Bloom and Scatter [Free! Zombie AU]

Homecoming

Death is a debt all men must pay

Euripedes

Despite the promises of a smooth flight, there was still a lot of turbulence en route to Japan. It was bad enough that the only plane Rin could find was a rusty old piece of shit the Australian air force had scrapped, but the repurposed cargo plane had him strapped down into seats and belts that looked like they would barely hold if they hit a particularly rough patch of sky. He tried not to think about it too much. Truth be told, he knew he was lucky he even managed to find a ride. Islands were supposed to be safe; that was the general wisdom that everyone ate and spat out as they built crude boats and chartered illegal flights to islands, turning them into gathering points for the infected. Islands always ended up closing their borders.

Japan closed its borders three weeks ago.

It wasn't his fault he couldn't leave earlier. Rin had cleared out every single bank account he had, all the money he had stored away, all the cash prizes he had won from swimming, and poured everything into getting a flight to Iwatobi. Finding a willing pilot had taken longer than he had hoped. He hadn't even begun considering what the Japanese Defence Force would do to vessels trying to enter the country illegally. He remembered the last go around, he'd heard about people getting shot down or sunk into the ocean, even if he was too young to have lived through the last epidemic. Either way, smuggling people was a lucrative business, and surely the pilot wouldn't have agreed if he himself didn't expect to make it out alive, right? Rin wasn't the only one on the plane either. He'd recognised one of the passengers – a politician maybe? An actor? – and there was the fact that the pilot had promised he'd get him in. Considering the price Rin was paying, he had fucking better.

The engine was too loud, rattling the entire plane, and the whole vessel suddenly jolted, sending the lights flickering on and off.

"What's going on up there?" Someone yelled nervously.

"Detour," was yelled back, followed by a shouted curse, and, "Hold onto your seats, ladies!"

Without warning, the aircraft's engines gunned into overdrive and pulled back so that they were almost completely vertical, shooting upwards through the sky. Rin clutched onto the straps holding him down by the shoulders, feeling himself fall towards his right side with gravity, and hoped to god that what he was hearing was thunder and not guns.

His blood ran cold. He wasn't going to die here, was he? Not at this leg of the journey. Communications had been cut off and he hadn't been able to contact anyone in Japan, much less Iwatobi. No one knew where he was. If he died, he'd be considered missing. He couldn't imagine anything worse happening.

There was a loud boom and crack, the sound of ripping steel, and Rin and the other passengers watched in horror as the smoking hole in the cargo door forced out a rush of air like a cyclone that widened the gap as the metal sheets of the plane's frame peeled off. Everything was shaking uncontrollably and he held on as tightly as he could, unable to tear his eyes away from the hole. In the distance, the sea was black and bright red tracers lit up the sky as bullets followed their path, sounding like fireworks against the overloud scream of the engines. The plane jerked to the side and began to nosedive. Someone screamed. Rin was trying to think, but everything was shaking, and surely they hadn't been shot anywhere vital? They would have felt it. They weren't going to die. They weren't going to die. Even if the plane ended up crashing in the sea, Rin could swim back. If they were close enough to get shot at, surely they were near the islands.