Undead Freaks (8 page)

That was when she figured out what
it was. The lights in Cumberland were out. The plane wasn't high
enough for her to see all the way to Richmond, but it looked like
Yarmouth was the same way. It was like the power outage from the
big ice storm back in '98. What lights there were looked like
fires.

“
Frank, I think we have a
problem,” said Kelly.

“
What now?”

“
The power's out. Not just in
Calvert Falls, but all over. You see any lights up
here?”

Frank looked out. He checked
behind them, too, toward Portland. He told Todd and the kids, “All
eyes outside the plane. Tell us if you see any electric lights.
Street lights, that kind of thing”

“
Sure,” said Pete. He was shouting
but that was because the plane was loud with the engine and prop
noise. Pete was getting over the terror of the zombies and having
fun in the plane. He was just bummed that he wasn't the one flying.
He'd have to try and get another go later, if Kelly got tired and
wanted to land somewhere and switch off.

Kelly dropped down a little lower
to keep a low profile. No sense escaping hungry mouths to end up
getting shot down. The terrain had small hills in it. She buzzed
the treetops.

She saw a long, narrow clearing
that cut straight through the woods in front of them, and that
meant more power lines. She pitched up ever so slightly and the
airplane started a slow climb. They went up at only a hundred fifty
feet per minute, which was terrible.

They cleared the power lines by a
more comfortable margin, but it was only a wingspan. Then Kelly
dropped them back to treetop height. Her arms were cold. She felt
her heart making shallow beats in her chest; her hands were clammy.
She turned more east, toward the water. She could see the ocean in
front of her. A dark line. Following the coast was crude but a good
way to navigate in this neck of the woods. Ray had taught her that,
too.

“
Where to now?” Kelly shouted over
the noise.

“
How far can we get in this
thing?” said Frank.

“
I don't know. Looks like we might
have half tanks, maybe more. A couple hundred miles,
maybe.”

Frank asked Todd, “Any lights on
the ground yet?”

“
No,” said Todd. “Nothing. It's
like the whole county went dark. But it's hard to tell from down
here.”

“
Let's go for Boston,” said Frank.
“Maybe we can skim in real low and land outside the city. We'll be
able to find out what's happening there.”

The coast came up and now Kelly
dropped the plane down even lower as she flew it above the water.
She kept it at fifty feet, which took concentration. If the sky
hadn't been glowing orange she wouldn't have been able to do this.
She hugged the shore and the airspeed crept up to a hundred and ten
knots. They were going flat out.

That was when Frank saw the
flashes and knew this thing was bigger than he thought. The lights
blinded him.

14

It happened over Portland. Both
Frank and Kelly saw it from being in the front seats. The
explosions were huge. Bright white flashes that stole their night
vision.

Kelly swore and said, “Fuck. I
can't see. Shit. I need to keep it level. Tell me if we're turning
or descending.”

The kids in back kept a lookout.
Pete was looking over Kelly's shoulder at the attitude gyro in the
panel and looking outside. No death spiral yet. Kelly had the
Cessna trimmed out pretty good and they were keeping steady and
level.

They flew like that for two long
minutes before a night vision started to come back to Kelly a
little bit at a time. At least she wasn't blind. She saw big balls
of orange and yellow flame climbing into the sky over the Portland
skyline.

Josie spoke up in the back. She
said, “It's bad, huh?”

“
Yeah it's bad,” said Frank.
“Looks like our friends in the armed forces decided to extend the
cleanup operation.” Frank felt a clenching in his gut. The fact
that the power was out on the coast Portland was under attack meant
that the outbreak had spread. There was no other explanation. And
that was bad news for his daughter, Sarah. He had to get to
her.

“
Any telling how big this thing
is?” said Todd.

“
Can't say,” said Frank. Now he
couldn't help but worry for Sarah. She was up way north, toward
T6-R8 where the girl's campground was on Matagamon lake. It was too
far to fly there from where they were and there was no telling if
she'd gotten news and evacuated in time. He hoped she had. Frank
wasn't the kind of guy to panic but this was his daughter and he
had to fight to keep his mind from going into full-on panic
mode.

They flew down Casco Bay. Kelly
was keeping an eye on the oil pressure gauge. It was near the
bottom of the green arc and it looked like the needle was moving
back and forth. She was pissed that she hadn't checked the oil
before takeoff, that was something you were supposed to do every
time, but she'd gotten a little rushed with the zombie attack.
There wasn't much she could do now except get ready for a forced
landing if the engine decided to throw a wrench into
things.

“
My family has a cabin up near
Merrymeeting Lake, in New Hampshire,” said Pete from the back seat.
“We could hide out there. They have a freezer with food in it and
they're on solar with batteries so it doesn't matter if the power's
out there, too.”

“
Is there an airport nearby?” said
Kelly. “I'm not doing a water landing. I'll probably drown
us.”

“
No,” said Pete. “Sorry. I thought
maybe we could sorta crash it nice and slow in the shallow water by
the house.”

“
Let me guess – you did that in
the sim,” said Kelly.

“
It was an idea,” said Pete. He
was disappointed.

“
Never mind,” said Kelly. “I don't
think we're going to New Hampshire. The plane might not make it
that far.” She looked at Frank for guidance but his expression had
shifted and he wasn't helping. He was looking outside.

Kelly saw the oil temperature
gauge reading higher. The needle was just past the upper limit of
normal. And oil pressure was falling. Falling pressure and climbing
temperature meant there was a leak. It also meant that their
minutes in the air were numbered.

Kelly listened, trying to hear a
change in the Lycoming engine. It was loud as hell but so far it
was holding. She just didn't know for how long.

“
Holy shit,” said Todd. “Look over
there.” He pointed toward Portland again. There were white lights
streaking downward from the sky.

Frank looked over. The light
looked like shooting stars but Frank knew better. They were
missiles. He'd seen them in action before. If the Air Force was in
on it, lobbing missiles from on high, that meant bad things The
only question was the payload. They'd hit any second.

“
Do you really think it spread?
The infection?” said Kelly.

“
You mean the zombie thing? It
looks like it,” said Frank. He kept an eye on the white lights
streaking downward. Now their speed seemed to be increasing, which
meant the hit was coming. “Can you land us on the beach over
there?” He pointed toward a little island just off the left wing.
There was a small strip of sand by some rocks.

“
Why?” said Kelly. “I might crack
us up doing it. And we'll never fly off.”

“
Don't look over the city,” said
Frank. “Just land the plane. I think someone means
business.”

15

Kelly banked the plane and got
them turned for a downwind landing in the sand. It was the shortest
patch of earth she'd ever tried to land on. She extended the flaps
but forty-five knots indicated over a sliver of beach still felt
too fast. They came in a little high over the rocks and then when
the wheels hit the sand she thought they were going to hit the
rocks in front of them at the other end of the beach.

The sand was wet. The airplane
wheels sank in and the plane stopped in less than two hundred feet.
They all lurched forward with the deceleration and Kelly reached
down and cut the power with the Master switch. She exhaled. She
couldn't believe that she'd landed them here. It was some damn good
flying for a rusty student pilot. She looked at Frank. “What
now?”

“
We get out,” he said.

That was when the first of the
missiles hit. Frank and the rest of them couldn't see it from their
side of the island, but it streaked into downtown Portland,
initiating its detonation sequence at an altitude of five hundred
feet AGL directly over the Civic Center. The other two missiles
went for Augusta and Bangor and hit seconds later.

The missiles were low-yield
tactical nukes designed for neutralizing small towns and cities.
This was their first operational deployment, in a domestic security
operation. With some changes to the timing and delivery vehicle,
they could also be used for busting deep bunkers. With an
atmospheric low-level detonation like they were doing here, the
missiles had a guaranteed kill-radius of three miles. They created
a fireball that consumed everything in its path. Outside the kill
zone, there was the fallout danger. But that was harder to predict.
It depended on winds and weather.

The President had authorized the
strike himself, announcing it to the American People from the Oval
Office on network TV and a streaming Internet feed on
whitehouse.gov. He'd said it was necessary to remove an
'existential threat' to the American Way of Life. Maine was Ground
Zero for the zombie infection, and he asked the country to pray for
the men, women, and children who lived there. He was careful not to
say the words 'zombie' or 'undead' during his address. But Facebook
and Twitter and Snapchat were spreading the word anyhow.

That was the start of the national
panic.

By the time the authorities
realized what was happening and cut off all cell, phone, and
Internet access to the state, the first pictures of the devastation
were already going viral all across the Web. There were pictures of
zombies tearing into the throats of soldiers; an eastern seaport
transformed into a nuclear-devastated city; a blood-smeared baby
eating the breast of its dead mother. The cat was out of the bag.
Those who survived tried to show the horrors until they were cut
off.

It was probably better that the
survivors on the island hadn't heard the President speak. It was
easier to cope when you didn't know what you were up against. When
the blast hit Portland, there was a shock wave that went through
the air and flattened downtown, lighting it up in flame. The blast
blew over the island a second later, passing over the lee side and
the survivors still in the little Cessna stuck in the sand. The
boom followed like the deepest, most rumbling thunder they'd ever
heard.

They were lucky. If they'd been
flying, they would have been incinerated.

“
What was that?” said Kelly.
Everyone in the plane had felt it.

“
What I was afraid of,” said
Frank. “A nuke.”

Everyone got out and the kids
scrambled up on the rocks to get a look at the mainland a few miles
away. Josie saw the fires and said, “I think everyone's gone
now.”

She was right. There was some
buildings like fried insect carcasses somehow still upright but
they were just burned out shells. The rest had collapsed or were on
fire. It was bright in the night. There was a warm wind coming from
the land.

Frank was with Kelly and Todd by
the plane, leaning against the engine cowling. He said, “It
happened. Now we gotta get outta here. If we can find a boat we can
get away before the radiation from the fallout poisons
us.”

The ash hadn't started falling on
them. Not yet. It was the luck of the wind. Frank knew not to count
on luck. It was a fickle mistress.

“
Shit, the radiation,” said Kelly.
“I didn't think about that. I'll go look. I'll bring the kids with
me.”

“
We'll all go,” said
Frank.

They went up the beach. There was
an empty summer house on the water with a dock. The blast had
passed over it and it was intact. Even the windows were
whole.

A sailboat was tied up at the dock
below the house. It was a small boat, without a cabin. Frank
wondered if the infection had spread to the islands. It was
possible. He wanted something to eat and the house had to have a
kitchen but he knew they'd better get off the island and away from
the fallout.

Kelly saw the boat and went to it;
she started to work on getting the mainsail up. It was already in
the mast track and she undid the sail ties before pulling on the
main halyard. She'd been sailing as a kid. She thought that if
there was one good thing about this whole fucked up mess it was
that she wasn't home ordering online shit that she didn't need and
waiting for Terry to come home and slap her around. She was doing
something real. She was helping other people. It felt better that
way.

The others followed her, climbing
onboard one at a time and taking their seats. Kelly untied the
boat. It looked like it could fit eight people if you crammed them
in.