“He’s still working on it but get in!”
I return my attention to the advancing horde. They’re close enough to make out individual faces now. All their identifying characteristics—skin color, eye color, even hair color in some dusty specimens—have been absorbed into the tide of gray, but traces of their personalities remain. A tattoo. A piercing. And of course, their clothing choices. Even in the ravages of death, they are full of history.
How can I remind them?
“R!”
Her voice floats down from miles above me, shrill and desperate.
I step out from the shadow of the nose cone and let the sun warm my face.
“Who are you?” I ask the Dead. “You were people. You still are people. Which ones?”
I don’t shout. I ask calmly like a friend at a pub table, the serious question that leads away from idle chatter and into real depth. Are they willing to follow me there? Or will they laugh me off, call me a buzzkill and then kill me?
“Who are you?” I say again, unable to keep some fear out of my voice as they lumber closer. “Think! Remember!”
I see a ripple in their faces. Hungry snarls flicker with uncertainty. I do something I doubt they’ve ever seen before: I take a step toward them.
“Who are you?”
They stop advancing. They look at the ground, then at the sky. There is . . . a moment. And then the ones bringing up the rear bump into the transfixed vanguard, and the moment ends. They remember one thing: that they’re hungry. They rush forward to devour my newly Living flesh.
And then they begin to fall. Whatever seeds I may have planted exit their heads in sprays of blood. Whatever thoughts may have been forming disintegrate as bullets sever neurons and disperse their electricity into the evening air.
M and Nora are kneeling on the wing. Nora’s shots are precise, each bullet finding a brain, picking off the ones closest to me. M’s AK-47 sprays more indiscriminately but kills just as well through sheer volume of bullets. A scream builds in my throat; I want to curse my friends, but I can’t. Their actions are rational. They live in this world and they want to stay here. They are not obligated to join me on this altar.
I retreat to the cargo ramp and close it and run to the wing. They’re still firing.
“Stop!” I shout at them.
“We can’t, R!” Nora says between shots. “They’re swarming the plane!” She sights a young man climbing up the nose wheel and picks him off.
“They . . . can’t get in!”
“You know they can,” M grunts. “Tight swarm, pile up, break windows . . . remember that bus we did in Olympia?”
He unloads a volley into the advancing swarm, stripping away the front row.
I grip my face in my hands. What happened to my act of kindness? How did it become this? I have catalyzed two massacres in a single week. What is the flaw in me that turns my noblest efforts to shit?
I rush into the cockpit and find Julie testing switches while Abram wraps the last of the duct tape around the control rod. “Please say you’re done,” I beg him.
He settles into his seat and carefully pushes the mass of tape that surrounds a large switch. It clicks, and the engines roar to life. I hear M and Nora scrambling inside and slamming the emergency door shut. Zombies fall away from the plane as we blast into reverse, and by the time Abram has pulled as close to a U-turn as a jumbo jet can manage, we are clear of the swarm.
They stand among the motionless bodies of their peers, watching us depart, and just before distance makes their faces illegible, I see their expressions soften from hunger to longing. A subtle change, but visible to anyone who has felt it before. Perhaps somewhere under the scorched earth, a few seeds survived. Perhaps I am capable of good in the midst of my failures. Perhaps if I tell myself enough, if I repeat it over and over as we fly away from this continent, I can make myself believe it.
HIS FACE through the bars.
“How are you getting along with your fellow criminals, R—?”
“I’ve made lots of new friends.”
My grandfather smiles. I don’t. My face is mostly bruises, and smiling hurts. My muscles are lean and corded. The skin on my fists is finally starting to callus.
“I know prison’s hard,” he says, “but looks like you’re taking it harder than most.”
“I’ve been training.”
“You’ve been getting your ass kicked.”
I look at the floor. “Some of them don’t like me.”
“Why not?”
“Usually starts with my name.”
“What about it?”
“They’ve never heard it before, so they don’t like it.”
He chuckles. “Never did figure out how a Bible-thumper like your mom came up with that hippie bullshit. Bet the kids at school got real creative with it.” He notices my glare and returns to his track. “But you can’t tell me you’re getting all this”—he gestures to my face—“just for having a stupid name.”
“No.”
“So why don’t your new classmates like you, R—?”
“Because they know I’m better than them.”