Chimera-44 (4 page)

“
What’s wrong with him?”
she asked.

Peter shrugged, “He was feeling bad
when we left Sidney and has been asleep most of the
time.”

The attendant put her hand on the sick
man’s shoulder and shook him gently, “Sir,” she said to his face,
“Are you, ok?”

Another flight attendant appeared on
the other side of the aisle and looked on.

“
What’s wrong with him?”
James asked his father.

He leaned down into the boy and
whispered, “He’s got the flu or something. I’m sure he is fine.” He
lied. The guy looked like shit. If his kids saw someone die on
their vacation, their mother would never let him hear the end of
it.

The sick man picked his head up and
opened his eyes, fixing them on the veteran attendant in his face.
His lips mumbled, but no words came out. He brought his hands up to
the woman’s face and put one on each cheek. As she started to
recoil backwards away from him and protest, the man grabbed her
roughly. With his hands fisted in her dirty gray-blonde hair, he
forced her face to his own and roughly kissed her lips. The flight
attendant pushed away from his embrace and struggled.

Then came the screams.

Muffled ones from the woman being
kissed, louder, horrified ones from the second flight attendant
looking on. Two screams lead to dozens in a packed airplane
hurtling over the Pacific Ocean at 500-knots.

Peter reached out and grabbed the
woman around the waist, tugging her back from the seated navy
officer. The man refused to release his grip and only pulled her
closer to him as he kissed her roughly. Kisses turned to bites and
the man clamped down hard on the woman’s lips and chin as she
slapped and pushed against him.

A male passenger, a stocky man wearing
an Oakland Raiders jersey, came barreling down the aisle and helped
Peter pull the woman from the attacker’s embrace. When she came
away from the would-be cannibal, Peter noticed her bottom lip
looked odd. It was a split second later when the man spit it out
across the aisle that Peter knew why.

He shivered uncontrollably and stood
watching the situation unfold. Oakland Raider’s jersey guy punched
the naval officer square in the face, exploding the man’s
gore-streaked nose in a shatter of bone, cartilage, and bloody
mucous. The man was still belted into his seat and made no effort
to unbuckle himself, meaning all he could do was sit and take it.
The cannibal shook his head violently and sprayed blood in all
directions as he clawed at the bruiser’s face. The scene devolved
into a dog pile of the two men fighting, one belted into his seat,
the other fighting to get away as much as anything else. Another
three or four male passengers soon joined in. Peter pulled his sons
out of their seats and pushed them down the aisle towards the
cockpit and away from the fight.

Once the fight had broken up and the
naval officer was left alone in his aisle, still belted in, he
still struck out like a maniac. He bit his own tongue off and spit
it out into the cabin. Finally, Peter and some of the other male
passengers wrestled a thick blanket over the man’s head and secured
it with a belt buckled tightly around the bundle. Even then, the
man fought and screamed, wrestling against the seatbelt without
success.

Peter found his sons after some sort
of calm had been restored to the plane’s cabin. One of the
uninjured flight attendants escorted them to the first class area
where a few seats were open and settled them there for the rest of
the flight.

“
Here,” she said to him,
pressing two mini bottles of Smirnov into his hand. “You may need
this.”

He did indeed and set them on the arm
of his new seat. His sons were on either side of him.

“
Jesus, Dad,” said James,
“What happened back there?”

Peter looked at his teenage son. The
boy had blood splattered across his face. Tiny drops of it clung to
his eyelashes and forehead. One large fleck was on his
nose.

“
The world is a crazy place
sometimes,” he replied, passing over a hot towel that the flight
attendant had presented them with when they were reseated. “Here,
wipe your face off.” Then he turned to his David and Andrew and
asked if they were ok while James rubbed his face clean.

They were visibly shaken but nodded
that they were. Peter took the towel from James and passed it to
them.

“
Here, you guys wash your
face, you will feel better.”

—
| — | —

Want to find what happens
when the virus makes it to the United States? Check out
Last Stand on Zombie Island
, available from
Amazon.com
for your
Kindle and from
Necro Publications
as a hardcover
and trade paperback, and from
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for Apple, Kobo, EPUB
and almost every other format.

—
| — | —

WELCOME TO THE END OF THE
WORLD!

Disease-K has decimated the world
leaving its victims shambling homicidal maniacs. And nestled along
the warm Gulf waters sits Gulf Shores…the last outpost of
civilization. With looters and thieves preying on the shocked
survivors, it’s up to the retirees and bank tellers, phone
repairmen and charterboat captains to put the town back
together.

THE SHADOWS ARE GATHERING OUTSIDE OF
TOWN!

There, in the sands and marshes of the
Gulf of Mexico, the citizens of Gulf Shores along with scattered
military units, a downed Air Force pilot, and a lone Coast Guard
cutter form the last line of defense against the amassing horde of
the infected marching its way toward the sea destroying what is
left of humanity along the way.

As summer gives way to the fall and
the cold winds blow off the sea, Gulf Shores draws the line and
prepares to make the…

THE LAST STAND ON ZOMBIE
ISLAND!

Read an Excerpt
here
.