The plane rolled forward several feet and suddenly jolted to an abrupt halt. He pushed the throttle knob forward dumping gas to the engine. The four cylinders roared, but the plane refused to budge.
“I think the body is in front of the right wheel. I’m going to have to shut it down and move him.”
“You don’t have time,” Meagan reported, pointing to an approaching group of five more men and a woman.
“Hang on!” Zeke firewalled the throttle. Torque from the engine dipped the left wing toward the ground. The left side of the plane began to pivot slowly around the blocked right wheel. Zeke applied the left brake to stop the rotation. The right wing lurched upward as the thrust of the propeller pulled the small wheel over the corpse.
The huge volume of air being pushed rearward by the propeller picked up every piece of dirt and debris from the unkempt floor. The air and dirt hit the back wall, rising up toward the ceiling where the airflow pushed it forward out of the cavernous opening. The blinding dust cloud obscured the approaching infected as well as the parallel set of hangers seventy feet across the taxiway. As the plane shot into the open, Zeke pulled the throttle back and stomped on the left brake pedal. The nose wheel pivoted and the plane turned to the left. When he estimated he had turned through ninety degrees, he applied the right brake to straighten it out and align with the taxiway between the two hangers.
The aircraft pulled out of the dust cloud and the bodies emerged just in front of the plane. Zeke pulled the throttle back to idle, slowing the propeller before it mowed a path through the mob of people. Meagan covered her head with her hands as blood splattered down the right side of the plane, partially obscuring the windshield on her side. Several bodies outside of the propeller’s radius were struck by the wing. Two disappeared beneath the plane. The third was folded over, his torso draped across the wing top while his legs trailed below. He reached angrily toward the cockpit. Zeke increased the throttle. In response, the speed the plane was taxiing increased. The forward motion held the body pinned to the leading edge of the wing.
This side of the airport had not been well maintained. Large sections of asphalt had cracked and dropped with the settling earth beneath, leaving two-inch gaps between sections. Zeke taxied at nearly fifteen miles per hour, a fast taxi even on a smooth taxiway, and the plane jolted and jostled as the wheels dropped to lower sections or bounded up raised sections.
The jostling bounced the infected man around like a ball of yarn batted by a playful kitten. Despite the bouncing and bumping, he continued to stay firmly affixed to the leading edge of the wing three feet away from the canopy. Zeke transitioned onto the main taxiway, which was well maintained. The recently paved black surface was as smooth as a freshly chipped piece of obsidian. There was no hope of bouncing the hitchhiking passenger off the wing.
In the half mile to the end of the runway, Zeke tried to finish as much of the pre-takeoff checklist as he could. A quarter mile from the runway threshold, he told Meagan to watch as he fastened the five point harness. Instead of a simple lap belt like the airlines, this plane had straps that went over each shoulder in addition to a thick strap across the lap. It was typical of an aerobatic plane. Even inverted, the occupant was held firmly in his seat.
Meagan attempted to mimic his actions, but he went too fast and lost her. He looked over and saw her bewilderment. “No, this one goes last,” he said.
“Got it,” she said, threading the parts together and pulling the clasp down to lock the buckles of each strap in place.
The taxiway made a ninety degree turn to the runway. Rather than pulling back on the throttle, Zeke pushed it in further. When the front wheel of the plane aligned with the white dashed lines that designated the center of the runway, Zeke push the throttle all the way in. The light plane leapt forward as the propeller took huge bites of air, clawing its way down the runway. The man still clung to the wing, inching his way closer to the cockpit.
As the plane hurtled down the mile-long raceway, a figure ambled out of the grass and onto the runway two hundred and fifty yards away, eyeing the oncoming aircraft. Zeke watched the airspeed indicator as the white needle passed through sixty miles per hour. “If we hit her, this flight is over before it begins,” Zeke murmured to himself more than to Meagan.
The distance between the woman and the plane rocketing down the runway closed at an alarmingly fast rate. At eighty miles an hour, Zeke pulled back on the stick, a mere hundred feet from the woman. The nose of the plane pitched skyward. The rest followed as it leapt into the air. The body draped over the left wing interfered with the air flowing over it and greatly reduced the lift it was creating. As soon as the wheels left the ground, the extra weight on the wing coupled with the reduced lift caused the left wing tip to dip dangerously close to the ground. The whole plane shuddered as it passed over the woman and the dangling nose wheel slammed into her face, knocking her dead on the asphalt runway. Zeke pushed the control stick to the right and leveled the drooping left wing. With the plane airborne and stable, he flipped a toggle switch that retracted the landing gear.
Even if the infected man wanted to let go of the wing, Zeke wasn’t sure if the hundred mile per hour wind would permit him to wiggle free. Shortly after takeoff, at an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, Zeke told Meagan to hang on. He pulled back further on the stick and then pushed it to the left. The agile craft rolled rapidly. Zeke looked out the window at the left wing tip. As it approached eighty degrees of bank, he slowed the roll rate. The tip of the wing pointed straight toward the ground and the man slid down its length, plummeting to the earth’s surface.
With the man clear of the wing, Zeke pushed the stick to the left again and the plane rolled upside down, and then continued rolling until it came right side up. Meagan screamed and then yelled, “That beats any rollercoaster!”
After nearly five hours of flying over a patchwork quilt of fields ranging from various shades of green all the way to brown, Zeke announced they were nearly at their destination. They had crossed half the country at an altitude of ninety-five hundred feet, high enough that the details of towns, ranches, and small estates blended into obscurity.
Cars appeared as tiny dots parked along streets, in front of houses, and in parking lots. Occasionally one crawled along a road or highway below. Even at sixty miles an hour, a car was traveling a quarter of the speed they were and looked like a tiny insect slowly traversing a barren and featureless landscape.
Plumes of black smoke billowed from towns engulfed in raging flames. Some were set by looters, others by accident. Firemen who weren’t infected had abandoned their stations. Even if they desired to put out the blazes, it was suicide; there were too many infected rampaging through the streets. Just like everybody else, the firemen had families who needed to be protected, wives and children who needed to be comforted. The only thing that would stop the fires was when the fuel was exhausted. With their homes and shelters destroyed, fleeing families had little chance of survival.
At nearly two miles above the chaos and struggles for survival, Zeke and Meagan couldn’t grasp the full scope of the fight for life taking place below. They understood the overall picture of what was happening because hours before, they had been in the midst of it. They understood the terror and hopelessness that unseen people below were fighting to overcome, but they could not see the specific plight of individual persons.
The world they were currently inhabiting was sterile and peaceful, although they were about to reenter the harsh and cruel macrocosm endured by the rest of humanity. As Zeke announced their imminent arrival, a sense of dread settled on both of them. Adrenaline caused a tingling in Zeke’s stomach. Meagan’s pulse quickened as her heart began to pound. Both silently wondered what they would find on the ground. There was no way to know if there would be fuel to continue their trek, or if the airport would be overrun by infected.
With both wing tanks empty and the auxiliary tank in the nose of the plane showing only a few gallons on the fuel meter, Zeke was more concerned with making it to the airport than he was over what they would find when they landed. He was unfamiliar with the particular quirks of the aircraft. He did know, however, that the FAA only required a fuel gauge to be accurate when it displayed full and empty. Between full and empty, they didn’t care if it gave a true reading. He assumed the fuel gauge was reasonably accurate, but an inaccuracy of a gallon or two would mean the difference between landing safely at the airport or crashing somewhere short of their destination with a silent engine and a slowly windmilling propeller mocking their helpless state.
Rather than beginning a slow descent, Zeke maintained his altitude, hoping to keep a margin of safety in case the gas gauge was off and they ran out of fuel. Although the thin wings would not provide a good glide ratio if the engine quit, the extra altitude provided a reassuring buffer which would enable them to glide at least twenty miles.
“The airport should be out there,” he told Meagan as he pointed straight ahead. “It should be fifteen miles in front of us. If you see it, let me know.” Several minutes later, Zeke spotted a narrow black ribbon at the north edge of a town. “There it is,” he pointed. “We’re going to come in high and circle down to make sure it’s safe.”
Zeke banked to the left as he crossed the middle of the runway. The orange windsock was pointed straight out, nearly perfectly aligned down runway three-one. More importantly, the runway was clear of obstructions and he couldn’t see any infected near the airport.
His main concern with the airport was that it bordered the edge of the city. He was afraid the sound of the engine would bring every infected from the small town to the airport. Planning the trip back in Georgia, he hadn’t realized the threat this posed. At this point, there wasn’t enough fuel to try for a different airfield. They were committed regardless of what happened.
Zeke pushed the mixture and propeller control knobs all the way in. The RPM gauge inched up just short of red line. He pulled out the throttle knob, causing a drop on the manifold pressure gauge. When they had descended to five thousand feet, he leveled out again. The airspeed bled down to one hundred twenty miles an hour and he flicked the gear switch to the down position. Two of the three green lights next to the switch illuminated. The third light, which represented the nose gear, remained dark. Zeke tapped the unlit bulb with his finger. Nothing happened.
Meagan, sensing his apprehension, asked, “What’s wrong?”
“These three lights represent the landing gear. When a wheel is down, a green light comes on. The light for the nose wheel isn’t coming on.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means the nose wheel isn’t all the way down. It was probably damaged when we hit the woman on the runway at takeoff.” He flipped the switch up and the lights went out. He flipped it back down and the nose light still failed to illuminate. “I’m going to perform some abrupt maneuvers and see if we can shake it down and get it to lock in place. Hang on,” he said hopefully.
He pulled back on the control stick and the nose shot up. Meagan felt her entire body pulled into the seat. She instantly felt like she weighed seven hundred pounds. She tried to lift her arm, but it was too heavy and remained pinned to her thigh. Her vision began to darken around the periphery until she was left with a small sphere of sight directly in front of her face.
Without warning, Zeke pushed the nose forward. For an instant, Meagan felt her body lift lightly off the seat. For the first time in her life, she experienced the same feeling of weightlessness that is normally reserved for astronauts. She felt a strange sensation in her stomach as her organs lifted within her body, floating in her abdominal cavity. As Zeke pushed further forward, the plane began a dive. The curiously pleasant sensation suddenly became utterly unbearable. Her body was violently pulled away from her seat as the plane descended faster than the pull of gravity and literally left her behind. The only thing that kept her from flying through the canopy was the seatbelt harness fastened tightly over her shoulders and lap. Her vision turned red as the effects of negative gravity forced excess blood into her head and eyes. The intense pressure it caused in her head nearly drove her out of her mind.
Zeke pulled back on the stick once again, pitching the nose up and slamming her back into her seat. The G force pinned her arms back to her sides. With side pressure on the stick, the plane rolled violently and Meagan’s head slammed into the side of the canopy. The ground and sky switched places as the plane rolled inverted. She lost all sense of orientation.
As the plane rolled upright again, Zeke pushed the stick over in the opposite direction. Meagan slammed into his shoulder as the plane rolled to the right, causing the horizon to spin wildly. Meagan’s stomach became queasy. The remnants of her early morning breakfast threatened to violently reappear.
The sky returned to its proper location above them and Zeke pulled back on the stick. The nose of the plane pitched up, yet again. It kept rising until it was pointed at the noon sun, directly overhead. The plane climbed straight up, rapidly losing speed until it momentarily hung on the screaming propeller. Unable to hold itself in the thin air, the craft began falling back to earth, tail first. Zeke pushed the stick forward and air flowing backwards over the elevator caused the craft to pitch over, once again showing its belly to the sky. Then the nose pointed straight down and the altimeter, which had peaked at eight thousand feet, rapidly unwound, the needles spinning backwards as the plane rocketed toward the ground. Zeke pulled the throttle back as he tugged back on the stick. Meagan was shoved into her seat as the force of gravity her body was subjected to increased six times above normal.
As the plane leveled out, Meagan began to heave. She tried to put her head between her legs, directing the vomit to the floor. For a second, she felt better, but the smell of her own puke quickly brought on another round of upheaval, this one even more violent than the first.
She turned behind the seat, looking for the bag of beverages to wash the bitter taste from her mouth. The cargo net over the baggage had kept it in place during the violent maneuvers, but she couldn’t reach it while belted into her seat. There was no way she was going to undo her seatbelt harness after the violence Zeke had just subjected her to.
“Please tell me you fixed the landing gear,” she begged. “That better not have been for nothing.” Unfortunately, she already knew the answer because she could plainly see the top light was still dark.
“I’m sorry,” Zeke answered. “It didn’t work. We’re going to have land the way we are. We don’t have enough fuel to keep monkeying around, hoping for a miracle.”
He positioned the plane parallel to right side of the runway and flew several miles past the end before beginning a gentle, banking turn that lined the plane up with the long black strip of asphalt. With the Lancair lined up on the runway centerline, he flipped the gear switch back up and the two green lights extinguished.
“What are you doing?” Meagan questioned in confusion. “Did you just put the landing gear up?”
“If we land with the nose wheel up and the main gear down, the nose will dig in and the plane will flip upside down. We’ll probably die. With all the gear up, it will slide down the runway on its belly. It will ruin the plane, but we’ll most likely be okay.”
“I thought planes catch on fire when they crash,” Meagan countered with concern. She had faced a myriad of horrible ways to die over the past few days. All of them were preferable to burning to death, strapped into a tiny midget of an aircraft. “I think I would rather jump out right now than risk burning to death.”
Half a mile from the end of the runway, the engine began to sputter and cough. And then it died. Except for the soft whistle of air passing over the body of the powerless plane, the cockpit was ominously silent.
“Well,” Zeke began, “running out of fuel isn’t all bad. At least we won’t burn after we crash.”