CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Every apocalypse deserves an after-party.

-The Rezort

The helicopter rose into the air until Fairacres stopped being a mass of disordered debris and became something segmented and laid out again. It looked like something that had actually been planned, with streets and buildings lined up and sectioned out. It looked like something that someone had wanted, and painstakingly created. It was strange to think about this, all of this, as something that so many people had collaborated on -- now just about destroyed in a matter of hours.

Thinking about the shapes in what she saw below her was going a little of the way towards alleviating any fear of heights she might have had.

But not all the way.

“Try not to look.”

Liza leaned back in her seat facing the cockpit and nodded at JJ’s words. “I’m not really one for turning my back to anything.”

She could see him smirk in her periphery. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees in a way that made him look strangely much taller than if he had been sitting up with his back straight. “I’m looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield,” he said.

The battlefield. “Isn’t that a weird way to put it?” she asked. “You guys are fighting zombies. It’s not like it’s anything…”

“Real?” he finished for her. The sound of the rotor blades all but drowned out his words. She shrugged, a little embarrassed by how she had dismissed what they were doing. Sure, this all seemed unlikely, and fake, but she had seen people die. So had they, she was certain. So to belittle what was going on was disrespectful.

“Sorry,” she said.

JJ didn’t answer, and she followed his line of sight over to Truffles, the pale-faced newly-conscripted military boy on the opposite side of the helicopter.

“You OK, buddy?” JJ asked.

“Just, uh, just freaked me out. We nearly died.”

JJ stretched himself out, frowning and thoughtful, and Liza realised she was wrong: he was much more imposing when he drew himself up to his full height.

“We’ve nearly died plenty of times,” he said.

The tone of his voice made the hairs on Liza’s arms stand on end. This collected, presumably trained, self-assured man was nervous, at the very least. Scared, at most.

“Thornton,” he said, using the other man’s real name, but keeping his voice very calm and even. “Are you feeling well?”

Liza pressed her back squarely on the seat behind her, and looked around. What for, she had no idea. The best weapons were strapped to her. She had to remind herself that she was prepared for anything. Even a hostile takeover of this aircraft was potentially in the cards. But she wasn’t about to make an enemy of the Royal Air Force just because someone’s tone of voice sounded weird.

So she breathed, and remembered not to stare out of the gaping hole to her left at the city below. Even Cole, the pilot, must have sensed something was wrong because he glanced over his shoulder.

“Liza, let me know. Is this the university campus?” he asked, and she relaxed. He wasn’t picking up on any tension at all, he was just being normal. Speaking of tension, though: JJ’s gaze hadn’t left Thornton -- Truffles, whatever the hell he wanted to be called -- for several seconds.

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She thought giddily about a fact she had heard once: if someone stares you out for longer than six seconds without looking away, they either want to kill you or fuck you.

“Guys?” she asked.

“Liza?” Cole called out again. “Kinda need to know sooner rather than later. It looks like a campus to me. Is that it? We don’t want to land far away and have to…”

He blinked. “What’s wrong, Jake?”

“Yeah,” Liza asked. “What’s wrong?”

JJ breathed out slowly, and then pulled his gun onto his lap, his gaze not leaving Thornton for a second.

“Our friend Truffs here is going to tell us if he’s been bitten or not. And he’s going to tell us now.”

His face was excruciatingly pale as he turned to look at JJ. His eyes were purple and bruised. He blinked, looked at the gun, swallowed visibly; painfully. “I wasn’t bitten,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Oh, God,” Liza said quietly. “Are you lying?”

“What’s that?” Cole yelled over the blades.

“Fucking hell,” JJ snapped, going to stand up and clearly stopping himself as he remembered he’d just hit his head on the ceiling. Instead, he just jerked in place. The sudden movement made Thornton snatch up his own firearm and shakily point it at his superior.

“I wasn’t bitten,” he said. “I haven’t been bitten.” His eyelids were heavy.

“Fuck this,” Liza said, grabbing for her knife. If a bullet hit the wrong part of the chopper, she didn’t know anything about this stuff, but couldn’t that cause a serious problem while they were still airborne?

“We’re not going to be rash,” JJ said, raising his hands until Thornton lowered his gun with shaking hands. “Pull back your sleeves and show us your arms.”

Thornton pulled back his left sleeve with his best impression of unwavering eye contact. The skin was clear. Liza would have killed for a glass of water right then.

“Guys?” Cole yelled backwards. “I need to know if I’m landing.”

“It’s probably best to land,” Liza called back. Thornton pulled back his right sleeve to expose another clear arm.

“What?” Cole shouted.

“Legs,” JJ said, pointing.

“I can’t … hang on.” Cole turned fully away from the controls to face them. “I need to lipread or something. Am I landing here or not?”

Thornton pulled up his left trouser leg to expose clear skin, his eyes remaining fully on JJ.

“Jesus, fuck, mate … Truffs. What happened to your fucking back?” Cole, oblivious to the conversation, leaned far through the threshold into the body of the chopper and yanked down the uniform shirt to expose something that only he could see -- which made his eyes widen and his mouth fall open.

“No!” JJ roared, as Thornton’s skin became yellowed and drawn before their eyes, and he craned his neck impossibly. Before JJ could even lift his gun, or Liza her knife, Thornton had moved faster than a human ever could, and clamped his jaws across Cole’s face, pulling away to rip off his nose, and showering the studded metal floor with fresh dark blood.

Cole screamed, JJ yelled incoherently, and Liza was up with the knife, backing up only when she realised that JJ was pulling his trigger whether she was in the way or not. She slammed her back against the seats again, dangerously close to the gaping doorway, as three consecutive shots were fired. The first, in his panic, fired from the hip and missed by half a foot. The second punched between Cole’s eyes while he shrieked, still human, and finally silenced his horrifying, nasal noises.

“Fucking arsehole!” JJ screamed, filling the void left by Cole’s silence. “I knew you were a piece of shit!” His gun clicked, empty, and he swore and launched himself forward, smacking Thornton’s undead temple while he gargled and chewed.

“How do we … what do we … we have to land!” Liza yelled over the noise. It wasn’t her imagination -- they had dipped considerably and from the sensation in her gut, they were continuing to fall through the air. Slowly, sure, but the ground didn’t much care about that.

The men were grappling now, both of them straining and gargling almost identically.

“Damn it,” Liza said, staring dumbly out of the doorway as the realisation hit her. “I shouldn’t have got on the helicopter.”

Well, now it seemed obvious.

Just then, the zombie military man slammed through the threshold and onto the controls, and the helicopter tilted with a stomach-churning lurch. Liza turned to look at JJ, but saw nothing but her own hair in her face.

She tumbled backwards through the doorway, helpless to gravity no matter how armed and ready she was.

And she fell.

And fell.