“Is it Canada?” Bobby asked.
“Or the U.S.,” Corrie said. “We’ve been in the air longer than we expected, which we can blame on the crosswinds, but it’s hard to gauge what impact they had on our course. We can see snow on the mountainsides, so that’s a good indication we’re in very northern climes, but we can see green, too, so we’ve not flown all the way to the North Pole.” She grinned. Bobby didn’t.
“Then we’re not in Canada?” he asked.
“We’re looking for a city,” Corrie said. “It’ll be Portland, Seattle, or Vancouver. The terrain immediately before we reach it will confirm which. From there, we know what we’re looking for, so we’ll be setting down within an hour. Buckle up, because we’re going to fly low, and there won’t be any warning before we set down. Not unless I can figure out the intercom.”
Pete had questions, but didn’t want to ask any in case they made Bobby realise that Corrie hadn’t answered his. They didn’t know where they were, where they were going to land, or what they’d find when they did. Assuming it was a landing and not a crash.
“Wish there were windows,” Bobby said.
“Have you been abroad before?” Pete asked.
“Oh, sure. Dad took me with him to a mine in China last year. It was super-weird, but in a good way. Then we went to visit Clemmie on our way home.”
“That’s taking the long way home,” Pete said. “Australia was my second time out of the U.S. I went to Canada once. That was—”
The reminiscence was forgotten as the plane dipped forward. The engine noise, a dull background rumble he’d grown to ignore, rose in intensity. The plane tilted forward, steeply banked left, but then levelled off before tilting backward. The landing had been abandoned, he guessed. Too many planes on the runway? Or something worse? Something like—
The plane shook as the wheels touched tarmac. A high-pitched whine drowned all other sounds and thoughts as the plane rocked and shook. Just when he was sure the aircraft was about to tear itself apart, everything went still.
Pete unclenched his fists. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I guess,” Bobby said.
“I think we’re on the ground.”
Liu appeared in the doorway a second later. “Okay, Bobby?”
“Fine, Mum.”
“That was a bit of a rough landing, I know,” Liu said. “Blame the autopilot. It was doing most of the work. I think this plane could fly itself, but it needs a bit of practice on landings.”
“Are we in Vancouver?” Bobby asked.
“Not exactly,” Liu said. “I’m not sure where we are, or even that we’re in Canada. We are at an airfield, though, but not one of those I was aiming for.”
“There are no soldiers here?” Pete asked.
“There’s no one at all,” Liu said. “We’re a lot closer to the Pacific than we should be. It might be British Columbia, it might be Washington State. But as we were coming in to land, I saw people and cars. About a mile away, maybe less. They’ll have seen the plane. They might be the soldiers we’re hoping to meet, but they might be refugees looking for a flight out of here.”
“Pete and I’ll take care of them,” Corrie said, coming through from the cockpit.
“You’re not going to shoot them?” Bobby asked.
“What? No, of course not,” Corrie said. “I’m not even going to take the rifle. We need to appear friendly. And we’ll stick to the truth, more or less. There’s a plan to put together a relief effort for the Pacific. Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and other places between there and here. We’re looking for a runway that can be used as a staging post to bring in supplies. We’re expecting to meet Canadian soldiers, and we want to survey the ground. Once we’ve done that, we’ll return to Australia, and we can take a few people with us, but we’ll need the rest to hold the runway, to make it ready for the next flight. We left Australia without the soldiers because some idiots tried to steal the plane. We stick to that story, and we shouldn’t have much trouble.”
Pete might have believed her if she didn’t have concern written across her face. He zipped up his coat, followed her to the door, and helped her with the floor-hatch beneath which the ladder was concealed.
“How bad is it really?” he whispered.
“I’ll tell you in a moment,” she said, reaching for the door handle. “You ready for this?”
“Sure,” he said. She pushed open the door, and a cold blast of frozen air slammed into his lungs. “Urgh. Talk about bracing.”
“We’re not in Oz any more. It’s freezing,” Corrie said, flinging the ladder out the open doorway. It clattered and clanked itself open as it fell.
“No, it’s perfect weather,” Pete said. “It’s what weather should be, this time of year.”
“You’re fooling no one,” she said. “You’re shivering.”
“Trembling with joy,” he said. “Can’t see anyone out there.”
“No, and I couldn’t see anyone from the cockpit. Ladies first.” She climbed down the ladder.
He followed, and nearly slipped on the icy runway.
“Okay?” Corrie said. She glanced up. “Come on. Careful of the ice.”
“We’re lucky we didn’t crash,” Pete said, turning his back on the gusting wind that was blowing daggers of icy air against his exposed flesh.
“We almost did,” Corrie said. “Look behind, then look down, then look over there.”
He did. The plane was at ninety-degrees to the runway, and right at its very edge. “We spun?”
“Wherever we are, no one was expecting a plane to land,” Corrie said. “They didn’t de-ice the runway. We saw a couple of airfields between the coast and here, but Liu thought they were too short. We need six and a half thousand feet, but that’s a guess based on an unmodified version of that plane.”
“Looks like we found a runway that’s exactly the right length,” Pete said.
“Only because we had the wind working in our favour, slowing us down,” Corrie said.
An ice-white frost tipped the dark winter grass separating the runway from the blue-painted terminal and hangars that looked narrower than the jet’s wingspan.
“Those are some tall trees,” Pete said, thrusting his hands deep into the coat’s pockets. “Well, not that tall, not really, but compared to Australia they are. And mountains behind them. Proper mountains. So much green and white.”
“It’s an airfield, not an international airport,” Corrie said, shivering. “Even so, where are the planes?”
“Hmm?” Pete turned his gaze along the length of the runway, at the small hangars and cluster of smaller service buildings, then at the stands near the squat terminal. “There are no planes at all. Should there be?”
“I guess not,” she said. “We should head to the entrance before those people get here. I guess that’ll be on the other side of that terminal.”
Pete began striding towards the squat blue structure, but slipped when making his third step. “Ice,” he said. “You know, I was just getting used to Australia. Getting to like it, too.”
“It grows on you,” Corrie said. “I hated it at first. Almost left it twice, but I couldn’t find anywhere else to go. I’m glad I stayed.” She glanced back at the plane. “We had half an hour of fuel left.”
“We really were lucky to land when we did,” Pete said. Ahead, a pair of jet-black birds took off from an unseen perch on the far side of the terminal.
“Where are the people?” Corrie asked. “Where did they go? One of the other runways we flew over was full of planes. All small, on the grass, on the stands, on the service roads, but they didn’t look like they’d crashed. Did they come from here?”
“Meaning did they escape from here?” Pete asked, looking around. “Let’s not give ourselves anything more to worry about.”
Corrie glanced up at the fast-moving clouds scudding across the sky. “One thing we do have to worry about is getting that radio working before we return. We’ll ha
ve to reassure those fighter planes that we’re not carrying the infection.”
“What fighter planes?” Pete asked.
“Of course, you don’t know. I forgot. Liu didn’t want Bobby to know. A pair of Air Force jets gave us an escort as we left. It’s what made up Liu’s mind to keep going. She thought there was more chance they’d shoot us down if we tried to land than if we made it clear we were leaving.”
“I’m glad there were no windows. But fixing the radio can be a problem for after we find fuel,” he said. “And after we figure out where we are.”
“And after we calm the approaching mob,” Corrie said. “Maybe we should have brought Bobby. The sight of a kid might have stemmed the desire for violence.”
“You don’t think they’re the soldiers?”
“Not yet,” she said. “They surely have spotters along the coast, but they weren’t expecting us to land here, so it’ll be hours before they arrive. No, these are locals, and we just have to hope they’re friendly. I think that’s a service road over there, leading around the terminal.”
Between them and it, parked on a narrow grassy verge, was a boxy ground-power-unit truck. Not parked, Pete realised, but abandoned.
“Bullet holes,” Pete said, pointing at the uneven line stitched into the vehicle’s side, ending at a smashed driver-side window.
“This is not looking good,” Corrie said. “That’s good, though. That sign. It’s in French as well as English. Nanaimo Airport—” She stopped talking and walking. A moment later, Pete caught up and saw why.
The narrow ribbon of frosty asphalt led to a closed pair of roller-gates and an unoccupied guard-post. On the other side of the gate were an ambulance, a bus, and an up-ended sports car. Around the vehicles were figures. Shapes. Shadows of people, but they weren’t the living.
“Zombies,” Corrie said. “I count nineteen.”
Four had reached the gate, pushing at the chain-link, while the others were approaching fast. Padlocked chains held the pair of rolling gates closed, but they were bulging at the point where the two gates met.
“I should have brought my rifle,” Corrie said. “I’m going to get it. Are you armed?”
“No,” Pete said. “Wait, yes. I have that pistol.”
“Do what you can,” Corrie said. “I’ll be back.”
She slipped on the ice as she tried to turn her walk into a jog. Pete turned to face the undead. He unzipped the jacket, letting the blast of frozen air focus his mind. His hand knocked against the detached suppressor as he fished a magazine from the other pocket.
“Okay,” he said to himself. “You managed that. And you’ve done this before.” He loaded the magazine. He had done this before, back at Corrie’s compound in the outback. He glanced up at the clouds. There would be no SASR flying in to rescue them here.
Glass tinkled onto the road as a zombie’s flailing arm smashed the window of the bus from the inside.
“That makes twenty,” he said. “At least. One bullet, one kill, I’ll have enough.”
There was little comfort in speaking the words aloud; he had two magazines, but no idea how many bullets were in each. There was no comfort at all in the dry hiss of air escaping from dead lungs as the zombies pushed and scrummed towards the gate.
He took another step forward, and another, until he was two metres from the bulging gate. He picked his target: a zombie, not an overweight man missing an eye and a good portion of his heavy goose-down coat. With each slapping throw of its hand against the gate, feathers flew from its shredded jacket. Pete pulled the trigger, reflexively closing his eyes as he did. When he opened them, the zombie was still there. He’d missed.
“Can’t miss. Don’t have the ammo to miss,” he told himself, his words vanishing in a misty fog that was completely absent around the mob pushing at the gate. He took another step closer to the large man. “No, you’re not alive, not anymore.”
He fired. This time, the zombie collapsed.
Not giving himself time to think, Pete moved on to the next target, then the next. Each shot was fired from a metre’s distance. He only paused when he had to wait for the zombies to clamber around the stalled vehicles, and over their fallen fellows.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Who were you?”
A zombie in a ski-jacket and matching trousers snapped its mouth up and down, its hands curling around the links in the gate.
Pete fired.
“Where did you come from?” he asked, talking as a distraction from the horror of the plea-less execution. He fired again, and realised that the answer to where these zombies came from was partly explained by the bus, partly by the empty runway. The planes had departed, perhaps flying in a short hop to one of the airfields closer to the Pacific, perhaps flying inland and a lot further. Either way, they’d gone, and the bus hadn’t made it here in time. Were these zombies the passengers, or had they arrived afterwards?
He fired, waited, fired again, waited, pulled the trigger. It clicked on an empty chamber. As he fished out a spare magazine, his eyes were caught by padlocks and chains. There were four, the links nearly an inch thick, but the keys had been left in the locks.
“They were keeping you out. Were you on the bus, or were you following it? They locked you out and flew away.” He fired. The words he’d spoken slowly sank in. The airfield had been overrun, and it had happened days ago.
“So much for there being Canadian soldiers waiting for us.”
He fired.
And then he realised something else. The zombies had followed the people. But why? How? He had an answer. It was sound that summoned them. Here it was the sound of an engine, the jet’s and the departing planes before that, and perhaps the sound of the bus itself. In Menindee, the zombies had heard the people hiding in the house. After the plane crash, they’d followed the sound of Corrie’s car, and the sound of the generator in the compound. Sight might be important, too, but sound was key.
He reached into his pocket and found the suppressor. He fumbled with his frozen hands as he attached it, and fired. The bullet flew with a near silent whisper.
He took a step closer, fired, then turned around when he heard running footsteps behind him. It was Corrie, rifle in hands.
“It’s sound,” Pete said. “They follow what they can hear, I’m sure of it. Our plane, cars, engines, generators. Gunshots.”
“Good theory,” she said. “But how many bullets do you have left?”
“Um… not sure. Seven or eight, I guess.”
“There’s too many,” she said as a zombie crawled out from beneath the bus. A second creature appeared in the vehicle’s doorway, stepping on the prone and squirming figure, tumbling onto the gore-soaked roadway. “Way too many. And they’ve already heard us.”
She raised her rifle and fired.
Five minutes later, silence returned.
“It’s easy with guns,” Corrie said. “But what are we going to do when the ammunition is gone?”
“The people who flew out of here left the keys in the padlocks,” Pete said. “I think they locked the zombies out before they flew away. We’re not going to find any soldiers anywhere near here. We need to refuel the jet. Wherever we are, it’s not Vancouver, and if that’s where we’re going, that plane is the quickest way to get there.”
“It might be fastest, but I don’t know if it’ll be safest,” Corrie said. “But, yeah, we need to know if there’s any fuel here or not. Liu and I’ll take care of that. Can you look in the terminal building, see if whoever was last here left any note saying where they went, or what happened here? We’ll meet back at the plane in half an hour and figure out what to do next.”
Alone again, he walked along the ice-covered path towards the blue-clad terminal building, a two-storey structure smaller than most grocery stores. Taken with the size of the hangars and what little had been gleaned from his days at Broken Hill, this had to be an island-hopping runway for prop-planes. The planes couldn’t have gone far, but a more pressing qu
estion was why had no planes from elsewhere come here?
The large glass doors leading from the terminal to the runway were closed with metal shutters drawn behind them. Littering the ground, gathering rust, lay a hammer, a few chisels, and a smattering of screwdrivers, suggesting someone else had already tried to force the lock. He didn’t bother trying, but continued along the perimeter until he reached a windowless door with a sign forbidding unauthorised entry in both English and French. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. The door opened easily, explaining why that person’s attempt to break in had been abandoned.
The door opened into a wide, windowless corridor littered with discarded high-viz vests. A closed door led to the right, with a second door at the far end. To the left was a rack of emergency equipment. Most of it was missing. A lonely fire-proof jacket hung above a solitary thick boot. A pair of wide snow shovels kept a trio of fire extinguishers company, while a box of flares lay open and empty. The mat of high-viz vests crinkled and crunched as he retrieved a fire extinguisher with which he propped open the outside door.
With one option as good as any other, he tried the door at the corridor’s far end. It led into a break room, though with a metal staircase taking up centre-stage. Around the walls were counters, and by the dim second-hand light bouncing off the high-viz jacket’s reflector strips, he saw the empty coffee pots, the mugs, the mouldering tray of half-eaten doughnuts. Chairs, tables, posters, a work schedule. And then he caught sight of the lantern, on the counter on the far side of the table. He took two steps towards it when he heard the noise. A shuffling rustle. A sniffing wheeze. He spun around, raising the gun, but the corridor was empty, with nothing outside. He took a step back towards the door, in two minds about abandoning the search, when he heard the sound again. Not from outside, but inside. Not from behind him, but above. He swivelled to his left, raising the gun to aim up the stairs just as a shadowy figure appeared at the top. He fired, pulling the trigger twice before he thought to ask if the figure was one of the alive or the living dead. The figure twitched, falling forward, toppling down the stairs.
Surviving the Evacuation (Book 16): Outback Outbreak Page 27