by Kate L. Mary
10
The first thing my groggy brain registered as I struggled to pull myself from a deep sleep was the way my shirt clung to my body and my hair was stuck to the back of my neck. Kellan had his body pressed up against mine, and I was moist with sweat. It shouldn’t have been a new revelation. Oklahoma was stifling both day and night during the summer, and we weren’t in the shelter—which meant we didn’t have the luxury of air conditioning. Only, something about this heat didn’t feel right.
When I opened my eyes, I was met with blackness, but even so, I could tell something was different and very, very wrong.
I inhaled, and the air seemed to scratch my nostrils and throat before settling in my lungs where it burned. A cough followed, and then I bolted upright, my heart beating faster.
Smoke.
I shook Kellan, my mind snapping to attention and finally registering the coughs echoing through the plane. The air was thick with smoke, which was heavy and suffocating, but there were no panicked voices, and as far as I could tell, no one was else moving around. They were still asleep. Everyone was still asleep.
We had to move.
“Kellan,” I said, shaking him harder.
He groaned, but only a second passed before he was on his feet, almost knocking me over in his hurry to get up. Through the thick darkness and smoke filling the plane, his wide eyes were barely visible, but the stiff panic settling over him told me he understood what was happening.
“We need to go,” he said, and the words had hardly had time to pass his lips before someone else yelled, “Fire! Everyone up!”
It was Bill.
People cried out, their voices rising through the darkness and bouncing off the metal walls as the world exploded in activity. Somewhere, a lantern was lit, and light flooded the room. Shadows danced across the ceiling of the plane as people moved, running to help others, to gather things, to see where the smoke was coming from.
Kellan and I were up, pulling on shoes and grabbing the few belongings we had, but my thoughts were on other things. The kids. The children Bill had worked hard to save and raised as his own were now in danger. How bad was the fire? There were no flames visible, but smoke had filled the plane, and my eyes were watering, my throat burning with every breath I sucked in, and with each passing second it became more difficult to see. The fire had to be inside the hangar, close to the plane. There wouldn’t be this much smoke in the air, otherwise.
Harper came rushing into our cubicle, shoving the curtain aside just as I stood. “Fire!”
Had I not been panicked, I might have laughed or pointed out that she was stating the obvious, but I couldn’t, not when I was as terrified as I’d been after Andrew’s men took Kellan. Everything was at risk. All the people, all the lives.
“We need to help the kids,” I said.
Harper nodded, her big eyes rounder than ever.
Kellan grabbed my hand and motioned for us to move, and together we pushed our way out of the cubicle.
The plane was in chaos. Sobs echoed through the air, and panicked adults ran past the rows of cubicles with their arms loaded down with supplies they were trying to save. The smoke was thick, but not thick enough to block out the light at the other end of the plane, in the direction of the open ramp, as it flickered across the darkness. Flames. I instinctively knew the light was from the fire, and it filled me with dread.
Twelve-year-old Stephen, who was almost as tall as Harper, stumbled from the cubicle in front of us, Jack and Jill on either side of him. He started to run for the back of the plane, pulling the twins with him, but Kellan grabbed his arm before he could get far.
“The other way!” he yelled over the chaos, his voice strained and slightly gravelly from the smoke. “We need to go this way.”
Stephen, whose gray eyes now seemed even more serious than they had during the light of day, didn’t ask questions before pulling the twins toward the door at the front of the cargo bay.
Janet moved past us, helping her elderly grandmother, followed by two teenage boys, and behind them Bill had Tiana cradled in his arms like she was still the baby he’d discovered all those years ago. He was calling out orders, directing his people to hurry to the front of the plane while the little girl clutched at him like he was the only thing separating her from a horrible death.
Christine and Jessica ran past him, pausing briefly so the older woman could try to pry little Tiana from her husband’s arms, but the girl refused, instead clinging tighter to the only father she could remember.
A rush of people moved to the front of the plane, pulling Kellan, Harper, and me with them. My feet couldn’t keep up with the swell of people propelling me forward, and I stumbled, but the tight hold Kellan had on my arm made it impossible to fall. With each passing moment the burning in my eyes intensified, and around me the coughing grew more insistent, so that by the time we reached the little door leading out into the hangar, they were the only sounds I could register.
We made it to the front of the plane, and Kellan tried to shove me toward the door, but I resisted, my mind suddenly snapping to attention. I scanned the people surrounding me but didn’t spot the blond head I was searching for no matter how hard I tried. He was nowhere in sight.
When it was my turn, Kellan shoved me forward, toward the stairs that would lead out of the plane, but once again I resisted. “Cade!”
“He must have gone out.” Kellan gave me another push.
I stumbled down the first step but grabbed hold of the railing and held on, refusing to move. “We can’t leave him!”
“Go, Regan,” he said. “There are people behind us. You’re putting everyone at risk.”
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t because Kellan was right. Even through the thick smoke, the people gathered at his back were visible, Harper among them, and I was blocking them all. Still, how could we leave? What if Cade was still asleep?
“You can’t leave him!” I screamed.
Kellan nodded three times, and as if trying to reassure me that nothing in our lives was going to change, his hair flopped across his forehead. “You go out, and I swear I’ll find him.”
I didn’t like it, didn’t want to even think about Kellan going back into the plane, but it was the best I was going to get at the moment.
“Okay,” I said, and when Kellan took a step back, I held my hand out to Harper. “Come on!”
She took it, and I pulled her forward while Kellan turned around and shoved his way through the crowd behind him so he could head back into the plane. Back into the smoke.
When the crowd swallowed him up, I wanted to scream, but I kept moving.
The smoke in the hangar was three times as thick as it had been in the plane, making visibility difficult, both because it was clouding my vision and because my eyes wouldn’t stop watering. Even worse, it had a strange smell to it, like burning rubber or chemicals, and it didn’t just make my eyes, nose, and throat burn, it made my stomach twist and my head ache. This was no natural fire.
Every breath took effort now, like nails scraping against the inside of my throat. I couldn’t stop coughing, and I wasn’t alone. Between terrified questions about where to go and what to do, coughs rang through the air. Harper’s hand was still in mine, and her body shuddered every few seconds from her own coughing fits.
We stopped only a few steps from the plane, unsure of where to go. The huge hangar door was still closed tight, and I wasn’t familiar enough with the area to know what I should do. Bright light flickered through the darkness in that direction, telling me it was the location of the fire, but I still couldn’t imagine what in this metal and cement building could have caught fire.
Just as I was thinking that, a voice boomed through the chaos. “To the front! The small door is open.”
When the crowd shifted and started to move, I went with them, taking off running, pulling Harper with me, coughing and gagging from the smoke now, but refusing to give up. Figures surrounded me, too swallowed up by sm
oke for me to make any of them out. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my chest ached with the effort of breathing, but I kept moving, kept pulling Harper forward.
We reached the back of the building, and a small opening came into view. The closer we got, the better the air became. It reminded me of when I was young, of staying under a blanket so long that when I finally pulled it down, the air I sucked in was fresh and cool.
I reached the door with a mass of others and had to force myself not to shove them aside. It was an instinct I hadn’t expected, wanting to throttle people for the chance to breathe, but it was undeniable, because I thought for sure I was on the verge of suffocating, and it wasn’t in my nature to go down without a fight.
When we finally burst outside, it was like coming up for air after hours of being stuck underwater. I gasped, filling my lungs until they threatened to burst, and released Harper’s hand without realizing it as I stumbled forward, falling to my hands and knees on the pavement. The weeds were high and thick, tickling my face and arms, but I didn’t care, couldn’t care about anything when the need for air was this intense.
At least not right away. After a minute, after the oxygen had reached my brain and it started functioning a little better, my thoughts turned to Kellan and Cade. I pushed myself up to my knees, still unable to trust my legs to hold me up without giving out, but unable to stay down when I had no idea where they were.
All around me, people were on the ground, coughing and gasping. I scanned the group and found Harper, the four kids, the teenagers, Janet and Lilith, Jessica and Christine—somehow, they had managed to pry Tiana from Bill’s grasp—but that was it. No Kellan, no Cade, no Bill, and none of the other people from their group. Seven people were missing, and no one else was coming through the still open door.
Where were they?
I pulled myself to my feet, struggling to stand, but had only taken a couple stumbling steps toward the hangar when the large doors began to groan. Still, I kept going, stepping over people, desperate to get to Kellan, to know he was okay.
Why had I left him? Why hadn’t I insisted he come with me?
Cade. That was why. He had to check on Cade.
Still, I wanted to scream as the huge hangar doors were pulled open at a turtle’s pace, groaning in protest, more smoke pouring from the building with each passing second, thick and black and unnatural.
The doors were only a quarter of the way open when they stopped, but the gap was wide, big enough for a car, and less than a minute later a pair of headlights broke through the black smoke. Bill’s truck drove out, followed by two more vehicles, and then a handful of people stumbling from the dark hangar. With them came even more smoke, thick and black and seemingly never-ending.
The smoke clogging the night air made distinguishing the newly emerged survivors difficult, but I finally caught sight of a shock of blond hair among the group. Cade. He was on his feet, but supported by another, taller man.
Kellan.
“Thank God,” I gasped as I ran for them.
When my body slammed into Kellan’s, I almost knocked both my friends over. Cade was coughing, his face streaked with soot from the smoke, and Kellan didn’t look much better. He hugged me back when I threw my arms around him, but his breath was wheezy, shallow and terrifying.
“Over here.” I pulled on Kellan’s arm to get him moving, and after only a few steps, put my arm around his waist, hoping it would help both of them stay on their feet. “Farther away from the building.”
Once we were far enough away that the air was clearer, we collapsed, but even here the smoke was thick. Whatever was burning, it was still going, and it had more of a chemical smell to it than ever. Even where we were sitting, visibility had been reduced to less than six feet, and the world appeared hazy. Not that I cared. All I needed right now was to see Kellan. To look him over and make sure he was in one piece.
“You’re okay?” My hands were on his face, trying to wipe the black from his cheeks.
“I’m okay.” He coughed. “We’re okay.”
“Seems like bad luck has been following us lately,” Cade wheezed out.
As if his words were prophetic, a cry rang through the air.
I was on my knees in an instant, my hand on my knife while I scanned the area. It was hard to see much of anything through the thick smoke, but it was impossible to miss it when the people around me started moving. They were all still in shock, still coughing, still struggling to breathe, but that didn’t stop them from getting up and running.
“Something’s wrong,” I said as I stood.
Kellan got to his feet, as did Cade. They both looked like they could hardly catch their breath, but like me, they must have been able to sense that our ordeal wasn’t over yet.
People rushed past us, running away from the hangar, and I had just opened my mouth to ask what was going on when the first zombie materialized from the smoke less than ten feet in front of me.
“Zombies!” I screamed.
The one closest to me lunged, and Kellan cut him off by shoving me out of the way. Cade had moved forward, too, and was busy ushering some of the younger people behind him, and frantically I searched the crowd for Harper, realizing I’d forgotten about her in my panic to find Kellan. It only took a moment to find her, standing behind us with the other teens and children, Tiana in her arms.
Someone grunted, and I spun back to face the incoming dead. A few were already on the ground, but the smoke still billowing out of the hangar made it was impossible to tell how many more there were. Out of the entire group, no more than ten of us were up and ready to fight, and I realized that in the panic to get to safety, very few people had grabbed weapons. Bill may have taught them to defend themselves, but he must not have had a disaster plan in place, and no one had been prepared for this. They’d relied too much on the idea that they were safe in their metal hangar, thinking nothing could drive them from it.
A growl to my right grabbed my attention, and I spun toward the sound, my knife up and ready when a zombie, skinny and decayed, lunged, hands out and mouth open. He was old, and dodging him was easy, and I didn’t even need to use all my strength to shove him to the ground. He landed on his stomach, and I pounced the second he was down, slamming my knife into the back of his head.
I was panting when I pulled my blade free, my gaze already searching the chaos. To my left, Kellan and Cade were fighting off more of the dead, and to my right, other people struggled to take out the incoming zombies. Bill, Diane, James, and others whose names I couldn’t remember took the creatures down one by one, but still more came. It was like the fire had set off an alarm living people couldn’t hear, and every zombie in the area had come running at the sound.
A decayed woman made it past Kellan, who was in the middle of wrestling another zombie to the ground, and a shudder shook my body when her milky eyes focused on me. Her gray hair was a stringy mess that barely clung to her head, and she opened her mouth to reveal teeth that, although brown and decaying, were still set firmly in her blackened gums.
I kicked her in the stomach, sending her stumbling back a few steps. She didn’t fall, but she was off balance enough to give me the advantage so that when I jumped on her, she went down with no problem. The second she hit the ground, I slammed my knife into her eye socket, sending my blade into her brain and putting her down once and for all.
I had just enough time to pull my knife free before another zombie was on me. He lunged, knocking me to the ground, but my knife was ready. I jabbed it at him, but only managed to get him in the cheek—nothing that would kill him for good—so I pulled my blade free and gave it a second try, this time managing to get him in the eye. The knife sank in, piercing his milky eye and lodging deep in his brain, and he dropped on top of me. Dead.
He was heavy even though he was little more than skin and bones, and he rolled off me when I gave his motionless body a shove, but not completely. My hand—the one holding my knife—was still trapped under his bod
y, and I had no time to yank it free before another zombie was on me.
This one was newer, faster, its reflexes more intact. It snapped its barely decayed teeth at me, but I managed to get my free hand around its neck and hold it back, my muscles straining from the effort. When it snapped its teeth at me again, I screamed and tried to jerk away, but I was flat against the ground and there was nowhere to go, and my other hand was still under the dead zombie. With this one on top of me, it was impossible to pull my arm free.
The skin on his neck was soft and thin, and the zombie was strong, fighting against me harder with each passing second. His skin tore, and my fingers sank into his flesh as black blood oozed from the wound, running down my hand and wrist, down my arm to my elbow. That was when my hand slipped. I felt it happening, felt my fingers sliding across his now damp flesh and him coming toward me. Then his body slammed against mine, crushing me, and I screamed. I twisted and writhed, trying to get away, but it was no use. I knew what was going to happen before it did, but that didn’t stop me from letting out an agonizing wail when his teeth sank into my forearm.
11
It wasn’t my first zombie bite, but the pain pulsing through my body when those teeth sank in still took my breath away. My scream echoed in my ears, and adrenaline shot through my veins like a bolt of electricity, giving me the strength to finally yank my arm out from under the dead man at my side. The second I was free, I slammed my knife into the skull of the zombie trying to use me as a chew toy.
He released my arm and went still, but my blood was pumping too hard to register either of those things. I was too furious, too hurt and too bloody, and I wanted to make him pay. I yanked my knife from his skull and thrust it in again, then again, and then a fourth time, and with each plunge of my knife I let out another shout until my throat was raw and my voice hoarse. Still, I couldn’t stop. Tears clouded my vision. The dead zombie still weighed me down and his black blood covered me, but I couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stab him.