Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 2

by Riley, Claire C

  Looking back, I found Trent blushing furiously. I felt bad for him, my earlier misgivings about him diminished. “Nolan, leave him—” I started, but I didn’t get a chance to finish.

  “It’s okay,” Trent sighed, stopping my protests. “I’ll be right back.”

  We passed the store called Hudson, and when I peered inside I noted it was the kind of store with magazines and last-minute travel items. They’d have bandages and cleanser. Part of me wanted to detour, but I was scared to go in for first aid supplies and have Trent notice and question what I was doing. I could lie maybe…though I was shitty at lying.

  When we were at the restrooms, the duty-free store only a few doors back, Nolan, Alexa, and I turned to watch Trent stumble toward us like a drunkard. He was wearing his soiled black and white sneakers again, but he’d kept the crazy island shirt.

  “Be out in a few,” I said, pushing through the spring-loaded door to the women’s restroom.

  “Okay, we’ll be fine here.” Trent took a step closer to Alexa

  “Actually, I really need to pee.” The girl spoke quickly. Without a backwards glance at the men, she pushed past me into the bathroom and headed straight for the last stall.

  I let the door swing closed behind me as I headed to the stall next to her and made short work of changing into the decorative running outfit that I couldn’t imagine anyone serious about exercise ever wearing. The bathing suit was a little tight, riding up my ass and threatening to give me a wedgie. I ditched it, stuffing it into my bag in case someone else could use it, and I kept my strapless bra.

  “You doing okay?” I called to Alexa as I began shoving my feet into the boat shoes, realizing I’d forgotten to grab some socks and hoping Nolan wouldn’t be stingy with the supply he’d already taken, despite me mouthing off to him.

  When there was no answer, I crumpled my old clothes into a ball and discarded them into the wastebasket before knocking tentatively on the stall door. “Alexa, you okay in there?” My only answer was some soft sniffling.

  She hadn’t locked it, so I pushed the door inwards and found her with her legs pulled up against her chest and her feet against the very edge of the toilet seat.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” I comforted, leaning forward and putting my hand on her shoulder.

  “I know,” she replied, untying her hoody from around her waist and bringing up a sleeve to wipe her eyes. “Let’s just go.” When she stood, she put the hoody on rather than re-tying it around her waist. I was glad; it made less skin show. I wasn’t sure why it was bothering me…it shouldn’t have.

  When we exited the bathroom, the guys were nowhere to be found. I stuck my head into the men’s room. “Nolan? Trent?”

  No answer.

  “Where’d they go?” Alexa asked, pushing her back into the wall next to the restroom doors. “Why would they just leave? They were supposed to wait right here.”

  “Something must have happened.” At the fearful look that washed over her face, I amended my response. “Maybe they saw something that would be useful and went to grab it. I’m sure they’ll be right back.”

  “My dad sent me with you guys so I’d be safer. He’s going to be pissed when I tell him they left you and me alone.” Alexa fiddled with the zipper of her jacket.

  “Everything’s fine. We don’t need to get your dad riled up for nothing.” I looked around and smiled when I saw the advertisement poster for the drink again. “How about getting the biggest size of the most fabulous drink ever? Like, honestly. This must be a pop-up sort of thing, because I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”

  She followed my gaze, seeing the pale orange drink in all its photographed creaminess. “Sure. Sounds good.”

  “Oh, it’s not just good. It’s like drinking an orange Creamsicle mixed with vanilla marshmallow heavenly amazingness.”

  “You know when people build things up so much that inevitably the real thing is a total letdown? Like the time my dad told me he was taking me to see Disney on Ice and it turned out to be a bunch of local idiots in dirty costumes skating around on the barely frozen pond outside town.” Alexa was smiling when she told the story, like the memory wasn’t a letdown at all.

  “Trust me, you’re going to love this.” I made short work of walking around the kiosk and snagging two of the biggest cups possible. The smoothie machines were still turning, doing their work while the rest of the world fell apart. I found that funny somehow and wondered what the future would bring to these machines—if the power failed, if delivery of fruity-flavored powder stopped coming. The Orange Julius had a bleak future, I was afraid.

  I filled the two cups, capped them, strawed them, and slid them across the glossy serving surface toward Alexa.

  She took one tentatively.

  “Seriously, you’re going to love it,” I urged, hauling my body back over.

  She took a sip and grinned. “Not a letdown at all.”

  “My turn.” I brought my straw to my lips and got the first hint of deliciousness just as a guttural, terror-filled yell startled me into dropping my drink and splashing a lake of smoothie across the floor.

  “What the hell was that?” Alexa squeaked, dropping her own drink onto the countertop and not caring that it fell over and started leaking.

  “God, I don’t know. It might be…” Movement caught my attention…Trent and Nolan. They were racing flat-out toward us. And danger was hot on their heels.

  “Alexa, we have to run.”

  Chapter four.

  Rose

  “T here should be some radios we can all use in here.” Karla pulled the keys from her belt loop again and unlocked the secured door in front of her.

  She peered around it before heading in, and the rest of us followed her inside.

  The sizeable office was empty of people but filled with an array of monitors across one wall, showing all the different parts of the airport terminal. A bank of computers rested against a long, corporate-style desk. The only sign that anyone normally worked there was a half-finished mug of coffee with the words World’s Best Uncle written across the blue ceramic. Oh, and a pile of bloody gore slapped across one of the computer stations. We all rushed forwards to stare at the colored screens, which were divided into four camera scenes, eyeing up the angry horde of zombies on the runway and trapped in some of the terminals. The baggage claim area didn’t look like it had improved since we’d been there either.

  “I think those fireworks brought more of them,” I said, swallowing down the ball of fear that was firmly lodged in my throat. “I guess we didn’t consider that.”

  “You couldn’t know, girl,” Karla said, patting my hand. “And you saved our sweet asses, so you won’t hear me complaining.” She sat at one of the controllers and used a small dial to zoom in on one particular area of a monitor. “That’s a problem,” she said, zooming in even closer.

  “Shit.” I put a hand over my mouth, watching as a fire exit door swung open as a small breeze hit it. “We need to get that closed. Where is it?”

  Karla zoomed back out and switched monitors. “Main floor, near the Starbucks employee entrance. It’s for deliveries, I think. There will be security there too. No one can just walk into this place.”

  As she spoke, we watched as two zombies stumbled through the open door, bouncing off one another as they moved down the hallway. We followed their movements on to another of the screens. The door to the Starbucks was closed, and there’d more than likely be another door preventing them from getting through the store and into the terminal. But that outside door still needed closing.

  Akhira muttered something to us, or maybe just to himself; either way, it didn’t take understanding Japanese to know that he was just as worried as we were about that door.

  “Are there any weapons in here?” Leon asked, and Karla turned in her chair to face him.

  “Not here, but there are some near customs in a special holding locker. We could probably get there without using the main passenge
r route, but we could still run into more of those things.” She didn’t look happy about the prospect, and I didn’t blame her. But regardless, the situation called for weapons. Not that I’d even held a gun before, but I’d definitely feel a lot better with one in my hand, for sure.

  “We need to go get them, and quickly. Are there any other ways those things could get in here?” Leon asked, his expression serious.

  Karla shook her head. “No, sir, that should be the only door other than the one that you closed. The staff routes are up here and out of the way, each one locked and only accessible by one of the security cards.” She held up the lanyard that hung around her neck.

  “All right, well, let’s get on with it. The sooner we have weapons and this place is locked down, the better for us all,” Jamie said, sounding nothing like the worried father we’d first met.

  Karla stood up and went to a cupboard, opening it and pulling out radios for us all to use. She switched them on, tuning them to the same frequency, and I shoved mine in my backpack when she handed it to me. I grabbed another couple for Sam and Nolan too.

  Karla stood by the door on the far end of the security monitor room. “It’s through here. At the end of the hallway, turn right and there’s another door—we’ll need my card for that, then it’s straight up a short flight of stairs through another door and the confiscation lockup door should be right there. Everything’s locked in cabinets, but we can break those locks.” Karla finished on a heavy breath, wiping a hand across her forehead. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” I replied.

  I wasn’t ready, of course, but time was of the essence and we needed to get moving ASAP.

  Karla unlocked the door and we all headed through it. Another door hung to one side, but we all ignored it and continued on towards the end of the hallway as instructed and turned right. There was no blood, no stench of decay, nothing but silence, and I could almost let myself believe that everything was normal, barring the fact that I was using a screwdriver I’d picked up from the security office as a weapon of defense against a horde of angry zombie people that were trying to get into the airport to eat my brains… I let out a slow breath and tried to calm myself down before I completely psyched myself out.

  No one spoke as we moved, and only the near-silence of our feet on the soft light blue carpet could be heard. Karla used her card again to open the door for the stairs, which were thankfully still lit. I quietly let out a sigh of relief, because being trapped in a stairwell in the dark, with people I didn’t know, in a horror movie situation was not what I had been expecting from this trip. Though nothing about the trip was what I had expected so far.

  We started up the stairs, our sounds echoing both up and down as we moved as a collective. At the top of the stairs, Karla unlocked the door for us as we moved inside.

  “It’s just there,” she whispered, pointing to a door that was cracked open. She glanced at me and my stomach sank at the sound of movement from inside.

  Karla began walking towards the door and we all followed as silently as we could. The door was ajar and Karla moved to one side of it while Leon stood on the other side. He nodded at her and glanced inside before looking back out and shaking his head. I had no idea what he was trying to tell us, but I was guessing it wasn’t anything good by the blanched look on his face.

  His gaze moved down to my screwdriver and then across to Jamie, who held a large paperweight in his hand. Luckily Karla had a retractable metal stick, which I guessed was the American equivalent of a truncheon. We were all armed in some way, barring Akhira, though I suspected he was his own sort of weapon by the way he held himself.

  Leon looked over at us and mouthed one, two, and when he got to three, he pushed the door all the way open and charged inside. The room was large, much larger than I expected, the walls white and the floor covered with pale linoleum that was splattered with smears of all different shades. They ranged from bright red to dark brown. The walls were lined with cabinets and shelving, and items were piled inside of each one of them; a single window showing the outside world was covered by a light blue window blind to shield whoever had been working in there from the glare of the sunshine.

  Dread was in our every step as we moved further inside, only worsening when the three zombies at the far end of the room, which were crowded around something on the floor, stood up and started moving towards us.

  The smell made me wretch and gag—or maybe it was the look of them. All three were part of the security staff in some way, and given the cry of “no” that Karla let out, she knew at least one of them personally. Their movements were jittery and slow, their empty gazes held firmly on us as they stumbled into one another without complaint.

  I watched as Akhira moved towards one of them, yelling something in Japanese. Jamie was practically backed into a corner by another and was only holding it away by pushing on its chest; his paperweight had been dropped and was out of his reach. Leon and Karla were fighting with one on the floor, though I couldn’t see who was winning. I realized, with sickening dread, that it was down to me to help Jamie.

  I moved towards them, lifting my shaking arm higher as I got closer to the abomination that was trying to get a chunk out of Jamie’s face. I stood behind it, my hand poised above its head, the tip of the screwdriver practically begging to be shoved into its skull and kill it, but the more I willed myself to do it, the more I couldn’t.

  All of my senses were screaming at me to do it. Telling me that time was running out. That this thing wasn’t alive anymore but that Jamie was and he needed my help. But fear was dragging at me, stopping me from doing anything other than stare and shake. All I could really see in front of me was a monster that was once a man.

  What if there was a cure?

  “Help me!” Jamie called, sweat trailing down his face.

  My hand shook, my knuckles going white as I gripped the screwdriver tighter and tighter.

  “Rose, please…” Jamie begged, his eyes widening with fear.

  What if this thing wasn’t really dead, and after this was all cleared up…what if I got in trouble for murder?

  “Rose!” Jamie screamed as the thing’s fingers clawed at his skin.

  If I killed it—if I took this screwdriver and rammed it into its head—I’d be a murderer. The thought occurred to me that I already was. I’d been party to it already.

  I caught Jamie’s gaze over the thing’s shoulder, saw his mouth opening and closing as he yelled at me, but I couldn’t hear a damn word he said above the frantic beating of my heart and the painful ringing in my ears.

  A hand roughly grabbed me and shoved me to one side. I slammed into a large metal cabinet, pain shooting up my arm and side. When I looked back up, Akhira was wrapped around the zombie’s back, his arms encircling its neck as he twisted and twisted. Leon was running over, his gaze skimming me once as I climbed up from the floor in shock. Leon grabbed a heavy-duty stapler from the desk and smashed it the side of the zombie’s head. It was dazed, but it took three more hits before it sank to the floor and Akhira jumped from its back, straightened out his suit, and turned and yelled at me in Japanese.

  I had no idea what he was saying, but I was pretty certain that it wasn’t “good job, lady.”

  Karla helped me up, the front of her blue uniform splattered with dark crimson blood. “You’re okay?” she asked, checking me over.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I replied, and pushed past her and towards Jamie. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened!”

  Jamie looked furious. Panicked and furious. “You almost got me killed!” he roared.

  “I know, I know,” I conceded, holding my hands up. “I know. I just froze, I just—”

  “All right, it’s done now,” Leon thankfully interrupted, his gaze moving between me and Jamie.

  “It’s done now? It’s done now? Are you kidding me? I almost died, and then what would happen to my daughter? She’d have no one!” he continued his onslaught.

 
“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “I just kept on thinking about what would happen if they weren’t really dead. What if they could get better?” I dragged a hand down my face. “What if—”

  “Look, you stupid girl, these things are never coming back from this shit!”

  He stared at me, his dark brown eyes boring into mine, and I nodded, more hot tears pouring down my cheeks. I swiped at them angrily.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, one last time.

  “All right,” Leon interjected, “let’s just get these weapons back to the control room and then work on getting that damn door shut.” He glanced at me, pity on his face. “Rose, you’re with me.”

  I nodded quickly and followed him, knowing no one would want me helping them now. Even Leon didn’t. I was a bloody liability, so I couldn’t exactly blame them. I wouldn’t want me on my own team either. I hoped to hell Sam was faring better than I was.

  Leon took my screwdriver and wedged it in between the padlock and the cabinet, and started pulling until it snapped and the lock fell off. He threw open the door and I pulled off my backpack and unzipped it.

  “I don’t know what happened,” I muttered to him. “I was fine killing those things earlier. I mean, not fine about it of course, but I didn’t freeze like that, I just got on with it. But this time, I don’t know, I just couldn’t kill it, him—that thing, it just felt…I don’t know.” Tears welled in my eyes again, and I begged myself not to cry and embarrass myself further. I was at least grateful that Nolan wasn’t there right then. He’d have torn into me for nearly getting Jamie killed for sure.

  “Oh god.” The realization hit me then. Hard. “I nearly got him killed.” I covered my face with my hands. “What would I have said to his daughter?”

  “Hey, hey, it’s all right, he’s fine,” Leon soothed. I shook my head and he pried my hands from my face. “He’s fine, and they’ll get over it. It’s not exactly a bad thing that you don’t have it in you to kill instinctively. It’s not something any of us should have to think about, but shit’s gone mad, right?”