by Tim Lebbon
‘Come on, come on,’ he said, willing the cops to see them.
The two vehicles were reversing away from the burning terminal and away from them, moving slowly but obviously under control. There was a flash from the truck’s passenger window that might have been a gunshot. And then the police cruiser stopped.
‘Come on,’ Sean said again. The cruiser’s blue lights flashed a few times, and he reached up and flicked two reading lights off and on.
‘They won’t see that,’ Jayne said, but then she grinned. They had seen it, because they’d been watching for it. And now they were powering across the airport, skirting around the burning main building, and as the police car veered around a staggering figure she closed her eyes just before the truck ran it down.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she breathed, and Sean squeezed her hand.
‘Come on. Back door on the starboard side.’
‘I’m scared,’ she said, thinking of a car journey through what was happening out there. Here they had drunk wine and talked, and she had slept. Out there, carnage and chaos ruled.
‘We could never have stayed here for long,’ Sean said. He looked older than he had before, his eyes heavier and darker because of his fear for his daughter. France? he’d said, amazed, and Jayne still could not believe that the infection had travelled so far so quickly.
‘I know.’ She nodded, and started rubbing her shoulders with both hands.
‘I’ll open the door.’ He walked slowly, glancing back as she followed. Jayne felt protected, but she also knew that she was providing Sean with a distraction, and a cause.
The blast of warm air when Sean opened the door was shocking. He stood back slightly, gun raised, then edged forward slowly.
‘They there?’ Jayne asked. She had to raise her voice against the roaring fires, and she realised how close they were. And the fact that they were in an aircraft that probably contained tens of thousands of gallons of fuel hit home.
Sean waved her over with one hand, then shoved the gun in his belt and held out his other hand palm out.
Jayne joined him at the door, wincing against the incredible wave of heat radiating from the conflagration. It stretched her skin and dried her eyes, and when she gasped her lungs burned.
The police cruiser was parked thirty feet away. The truck stopped thirty feet behind that, its bodywork, scratched and bumped. There was a swathe of dried blood across one wing and up the door. Its windows were darkened, and she felt someone – something – staring at her.
The cruiser was similarly battered, and the driver’s window had been smashed. Even before the door opened she saw the size of the man in there, and as he got out of the car and looked up at them, Jayne felt an unaccountable rush of optimism. The cop must have been six and a half feet tall. With someone like him coming for her . . .
She closed her eyes and sighed, wondering how she could be so foolish. Maybe because she had always needed someone to help her look after herself. Was that a weakness? She hoped not.
‘You the girl got bit?’ the big man shouted up at them. He disregarded Sean and stared right at her.
Jayne raised her arm and pulled up her sleeve, displaying the bandage.
The man leaned back into the cruiser and grabbed a shotgun. He held it casually, as if he was used to it. He was sweating visibly through his uniform.
‘Who’re you?’ Sean asked.
‘Sergeant Waits, Baltimore PD. You?’
‘Sean Nott. I’m a sky marshal.’
‘Right.’ Waits glanced around every few seconds.
‘There are lots of them round,’ Sean went on, ‘so be careful.’
‘Careful. Right.’ Waits looked back at the blacked-out truck behind them, and Jayne wondered what might be inside.
‘Did Leigh call you?’ Sean asked.
‘Leigh?’ The big man shifted the shotgun to the other hand, moving forward and leaning against the truck’s damaged hood. The blood did not seem to concern him.
‘About us.’ Sean touched Jayne’s shoulder, and she could feel his hand shaking. ‘About Jayne.’
‘Don’t know no Leigh. Just know a girl’s got bit, hasn’t turned. Been plenty of claims on the register, but none confirmed so far.’
‘Where will you take us?’ Jayne asked.
‘Back to the station.’ Waits looked around again, and gave a vague signal to the truck. ‘From there, don’t know yet. How long you been up there?’
‘Several hours,’ Sean said.
‘It’s fucked as hell out here,’ Waits said. ‘We been through some stuff. But the station’s tight, and it’ll be a damn sight safer than—’
They all heard the sound at the same time – the thumping of feet against metal. Jayne knew instantly what it was, and even as Sean gasped and Waits turned she shouted, ‘Bus!’
The vehicle was between the fire and the aircraft, where it had stood silent and unthreatening since they had closed the aircraft doors. Now she could see movement inside, silhouetted against the flames.
A man appeared on the bottom step wearing a bus driver’s hat, and when he stepped forward it was like releasing a stopper from a bottle. They flowed out behind him, rushing towards the police vehicles as fast as their various injuries would allow. For many of them, their wounds did not slow them at all.
Waits rested his elbows on the cruiser’s roof, aimed the shotgun, and fired. The resulting mayhem was so sudden that Jayne did not even see if anyone fell, and then Sean was grabbing her arm and pulling her inside the aircraft, reaching for the door handle and tugging it closed.
Something struck the aircraft with a loud, hollow thunk! and she realised that the shooting had begun in earnest.
‘The window!’ Sean said, pulling the door closed and engaging the locking lever.
‘Window?’
‘We might need to move fast, so we have to know what’s happening.’
Jayne tried to move quickly, but her joints screamed and the churu threw grit into her eyes, clouding her vision and disturbing her balance. She staggered along the aisle and fell sideways across a row of seats. She could hear gunfire outside, the pop pop of individual shots and a heavier, more sustained burst of machine-gun fire. She bit her lip and her vision cleared, and she felt a terrible, unreasonable shame at being such a burden.
‘It’s okay,’ Sean said softly. He was beside her on the seat, helping her upright and then leaning across her to look outside.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Jayne said. Tears burned in her eyes.
‘It’s not over yet,’ Sean said. But she could tell that the words belied his belief. So she pushed him away, and leaned forward to see from the window herself.
And it was all over, because Waits was already down and smothered with raging, thrashing people, and the cruiser’s other door was open and a uniformed woman was being dragged out, and she was shooting people in the head – three, four – before a young boy bit into her arm and she dropped the gun. And as automatic gunfire raked the cruiser from the truck’s lowered windows the monsters turned that way, rushing forward and being cut down, walking across those who fell to press themselves against the truck’s side, forcing those inside to withdraw their weapons and close the windows. The zombies – there must have been fifty by then, perhaps more, and others were rushing from all directions to join in – swarmed around and over the truck, punching and stamping and head-butting until windows smashed and gunfire erupted again.
As Jayne saw Waits standing, different from how he had been before, she pulled back from the window.
‘He saw me,’ she gasped.
The gunfire ceased. Someone screamed, the sound distant and muffled.
‘They can’t get in,’ Sean said. He was passing the gun from one hand to the other, as if he was trying to find a way to hold it without his nervous sweat making it slick.
‘But he knows we’re here,’ Jayne said.
Sean blinked at her and shrugged. But there was nothing he could say.
Fro
m outside there came that familiar, terrible call. Jayne looked again. They stood motionless now, following Waits’s stare, and before she pulled away from the window again Jayne was aware of every single one of them looking up at her. And she knew that they would wait.
4
This time the dream staggers rather than flows, shifting from one scene to the next like a damaged film missing random frames. And Charlotte stalks the suburbs of Vic’s guilt.
This is my dream I can change it I can make it better.
Charlotte chuckles. The dream flickers, and then they are outside the strange place that always feels like home. Vic tries to run, but he is on his hands and knees, his fingertips melting into the hot road. Charlotte knocks on the door and Lucy answers.
No, he tries to say. Charlotte turns to laugh at him or show him her dead eyes, but it is not Charlotte at all – it is Holly standing there dead before him and mocking his remorse.
‘Holly!’ he shouts, shocked that he had found his voice at last. ‘No, Holly!’
Her mouth falls open and she—
—Vic snapped awake, Olivia crying beside him, and Marc looked back at him from the cockpit.
Shit shit shit, he thought, blinking quickly but not really wanting to close his eyes again. He was afraid that she would still be waiting there behind them.
He looked over Olivia’s head at Lucy, and his wife was just turning away. ‘Lucy?’ She didn’t hear him, and though he took a deep breath he did not speak again. He remembered the end of his dream and what he’d been shouting, and wondered whether he had scared them all with his yelling out of Holly’s name.
Even though the light was weak and the helicopter shook, he could not mistake Lucy’s expression when she’d turned away from him – the heavy eyes, her sadly etched mouth. So Vic hugged his daughter, accepting her innocent, uncomplicated love and wishing his could be like that.
He looked from the window and saw a landscape fired by a red-palette dawn. Red sky in the morning . . . he thought, and Olivia snuggled into his embrace. He remembered Holly, not as she had been in his dream but as he had known her at the height of their affair. Never demanding, never intrusive, their few tentative conversations about being together properly had always been initiated by him, and she had never forced the issue. In her silence he had read the truth – she had wanted it more than anything.
But he’d never truly considered leaving Lucy, and when she had fallen pregnant his and Holly’s relationship had stopped without either of them needing to say anything. He could remember each intimate detail, every sigh and position from the last time they had made love, but he had no idea whether either of them had known it was going to be the last time.
Gary was flying quite low, and as the minutes ticked by it became easier to see the truth of what had happened below them. It also became harder for Vic to reach out to Lucy and try to explain. Her expression as she’d turned away should have prompted him to reassure her, but it had scared him too much. So he looked at the ruin outside and wondered how it could have spread so quickly.
The rolling landscape was speckled with individual homes and groups of buildings, and every few minutes they passed over larger townships. Fires were burning, many small, a few large, probing up at them with smoky fingers – accidents, people protecting their homes, authorities burning bodies on pyres that got out of hand. Some of the smoke was grey and light, some heavy and dark and thick, and he had no desire to understand the difference.
‘Daddy?’ Olivia shouted against the helicopter’s roar. She was fidgeting against him again. Vic gazed down at her. Lucy was looking at him now and something in her expression seemed to have relaxed.
‘I need to pee,’ Olivia said.
Vic nodded, and smiled at Lucy. She didn’t smile back, but the mistrust had gone from her eyes. Perhaps she’d thought it away, or maybe she’d simply discarded it because of everything else that was happening.
Vic slipped on his headset and asked, ‘Gary, where are we?’
‘Baltimore’s close. Airport in about thirty minutes.’
‘Sorry, I slept,’ Vic said.
‘Need the rest,’ Marc said, turning and looking over the facing seats at the family. ‘Don’t worry, honey, you can pee soon.’ He smiled at Olivia and touched his microphone. Lucy got the message and took off Olivia’s headset.
‘What?’ Lucy asked.
‘Everything’s buggered,’ Gary said. ‘Air-traffic control’s working so hard to avoid collisions that, they don’t have time to answer anything incoming. And since we’re approaching a bloody massive airport I’d like to know what’s happening there.’
‘I guess we can just assume it’s batshit,’ Marc said. ‘I don’t think Baltimore airport’s going to be fucking around with passport control right now.’
‘I’m feeding radio just to my headset,' Gary said. ‘I haven’t even told you this . . .’ He reached across and held Marc’s hand, clasping it tightly. ‘Two passenger jets collided above Washington. Three more above Chicago airport, and I’ve heard of at least four others going down. And there are rumours about military jets shooting down anything that ventures out over the Atlantic.’
‘Our air force is shooting down passenger planes?’ Lucy asked, shocked.
‘I didn’t say our military,’ Gary said. They fell quiet at that, and Vic reached across to touch Lucy. For a moment she seemed to stiffen, but then she squeezed his hand.
Vic soon grew tired of looking down and seeing what was becoming of the world, so he looked to the skies instead. That was not much better. In the space of the half-hour it took them to reach Baltimore airport, they saw several smaller helicopters, three fast jets, and at least a dozen military helicopters, some of them Chinooks with vehicles slung beneath them. Their bellies were probably full of soldiers. Most of the army’s choppers seemed to be flying north.
‘Attack or retreat?’ Marc said, and no one risked a response.
Olivia’s desperation grew intense, and in the end Lucy fluffed up a blanket and sheltered her while she peed into that. The smell filled the cabin. No one commented, and Vic felt an intense gratitude to the other two men for that.
‘Airport’s close,’ Gary said, his voice quieter than before. ‘Better come see.’
Vic and Lucy crouched forward, and Olivia went with them, holding their hands. She felt cold to Vic, and he tried to remember the last time they’d eaten or had a drink.
The sun was a pale smudge on the horizon directly ahead of them, veiled by the massive spread of smoke that stained the eastern sky. It reached high into the air, and thousands of feet above them the spreading cloud was smeared with a dirty sunrise. At the base of the column of smoke was the glow of distant flames.
‘That’s the airport?’ Lucy asked.
‘Yeah,’ Gary said. He flicked a switch and spoke into his microphone, the words inaudible to the others. Vic tried to read his expression from the side but it was inscrutable.
‘She must be dead,’ Lucy said.
‘No,’ Marc said.
‘How can you know?’
‘I can’t,’ he said, never once looking away from the smoke and flames. ‘But if there’s even a remote chance that she isn’t, then it’s our duty to search for her.’
‘And put my daughter at risk?’ Lucy asked. Vic felt a swell of pride.
‘Absolutely.’ Marc turned around and smiled at the little girl who was unaware of their conversation. ‘Absolutely. This woman could save a billion other kids.’
Lucy snorted and looked away. He’s right, Vic thought. It’s gone so far so quickly, and if she is dead then maybe everyone is dead.
‘Honey, we’ve come all this way,’ Vic said. He meant from Cincinnati, but when Lucy smiled he thought back to the very first time he had set eyes on her, when he had fallen for that smile.
‘I’ll go in upwind, from the south,’ Gary said. ‘But it’s still going to be bad. I’ll do a flyover. You all need to be looking, because I’m going in low and
all my attention will be focused on not hitting anything.’
‘What are we looking for?’ Lucy asked.
‘Anyone alive.’ Marc had produced a gun from his bag and placed it casually across his lap. Vic saw Olivia’s eyes straying that way. They went wide.
‘Where’s your gun, Daddy?’ she asked.
He thought of every way he could answer that: how to protect her, to shield her. But he realised that he was still thinking safe thoughts, from a time when safety was a very different thing. Baseball matches were cancelled, Oprah was not on air, and the schools were closed today.
‘It’s here,’ he said, pulling the M1911 from his belt. ‘And Daddy uses this to make sure that no one ever, ever hurts you.’
Olivia nodded, her eyes still wide.
Gary flew them in at about five hundred feet, curving across the southern part of the airport and keeping away from the blazing terminal buildings. Small explosions were erupting in there all the time, terrible flowers of flame and smoke, and the eastern concourse was also ablaze. Several large airliners burned fiercely in islands of fire and wrecked fuselages. Vic hoped they had been empty when they’d exploded but realised that it probably didn’t matter.
‘If they were trapped in a plane they might have left by now,’ Vic said. ‘Who’d want to stay here?’
‘Someone who had to,’ Lucy said. ‘Gary, swing around again, take a wider sweep further from the fires.’
Vic raised his eyebrows at Lucy, surprised at her sudden involvement. She offered him a nervous smile, resting a protective hand on Olivia’s leg.
‘Further from fire sounds good to me.’ The helicopter banked and curved around to the south.
‘What did you see?’ Vic asked. But Lucy was frowning, shaking her head.
‘Something that didn’t register,’ she said. ‘But it’s bugging me.’
The stench of smoke already filled the cabin. Olivia coughed. She seemed more scared than before, and Vic guessed it was to do with the sudden flurry of activity. Until now the little girl had been sitting with her parents on a long helicopter ride, and maybe it had even been exciting for her. Now there was smoke and fire, and a burning airport.