He quickly overcame his surprise, ran to the rollup door, pushed the green button on the electric opener on the side of the wall, and sprinted for the truck as the monstrous door slowly clinked its way open. Once he could see light through the rearview mirror, he dropped the transmission into reverse. The tires chirped on the smooth epoxy coating the concrete floor as he gunned the engine. The truck shot from the bay into the exposed insecurity of the outside world. He looked over his left shoulder as he cranked the wheel in that direction. There were no infected behind them or in front of them. Once clear of the shop, he shifted to drive and romped on the gas.
"Aren’t you going to close to garage door?”
"No. We don't have the time and if we need to retreat back to the school, that's the only way in.” The tires squealed as he accelerated down the asphalt drive that ran parallel to the hallway in the building. The engine roared as huge quantities of gasoline were injected into each cylinder.
As the truck barreled past the front of the building, Zeke looked to his left, examining the outcome of his work. The doors to the building were gone, having been blown into the hallway from the force of the explosion, and the ground around the entrance was a writhing mass of bodies.
It had worked. The explosion had killed the majority of the horde. The plastic bowl full of TATP was instantaneously converted to ozone and other gasses. The volume the newly formed gasses occupied was orders of magnitude greater than the area the solid explosive had taken up. As the chemical reaction changed the solid crystals into gasses, the gasses expanded outward in all directions at supersonic speeds. The mass of nails, screws, bolts, nuts and washers that surrounded the bowl of explosives were also hurtled away from the explosion at nearly the same velocity. Each metallic object in the bucket was turned into a lethal projectile and was driven away from the blast in a high velocity cloud of death. The missiles that were driven into infected brains brought about instant death. The force of the explosion, as well as the force of the impact between projectiles and flesh, severed limbs and left bloody, broken bodies crawling over each other like a knot of worms. Blood painted the area surrounding the entrance a sea of crimson. One hundred feet away, splotches of blood and severed limbs marked the sidewalk, grass, and parking lot like the canvas of a demented abstract painter.
Howls and shrieks from the infected overshadowed the roar of the still accelerating engine. Whether the outcry of the mangled bodies was from pain or from fury at the inability to get to the passing truck didn't really matter.
A handful of infected that had been on the periphery of the crush of bodies had been shielded from the blast and the hail of projectiles. These ran at the truck, their faces contorted in rage, hunger, or agony.
Meagan stared at the scene of carnage after they turned onto the street, her mouth agape, shocked at the brutality of the explosion. Unable to tear her eyes away from the scene of destruction, she continued looking over her shoulder as the school shrank away behind the truck.
For the first mile or so, the streets were abandoned, showing no signs of life. Every infected within earshot of the school had been irresistibly drawn to the commotion preceding the explosion. Whether they sought food or were simply attracted to noise, the effect was the same: they could not resist the impulse that drove them to the source of the maelstrom about to be unleashed.
Houses along the street showed broken out windows and broken down doors, signs that trapped infected had battered their way out of their former homes only to be torn apart outside the school. Faces in intact homes peered out enviously as the truck sped past, leaving the local chaos and death behind, presumably headed to a safer environment. For each set of faces peering out, there was a car in front of the house or in a garage. All of them could have fled, but because of fear, or a lack of a better place to ride out the apocalypse, they refused to leave the perceived safety of their homes.
As distance from the school increased, so did the number of bodies ambling aimlessly in the road. The event replayed repeatedly. A body would turn its head toward the sound of the approaching pickup. Seconds would pass before jumbled memories came together in rotted brains and recognition briefly spread across a blank face. Recognition rapidly turned to fury and the individual or group would charge the truck. Time after time, Zeke would swerve at the last second, dodging the charging bodies obstructing his path.
As the truck swerved, the infected invariably lunged at the passing vehicle. A head slammed into the windshield, spreading a web of cracks radiating outward across the passenger side. Another hit the driver side mirror, exploding the plastic housing into a thousand pieces and shattering the glass as the assembly pivoted inward with such force that it hit the side window, sending a cascade of broken glass showering in on Zeke.
"Zeke!" Meagan exclaimed several miles from the school. "We're going the wrong way. California is the other direction."
Further from town, the infected finally disappeared from the road. Zeke turned to Meagan. "The plan has changed. I think I have a better route home, but we can't start from here. We have to back track a little to get to the starting point."
Twenty minutes later, Zeke stopped in front of a closed gate barring entrance to the West Georgia Regional Airport. “This is as far as we drive,” he said as he pulled the truck into the grass strip at the side of the entrance to the airport and turned off the engine.
“Let’s get over that fence,” he said, looking down the road behind them. They had passed three infected a mile back. When he last saw the group in the mirror, they were still chasing the truck. The group hadn’t come into view yet, but Zeke knew it was only a matter of time before they did.
He and Meagan hurriedly threw bags and tools over the fence. Last was a red fire ax he had liberated from the wall in the shop. A shriek down the road hurried him as he double checked the truck, making sure nothing had been overlooked. He shut the door and looked down the road again, catching a glimpse of the three bodies rushing toward them.
The mile they had sprinted didn’t seem to have slowed them at all. Their energy seemed limitless.
“We have to get over that fence,” he admonished Meagan, who was watching with a mixture of fascination and fear as the group closed to a quarter mile.
Zeke bent over and interlaced his fingers, holding them between his knees to give her a boost. Meagan looked at him with a raised eyebrows and a smirk before proceeding to lithely scale the fence without his assistance.
“Come on, Flyboy. I need you on this side of the fence. I don’t know how to drive an airplane.”
Zeke awkwardly pulled himself over the fence in a spectacle that was completely devoid of the grace and finesse Meagan had demonstrated. By the time he was on the other side, Meagan had already hung a strap from each of the backpacks of food over one of her shoulders and picked up her oak club and small canvas tool bag. “Where’s your plane?” she inquired.
Zeke shrugged as he quickly shouldered the two bags of drinks and picked up the bolt cutters and ax. “I don’t actually have a plane. We’re going to have to borrow one. We’re looking for something that’s fast and has a full tank of gas.”
Carrying their loads of gear, they quickly ran toward a long hanger ahead. Along the ramp in front of the hanger, a dozen planes were lined up facing the road. Many were derelicts far past their prime, the airworthiness of several was questionable. None were what he was looking for. He briefly eyed several old, underpowered twins. Their increased payload and interior space didn’t make up for their lumbering slow speeds and increased fuel burn. In theory, the extra engine was supposed to take the plane to safety if one engine failed. In reality, the extra engine doubled the chances of a catastrophic engine failure. For these smaller twins, even when brand new, the second engine barely had the power to maintain altitude. On the aged specimens of aeronautical history sitting on the ramp before them, the second engine would have just enough power to carry them to the scene of an airplane crash.
Bolt cutters in hand, Zeke approached the first hanger door. With little effort he severed the shank of the lock securing the door. He pushed the door open, revealing a sleek composite bodied airplane painted in a red, white, and blue paint scheme. A large, highly polished exhaust pipe came out either side of the cowling. Without bothering to shut the door, he hurried to the next.
Meagan peeked in after he moved on. “That one looked nice. Why can’t we take it?” she asked, disappointed in passing on what was obviously a luxury craft.
“It would be perfect for somebody else,” he said, his face turning red in embarrassment.
“Why wouldn’t it be perfect for us?” she asked in confusion.
“It has a turbine engine. The shop I worked in during college only worked on piston powered engines and I have only flown piston powered airplanes,” he said as his bolt cutters crushed through another lock. “I don’t know how to start it.”
Meagan futilely attempted to stifle a laugh. “That’s too bad because I really liked that one.”
Zeke wasn’t satisfied with the slow, short range Cessna 152 and continued to the end of the building, not finding what he was looking for in any of the bays.
The three ghouls had reached the gate and were throwing themselves against it noisily. The fencing rattled and the assaulting body bounced off with each failed attempt to breach the chain link barrier.
Zeke hurried to the other side of the hanger and began clipping his way through the locks down the building and then back up the building across the way.
“Zeke, I think you’re being too picky. Can’t we just take one of these and go?”
“None of these will make it across the country without multiple stops. Each time we have to land and refuel, we are exposing ourselves to a lot of risk. The power may be down and we might not be able to get any fuel. The airport might be overrun with infected. We might run into somebody we don’t want to meet. I’m looking for something that can make it with only one stop.”
He pushed another giant sliding door to the side, revealing a small, low wing aircraft. A large bubble canopy sat over two, side by side seats in a tight cockpit. A shiny chrome spinner rested at the front of a white, three bladed propeller with red tips. Purple stripes swirled down the white fuselage. The aircraft sat on three tiny, retractable wheels. It was the sky’s equivalent of a Ferrari. “This is it!” he blurted out excitedly as he passed through the narrow opening in the nine foot tall rolling doors. “A Lancair 360! Get in here!”
Meagan followed him into the hanger and he rolled the door closed behind her. Translucent plastic roofing panels allowed light to shine into the hanger.
Zeke walked around the wing and pushed the canopy forward over the engine, opening the cockpit. “Stow your gear behind the seat.” He looked at the instrument panel and added, “There’s no key. We have a little work to do before we can leave.” He dropped his two bags into the modest cargo space behind the seat and quickly removed the fuel caps from each wing and one more behind the engine. After inspecting each of the three fuel bays, he announced, “She’s topped off with fuel.”
Zeke pulled a screw driver from the canvas bag and began undoing the fasteners that held the cowling over the engine. With access to the motor, he disconnected a wire from two metal boxes on top of it.
“What are you doing?” Meagan asked
“I’m disconnecting the magneto P leads,” he said. “Airplanes are different from cars. When you turn the key to the on position, you aren’t activating the starter; you’re breaking the ground connection to the magnetos which are either of these boxes on top of the engine. The magnetos produce the electric impulses that arc across the ends of the spark plugs. The magneto can’t produce a spark when it’s grounded which is why we disconnected the P leads or the grounding wires. When we undo the ground wires, it enables the engine to run without the key. There’s a separate button you push to activate the starter,” he added as he put the cowl back over the engine.
“That’s it? You don’t have to do anything else?” she asked, surprised at how easy it was to steal an airplane.
“That’s it. If you redo all these fasteners, I’ll see if I can plan our trip real quick.”
Zeke climbed into the cockpit and sat in the left seat. He clicked two red rocker switches up and a relay closed with a
pop
. A whirring began behind the instrument panel as the gyros spun up. Zeke began pushing buttons on the GPS unit in the panel. “How does Syracuse, Kansas sound?” he asked Meagan as he leaned his head out of the cockpit.
“I’ve never heard of it before, but it sounds good to me.”
With the course programmed into the GPS, Zeke clicked the master switch down, cutting off battery power to the plane. The whine of the gyros slowed as they spun down.
Zeke examined the Cam-Lock fasteners as Meagan twisted the last one into place. “You’re a natural. If you get tired of working at the investment firm, I’m sure you could get a job working on planes.”
“Thanks. It’s good to know I have options to fall back on if this doesn’t work out for me,” she replied sarcastically.
Zeke put his weight behind the door as he started rolling it open. A widening crack appeared, shooting a splinter of light across the hanger floor. A long shadow appeared in the bright column on the floor. Zeke turned and saw an arm reaching through the opening. An angry scream pushed into the hanger from behind the arm. Zeke stopped the door before it opened wide enough for the body attached to the arm to gain entrance.
A
crash
echoed through the hanger as something smashed into the metal siding that covered the door. “Grab me the ax!” Zeke screamed.
Meagan dove into the plane, and dug through the luggage in the back. She unzipped a pocket on the side of the food bag and removed a paper face mask she found in the sick room back at the school. She pulled the fire ax from beneath the bag and scurried to the crack between the wall and the rolling door as she fitted the mask over her mouth and nose. The frustrated arm continued to reach through the gap, fingers opening and closing. A face crammed up to the gap, unable to fit through.
“Roll it open a couple more inches,” Meagan suggested apprehensively.
“It’ll let him in,” Zeke countered, vehemently opposed to the idea.
“No, he’s too fat,” she disagreed. “Another couple inches and I can split his head.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said, hoping she was right.
Zeke slowly pushed the door. The head pushed its way into the opening, teeth clacking loudly as they sought Meagan’s skin in vain. The head hissed loudly in frustration. Outside, two separate howls echoed off the metal hangers.
“Push it closed,” she shouted.
Zeke obeyed without questioning, rolling the door back the other way. It moved a couple inches before it stopped, the thick neck of the encroaching body blocking the way. Meagan lifted the ax over her head, closed her eyes and brought it down in a crashing blow on the back of the intruder’s skull. The ax blade sank three inches into the skull. The head and arm slid down the face of the wall and door, collapsing to the floor. A second arm reached for Meagan as she struggled to free the ax from the infected’s cranium. It was tightly wedged in and she couldn’t free it regardless of how hard she pulled. Finally, she put her foot on the head and leaned back, pulling as hard as she could, leveraging the ax up and down. It suddenly wrenched free. She was leaning back so far she couldn’t keep her balance when the ax was freed and she fell backwards, landing hard on the floor.
She quickly stood, picked up the ax, and buried it in the second head poking through the slender opening. This time she kept her eyes open, but couldn’t keep a grimace from spreading across her face as she completed the gruesome task of bashing in the man’s head.
The second body collapsed on top of the first only to be replaced by the head of the third infected, its teeth
clacking
violently. Again, the second skull held the ax fast in place. Careful to stay clear of the groping arm and
clicking
teeth, Meagan once again freed the ax and, this time, was able to maintain her footing. She swung again, crushing the third head with the blunt end of the ax. The body crumpled to the ground, blood from its mangled head adding to the rapidly growing scarlet pool forming around the dead trio. “I think it’s clear now,” she hollered to Zeke.
“Then get in the plane.”
She crawled over the left wing and sat in the left seat. Zeke put his weight behind the door and it rolled open. “Unless you’re planning on flying, get in the other seat,” he shouted as the door slammed against the stop at the end of its travel. With the doors open, Zeke ran across the hanger, leaped onto the wing, wedged himself into the seat Meagan had just vacated, pulled the canopy closed, and showed Meagan how to fasten the latches on her side to secure the canopy.
“Fuel selector – check, brakes – check, beacon –we’ll skip that one, circuit breakers – check, master on – check, mixture rich – check, prime engine – check.”
“Zeke! Problem!”
Zeke halted his pre-start up checklist and looked out the cockpit to where Meagan pointed. A lone man stood in the center of the hanger door. His grizzled face had a huge, bloody sore below his ear as if a bite had been torn from it. He looked dumbly into the hanger, sensing something, but not sure what it was. The sun reflecting off the canopy blinded him to what was beyond the thin Plexiglas. The hum of the electric fuel pump held his gaze as his mind feebly attempted to determine what it meant.
“We’ll forgo the checklist in favor of an expedited departure.” Zeke pulled the throttle back and pushed in the silver starter button at the bottom left of the panel. The prop began rotating and the engine sputtered intermittently as the blades arced around.
The sound of the spinning prop and engine grabbed the man’s attention. He was drawn to the sound and motion like a moth to a flame. He ran forward as the engine caught and accelerated the prop momentarily before it coughed again, spitting black exhaust from the pipes sticking out the bottom of the cowling. The prop was spinning fast enough that it had disappeared in a rotating blur. A hand reached for the engine cowl, instinctively drawn to the sound. The rapidly spinning propeller severed the arm. Even if the man’s brain was capable of realizing what was happening, he couldn’t have stopped his forward motion fast enough. His body collided with the propeller. The blade crashed into the top of his skull, slicing his face from his head. The force of the spinning blade threw his body to the side. The engine caught and revved loudly. Zeke quickly reduced the throttle and let his feet off the brake pedals.