Chapter 2

Erik wasn't used to flying on military planes. Outside of his trip to and from
Iraq, and the trip to Monroe, he'd only flow on commercial airliners. The jerk
from the turbulence and the air blowing through the cargo hold, where he sat
with the other four remaining members of Monroe station, was enough to keep him
on edge even though he hadn't slept in nearly 24 hours. He had first tried to
carry on a conversation with Sam and Amanda, surprisingly the two members of
the airforce both had an aversion to flying, but the racket of the flight made
listening difficult and conversation didn't last long. At least they were warm,
thanks to the arctic cold weather gear they were still wearing. The two pilots
who had picked them up hadn't been willing to provide much information about
the disaster they would soon be facing, but the grim looks in their eyes told
the group that whatever it was, it was going to be worse than they had
imagined.

Erik hadn't been able to get a good look at them when the arrived, due to the
face masks they wore as part of the cold weather gear, but 2 hours after they
had started the flight one of the pilots had entered the rear area where they
all sat and laid down on the cargo net hammock situated next to the chemical
toilet. He knew, from his previous deployment, that on long trips airforce
pilots traveled in pairs. One would operate the plane while the other slept,
and they would trade off, ensuring that no pilot was operating a plane while
suffering from sleep deprivation. The man looked terribly ill, and Erik was
surprised that he'd been allowed to go on duty in his condition. As he lay down
his skin looked pale and clammy, and he had dark circles under his bloodshot
scarlet eyes. He couldn't hear the man over the sound of the plane, but he
could see his body jerking in, Erik supposed, fits of coughing.

Erik leaned his head back against the inner fuselage of the plane and shut his
eyes, hoping for sleep. Minutes, or hours, after he drifted off he was torn
awake by a loud guttural scream. His eyes snapped open and he turned his head
in the direction of the cries. Five feet away, near the front of the plane, he
saw the pilot bent over the large frame of Marcus Brown. His breathing eased up
for a second, whatever had happened to Marcus had woken the sleeping pilot who
was trying to help the man. It took another second for Erik's reason to catch
up with his senses.

They say that smell is the sense tied most strongly to memory. The smell of
freshly baked cookies or turkey transports one back to childhood memories of
Christmas mornings; the earthy smell of freshly cut grass to memories of
running free under the warm yellow glow of the summer sun. Now the metallic
smell of blood mixed with the musk of torn intestines brought Erik back to his
time in Iraq, to a day when an IED had exploded, killing three of his team
members. He saw the scarlet pool creeping along the floor. To his right Amanda
screamed "Oh my God! Oh my God! What is he doing!" In front of him Scot
screamed "No!" The shouts caught the pilots attention and he stood up. His eyes
were vacant, painted marbles in a death mask.

He walked toward them like a drunken marionette, limbs jerking inhumanly. His
skin was a clammy translucent yellow, like Vaseline spread over vellum.  Blood
stained his cheeks and chin, turning into a black stain on the front of his
navy blue flight suit. Behind them they could see Marcus sprawled on the
ground, his black skin ashen, features distorted into a caricature of terror.
His abdomen was torn open, viscera pulled out, torn bits of intestine dripping
blood and a sickly yellow mixture of bile and the remnants of his last meal
onto the floor.

The pilot turned to Scot, who was nearest, and let out a low gravely moan. In
shock and with no idea what else to do, Scot let loose a punch with all 120lbs
of his lank frame, hitting the pilot in the face. The creatures head snapped
back but it's body continued forward, arms outreached and grabbed Scots still
extended arm. Jaws open, snakelike, it pulled its head forward as though to
strike. Before the bite landed the creature crumpled to the floor as Sam kicked
it's legs out from beneath it. Another kick to the chest knocked it back and it
crumpled into a heap against the wall that divided the cargo hold from the
cockpit. Sam turned to Scot, his mouth starting to form the words "you okay?"
when the creature moving again, slowly pushing itself back up to it's feet.
"Fucker won't go down" Sam shouted. The pilot moaned. "Here!" Amanda shouted
from the rear of the plane.  She was working on unlatching the nylon cargo
netting that housed one of the spare generators. Erik ran back to help her,
understanding immediately her plan. Grabbing the opposite side of the cargo net
he turned toward the front of the plane, intent on capturing the pilot and
binding him in the netting.

As he turned to the front of the plane he saw the metal hatch that led to the
cockpit open. The other pilot had obviously heard the commotion when the
creature had hit the wall to the cockpit. Erik hoped that auto-pilot was
standard on airforce planes. He wasn't the only one who saw the hatch open. As
the pilots hand pushed the door open into the cockpit the creature that had
been his copilot, now on it's feet, grabbed the arm just within its reach and
sunk its teeth into the pilots arm. The pilot shouted and jerked away, leaving
the creature to chew the chunk of meat left in it's jaws. Once he had regained
his balance, the pilot pulled a hunting knife from the sheath strapped to his
thigh and stepped back into the cargo hold. Sidestepping the creature as it
lunged for him again, he drove the blade of the knife into its ear and the
creature dropped to the ground, lifeless.

Mirroring the creature he had just killed, the pilot sunk onto the floor,
cradling his wounded arm. Scot rushed forward first and dropped down to one
knee to examine the mans injury. His call for bandages was staunched by the
sound of ripping cloth and Sam stepped over Marcus's bleeding frame to hand him
strips of cloth ripped from his uniform. With Scots help the pilot bandaged the
wound and then struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the wave of
dizziness brought on by lack of blood and the adrenaline leaving his system.
Easing his way back to his seat at the helm of the aircraft he blinked to focus
his eyes then checked the instruments to make sure that they were in no
immediate danger of crashing. "Anyone else know how to fly this bird?" He
shouted the question, though he needn't have done, the entire group was huddled
in the cockpit, speechless and staring at one another, trying to cope with the
shock of what had just happened.

Amanda was the first one to speak, "Captain...", she'd seen his rank on his
uniform but he had no name. "Call me Dave" he said.  "Dave...what the fuck?"
Inarticulate though it might have been, Erik felt that Amanda's question had
summed up his feelings perfectly. "Linden musta got infected while we was
clearing out the runway, but I didn't see no bite, shit!" When they had spoken
to the pilots while boarding the plane Dave had spoken with a generic American
accent, but the stress of his injury had caused him to revert back to a
southern dialect that none of them could identify. "Infected?" Sam asked.
"Don't nobody told y'all anything 'bout what's going on out here?" he asked.
"We haven't heard anything from anyone for the last few months, except for the
evacuation order." Scot answered. "Shit" Dave said, then standing up quickly he
said "SHIT" again and pushed his way through the group, knife again at the
ready. Through the doorway they saw the body of Marcus roll over, intestines
spilling out onto the floor in a bloody pile as the corpse began to push itself
up. With one blow Dave drove the knife into Marcus's eye socket, giving the
handle a quick twist before removing it, wiping the blood and what was left of
Marcus's eye onto his uniform.

This was too much for the group to handle. Erik, standing behind Sam, threw up
chunks of sausage and dehydrated egg onto the back of the mans uniform while he
braced himself from collapsing with shock. Scot, with nothing to brace onto
fell to his knees. Amanda stared at the scene, stoic aside from the tears that
welled up behind her eyes. Dave pushed his way back through the group and
retook his seat in the cockpit. "When y'all was askin' questions earlier I
didn't know that y'all didn't even know about the infection. I can't believe
them sorry sumbitches didn't tell y'all what ya was flyin' into though. Shit,
s'pose they figured if ya'da knowed what it was like y'all'da never come back."
"What can you tell us about what's going on? What the hell was Linden doing
attacking Marcus, and how the hell did Marcus manage to move after having half
his guts ripped out?"

"The whole world's done gone ta hell is what's happened." Dave said. His voice
was shaky and Sam wondered if he'd lost too much blood from the bite before
they'd gotten the wound bandaged. "I don't know all'a what happened but I
s'pose I best tell ya what I can. Back maybe six months ago there was some
rumors of a plague goin' around, it was on the news but not much got made of
it. After West Nile, then Bird Flu and then Swine Flu I guess them TV people
decided there weren't much money in more stories of plagues, but a bunch of us
started getting orders out ta a few bases, and then they said they was gunna
pull outta Iraq and Afghanistan and they pulled out most of the troops from the
other bases all over the world. We knew something was up but nobody made the
connection to the plague right then. Anyways they set us all to building these
new buildings and ramping up defense on our bases, and they brought a bunch of
civvies ta live on the bases too. We thought maybe the spooks dug sumthin' up
about a attack against the US. Twern't too long after that the first infected
showed up." He stopped and took in several heavy breaths before continuing.
None of the group could find words to interrupt him. "So these infected, they
ain't just carryin' some flu, when people got infected they died, or I guess as
close to died as you can get, but they was still walkin' around all slow like,
like the zombies from them movies I guess, but they was real, and they would go
after people and try to eat 'em. Didn't matter if they was family or friends or
just some guy off the street, and they was slow but strong and they could take
down a big dude just a couple of 'em. Nothin' would stop 'em 'cept ta destroy
the brain. Shit, I saw one of 'em get 'is head lopped off and they damn thing
kept tryin' to bite like a goddamned rattler or something, but once anybody got
bit they ain't got long and then they go into a coma I guess and real quick
afterwards they come back as one of 'em."

"But you were bit." Erik said, still processing the horror of what was
happening. "Yeah, and I hate ta tell y'all but if ain't none of the rest of
y'all can fly this bird I'mma haveta put us down right quick else we're gunna
fall outta the sky." "I don't understand how" Scot started, but Dave cut him
off, "Look, y'all need ta go buckle up cuz we're about ta have a hell of a
rough landin' but if I get us down in one piece I'll tell ya whatever else I
can on one condition" he said. "What's that?" Amanda asked. "That when I drift
off one of y'all put a bullet in my brain before I come back as one of those
bastards."

With that the group buckled themselves into the bench seats in the cargo hold
of the plane and braced for the landing ahead.