Peter pushed the man over and away from him as far as he could and, wiping the blood from the back of his arm with a collection of napkins left over from lunch, pressed the CALL button to get a stewardess over. As he waited, he looked at the sick man’s face. His lips had turned blue and his cheeks were covered in swollen splotches of pooled blood. The man’s eyes were closed and he was unresponsive. Every few seconds, a drop of blood would fall away from his nostrils. Peter wanted to jump up loudly and step away from the man, but he had to set the example of calmness for his kids.
A stewardess, an older woman with a hard face and hair the color of dishwater, appeared in the aisle between himself and his sons. Immediately she saw the problem.
“Oh my god,” she said aloud with a hand to her face. “Is he ok?”
Peter looked at her. Was she serious? “Well I don’t think he wants the chicken,” he said as he stood up and sidestepped away to allow her to take his place.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
Peter shrugged, “He was feeling bad when we left Sidney and has been asleep most of the time.”
The attendant put her hand on the sick man’s shoulder and shook him gently, “Sir,” she said to his face, “Are you, ok?”
Another flight attendant appeared on the other side of the aisle and looked on.
“What’s wrong with him?” James asked his father.
He leaned down into the boy and whispered, “He’s got the flu or something. I’m sure he is fine.” He lied. The guy looked like shit. If his kids saw someone die on their vacation, their mother would never let him hear the end of it.
The sick man picked his head up and opened his eyes, fixing them on the veteran attendant in his face. His lips mumbled, but no words came out. He brought his hands up to the woman’s face and put one on each cheek. As she started to recoil backwards away from him and protest, the man grabbed her roughly. With his hands fisted in her dirty gray-blonde hair, he forced her face to his own and roughly kissed her lips. The flight attendant pushed away from his embrace and struggled.
Then came the screams.
Muffled ones from the woman being kissed, louder, horrified ones from the second flight attendant looking on. Two screams lead to dozens in a packed airplane hurtling over the Pacific Ocean at 500-knots.
Peter reached out and grabbed the woman around the waist, tugging her back from the seated navy officer. The man refused to release his grip and only pulled her closer to him as he kissed her roughly. Kisses turned to bites and the man clamped down hard on the woman’s lips and chin as she slapped and pushed against him.
A male passenger, a stocky man wearing an Oakland Raiders jersey, came barreling down the aisle and helped Peter pull the woman from the attacker’s embrace. When she came away from the would-be cannibal, Peter noticed her bottom lip looked odd. It was a split second later when the man spit it out across the aisle that Peter knew why.
He shivered uncontrollably and stood watching the situation unfold. Oakland Raider’s jersey guy punched the naval officer square in the face, exploding the man’s gore-streaked nose in a shatter of bone, cartilage, and bloody mucous. The man was still belted into his seat and made no effort to unbuckle himself, meaning all he could do was sit and take it. The cannibal shook his head violently and sprayed blood in all directions as he clawed at the bruiser’s face. The scene devolved into a dog pile of the two men fighting, one belted into his seat, the other fighting to get away as much as anything else. Another three or four male passengers soon joined in. Peter pulled his sons out of their seats and pushed them down the aisle towards the cockpit and away from the fight.
Once the fight had broken up and the naval officer was left alone in his aisle, still belted in, he still struck out like a maniac. He bit his own tongue off and spit it out into the cabin. Finally, Peter and some of the other male passengers wrestled a thick blanket over the man’s head and secured it with a belt buckled tightly around the bundle. Even then, the man fought and screamed, wrestling against the seatbelt without success.
Peter found his sons after some sort of calm had been restored to the plane’s cabin. One of the uninjured flight attendants escorted them to the first class area where a few seats were open and settled them there for the rest of the flight.
“Here,” she said to him, pressing two mini bottles of Smirnov into his hand. “You may need this.”
He did indeed and set them on the arm of his new seat. His sons were on either side of him.
“Jesus, Dad,” said James, “What happened back there?”
Peter looked at his teenage son. The boy had blood splattered across his face. Tiny drops of it clung to his eyelashes and forehead. One large fleck was on his nose.
“The world is a crazy place sometimes,” he replied, passing over a hot towel that the flight attendant had presented them with when they were reseated. “Here, wipe your face off.” Then he turned to his David and Andrew and asked if they were ok while James rubbed his face clean.
They were visibly shaken but nodded that they were. Peter took the towel from James and passed it to them.
“Here, you guys wash your face, you will feel better.”
— | — | —
Want to find what happens when the virus makes it to the United States? Check out Last Stand on Zombie Island, available from Amazon.com for your Kindle and from Necro Publications as a hardcover and trade paperback, and from Smashwords for Apple, Kobo, EPUB and almost every other format.
— | — | —
WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD!
Disease-K has decimated the world leaving its victims shambling homicidal maniacs. And nestled along the warm Gulf waters sits Gulf Shores…the last outpost of civilization. With looters and thieves preying on the shocked survivors, it’s up to the retirees and bank tellers, phone repairmen and charterboat captains to put the town back together.
THE SHADOWS ARE GATHERING OUTSIDE OF TOWN!
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THE LAST STAND ON ZOMBIE ISLAND!
Read an Excerpt here.
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