Zombies on a Plane © 2008 Travis L. Heermann "I'm getting muthafuckin' tired of these muthafuckin' zombies on this muthafuckin' plane!" Neil opened the lavatory door that he had just used to scissor off the zombie's head and kicked the still-mouthing head away from him. It rolled through a puddle of blood into one of the empty serving cart bays with a wet, sloppy sound. The zombie woman's body flopped and twitched in the lavatory doorway, arms clutching and spasming. My friend Neil had a penchant for overstating the obvious. And he loved movies, sprinkling everyday conversation with lines from any film he had ever seen at least once. I lowered my weapon, the blood-smeared, dented steel coffee decanter. "Dude. You don't look like Samuel L. Jackson. Sideburns but no 'fro." In fact, he looked like a 5'8" Jewish guy with short black curly hair, sideburns, and a goatee. "But I sound like muthafuckin' Samuel L. Jackson! Just change my name from Goldstein to Jackson, bitch! This is some fucked up repugnant shit! And I don't eat no pork neither, muthafucka!" "Settle down, man." "Settle down? Muthafucka, we're at 35,000 feet over the muthafuckin' Pacific Ocean somewhere between muthafuckin' Alaska and muthafuckin' Siberia, and there are muthafuckin' zombies on this muthafuckin' plane! How does that shit happen?" He was a little on edge. "We need to get the swords out of our luggage. Then we can go kick some zombie ass." The cute Japanese stewardess's English was good. "Passengers aren't allowed down there." "Right," I said, "and neither are they. Zombies can't operate complex mechanisms like hatchways and dumbwaiters. Which is why we're going down there, sweetheart." "But those are people up there! I work with some of them!" "Not anymore, sweetheart," I said, channeling Bruce Campbell. "In case you missed it, they're busy eating everyone else up there." "But there was an air marshal—" "Yeah, just one, and I saw him with a mouth full of intestines. Listen," I looked at her name tag, "Chieko." I dropped my voice an octave and moved closer to her. "Everything's gonna be okay." I gave her arm a little squeeze. Her dark eyes glittered for an instant. Then she moved closer, and her head tilted at a sassy angle. "Okay, but I don't need you to save me, big boy," she said with a saucy smirk. Her coal-black hair was pulled into a bun so tight it looked plastic, and tiny droplets of blood freckled her porcelain-smooth face. Blood from another stewardess's jugular, torn open by a guy who looked like Roddy Piper. Roddy Piper was still up there somewhere, behind the barricade. Lifeless hands slid and slapped like bloody steaks against the other side of the stack of aluminum serving carts, distracting me for a moment, until I focused on her face so close to mine. "As long as the pilot up there is alive and sane, we're good," I said. "We just have to survive until we get over land. I know this is scary. But me and my buddy Neil here, we're gonna save the day." "Yeah." Neil sniffed like an action hero and gestured like a gangsta. "We gonna save the muthafuckin' day." Let's back up just a moment to where all this began, to the 'inciting incident,' as they say. My name is Baltazar. Yeah, weird, I know. In high school I wanted to murder my parents for that one. 'Balls and Farts.' 'Ballsy.' 'Ball Boy.' Yeah, I heard it all. But my friends call me Balts. I'm just a Motor City geek. Nothing special about me. My friend Neil is the special one. The Goth girl in the seat beside me was cute. Black everything, down to the T-shirt that was just the right amount of tight. She had been telling me about all the jewelry she had to remove from her flesh before being able to pass through the airport metal detector. Her nose was too big, and her eyes were sad and down-turned like a basset hound's, but she had a sweet smile. And it's refreshing to hear a girl openly discuss her clit. Her name was Darcy, and she had a strange smell about her. I couldn't place it, so I asked her about it. "That's my perfume. It's called Dirt." "There's a perfume called Dirt?" "Cool, huh? Sometimes I mix it with Funeral Home." Darcy was going home from six months in Japan. She was titillated just to be speaking English. I leaned in close. She bared her throat for me. It did smell like dirt! The kind of warm, moist, fertile earth that you want to run your fingers through and squeeze. I let my nose brush her flesh. "Nice." Her fingers transmitted her shudder into my arm like the feather-light brush of a warm vibrator. The darkened cabin of the 777 kept the cattle docile. The pregnant woman and her husband across the aisle were snoring and snuffling softly. Lights flickered from a few small video screens on the seat backs, swathing heads with flickering haloes. Most of the window shades were closed against the frigid darkness outside. The sun had disappeared a couple hours ago as we flew forward into night and backward a day. When we reached Detroit, it would be the same Tuesday we departed Tokyo, even the flight was fourteen hours. We were somewhere over the northern Pacific ocean now, a few hundred miles off the coast of Siberia. Neil snored softly against the bulkhead. Tinny death-metal roared at concert volume inside his iPod ear buds. Around the cabin were scores of motionless passengers, headphones on, watching the gut-wrenchingly awful movies the airline so generously provided. (And I doubt the Chinese and Japanese subtitles made them any more palatable to the baffled Asians traveling to Detroit. The airline's balls-out drive to choose things that would appeal to the Least Common Denominator simply made them offensive to everyone.) Others were motionless lumps of slumbering flesh. Back home, Darcy might not have given me the time of day, but now she was happy just to be speaking English, titillated in fact, leaning close to me, touching my arm with warm fingers, teasing the blonde hair on my wrist. I unbuckled my seat belt and got up. It was time to go freshen up a little. She smelled like Dirt, and I smelled like ass. I was careful to caress her hand, then her shoulder, as I moved past her into the aisle. She put on her headphones, pretending as if that little bit of electricity hadn't just sparked, but I caught her lingering glance before I turned away, and she bit her bottom lip. As I threaded my way down the aisle, I spotted the guy who looked like Roddy Piper sitting about ten rows ahead. The resemblance was uncanny. Even if he wasn't really him, this guy had the thick, meaty shoulders of a pro wrestler and a serious tan. Neil's voice came to mind, when we saw the man at the Narita airport gate. "I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all outta bubblegum." I squinted at the muscular man with shoulder-length brown hair and red silk shirt. "Roddy Piper? Are you sure? Close, but I don't think so." As I slid by him in the aisle, classical music strained from his headphones, and his head leaned against the back of the seat. Would the real Roddy Piper be traveling in coach? I passed through the curtain into the harsh white light of the galley and lavatory area. I blinked, and one of the well-embalmed stewardesses flashed me a skilled-but-still-fake smile as she poured coffee with her leathery hands, gleaming rings, and nails that looked like blood-red lacquer. I peeked out the small window in the emergency exit door. The moon glimmered against a few silvery wisps of cloud and the glassy sheet of empty sub-arctic salt water ocean six miles down. No lights, no cities, nothing down there. A shimmering movement against the stars like filaments of green and electric blue blown across the cusp of outer space. "Cool!" The well-embalmed stewardess behind me said, "Northern lights. Aren't they beautiful? I've never seen them so strong." They ensnared my consciousness like flames until I heard Neil's voice. "Dude, you checking out the aurora?" "Never seen it before." "I was checking it out while you were hustling the Zombie Princess. I saw something on AstronomyGeek.com a couple weeks ago that they were predicting like this massive solar flare. Biggest ever recorded. So you shootin' for the Mile High Club?" "Game on, baby." He gave me a thumbs-up. "Get on that, young man. Mind if I drop cargo first? I'm gonna heave a loaf the size of your head." I glanced over my shoulder and saw the stewardess had gone, either before or because of our charismatic exchange. "Sure go ahead." "I'm gonna own this fuckin' bathroom!" With that battle cry, he dove into the lavatory with dramatic aplomb. I noticed that the lights outside were brightening, like the power-level on a rheostat turning up. The wriggling wispy bands of green and blue thickened and merged, growing brighter until a huge patch of sky blossomed into daylight blue. Suddenly a blinding white slash tore across the bands of the aurora like a jagged rip in the sky. The lights inside the plane flickered and died, and the plane lurched. Sparks coruscated along the gleaming aluminum wing surfaces. Something in my chest clenched. Neil's exclamation was muffled by the lavatory door. "What the fuck—!" The lights limped back on and the ride smoothed out. Nothing major, it seemed. The jostled passengers stirred from their lethargy but didn't erupt. Just normal turbulence, right? The white light outside began to fade like the afterimage from an arc welder, but the aurora still writhed and crackled, emerging from the blinding glare. The lavatory door opened and Neil came out, rubbing both ass cheeks. "Dude, my ass just got electrocuted! My poop was smoking!" Then he leaned down and stared out the small window. "Holy shit, I thought it was supposed to be dark outside!" "I think the Astronomy Geek hit it right on the money." "No shit?" "No shit." Stewardesses hustled up and down the aisles with soothing platitudes. The PA system dinged, and the captain's voice clicked on. "Sorry for that bump, everyone. Just had a little atmospheric disturbance, there. Nothing to worry about. Everything's fine." Was that a slight waver or hesitation in his voice at the last word? I looked outside below the wing again. Still nothing down there but cold, bottomless, shark-infested ocean. Suddenly I wanted to test my seat cushion flotation device and count how many rows to the emergency exit. I threaded my way back down the aisle. Some of the passengers had stirred at the jolt. Others still slept, apparently having missed the whole thing. Darcy didn't acknowledge me as I slid back into my seat after Neil. Darcy's eyes were closed and her head leaned back. Richard Wagner boomed from her headphones. I waited a few minutes to see if she would stir, but fruitlessly. With my seat belt tightened, my thumping heart stopped trying to bruise the inside of my ribcage. Ah, well. I'd been brushed off before. Maybe it was time for some shuteye. With the flimsy airline blanket tucked under my chin, the tightness in my chest slackened, and I felt almost cozy. When I woke up, the stench punched me in the nose. I sat up like someone had just hit me with smelling salts, eyes streaming tears. The cabin reeked like the interior of a portable toilet at a White Stripes concert, thick and moist and wretched. A stewardess in the forward galley clutched a handkerchief over her nose. Neil had pulled the collar of his Ninja Museum T-shirt up over his nose. He looked like a ninja, with his face concealed. He saw my reaction. "Dude, somebody fuckin' reeks." My watch told me an hour had passed since the 'incident,' and my bladder had something to say. I crawled out and stumbled forward. My legs felt weak, and the stench penetrated the T-shirt over my nose and mouth. The stewardess's face was milk-white. She moved the handkerchief aside long enough to say, "We're sorry for the smell, sir. We're having a problem with the plumbing system." I nodded and slid past her. After I shut the lavatory door, I took a deep breath. Yes, no doubt about it, the air was fresher in here. Returning to my seat was like passing through mingling pools of excremental effluvium, but many of the passengers still slept quietly in their seats. Others covered their faces with clothes, scarves, or blankets. The immediacy of the stench struck me as I leaned over Darcy. Then I stopped. She hadn't visibly moved, but part of her had 'moved.' Not something that guys like to think about, but I guess girls pooped too. "Dude, she's out," Neil said. "She hasn't moved in an hour, and the only sound she's made is a gurgle." "She must have taken some serious drugs to knock her out like this. You think she's OK?" "Maybe she ODed." I touched her cheek. It was cold and slack. "Hey, you OK?" I patted her cheek. "C'mon, Darcy. Wakey-wakey!" My heart beat faster, and I glanced around for a stewardess. I didn't know if I could stand a girl dying next to me. A wave of relief washed through me when she opened her eyes. Her head lolled, but her eyes were open, glazed and lifeless. "Darcy, what's wrong? Did you take something?" I squeezed her slim hand. "Goddamn, you're clammy. Neil, grab my blanket." He handed it to me, and I covered her up. "You're a mess. You need to get warmed up." The corner of her mouth twitched, and her jaw opened like she was trying to speak. Her cold hand rose slowly and grasped my neck. A steadily rising level of susurration pattered on my consciousness like squirrels throwing acorns. Then a woman's scream reverberated through the cabin. I looked back over my shoulder. Two male passengers were locked arm in arm, straining, grunting. Confused arms were raised around them like a tentative ring of seaweed, not wanting to touch or get involved. Then one of the struggling men pulled the other close and bit at his face. The second man screamed and tore himself away, stumbling backward into a stewardess, and they fell together in a pile of limbs of serving trays. In the pale fluorescent light of the galley, I saw a bright crimson spatter. A chunk of bloody flesh dangled from the attacker's teeth, which he shoved the rest of the way into his mouth, then he lunged after his prey again. Chaos. Screams like a thousand nails on a chalkboard. I almost didn't hear Neil's warning. "Balts, look out!" I turned back and Darcy's black-lipped mouth gaped toward my ear. I jerked away, and her black nails raked across my neck. Her teeth snapped together like a movie-set clapper. Her dark eyes had been pretty not so long ago, and now they were just bleak empty holes in her skull, free of emotion or moral restraint. I scrambled backward, out of her grasp. She strained to reach me, but her seat belt held her in place. With his lips spewing colorful expletives, Neil released his own seatbelt and dove over her into the aisle beside me. He was a wiry, nimble little guy, but I'd never seen him move so quickly, not even during his exam last week at the dojo. His knees bounced off the side of her head, and he landed like a fish, face-down on the carpet. Her claws snatched down and tore holes in the back of his T-shirt. I scrambled away toward the back of the plane to give him room to get away. He scrambled over me. She twisted in her seat, reaching back for us. Tendons and vertebrae creaked and crackled. Neil panted, "If she unhooks her seat belt, we're fucked!" Screams throughout the cabin flagged discrete islands of carnage, then other sounds, like tearing, splattering, dribbling, chewing, cracking, moaning, choking, swallowing. Like feeding time in a lion cage. "Jesus, man! Zombies!" I yelled. Stewardesses standing forward of us stared in helpless astonishment at the mounting carnage. Zombie Roddy Piper lunged at one of them and crushed her to the floor like a bear bringing down a sheep. A ripping sound that I will never forget, fabric and flesh torn open, and a deluge of fluid spilling onto the floor like a pitcher of viscous liquid. The pregnant woman, who not so long ago had been asleep and dreaming on her husband's shoulder, had torn open her swollen belly with her nails. She reached inside and dug out the wriggling fetus, brought it dripping to her white teeth and... A hand snatched my collar and dragged me toward the aft galley, my feet skidding behind. Neil was almost babbling in a bad Chinese accent. "Come on, Dr. Jones! No time for looove!" My mind was a tumult of sparks and primal urges. My guts were a rock-hard knot just about to spew my Oriental Pork and Rice onto the nearest surface. What happened? Now what the fuck do we do? Game over, man! Game over! We're fucked! But first things first. Better to have our backs to the wall than to be surrounded. Moments later, we reached the aft galley, momentarily out of the zombies' sight, but for how long? Some of them appeared to be 'trapped' by their seat belts. But more of them were loose in the aisles or among the seats, hunched over, feeding upon screaming men, women, and children. Other passengers fought and struggled to get away from them, punching, kicking, screaming, against attackers that seemed to feel no pain. I saw passengers connect with horrific blows with fists and feet, sending zombie teeth and serving trays flying, but without effect. The coppery reek of blood and shredded entrails replaced the stench of shit, and filled the cabin like the thick, choking smell of a slaughterhouse. "What do we do?" Neil said. A woman fell into the galley area, on the opposite side, her face scratched and clothes torn. Her face was a contorted mask of pale, sick terror. She clutched a blood-smeared serving tray in both hands like a shield and a weapon. She took one glance at us, then threw herself into an empty lavatory and locked the door. A voice came over the PA, the captain, and his voice quavered, "Cabin crew, report! What the hell is going on back there?" They couldn't answer. "Cabin crew, report!" They were being eaten. "Cabin crew, report! Why the hell doesn't somebody answer?" In the galley section just forward of us, one of the Japanese stewardesses snatched the phone from the wall. I heard her voice, but over the screams I could only hear that her voice was near hysterical. She was doing better than some. Neil and I looked at each other. "Balts, dude," he said, "I'm hanging on by a fucking thread. What now?" I closed the curtain of the galley like a kid hiding my face from the monster so it wouldn't get us. Neil closed the other side, then grabbed the phone on the galley wall. "Hey, is this the captain? Never mind that. I'm just a passenger who's alive. I'll tell you what's going on. You ever see Night of the Living Dead? Pick any zombie movie you ever saw and imagine it and that's what's happening in this muthafuckin' airplane. What do you mean you never saw a zombie movie! Don't ask me how, and I'm not full of shit. It's not a terrorist attack, dumbass! It's not a hijacking! Don't you have cameras up there or something? Yes, some of the passengers are eating the other passengers! And your cabin crew! And I think the people doing the eating are actually dead. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but you didn't almost get eaten. Something happened to all these people. We're in some crazy, fucked-up shit back here! Are you all right in the cockpit? Good news, there. Listen, I don't know how many survivors there are. Less every minute. How long before we can land?" The vibration of the engines rose in pitch and intensity, and the floor tilted as the wings banked. "Five hours!" Neil exclaimed, "Motherfucker, we're all gonna be dead in fifteen minutes! I'm glad to hear that. All we have to do is survive back here until we reach land. Aren't you supposed to have weapons up there? If you do, fantastic, but I don't think you have enough ammunition to kill 'em all." As I listened to him talk to the pilot, I tried to get myself under control and think. A trickle of blood crept into the galley from beyond the closed curtain. We didn't have much time. The zombies would reach the end of their food supply and come looking for more. My mind scrambled along like a roomful of hypered-up cats, bouncing from one thought to another to the top of doors to chair backs and under sofas and through the shitty cat box. These couldn't be movie zombies. Those were movies! A high-pitched mechanical squeal intensified and merged with a rumbling sound. Luckily, I stepped away from the curtain just in time to avoid the heavy, blood-splattered aluminum serving cart that hurtled through the cloth barrier and crashed into the rear bulkhead. A Japanese stewardess sprawled at my feet. Her clothes were torn and smeared with blood. Heartbeats behind her, the curtain slid aside for a dead-faced Japanese teenager wearing a Dragon Ash T-shirt, bushy anime-style haircut, camouflage pants and his airline headphones. His bloody fingers snatched for her ankle, obviously mistaking that lovely calf for a luscious chicken drumstick. I hammered my fist against the side of his skull. My hand exploded with pain. Fortunately, his face gave way to my fist. His skin felt cold and clammy, like Darcy's. My blow knocked him aside but didn't slow him down. He reached for me instead, his teeth snapping, his eyes empty and unseeing, like a sleepwalker's eyes, like shark's eyes, like a doll's eyes. My hand found the handle of the stainless steel coffee decanter resting dutifully on its heating pad, and never was a more welcome bludgeon used by modern man. I sent it crashing into the side of Zombie Boy's head, spewing hot coffee and cold blood across the lavatory doors. The boy's body slewed sideways and fell, spasming and twitching. He didn't get up. The blood seeping out of the shattered skull was thick, dark, and dead. His pants were stained with the final relaxation of his bowels. I reached down to touch his skin, and it was indeed ice cold. Around his ears were dark bruises and black smudges that could have been burns. "Nice shot, kemosabe." Neil jumped forward to close the curtain again. I took the stewardess by the hand and pulled her to her feet. She was mumbling, "Koroshita... koroshita, minna...." She was light as a feather, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. "You OK?" I asked. Her lower lip just trembled. "You killed him!" "I had to! He was going to take a bite out of your leg!" "But —" "Killing is bad, I know. I get it." I brandished my dented decanter, smeared with blood and hair. For a long moment, I looked her squarely in the eye, then said, "Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun." Did I sound like Bruce Campbell? "Anyone else alive out there?" She shook her head, and there was a haunted luminescence in her eyes, like the flicker of a movie projector spewing images of gore and death in her mind's eye. We were among the swiftly diminishing population of living human beings on this plane. "Barricade!" Neil exclaimed. "Use the serving carts! Make a wall!" "Fuckin'-A!" I said. We hauled them out of their bays and pushed them into the doorways. The clatter of our efforts attracted their attention. Blood-soaked arms and faces thrust themselves past the curtains, and I used the steel coffee pot like a sledgehammer, trying to clear the zombies away long enough to secure the carts in place. The coffee pot crushed an anatomical diagram's worth of bones, but no matter how much damage I dealt to their arms and faces, they didn't stop until their brains were damaged. Just like movie zombies; check. The carts were designed to fit snugly, so the barricades went together like stacks of Legos, held in place with twisted ropes of plastic trash bags. "I feel safer already." Neil's voice was thick with sarcasm. Strangely, I did feel safer. At least for the moment, we could breathe without fear of being swarmed by mindless inhuman eating machines. I leaned against the bulkhead and wiped my face with my wrist, adrenaline surging through my blood like radioactive super-juice. But it also gave me time to think about how many people up there were dead. About how many kids had been on the plane. Babies. Toddlers. Elementary school kids. I thought about my three-year-old nephew back home, and the other kids that were just his size, just out there, just eaten. Or eating. The coffee pot sagged and fell against my leg. My hand hurt from holding it so tight, and my arm felt like a bowl of cold, sticky ramen noodles. Neil saved me from a death spiral into suicidal funk. In his best Kurt Russell trucker's voice, he said, "Just remember what Jack Burton does when the pillars of heaven shake the rain comes down in sheets thick as lead." I finished the quote. "Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol' zombie square in the eye and says, 'Gimme your best shot, pal. I can take it.'" The woman came out of the lavatory. "What the hell are you guys talking about?" "Never mind," I said, "Just a little insane levity to keep the insanity at bay." Neil's sarcasm returned. "Glad you could join us." She looked away. "Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I lost it for a minute." I said to Neil, "So, what did the pilot say?" "We're five hours from an emergency landing in Vancouver. Autopilot, communication, GPS, navigation, and some of the other systems are out, but the flight crew is OK. They're safely locked behind their terrorist-proof door. But we're stuck back here. He thought I was full of shit, but I set him straight." "It must have been that solar flare." The woman hugged her bloody serving tray to her chest. "You guys are crazy. Solar flares can't do this!" Neil said, "Are you an astrophysicist or an idiot with a serving tray? No one knows what solar flares can do. In human history, none have ever penetrated the earth's magnetic field to burn through the atmosphere! A strong enough solar mass ejaculation could, oh, say, vaporize Russia and Canada and turn the Arctic ice cap into a cloud of steam. If that's what happened, most of the satellites in orbit are just little globs of rare metals now." Something clicked in my mind from physics class. "Electromagnetic fields." I knelt beside the zombie boy and pulled off his blackened headphones. His ears were also blackened, burnt. "A powerful EM field could zap right through the brain." Neil said, "And fry through your brain stem like a Jacob's Ladder. Dude, that is way too Stephen King. I just read Cell." Tray Woman just stared at us. "You guys are fucking geeks." "But we're gonna save your ass," Neil said. She snorted. "Yeah, right." Then another sound slithered from inside one of the other lavatories. Someone inside. Neil approached the door. "You OK in there?" "Careful, man." He knocked on the door, with no response. I looked at the stewardess. "Can you open it?" She pulled out a strange key and stepped over to open the door. The door slid open like a telephone booth and a body spilled onto the floor. She was a small, middle-aged Asian woman, fashionably accessorized with square-cut hair and Prada boots. Inside the lavatory, the walls and surfaces were pocked with blackened scorch marks. A chill went up my spine and stood my hair on end. She reached out and grabbed Neil's leg, pulling his ankle toward her mouth. He kicked her hand away and jumped back. Tray Woman screamed. Zombie Fashion Plate stood up. Thick layers of makeup had melted like wax from her face. Her eyes had burst, spilling retinal jelly down her rouged cheeks. Tray Woman screamed again. I hit Zombie Fashion Plate high, and Neil hit her low. I bludgeoned her skull with the coffee decanter, and Neil hammered her with a ninja kick in the belly. She tumbled back into the lavatory, crashed into the wall and fell forward onto her side. Neil grabbed the door and slammed it with all his might. The edge of the door scissored her neck, shearing it half through. He slid the door open and slammed it again. The spine crunched. One more time, and at last the head tumbled free. "I'm getting muthafuckin' tired of these muthafuckin' zombies on this muthafuckin' plane!" Thus we arrive again, full circle, to the beginning of our narrative. Tray Woman snorted. "What are you geeks doing with swords? On a plane!" The moaning and slapping on the other side of our barricades grew louder. Maybe some of them had finished their first meals and were looking for a second course. In any case, I'd had enough of her derision. "Now listen here, lady. My buddy Neil here, he's a ninja." "Fuckin'-A." She backed away. "You're crazy." "No, that's why we went to Japan. He just passed his test to become a black belt in ninjutsu. Me, I'm just a movie geek along for the ride." "Martial artist, baby." "At the Ninja Museum in Ise, I bought an uber-cool sword. Neil already had a gen-u-ine ninjato. They're in our luggage. Do I need to spell it out for you? We're going to kill zombies." "You guys are fucking crazy," she said, her eyes glistening with tears, "And you're assholes." Then she turned and fled back into her sanctuary. The deadbolt snapped shut. I shook my head and turned to Chieko. "So how do we get down there?" Her lips were a firm line. "There's a dumbwaiter to the cargo hold in each galley. It's here, under the counter." The missing serving carts revealed the platform that raised them up from below. It was big enough for one of us at a time. Chieko lowered each of us down, then we brought her down. Tray Woman would be safe if she had sense enough to stay locked in the bathroom. At least I thought so. We were now neck deep in luggage and cargo. Hundreds of bags piled high and deep, secured with cargo nets and straps. Our breath formed clouds of steam, but at least we weren't breathing that awful charnel stench. Outside, the temperature was fifty degrees below zero. The four-hundred-knot wind whistled across the aluminum skin, and the engines roared. As we searched, I thought about staying down here. We would be safer, but there might be other survivors. We had to reach them. Neil loosed an exultant cry. "Booyah!" By the time I crawled around to him, he already had the sword boxes open. He handed mine to me and strapped his across his back. "Rock and roll!" His eyes glinted. Under the floor of the passenger cabin, we moved forward toward the cockpit. Suddenly the plane lurched again, and the nose began to slide oceanward. I grabbed a cargo net. ""Oh, shit! Now what?" I snarled. "Can we get to the cockpit from here?" Chieko said, "We have to go through avionics. There's a floor hatch into the cockpit, but it's probably locked." We hurried forward through the luggage, then through a small hatch and a narrow crawl space into the cramped electronic heart of the aircraft. It seemed to take a lifetime. The angle of the plane's descent steepened, and the hiss of the wind rose to a screech. The stench of ozone and smoke hazed the air. The wiring and conduits looked burned or melted. It was a miracle this plane was still in the air. We finally reached the narrow ladder leading up to the cockpit, but of course the hatch above was closed. The ceiling thumped and scuffled with movement. "Dude, it sounds like a fight!" Neil said. I looked at Chieko. "I don't have that key!" I pulled out my sword and rapped against the solid metal hatch with the hilt. Shave and a haircut, two bits. To my surprise, my rapping pushed the door open. I scrambled up the ladder, Neil hot after me. Both pilot seats were empty. A body sprawled through the open cockpit door. The captain and Zombie Roddy Piper were locked arm in arm. The massive zombie's torso and arms were drenched in blood, and its distended belly, stuffed with raw flesh as tight as a sausage casing, had burst the buttons of his shirt. Behind the zombie was a crowd of dead-eyed bloody faces, reaching, grasping, tearing, eating. Blood rained down the steps from First Class and splashed the walls. I moved to attack, but then hesitated. If I wounded the captain, we were well and truly fucked. Then Neil took one step and plunged the point of his sword through the zombie's right eye. The body dropped like a poleaxed water buffalo on the Mekong River delta, almost pulling the captain down as well. Neil crowed, "I kick ass for the Lord! Have some bubble-gum, motherfucker!" Wow, two movie references in one breath! He was good. The captain lunged for the controls, and Neil dove out into the crowd, where there was more room to slice and stab. "Get that thing out of there!" the captain ordered me, pointing at the body blocking the door. It was the copilot, and his feet had already been eaten to the bone. I grabbed the corpse by the collar, hauled it into the cockpit, then sent the body tumbling into the avionics bay. The plane began to level off. I moved behind Neil, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him through the cockpit door. We slammed it shut and threw the lock. "How'd they get in?" I said. The captain gripped the yoke. "Bob thought he heard someone calling for help. The security cameras are down so we couldn't see what was out there. McMurphy, the navigator, was in the bathroom when all this started. He never came back from the can." He was lean and small and hard like a former combat pilot, his voice cool and calm. "I need an extra hand on the controls. Most of the electronic systems are down. I have to get us back on course and navigate with dead reckoning, no communication, and no avionics. I don't even know if the landing gear will function. We may have to belly land." Neil jumped into the co-pilot's seat. "I can hold this bitch steady while you herd it home, chief." "Fair enough. It was you on the phone, wasn't it." Then Neil slipped into a Scottish accent. "Nae, that were me friend. He's kind of a prick." He thumbed over his shoulder at me. I rolled my eyes and slammed the floor hatch. Four hours later, the lights of the Canadian coast came into view. The lights of Vancouver. At least I hoped it was Vancouver. Had the Canadian power grid been spared the electromagnetic effects of the solar flare? I sat on the floor for a while and tried and failed not to think. Chieko's dark eyes searched me, but she said nothing. I reached over and squeezed her arm. She grabbed my hand and held it. Her skin was warm and soft. Neil and I discussed combat techniques that would not work against an entity that felt no pain and had only one vital organ. The captain drew lines on his chart with a pencil and checked his few working instruments. The patter and slap against the other side of the metal cockpit door never ceased. Relief began to eat away at the relentless tension that had cranked my muscles tighter than piano strings. Little by little, the relief crept in, as we got closer to the airport. As the sparkling splash of lights became a city. As the captain tried in vain to contact the control tower. As I searched the sky for the strobing lights of other planes and saw nothing. As the streets and neighborhoods became an airport. As the landing gear went down and locked. Thank God for that. As the runway stretched out in front of us, rose to meet us, touched our wheels, and the solid earth felt like home. No moving vehicles on the tarmac. No one coming to meet us. We rolled toward the terminal, with our cargo of relentless, ravening hell. What kind of world were we coming back to? |
