by Amber Wyatt
Time passes.
Sometime later, Caroline who is no longer Caroline wakes up. She is standing in water just above her ankles. She does not know that the broken fuselage of the plane lies behind her, half submerged in water and weeds. There is no thought. It is light, then it is dark, then it is light again. This happens many times. Rain falls, the wind blows, some days the sun blazes down. Other days are grey with dark clouds. Days pass. Maybe years. She has no concept of time, nor of how much of it has passed.
Birds fly overhead but are not seen by the lonely, weather-battered figure standing in the swamp. Occasionally an alligator or deer passes by, ignoring her as if she were a tree or a rock. Once it was a possum with six cubs clinging to its back like a bunch of grapes. She, in return, is oblivious to all of them.
Then she glimpses a silhouette pacing through the trees in the distance. Her head snaps towards it, with terrible intensity burning in her long unused eyes. This movement is different to the others. Human movement. Prey. A glorious, hot hunger surges through her, and her lips draw back over bared teeth. But then there is a blinding light as the high velocity rifle round punches through her forehead and sprays her brains and the back of her skull across the water behind her. Three years and five months after she died the first time, Caroline dies for the last time. Her lifeless body crumples backwards into the water with a splash.
“Okay that’s the last one.” Hana watched the zombie corpse for a few seconds before lifting her eye from the scope and flicking on the safety catch of her rifle. “Behnke, was that you moving behind me?” She did not even bother to look around at the offending culprit. The female zombie she had just killed, had moved suddenly at the last second. Hana had nearly missed the shot.
“I was just trying to get a better camera angle,” Behnke explained, holding up the camera to shield himself from the accusing glares from the rest of the group.
Gina gave him a look of disgust and then returned her attention to the aerial photograph of the crash site. Taking a permanent marker pen, she drew a red cross over the last zombie that Hana had just shot. There were already fifty-six other red crosses on the photo.
“Okay then everybody,” Hugh said in a voice loud enough for all of them to hear. “Pack up your stuff and let’s get ready for Phase Two.” All around them the rest of the group stood up from their hiding places and started putting on their small packs.
Behnke and Tristan approached Hana, and waited wordlessly as she stood up and stretched out the kink in her back. Then she bent and picked up the rifle from its resting place on top of her backpack and handed it to Behnke.
“You’ve got ten rounds. There’s already one in the chamber. Safety catch is on.”
“Thanks,” Tristan at least had the grace to look a little shamefaced. Behnke had already turned and gone to take up a firing position that showed off his muscular frame in the best light. Since the farm, everyone else was wearing bite-proof suits apart from Behnke. He claimed it was because with everyone else providing security, no zombie would get close to him anyway, but the truth of the matter was that he had lied to Hana about his measurements when ordering the suits.
Specifically, he had taken a good twenty inches off his waist size, and consequently the jacket she had brought for him had no chance of fitting. Thomas had offered his jacket instead, but Behnke, suddenly struck by the idea that he would be the only one on screen jacketless, and perhaps sometimes shirtless, had adamantly declined. He had also made the most of it by cutting the sleeves off his shirt, all the better to show off his biceps.
When planning for the expedition Behnke’s staff had realized that the approach to the plane crash site would likely be through swamp and open water. To that end they had asked Hana to supply three canoes from Takumi Taktical, and she and Hugh had dutifully packed them on to the back of the trucks with the rest of the requested supplies. Now that all of the zombies outside of the airplane had been killed, everyone set to work quietly dragging the canoes to the water’s edge and carefully pushing them out. Once the boats were settled, they stood and waited until Behnke flexed his muscles and fired bullets randomly out into the swamp.
“What is he shooting at again?” Wilkins asked quietly.
“Tristan is filming him, so that later on we can edit the footage for Phase One, to make it look as if he sniped all the zombies outside the plane.” Rob answered.
“Oh, right. Of course.” Wilkins shrugged. He still did not fully understand Behnke’s motivation to portray himself as the sole hero in his own action film, but did not really care one way or another. Their plan to approach and clear the plane was much more methodical and deliberate than the catastrophic mess at the farm the day before. Of course, it could hardly have been less organized, Wilkins thought sourly, looking at his bound wrists and the bandage on his forearm.
Phase One was simple, if boring; its objective was the elimination of all the identified zombies outside the plane. They had spent most of the morning circling the crashed plane at a distance, while Hana, who seemed full of surprising skills, shot all the visible zombies from long range. She had hit all fifty-seven of them with headshots, most from at least three hundred yards.
Phase Two would be much more intense. They were about to approach the plane itself and, using themselves as bait, try and draw out as many as possible of the zombies still hidden inside the fuselage.
Behnke had finally finished his posed shooting, and with practiced panache scanned left and right through the rifle scope before turning dramatically to face Tristan.
“Okay, that’s the last one,” he said in his deepest voice, directly into the camera. Then he turned and looked meaningfully into the distance. “Now we move on to Phase Two. Approaching the crash site!” He waited for a few seconds until Tristan gave him the signal that he had stopped filming before relaxing. When he spoke next, his voice was far more whiny than when the camera was rolling. “I still don’t understand why she got to shoot them all.” Behnke gestured at Hana like a sulky schoolboy.
“Because she’s our best shot, and we need to hit them in the head to kill them.” Tristan replied tiredly.
“No, I mean why does she get to shoot her guns. How come when I shot my guns back at the farm everyone treated me like some kind of criminal.”
“This rifle has a suppressor, Philip,” Tristan tapped the bulky muzzle attachment carefully. It was still too hot to touch. “The zombies cannot hear or see where the shot is coming from, so they are not going to swarm us like last time.” He could see Behnke’s pouting mouth open to give yet another example of what seemed like an endless flow of complaints about the farm, and cut him off quickly. “Hey bro, why don’t you pick out what gun you are going to use next? Phase Two is all about making noise and shooting. Pick something that is going to look awesome on camera.”
Behnke brightened visibly and clamped his mouth shut on whatever he was going to say. He tapped knuckles with Tristan and went off to check his gun cases. Tristan shook his head almost imperceptibly and, stifling a sigh, went over to his assigned boat and sat down to wait next to Gina. Today he was carrying Behnke’s Devastator shotgun, and he had to shift the bulky drum magazines in his vest pouches to sit down comfortably.
“You okay?” He asked her. He had thought the petite singer had looked a little haunted ever since they had left the farm the day before.
“It still feels like we are killing actual people.” Gina had looked at the last zombie through binoculars, before Hana had shot her. It had been a woman, maybe a member of the flight crew. The clothes the woman had been wearing had virtually rotted off, but she had still been wearing a plastic lanyard with an ID pass on her chest. “Are we really sure that there are no …” Her voice trailed off. Even to her it sounded ridiculous. Of course, there would be no survivors standing around after three years.
That morning as they had gone over the laminated, blown-up photos that Behnke’s team had prepared she had asked Hana and Hugh how they had been so confid
ent in labelling all the zombies outside the plane.
“These photos were taken only three weeks ago by drone,” Hana had explained gently, knowing the source of Gina’s sensitivity. “If they were still human their corpses would have rotted or been eaten by scavengers long, long ago. Ironically it is the fact that they are still standing up and looking alive that shows that they are zombies.”
“And there is no chance at all that there were any survivors? You know. Maybe camping out here?”
“No Gina, look at this photo.” Hana pulled out another one from the folder and spread it out. “It was taken six months ago by Behnke’s people. Can you see the passengers? They are all standing in exactly the same spots.” She pointed out the eerie figures on the older photo one by one. “They have been standing there since that plane crashed over three years ago. They are all zombies.”
Gina brought her mind back to the present and looked down at the photo on her lap, studying the wreckage. As expected, the air to air missile had pretty much destroyed half of the left wing. What was surprising was, even taking into account the soft surface of the swamp, that the pilot had managed to land the plane on its belly more or less in one piece. Even with three years of growth, there was still a clear track through the thick vegetation of the Everglades where it had ploughed through the swamp before coming to its final resting place. The front half had broken off just forward of the wings, but other than that the plane looked relatively intact.
“It doesn’t look too badly damaged does it?” She said to Tristan.
“I know. But it’s going to be harder for us to clear the plane because of it.” He did not need to explain further. Hana, Hugh and Thomas had all made their views known during the morning briefing. The mostly intact plane made their task of recovering the black box flight recorder immeasurably easier. However, at the same time it also definitely meant there was a possibility that large numbers of zombies would have survived the crash landing, and might still be inside the cabins. Although they had shot a few dozen already, those were individuals who obviously had been thrown clear of the plane during the crash. There could still be dozens, maybe even hundreds, still waiting inside the plane itself.
“Excuse me,” Tristan grinned at Gina. “I have to get back to work.”
Gina looked up and rolled her eyes when she saw Behnke approaching. What does he think he looks like? Behnke had picked a belt-fed machine gun this time and had crisscrossed ammunition belts across his large chest and even larger stomach.
“Okay everyone, let’s move out!” Behnke roared. Tristan, filming him, rotated one finger round and round and silently mouthed Do it again. “Okay everyone, let’s move out!” Behnke shouted again, pointing his machine gun forward in a warlike pose.
“Why’s he pointing that way?” whispered Wilkins, bewildered. “The plane is over there.”
“It’s because if he faces in that direction, the sunlight catches him from a better angle,” Gina whispered back. The entire group stoically endured several more repetitions as Tristan and Rob filmed Behnke repeating the same line on their respective cameras, from several different angles.
Eventually Tristan nodded in satisfaction and looked over to check with Rob, who nodded back. “Okay that’s good,” Tristan said to Hana. “We are good to go.”
“Let’s go,” Hana called out in a clear voice. “Push out the boats.”
Much to her surprise, they managed to climb into, and launch their three boats with far less splashing and drowning than she had expected. Behnke and Tristan were in the same boat, so that Rob could film them both in the same camera shot from the second boat. Tristan’s bodycam would cover the close-up action shots of Behnke and his belt fed machine-gun. Gina was with them to look good and add some sex appeal to the scene. In the second boat were Hana, who had a dual role as both a shooter and, like Gina, to be decorative, accompanied by Rob on his camera and Hugh, who insisted on being near Hana. The third and last boat had Thomas and Wilkins. They would be bringing up the rear.
Although they would normally have used paddles, since Behnke was footing the bill for this expedition, Hana had supplied each kayak with a small, hand-held electric engine. The first two boats glided silently across the flat water towards the plane. Thomas and Wilkins, in the third boat, lagged well behind. Their job was to give covering fire, if required, to the two boats in front. The three members of the group with SCAR assault rifles, Hana, Thomas and Hugh, had attached suppressors to the front of their weapons. They would still be quite loud, but at least it would save their eardrums.
As they approached the wrecked hulk of the plane Gina was surprised at how large it actually was when you got up close to it. These things sure look smaller when you look at them out of the airport windows. She glanced up at the two drones filming their silent approach. Actually, I have to admit, this does look pretty cool. The plane had broken neatly into two, as if sliced by a giant knife just in front of the wings. Gina could look directly into the virtually untouched, cross section of the cargo hold and passenger cabin as if it had been opened up like a dollhouse.
Wilkins looked down at the murky water with undisguised fear. It was impossible to tell if they were floating in a few inches of water or a few feet. The last zombie Hana had shot had been standing almost completely out of the water. But some of them had only had their heads and shoulders showing. And those were just the ones they could see. Beneath the opaque surface, there might be another hundred or more, just waiting.
Hana had argued the same thing and had wanted to send in Tristan’s drones to check out the plane first, but Behnke and Tristan felt that if they stood off at a safe distance in the boats, that would be enough of a safety margin. And besides it would look good on the documentary if they could generate some tension by physically approaching themselves. Outvoted by the others, Hana had fumed but just insisted that everyone be on high alert for anything unexpected.
The front two boats stopped side by side about fifty feet from the two broken halves of the plane with the dark caves of the breached cabins looming slightly above them. Thomas stopped his boat a further fifty feet behind them. Everyone scanned the surprisingly large fuselage with fierce concentration, looking for even the slightest sign of movement. Behnke and Tristan pointed their weapons left and right, nervously seeking targets. Hana and Hugh simply observed alertly over the tops of their scopes, although with no less deadly focus. Gina and Rob sat at the back of their respective kayaks, hands on the electric motors, ready to pull them out of trouble.
So far there was no movement. Hana’s eyes lingered on the plane itself, noting the smaller details of the torn metal, the hanging wiring and ducting, and the ravages of weather and time that three years in the heat and humidity of the Everglades had inflicted upon the wreckage. Then she reached down between her feet and switched on the loudspeaker. Loud rock and roll music blared out, piercing the silence that had laid across the swamp, and a few startled birds took flight from the trees behind the plane.
Everyone tightened their grip on their weapons and aimed their weapons at the empty, gaping cabins of the planes. Nothing happened.
Only Wilkins, still glancing back and forth between the plane and the water, noticed the slow, lazy shifting of shadows under the surface; the sudden eddies and ripples where there should have been stillness. An icy hand gripped his chest and stole the breath from his lungs. He tried to say something but his tongue was frozen in terror.
Immediately after the crash landing, the zombies, still in a feeding frenzy, had poured out of the plane looking for prey. Then over the months and then years, the hundred mile per hour winds of Florida’s frequent hurricanes had blown most of them down. In the absence of any stimulus they had remained lying where they fell, unmoving, undisturbed and submerged beneath the muddy waters of the Everglades. Undisturbed until now. Now the undead passengers of Columbus 754 were waking from their stupor and reaching up towards the surface, drawn by the muffled music and spurred on by a ravenous h
unger. Hundreds of them.
At the rear of the first canoe Gina was leaning forward, her breathing fast and shallow as her eyes flickered back and forth across the plane in front. Her heart was thudding and her nerves were stretched almost to breaking point, as she waited to see if any zombies came out of the plane in front of them.
She never saw the white, bloodless hand reaching up from the water behind her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Black Box
The boat jerked backwards without warning, and Tristan and Behnke nearly fell out. Behnke dropped his gun into the bottom of the canoe and grabbed the sides to steady himself.
“What the fuck are you…” he started to shout back at Gina and then he saw the zombie pulling itself on to the rear of the boat. She turned and started screaming as it lunged at her with dripping jaws. Behnke looked around wildly. Heads were appearing out of the water all around him, and dripping hands reaching for the boat. “They’re in the water! They’re in the water,” he screamed.
I know they’re in the water. Fuck’s sake just shoot them already. This one’s trying to eat me! Gina swung the electric motor at the zombie, knocking it back. Her hands were gripped tightly around the throttle and the propeller blurred into life. She was still screaming but that did not stop her battering the zombie in the face with the spinning blades. Tristan and Behnke had regained control of their weapons and both simultaneously opened fire at the heads emerging out of the water surrounding them.
On the other boat, things were worse. The booming music of the lure had done its job and most of the zombies were heading towards Hana and Hugh’s boat. Each of them was firing as fast as they could to the left and right respectively, but then Hugh flinched and ducked as something hit the boat. Stray bullets from Behnke’s wild shooting were zipping past them.
“Behnke check your fire! Check your fire, asshole!” Hugh yelled.