Coldbrook (Hammer)(85)

Saving his daughter by saving me, Jayne thought. And she smiled at the man, because he was honest.

The plane stopped.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘One . . . two . . .’

From the front of the plane came a heavy clunk! and the hiss of air as one of the aircraft’s other escape chutes was released. Someone shouted, and Sean and Jayne pressed their faces to the door’s window.

They saw the first few people tumble from the end of the inflated chute, stand up and then look around in panic. Seconds later, shapes darted from beneath the aircraft and fell on them.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Sean said. He hadn’t seen this before.

‘I can’t do this,’ Jayne said, ‘I can’t, I can’t . . .’

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘They might climb the chute.’

‘Okay,’ Jayne said, taking a deep breath. ‘Sean, I’ve seen them before. They’re fast. Their main aim is to spread whatever it is they have. They’re not like . . . you know, “real” zombies. Don’t eat your brains, shit like that.’

Passengers scrambled on the chute, struggling to halt their slide after seeing what had happened to those who’d reached the ground. But it was to no avail. And by the time they reached the bottom, some of their bloodied fellow passengers were standing to welcome them.

‘Right,’ Sean said, his voice and hands shaking. He took a couple of deep breaths. ‘We wait until those things start climbing the front chute, and when enough of them are distracted, I’ll pull the handle and we go through this exit. And I’ve got an idea of where we can go.’

‘You do?’

‘Yeah.’ And he smiled. There was some measure of control in him again, as if his blood was up and he was now riding the situation. Once again, Jayne promised herself to ask about his scars.

They leaned down to watch from the window. Passengers had stopped sliding down to their doom, and the zombies were beginning to climb the chute. There was screaming from further along the aircraft, and the sound of something ripping and hissing as they tried to dislodge the chute. But even as it deflated and shrank, the bloodied people still clawed their way upward. Some hung on tightly and stayed still while others used them for hand and footholds. A woman fell away, shoved from the aircraft doorway out of Jayne’s view, and her head cracked against the runway concrete.

‘Be lucky like that another fifty times,’ Sean muttered.

The curtain was ripped from its rail and the remaining passengers backed along the aisle, forgetting all about Jayne now that the true infection was among them.

‘The gun!’ someone shouted. ‘The marshal’s at the back of the plane!’

‘You could hold them off,’ Jayne said, and Sean hesitated, his hand still on the door handle.

‘He’s in!’ someone shrieked.

‘Jayne,’ Sean said. He turned the handle and stepped back. The door’s bolts blew and it fell outward, the chute inflating in seconds and before she could say anything Sean had dropped onto his behind and slid down.

Instinct took over and Jayne did the same. If she’d waited a few more seconds she might have been trampled by the panicked passengers, or pulled back from the doorway so that others could escape. Because this was pure panic – screaming, raving, spitting panic.

She slid down the chute and heard the first gunshot.

‘Hand!’ Sean said, holding out his left hand. She took it. ‘Can you run?’

‘Yes.’

He fired again, and a woman wearing a stewardess’s uniform flipped back and down. For a blink, Jayne thought it was their stewardess, but this one was Asian, her tights ripped and her legs pale.

They ran directly away from the aircraft. There were shouts behind them, and Sean turned and fired again. Jayne could not help glancing back.

Three shapes were rushing at them from around the plane’s forward exit, where the collapsed chute was still alive with zombies crawling and scrambling upward into the interior. Jayne hoped that the runners were escaped passengers, but then she saw the fresh blood across their mouths and chins.

Sean paused and let go of her hand, and dropped them all with one shot each to the head.

‘Don’t slow down,’ he said, grabbing her hand again.

Someone had opened the rear door on the opposite side of the aircraft, and that chute too was now down. Several people had made it away and were running. They were being chased – the uninfected were easy to identify because they looked back over their shoulders in sheer terror. One of the men was holding an old woman’s hand and attempting to pull her along. The woman fell, and he knelt by her side, hugging her to his chest and refusing to let go. As the first of the pursuers reached the pair, Jayne looked away.