Zombie Flight

Zombie Flight - chapter 16 - Turbulent

What's taking Shrikanth so long with Susie? Whatever freakiness seized Nola, she was no match for him, but, senator or not, I was his backup.

I reached down to undo my seat belt, my eyes fixed on the curtain, as three things happened simultaneously.

First, we dropped one hundred and fifty feet in less than a second. The carbon fiber composite frame of the Dreamliner held under thousands of pounds of pressure, buffeting from left to right with the turbulence.

Second, gravity pushed my stomach up to the roof of my mouth as my body strained against my seat belt. It dumped me back down in my seat with a jolt. Some of the other passengers had started to move around the plane when it happened. They were thrown to the roof, then dumped down like projectiles, leaving a trail of breaks, dislocations, bloody noses, and screams. The scent of blood saturated the air.

Third. a tangled bloody mass came through the curtains, skidding into business class in the aisle in front of me. As my head jerked back down, I made out Nola the flight attendant surfing in on Shrikanth's bloody corpse. Her head was buried in his neck and covered in gore. When she looked up, I saw a chunk of his neck still in her mouth. What the!

Instinct kicked in, and I started to move. It was as if I were moving in slow motion compared to the passengers Susie picked as infected. They ignored the pandemonium and retreated toward Economy. I don't know what super skills this Mustang thing had given them, but getting the hell out of the way of zombies was one of them. They were like a bunch of stirred cowardly hornets. The infected woman sitting in front of me palmed a guy twice her size, pushing him back into his seat to make it to the aisle first.

No one else had even started to work it out yet. The air was scented with blood, drenched with chemical messages. Screams and moans rang out as passengers nursed their injuries, but Nola heard nothing.

Then good old Army training kicked in. Run toward danger. Well, my own adaptation of that schema. I unlatched my seat belt and flew out of my seat. I crawled over the passengers in the middle of the plane, creating a buffer of seats between me and Nola. If she could do that to Shrikanth, we were all in trouble.

Meanwhile, Henning and Chan scrambled to right the Dreamliner, but the turbulence passed as quickly as it arrived. The Fasten Seat Belt sign came on, but from where I was, screams drowned out Captain Henning's voice coming over the intercom. "Will cabin staff ensure all passengers fasten their seat belts?"

Nola rose from the floor, her white shirt and face covered in crimson arterial blood. She stood, unhurried, as passengers competed for her attention as pandemonium ran through the length of the Dreamliner. When the passengers saw the scrap of flesh hanging from her mouth, the screaming just got louder.

A bolt of terror ran up and down the left-hand aisle of business class, which I'd just fled. They had the clearest view of Shrikanth's corpse, a bloody broken action figure at Nola's feet. Shrikanth's head bent at an unnatural angle, almost severed.

Nola snatched the woman in 1B and tore a gaping hole in the back of her neck with her teeth. Leaving the body for later, she went on to her next victim.

She resembled a late-night horror movie goddess. Blood streamed from her mouth, saturating her white shirt and coating her gray Wedge Airlines skirt. She was fast, shepherding her prey into killing range like an effective predator, methodically plucking passengers out one by one and pouncing on anyone who tried to run. It was hunter behavior, not driven by hunger. That worm must be stuffed. I don't know where she put it all.

The screaming was high pitched, shrill, and constant, a soundtrack for a full-blown killing machine. Passengers trampled one another in their rush to get away from Nola and toward Economy.