Diaries of the Damned

by Laybourne, Alex

  Chapter 24 – Is it Ever Too Late for Redemption?

  Neil stopped talking. His chest was tight to the point of being painful. He felt the weight of their collective gaze, and the heavy air that had fallen over the cabin. For a while, nobody spoke and Neil found himself beginning to tremble.

  “Do you really expect us to believe you? To believe that our own government planned to attack us, just to start a war with another country? I mean who? North Korea, Iraq… China?” Jessica spoke, her voice stronger than at any point in the flight thus far.

  “Really, that’s rich coming from you,” Neil spat.

  “Shut up, soldier,” Jessica snapped, her façade slipping.

  “Paul, you wrote down everything that people have told you. So tell me, what was her reason for slicing her wrists?” Neil turned away from Jessica, who stared at him with her jaw clenched.

  Paul flipped through his notes, reading and re-reading his coded scribbles.

  “Save it, because whatever she told you was a lie. She slit her wrists because she wanted the easy way out. She couldn’t cope with the knowledge of where we are really going,” Neil had started to shout. His face darkened as anger took over his emotions.

  The plane continued its descent, a steeped event that most had previously experienced. “I should probably go check with the pilots,” Jessica had regained her mild natured tone of voice.

  “Save it, Captain,” Neil spat. “Or whatever rank it is you managed to fuck your way into. You forget I know where this goddamned plane is going. I’ve got nothing left to loose. That’s why you cut your wrists. I tell you what. Give me a knife and I’ll finish the job for you.” Neil had lost all control. His emotions came in a rush.

  “Hey, hey, Neil, calm things down. Leave Jessica alone. You’ve been through something shitty. We all have, but there is no reason to turn on each other. Now Jessica told us about the army, how they conscripted her to fly these planes. She is bringing us to safety, and has been flying back into Hell every night for weeks. So why don’t you sit down and start telling us the truth.” Paul, usually cool and in control of himself, could no longer hold his tongue. After the crazy story spun by Brian, he had had enough of being lied to, and played for the fool.

  “I am telling you the truth. She’s no stewardess. She was born into the army. Her father, probably even her grandfather. She was an officer before she even fucking signed her papers.”

  “Shut up,” Jessica snapped.

  “Make me!” Neil roared. “Go ahead, kill me now, save them the satisfaction,” Neil roared as spittle flew from his lips.

  Paul sprang to his feet, followed by Leon. Everybody else shrank away.

  “Okay, everybody calm down. Jessica, what the hell is he talking about?” Paul looked from Jessica to Neil.

  “I don’t know. He must have seen me at the airport. That General followed us around; me and the team that put these flights together. I was there when they brought him in. I heard what he had been through. Don’t blame him. He’s been through enough. He was trapped under the ground for a week or more without food. Waiting for a court martial, that’s what I heard. He’s lucky to be getting a second chance.” Jessica rose, smiling at Paul, scowling at Neil. “Now, we’re coming in to land. I need to talk to the pilot.” She stepped over Paul, and placed a hand on Leon’s shoulder, easing him back into his seat. “You should all sit down. I have no idea how bumpy this is going to be.”

  “Wait just one second,” Paul spoke up. “Look at me, Jessica. Look at me. Tell me the truth.” Paul urged.

  “Yeah, tell him, Jessica,” Neil jabbed, much to Paul’s annoyance.

  “I don’t have time for this, Paul. I told you my story. Now we are almost there, free from all of this. You can put it behind you,” she began.

  “Put it behind us?” Alan called out, “How can we just put it this behind us?” he asked.

  The plane leaned to the left, a sudden lurch that caught them all off guard. “I really need to go. Argue it amongst yourselves. What’s done is done, whether it was the government or someone else, or even an act of God. We are away from it now.” She turned and walked away, a scurry in her step.

  “Paul, you have to believe me,” Neil began, “You had it all put together. You had already figured out the flu and everything. I just told you who did it. Please,” Neil begged.

  “I do believe,” Paul answered to the shock of the group.

  “Really… just like that you change your mind on her?” Leon jumped in. “I mean, I don’t know who to believe. Maybe everybody is lying. Hell, I could see our government doing that. They don’t care about us, anyway. If anything it makes perfect sense…Orwellian you could even say.”

  Paul looked at them all, thinking how to tell them about the distrust that had formed in his mind over Jessica’s story. “I never fully trusted her. No flight attendant goes to the pilots that often, not on a flight like this. Every time she goes in, she looked around, as if checking nobody is standing behind her. She doesn’t act like a stewardess, and well…she’s wearing dog tags, small ones; on a bracelet. They might only be symbolic, but when you put it all together…”

  “So she lied to us. What the hell is going on? Where are we going?” Tracey asked, as she hugged her stomach.

  “We are going to Eastern Europe – I mean deep into the East,” Neil emphasized the location for them.

  “Why?” Paul, Leon and Monique all asked in unplanned unison.

  “Why do you think? We were all exposed to the virus, had close contact to the diseased,” Neil began but was cut off by the sound of the remaining passengers turning around to pay attention. News that their proposed fresh start was not quite the thing it had been made out to be had them all riled.

  “We were the good group.” Robert took his chance to speak. The others were injured or beaten. We were the ones that got out.” For the first time since they had met, Robert sounded young, frightened.

  “You think that because you were less damaged than the others, you were immune. We all breathed in their blood, we consumed their bodies the moment we killed them. We are more damned than any of them.” Neil paused. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Jessica returning from the cockpit. “Just ask her about the other group, the ones being flown out of a secondary airport, a military base at…” Neil’s words stopped a split second before a dark red hole appeared above his left eye. The sound of the gunshot was muffled by the silencer, and it took a few moments for people to realize what had happened. Only when the blood blinded him and the hole in the back of his head dribbled the first few globs of brain matter did Neil fall.

  A scream rang from around the aircraft, although it was more from surprise than horror. Death had numbed them all.

  Fittingly, it was Paul that reacted first, even as the plane’s angle of descent continued to steepen. “Where are we really going?” he asked, unafraid of the weapon aimed at his chest.

  “Does it matter?” Jessica asked, her voice unrecognizable. The accent she had worked hard to keep hidden burst through, capturing her every word.

  “You tell us. Are we heading toward our deaths?” It was Alan who spoke, and rose out of his seat.

  Jessica looked at them all, not just at Paul and those that surrounded him, like disciples, but at the entire aircraft. She smiled; a strained expression. “It’s too late to change anything now. The plane is approaching the landing zone. The Russian military are waiting. They will escort you to the camp, where you will be…processed.

  “That’s very clever,” Paul said, the pieces falling together before his eyes. He looked at his notes. He heard the echoes of everybody’s tale of survival reverberating inside his skull, and for the first time, he felt not only hopeless, but sad; sad that he had fought so hard to survive.

  “Why save us at all?” Leon asked. His own image had formed just moments after Paul’s.

  “With every nation in the world watching, zombies walking the streets…it was unforeseen but played into our han
ds. Everybody is clambering over themselves to help, to prove it wasn’t them. We even have a few planes being taken into North Korea. The world is uniting. It’s remarkable.” Jessica smiled at them. “We could realistically be thinking about world peace, and all for the price of a few bodies and an abandoned island.”

  Paul stood and stepped into the aisle of the descending plane. His ears popped, with that eye watering annoyance that seemed unavoidable. “So we are all to be executed. This is all just a show. Let other nations kill us, which gives you something to hang over their heads should things ever turn sour. That’s not world peace. That’s blackmail. It’s a fucking dictatorship in the making. Ruling by fear… retribution is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal.” Paul walked down the aisle, taking each step slowly.

  “But you know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have cut your wrists. You started this. You wanted Paul to write everything down, even though you knew we were going to die. It’s too late for you to cleanse your soul so cheaply,” Leon spat, his mild manner replaced with a hatred of his own. “We had a better chance out there, on the streets,” he spat, looking at his daughter who had woken up and stared at them all with wide, terror filled eyes.

  “It’s too late now. It’s too late for all of us. You see, you’re right, Paul. I did know…I do know one hell of a lot. The world is going to change. This is just the start. Our day ends with the start of a new world.” Beneath them all, the plane gave a gentle shudder as the wheel hatches opened and the landing gears stretched their links in anticipation of the landing. All around them, for those that took the time to look through the windows, snowcapped mountains stretched into a bleak oblivion.

  “And you? You just go back tonight, rest up and deliver another package to some other helpful nation tomorrow? Do you really think they won’t see the scars, Jessica? You said it yourself, the world is changing. There is no place for weakness.” Paul took another step forward. She held the pistol in her hands. Paul didn’t know what he hoped to accomplish, but to simply walk toward his own death like some passive fool was not going to be his way out.

  “I know, and Paul,” Jessica adjusted her grip on the pistol, her finger wrapping around the trigger, as she adjusted her aim, causing Paul to stop his approach. “You don’t have to believe me, but I really am sorry.” Tears welled in her reddened eyes. The rest happened in an instant. The gun fired, a fine bloody mist filled the cabin, and Jessica dropped the gun, her face an expression of slack-jawed disbelief. The same expression one wears moments after performing a task they always knew was better left undone. A few seconds later, she fell to the floor…dead.

  From the moment Jessica’s body hit the floor, an intoxicating cloud of black panic descended over them. It seeped through their pores and sickened their minds. Even Tracy began to babble frantically to herself under her breath. Robert began to hyperventilate. Seeing what was going on, Leon, who prided himself on remaining calm throughout everything he had faced thus far in his life, went over to her. He crouched down in the aisle, so he could make eye contact.

  Paul heard him start to speak, but was more aware of the ground that was approaching so rapidly. They were only a few hundred meters from the ground; there was no time to do anything. Then Paul remembered the gun. It wasn’t much, but he was certain that they wouldn’t fly into such inhospitable areas without more weapons on board. Moving as fast as the cramped cabin allowed, he sprinted toward Jessica’s body, where the gun was still clutched in her hand. Bending down to gather it, he felt a shadow fall behind him.

  “It’s too late,” said Robert, the young boy whose tale of sexual depravity was told without a trace of the bragging tones one would normally expect from a fraternity boy.

  “No, but I won’t go without a fight. There has to be weapons on board this thing. They have to be in the cockpit, it’s the only place. Bending down, Paul pulled the gun out of Jessica’s hand. He rose and saw the airport stretch out before the plane, the grey tarmac of the runway filling more and more of the window. He could see the military vehicles standing by, their arrival long since expected.

  “I’m with you. Let’s go.” Robert nudged Paul in the small of his back as a sign of his intent.

  Paul couldn’t say if it was accidental, or if Robert had seen the freezing wave of panic begin to settle over his body, but in any case, Paul was thankful to have him there, even if they only had one weapon between them.

  Storming into the cockpit, Paul began to bark his orders, hoping the surprise would catch them off guard. Only…there was nobody there. The pilot and co-pilot were gone.

  “What the fuck…” Robert asked.

  “Drones…we’ve been sitting in a fucking drone all this time.” Paul’s voice was empty, the words as hollow to the ears as they were to his tongue the moment he uttered them. The pistol fell from his hand and the entire plane gave a violent lurch as the wheels touched down. Everybody was caught off balance, the speed and angle of descent far from ideal. Paul fell to the floor, Robert fell on top of him, and the last thing Paul remembered hearing were the screams of the passengers, as their fate was sealed.

  Chapter 25 – Landing Party

  The first thing Paul heard as he found his way through the fog that had settled over his brain was the strange hissing sound as the door he was lying next to released its lock and opened. The light outside was bright and a harsh wind was blowing. The howls through the open door only served to further heighten the screams of the other passengers.

  Scrambling to his feet, Paul made a dash for the gun, which lay further inside the plane. His fingers brushed the metal, when a shadow fell over him and a heavily accented voice spoke up.

  “I would not do that if I were you.” The Russian voice was deep and gravelly, the accent only making it less hospitable.

  Paul got to his feet and turned to look at the man that addressed him. His legs wanted to buckle, but he forced himself to stand tall. The man was dressed in military clothes, his jacket adorned with pins and medals which, while shiny and impressive to look at, probably meant much more to someone from Russian heritage.

  “What is going on here?” he demanded, looking at the bodies on the floor. Blood still dripped from the ceiling of the plane from where Jessica had taken her own life. A deep red drop fell and landed on the tip of the man’s boot which, contrary to the popular image, had not been shined to a mirror-like finish.

  “You will answer me.” The Russian fought hard against the desire to attack. His defenses and mistrust for the English seemed to be greater than the media would have people believe.

  For a while it was as if the plane was empty. That only he and Paul stood there. The Russian soldier’s gaze never faltered. He didn’t even blink.

  “She…there was a fight. The stewardess…whoever she was, shot and killed that man there, before taking her own life,” Paul explained, feeling his own steely resolve begin to weaken. Three more soldiers stood in the open doorway of the plane, armed with heavy duty automatic weapons. From the way they held them, they were not averse to the notion of following Jessica’s lead and wiping out the plane. They were going to die no matter what, so did it really make any difference where?

  “That is most unfortunate. But there is no time. Come. You must now all come with me. We will take you to the holding camp where you will live until your government finalizes the evacuations and your lives can begin again.” The man turned and left the plane without another word. The three remaining soldiers entered. Two stood by the door, while a third rounded up the passengers, helping them from their seats and through the aisles.

  Outside, two large busses waited on the tarmac, surrounded by military vehicles. Every soldier that Paul saw was armed, and each wore a facial expression that said anything but welcome home. The air was hostile, and the niceties forced. Paul realized that knowing the truth changed their viewpoint on things, but didn’t think it mattered much. The Russians, however helpful they wanted to make themselves look, were far from pleased at bein
g used as a mass grave provider.

  The air was colder than any had expected, and by the time they had made it to the waiting busses, the winter air held them all in its thrall. Unsurprisingly, there was no heating on the vehicles – or suspension – they would later come to realize. Nobody spoke as they pulled away. The bodies of both Jessica and Neil were removed from the aircraft and thrown rather unceremoniously into the baggage compartment of the final bus.

  The scenery around them changed the moment they pulled out of the airport, which was tiny and made Paul wonder how on earth the aircraft managed to land on such a small runway. By the time he looked back, as if he needed to reaffirm his sizing suspicions, the airport was gone, and they were surrounded by trees.

  The road that they followed was unpaved for the most part, and was certainly not on any map Paul could conceive.

  “Where are we?” He heard a middle aged man whisper to the younger man that sat beside him. It was a common question; one that bounced around the bus like an echo. The vehicle felt like an old school bus. Iron framed, worn out seats, the padding long since gone. The driver sat behind a semi partition, which obscured him from view; also from any projectiles that may be thrown his way during whatever journey he was making.

  At the front of the bus, standing beside the driver were two armed guards. They stood motionless; their bodies immobile even as the bus bounced down the pothole strewn road. The stared at the group, but nobody dared approach them, or even call out to them. Paul looked around, trying to find something to occupy his mind. He had left his notepad on the plane. Or rather, he had put it to one side when he went to retrieve Jessica’s gun. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. They were being taken to their execution after all. As his eyes roamed the bus, they came to settle on the graffiti that littered the wooden paneled back of the seat before him. It was, he had no doubt, the standard fare: declarations of love, and numbers offering the same for a decent price. The Russian text made no sense to his eyes, and he wondered how anybody could read it. He had mastered several languages during his years, but never one so complicated at first sight.