Surviving the Fall: How England Died

by Stephen Cross

  “I must say, this is very nice of the airline. Is this a sort of hello, a meet and greet type thing?”

  Calder looked uncomfortable. “I’m afraid not, Captain. This isn’t a social call. Please, take a seat.”

  Andy continued to pour himself a drink. He poured himself an extra measure. The man’s demeanour was quickly making him nervous. Had something happened on the flight? Had he done something wrong? Maybe his co-pilot had reported him for something.

  Andy sat down at one of the room’s small tables.

  Calder took a deep breath and spoke. “During your flight, we received notification from Manchester, while you were in the air that…” he faltered.

  Andy looked into the man’s eyes. “What? What are you here to tell me?”

  “I’m very sorry to tell you Captain, that there was a car accident early this morning in the UK involving your wife.”

  The sounds of the words echoed with a tinny resonance and time itself seemed to slow down.

  “Your wife was pronounced dead at the scene. I’m very sorry Captain, you have my full sympathies.”

  Calder continued to talk, but Andy didn’t hear much of what was said. The room took on a strange cotton wool consistency, and Andy felt himself sink into the white, into the nothing. He looked at Calder, whose lips moved, but with no accompanying sound. Andy felt nauseous and there was a ringing sound in his ears.

  “Captain, can you hear me? Are you ok?”

  Some words, a question, he was expected to answer. He was fine, wasn’t he? Was he ok?

  “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “I know this must be devastating news, and the airline will do anything we can to help you. If you would like I can stay with you now and-”

  “No,” said Andy. “No, it’s fine. Thank you, but please leave.”

  “Of course.” The man reached over and left a card on the table. “If you need to contact me. You are of course excused from flying detail. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

  Calder walked out of the room.

  Andy called after him, “There’s no mistake is there? I mean, no chance of there being a mistake?”

  Calder shook his head. “No mistake. I’m very sorry.”

  He left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Andy sat in the silence. The deepest, most terrifying silence he had ever known.

  Mary. The baby. Gone.

  He grabbed his head in his hands and cried, his body shaking violently.

  What now?

  Bang, thump.

  Bang, thump.

  “This is fuckin’ disgusting,” said the solider to himself, now only a few aisles away.

  Andy felt the tension building around him. He could feel Peter, Jenny and Carl waiting, looking to him to make a move. It was funny how they still looked to him for an answer, for a decision to do something, even when it was their lives on the line. Was it because he was the Captain, and there was some strange institutional hierarchy implanted in their minds? They already handed their lives over to his decisions when they got on they plane - was it just a simple continuance of the same pattern? The plane may have crashed, but he was still the Captain.

  The Crash.

  Andy thought about the crash, the clumsy landing into the departure lounge.

  The plane was sticking out of the building, a large portion of it still outside. Maybe there were no soldiers outside.

  Now he had a plan. He just needed the order of command and trust to hold when facing death.

  The soldier would reach Peter first, who was lying in the aisle with his face covered in human giblets and warm blood.

  Andy watched the soldier carefully - the young man moved slowly but carelessly. He wasn’t expecting anything to happen. As far as he was concerned he was in a plane full of dead people, a metal tube of dead and stinking corpses, the pungent iron smell of blood and innards making the plane feel like an infected abattoir. Dirty, rotten, death.

  Andy stretched his hand forward slowly and eased out the inflight magazine from the rack in front of him. The duty free one, the thicker one. He rolled it up carefully in his hands into a tight cylinder.

  Bang, thump.

  The soldier was only a few feet away, he raised his gun and pointed it at Peter’s head.

  Peter’s eyes sprung open, “No, wait!” he shouted.

  “What the?” said the soldier, he paused.

  Andy jumped up and let out a loud yell. He pushed the rolled up end of the magazine into the soldier’s eye.

  At the same time, Peter grabbed the soldier’s legs and pulled. The soldier fell, his helmeted head landing in the emptied torso of a corpse.

  Andy moved quickly. He leaped into the aisle and fell on the soldier. He looked in the man’s eyes, they were wide open with fear and surprise.

  Andy raised his fist and hit the young man once, twice, there times, each punch ringing through his knuckles and jarring his arm, a sickening thump underlining each strike.

  The soldier tried to buck his torso to get Andy off, but it was too late. Andy threw a few more punches and the soldier’s nose exploded. His eyes closed over. Andy continued to punch the soldier. He felt teeth smash under his fist.

  Someone grabbed him from behind.

  “It’s ok, Captain, we got him. We got him.” It was Carl. He eased Andy back, away from the soldier.

  Andy shook his head and looked at the young man lying on the ground. His face was a bloody pulped mess, his nose flat, his teeth shattered. Andy felt sick.

  Jenny jumped up and manically brushed of the entrails from around her, like she was brushing off a nest of ants. Peter did the same.

  “Now what?” said Jenny. She look nervously at the front of the cabin.

  “We go out the back,” said Andy. “We can get onto the runway, and figure it out from there,” said Andy.

  “Good plan,” said Carl.

  They ran to the back of the plane and Jenny and Carl set about opening the back door. Jenny activated the emergency slide. It dropped to the side of the plane and inflated noisily with a burst of high air compression.

  “Ok, let’s go,” said Andy.

  Peter jumped down first, he flew down the slide and hit the ground hard.

  Jenny followed.

  Carl went next. Gunshots followed Carl as he raced down the orange inflatable, the soldiers having noticed the escape attempt. Carl put his arms up to shield his head.

  The sound of boots on metal rang through the cabin. Soldiers coming up the ladder.

  Andy jumped on the slide and lifted his legs, allowing himself to slide with no control. The ground raced towards him. He heard shots. He saw the others on the runway running towards a maintenance truck, shots following them.

  Andy glanced towards the departure lounge and saw flashes of muzzle fire dance behind the broken windows.

  Then he hit the ground hard. Momentum carried him forward and he rolled on to the concrete. He jumped up and ran.

  Bullets bounced around him.

  Peter waved from inside the truck, “Come on Andy!”

  Andy ran from side to side. He didn’t know if it helped, but it was what they always did in the films. Maybe it worked, because he made it. He jumped into the maintenance truck and slammed the door. Bullets rattled over the truck.

  Peter let out a cry and blood splashed across the dashboard.

  “You’re hit,” shouted Andy.

  “My arm,” said Peter, grimacing. “I’m ok, only grazed, I think.” He grabbed his shoulder and squeezed tight. Blood oozed from between his fingers.

  “Let me drive,” said Andy.

  “No, we haven’t got time to swap. I’m ok.”

  Peter hit the accelerator. The truck pulled off with a squeal.

  The passenger window shattered. Carl and Jenny ducked in the back seat.

  Peter raced towards the runways, the gunfire faded.

  Chapter 9

  The truck bounced over the runway, pitted with holes and ruptur
ed slabs of concrete, pierced with fragments and chunks of steel. The remains of airplanes. Some still smoked, only just crashed from their fiery end. How many planes had they shot down? wondered Andy.

  As if in cruel answer, a loud explosion rocked the air. All eyes in the truck looked skyward. A bulbous cancerous lump of smoke spread across the sky, a few hundred feet up. Small black fragments escaped from the burst, and then, like a dying whale, the carcass of a plane fell from the cloud. White and blue, in half. A wing followed. A tail wing. The second half of the plane. Bodies.

  “Christ, those bastards. How can they?” said Peter.

  “Their own people,” said Jenny. “It’s horrible.”

  The two jets responsible for the carnage were visible flitting in and out of the could line. They dropped and turned in a wide circle, heading towards the airport.

  “Peter,” said Andy.

  “Yeah?”

  “Those planes. They’re coming back. We need to get off the runway.”

  Silence as Peter looked into the sky, watching the planes coming towards them.

  He hit the brakes and turned the truck sharply.

  “Go round, get to Terminal 1,” said Andy. “We can get into the car park through the maintenance tunnel.”

  Peter hit the accelerator of the truck and the engine whined. Faster. They needed to go faster, they were up against supersonic jets.

  Andy stared out behind the truck. There was a flash underneath one of the planes.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What?” said Carl.

  “Drive Peter, fucking drive!” shouted Andy.

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  A white tube of smoke in the air betrayed the missiles journey, it would be on them in seconds.

  “There!” Andy pointed to under a plane access tunnel.

  Peter pulled the truck hard to the left. The two left wheels lifted and the right wheels squealed.

  The missile changed trajectory to follow.

  The truck drove under the access tunnel.

  The explosion.

  Surrounded by white light. Thumps of metal on the roof of the truck. A spike of metal pierced the roof, missing Jenny’s head by inches. She screamed.

  The truck burst through the smoke back onto the open runway.

  “Hug the building,” said Andy.

  Peter drove the truck yards away from the side of the airport building, passing one gate after another, racing under the may access ramps and planes sat waiting for passengers that would never arrive.

  Windows shattered as the two planes passed over, a few hundred feet.

  “Fuck this,” said Andy, “we won’t make it.”

  “Let’s ditch,” said Peter.

  He brought the truck to a screeching halt as near to the gate as possible.

  They jumped out of the truck. The air was damp and heavy, ominous somehow, as if the world had suddenly turned against all life.

  The sound of the two jets filled the air.

  They ran into the building, into the empty staircase that went up one flight to the departure gate.

  “What about soldiers?” said Jenny.

  “More chance against them than those jets. Let’s just be careful, come on,” said Andy motioning for everyone to follow him.

  The building shook as the jets passed low overhead. They screeched into the distance.

  The group climbed the stairs which led to the gate waiting lounge. Andy looked through the glass walls.

  No people. No soldiers. No zombies.

  They moved carefully into the lounge. Rows of empty chairs. A vending machine with flashing lights. An arcade game sang out twee songs over racing car noises. Beyond these low electronic sounds was a deep silence. Andy had never been in an airport this silent.

  “What now?” said Carl.

  “Anyone got a car parked here?” said Andy.

  “I do,” said Jenny. “It’s only small. A Peugeot.”

  “If it goes, it’ll do. Where are you parked? Staff parking?”

  She nodded.

  Andy looked down the length of the silent departure gates. A few hundred yards of nothing. And then would be baggage reclaim and the arrivals lounge. There must be people, soldiers, somewhere. Zombies.

  “Let’s stick together, keep your eyes open,” said Andy. “How’s your arm Peter?”

  The left arm of Peter’s shirt was stained a dark red. He was holding his shoulder tightly.

  “It’s ok. Stings like hell though.”

  They set off at a jog through the departure gates. Soldiers would be looking for them. Andy wondered how long before they were found.

  Not too long.

  “Freeze, don’t fucking move!”

  The voice came from behind.

  The group stopped running. No-one turned.

  Andy’s heart raced, thumping hard against his chest. Adrenaline pumped through his body.

  “Hands up, and turn around, very slowly.”

  The four obliged.

  Two soldiers stood a few yards away. Machine guns raised, pointing at them. It was the first time Andy had had a gun pointed at him. It felt strange, to be just a trigger pulling decision away from death. To be so utterly dependant on the whims of the men in front of him.

  “Where have you come from? You come from that plane?”

  “We’re not infected,” said Andy, slowly, measured.

  “Are you from the plane?” repeated the soldier, also speaking slowly.

  Andy felt all eyes on him. For a moment, he wished he wasn’t the Captain. He wished they weren’t all relying on him to make the decisions, to answer for them. He toyed with the idea of running at the soldiers, getting himself shot, relieving himself of the pressure, of the pain he felt every day.

  But he didn’t. Instead he said, “No, we aren’t from the plane. We are crew of flight GH-5673. Due to take off thirty minutes ago. Before, all this. We’ve been hiding in the toilets. We were scared, didn’t know what was happening.”

  The soldier eyed Andy carefully. The other, a young man with bright red hair cut close to his head, pointed at Peter and said, “What happened to your arm?”

  “I got shot.”

  The solider stared at Peter. “Do you need medical assistance?”

  Peter shrugged.

  The first solider, a sergeant, going by his stripes, said, “You need to come with us. I think you are from a plane that recently landed. If so, you need to be quarantined.”

  A loud moan echoed in the empty air.

  “What was that?” said Jenny.

  “Zeds,” said the Sergeant.

  He motioned them along with his weapon. They walked down the corridor, heading back the way they had came. Every now and then a shot, or a moan, broke the silence.

  “What’s happening?” said Andy. “Where is everyone?”

  “Not sure myself,” said the Sergeant. “We have orders to keep the infection out.”

  “So you are shooting innocent people then?” said Jenny, her voice wobbling.

  The Sergeant gave her a sharp look.

  “Easy,” whispered Carl, and he put his hand on her arm. She shrugged it off.

  “How can you do this? How can you kill all those innocent people, innocent children, you’re monsters!” she shouted.

  The Sergeant spun round. “They were infected! We have to contain the infected.”

  “They weren’t infected, not all of them. You must know that. Monsters.” Jenny hissed the last word. “You’re even worse than the zombies. You make me sick.” She spat towards the soldiers.

  The Sergeant’s face flushed. Whether it was anger or shame, Andy couldn’t tell. “Listen, you have no idea what’s going on out there, you have no idea!”

  “So you think the answer is just to kill everyone,” said Jenny. “Fucking hero’s, the lot of you.”

  “We’re following orders,” said the Sergeant.

  “That’s what they said in Nuremberg,” said Jenny.

>   “She’s right,” said Andy. “If you know what you’re doing is wrong, then you can’t hide behind orders.”

  The group stood in silence. The Sergeant looked from Andy, to Carl, to Peter, and then to Jenny. He was in his early twenties. Tough looking, strong. Typical jarhead army haircut.

  The other solider, the one with the red hair, had been quiet for most of the exchange, just watching his Sergeant. But now he spoke.

  “They told us that they were all infected. But I know they weren’t. We knew that, Sarge, it’s obvious,” he said. “These people are right, we’re monsters.” He had tears in his eyes. He sniffed loudly and looked to the side, out the window of Gate 23, trying to hide his tears.

  The Sergeant opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t. He stood still, his mouth hanging open. He closed it. He looked up and down the corridor. It was empty for as far as they could see. More moans rang out, closer, this time.

  “You were on the plane that crashed into the departure lounge, weren’t you?” said the Sergeant.

  Andy nodded.

  “How many were infected on the flight?”

  “We had three hundred and seventy two passengers.” said Andy. “Before we got off the plane, I counted about twenty dead. Maybe a handful escaped that had been bitten. But I would say that the rest were ok. Just trying to stay alive.”

  The two soldiers looked at each other, the math firing between them in silent blinks and stares. Over three hundred innocents, dead.

  The Sergeant took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. He looked on the brink of tears of himself. He cleared his throat.

  “I’m Sergeant Chimer. This is Private Hutchinson.”

  Andy and the others introduced themselves.

  “Where are you going?” said Sergeant Chimer.

  “We’re trying to get to the car park.” said Carl. “We have a car, we want to get out of here. We have families.”

  Andy felt a brief stab in his heart. His only family was a photo in his trouser pocket.

  “Ok,” said Chimer. He looked at Hutchinson, and held his radio up to his mouth. “Runway Base, this is Chimer, Runway Base, this is Chimer, come in. Over”

  “Sergeant Chimer,” came the muffled reply, “this is Runway Base. Over”

  “We’ve spotted them. Looks like they are heading towards the arrival’s lounge, they’ve doubled back on us. Me and Hutchinson will give chase. Over.”