The crowd’s attention turned to their own jet.
‘Hope the pilot’s got enough sense not to taxi back there,’ Sean said. The plane touched down, they bounced, jolted left and right, and Jayne wondered whether the vagaries of fate would allow her to die in a plane wreck. But then the wheels hit the runway again and they were down. The aircraft’s jets roared in reverse thrust and Sean pressed an arm across the front of her shoulders to keep her back in her seat. She winced at the tensions in her body, and the pains they aggravated.
‘Soon as we slow to turn—’ Sean said, and the aircraft veered so sharply to the left that Jayne was sure the wing tip would skim the ground and they’d be flipped.
Screams from the cabin in front of them, hidden by swishing curtains. The continuing roar of the engines. And Jayne saw shapes below them, passing beneath the wing and the fuselage, and the smears of several people crushed across the concrete.
‘He’s dodging them,’ she said, and Sean uttered a short, sharp laugh.
The aircraft straightened, and as it slowed they felt several shuddering impacts. Jayne closed her eyes and saw Tommy struck by a bullet, and she was glad that he’d died so clean.
As the engines powered back and the plane drifted to the right, Sean jumped from his seat and went to the rear exit door on the starboard side. ‘Are they all . . .?’ he asked, amazed.
‘All infected,’ Jayne said. ‘I can see blood.’
Sean stood back and seemed to gather his thoughts. Then he went through the kitchen to the opposite door. ‘Here!’ he called.
Jayne was already out of her seat, wincing against the pain but finding movement relatively easy. Sean was removing a locking bar from the emergency-door handle.
‘When I open this, the chute inflates and forms a slide. You’ll have seen it in the movies. I’ll go down first, and you wait until I signal that it’s safe. Got it?’
‘Yeah.’
He pulled his gun, looked at it, tucked it back in the holster. ‘Can you tie the bag to your belt?’
Jayne did. It contained bottled water, a tin opener broken so that the blade was exposed, and a penknife. Not much of a survival kit.
‘Oh shit,’ she whispered. Sean smiled at her and nodded. ‘Why are you doing this for me?’ she asked.
He held the door handle, breathing heavily, glancing outside, judging when to pull. ‘My daughter’s about your age,’ he said. ‘Which sounds fucking trite, I know. Sad middle-aged motherfucker who couldn’t keep his family together.’
‘No, not trite,’ she said.
‘And because you’re special. Bitten, but still well. And this . . .’ He pointed at the window, what lay beyond.
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.’