alarms and sirens to shriek and George to curse and frantically go back to switching his controls. By the time the plane moves again, it’s too late. It’s like the Ford on the road. They surround us, so many of them. I feel like I can’t breathe.
Near the front, cupboards fly open and glass bottles spill onto the floor, some break, some go rolling down the aisle as the plane tries to pick up speed. I’m digging my hands into the armrests. My teeth grind. Outside of my side window, a black shadow seems to form. It’s the zombies and my right hand instinctively goes for my gun. Over the beeping comes a thump, thump, thump.
Herb screams and points out the window.
“Gotdamn zombies!” George shouts. It’s like we’re wheeling through thick mud and not concrete.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
The plane rocks back and forth. Pretty soon, we’re going to be covered in zombies. I don’t want to look out of the window, but I have to. What I see sends shivers up and down my body. The zombies are out there, all right, and it’s not the zombies I’m used to. Gone are the brain-dead dummies who’ll keep coming at you even if you put a slug in their gut. What I see are glowing eyes of understanding. Hundreds of them. It’s like they’re all mocking me, like they know we are stuck and they will get to us sooner or later. Now, this could just be my imagination or my brains own paranoid response to a traumatic situation, but I’d almost swear some of them are smiling. I don’t think that disease that did this to them would let them die with a smile on their faces.
I unbuckle my seatbelt. The plane’s not going anywhere and I have to get in the air because I have to get Darlene back. I’m not about to let the zombies win, and I’m certainly not going to let Klein win.
“Jack?” Abby says. I glance over at her as I stand in the aisle. “What are you doing?”
I ignore her, bend down and pick up two bottles, one Jack Daniels and another clear bottle of what I think is vodka, and I go to the door. I grab a few rags. Some of them look used, like they wiped up grease or something.
I might be stupid for doing this.
“Wait just a doggone minute,” George is saying, but it’s too late. I cut him off and ask Norm for his lighter. I know he has it on him. He always does. It’s the soldier in him. He gives me a weird look before understanding dawns. He digs in his back pocket and flips it to me.
“You crazy son of
— ” he is saying.
I don’t hear the rest.
I open the door and I climb out. From the corner of my eye, right before I get on top of the bloody wing, feeling the wind of the dying propellers on my face and hair, I see Norm smirking at me, as if he was proud. This is nothing to be proud of. This is desperation. This is craziness on my part in the name of love.
Thirty-Nine
As soon as the zombies see me or smell me or whatever these fucked-up abominations do, their groans and voices grow much louder than the dying plane engine. I’m on the wing. My hands are sweaty and my legs are shaking. In my pocket I have the medium sized bottles of Jack and Vodka.
The zombies reach for me, but I’m not even close to them. The smell is death. I won’t say it’s sickening sweet anymore. That ship has sailed as these bastards cooked in the hot sun and rotted for the better part of seven or so months. Sure, some are fresher than the others, but the stench would say otherwise. They all have skin the color of puke and old cheese. Their jaws — those who have them — hang open as the death rattles slip from rotted throats. The eyes shine at me like searchlights. All of them are turned up. I’m the center of attention at last.
I scrabble up the wing, but my heart stutters as my sweaty hands betray me. I slip and fall hard on my side. I hear glass breaking. Pain shoots through my leg, the already wounded one, as glass drills into me and warm alcohol spills down my pants. That, or blood or urine. I don’t know, but I do know I’m scared as all hell.
The propellers barely spin. Hands scratch at the metal. My legs dangle above the encroaching crowd of dead. I know their arms are stretched up, waiting for me to drop. And my hand is slipping, nails digging into the metal. Cold underneath my fingernails. Pain bursting through my hands.
Now I feel more warmth running down my pant legs. This has got to be urine. Don’t judge. You’d piss yourself, too if you were in my position.
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