The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) (27 page)

When it's done some of us are sobbing and some are laughing. I feel buoyed up, cresting on a tide of my fellow survivors. I want to give my speech again, thanking them for surviving and for wanting to survive, but there's no need because the national anthem did it better than I ever could. Everybody here gets it. We are the last gleaming, the last red rockets, the last of the free and brave that made this country what it was.

"Is that it?" Feargal calls out, and people laugh. "Does nobody know the second verse?" More laughter.

"Here's another," somebody says. I think it must be Witzgenstein, though I didn't notice when she came over to join us. I'm glad she did, because she's part of us too, no matter how much she wanted to split us apart. I hope Masako is somewhere comfortable and warm too, with her gentle husband and her sweet son by her side.

Witzgenstein starts singing a folk classic, one I haven't heard for decades, back then would have considered twee and old-fashioned, though now it hits me right in the gut. 'This Land was Made for You and Me' by Woody Guthrie.

Her voice is high and clean and we all join in. She knows all the words though, more than anyone else, and carries us along with her from California, down the winding highways and across the sparkling deserts, through the Depression-era clouds of dust and the fog of civil war all the way to New York in the east, with a repeated, endless chorus we can all join in on.

"This land was made for you and me."

We keep singing because none of us wants to stop. We don't know what comes next and none of us wants to find out. We don't want our ending to be silent, dripped out in the dark. I can feel the demons now, so close through the night, as the cold inches over my skin and pulls me in. They're like a deep riptide in the ocean, silently tugging us all down.

I finger the gun and prepare myself. None of us should suffer. My children won't suffer. My wife won't suffer. This way is better.

At last the soaring voices fade. My throat is sore. We are all here together, and that is how it should be. I slip the clasp on the gun's holster, holding Lara's wiry, tough hair close to my lips and kissing it deeply, breathing in the sweet, natural smell of her.

The zombies are not here. They cannot save us, and I accept that. Any moment the demons will come.

At last, the last of us fall silent.

Only then can I hear the voice shouting, clear as a train whistle across the long and lonely night, coming over the radio by my feet. She sounds hoarse with repeating the same lines again and again, calling into the night, to anyone who will listen.

The cold solidifies as ice in my belly. It's impossible, but I can't deny it.

"Amo, are you there? Lara, are you there? I've found the zombies, we've found them, please tell me you're there."

Oh my God.

It's Anna.

INTERLUDE A

The plane plummeted out of the night sky. The moonlit clouds rose away and the dark asphalt of the runway filled the cockpit window.

Anna clutched the radio like it was her father's phone, braced against the dashboard, racking her mind for something to do. The engine barked violently and black smoke vomited out of the propeller hood, buffeting the glass and filtering back into the cabin through the exhaust. The wind was a tearing rush all around and the propeller crackled and popped like a faulty firework, sparks shooting out of either side.

"I can't-" Peters shouted over the roar, straining to pull back on the stick. He turned to her in the co-pilot's seat with desperation carved in his lined, withered face. "Help!"

Behind them Jake had bent into the crash position, hands crossed over his head.

They'd barely taken off. They were only a few hundred feet in the air and now they were in a nose-dive.

"Help me!" Peters cried desperately.

Anna dropped the radio and smacked her seat-belt release loose, then tumbled sideways onto Peters' lap. There could only be seconds left. She grabbed the stick with both hands, braced her legs against the instrument panel and heaved.

The plane screamed, the fuselage jerked and something ripped sharply off the tail of the plane with a jolt that smacked Anna's forehead against the stick.

"I love you, sweetheart," Amo's voice came over the radio, "Jake, thank you. I'm so sorry."

"Amo-" Anna shouted, then the plane hit the runway with an earsplitting-

CRASH

The ceiling punched Anna in the back then threw her to the side as the plane's body skidded and screeched over the asphalt, entering a roll that crumpled the left wing like wet tissue paper in a blender. Her arm crunched off the unforgiving instrument panel as the cockpit rolled on its side, tumbling her like clothes in the laundry. Sparks shot off the asphalt as the battered plane scraped out the last of its momentum on the runway and hit the damp, overgrown soil of the verge with a muddy slap.

The plane body tilted onto its roof then creaked back again, settling in a trench on its side where the torn wing had been. Anna lay against the cockpit side glass, dizzy and in pain.

"Amo," she whispered, as the darkness drew in from the sides of her vision like a great black tide, shutting her in.

Seconds later she came up gasping. Her shoulders and head were pressed to the window while her lower body was sprawled upwards across Peters' lap, still fastened to his chair.

"I think we made it," he wheezed, hanging sideways from his seatbelt.

Anna tried to push herself up but she was dizzy and her arm shrieked in pain as she tried to put her weight on it.

"Amo," she shouted, but the radio didn't respond.

The cab was filling with black smoke, filtering through the cracked front mechanics. The propeller was still spitting out a dying, spluttery roar, and underneath it there was the gulping sound of kerosene spewing out of the fuel tank in back. Anna spun, taking in the state of their wreckage, and used her good left arm to tuck her knees in and get her feet under her.

Through the cracked windows above Jake's head she saw glowing embers of red-hot metal lying like a slug's trail of torn debris behind them.

It was going to blow.

"Get out," she muttered in Peters' face. He nodded but didn't move. She shifted position and slapped at the belt buckle with her good hand, getting it on the third try, and he slid bonelessly against the side window with a crunch that broke his nose and spurted red on the glass.

"Unhh," he grunted.

"Shit," she cursed and heaved him to the side. "Jake!"

Jake didn't answer. Already the smoke was stinging her eyes. Never mind the fuel going up in flames, they would choke first. Dizzily she tried to remember how they'd got in the plane, now that it was rocked nearly onto its roof.

She grabbed the seat back and crawled through the gap between the pilot and co-pilots' chairs, to where Jake hung sideways in his cradling seatbelt.

"Jake!" she shouted over the whining in her ears and the startling barks of the sick propeller. His eyes were open but he wasn't all there. There was a wound pumping blood in his forehead and his skin had gone very pale. "Jake, come on!"

His eyes focused on her for a second then peeled away, his lips mumbling wordlessly. Anna tore off her sweater, her right arm crying out in pain, and fumblingly knotted it as tightly as she could around his head. Then she slapped his belt off and caught his head before it smacked the glass.

"Jake I need you," she shouted. "I think my arm's broken and I can't carry you out of here. You have to get up!"

He looked at her faintly between the trailing arms of her sweater, draped now down his face, like a drowning man trying to swim up from under a sheet of clear ice.

"Jake!"

He grunted started to move.

"Get Peters," she ordered, then climbed onto his seat to reach up to the door, which now hung overhead. Working the catch was difficult by the flashing red emergency light, and when she cracked it open for a second fresh air poured in.

The backdraft set the cockpit aflame. Bright tongues of fire licked at the controls, pumped by the engine, and in a second Peters caught fire too.

He screamed. Jake had his hands on him and he screamed too as the fire bit them both.

Anna slammed the door shut again.

"Smother it!" she shouted, and Jake fumbled around with his shirt trying to stretch it to cover Peter's head, even as his own jacket was on fire. Anna leaned over, stepping on the sides of the seats, and slapped at Jake's back with her one good hand. Acrid black smoke filled the cockpit again in seconds, and soon her eyes were stinging and she was coughing, but it helped them kill the fire.

"Come on!"

Jake lurched and hugged Peters to him, and together they tumbled back into the second tier of seats.

"Quickly now," Anna called over the sound of the propeller shrieking itself to a crescendo as the engine burned itself out, and threw the door open again. Smoke sucked out, fresh air flushed in and this time the whole instrument panel lit up in a wall of flame. Peters screamed.

"You have to climb," Anna shouted, looking into Jake's bleary face. "Jake, you first."

He nodded, his eyes far away, and tipped Peters casually onto Anna. She caught him around the back with her bad arm, and the pain was excruciating. Jake climbed feebly up, kicking wildly off her cheek.

"Now wait up there, I can't lift him alone."

A moment later Jake's head appeared above the open door, lit by the red emergency light, looking barely awake and dripping thick blood on her face. The propeller was frantic now as the engine tore itself apart in a fury, ripping at the air, and the heat of the cockpit fire was unbearable and spreading.

Anna strained, lifting with her thighs and her shoulders, pushing Peters' frail body up with her hips. His face passed her by, bubbling with blood from his broken nose, then Jake had him and pulled him through.

Anna was left alone in the fuselage, shrouded with smoke and fire. The cockpit glass started to warp and crack and the instruments began to pop out of their settings in the plastic dashboard.

"Anna!" came a tinny little voice through the thick of it, "Jake!"

Amo on the radio.

Then Jake was leaning back in, his arms trailing down like climbing ivy, and she gave him her hand. Her skin was slippy with sweat or blood though and he couldn't get a grip.

"Uurgh," he grunted, his mouth barely opening, flapping his right hand at her. "Uurgh."

She gritted her teeth and flung him her broken arm too. Extending it almost made her pass out. The forearm was visibly broken, one stick of bone sticking out through the skin. Jake caught it by the wrist and heaved.

She screamed. It was like being stretched on the rack, as the meat of her arm alone took her weight for jerking, huffing seconds. Silver lights sparkled in her eyes and the bone sucked back into her arm, followed by a sharp grating on the inside like nails on a chalkboard, then she was up and over the lip and scrabbling instinctively with her good arm.

The plane was scoured black and lit by fires consuming the propeller and spilling out onto the scorched grass. Jake slumped by the entrance with his legs trailing along the plane's white underbelly, while Peters lay like a broom across his lap.

Anna let herself slide down the plane's side and tugged at Jake as she went, pulling them both after her. They tumbled into a soggy puddle of mud and kerosene, which splashed on her face and stung her eyes. They needed to get away.

She shoved Jake and dragged Peters after her, only seconds before the puddle of fuel caught with a lifting whuff of flame.

Ten seconds later, shuffling backward over the runway, the plane's tank caught and the back end exploded, tearing the fin and back fuselage to flying shrapnel. Anna sagged to her side as chunks of metal and fiberglass rained around and thunked off her. Jake dropped by her side and vomited on her legs. Peters lay motionless nearby. She closed her eyes for just a second.

* * *

A warm rain woke her, rinsing the soot out of her eyes. The sky was a gentle morning gray, overcast and humid. The sun was low and the demons were coming.

"Come on," she mumbled, nudging Jake. He roused and looked around. The makeshift bandage on his head had shifted and she could see the wound in his temple beneath it. It looked bad, a deep cut that had crusted over wildly, making it look like half his face had been ripped away. His eyes were slow and unresponsive.

"Jake can you hear me?"

He nodded.

"But you can't talk?"

A sharp tinge of panic grew in his eyes, then ebbed as though under a fog.

"That's fine," Anna pressed on, tasting smoke and gritty kerosene in her mouth. Her own head throbbed. "But I need you to help me."

He nodded slowly.

She got to her feet. Where was Peters?

She staggered over the runway calling out his name. He was a dark streak fifty yards away, crawling inch by inch over the weed-cracked asphalt. His back was charred black burned clothing, half his hair had been scorched away, but when she rolled him over his eyes were bright despite the bloody wreck of his broken nose.

"Anna," he croaked, "you're alive."

"Just barely," she said. "Can you not walk?"

"Something's broken," he said, and nodded, "down there."

Anna squatted back and looked. Her right arm was useless, but with her left she peeled a torn strip of his pants back.

Both his legs were broken; one twisted sideways at the ankle and the other at the calf, though at least the skin wasn't broken. She gagged but held it in, plastering a calm look on her face.

"Broken, you're right," she said. "Wait right here."

"Jake!" she called. He was up now and wandering off to the right, leaning at a strange angle, but corrected when he saw her, even raised a hand to wave.

"Come here," she said, and he did, tottering on his tiptoes in a way that looked like he couldn't remember how to walk. Every step nearly saw him tip on his face.