Jacqueline Druga - Omnicide

It took a while to find out if they understood or even if they had the strength to do so, but the door finally cracked enough for Kit to grip onto and open it.

It wasn’t easy. The bottom of the door was two feet higher than the van.

When it opened a tremendously strong odor seeped out, pelting them. It was a mixture of something sour, body fluids and death.

A skinny man, no older than thirty and drenched in sweat, stumbled to the door. He wheezed loudly, gasping so dramatically it seemed like an act.

It wasn’t. His face was pale, dark circles under his eyes, and he swayed. “Tell me I won’t die for breathing this air.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cass said.

“Cass,” Kit scolded.

Just as she questioned why Kit was upset, the man tumbled out and onto Cass, probably expecting her to hold him up. But he was too heavy and too wet, and not only did she not hold on for long because of the weight, Cass instinctively jumped out of the way.

The man dropped to the roof of the church van and rolled down over the windshield to the hood.

“Cass, what the hell?” Kit asked.

“You expected me to catch him? I wasn’t ready!”

Niles hurried to the man. “Are there more alive?”

The man nodded.

Niles peered up to Kit. “We need to go in.”

“Stay with him,” Kit instructed. “Art, get water out of the van.”

“Kit,” Niles said. “We can’t just head back. If anyone else is like him, we need to find a place to give them medical attention, at least for today and then head home tomorrow.”

“We will. But right now…” Kit looked at Cass. “Ready.”

Cass nodded her reply.

Kit stepped up and through the door then he turned around and extended his hand to Cass. She used it as leverage and climbed inside.

The moment Cass crossed the threshold of the plane, Kit stopped her.

They had boarded on the right side, through the doorway closest to the front. It wasn’t a big plane, Kit believed it was an Embraer 175, and where they entered brought them between the small galley and storage closet, directly across from the lavatory.

A good place to keep Cass from seeing anything.

“You know, what? Stay here,” he told her. “Let me look first.”

“I’m fine.” Cass brought the back of her hand to under her nose.

“Just… stay here, okay?”

Cass agreed and Kit braced himself for walking that plane.

He didn’t know what to expect but he knew what he would see. Families traveled on planes and maybe it was a sense of protectiveness over Cass that made Kit want to be the first to explore.

He could smell it… death. The air was stale and thick, the temperature was stifling hot—the fact that the young man still lived told Kit the pilot had circulated the air.

Kit listened.

He listened for any signs that meant life. A breath, cough, rustling, groaning… anything.

The lavatory door was closed and the cockpit open. It was dark. He could see the outline of one pilot slightly slumped in his seat. He wasn’t moving. In fact Kit stood there, watched and listened before moving through the fuselage.

He would definitely check again on that pilot before he left.

Slowly he walked through the small first-class section. Four rows, two seats on one side, a single seat on the other. Only a few passengers were there, the remaining seats held crew.

His foot kicked an empty water bottle as he inched down the aisle.

There were many empty bottles: water, soda, juice, and wine.

He didn’t need to check for pulses, he knew by looking at those in first class that they were dead.

Their faces were pale and dry, eyes sunken in, a dried white foam formed around their mouths and on their chins. All of their torsos and bellies were unnaturally distended. A sign of ‘hot car death’—the temperature reached too high, and their insides slowly baked.

There wasn’t enough water to save them.

But how did the man from the back of the plane survive?

Surely the temperature in the back was the same as the front? Too hot to sustain life.

And as Kit walked into the main cabin and economy section it didn’t feel any cooler. It was much of the same view. Scattered bottles, snack bags… bodies.

It was a twenty-row aircraft and it wasn’t until Kit hit row fifteen that he felt it. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he swore he felt a temperature change. That was when he noticed the last three rows were empty. Where were the passengers or had the rows always been empty?

“Anything, Kit?” Cass called out.

“Nothing yet… but…” Kit peered forward to the end of the craft. He saw a leg extending out from the back to the aisle. It looked like a man’s leg.

He picked up the pace, slipping near sideways down the narrow aisle. When he arrived at the leg, he noticed the curled toes on the bare foot.

That wasn’t all he noticed.

Early on, after they landed, someone had opened up the rear left door, realizing the twenty-four hours were up, he guessed.

It brought in fresh air, lowering the temperate on the plane, but it hadn’t lasted for long and for the same reason Kit and the others never saw that the door was open. The fungus had grown over it leaving only small pockets of openings and air. The missing passengers, six in all, were gathered by the door.

Two of them were dead, while the other four, one of them wearing a pilot uniform, huddled together. Their legs twisted around each other, slightly overlapping. They grasped at the fungus, their necks arched and mouths open, aiming for the tiny pocket openings, desperately trying to suck in every bit of cool air.

They were alive, barely, but they were alive.

“Cass!” Kit called out. “Get the others. I’m gonna need some help.”

Outskirts, Las Vegas

“Vegas five miles.” Ada looked down at her watch. “Good timing.”

“Yep,” Eb replied. “I can make this drive like I’m on auto pilot. Kind of sad, though, I won’t be able to do that anymore.”

“Sure you can.”

“Nah, it won’t be the same. Although, a demented part of me kind of is looking forward to seeing the apocalypse Vegas. I think it goes back to reading The Stand .”

“That was downtown, not the strip,” said Ada.

“True.”

“Cass ever come out here with you?”

“Oh, sure. But not that much. Couldn’t pull her off the slots. She used to say she could lose all her thousand dollars a week for life easily. Claimed it was her addictive personality and she could easily get addicted to things.”

“Well, we learned that to be true,” Ada said.

“Yes, we did. Still, if she wasn’t riding out for that plane, I may have asked if she would have come with me. No offense.”

“None taken,” Ada replied. “What happened there, Eb? I mean we all wondered. What you and Cass went through, the town hadn’t seen a tragedy hit a family like that since the fire killed the Hoffer kids.”

“You can say I wanted to embrace every memory and hold on to them and Cass, well, she didn’t want a part of anything that reminded her.”

Ada nodded. “Still, is there more to the story? I mean, we all took it as you gave up on her.”

“I kind of did. It was purely selfish. I couldn’t help her or save her, and I just couldn’t be there when she died,” Eb said. “And it was gonna play one of two extremes. Either she’d get help or die.”

“She never moved on after you.”

Eb laughed. “She remarried.”

“Oh, stop. You and me both know that was platonic and for insurance. Mark’s a good friend. If it wasn’t for that good insurance, she would never have gone away for the help she got. He saved her. If it wasn’t for him she’d be dead.”