“Let’s just fly there,” Kaylee repeats, spreading her arms like wings. “We could be there in, like, a few hours or something.”
Warren steps in. “Kaylee, please. We don’t have a plane, and none of us can fly. Now, Tom, I have to agree with–”
“I can fly.” Kaylee turns to face us now, suddenly lucid. “We can just go in my plane. Well, OK, not my plane. My dad runs a flight school. There’s a plane there.”
“You have access to a plane? A real one? Not just a toy?” Warren asks incredulously.
“Sure. It’s a nice one. It’s got, like, five or six seats. It goes really fast.”
“And you can fly it?”
Kaylee grins. “Sure, I could fly it with my eyes closed.”
Vee, Warren and I exchange doubtful looks. “And where is this plane?” Vee asks.
Kaylee points vaguely towards the south. “It’s at the airfield just down the river. We can be there in about ten minutes if we leave now.” Her eyes light up. “Ooooh, but can we stop at a 7-Eleven on the way? I’ve got some insane cravings going on. Deal? You find me some chocolate covered pretzels and I’ll fly you anywhere you wanna go.”
I lean in towards Vee and Warren and lower my voice, turning away from Kaylee. “What’s the harm?” I whisper. “If she’s telling the truth we’re golden. If she’s making shit up it’s ten minutes out of our day.”
They both think for a moment then nod, though of course they still look doubtful. “OK, deal,” Vee says. “You wanna lead the way?”
Kaylee grins and claps her hands. “Ooooh, pretzels,” she says in a sing song voice. “I’m so fucking hungry I could eat ten bags. Let’s go!”
She hops excitedly into the back of the Stryker and rushes to the front seat. Warren climbs in after her and yells a warning to her to not touch the controls to the roof-mounted gun.
“You think she’s crazy?” Vee asks me, her voice low.
I shake my head and smile. “I don’t know. If she’s really got a plane I don’t care if she wants the Cookie Monster to be her co-pilot. Do you?”
΅
:::14:::
THE NEXT HALF hour passes for all of us in a sort of odd, dreamlike state.
Warren slowly guides the Stryker through the leafy, picture perfect suburbs west of the Susquehanna. Endless rows of pretty houses ringed with pristine white picket fences line the wide, leafy streets, their slightly unkempt sun-dappled lawns the only indication that the owners are either gone or long dead.
Little by little the houses grow smaller and less well kept until we finally pass through the low rent neighborhoods and out into the grimy industrial district of the city, a landscape pockmarked with prefab warehouses and sprawling discount used car lots.
Warren pulls in at a convenience store beside a Burger King with shattered glass glistening across the parking lot, and for a few minutes Kaylee skips happily through the aisles and stuffs her pockets with strawberry laces and Jelly Belly beans. When she can carry no more we guide her, protesting, back to the Stryker, and we continue until she points out a small sign by the side of the road that reads Capital City Airport.
It’s only a small airfield, the main building a two floor block with broken windows that look like they were probably already broken before the world ended. There’s no security to speak of but a low wire fence around the perimeter, and the Stryker pushes through it like it’s a fine mist. Kaylee climbs to the front and points over Warren’s shoulder to a small, run down hangar sitting out on its own about a hundred yards from the main building.
None of us but Kaylee really believe we’ll find anything in there but disappointment and the punchline to a long, time wasting joke, but as we pull up beside the tall open doors of the hangar we see in the darkness within a small, sleek white plane with a sharp, pointed nose, a red tail and the words ‘Baxter Flight School’ emblazoned along its side.
“It’s nice, right? That’s my dad’s.” Kaylee grins at us and rushes to the back, pushing open the rear hatch and hopping down with her hands held over her bulging pockets to keep the candy from falling out. “Come on, guys!”
I stand up to leave, but Warren grabs my arm before I can move. “Hey, do you really trust this psycho at the controls of a plane?” he hisses. “How do we even know she can fly this thing?”
I shrug. “Do I trust her? No, not at all. I wouldn’t trust her with plastic cutlery, but it doesn’t look like we have much of a choice, right?” I pull the Petri dish from my pocket. “We have to get this to Nevada, and Vee’s right. Driving there would be a suicide mission.” I let out a sigh. “Look, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. You can stay here and wait for the fungus to arrive, but I’d rather die taking a chance, you know?”
Warren shakes his head and frowns at me while he thinks, then eventually nods as if he’s come to a decision. “Your dumb ass wouldn’t make it five minutes without me. I’ll come, but look...” he grabs the fabric of my jacket and pulls me in close. “Is your chili really that good or were you just kidding?”
I meet his gaze and speak slowly, in the most serious tone I can muster. “My chili will make your eyes pop out of your fucking head.”
Warren lets me go and grabs his rifle. “OK then, what the fuck are we waiting for? Let’s let a crazy bitch rocket us to 40,000 feet in a tin can.”
As we climb from the Stryker Kaylee is yelling instructions to Vee as she circles the plane, dropping to a squat to check the tread of the tires before she moves to the wing, unclips a cap and pushes a small glass vial against a valve.
“What are you doing?” I ask, curious.
Kaylee ignores me for a moment as she carefully studies the fluid in the vial. She seems like a different person now she’s focused on a task. “Pre-flight checks,” she distractedly mumbles. “I’m checking for impurities in the fuel. This bird probably hasn’t been in the air in a while.” She waves me away as if I’m bothering her. “Go find some new clothes for us in the back room over there. I hate to say it, but you guys all stink like old ass.”
I start to walk in the direction she’s pointing, then stop short when she yells out to me. “Oh, and... sorry, what’s your name?”
“It’s Tom. That’s Warren, and she’s Vee.”
“Great, Tom. Can you go in the bottom drawer of the desk and bring me the little pink My Little Pony lunch box?”
“Umm, sure.” I turn back and shake my head, hardly believing I’m about to let this weirdo get us off the ground. I carefully make my way through the dimly lit hangar, avoiding stacks of engine parts and discarded chairs until I find the back room, a cramped little office strewn with maps and charts, and find Vee rifling through file cabinets.
“What are you doing?” I ask, heading for the desk.
“Fetching things for little miss bananas over there,” she replies. “She wants maps, charts, handbooks... I don’t know, it’s a long list. What job did she give you?”
I pull open the bottom drawer and pull out the box. “Ummm, a lunch box and clothes, because apparently we all stink like old ass.”
Vee laughs. “Well, she’s not wrong there. I wouldn’t say no to a shower right about–”
“Jesus!” I gasp. Vee falls silent and turns to me. “OK, correction. I’m collecting the contents of the local pharmacy.” The lunch box is full to bursting with pill bottles. “Lamotrigine... Xanax... Lithium... Oh, and a shitload of weed and rolling papers. Looks like Kaylee has quite the party planned.”
Vee gathers her supplies and looks back at Kaylee through the window to the hangar. “Fuck. Tom, is this a dumb idea? Maybe driving isn’t such a crazy plan. Not as crazy as letting an insane drug addict fly us to Vegas, anyway. Maybe we could just–”
Again she doesn’t get to finish her thought. A shot echoes deafeningly off the corrugated steel walls of the hangar, and Warren comes running through the doors. “Time to go, folks! Looks like they heard our engine. Kaylee, you ready to go?”
Kaylee glances up from
the vial she’s pushing into yet another fuel valve. “Nope, it’ll be another ten minutes. Gotta inspect the flaps and go through the instrument checks.” She looks back to her vial as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Guess again!” Warren shouts, peering out the door towards the concrete apron beyond. “I want us in the air in two minutes. Make it happen!” He braces his rifle against his shoulder and squeezes off a few quick rounds then looks back to see Kaylee still gazing at the vial. “Now! Vee, Tom, get her in the fucking plane!”
I grab the lunchbox and a bundle of clothes from beside the locker, then follow Vee at a dead run towards the plane. She pulls open the door and dumps her load in the back, then runs to the wing and pulls Kaylee away.
“Hey, I need to–”
“You need to get in the fucking plane, young lady!” Vee yells, pulling down the retractable steps with one hand while dragging Kaylee to the door with the other. “Warren, come on!”
I climb in behind them and watch as Vee bundles the girl roughly to the cockpit, before Kaylee twists around to face me. “Tom, did you get my box? Please tell me you got my box!”
I hold up the pink My Little Pony lunch box triumphantly and yell out “I got the box!”, moments later realizing this may be the single most ridiculous moment of my life.
Kaylee grins and turns to the controls. “Sweet! OK, brakes... test and set... avionics... where are you? Aha, off... circuit breakers... check... ummm, fuel shutoff valve... on. OK, guys? We gotta do a passenger check. Do you all have your seat belts fastened? Do you know the location of the nearest emergency exit?”
Vee grabs her by the shoulder and squeezes hard enough to make her yell out in pain. “Forget the fucking checklist and get us off the ground, now!”
“Jeez, OK, OK,” Kaylee mutters, rubbing her shoulder. She flips a switch and the engines begin to hum behind us, and moments later she releases the brake and pushes the throttle forward a little. The plane judders for a few seconds then begins to slowly trundle forward, and I move back to the door and lean out.
“Warren, come on!” I yell, but he doesn’t hear me over the engine noise. By the look on his face I’m not looking forward to what we’ll see when we pass through the doors, and my confidence doesn’t climb any higher when he finally turns back to us and starts sprinting for the plane.
“Go! Fucking go!” he cries, throwing his rifle through the door before leaping in after it.
I pull up the steps behind him, swing the door closed and twist the locking bar down, and finally the plane begins to pick up a little more speed as we move out from the dark hangar and into the sunlight. As we emerge I look out through the small windows, and a chill runs down my spine as I see what awaits us.
The broad concrete apron is swarming with infected. Dozens of them race towards the hangar while still more swarm in from the road beyond. “Kaylee, go faster!” I yell. “Where the fuck did they come from?”
Warren presses his face against the nearest window. “They must have heard our engine and followed us. We’ve probably been pulling them in like a fucking magnet all the way down from the bridge.” He turns to the front. “Kaylee, will these guys cause us any problems? Can they tip us?”
“No!” she yells over the drone of the engine. “But if any of them get close to the jet intakes we’ll... well, let’s just say it won’t be good news.”
“Then go faster, woman!” As he speaks the fastest of the swarm reach the plane. Two of the sprinters slam violently into the side and sends us rocking, and the plane jogs up and down for a moment as the rear wheels roll over one of the fallen bodies.
“Faster!” I yell. “Why the fuck are we going so slow?”
“There’s a speed limit!” Kaylee replies. “We’re not allowed to taxi at more than 20 knots per hour when there are obstacles on the apron. It’s in the handbook!”
“Forget the fucking handbook, the fucking world has ended! Vee, can you deal with this shit?”
Vee nods, leans over Kaylee and pushes the throttle lever all the way forward. Almost immediately the engines build to a dull, deafening roar that reaches down to our bones, and the plane accelerates with a jerk that almost knocks me off my feet.
“No!” Kaylee cries, “we need to taxi to the end of the runway before we can reach takeoff speed!”
I run through the plush cabin and burst into the cockpit as Kaylee reaches out to the controls to throttle back. “Wait! Kaylee, how much runway do you really need? Look at the swarm. We have to take off now or the runway’ll be crawling with them.”
She finally seems to realize what’s going on. The narrow taxiway we’re on joins the runway around halfway down its length, but the infected are now flooding in from all sides. Some are even running, hobbling and dragging their bodies across from the other side of the airfield, out over the scrubby grass in the distance. Within moments the fastest will reach the asphalt, and once they’re there we’ll have no chance of a clear run down the runway.
“OK, you better hold onto something,” Kaylee says, slowing us just a little. “This turn might get a little rough. Oh, and everyone get to the left of the plane.”
I brace myself against the wall of the cockpit as Kaylee prepares for the turn. The runway is at least as wide as three wingspans, but even so we’re looking at a turn of around 30 degrees at close to full speed. I grab the back of the pilot’s seat as Kaylee steers us in, and for a brief moment my stomach turns over as we list to the side. I feel one of the rear wheels rise from the ground, and after a few seconds in which I’m certain the wing will scrape along the ground we finally begin to straighten up. The wheel crashes back to the ground, and for a moment the rear wheel on the other side of the plane digs into the soft earth beside the runway before Kaylee fights the controls and pulls the plane out of the swerve.
The first of the infected reach the asphalt as we approach, swarming in almost a solid block onto the runway far ahead of us. Kaylee pushes the throttle forward and desperately flips switches as we accelerate, and by the time she grabs the yoke they’re just a couple hundred yards ahead of our nose. I grit my teeth and cling to the back of the pilot’s seat as the engines roar and the infected hove ever closer. At this distance I can almost make out their faces, and it’s all too easy to imagine us plowing straight into the swarm. It’s easy to imagine them grabbing at the wheels as we pass, yanking us back down to the asphalt nose first, sending us into a burning heap and allowing them to climb into the wreck to drag us out. I close my eyes and squeeze the back of the chair even harder.
Finally Kaylee grips the yoke and pulls back as hard as she can. I feel the front wheel raise slowly from the ground, and after a few seconds of terror I see the runway begin to fall away beneath us. The infected stand as one, their arms raised, reaching out for us as we pass just out of reach of their fingers. Gravity tries to pull me down to the floor, and I hang on tight to the pilot’s seat until I can only see clear blue sky out the front window.
“Tom,” Kaylee says, her voice low, “can you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” I stammer, surprised I can still form words.
“Can you go and get me my lunch box? Bring me Xanax. And lithium.” She begins to level the plane off, looks down at her instruments and banks into a gentle turn. Beneath us the runway comes back into view, and we all stare open mouthed at the sea of infected staring up at us, raising their arms as if they’re trying to pluck us right out of the sky. Kaylee runs her shaking fingers through her hair and slumps back in her seat. “And, like, all the weed.”
΅
:::15:::
WE'RE CRUISING SOMEWHERE over central Illinois by the time Kaylee’s medication kicks in enough to level out her mood and stop her hands from trembling.
Once we were out of sight of the airfield she climbed further then leveled off at around six thousand feet, high enough to clear any mountains we might come across before we hit the Rockies, but low enough to avoid any high altitude air currents that might pus
h us off course.
As soon as she was satisfied we were on the correct course she stumbled back to the cabin with her lunch box of medication. Now she’s reclined in one of the luxurious leather seats in the cabin while Warren takes a turn in the pilot’s seat, under strict instructions to just make sure the plane stays level and not fuck around with the controls.
The Spectrum S.33 was fresh off the production line six months ago, according to Kaylee. It’s equipped with an autopilot system so sophisticated it can track approaching weather patterns and adjust course to avoid storms and turbulent air, but unfortunately the system only functions with an accurate GPS signal. Warren tested it soon after Kaylee leveled out the plane but it refused to so much as start up, throwing up a connection error message on the little OLED screen beneath the master switch.
Warren’s guess is that the entire GPS network has begun to fail after a month without maintenance. He explained that the network depends on constant care from the Ground Segment, a network of monitoring stations around the world that track the orbit of satellites, fractionally adjusting their course and correcting their clocks whenever they drift slightly out of sync. Even without those stations the satellites should stay in the sky for years before their orbits finally degrade, but without maintenance they’re designed to automatically take themselves out of the network if they fall too far out of sync.
The idea is that the remaining satellites will plug the gaps until a failing node can be repaired or replaced, but without updates from the Ground Segment multiple satellites must have stopped sending a signal. The network had been reliable enough to pinpoint our sat phones when Vee was taken, but apparently it’s not stable enough to track the movements of a light aircraft cruising at 400mph.
It was only after Warren explained all of this that a worrying thought occurred to me. If the GPS network is controlled by stations all around the world, surely it wouldn’t fail with the loss of just the US stations. Surely that must mean that the infection hadn’t only affected us. Maybe the whole world was like this now. Seven billion people fleeing from monsters, desperately fighting for their lives from Sydney to London to Rio.
Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 33