Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 2

by Riley, Claire C

  RED Eye

  The Armageddon Series

  Season One: Episode Two

  By

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Claire C. Riley

  &

  Victoria Cage Author

  Eli Constant

  RED EYE

  Copyright ©2019 Claire C. Riley & Elizabeth Constantopoulos

  Cover Design: Wilde Designs Elizabeth Constantopoulos

  Editor: Amy Jackson

  Formatting: Claire C. Riley

  ALL RIGHT RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws, any unauthorised reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

  About the episode:

  Most fabulous drink ever!

  ** While the ragtag group scrounge for supplies, Jamie becomes even more

  protective of his daughter. There’s a new face amongst the group… but can he be trusted? **

  About the Series

  When a red-eye flight from London to Los Angeles brings two strangers together, they have no idea that it’s the end of the bloody world!

  Rose, a British runaway, is ready for the adventure of a lifetime. Her hopes are high, her funds are low, and nothing is going to rain on her parade.

  Except maybe the apocalypse!

  Sam is an American ballerina on her way home from a hellish vacation. She’s tired of culture, tired of traveling, and seriously tired of men. She can’t wait to get home.

  That is until everyone turns into flesh-eating zombies!

  Neither woman expects their exhausting overnight flight to devolve into bloody carnage of terror and mayhem.

  But when you’re over 30,000 feet in the air

  and there’s nowhere to run

  and nowhere to hide…

  what else can you do but team up with as many survivors as possible and try to stay alive?

  *

  Start this epic zombie apocalypse thriller written by USA Today Bestseller Claire C. Riley and Victoria Cage Author Eli Constant.

  Red Eye Season 1: Episode 1- OUT NOW

  UK: http://bit.ly/2ouPKWLRedEYEUK

  US: http://bit.ly/31ZIRKTRedEyeUS

  FREE with your kindle Unlimited subscription!

  Red Eye Season 1: Episode 2 – OUT NOW

  Red Eye Season 1: Episode 3 – Coming November 21st

  RED Eye

  The Armageddon Series

  Season One: Episode Two

  By

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Claire C. Riley

  &

  Victoria Cage Author

  Eli Constant

  Prologue

  “M ommy?” The little girl tugged on her mom’s sleeve, her big round eyes fixed firmly on the man slumped in the chair opposite them.

  She’d been watching him on and off since they’d sat down. She’d felt the heat of his gaze on her and it made her feel like she had ants all over her body. Little tiny feet crawling over her skin, under her clothes, and into all the little nooks and crannies…

  But now his eyes weren’t watching her. They were rolled all the way back up into his head.

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek.

  She didn’t like it.

  There was something wrong with him.

  “Mommy?” she tugged again.

  Her mom finally looked down.

  She had tears in her eyes.

  Her cheek was still bruised.

  Her lip still had blood on it.

  “It’s okay. We’ll be boarding soon, honey,” she assured her. “Hush now, let Mommy think.”

  The little girl nodded and looked back at the man.

  He looked kind of sad and tired.

  Maybe he just needed a nap.

  She hugged her gray teddy bear tighter to her chest and decided to ignore him.

  She watched the people in the airport walking back and forth.

  Everyone looked busy. They were talking, and walking—some even ran, their cases being dragged behind them noisily. Most people looked happy, and she bet that those were the ones that were going on vacation. She wished she were going on vacation too.

  A little boy walked past with his family, and she waved at him and smiled.

  She looked back up to her mom.

  She was still crying.

  She wished she could make her smile again.

  Maybe if she just sat real still and quite that would help.

  The man coughed and the little girl looked over at him.

  He was dribbling.

  It was gross.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, his red-eyed gaze pinning her in her seat.

  And when he started to get up from his seat, she screamed so loud she thought her throat might split in two.

  Chapter one.

  Sam

  I leaned out past Rose and surveyed the situation. “Oh, fabulous.”

  Looking at the ugly grouping of growling, reaching corruptions, I wanted to turn around and leave the so-called “survivors” to themselves. It wasn’t fair that the world went to hell in a handbasket, after so much had already gone recently wrong in my life. I wanted to disappear, huddle in a corner, and just worry about myself. Rose was scrappy; she’d survive. Thinking about leaving the person who had helped keep me stay alive so far made a knot of self-disgust form in my belly.

  And then my gaze flicked to Nolan. There was something about him that I couldn’t pinpoint. He seemed reliable, but dangerous. Almost like a man that had run to sanity’s edge and had only just started coming back from that precipice. If I abandoned Rose, he’d be her only backup. Rose trusted me. I couldn’t leave her. I wouldn’t leave her.

  That thought made me look down at my weapon. It felt too light, too flimsy. It wasn’t kid-size either; it was full-grown-man-size. Something that could have supported my second cousin Garth—all seven foot and three hundred pounds of him. Yet still, I worried that no matter how hard I swung it, I wouldn’t do enough damage to take one of the monsters out. No, not monsters. The zombies, as Nolan insisted on calling them. I looked out at the horde reaching up toward the fearful, uninfected faces above. I didn’t know them. I had no obligation to risk my life for them.

  But it could be me spitting and snarling soon. It could be me, and I had to help people for as long as I could, while I could. Didn’t I?

  I backed a step away from the coming fight. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until Rose’s hand found mine again. I blinked, looking down at her fingers squeezing my hand.

  “It’s okay, Sam.” She was smiling at me. She’d said she trusted me. She didn’t even know me. But she trusted me. I’d done nothing to earn that—not really. We’d been thrown together by ugly circumstance; that was all. We’d saved each other because it was the thing to do, in the moment. Because there’s safety in togetherness.

  Then again, people that I’d known for all my life, that I’d trusted through and through, had abandoned and betrayed me. Maybe trusting this woman I’d known for two hot seconds would be the smartest move of my life.

  “Sorry. Just the thought of”—I pointed out toward the zombie things—“facing more of those scares the hell out of me.”

  “Well suck it up, Buttercup. This life isn’t ‘as you wish’ anymore.”
Nolan was turning in a slow circle, looking for something. Maybe a way to get the people on the high balcony out without alerting the monsters.

  Rose glared at Nolan, continuing to grip my hand. “Hey, be a dick all you want, but don’t use a great movie quote to do it.”

  “Yeah.” I stood a little straighter, advancing forward the step I’d retreated and making Rose shift as well. “You’re about a million miles away from being some Dread Pirate Roberts, so stop acting like you’re a fencing master with a six-fingered vendetta.”

  “Great, there’s something we bond over. We all know about a movie that is absolutely zero fucking help right now,” Nolan grunted out, exasperated. “All the people I get stuck surviving with—too prissy fucking girls.”

  Rose swung round to glare at Nolan. “Are you bloody serious? Did you actually just call us that? You chauvinistic wanker!”

  I grabbed her and pulled her back before she let loose with the steam train of insults she likely had ready to flatten him with. As much as I’d have liked to listen to her tear him a new one with that sharp tongue of hers, there was the more urgent matter of imminent danger to deal with.

  “Ignore him—he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” I said, my words sounding lame, but it did the trick and Rose nodded and let out a breath.

  “You know what—let’s just figure out what we’re going to do to secure the main part of the airport. It was your bright idea to come here and make it some sort of safe haven. Seems pretty damn hard when there’s twenty or more monsters already playing house.” Rose let go of my hand, stalking forward and slamming her fists against her hips. I was right to think she could survive on her own if it came to that. I imagined her picture by the word scrappy in the dictionary. The shallow wound on my arm stung just then, as if reminding me it was there and what a good thing it was that Rose wasn’t a wuss.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking about it,” Nolan admitted gruffly, not looking like he had any idea of what to do.

  Rubbing the thin makeshift bandage covering my arm, I peered around too, like I was going to magically come up with the perfect plan when Nolan, who seemed infinitely more survival-savvy, hadn’t yet. “We need to draw them away, right? We can’t go around locking doors and trapping them in here with us.”

  “Obviously,” Nolan said in a bitchy tone.

  I looked at the frosted glass doors that were once again closed as we conferred. “Once, my neighbor’s dog got out. He tried everything to get him to come back in, but it wasn’t until a car came past on the road, honking and yelling about getting ‘the damn dog out of the road,’ that the pup finally went back in the house. He did it willingly.”

  “Your point?” Nolan was walking toward a fire alarm switch mounted on the wall.

  “Maybe we draw them with noise, something we can…I don’t know, keep going without us having to be right here. We prop the doors open and when they file through looking for us, we slam them shut. Are you sure we can secure them?” I had no idea what I was saying, totally talking out of my ass, but Rose and Nolan were looking at me as if I’d said something interesting, something that could work.

  “The fireworks back in the security office.” Rose nodded. “Lots of noise. We can tie some of the fuses together so we’d have more time to get out of the way. That would work.”

  “I didn’t see fireworks.” Nolan quirked an eyebrow.

  “You were busy flipping out about there not being guns. There were fireworks, trust me.” Rose looked to me for confirmation. I gave a quick bob of my head, but truthfully I hadn’t seen them either. I’d been too busy worrying about the lack of guns also, and trying to figure out something I could kill the undead with.

  Nolan’s eyebrow was positioned back to normal and he wore a thoughtful look. “I still have that lighter.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the black lighter, giving it a shake close to his ear. “Seems pretty full still.”

  “Great, so we have a plan…ish,” Rose said, and then smirked, patting the strap of her backpack. “And the ex-owner of this backpack was a smoker, so we’ve got more lighters for days.”

  A growl sounded, one that seemed way closer than the zombies we’d seen in the middle of the main part of the airport.

  “Did that sound pretty close to you?” Sam asked, swallowing.

  Rose nodded. “Too close.”

  We all turned and headed back for the security room. All I could think about was how stupid it was to set fireworks off in an enclosed space and how we’d all be arrested if things were normal and airport security was prowling. Of course, if airport security was operating we’d have no need for explosives to draw a bunch of blood-hungry monsters toward us in hopes of securing some safety.

  Minutes later, we had the stash of seized fireworks spread out across the large steel security table. Nolan was pulling fuses and tying them to the fuse of the largest explosive available. Rose was then taking the defused fireworks and strapping them all together into the biggest giant lump of bang-them-up TNT that I’d ever seen—something better suited for an episode of Wiley Coyote than reality.

  “Are you positive that thing’s not going to go off early and blow us all to hell?” I looked at the fireworks like they were a death promise, all sugar-coated with glitter and neon colors for wrappings.

  “This fuse will give us minutes. We’ll be fine.” Nolan lifted the now four-foot-long fuse into the air for me to see.

  “How do we prop the doors open? And if the monsters magically waltz into our trap, how do we close and lock them?” I was fidgeting nervously, feeling like I had nothing to contribute while Rose and Nolan worked together.

  “Most of these doors have mechanisms to keep them open. As for locking, we might be lucky and they automatically lock from the other side. This is a security area; they wouldn’t want anyone being able to access it.”

  “Okay.” I bit my bottom lip. “Where do we hide on the other side?”

  “We’ll figure that out before we set off the fireworks. Okay?” Rose said, her eyes tight.

  “Sure. Okay.” I nodded. Leaving them to it, I started searching around the room. I hadn’t taken a really close look at it the first time, more concerned about deciding if the crutch or the folding chair was a better weapon. There was a row of narrow metal lockers against the wall—personnel’s storage maybe. I walked over, opening the first locker and finding nothing useful.

  I found a blue sports bag in the second—the flimsy sort of thing people toss their gym shoes in after a run. I thought about taking it, but the rope straps were narrow and I didn’t think it would support much. The first and third lockers were practically empty, save for a box of tissues and some female hygiene supplies. The fourth locker wouldn’t open. “Did either of you guys spy like a flat-head screwdriver or something?”

  “No, but there were some random tools in one of the bins near the shampoos.” Rose spoke absentmindedly, examining the incendiary she and Nolan were concocting.

  “What are you doing?” Nolan asked as I rummaged through the plastic bins until I found a combo tool with a flip-out screwdriver.

  “Checking to make sure there’s no pot of gold in the lockers.”

  “Yeah, I saw those earlier but they looked empty.” Rose was fiddling with how to connect what looked like the last firework to the rest of the explosives matrix.

  “No, the fourth one is locked. Who knows, maybe there’ll be something good.” I opened the flat-head tool and set to work prying open the locker. It was flimsier than the ones we’d had in our high school wood work class, but it would do the trick.

  “It’ll just be personal belongings and useless shit.” Nolan was picking at his finger, prying off a hangnail. It almost made me laugh. If I had any issues with my nails, I’d be running off to my manicurist. She was kind, and had never once mentioned how warped and damaged my feet were. Not that I got a pedicure often. I was a dancer, my toes were a point of pride, a badge of honor, but I didn’t see any romantic foot rubs in m
y future. Travis had never offered; he hadn’t been a hands-on sort. Even if I had perfectly shaped, pedicured toes, he wouldn’t have grabbed the lotion and massaged his way to a homerun. No, all he’d cared about was the homerun part, no foreplay required.

  “We’re here; we might as well check things thoroughly,” I huffed, yanking my thoughts away from Travis. It was ridiculous that I was even thinking about him right then. Being around Nolan was making it harder to erase the jerk from my head—I mean, they didn’t look anything alike, so it wasn’t that. It was more that Nolan was the first man that I’d spent any real time with since Travis, other than the waiters at the honeymoon hotel. I guess being consistently around someone of the opposite sex was bound to bring up my developing hate for men after what had happened. I’d never thought, in a million years, that my almost-wedding would turn into such an emotional cluster-storm.

  “Waste time if you want.” Nolan stopped messing with his nail and went back to double-check the fuses. The guy was useful in a fight, but I’d kick him to the curb in a heartbeat if he did anything shitty. I just didn’t care for his attitude. Sure, maybe the apocalypse situation we were currently surviving warranted sarcasm and end-of-the-world pessimism, but being an ass wasn’t going to help anything or anyone.

  I gasped a little when the lock finally gave way and the metal door swung open hard. I barely got my hand between the cabinet door and the surface of the third closed locker in time. I could only imagine that the sound would have been like gunfire in the small space, and it wasn’t time to draw the monsters into this area—not yet.