Assumed Dead, page 19
“We could leave the kids on the bus to sleep until we board,” Peter suggested. Some of them were grumpy at being woken so early, though Hope slumbered peacefully in Vicky’s arms. Vicky stayed to supervise the kids, along with one of the Moosonee women, while everyone else left the bus with their gear.
It had been tempting to bring everything they could shift. But they didn’t know what lay at the other end of their journey. They couldn’t know if they’d have vehicles they could use. They had to take only what they could carry on their backs. The store that sold camping and exploring gear to tourists had been stripped of the most expensive backpacks it had once sold. Most of Peter’s kit was medical equipment. Everyone had good, solid hiking boots. Kasper went by carrying the first a couple of bundles of hiking poles—which R.J. had suggested taping carving knives to the ends of, to turn them into makeshift pikes. But they’d wait until they landed to do that little craft project.
Jay, R.J., Stav, and a few Moosonee people were already fussing around the Dash 8 plane as it sat on the apron, a looming dark shape casting deep shadows. The day before, it had flown for the first time in nearly three years, and everyone had howled and waved. When Jay came back from the airport to have dinner, she was treated like a conquering hero. There had been no more discussion, after that, about staying or not. The sight of the plane in the air finalized everyone’s plans. Of course they were going.
R.J. came out of the hangar carrying a lantern. He opened the cargo hatch near the tail. He hopped inside and hung his lantern from a stanchion.
“Let’s get this baby loaded,” he called. “Matt, you’re a strapping lad. Come give me a hand.”
“See you on board,” Matt said to Peter and hurried off to help R.J. load the cargo. Peter wandered into the hangar, where Jay was drinking coffee and poring over a map with Kiche.
“Last-minute planning?” he asked.
“Always time for a little more.”
“Did you sleep well, Jay?”
She’d gone to bed early the night before, to be ready for today. Peter had given her a mild sedative to take in case she was too keyed up to sleep. He had been himself. He and Matt had talked and had sex until at least one o’clock—barely five hours ago.
“Slept like a baby,” she said. “Thanks. I’m ready.” And she wasn’t running about tiring herself out. He liked that. Others were taking care of the cargo and fueling. She glanced at her watch. “I think I’ll start the preflight checks. It’s early, but better to be ready. Then as soon as it’s light, I can do the walk-around. R.J. and Stav are going to walk the runway, check for any obstructions.”
“You must have checked that yesterday,” Peter said.
“It was quite windy through the night,” Kiche said. “Best to check nothing has blown there.”
“Is the wind okay for takeoff this morning?” Peter asked.
“Nice brisk tailwind. Not too strong. Perfect. The sky is clear. I’ll be able to tell better once it’s light. But old Henry’s been watching the weather here for sixty years. He thinks it’s going to be fine.” She smiled. “Relax, Doc. It’s all under control.”
Henry couldn’t tell them what the weather was a thousand miles away, though, and they couldn’t get a weather forecast. It would be a long, long way over the empty expanse of Ontario before there’d be anyplace they could land—an airfield or even a highway. The thought made him sick with nerves, but Jay stayed calm about it. As Peter did when working on a patient, he supposed. He was in his domain and just had to do his job. Not being the one in charge left his guts churning.
But he trusted Jay. She was an old-school bush pilot, used to flying in less than ideal conditions. Once, four years ago, she’d landed with him in her helicopter in the middle of a sudden, unseasonably early snowstorm. It had blown up and engulfed them as they were about to land at their base, after taking a trip to check up on a small group of scientists working at the top end of the island that year. He’d almost popped his knuckles through the skin with how hard he hung on to the seat. But Jay had stayed cool, and they’d landed safely. When he thanked her effusively afterward, she’d shrugged and said to buy her a drink when they all flew back to Moosonee at the end of the summer.
Just doing her job.
She and Kiche walked out of the hangar to the plane.
* * * *
“Let’s bring the kids,” Henry said.
The sun was over the horizon. Stav and R.J. were checking the runway. Jay was doing an exterior inspection of the plane, which she called the walk-around. The rest of the group milled about, talking in subdued voices. As departure approached, tension rose. A couple of people had gone aboard already. Maybe the tension of the group on the apron was too much to stand.
Henry’s suggestion gave them something to do. Matt helped out, carrying one of the younger kids, still asleep, from the bus and climbing the steps into the plane with the boy in his arms wrapped in a blanket.
Then everyone was coming aboard. Jay was back in the cockpit with Kiche, who was helping with navigation. R.J. and Stav came back from walking the runway to report all clear. The sun was streaming into the plane’s windows.
Time to go.
“You want the window seat?” Matt asked Peter as they took a pair of seats, right behind Stav and Chandra.
“No,” Peter said. He looked a bit pasty, skin grayish. Was he scared of flying? This was a pretty unusual flight. And if it went wrong, no help would come to them. Matt took the window seat and strapped in. The engines came on, and Peter sat down abruptly, started fumbling with his seat belt. Definitely nervous.
R.J. pulled up the steps that formed the passenger door and locked it. He called that through to the cockpit and took a seat near it. Then they were moving. The plane began to taxi, slow and steady, from the apron to the end of the runway. It’s happening. It’s really happening. We’re leaving.
The plane paused a moment at the end of the runway. The engine noise increased. Matt glanced over to make sure Peter had his seat belt fastened properly when the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign began to flash and the speakers to ping. One of the kids started to cry. Someone shushed him. Hope, held tight in her father’s arms across the aisle from Matt, was treating the whole thing with more equanimity and seemed to be asleep.
“Here we go, folks,” Jay’s voice said over the speaker. “Secure anything loose. Seat backs upright, trays closed. Talk to you again in the air.”
Someone was murmuring a prayer. The plane started to move. Matt gulped. He didn’t mind flying, but yeah, this was a scary flight. Peter had his eyes closed, his jaw set hard. He gripped his armrests tight. He was scared of flying. Matt took his hand and got a glance from him before he closed his eyes again. Possibly to avoid the view from the window, where the runway and the land at the side were whipping past as the plane accelerated. The propellers on the wings whirred at top speed. Matt turned from the window too and leaned close to Peter.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said softly. “It’s fine. It’s all fine.”
The engines hit full power. Matt’s heart pounded; his mouth dried. Now or never. Then his stomach dropped as he felt the instant the wheels left the ground. Up, up, up! He screamed the words in his head. A couple of people yelled them aloud. “Up!” or “Come on!” Someone shouted, “Climb, baby, climb!” Matt spluttered a laugh. He looked back at the window. The ground was falling away. They were up and climbing. In seconds the sea of James Bay was visible, and Hudson Bay a blur of blue to the north. The Moose River and Moosonee spread out below them like a map. He hoped nobody had left the iron on, and giggled slightly hysterically. Peter opened his eyes.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. Everything. We’re in the air, Peter. We’re flying.” He planted a kiss on Peter’s cheek but was disappointed when Peter pulled away from it.
“God, Matt, not in front of the kids.”
Matt snorted and rested back in his seat. Even that couldn’t dampen the joy as they flew up into the blue sky and the early-morning sun. The plane leveled off quite soon and banked to come back in from over the sea and make a last pass over the town. The people who’d lived there craned to see it out of the windows. A sigh of relief passed through the plane. The kid who’d been crying had stopped. Some people laughed, tension-releasing sorts of laughs.
“There’s the railway line,” Matt pointed out to Peter, who glanced over reluctantly but basically took his word for it. The line would be their guide across a vast swath of Ontario. Then roads, then Lake Superior, all the way into Duluth. They had to get there before dark. Landing in the dark with no control-tower guidance and no runway lights… Matt didn’t even want to think of it.
Jay’s voice piped up again over the speaker.
“Hello, folks. I hope you all enjoyed that takeoff as much as I did.” She had to pause for the cheers and clapping to die down. “Welcome aboard this slightly delayed Air Creebec flight to Duluth. I hope your three-year wait hasn’t caused you to miss any connections. We’ll be flying quite low to help with navigation, so we might feel a little turbulence over the mountains, though with luck we’re too early in the day for that. But I’d advise you to stay in your seats with your seat belts on as much as possible and keep any loose items stowed.”
There wasn’t much in the way of loose items. Peter’s medical kit was under his seat. Nearly everything was in the hold—except the weapons, which R.J. wanted in the cabin in case they happened to land in the middle of a bunch of zombies, stopping them from getting at the exterior hatch to the hold. Matt didn’t think any nonmilitary flight could ever have had quite so many rifles and pistols aboard.
“Unfortunately we have no flight attendant today. But there are refreshments in the galley. Fight among yourselves for them. We also have no in-flight movie, but Kiche tells me Henry knows some very interesting songs and limericks from his time in the army, so perhaps he can entertain you with them later. Meanwhile, sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight.” She finished her announcement to cheers and applause. People laughed and started chatting. Even Peter looked more relaxed.
“She knows how to break the tension, doesn’t she?” Matt said.
Peter managed a smile. “Crazy old bird.”
“You feeling better?”
“A bit. I’m not a good flier.”
“You should try to get some sleep.”
Peter snorted. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Rest, at least.”
“I’ll try.”
Matt tried too. He wanted to take the seat belt off to get more comfortable, but had better follow Jay’s instructions. So he kept it on, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes. Perhaps he’d at least catch forty winks.
* * * *
“There are people on the runway,” Matt said as Jay made a second circle of Duluth Airport.
“Those aren’t people,” Henry said, leaning over from the seat behind him. “Not living people. If they were alive, they’d be reacting to a plane circling overhead.”
That was true. The figures down there on the runway were moving slowly. Not jumping about and waving as people who hadn’t seen a plane land here for years would do.
Kiche stuck her head out of the cockpit. “Jay says we could fly on as far as Minneapolis, but the runway here is definitely usable and we don’t know what it will be like at Minneapolis. Also, dusk is only two hours away, and we have to land before dark.”
“We have to land well before dark,” R.J. said. “So we can get secure for the night.”
“Safest place will be inside the plane,” Henry suggested. “Then we can assess things in the morning.”
“Agreed,” R.J. said. “Those things can’t get at us in here.”
“Then everybody strap in,” Kiche said. “We’re going in.” She vanished back inside the cockpit, and everyone scrambled back to their seats and put on their belts.
The tension rose. Every flight Matt had been on, the tension had risen right before the landing. But never quite like this. It wouldn’t break afterward, the way it did when you’d landed safely and only had to contend with baggage claim, customs, and immigration. There were worse things out there than customs officers.
“Secure everything loose,” R.J. called. “We could have a couple of bumps.”
Matt shuddered at the thought. Would the zombies not even try to get out of the way? He remembered the second one that had appeared after the one R.J. shot before it could reach Matt. It hadn’t cared that the one in front of it had been shot. It had walked into the shot from Jay without trying to turn away or escape. They must have no instinct for self-preservation at all. Could they be scared off by anything? Fire? He’d shortly find out.
The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign flashed and pinged. “Descending,” Kiche said over the intercom. No merry banter from Jay this time. “Here we go.”
The plane lost height rapidly. The landing gear deployed. Wing flaps moved into position, reducing their speed and altitude. Matt didn’t envy Jay the task, coming in with no ATC guidance. And with human figures wandering on the runway ahead of her, that she’d have no way to avoid. They had to be zombies, right? Humans would definitely run away. Could hitting them damage the plane? What if they got knocked into the propellers? Would it make the propeller shear off? He squeezed the armrests tight. Then felt a hand cover his. Peter. Matt turned his hand up to hold Peter’s. They exchanged nervous smiles.
“Landings are scarier than takeoffs,” Matt said, trying to excuse his nerves. The plane bumped in the air, buffeted by winds and warm air from the hot ground below.
Fields rushed by them, then the runway. It had patches of greenery on it where weeds had forced their way up through a surface cracked by frost in the winter, baked in the summer, and never repaired. Greenery Matt could handle. It was the wildlife he was worried about.
In seconds the wheels touched the ground. One bounce, then down again. A harder slam, jarring, which made a few people cry out. Matt hung on tight to Peter’s hand. He’d bitten his tongue on that second bounce and winced. This time they stayed down, and they were no longer flying, just racing up the runway. Flaps fully extended, brakes on, the plane began to slow.
“Brace for a few bumps,” Kiche called over the intercom. “We’ll try to avoid them.” Them being the things on the runway. With so much forward momentum still, Jay wouldn’t be able to maneuver around them as she could if simply taxiing the plane.
“Don’t look out the windows,” R.J. ordered, shouting above the noise of the engine. Most people obeyed and made sure the children didn’t look out. Matt couldn’t help himself, but he saw little.
He heard it, though, as something solid bumped against the nose of the plane. People groaned. A second later the plane bumped as if it had run over something. Matt’s heart leaped to his mouth, but the bump wasn’t enough to tip the plane over or anything. As the plane got ever slower, he saw one figure on the runway ahead. The wing passed right over it, and it never so much as flinched. Matt would have instinctively thrown himself flat on the ground if it had been him out there.
The plane stopped at last. There was a sigh of relief, but the tension stayed high. R.J. was out of his seat in seconds, followed by several of the others, retrieving rifles and looking out the windows, searching for anything approaching the plane.
Nothing close yet. A few figures wandering. It was hard to see behind them. Was the one the wing had passed harmlessly over wandering this way? Did the zombies perceive the plane as something likely to have people inside? They might simply ignore it. He straightened from looking out of a port as applause broke out. Jay had emerged from the cockpit. She smiled at the applause, then waved it away.
“Sorry about the bumpy landing. I’m out of practice. But any landing you walk away from is a good landing.”
“We’re not in any rush to walk away from this one,” R.J. said. “We don’t have time to check out the terminal building before it gets dark. The only place we can be sure is safe is the plane. We stay in here until first light tomorrow.”
“We should stay here too,” Henry said. “Away from the terminal, I mean. There’s nothing close to us. We’ll be able to see anything trying to make a move on us.”
“Good idea,” R.J. said.
“Keep those passenger reading lights off where you can,” Jay said. “Those little suckers are hotter than Satan’s armpits and will make it tropical in here. I don’t want to waste what fuel we have left running the AC and leave us unable to taxi.”
“We should stay dark anyway,” R.J. said. “Try not to attract attention.”
Matt imagined the electrifying effect the sight of a plane coming in to land would have had on any survivors in the area and doubted they could avoid attracting attention.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Matt was right.
Though the night passed without incident, people sleeping as best they could in the seats or the floor, while others took shifts on watch, morning came with the sound of gunshots.
Matt started awake at the first crack of one. All around him others scrambled up, looking for their rifles.
Shit, shit, shit.
Peter handed Matt his rifle from under the seat. The two of them stared wide-eyed at each other.
“There,” R.J. said, pointing through a window. Off to the left two vehicles were approaching. Pickup trucks, each with a person in the back, wielding a rifle.
“They aren’t firing at us,” Henry said. “They’re firing on the zombies.”
Sure enough, as they watched, a figure in the back of one truck fired at a zombie shambling about near a terminal building.
“That doesn’t mean they’re friendly to us,” R.J. cautioned. “Jay, can we taxi?”
“We’ve got enough fuel left to drive around the airport for a while.”
“Stand by in case we need to move to a better position.”
The two trucks were coming closer. The people in the backs with the rifles dropped back down, no more zombie targets nearby to shoot.
