We’re going to die.
She should have called her mother. Really, how bad would it have been to suffer through a call like that compared to all of this? She almost laughed out loud thinking what their call was going to be like if she survived. Why didn’t you call? What happened to you?
Well, mom, where do I begin—?
The nose thumped down again, this time pointed back down the narrow strip of road they had labored through. The flood lights from the wingtips shone on a long set of partially shadowed troughs, a straight line leading back toward the hangar. Beyond their trail, Wendy saw the reflection of eyes in the distance and figures stumbling toward them.
Wendy leaned back and spoke over her shoulder. “What the hell is Keith’s plan?”
The door to the plane flung open and Keith fell into the pilot’s seat, kicking snow off his boots out the window. Cold air and icy powder swam in flurries through the cabin.
“Shit,” Keith grumbled, swinging his legs in and closing the door. “Forgot my fucking gloves.” He blew into his hands, which were visibly shaking.
He buckled his seatbelt and gave the throttle a quick succession of jolts, causing the plane to surge forward and fall back, rocking it like he was stuck in mud.
“Here goes nothing,” Keith announced and slammed the throttle to full bore. The engine roared and the plane leapt out of its snowy moorings, dipping side to side as it swam into the lanes plowed through the snow by their previous run.
“Holy shit,” Wendy blurted as she straightened her arms again to hold herself in her seat.
Keith was actually trying to take off toward the hangar building. Wendy could tell they were accelerating, but she couldn’t tell if it would be enough. How fast did a plane need to be going to get off the ground, and more importantly, did Keith know?
Wendy swallowed hard. “So, you can fly this thing, right?”
Keith laughed. “Pretty much. I’m not technically a pilot, but I’ve logged about ten, maybe fifteen hours up there.”
“What? You don’t know how to fly!”
The smile on his face vanished. “I can fly.”
“Keith can fly,” Troy called over the din.
The plane bounced up, the hissing and thumping beneath them vanishing for a second or two, just a heartbeat maybe, before they plunged back down with a hard whump. The plane dipped precariously to the side and slid back into the lanes carved in the snow.
“Fuck!” Keith put his thumb on a toggle switch under the yoke and held it there. “Forgot the flaps.” A whirring noise added to the shaking, rattling, hissing, and thumping throughout the cabin. “Come on, come on,” he growled at the laboring engine and the slowly extending flaps.
Four figures in the snow off to their right stood like trees as the plane passed them by, their arms out like stark branches, groping for the tips of the wing. The landing lights outlined another dozen shambling zombies working their way through the snow. None were in front of them, thankfully, but the mound of snow in the shape of the sagging, abandoned aircraft was.
The other plane charged at them as though it were under power, too. It felt like they were two opposing magnets drawn to each other, or trains hurtling at one another on the same tracks. Which was exactly the problem. The tracks their plane followed led straight at the other plane.
Wendy began to count down the seconds to impact in her head…eight…seven…six…an orange shimmering started to show at the tip of the other plane’s wing, a buried reflector of some kind, or maybe a demonic eye opening in time to witness their destruction…five…four…and like that Wendy couldn’t hear a thing. The thumping and rattling disappeared, replaced with a ringing sound that she guessed was time slowing to give her a chance to glimpse her own past. Thoughts of her sister came to mind first because it was most prescient given everything that had happened recently. Sarah diving into the water and not coming up, Wendy’s own screaming—God, she was screaming! The ringing was her own scream. She sat straight, feet mashed against the footrests beside the pedals, her hand pressed into the ceiling of the airplane so hard it hurt…three…two…the plane veered suddenly.
They were in the air?! She looked side to side, then ahead, but the abandoned plane was gone. Keith guided them gently in an arc that turned them away from the hangar buildings as they rose just over their roof tops, then above the tree line, where he straightened them out and let out his breath.
“Fucking fuck,” Keith said with relief. “Let’s not do that again.”
Wendy concentrated on breathing and relaxing her arms and legs. She couldn’t have agreed more with Keith. If she survived this, she was never coming into the Quarantine Zone again. She could work for Eloran in the Rurals or the Districts, if they still wanted her. If she still had a job. If they weren’t going to throw her in prison, or try to kill her again. The only thing that had kept her employed and out of prison up until now was the little girl balled up in the foot well behind her, and once they got back, that was going to end. After this monumental fiasco, no one, especially Senator Jefferson, was going to let Wendy within a mile of Larissa, and whoever it was that ordered her death, nothing would stop them from doing it again.
Except maybe Keith was right.
What if she made things public? She needed to get in front of cameras and make her case, make it hurt whoever thought she was just some disposable thing in the way of their master plan. She needed to take the fight to them, and the only way to do it was get them to come out of hiding and expose themselves. She didn’t like admitting it, but Keith had it right.
The plane continued its slow ascent into the night sky and Wendy closed her eyes, relief washing over her, settling her frayed and tattered nerves. She coughed repeatedly as she tried to control her breathing.
Goddamned cold.
Something touched Wendy’s lap, startling her. A hand. Keith’s hand. He pat her thigh repeatedly, not looking her direction, groping. She slapped his hand, hard.
“Ow!” He withdrew his hand. “Fuck. I said I need the GPS. Which way is south?”
Wendy shook her head. She was still way too high strung. She took the GPS from between her thighs and turned it around, getting her own bearings enough to figure it out. “I don’t know. Hang on.” She looked out the front windshield at the gray, hazy undulations of the earth spanning endlessly, a confusing cacophony of misdirection. Nothing below them was lit. They had only the stars and a sliver of moon as guide, and those were mostly gobbled up by high, unseen clouds blanketing the stratosphere.
She looked down at the GPS and pointed off to her left. “That way.”
Keith veered the plane slowly and Wendy followed the GPS compass with her arm, pointing the new direction of South for Keith to navigate by.
Keith eased the throttle and the engine calmed. He turned off the landing lights and the wings went dark, the world with it. She could barely see the wings beside her. She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, she could hardly tell the difference.
When was the last time she slept? She wanted to sleep now. She felt so tired. When would she get another chance?
Keith flipped open his lighter and flicked it once. The whole cabin glowed in orange a second as he lit a cigarette pinched between his lips. He shook the lighter closed and slid open a small window beside him. Freezing air swam through the cabin. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”
Wendy sighed. It wouldn’t be tonight.
The End
Thank you for reading Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment. If you’ve come this far, chances are you’ve enjoyed the series, which is why I’m happy to inform you that book five is coming soon. Be sure to follow me on Facebook or Twitter (@BetterHeroArmy) to find out when it releases.
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Table
of Contents
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment
Better Hero Army
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 22