Evolution of the Dead

by R. M. Smith

  He sighed heavily, an overweight man with sandy, graying hair. Occasionally, complete strangers would stop him on the street to tell him how much he reminded them of Captain Kangaroo from the old children’s program on TV. He’d be grateful. He’d bow to them, thanking them. He always tried to be a gentle man, a sincere man. The loss of his wife had simply devastated him. His son and daughter were the ones who urged him to move on. Be strong.

  Mom would’ve wanted you to be strong for us, dad.

  And his daughter. She didn’t look anything like him. She was short with long black hair. Black hair like her mother’s.

  His kids had always been there for him. He loved them for that.

  When Scott’s design was chosen for the new skyscraper to be built downtown, Frank had been so proud. He cried when the ribbon cutting took place at the ground breaking ceremony. During his speech, Scott publicly thanked his father for always being there. He dedicated the new building to him.

  “Alright honey,” he said quietly. “One more hour. But then I’m going to have to insist on prepping the plane.”

  She nodded against his shoulder, her tears leaving a wet spot on his shirt.

  It was dark and quiet.

  In B terminal of Orlando Florida’s airport, the daily mad rush of hurrying passengers was non-existent.

  Overhead televisions were dark. Loudspeakers were silent. Suitcases and travel bags sat unattended in rows of empty seats.

  Hundreds of the dead stood silent in the terminal. None were moving. They stood in the darkness, some in suits, some in casual clothing. None held cell phones. None checked their watches to see if they were late to catch a flight.

  It was eerily quiet.

  In dark restrooms, groups of the dead stood where last battles for life were lost. Walls were plastered with vomit.

  One last trip down to the boat, Dean Lawson thought to himself as he climbed down the ladder on the dock to his small yacht. Got the last of the supplies. When Mike gets here, we’re heading out to sea for the holiday weekend!

  The wooden ladder was slippery. He slid off, missing the last rung. A sharp sliver imbedded itself into the web of his thumb.

  Shit. Gonna need the tweezers for that one.

  Stepping onto the boat, he ducked down into the lower galley.

  Been eyeing that place down the river here. If we get it, we won’t have to climb up and down that stupid ladder all the time. We’d have our own dock. Then we wouldn’t have to push our way down here when it gets crowded. Damn people everywhere. No fucking privacy. Mike and I should have looked for a better place to store this piece of shit a long time ago.

  He and his friend, Mike Owens, a jet plane mechanic, bought the yacht seven months ago at an auction. Surprisingly, they won the bid. They didn’t think they would.

  It came with a trailer, but not a location to put it. Both men lived in apartments in Indian River, Florida. Apartments didn’t have room for yachts.

  For now, they kept it tied to the dock. Luckily, the weather had been agreeable. No hurricanes or tropical storms had lashed up yet.

  Inside, he pulled a drawer open in a small bathroom. The tweezers pulled the splinter out easily.

  Outside, up on the dock, someone screamed. Dean set the tweezers down on a counter-top listening.

  That’s not a fun scream, he thought. That’s not someone playing around up there.

  He walked out onto the back of the yacht looking up at the dock.

  Someone else screamed closer to shore. People were running. He could hear their feet stomping along the wood. They were running to the end of the dock, not back to shore.

  That seemed very odd to him.

  Curious, he jumped onto the ladder. He climbed up to eye level with the floor of the dock. People were screaming, running. Someone saw him looking over the edge. They waved him down.

  Behind them, closer to shore, people were vaulting vomit out of their mouths. Other people were falling over, grabbing their stomachs. All of their skin was yellow. What the hell was going on up there?

  He slid back down the ladder.

  I’ll duck down into the galley until this passes, he thought as he turned on the radio. Mike will be here after work. Til then, I’ll just chill.

  Outside, the screaming got louder and louder.

  Frank and Stacy Olson didn’t recognize the car pulling up next to Scott’s plane.

  Scott got out!

  He ran over to his sister. He was crying. They hugged.

  Fresh tears ran down Frank’s cheeks, too.

  Kim got out of the front seat. Smiling she walked over to Scott and his family. Hesitantly Nick went around to help Carmen get out.

  “I knew you’d be here,” Scott cried, holding his sister. “I knew you’d be safe.”

  Stacy said, “We were so worried about you, Scott.”

  “So good to see you, son,” Frank said, taking his turn hugging Scott.

  “You too, dad.”

  Taking off his glasses, wiping his eyes, Frank said, “We need to go. They’re getting closer.”

  Scott nodded quickly, wiping tears from his own cheeks. “They’re getting too close. Is the plane ready?”

  “I was about to start prepping for flight.”

  “We don’t have time to prep.”

  Stacy said, “We’ve been listening on the radio. It says to stay out of downtown.”

  “They need to change it to the whole city of Orlando,” Scott said. “It’s bad.”

  Kim walked up next to them. “It’s everywhere.”

  Frank said, “Let’s get moving then.”

  They hurried over to the plane.

  Carmen was already standing by the front of the plane with Nick. They weren’t talking.

  Frank noticed Carmen. She was only wearing underwear! She didn’t have any shoes on! Her bruised swollen ankle looked terrible.

  “Looks like you’ve all had a rough time,” he said addressing Carmen. He opened the side door on the plane. “Please, get in.”

  Kim boarded first followed by Stacy. Nick went next. He gave Carmen a hand getting in. She plopped down into a seat.

  Sliding the rear door closed, Frank got in the front seat of the plane.

  Scott was already up front. He asked, “Everyone buckled in?”

  Dead people began to pour around the corner of the hangar. Some shot bloody worms out of their skin into the grass in front of them. Others vaulted vomit and spit into the air attempting to hit the plane from their distance.

  “Scott, let’s get these engines started,” Frank said as the group approached.

  “How much fuel do we have?” Scott asked.

  “150 gallons.”

  One of the dead near the front of the group fell down. It didn’t stumble over anything. It simply fell on its face.

  Scott asked, “What’s going on with that one?”

  “Is it dying?” Kim asked.

  The rest of the dead group began to funnel around the dead one on the ground. They circled it. Several others headed for the plane.

  “Let’s start the engines,” Frank said loudly.

  Inserting his key, Scott hit the ignition press button switch on his side of the cockpit. Frank pressed his. Both engines started. The propellers began to rotate.

  The dead people were within a few feet. One of them lobbed a glob of spit at the plane. It spattered on the windshield. Worms grew out of it. Others shot worms at the propellers attempting to wrap around them and choke out the engine.

  The propellers were at full speed now. One of the dead walked into the propeller on Scott’s side. Its body was shredded to pieces.

  “Oh God,” Stacy breathed in disgust.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Frank said. Releasing the brakes, Scott throttled the plane forward. He drove through the group of the dead, the propellers dicing through them. The side of the plane was slicked in blood.

  Body parts were thumping against the side of the plane.

  The engine sput
tered.

  “Steady,” Scott said, reassuring everyone. “We’re at full power. We’ll be in the air in a few minutes.”

  Another loud thump hit the side of the plane followed by another.

  “What the hell?” Nick said, “We should be far enough away from the group now. What are we hitting?”

  Another thump hit the tail section.

  Kim was able to see out her side of the plane. “They’re throwing themselves at us.”

  “They’re what?” Scott asked.

  “The one that fell on the ground…the rest of them are…they’re ripping it to pieces and they’re throwing the body parts at us!”

  “My god,” Frank whispered.

  Nick shouted, “How can they do that? How can they choose to do that to one another?”

  Without looking at him, Carmen said, “Executive decision.”

  He looked over at her. “A what?”

  “One, or part of the whole group, decided that one of them needed to be left behind. It may have been weaker than the rest. It needed to be used to better the rest – used or sacrificed.” She looked at him, no emotion on her face. Her eyes were glazed over. “Kind of like you did to me, Nick. And to Janet. You decided we needed to die.”

  Scott pushed the plane up to full throttle. The noise of the plane got too loud for Nick to say anything.

  The dead picked up the ripped body and tore it to pieces, lobbing pieces of skin, broken sections of bone and ripped muscle at the plane as it taxied away. As Scott turned onto the runway, the last piece of the torn body hit the propeller on his side of the plane, damaging it.

  The plane started to vibrate. Scott yelled, “Dammit! We gotta get up!”

  “We can still fly outta here right?” Nick asked, desperate.

  “We can,” Scott said, “but if it’s too bad we’re not gonna be able to get very high.”

  The propeller on Scott’s side started shuddering. “Oh shit. Let’s try to get to at least Orlando airport. It’s not that far.”

  Frank said, “Hopefully, it’s safe there.”

  They took off.

  Kim watched out her window. The horizon was shrouded in smoke. Buildings were burning all over the city. Cars were burning in the streets.

  Carmen sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. She shook her head.

  Quietly she said, “It won’t be.”

  After a rough landing, Scott taxied toward the terminal.

  There was no movement around the gates. No ground crew was working. Sitting on the tarmac, he tried raising the control tower on the radio. No one answered. “Looks like we’re on our own, folks,” he said quietly.

  Stacy asked, “It’s here, too?”

  “Seems that way.”

  Carmen said plainly, “It is.”

  Nick wanted to ask her how she knew but he kept his mouth shut.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go up to the main terminal,” Frank suggested. “Let’s try one of the hangars on the outside runways.”

  “Why?” Scott asked, turning the plane.

  “Well we’re not getting any answers from the tower. Obviously, something’s wrong here. If we park further out – or over by the hangars - we’ll have a better chance of getting out of here quickly if we run into trouble.”

  “I guess that’s a good idea,” Scott said. “We may need to take off in a hurry – that is, if the propeller’s not too badly damaged. I’m going to check it after we shut down.”

  All of the runways were empty.

  Five large hangars, labeled A B C D and E sat on the south side of the runway. Several other smaller planes were parked outside. Scott taxied to the front of the center hangar which was hangar C.

  He added, “If we shut down, we probably won’t be able to get going again.”

  “Let’s just hope its safe here,” Frank said.

  “I’ll leave the plane running.”

  He got out to see if any of the hangars were unlocked.

  Kim asked, “If our plane dies, couldn’t we just take another one? There are a lot of them just sitting around out here.”

  Frank looked back at her over his shoulder. “It wouldn’t be that easy, hon. If these other planes are pre-1990, I think we’d be able to break into any one of them pretty easy. We could start the plane with hardly any trouble. But stricter aviation laws made it a lot harder to break into personal planes – and even commercial airliners, for that matter.”

  Nick said to himself, “We’re at an airport with plenty of planes, but if this one dies, we’re stuck.”

  “It would take a lot of work to get a different plane started,” Frank repeated.

  “What would we have to do?” Carmen asked.

  “I’m not familiar with all of the details, honestly. I’ve only read a little bit on the internet, mostly stuff Scott sends to me. I am no expert. Really, Scott knows a lot more about this than I do.”

  A minute later, Scott came back out by the plane. He motioned for Frank to kill the engine.

  “Guess we’ll be safe. He must have found something,” Frank said as he pressed his button to shut off engine number one.

  Frank knew they were stuck. They would never be able to get Scott’s plane up again. All of the other planes were useless as well. If they chose to break into one, they would need a coded key specifically made for that plane. Finding the key, or the owner of the plane, would be nearly impossible; especially now.

  Carmen popped the door open from the inside. Scott helped her down to the ground, offering his shoulder as support. She happily took it. The pain in her foot remained.

  He led them to a side door on the hangar. Right inside, beyond a tall standing receptionist desk which was covered in dust and old papers, someone had set up several old couches around a box TV. Small end tables were covered with cigarette ashes, overflowing ash trays and empty beer cans. On the opposite end of the hangar a large plane sat which had been nearly stripped down to its frame. Several large tool boxes were stationed around the plane. Spare parts, some in boxes, others laid out on fold-out tables were everywhere. Coiled rope was bunched up along another wall. More cardboard boxes sat here and there. The building smelled of used oil. A metal stairway led up to some offices. Large windows high up on the walls of the hangar lit the interior of the hangar.

  Scott set Carmen down on one of the couches. “You rest now,” he told her.

  Kim was at his side.

  Frank and Stacy were looking up at the bare-boned plane. Nick said, “They use that for spare parts. It’s called a hangar queen.”

  “They know that,” Scott said.

  Carmen asked Nick, “Where’s Janet?”

  He crossed his arms, sighing. “I told you. She wanted out.”

  “You told me,” Kim said. “But you didn’t say exactly what happened.”

  “We had an argument,” he said not looking at them. “She wanted to get out of the car so, I let her out.”

  Carmen said quietly, “You ran her over.”

  “No!” Nick said, angrily. “No, I did not! She got out on her own.”

  He screamed in his mind, how does this bitch know this?

  Scott asked, “You let her out of your car in the middle of the street? With all of the dead shits around? Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You killed her, didn’t you, you son of a bitch?”

  “Fuck you, I did not.”

  Frank walked between them. “Listen, we’re safe now. Let’s work together here, alright? We don’t need to argue. Let’s get along.”

  “She was a friend of ours, dad,” Scott said. “We just want to know what happened to her.”

  “She’s dead, son.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t…”

  “If she’s alone out there, she’s dead.”

  Scott stopped arguing. His dad was right. He was always right. Janet couldn’t have survived alone.

  Stepping forward, Frank offered his hand to Nick. “I’m Frank Olson.”<
br />
  Nick shook Frank’s hand. “I’m Nick Carson.”

  “Kim Schlaegel,” Kim said, her hand outstretched. She wasn’t happy about what had just transpired with Nick. She’d have to talk to Scott about it later.

  “I’m Carmen Mayfield,” Carmen said raising her hand in the air. She wasn’t happy about it, either.

  “Ok, so, it seems we have a bit of a break from the dead,” Frank said. “Why don’t we look around for some supplies, food, maybe some water? Carmen, you look like you could use some pain medication.”

  “Yes, but they’re a bit of a hard commodity to come by these days,” Carmen sighed.

  Frank smiled. “We’ll see if we can find something for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nick sat down on one of the couches. “I’m taking a break. I’m fuckin beat.”

  “Me too,” Stacy said. She sat in one of the couches next to Carmen and Nick.

  “I could really use a potty break,” Carmen said.

  Scott leaned down toward Kim, his eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, I’ll take her,” she smiled with a sigh.

  He winked at her. Turning to his dad he said, “I guess it’s me and you then, dad. Let’s see what we can find.”

  Frank gestured for Scott to take the lead.

  He did.

  After Kim helped Carmen up from the couch, Nick asked Stacy, “So you’re Scott’s sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Younger or older?”

  “Younger.”

  Nick sat with his hands in his lap. He was rubbing his thumbs together.

  Stacy was admiring his looks. She said, “I like your long hair.”

  “Oh, thanks. A lot of people compliment me on it.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Yeah, yours is nice,” he said. “Very shiny. Clean. It reminds me of my girlfriend’s.”

  Stacy asked, “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Last time I saw her was before lunch yesterday.”

  “God, it would drive me mad if I couldn’t talk to my boyfriend during all this.”

  “Oh it’s bugging the hell out of me,” he said. “We just found out we’re pregnant.”

  “Nice,” she said. “Congrats.”

  “Thanks.”