The music still worked its way through the air, calming and soothing, and chilling as a deep-freeze icebox.
I felt the plane dip slightly more. The flight was almost over, and for that I was thankful. I kept my eyes closed for a moment longer, took a deep breath, and reopened them. Immediately, I saw the seatbelt sign again. I reached for the belt trappings, to pull them across my waist and secure the lock. I was stopped in my tracks, though, by the sounds of complete and absolute freaking terror.
It was not the grieving wife’s screams that filled the room this time. It was the doctor’s.
It took me seconds, precious seconds, to realize what was happening, and even then I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing.
Charles had sat up.
His arms were holding the doctor in a vise-like bear hug.
And his teeth were worrying the man’s neck with a ferocity akin to a starved tiger seeing fresh meat for the first time in ages.
Blood. So much blood.
“Holy shit!” the young man called Max yelled, backing away from the violence, backing away from the doctor’s desperate cries for help. It was apparently one thing to see this sort of violence in a movie and quite another thing to see it happening feet from you in reality. “Mom, what the hell is happening?” He backed into his mother, the red-nailed woman in the pantsuit with the new-looking hair permanent and the arched, tattooed-on eyebrows.
“I don’t know. God, I don’t know.” She clung to her son, her nails now pushing into his body rather than the seat cushion. She didn’t look entertained or interested anymore.
Seconds later, Charles let go of the doctor. The doctor’s bloody body fell to the floor with a soft thump. His face was slack, his eyes open, his neck basically nonexistent save for a few stringy-looking chunks of flesh clinging around the connection between spine and skull.
The wife was screaming again, screaming and pushing herself hard against the stewardesses who were standing in immobile horror. “Charles! Charles, what are you doing?” She held her hands out, palms toward her husband, and she was pale with fear.
Charles grunted and growled. His mouth was slick with blood; human gristle clung to his teeth like bits of cheap steak that refused to dissolve no matter how much you chewed, and his upper body was soaked with crimson turning black. He climbed up to his feet and stalked toward his wife, slow, clumsy movements, but also somehow fast. It was an effect better reserved for horror movies than an international flight high in the sky.
With nowhere to run.
The body of the doctor was near enough to the curtain that separated first class and coach that the blood slipping from his body spread in a great puddle that eventually touched the material of the separation. It soaked upwards, barely discernible on the deep maroon. But on the carpet…that was easy to see. Like a deep red sunset pushing its way across pale blue sky.
Another scream…So much screaming.
As Charles reached his wife.
“Charles, please, I’m begging you,” she cried.
Charles grabbed hold of her, and she shrieked in agony as his teeth latched onto the top of her shoulder. I let out a gasp of shock, fear holding me immobile in my seat. It seemed I wasn’t the only one, as a chorus of disbelieving cries escaped everyone’s lips around me, but no one moved. No one moved to stop the madness.
Everyone was frozen in their seats, too terrified to move yet also too horrified to look away.
We were all too damn petrified to do much of anything. We could only stare in horror and sob as Charles tackled his wife to the ground and set about feasting on her flesh.
It wasn’t until the doctor began to twitch and convulse that I finally managed to break out of my trance. I stood up, wanting to get as far away as possible from whatever was happening. I stumbled out of my seat, collapsing over other people. Others began to do the same.
Charles let go of his wife and turned to the rest of the passengers as the doctor’s eyes opened. He was dead. He was supposed to be dead. They were both supposed to be dead!
The weeping and yells around me died away and silence fell over first class as blood and flesh dripped from Charles’s mouth and hands. His eyes were red and unfocused…they chilled me to the core. And then the piercing silence evaporated as Charles reached for the closest person to him, and the drooling doctor did the same.
It was pandemonium as people climbed over one another to get out of their seats and away from the murderous duo. But where could you run when you were thousands of feet up in the air?
I stumbled and fell to my knees, my mind begging me to wake the fuck up because this couldn’t really be happening. Through the mass of bodies I saw Charles’s wife slowly begin to climb back up to her feet, and I knew by the devilish look in her eyes that the murderous duo was now a trio.
God help us.
Chapter Three.
Rose
“W hat is it?” the older lady whimpered, her wrinkled hand reaching out to grab onto my baggy denim dungarees with surprising strength.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from first class.
From the blood, and the carnage, and the insanity of everything I was seeing.
It was like being in a dream that I couldn’t wake up from. Only there was nothing good about any of it, because all the compensation in the world wouldn’t ever be able to banish those images from my mind.
“This can’t be real,” I muttered with a slow shake of my head.
The woman tugged at me again and I finally looked down to her.
“What is it?” she asked again, fear lacing her words, a desperate urgency for the knowledge that I had.
“Death,” I replied simply, the word slipping out without thought or consideration.
She looked confused and let go of my dungarees, as if whatever kind of crazy I had contracted might be catching. But it wasn’t me that was crazy; it was first class. Maybe they put something in the complimentary Champagne, I wondered.
Wouldn’t that be fucking ironic?
Free Champagne with a side order of I’m going to eat your face off!
I shook my head and blinked, hoping to change the image in front of me, but it was still just as horrific when I opened my eyes again.
I swallowed. Okay, I was going to call it. This was officially the worst trip ever. Mum and Dad had won. I was more than happy to go home now and become a great accountant like they’d wanted me to be. A nice, safe job for a girl like me. I would get married to Bob, another accountant, because what better suitor for me than another accountant, right? But Bob wouldn’t ever be able to satisfy certain needs. No, Bob was just Bob…I dragged a hand down my face, because my thoughts were derailing into complete and utter absurdity now.
Seriously, I didn’t even know a Bob, for fuck’s sake!
Mr. Sexy Southern took a step back as the doctor that had seen tending to the unconscious man staggered up to his feet. Blood pumped from the gaping hole in his neck, the remaining flesh there more like shredded ribbons of bloody gore than an actual throat. It was gross and fascinating all at the same time—or at least it would have been if it wasn’t so utterly terrifying.
The doctor turned to his panicked wife, and before I could understand what I was seeing, he’d buried his face in her shoulder and was tearing into her.
“Oh my god,” I whimpered. “Oh my god!”
Sexy Southern released the curtain and let it fall back in place, finally seeming to notice the blood across the floor. He stared at me and I stared at him.
“Did you just see that?” he asked in disbelief, and I nodded, too numb to talk.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We will shortly be descending into LAX International Airport. I’ve been informed by control tower that everyone needs to remain in their seats as we’re unable to disembark currently. Unfortunately, ground has informed me that there has been an incident at the terminal and all passengers must remain on board until further notice. Thank you for flying with us today.”
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More screams erupted from first class and I squeezed my eyes closed, praying that I’d wake up and this wouldn’t actually be happening. But when I opened my eyes, everything was still the same.
“All right, everybody needs to move to the back of the plane,” Sexy Southern declared to the rest of coach, like he’d done this a thousand times. But no one moved from their seats, despite the increasing screams from first class. He snapped his fingers in the air. “Everybody up, I need as many cases put in front of this curtain so we can try and create a barricade, before whatever is in there tries to get in here.”
The stench of blood in the air was unmistakable, and that did enough to get everyone moving. People passed their bags and on-board cases to the front one by one and we attempted to build a barricade, but every time the plane hit turbulence the whole thing would collapse.
“Shit,” Sexy Southern said, looking to me like I might know what to do. “This ain’t working.” All of his “I can handle this, little lady” bravado had faded.
I looked back behind me as one of the stewardesses tried to hand me another case. “Wait a minute.”
The rest of the people had backed up as far as they could go. No one wanted to go anywhere near first class, and I couldn’t blame them. The things I’d just witnessed would be burned into my memory forever. These other people hadn’t even seen what I had. They’d had the good sense not to bloody look!
I looked sharply back at Sexy Southern and his eyebrows scrunched in. “What is it?”
I held a finger to my lips and pointed to my ears.
He frowned even more, not grasping what I was telling him.
“It’s gone quiet,” I whispered, watching as the recognition hit his features.
And it had.
Behind the curtain, first class was quiet.
No more screaming.
No more crying.
No more begging.
That wasn’t a good sign. It couldn’t be.
I felt dizzy with panic and worry as Sexy Southern turned back to the curtain. He walked towards it slowly, careful not to trip on the scattered on-board luggage, and that time I stayed where I was. Nothing and no one was getting me any closer to that damned thing again.
I took a step back as the curtain twitched.
Behind me people gasped.
The curtain twitched again and my hands curled into fists at my sides.
I was going to be sick.
I shook my head, feeling dizzy with fear.
I just needed to breathe…
The curtain began to part, and one of the stewardesses from earlier stumbled through. The collected coach passengers gasped. She was covered in blood. It was splashed across her uniform and drenched her chin and chest. She reached for Sexy Southern and he batted her hands away.
“Ma’am, kindly get the fuck off me,” he growled, shoving her away with force.
But she continued pushing forwards. She tripped on the luggage we had piled up and he darted away from her.
“Get away from her,” I mumbled to him, willing my voice to be louder, but it was as if someone was squeezing my vocal cords.
She reached for him again as the curtain parted and more people began to come through. I use the word people very loosely, because those weren’t people anymore.
The passengers in first class, at least those that looked healthy enough to, were now diving from their seats and climbing over one another to get away from the…from the…sick? Infected? Mentally unhinged?…and screams tore through the entire plane. The voice of the captain was coming through the speaker system again, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying—though I would venture a guess that it was something along the lines of “get back to your seats and stop tearing each other apart, you cannibals!”
The old lady that had forced me to look through the curtain climbed over the back of the seat next to me, her foot almost kicking me in the face. I jerked out of the way just in time.
Sexy Southern roared out angrily as the steward and a kid who looked no older than seventeen or eighteen dived on him, dragging him to the ground as more and more of the first-class people burst through the curtain and headed towards us.
Screams echoed around me, my ears popping painfully as the plane came in to land, and I struggled to stay upright and not fall over.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled between my fingers.
People pushed and shoved, more than ready to throw one another into the path of the things which continued to come from first class.
I dived over seats to get to the other aisle, not caring if I stood on anyone so long as I got to safety. There was nowhere to go.
Another woman stumbled out through the curtain, and my gaze flew to her. She looked down at the graphic scene on the aisle floor and she choked on a sob. She didn’t move from where she stood. She was going to bloody die if she kept standing their frozen like an idiot.
I dove across the seats along with everyone else, trying to put as much distance between myself and the mayhem as possible. But of course there was nowhere to go. We were trapped on the plane, even as it descended to land.
I made it to the opposite aisle and ran towards first class, bumping into every seat and person that I encountered and no doubt covering myself in a multitude of bruises along the way. But I didn’t care. None of that mattered so long as I got away from those…things.
There were no words for what the hell was happening right then. There was no possible explanation for any of it. The plane had descended into chaos, bloody chaos!
The plane juddered, and I grabbed hold of the backs of the plane seats as the plane hit more turbulence. A loud screeching noise which sounded like metal on metal came from somewhere. The stewardess and the dark-haired kid had lost interest in Sexy Southern and were now heading in my direction, but thanks to the speed and velocity of the landing, they fell backwards and slid along the floor in the opposite direction.
But for how long?
Once the plane stopped, then what? We’d already been told there was an incident in the airport so we couldn’t get off the plane, and a plane full of ravenous and utterly insane passengers was definitely not going to be allowed to disembark.
As the plane whined to a crawl, readying to stop, I eyed the door to get off the plane. The drop to the ground would be too much; I knew this. Yet all I could think about was pulling that door open and getting off that plane before I was killed.
I kept moving frantically, not caring about anything except staying unharmed.
Chapter Four.
Sam
I didn’t know what to do.
So I ran.
As far as I could possibly run while stuck in the first-class cabin of an oversized international plane. There, there was my saving grace: the bathrooms across from the small kitchen area—which had its curtain open at the moment, revealing the commercial fridge with the glass front filled to bursting with goodies, the microwave, and the rolling cart. There were two attendant seats there also, pointed toward the aisle and both unoccupied at the moment.
There were only two single-occupant bathrooms. One was already occupied by some insanely smart soul who’d taken refuge inside, no doubt.
The screams followed me as I jerked open the door to the vacant restroom and hurled my body into the generous space with the urinal, toilet, bidet, and marble washstand. I slipped on the glossy floor, my leather sandals not providing any traction, and my fingers scrambled for the lock and I turned it quickly. My heart wanted to beat out of my chest, and I thought I might cough it out, given half the chance. Like a horse rounding the last curve before the finish line at the Kentucky Derby, I slammed my back against the locked door and squeezed my eyes closed and tried to think of anything but the horrors on the other side of it.
I’d been there once—to the Derby. I kept my eyes closed and I remembered the fanfare of it all—the women in their extravagant hats, the men in breezy-looking seersucker suits and panama caps, the sleek horses read
y to run.
It had been lovely.
I liked lovely things.
I liked…
A piercing cry broke into my ridiculous thoughts. People were yelling out words…Get the cuffs, restrain them. Bedlam stretched on for miles and I refused to open my eyes. I let my body sink to the floor and I tried to keep thinking of nice things. Pretty things. Any memory strong enough to yank me away from my current reality.
Finally, the commotion outside the small stall seemed to calm.
I stood on shaky legs, my entire body quaking with the effort to keep myself upright. My fingers flexed at my sides, my mind racing. Should I open the door?
My hand was on the lock.
Everything was fine now.
I was turning the lock.
Everything was fine now.
And then the captain’s voice crackled to life, rich and soothing. I had to press my ear to the door to hear everything clearly, despite the cockpit not being too far from the first-class bathrooms. My heart began to race again as I made out each utterance. What he said was not soothing…not at all.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We will shortly be descending into LAX International Airport. I’ve been informed by control tower that everyone needs to remain in their seats as we’re unable to disembark currently. Unfortunately, ground has informed me that there has been an incident at the terminal and all passengers must remain on board until further notice. Thank you for flying with us today.”
I locked the door again and I staggered backwards, falling to a sitting position atop the closed lid of the black glossy toilet. Its color made me think of really shitty retro houses that people tour on the home-improvement network, wanting to buy a rundown place on the cheap and renovate it into a dream residence. I’d never have a black toilet. It seemed low class.
Who cares about the toilet, you idiot? I mentally chastised myself.
My mind stopped thinking about ridiculously unimportant television and started thinking about what the captain had said. There was an incident. We had to stay on board after we landed. God, I didn’t want to stay on this plane. Even though the cabin had quieted outside my hiding place, the passengers accepting that they would have to remain on the plane for some while after arrival, fear was still playing around in my stomach, a jumping bean impervious to gastric juices. A jumping bean that wouldn’t fucking stop bouncing around and wrecking my nerves.
Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 1 Page 3
