When she turned back around, she found Larissa staring at her on this side of the plane now, her head cocked sideways like a curious puppy, the duct tape half peeled off. The part she had managed to peel back was stuck to her fingers. She looked confused, maybe even worried.
Wendy approached the plane, curious herself by the behavior. Larissa was caring for her own needs, or at least tried to. She didn’t have the motor skills to figure out the strong adhesive, but she tried.
What if it was the Ketamine?
Troy pumped Larissa full of Ketamine earlier today, after all. Wendy had thought Larissa’s overly long sedation was due to an overage in dose, but maybe it had been something more. Larissa’s sudden breakthrough in cognitive function was inexplicable otherwise. Ketamine was a hyperglutamateric, meaning it stimulated the NMDA glutamate receptors—neurotransmitters responsible for aiding in learning and memory, something the Consumption Pathogen blocked in abundance. Wendy wondered if maybe the Ketamine amped Larissa’s glutamate production.
Wendy dumped all the medical supplies next to Troy and stepped closer to the plane, staring into Larissa’s now very alert eyes. Larissa pulled her hand, which tugged at the tape. Her eyes reflected the pain she felt, this new and bewildering experience obviously bothering her.
“Hold on,” Wendy said, opening the door to the plane. “Here.” She leaned in and took Larissa’s stuck hand. “Let me help.”
She grabbed the tape with her other hand and pulled the two apart. Larissa seemed surprised and looked carefully at her now freed hand, touching her fingers together as though she couldn’t believe what just happened. She shot Wendy a questioning look.
“I need to help Troy,” she told Larissa firmly. “Wait.”
Wendy closed the door on Larissa, who immediately let out a longing moan. She didn’t have time to deal with the girl, though. Kneeling beside Troy, she looked at his head while sorting through the bandages she had brought over. The first thing she needed to do was control his bleeding, and ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time. Larissa moaned and thumped into the plane’s window behind her as she moved Troy’s hair off his head wound. He had a number of small lacerations she could just bandage, but the one above his temple worried her the most. It trickled blood and had only really congealed because of his hair.
She patted on Troy’s cheek to get his attention. “Is there any crazy glue in here?”
He nodded, pointing toward the wall. “Toolbox?” He didn’t sound sure.
As Wendy slid open drawer after drawer, Keith pumped at a fuel line connected between the top of the fuel truck and the gas tank of the plane by a long hose. It looked jury-rigged. She half-expected him to have a lit cigarette dangling from his lips by the cavalier way he usually treated things. That and the stress of the situation was nearly driving her to ask for a cigarette herself.
She found an unopened bottle of crazy glue and thanked her luck. Just dressing his wounds wouldn’t prevent more blood loss, and until they could get him somewhere that had even the most basic of aid stations, that was the number one problem she had to deal with.
She knelt over Troy’s head so she wasn’t in her own light. “This might hurt,” she said, and pinched the skin together where the wound still oozed blood. Troy hissed and straightened his legs, but didn’t pull away. She pressed the tip of the tube against the folds of skin and squeezed gently until she saw a bead of glue, then loosened her hold, letting the skin part so that the glue would fill the space. She started counting backwards from fifteen, aloud so Troy would know how long he had to suffer through the pain.
“Don’t get stuck to me,” he grunted.
“I’m not planning on it,” she said, moving her fingers slightly to get the glue to settle away from her own skin.
She repeated the process several more times, twice having to quickly tug the hair out of the wound, which immediately ripped open the few scabs he had formed. Those were the worst. Troy swore liberally, jerking away from her on each occasion. He knew she wasn’t gluing, so his movement didn’t cause more problems. It just made him feel better about her rough treatment.
“Fuck, how big’s the wound?” Troy complained after her third gluing.
“Big,” Wendy said. “Two more.”
She finished the same time Keith yanked the fuel hose out of the plane. There wasn’t enough time to dress his wounds, so she scooped up what bandages she could, stuffed them into her pockets, and helped Troy to his feet. He leaned heavily on her, limping as though he just didn’t have the strength to make it another step. She grabbed his belt and forced all of his weight against her as he managed the three steps to the wing door. He opened it and held it as Wendy turned him around to sit in the door frame. She had to physically push Larissa back to do it, making the whole maneuver twice as difficult.
“Get back,” Wendy snapped at the girl. “Move.” She pushed Larissa again, who cried out in fright at the rough treatment, and Troy managed to hit the knob on the pilot seat to flip it forward before lifting himself up and into the back seat.
Larissa was on his back, trying to crawl past him to Wendy, groaning and wailing like a child. She was a child, Wendy had to remind herself.
“Jesus,” Wendy said, pushing Larissa away while straddling Troy’s leg. “Do you have any more Ketamine we can use on her?”
“I wish,” Troy mumbled, leaning into the girl to help push her back. “I’d use some on me first, though.”
“How the hell are we going to fit you both in the back seat?”
“Well, I’m going to sit lengthwise,” Troy said. “And as soon as Keith starts up the engine, princess here will hopefully cower in the foot well.” He shoved Larissa again as he scooted backwards, straightening his legs across the seats.
Keith opened the opposite side door and leaned in over the front seat to pull Larissa out of the way. Troy and Wendy both breathed a sigh of relief as Troy easily slid into place.
Keith slapped Troy’s arm gently to get his attention. “Hey, T. I don’t want to run and hide anymore. I think we should cross the channel.”
There were a hundred reasons why that was a bad idea. Even Wendy knew a number of them. The fact that the military was authorized to shoot down planes traveling into or out of the Quarantine Zone being the biggest one that came to mind. The fact that the military had just tried to kill her being second. Or maybe they were tied.
Troy looked skeptical.
“Here me out,” Keith said. “They ain’t gonna shoot us down with the Senator’s daughter aboard. We’ll get to the ground safe enough, especially if I broadcast a mayday on enough frequencies. Plenty of press should be there to make sure of it.”
“Then what?” Wendy asked.
“Then we take the fight to them.”
“What fight?” The idea of fighting the Senator and all the powers that had caused the destruction of all three sanctioned trading zones was as immense as the web of espionage that made it all possible in the first place.
Keith didn’t answer except to shake his head.
Wendy tried to sigh, but coughed into her arm instead. “They’re going to win,” she said weakly. “You don’t know who they are, you—”
“All the more reason to flush them out.”
“You abducted Larissa and me, you—”
“We didn’t abduct the girl,” Keith interrupted.
Wendy’s eyes went wide. She pointed at Larissa, still a ball of struggling arms and legs caught in Keith’s arms. “What do you call that?”
Keith looked at Larissa, then at Troy, and back again at Wendy. “She’s my property.”
“What?!”
Fifty
Wendy stared at Keith, dumbfounded by such a statement. Property? People weren’t property, except….
“Shit,” Wendy whispered.
Keith smiled. “You know what’s funny about the Reusability Law that Larissa’s daddy, here, voted for?” Keith let Larissa go and she fell into the foot well of the back seats. “Every
recovered body, living or dead, has to be registered for sale or other disposition by a licensed property broker. You want to know what her daddy forgot to do four days back when he received her into the EPS?”
“Wait,” Wendy said, shaking her head. “That was a different circumstance. They administered the cure to Larissa before bringing her to the station.”
“Yup,” Keith said as he reached into his cargo pocket. He pulled out the piece of paper Wendy remembered the trio arguing about back at the EPS. He unfolded it and held it up for Wendy to see. “Except the Chief Registrar listed her as contagious, requiring standard Class B quarantine. See the check box there?” Keith pointed at the place on the form where four classifications of infection were available; A for infectious, B for treated, requiring quarantine, C for non-infectious, and D for deceased. The paper clearly showed the check box for Class B ticked.
“Look see at box eighteen, there,” Keith went on.
Wendy squinted. “Owning Entity. Who is Binder Park Trust?”
“That’s us. Me and T, and maybe a couple others if they survived Chico’s fucking end-of-days scenario back there.” Keith folded the paper up again and slid it into his cargo pocket. “So, we didn’t actually abduct Larissa so much as got our property back.”
“But, you broke into their network to hack the files,” Wendy said. “They’re going to—”
Keith shook his head. “We filed this two days ago. I just hit ‘print’ while I was there to get a certified copy.”
Wendy looked at Troy. He nodded in agreement.
“Technically, you’re the only person we abducted. If you don’t press charges, the most they have us on is False Imprisonment, and that’s a misdemeanor, or barely a year in the pokey. That blowing up the EPS shit, though. We need to turn that back around in their face, or we’re fucked. All of us, and that includes you, Doc.”
Wendy didn’t know what to say. Keith was actually making sense, and trusting in him was just about as scary as facing a horde of zombies. And yet, hadn’t Keith just saved her from that very thing? She looked to Troy for guidance.
“What do you say, T?” Keith asked, slapping his arm again.
“Yeah,” Troy replied. He pushed Larissa’s arms off his legs and straightened, wincing. “Yeah, we need to fix this. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that.”
Wendy wanted to ask how they envisioned things going down otherwise, but Keith clapped his hands together excitedly and let the door shut. The noise frightened Larissa, who crumpled into a ball in the backseat foot well.
“Get in, Doc,” Keith said under the plane. He yanked a wire out from a plug under the engine cowling and tossed it aside. “Time to get the hell out of here.”
Fifty-One
The roll-up gate to the hangar made a terrible racket as Keith spun the chain with long, hard yanks. Wendy expected a pack of zombies to seep under the door as soon as there was room enough for them to wedge their way through. Keith did, too, by the way he held his pistol pointed at the gate, but the airstrip outside was surprisingly empty.
Keith didn’t waste any time getting back into the plane. He settled in with a groan and tugged the door shut.
“Everyone ready?” Keith asked rhetorically. He didn’t wait for an answer. His hands were everywhere, turning on the GPS unit and putting it on the dash, reaching above the windshield to flick switches on, reaching around the yoke to turn knobs. A humming noise began somewhere beneath them. He pressed a button over his head and held it for a few seconds. He looked at Wendy, then at Troy, and back through the front of the plane. Troy held Larissa close to his chest so she wouldn’t squirm, but he looked irritated having to deal with the girl, who continued to moan and lament her undesirable circumstances.
“Fucking Chico,” Keith breathed as he let the switch go. Nothing happened in the plane.
“Shouldn’t it start?” Wendy asked.
“Hold your horses,” Keith said and pressed the switch next to the one he had just let go of.
The engine starter whirred and ground several times, making the propeller spin at full speed in the blink of an eye. Larissa ducked into the foot well in the back seat just as Troy hoped she would, probably groaning and moaning more complaints that no one could hear over the engine noise. Keith reached up and flicked another switch, then started fiddling with the knobs he and Chico had spent so much time arguing over. The engine growled as it chugged to a steady idle.
Wendy looked out the front windshield, through the spinning propeller, at a dark gray expanse, an undulating blanket of muted white that looked almost like the tops of clouds, as if they were already flying on top of them. It gave her a glimmer of hope, dashed only by her imagination conjuring the scene of zombies lurching into view, some even bubbling up from the ground in front of them.
“I told you he fucking flooded it,” Keith said over his shoulder.
“I know,” Troy agreed.
Keith adjusted himself in the pilot’s seat again and flicked a few more switches, acting vindicated. “Alright,” he announced, placing his hand on the throttle. “Let’s bug out.”
“Wait,” Wendy said, putting her own hand over his to stop him. “Shouldn’t you warm it up first? I mean, back at—”
“I pre-warmed the engine block,” Keith said, shaking her hand off his. “Besides, waiting here’s fucking stupid.”
He throttled the plane to full and they surged forward. There wasn’t much room between them and the snow line, but the plane accelerated into it quickly. Keith managed to line their wheels to meet the troughs used to bring the plane in. The whole plane shuddered and Wendy lurched forward in her seat at the impact. She thought they had stalled, or were stuck, but looking to her side she realized they were pulling away from the faint orange glow of the hangar behind them.
“Holy shit,” she said. “We’re moving!” She had to shout to be heard over the roaring engine and the grating and hissing beneath them. The plane shook violently, tipping side to side in the uneven snow, but they were actually moving.
“You sound surprised,” Keith replied. He leaned on the throttle, revving the engine more. He reached for another switch and the wing lights turned on, illuminating the snow ahead of them, nearly blinding Wendy. “That’s better.”
“I thought we’d get stuck, like earlier.”
“Naw,” Keith said, not giving the idea much merit. “The primary objective of landing is to come to a stop. Taking off, well, you kind of want to do the opposite.” Keith grinned and leaned forward to look over the nose of the craft. He was watching the lines in the snow. “This might get a little bumpy.”
He veered the plane hard to avoid the parked plane they had almost hit earlier today—had it really only been ten hours since they almost crashed into the ancient wreck? It seemed like days.
The nose of the plane lifted into the air and the right wing dipped to the side, nearly touching the snow, or maybe it did and Wendy couldn’t tell with all the other scraping and thumping sounds rising from under her feet. The plane shook violently, creaking and rattling and chirping all at once as it swayed from left to right and back again, the wing light swimming past the snow-packed mound of wreckage.
The GPS unit slid off the dash and Keith caught it as it fell. He shoved it into Wendy’s hands. “Take this,” he grumbled. She put the GPS between her legs and resumed her crash position of one hand on the dash, the other on the ceiling.
Keith sat clench-jawed and white-knuckled as he fought the pedals beneath him, at one point tightening his seatbelt so he could stand on them. Wendy knew enough about planes to know that was how you applied the wheel brakes.
“Why are you stopping?” Wendy shouted.
“What?!”
“The brakes! Why are you—?”
“Keep the wheels from spinning.”
“Why don’t you want the wheels—?” Wendy cut herself off and let out a scream of fright. The plane dipped hard to her side as Keith steered them back into the troughs in the sno
w where they had landed. It would have been fine if he had lined them up straight, but only two of the three wheels were in ruts, the third stuck plowing its own course.
“Fuck!” Keith mashed one pedal and eased on the other, forcing the plane to turn slightly, but the wheels refused to jump tracks. The plane dipped forward, growling and raking the snow beneath them to the tune of bumps and thumps.
“We’re never going anywhere like this,” Troy called over the ear pounding noise.
“I got another idea,” Keith shouted. He strained with the pedals, holding the yoke more for support than for steering. “We just need to get…far…enough.”
The plane labored along the runway like that for hundreds of feet, slowing more and more the further they went. It was like trying to scrape snow off the driveway when she was a kid. You could only go so far before the snow you were pushing became a mountain. Wendy felt the lump in the pit of her stomach growing with every foot they plowed into the emptiness of the airstrip. She could actually see snow pressing against the dipping wing when Keith finally backed off the throttle and they lurched to a stop.
Ahead of them she could see the silver reflection of eyeballs in the distance like little moths coming toward the plane’s flood lights.
“Why the fuck are we stopping?”
Keith glared at Wendy as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “I’ve got to turn us around,” he snapped. “Unless you want to do it.”
“Relax,” Troy said from the backseat, putting a hand on Wendy’s shoulder. She yelped at the sudden touch, straightening in her seat. “I know what he’s up to.”
Wendy took a deep breath, but all it did was send her into another coughing fit. Keith slid out the door, letting a wash of freezing air blow in on them. He trudged to the back of the plane and suddenly the nose lifted into the air. Wendy yelped again, slamming her hand into the ceiling to steady herself as Keith rocked the plane side to side several times before making a sudden hard swing. They made about a 15 degree turn before the plane’s nose thumped back down into the snow. Keith repeated the process again and again, letting the wing’s flood lights wash over the world around them bit by bit. More eyes in the distance reflected back at them every time he set the nose down.
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 21