Undead Freaks (7 page)

“
Umm...there's one thing, though,”
said Pete. “I know how to fly it, but I don't know how to start it.
The engine's always running when I start the sim.”

“
Shit,” said Kelly under her
breath. She opened the pilot-side door on the Cessna and sat in the
left seat. She knew she was rushing the pre-flight, but there was
no telling when the zombies might come for them next. She turned
off the panel switch and went through her flow: fuel selector to
'Both', mixture rich, slight throttle, strobe on, mags set to
'Both', three shots of primer, and Master on. She left the door
open and said, “Everyone clear of the prop. It'll take your arm
off.”

The others stepped away from the
plane and she pushed the button for the starter and the engine
kicked over. It wasn't taking. She cranked it again for almost
twenty seconds and stopped.

She tried to smell for gas,
wondering if she'd flooded it. But it smelled fine. She knew she
had to be careful not to burn out the starter. It needed a minute's
rest to be on the safe side. She gave it another two shots of prime
and waited.

And that was when things got
interesting again.

12

“
Shit,” said Frank. “We got
company. You see em? They're walking up the dirt road. Maybe half a
mile.” Frank pointed away from the barn. Todd and the others
looked. Todd saw them. It looked like a slow moving horde. A lot
bigger than even the group that they'd seen walking up the road by
the milk truck.

Frank went to the open door of the
airplane. “You think you can speed that up and get it
started?”

“
I don't know,” said Kelly. “I'm
trying. Give me a minute.”

“
We don't exactly have a minute,”
said Frank. “There's a welcome crew coming up the road. They look
hungry.”

Kelly looked through the window of
the airplane toward the road. She saw them. It made her sweat. She
felt her heart pound. She was going to start this damn
airplane.

Frank saw the strobe on the tail
and said, “Turn the damn light off. The noise we've been making is
bad enough as it is.”

Kelly turned off the strobe light.
Ray had told her to always light it. Under ordinary circumstances,
it was a good idea. See and be seen. It was how small planes kept
from running into each other. But was there anything ordinary about
this day?

“
Frank!” yelled Josie. “There are
more of them. They're coming from behind the house. Quick! Do it
quick!”

It was true. There were more of
them. They were converging on them from multiple
directions.

Walking fast, Frank went over to
the end of the airplane wing and motioned for Todd. Todd came. In a
low voice, Frank said, “We start shooting now, they're liable to
start running. How long you think we have if they do
that?”

“
I dunno – thirty
seconds?”

“
Yeah,” said Frank. “We're not
fucking with two airplanes. Kelly's getting that Cessna started and
we're all piling in.”

“
What if she doesn't get it
started?” said Todd.

“
Save a bullet for yourself and
two for the kids. I'll take care of myself and Kelly.”

“
Shit Frank. That's
cold.”

“
You want to turn into one of
them?” Frank looked at the horde coming up the road and the swarm
staggering from behind the house. They were converging on the barn
with a slow, hungry movement. The moaning was rising and falling
like one long Satanic chant.

Frank went back to Kelly and said,
“Any progress?”

“
I'm going to try something,” said
Kelly. She pulled the throttle back to idle and cranked the engine;
it started to catch. It coughed like it wasn't sure if it wanted to
start or not. Kelly held the starter and pressed in a little
throttle. Then it fired up.

“
Sweet!” said Pete. “I get to
fly.”

Frank said, “Not today, kid.
Change of plans. We're piling in.”

Kelly said, “Pete's right. If we
all get in this airplane it might not even get off the
ground.”

Frank looked over at the zombies.
They were rambling faster. It felt like an evil cloud with teeth
coming at them. He asked Kelly, “How long to start the
Supercub?”

She saw the horde of freaks too.
She said, “Shit, Frank. This might kill us. Okay. Everyone in.
Frank, you get up front. Todd and the kids in back. This is crazy.
I don't know if it's going to work.”

They all piled into the Cessna.
Kelly slammed her door shut and advanced the throttle. The noise
was loud in the tin-can cabin and the engine was just above idle.
With Ray, she'd borrowed a Lightspeed noise-canceling headset. This
was going to do some hearing damage; she knew it.

She started to taxi away from the
barn toward the field. It was bumpy. She held the yoke back to keep
weight off the nose wheel. There was no lighting out. She had a
hard time figuring out where the grass strip was in the dark. They
had to find the strip. Every bump on the ground was something that
would rob the speed they needed to get in the air when they started
their takeoff run.

Then she saw it. It was a long,
darker patch cutting through the field. There was a good chance the
strip had its fair share of holes and bumps, but it was better than
trying to fight the furrows in a field. She taxied toward
it.

“
I need the landing light,” she
said out loud. She flicked it on. It was an LED model and it lit up
the ground in front of them. She advanced the throttle a little
more. She put in ten degrees of flaps. She could already feel that
the center of gravity was off. The plane was tail-heavy. Shit like
that got people killed. She hadn't been kidding when she told Frank
what a risk it was.

One thing did go through Kelly's
mind, on the subject of death: Crashing and burning was better than
getting eaten, right?

Josie was looking out the back
window. She said, “They're running. They're coming at us. Please
get us up in the air. Please.” Her voice was tight.
Afraid.

Frank opened the passenger window.
He realized there was no room to stick the gun out and shoot. He
unlatched his door. He saw what Josie was talking about. The
zombies were running. Even over the engine he thought he could hear
them moaning.

An advance pack of six was closing
on the airplane. Zombie cavalry. They looked even more like
monsters now, with the way the skin was stretched over the bones of
their faces. They were running fast. One of them was going for the
open door. Its fingers closed around the wing strut by Frank's door
and the plane started to swerve to the right.

Still looking straight ahead,
Kelly shouted, “What the fuck, the plane's not staying on course,
what's going on Frank?”

Frank didn't have to aim to hit
it. He squeezed the trigger and put three holes in its chest,
knocking it backward from the kinetic energy of the bullets. He saw
it fall. He didn't watch to see if it got back up. He knew it
would. But hopefully by then they'd be in the air.

Frank said, “How long until this
thing gets airborne?”

“
Coming right up,” said Kelly. She
gritted her teeth. She lined up the plane with the grass runway and
took a deep breath. Maybe she even found religion. She pushed in
the throttle all the way and the plane started to accelerate. She
concentrated on working the rudder with her feet, keeping the nose
of the airplane from wandering. She tried to feel the balance of
the plane through the yoke. She knew they were way overweight and
'out of the flight envelope' as she'd heard Ray put it.

She thought,
This is how you die.
And she was
doing it on purpose. A light plane that was heavy and loaded too
far aft could pitch up on takeoff, then stall and spin in. Kelly
knew that if you flew like this, you were rolling the
dice.

Frank saw three more zombies
racing toward them. He couldn't believe his eyes, but they were
running up to the plane, even as it was gaining speed. One of them
jumped. It landed on the aft portion of the fuselage and pounded on
the plane. The plane pitched up and started to leave the ground
before coming back down hard on the nosewheel and
porpoising.

“
What the fuck is that?” said
Kelly. She fought to get them back under control. She was close to
losing it. The hit on the nosewheel might have already cracked the
firewall or the engine mounts. She said, “Get those fuckers off or
we're gonna die.” It was hard enough flying this thing as it was;
she hadn't flown with Ray in over six months. But they'd crash for
sure if a zombie was hanging from the outside of the overloaded
little airplane.

“
My problem,” said Frank. He aimed
under the flap for the zombie's head. The thing grimaced at Frank.
It was about to jump to the wing. Frank put three rounds in its
mouth and then its head was just a bloody stump. The freak let go,
bumping against the vertical stabilizer with an arm as it flew off
the back.

The plane was gaining speed, but
not fast enough. They were at forty knots. They could rotate more
at fifty. Climb out at fifty-five if they had to. Kelly saw the end
of the runway was coming up. The weight was coming off the main
gear but that wasn't going to help them clear the ditch and the
road in front of them. This wasn't the Portland Jetport. This was a
grass field and the plane was not fit to fly.

Kelly prayed it would. She didn't
want to kill everyone on board. She didn't want the kids to die.
She saw the airspeed needle edge past fifty. She brought the nose a
little higher. The trim was off. She was flying on instinct, no
longer thinking, just trying to coax the plane off the
ground.

A feeling of lightness. A slight
rock of the wings. They were off the ground, but not climbing yet.
They were in ground effect, where the drag is lower less than a
quarter wingspan from the ground.

The end of the runway was looming.
The main gear was still brushing the tall grass. Kelly saw a fence
up ahead, a dark line in the night. But the part that worried her
was that she saw power poles following the road that sliced in
front of them. That meant invisible steel wires were waiting to cut
them down if they didn't get high enough in time. She cursed under
her breath and white-knuckled the yoke.

She was still careful not to raise
the nose too high. She knew that could be death too. Stall and
spin, no one wins. She let the airspeed build. She saw fifty-seven
knots and she held the speed. The plane was nose-high but now it
was climbing out of ground effect.

Barely.

The plane got closer to the wires.
Electrical wires would stop them cold. They'd crash in a fireball
with a plane full of fuel and people. It would kill them all for
sure.

Now it was just a matter of
seconds. Kelly looked at Frank and he still had the door open,
hunting for zombies from the air. She yelled at him: “Close the
motherfucking door, Frank!”

Frank tucked the gun between his
legs and slammed the door shut. The reduction in drag gave them a
little extra performance. They needed just a little more height to
make it over those wires. A little more height or they were all
dead.

13

Nine and a half inches.

That was how high they were over
the wires when they crossed them. Less than a foot between life and
death. Kelly didn't know the measurement, not exactly, but she knew
it had been tight. She thought it was a miracle. The others didn't
know how close they'd come, except maybe Frank. He was sitting up
front and could see same as her how close it was.

Kelly was careful now that they
were up. She barely moved the controls. A stall at low altitude was
fatal. She kept the climb going. The night still had the red orange
glow to it. It gave her a visual horizon, which was good. She
wanted to get as far away from here as she could. For now she
concentrated on straight ahead. Keeping her climb up. The altimeter
showed them closing in on two hundred feet.

“
What are you doing?” said Frank
to Kelly. “You want to get us killed?”

“
I'm saving your ass,” said Kelly.
She only glanced at Frank before scanning the panel and making sure
the gauges were in the green. Her eyes went back outside like Ray
had taught her.

Frank said, “You keep flying up
over town the Army's bound to paint us with ground-based radar and
blast our asses out of the sky. We gotta stay low.”

Frank was pissing her off but
Kelly could buy it. If the town was quarantined, they probably
didn't want anyone in or out. Even in a plane. It had been bad
enough getting shot at in the BMW. Getting shot at in a Cessna
wouldn't end well. This one wasn't built to take
bullets.

She turned toward the coast and
dropped as low as she dared. She knew there were more power lines
around, big ones that went at least a hundred fifty feet into the
air. Not to mention the cell towers that reached up four or five
hundred feet. Now it was Russian roulette with their flight path.
Kelly squinted into the darkness. Something seemed wrong, but she
couldn't put words to it. She was just about over the town line.
She was headed northeast, out toward Cumberland and Yarmouth and
Freeport.