Surviving the Fall: How England Died

by Stephen Cross

  Seats, a vending machine, a small coffee stall scattered as they were hit by the full weight of the plane.

  They slowed, the friction and the thrusters doing their trick, the bottom of the plane screeching against the polished departure gate floor.

  Andy was flung forward in his seat, the seatbelt biting hard as they came to a sudden stop. The back undercarriage must have hit the building. Screams and yells from the cabin rang out loudly.

  A new salvo of alarms rang out in the cockpit.

  “Everyone ok?” said Andy.

  Peter wiped some glass fragments out of his hair, “I think so.”

  “Jenny?”

  She nodded, taking deep breaths. “Yes, I’m ok.”

  “Good,” said Andy. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 6

  Carl pulled himself up, and clutched his head. He felt a trickle of something warm down his forehead - blood. He must have banged his head in the crash. Had it been a crash? Surely if they had crashed he wouldn’t be alive?

  The landing then. A very bad landing.

  He turned on the cramped toilet’s tap, it was still working. He wiped away the blood from his head. He heard the cries and screams from the cabin.

  Zombies. He hadn’t signed up for that. His girlfriend had thought it would be the perfect job for him. Get to see the world, get to travel, get to meet lots of new people, and, oh plenty of time for her to get with that mechanic, Dave.

  Dave, what a prick.

  What a job it had turned out to be. Lost his missus and now surrounded by zombies. Should have stayed at the call centre.

  Calm yourself, thought Carl. No time to go over bad life choices.

  He pushed his ear up against the door of the toilet. Sounded like a bloody free for all out there.

  He took a deep breath, realised his hands were shaking. He tried to hold them still. No good, he would have to do this with shaking hands. He opened the door slowly, just an inch and peered out He half expected a zombie hand to push through and rip his throat out. But that didn’t happen.

  The back half of the cabin was empty, it looked like everyone had ran from the zombies, and then the zombies had ran after the people, and now everyone was crushed in the top half of the plane.

  The noise was unbearable - a mixture of crying, of shouting, the sound of violent scuffles, and worst of all, the sound of moaning. It was a deep resonating sound that filled him with dread.

  A body was on the floor of the cabin. What looked like Frank was leaning over it, getting his fill.

  Carl eyed the fire extinguisher at the other side of the galley. He could take Frank out with that. Straight on the head, like in the films. But did he have the guts?

  Anxiety rolled in his stomach, his hands were still shaking, his head pounded, and his mouth was dry. But he could do this. Dammit, he could do it.

  He sneaked out of the toilet, wincing as the toilet door creaked, but he needn't have worried, the noise from the front of the cabin was overplaying any of his sneaking sounds.

  He took one last glance at the Frank zombie, and ran to the other side of the galley, where he grabbed the fire extinguisher.

  Carl stood at the top of the aisle, extinguisher in hand - it was one of the small ones that should only be used for electrical fires. I guess they were the most common fires on planes. Either way, he reckoned it would do some damage to a skull.

  He felt nauseous.

  He imagined that Frank was wearing a blue mechanics uniform, and that his name was Dave. He took one last deep breath and ran down the aisle, shouting as he did.

  A few yards away and Frank-zombie turned and stared straight at him.

  Not only blood around its mouth, but long thick pink tendrils of flesh hung from his teeth, wobbling like a bad joke.

  It made Carl’s job easier, for now Frank looked like a monster.

  He brought the small-electrical-fires-only extinguisher down on Frank’s head and there was a dull clang.

  Frank wobbled and fell forward. Carl hammered down again, just to be sure. Then again, just to be extra sure. The zombies skull crushed flat in the middle, pink brain bursting out the sides of white cracked bone.

  Blood pulsed through Carl’s head, and he felt wobbly, his vision dazed and sound muffled. He though he heard the Captain’s voice.

  There was a sudden surge of noise. The crowd of passengers in front of Carl began to push forward. Carl watched as the move of people revealed a group of four or five zombies, munching on passengers, oblivious to the forward surge.

  If the passengers were moving forward, it meant they must be getting out of the plane.

  And Carl was the only one behind the zombies. He would have to take them all out if he wanted to get out.

  The first would be Frank’s victim, a teenage boy ironically wearing a zombie T-shirt - “Day of the Dead” it said in bold red letters covered in blood.

  The lower portion of the boy had been torn open and his intestines decorated the floor like bad taste bunting.

  This one was harder. Without seeing the bottom half of the boy, it looked like he was just asleep.

  But Carl knew he wasn’t.

  He brought down his weapon hard on the boy’s head, smashing his skull with the first crack, obliterating it with the second and third. Three seemed to be the optimal skull destroying number.

  The crowd moved forward a few more feet.

  The next zombie was a few feet ahead, on its knees, feasting on a broad middle aged woman in a yellow flowery dress, now drenched with a nice contrasting red.

  Carl repeated his zombie death method on both the zombie and the dead passenger, 1-2-3, dead again.

  Eight more to go.

  Chapter 7

  Andy adjusted his new Captain’s hat in the mirror and looked at himself for a moment, pleased with what he saw. Not in a conceited type of way, but pleased with what the clothes he was wearing represented.

  His Captaincy.

  His years of struggle. Living in a trailer at the end of a godforsaken Arizona airport so he could fly parachuters for free, just to get his hours up.

  Month after month of rejections and having to work for cut price airlines on call 24-7, just for the chance to earn a few pounds.

  Pulling the worst hours at the worst airlines, hardly ever seeing his wife. Living in a godforsaken town in Latvia near some stag-do destination, only getting home one week out of seven.

  And now, transcontinental pilot with a prestigious Middle East airline.

  He’d done it.

  Mary came into the bedroom.

  “What do you think?” asked Andy, straightening his hat.

  Mary smiled. “You look great. Daddy.”

  Andy’s hand’s dropped to his sides and he spun round to face Mary. “What?”

  She held up a pregnancy test pen. He stared at it for a minute before the thin blue line came into focus.

  He smiled, then he grinned, then he laughed. He picked up Mary and spun her round, his hat falling off.

  Andy looked in the monitor that piped through to the cabin cameras. The passengers were getting over the shock of the landing. They pulled themselves up from the floor and slowly, in small pockets, continued their confused melee. The ones at the back, closest to the line of zombies began to scramble away in panic. The one’s near the cabin door started up their fight again; those trying to open it against those trying to stop them opening it. And the pounding on the cockpit door began again in earnest.

  “What the hell are they doing,” said Peter, taking a second out from shutting down the plane’s engines. “Why don’t they open the door? Someone just needs to look out the window.”

  “They must all be terrified,” said Jenny.

  “The madness of crowds,” whispered Andy.

  “What?” said Jenny.

  “Nothing, we need to get the cabin door open.”

  “Can you not open it from here?” asked Jenny.

  “No. It needs
to be done manually. Safety mechanism to stop any accidental openings at 30,000 feet,” said Andy. “I’ll see if anyone is listening.”

  Andy picked up the intercom. “This is your Captain speaking. We have landed, you may open the cabin door, I repeat, you may open the cabin door.”

  A few people started to point at the intercom, and at the cockpit, and began shouting to those nearby, those trying to stop the door from being opened.

  “Keep going Andy, it looks like they are listening.”

  Andy repeated the message a few times, and it eventually filtered through. Those trying to keep the door closed stopped, and stood bewildered for a few seconds, before being hustled out of the way, mostly with punches, kicks and shoves. A scramble of hands grabbed the door and within seconds the cabin door was open.

  The crowd pushed and the first few people by the door fell twenty feet onto the hard floor below.

  “Quick!” Jenny leaped forward and grabbed the transmitter from Andy. She shouted into the mouthpiece, “Pull the orange level on the right, pull the lever.” She repeated her shout over and over and again, her voice becoming more frantic as she watched more people being pushed to nasty injuries on the floor below.

  Eventually someone pulled the lever, and the emergency slide burst out from the side of the plane, inflating quickly, like a time-lapse video of a bright orange plant growing to the ground.

  There was a collective sigh of relief in the cockpit.

  The crowd surged forward and jumped onto the slide, emptying into the departure lounge.

  Andy, Peter, and Jenny watched the passengers spill into the dusty, glass covered floor from the safety and silence of the cockpit.

  The passengers didn’t run though. They pooled around the plane, seemingly scared to move away from its protective hulk. The reason quickly became obvious.

  The floor of the lounge was littered with bodies, and teeming with zombies. Mutilated former humans dragged broken and sliced limbs behind them as they crawled through the lounge, searching for fresh meat.

  Bodies of all ages, colours, and sizes lay around the floor, spread over seats, in broken windows. Not only people in civilian clothes, but also military uniform.

  It looked like a battlefield.

  A man with a checked shirt, bent backwards over a bank of seats, slowly came to life. He struggled to sit up straight in the seat, a large bullet wound in his chest, his shirt stained different shades of red. A large gash in his leg hampered his attempts to stand up, his suit trouser torn and bloody with a hunk of charred flesh peeking through.

  The man eventually got to his feet and hobbled towards the crowd of people waiting around the plane. He let out a large moan.

  A couple broke from the crowd and ran.

  This acted as a catalyst and the rest of the passengers followed, running in all directions from the plane, screaming.

  The old hobbled, quickly, gasping for breath. The young sprinted quickly through the dead zone, easily avoiding the slow grasping zombies. Children screamed and cried and followed their parents.

  “Shall we go?” said Jenny.

  Peter got up.

  Andy held up his hand, “Wait, look, over there.” He pointed to the far end of the departure gate, where the corridor thinned and led back to security and check in. A fast and fluid movement, a scurry of figures in the dark, caught everyone’s attention.

  “What is it?” said Peter.

  His answer came in the form of a few brief flashes of light, followed a split second later by the loud and unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire.

  The young couples and families at the head of the escape fell immediately.

  The people following stopped dead, frozen in fear. Another volley of gunfire and they fell.

  A group of soldiers moved quickly into the departure lounge, firing as they came. The passengers fell like skittles, most of them too stunned and overcome to respond to the lightening attack from their own army.

  “Jesus christ,” said Peter.

  “My God…” said Jenny.

  “Look,” said Andy.

  A soldier was pointing at the plane. He motioned to a group of nearby soldiers and four of them broke from the main assault team and made their way towards the plane.

  “Ok, we have to go, now!” Andy jumped up and opened the door of the cockpit.

  He fell back in surprise. Peter caught him.

  By the door of the cockpit stood a young man, covered in blood, a small fire extinguisher in his hand. Around him, on the seats and on the floor, lay the bodies of a number of passengers, their skulls caved in.

  “Captain?” said the man.

  “Carl!” shouted Jenny. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Almost,” said Carl. He smiled at Jenny. He looked at the bodies surrounding him. “They were zombies, I swear!”

  “Well then, good work, I guess,” said Andy.

  “I heard gunfire,” said Carl, “what’s going on?”

  “We need to hide,” said Jenny.

  Sounds of shouting from outside. Loud voices, barking commands. A ripping sound came from the cabin door. The slide disappeared. More shouts, asking for ladders.

  “Who the hell is that?” said Carl.

  “The army,” said Andy.

  There as a metal clang as the top of a ladder hit the bottom of the cabin door.

  Andy held his finger up to his mouth and motioned them down the aisle.

  The clang of boots on the ladder became louder. Andy realised they wouldn’t make it to the back of the plane.

  He stopped. He kneeled down and rubbed his hands over the nearest corpse, covering them in blood. He rubbed the blood over his face, his hair and his white Captain’s shirt.

  The others copied him immediately.

  Carl waved his arms around and everyone looked at him, “It won’t be enough,” he whispered. He stuck his hand deep into a stomach wound of an old man and pulled out a long chain of intestines.

  Andy nodded and motioned to the others to do the same.

  Peter stuck his hands into a nearby carcass and pulled out a series of unidentifiable entrails. He gagged.

  Jenny lay down and put some of Carl’s stolen intestines over her back and down her shirt.

  They all lay still, covered in blood and pieces of the dead passengers.

  Andy was on an aisle seat with his head back. He opened his eyes a tiny amount and spied on the cabin door.

  A soldier clambered into the cabin. Just a young boy. Couldn’t even be twenty. He had a gun hoisted over his back. He quickly jumped up and scanned the cabin, his gun held up, ready to fire.

  He looked behind him, into the cockpit. Did a quick sweep.

  “Anything, private?” said a voice from outside the plane.

  “Can’t see anyone, sir, looks dead. Loads of bodies, sir.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Yes sir. Zeds, I guess.” The young man had gone pale. He stared at the body of a young girl in a seat next to him, her neck pulled open to reveal her spinal column and tendons.

  “Do a full sweep, private. A bullet in the head of every corpse. Could be zeds in waiting.”

  The private sighed to himself. “Ok sir.”

  Andy watched carefully as the private walked up to the first corpse. He raised his gun and fired once. There was a bang, loud in the confined cabin, accompanied by a damp thumping sound as the bullet lodged in the corpse’s skull.

  There was maybe twenty bodies between the private and the group. They only had a minute or so left.

  The private took his second shot. Another bang, another damp thump.

  Andy felt something tugging on his leg. He carefully eased his head down, satisfied the private’s attention was on his sombre task.

  Jenny was tugging on his trouser leg, she was lying on the floor next to him. Her eyes peered through a ring of intestine, open and scared, her pupils huge.

  Bang, thump.

  Bang, thump.

  They could jump the private
when he got near, though Andy. But what of the rest of the soldiers? They wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Bang, thump.

  Maybe he could tell the private the truth, appeal to his better nature. Andy laughed inwardly. The best they could hope for would be to be taken to the private’s CO, and then no doubt they would be shot. Just like all the other passengers.

  Bang, thump.

  Jenny grabbed his trouser leg and pulled hard.

  He shrugged. He was out of ideas.

  Chapter 8

  It had been a good day. Andy had completed his first flight from Manchester to Dubai.

  He relaxed in the luxurious lounge of the Hotel Jamerah, taking another sip of his beer. He had two days respite before his next flight back to Manchester. He had it all planned - take it easy tonight, grab a fine meal and a few drinks. Get up tomorrow and spend the day by the beach, followed by a swim in the crystal clear waters of the Arabian Gulf and maybe a visit to Dubai old town.

  He nodded to the waiter, “Thanks, can you charge it to my room please?”

  “Of course sir,” said the smiling young waiter. Andy left him a handsome tip, then went back up to his room on the twenty seventh floor.

  His room looked inland, and in most places that would have been inferior to a beach view, but not in Dubai. Andy went straight to the balcony and looked out across the impressive skyline, dominated by the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building. It stood like a tower of rock, a bony finger reaching to the clouds, a myriad of lights dancing around its frame like a million fireflies.

  He added a new item to his itinerary. The view from the top must be amazing.

  There was a knock on his door. Maybe it was his pilot, James.

  It wasn’t James, it was a man in a suit.

  He held out his hand. “Hello Captain Bracknell, I’m Simon Calder, the Middle East Airlines representative in Dubai.”

  Andy took his hand and shook it. “Hello, pleased to meet you, please come in.”

  The two men made their way into the spacious hotel room. Andy motioned towards the balcony. “Please, take a seat. Would you like a drink?”

  “No, it’s ok Captain.”