Coldbrook

Sean told Jayne not to strap herself in. He stood in the aisle beside her, gun in one hand, the other holding onto the seat in front of her. He no longer kept a watch on her. The man was tired.

‘So what happened to you?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean your. .’ Family, she wanted to say. But she hardly knew him, and what right did she have to know? ‘Your story.’

‘Right,’ he said, glancing down at her. ‘Yeah. Well, been working the airlines since 9/11, the pay’s good, get to travel. My wife moved to France ten years ago with my daughter, and I only see them once or twice a year.’ He was staring along the aisle again, and his voice was flat and emotionless. Everything tied up inside. Jayne knew how that felt.

‘At least they’re safe,’ she said. ‘You should call them, now we’re close to land.’

‘If I hadn’t left my phone up there.’ He nodded along the aisle.

‘Oh, sorry.’

They were silent for a while, feeling the strange lifting sensation as the aircraft lost altitude in preparation for landing.

‘What should we do when we’re on the ground?’ Jayne asked at last.

‘I’ve been thinking on that,’ Sean said. ‘Mostly up to now I’ve just been acting for the moment. Keeping you safe.’ He looked at her, and she wondered how old his daughter was. ‘And, if you’ll let me, I’d like to continue doing that after we land.’

Jayne smiled.

‘So once we land, we need to slip away and-’

The shouting was sudden, and shocking. Some people were speaking, others simply crying out in despair, and Sean knelt beside Jayne and levelled his gun along the aisle. He looks terrified, she thought. It had been her own pain, the threat to her own life, that had obsessed her since she’d woken half-stripped and exposed from her churu blackout. But here was Sean, protecting her because he knew it was right. And she could smell his fear, sense the tension in his body as he aimed the gun.

‘What?’ Jayne said. ‘What is it?’

‘Dunno,’ Sean said. He was glancing left and right, sweating. ‘When I say, get back into the rest room. You good to move?’

The curtain whipped aside and she held her breath, readying for the gunshot. But it was the stewardess, holding on to the seats as she hurried along the aisle to them.

‘Far enough,’ Sean said, sounding almost apologetic.

‘What’s happening?’ Jayne asked.

‘We’ve got to land in Baltimore, like I told you,’ the stewardess said.

‘And?’ Sean asked.

‘Baltimore’s burning, and the airport’s been overrun.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Sean whispered.

The stewardess stood there for a while, saying nothing, staring at Jayne. She’d helped them, and perhaps she felt some investment in her. Or maybe she’s just thinking about what’s about to happen.

‘I live in. .’ the woman said. Then her face crumpled and she ran back along the cabin.

‘We need to get ready,’ Sean said. He tucked the gun into his shoulder holster and went to the kitchen behind them. Jayne tried to turn in her seat, but the pain in her hips screamed out. She leaned back and sensed their descent.

Baltimore’s burning.

‘Out of the frying pan. .’ she muttered as Sean sat next to her and handed her a bag.

One of the terminal buildings was on fire. Others looked untouched, but there were people on the concrete surrounding various parked aircraft. Some of them swarmed around a mobile staircase beside a 757, clambering up the stairs, falling from the top, rising to climb again. The thought of what might be happening inside the aircraft’s cabin was horrible, but Jayne could not turn away.

The crowd’s attention turned to their own jet.

‘Hope the pilot’s got enough sense not to taxi back there,’ Sean said. The plane touched down, they bounced, jolted left and right, and Jayne wondered whether the vagaries of fate would allow her to die in a plane wreck. But then the wheels hit the runway again and they were down. The aircraft’s jets roared in reverse thrust and Sean pressed an arm across the front of her shoulders to keep her back in her seat. She winced at the tensions in her body, and the pains they aggravated.

‘Soon as we slow to turn-’ Sean said, and the aircraft veered so sharply to the left that Jayne was sure the wing tip would skim the ground and they’d be flipped.

Screams from the cabin in front of them, hidden by swishing curtains. The continuing roar of the engines. And Jayne saw shapes below them, passing beneath the wing and the fuselage, and the smears of several people crushed across the concrete.

‘He’s dodging them,’ she said, and Sean uttered a short, sharp laugh.

The aircraft straightened, and as it slowed they felt several shuddering impacts. Jayne closed her eyes and saw Tommy struck by a bullet, and she was glad that he’d died so clean.

As the engines powered back and the plane drifted to the right, Sean jumped from his seat and went to the rear exit door on the starboard side. ‘Are they all. .?’ he asked, amazed.

‘All infected,’ Jayne said. ‘I can see blood.’

Sean stood back and seemed to gather his thoughts. Then he went through the kitchen to the opposite door. ‘Here!’ he called.

Jayne was already out of her seat, wincing against the pain but finding movement relatively easy. Sean was removing a locking bar from the emergency-door handle.

‘When I open this, the chute inflates and forms a slide. You’ll have seen it in the movies. I’ll go down first, and you wait until I signal that it’s safe. Got it?’

‘Yeah.’

He pulled his gun, looked at it, tucked it back in the holster. ‘Can you tie the bag to your belt?’

Jayne did. It contained bottled water, a tin opener broken so that the blade was exposed, and a penknife. Not much of a survival kit.

‘Oh shit,’ she whispered. Sean smiled at her and nodded. ‘Why are you doing this for me?’ she asked.

He held the door handle, breathing heavily, glancing outside, judging when to pull. ‘My daughter’s about your age,’ he said. ‘Which sounds fucking trite, I know. Sad middle-aged motherfucker who couldn’t keep his family together.’

‘No, not trite,’ she said.

‘And because you’re special. Bitten, but still well. And this. .’ He pointed at the window, what lay beyond.

Saving his daughter by saving me, Jayne thought. And she smiled at the man, because he was honest.

The plane stopped.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘One. . two. .’

From the front of the plane came a heavy clunk! and the hiss of air as one of the aircraft’s other escape chutes was released. Someone shouted, and Sean and Jayne pressed their faces to the door’s window.

They saw the first few people tumble from the end of the inflated chute, stand up and then look around in panic. Seconds later, shapes darted from beneath the aircraft and fell on them.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Sean said. He hadn’t seen this before.

‘I can’t do this,’ Jayne said, ‘I can’t, I can’t. .’

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘They might climb the chute.’

‘Okay,’ Jayne said, taking a deep breath. ‘Sean, I’ve seen them before. They’re fast. Their main aim is to spread whatever it is they have. They’re not like. . you know, “real” zombies. Don’t eat your brains, shit like that.’