Cody looked towards the window. Not everyone had gotten out after all.
“Assholes,” he said, glaring at the party people.
Several faces turned around and looked at him. Their expressions were strangely blank. Cody looked across the aisle to his left. A young family was sitting over there – a man, woman and two little girls. The man looked confused and scared. The woman had a distant look in her eyes, like she was thinking about something she’d left behind. Or someone.
Several rows down, a baby started crying.
Cody leaned back in his seat.
“Jesus kid,” he said to Rachel. “I think she gave me a real humdinger dose of something. I don’t feel too good.”
Rachel squeezed his hand.
The plane climbed further into the sky. Outside it was blacker than black. Inside it was cold – the cabin felt like it had been slotted into the compartment of a giant freezer.
Cody’s eyelids were heavy. It was time to go back to sleep.
Before closing his eyes, he turned to his right.
Rachel was looking at him, smiling.
To Cody’s surprise, Kate was there too, sitting in the window seat. She was looking at him. The young man who’d been there just moments earlier was now gone.
Kate MacLeod was young and alive. She was at the height of her beauty and it was 1986 all over again. The MacLeods were on top of the world. They were the perfect couple going on a family vacation with their perfect daughter. With any luck, they’d see the Santa Monica Mountains again.
Kate’s silver eyes were dazzling and bright. She leaned forward. Slowly, she opened her mouth to speak.
Everything went black.
The End
Black Fever (Exterminators 2)
1
Cody MacLeod thought he was dead.
Why wouldn’t he be dead? Just seconds ago, the Black Widow had been sitting beside him at the back of the plane.
She’d come disguised as Cody’s ex-wife, Kate. Like she’d done several times before. She’d leaned in closer, her silver eyes shining bright. She’d spoken to him, although her blood red lips hadn’t moved. Cody couldn’t remember the precise words that she’d uttered. All he’d heard was the soothing and familiar sound of his wife’s voice, floating around the cabin like a distant siren’s song, drowning out everything else.
Seconds later, the roaring engine of the Boeing 737 had degenerated into a choking whine. The engine sputtered, stalled and then cut out altogether.
They were going down. Fast. When Cody looked to his right, the Black Widow was gone. All traces of Kate’s voice had extinguished and the only sound left in Cody’s ears was the chilling, high-pitched screaming of the other passengers.
The Boeing plummeted nose-down to the ground.
Cody grabbed a hold of his daughter Rachel, sitting next to him in the middle seat. He pulled her close and squeezed tight. He looked around at the growing scenes of panic unfolding within the plane.
A burning smell seeped into his nostrils and nearly choked him. The screaming inside the cabin increased. The passengers sounded like trapped animals locked inside a burning barn, banging their heads against the walls with no way out.
Cody looked straight ahead.
A raging fire roared around the tube of the fuselage. Like a hungry monster, it consumed the last of the oxygen and soon there was nothing left to breathe, nothing except thick plumes of swirling black smoke.
Everything went gray at the edges.
Cody couldn’t see very well but he could literally feel the plane disintegrating underneath him. He was suffocating. The air was heating up but it didn’t matter anymore.
It would be over soon.
Rachel looked around the cabin. Her fingers clamped down on Cody’s arm, like somehow he was supposed to keep her afloat while the plane sunk to Earth.
They wouldn’t escape the Black Storm. After everything they’d gone through on the road to the airport, it was a bitter pill to swallow. But it had always been a fool’s hope. In the end, they’d be like all the other poor lost souls down there in San Antonio. Mad or dead. They wouldn’t even be a statistic because nobody was counting anymore.
Cody braced himself for impact.
Jesus Christ, he was about to die in a plane crash and so was his daughter. He held Rachel tight, kissed her and spoke in her ear, telling her that he loved her over and over. He couldn’t say it enough, not now that words were all he had left for her.
He closed his eyes and stroked Rachel’s hair. She was locked in his arms, rigid and motionless like a mannequin.
At least they were together at the end. Nobody had taken her away from him. And now nobody ever would.
Cody opened his eyes. He gasped.
It was gone.
There was no fire, no screams, and no roaring engine. The cockpit hadn’t ripped away from the rest of the fuselage and neither had the tail. The plane was intact. Everything was normal and yet the experience of falling through the sky was still surging through his mind. It had been so real – the feeling of helplessness, of despair.
“What the hell?” Cody said.
Was this it? Was he dead?
He looked at Rachel sitting to his right. She was holding onto Bootsy the bear with one hand, while rubbing her tired eyes with the other. There was a look of confusion on her face.
No, he wasn’t dead.
The engines were silent.
Somebody groaned further down the cabin. Muted voices could be heard from all directions – more confusion in those voices.
“What happened?” somebody said.
Cody looked down the aisle. As he leaned to the side, his body creaked like it hadn’t moved for weeks. The other passengers were slowly waking up from what looked like a deep sleep. They were sitting up straight, rubbing their eyes and yawning and stretching their limbs. Some of them looked like they’d woken up from a nightmare – their eyes were wide and their mouths sucking at the air, like a dying fish.
A woman’s voice screeched from further down the aisle.
“Oh my God!” she said. It sounded like she was having trouble breathing. The words spilled out in between a series of violent gasping sounds. “We’re alive.”
Cody looked at Rachel.
“Are you okay honey?” he said. His voice was deep and raspy.
She looked at him.
“Are we dead?” she asked.
Cody shook his head. “We’re not dead,” he said. “At least I don’t think we are.”
Rachel looked further down the cabin with a wary look in her eyes.
“She was right there where you’re sitting,” Rachel said. “The Black Widow. The plane was going down.”
Cody felt a cold shiver run through him.
“You’re okay,” he said. “She’s gone now.”
“But where are we?” Rachel said.
He shook his head. “Sounds like the engines are off. I think we’ve landed somewhere. I don’t know kid.”
“Did we crash?” Rachel said. “That’s what she does to planes isn’t it?”
“I don’t think we crashed,” Cody said, looking around for anything inside the fuselage to indicate otherwise. “We’re in good condition if we did.”
“Why are the all the windows closed?” Rachel said.
Cody had already noticed that the shutters had been pulled down over the windows. Nobody had dared to open one yet. The lights inside the plane were switched on and everything looked normal. Back in the Hollywood glory days, Cody had regularly gone on wild drink and drug binges that would last for forty-eight hours and sometimes longer. When the party was over, he’d always wake up on the floor in a strange house or apartment surrounded by empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays. The world would be a foul-smelling blur. Nothing made sense.
That’s what it felt like now.
Cody glanced over at the young man sitting in the window seat next to Rachel. His skin was a ghoulish white. Thick beads of sweat dripped
down over his scrunched up features.
“Are you alright?” Cody said. “Hey mister, can you hear me?”
“I saw her too,” the man said, turning towards Cody. “She was right there, sitting in your seat for Christ’s sake. It was my mother, with silver eyes. She spoke to me but I can’t remember what she said.”
The man looked up and down the cabin like he was frantically searching for something he’d lost.
“We didn’t crash?” he said. “It was so…”
The man stopped talking. He looked like he was about to pass out.
“She was here,” Cody said. “But I don’t know…she’s gone now.”
“Why aren’t we dead then?” Rachel said.
Another man’s voice cut in. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
Cody glanced over his shoulder. The voice belonged to a man sitting directly across the aisle. He was leaning in closer, as if he’d been listening in on their conversation for some time. The man, a portly thirty-something with round, wire-rim John Lennon glasses, had a dazed look in his eyes. A blonde-haired woman sat beside him, trying her best to comfort their two young children who were groaning as they sat on her lap.
“The Black Widow should have killed us,” the man said.
“Did you see her?” Cody asked.
The man’s expression was grim. He nodded.
“My little girl,” he said, leaning further across the aisle so that his wife and children couldn’t hear what he was saying. “She spoke to me but it was her, the Black Widow. Those eyes, for God’s sake.”
The man sighed and turned his attention back to his family. Cody looked at the little girl spread out in her mother’s arms. She was about one year old and it was hard to imagine her with silver eyes. Cody didn’t want to imagine.
“Somebody open one of those damn shutters!” a voice yelled.
“After you asshole,” somebody else replied.
There was a chorus of metallic clicking noises. People were unbuckling their safety belts. One by one, they forced themselves out of their seats. They moved slowly, like freshly unwrapped mummies stepping out of their tombs. The sound of cracking limbs was everywhere.
“Where are we?” a man said, standing in the center of the aisle. He was looking towards the windows. The other passengers shook their heads and continued to talk quietly amongst themselves.
“Stay here Rachel,” Cody said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and tried to get up onto his feet.
“Oh Jesus,” he said.
His body was stiff and disobeyed the command being sent by his brain. Cody fought through it, staggering into the aisle like a drunk, his legs not quite fully underneath him. Once or twice, he had to grab onto the headrest of the nearest seat to retain his balance.
“Wait a minute,” he said, calling over to the huddle of people who’d gathered in the center of the aisle. The passengers ignored him and kept talking to one another. Cody cleared his throat and tried again, this time yelling at the top of his voice to make sure everyone heard him.
“Did everyone see the Black Widow?”
They stopped talking. All of them.
Some of the passengers nodded right away. Some didn’t have to – the frightened look in their eyes was enough. Most people ignored the question and turned away.
A middle-aged man nodded. His face was pale and somber.
“She was here,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. “But we haven’t crashed. That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Maybe we did,” a woman sitting nearby said. “Maybe this is what happens when she brings down a plane – everyone on board gets stuck in limbo.”
The man shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
An older woman stood up in her seat. Rachel had pointed this woman out to Cody earlier because she had a cat crate sitting on her lap when the plane took off. The woman yelped at the stiffness in her legs as she straightened up. She was still clutching onto the handle of the crate while the two black and white cats inside were in a crouching position, peering outside at the unfolding drama.
“Will somebody just look outside for God’s sake?” the old woman yelled. “I want to know where we are. Somebody open those shutters.”
Cody saw the hesitation in the passengers’ faces – especially those who were sitting next to the shutters. It wasn’t a good time to have chosen a window seat.
At last however, a few hands tentatively reached for the closed shutters.
Everyone held their breath.
There was a clicking noise as the first shutter was pushed up. Others followed quickly.
Cody leaned over from the aisle, trying to get a better look through the nearest window. It was dark outside, which didn’t come as a surprise. That was about all he could see. He’d have to go in closer if he wanted more detail.
Those who’d lifted the shutters pressed their faces tight up against the window.
“Well?” the old woman said. “Where are we?”
“Well we ain’t floating in the ocean,” a man said. “We ain’t sinking in it either or we’d be swimming by now. Looks like we’re just sitting in…”
“We’re back!” a woman’s voice cried out. She was looking through a window on the left hand side of the cabin, pushing her face tight up against the plexiglass, twisting left and right in order to get a better look at their surroundings. “I don’t believe it.”
“Holy shit!” someone else said. This voice was coming from the back of the plane. “We’re at the airport.”
Cody frowned. “What?”
Other people hurried over to the windows to see for themselves. Soon dozens of faces were pressed up against the side of the cabin. Some turned back around, a look of bewilderment etched on their faces. Others walked away in shocked silence.
“San Antonio?” the old woman holding onto the cat crate said.
“It’s true folks,” a booming voice called out. “We’re back.”
Nick Norton was standing at the cockpit door. A grim expression was stamped onto his rugged features.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” he said.
A crowd of people quickly gathered around Nick. It looked like a flock of groupies trying to get their favorite rock star’s autograph. They hurled a barrage of questions at the pilot like they were throwing bricks at glass windows. Nick did his best to try and address each one but it was impossible to keep up.
Cody hurried down the aisle. He stopped at the back of the crowd.
“Nick!” he said, raising a hand in the air. “Hey Nick, over here.”
There was a glimpse of relief in Nick’s eyes when he saw Cody. With a curt nod, he pushed through the crowd of passengers and walked over. He gave his old friend a brief bear hug.
“You okay?” Nick asked, looking Cody up and down. “How’s Rachel doing?”
“Yeah we’re both fine,” Cody said. “Confused but alive. You?”
“Same,” Nick said. “I don’t know what the hell happened up there man.”
“Tell me about it,” Cody asked. “You saw her then?”
Nick nodded. He lowered his voice so the other passengers couldn’t overhear.
“She was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat,” he said. “Get this – she was only disguised as my grandma. My evil old grandma for Christ’s sake. The only person on this planet who ever put the fear of God into me. All of a sudden, I was a five-year-old boy sitting at the controls of an airplane. The other pilots were gone. It was just me and that bitch. Boy she laid into me good – told me I was a waste of space, digging deep into all the worst mistakes I ever made. And you know as well as anyone Cody, there’s been a lot of mistakes. All those marriages and no kids to show – that always used to piss my grandma off.”
“That’s what she does,” Cody said. “Hits you where it hurts.”
“I don’t know what happened after that,” Nick said. “The plane was coming down and there was nothing I could do to s
top it. Not a goddamn thing. Next thing I wake up in the cockpit and I’m looking out at San Antonio airport.”
“She brought us back,” Cody said.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “But why didn’t she kill us?”
Cody shrugged.
“Maybe it’s a Purgatory thing or something like that,” Nick said. “Anytime we try to leave San Antonio she brings us back. That’s worse than death, ain’t it?”
There was still a crowd of people hovering at Nick’s back. It was clear by the way they were encroaching on his personal space that they wanted to talk to him further. He looked back at them and nodded, indicating that he hadn’t forgotten them.
“Good luck with your fan club,” Cody said.
Nick turned back to Cody and rolled his eyes. He pointed at Cody’s waist.
“How’s your wound?”
“What?”
“You got shot remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Cody said. He put his index finger to the location of the wound at his side and poked at it. He raised an eyebrow. “It feels fine. Better than fine actually.”
“Well it was only a graze,” Nick said.
Cody grinned sarcastically. “Because you’d know how I feel after I get shot, right?”
Nick didn’t answer. He was staring at the people who were huddled over by the windows.
“You looked outside yet?” he said.
Cody shook his head. “No.”
“Go ahead,” Nick said. “Looks like they trashed the airport while we were away. At least we missed that.”
“Alright,” Cody said.
He left Nick to deal with the mob and their endless questions. Cody turned around and fought his way past the crowds who were gathered in the narrow aisle. He found a row of empty seats and scooted his way down to the window. Then he pressed his face up against the cold surface.
“Oh shit,” he said, looking outside.
The terminal building was sitting on scattered patches of barren, charcoal colored earth that stretched back as far as the eye could see. It looked like a war had been fought out there.
Mega Post-Apocalyptic Double Bill Page 58