Jacqueline Druga - Immune

“What is going on?”

“I don’t know. I’ll radio to see where we can land.”

Eugene returned to his pilot’s chair, and made the radio call out. The first tower that answered denied him the request to land. The second request was denied as well.

With the co-pilot getting worse, he strapped in his friend, covered him with a blanket, and Eugene diligently made calls.

With repeated denials to allow them to land, he finally got angry. “I have a plane full of sick people here!”

“Yes, well, understand 4772, we have a country full of sick people too.”

What?

What did that mean?

Eugene instructed Stacy to go online to see what she could find out and he kept trying. Four hours into the flight, he stopped getting responses from any of the towers.

It had been a while since he’d heard from Stacy and Eugene was worried. They were to land in New York in less than ninety minutes.

Putting the plane on autopilot, Eugene went to investigate.

Twice Max Ryker woke up during the flight. He was exhausted and hurt. He just needed to sleep. The flight attendant woke him to see if he needed anything, Max downed a glass of water.

The woman next to him had an odd, medicinal smell. She looked pale and was snoring as she slept.

Max honed in on the white noise and went back to sleep.

The second time he woke up, a scream jolted him. He didn’t think much of it, because the plane was quiet. It was probably one of those subconscious sounds that enter dreams. He kept his eyes shut, trying to fall back to sleep when he noticed his lap was wet.

He could feel the warm dampness on the front of his jeans. Max cringed.

Tell me I wasn’t sleeping so hard I pissed myself!

He reached down and touched the abundance of wetness. It was on the blanket as well.

Great.

As he opened his eyes, he felt something hit his lap. Had a bag fallen on him?

Max sat up, his eyes widened, and he immediately sprang up, banging his head off the roof.

Stacy, the flight attendant was wide eyed, her head resting on his lap, her body stretched across the other seat while the woman who had been seated next to him hungrily indulged on the contents of the flight attendant’s gut.

It wasn’t piss on his lap, it was blood.

There was blood everywhere.

Max finally stood and Stacy rolled to the floor.

Gurgling, the woman next to him peered up to Max and sneered at him with a look that seemed to say, ‘Fuck you for tossing my dinner to the floor.’

The strange and horrific occurrences weren’t only happening in his row. From what Max could see, it was all around.

It wasn’t happening.

It had to be a dream.

Maybe it was.

Wake up. Wake up!

He climbed over the cannibalistic woman into the aisle. The white noise and engine sounds were drowned out by the steady buzz of snore -like breathing, coming from everywhere.

Max felt like he was in some sort of Night of the Living Dead dream. That was what they looked like, moving corpses. Had they not been making that sound while trying to breathe, Max would have been convinced they weren’t alive.

He looked back into the coach section. Some passengers were wandering up and down the aisle, but there were as many bleeding and dead passengers as there were ones who looked like snoring woman.

Snores, gurgles, some sort of clucking sound. Half-eaten bodies dangling from seats with looks of horror frozen on their faces.

He turned, and that was when he saw Stacy the flight attendant sit up.

Oh, no, Max thought. Now I know she is dead.

Then Stacy did that snoring breathing. Corpses don’t breathe. Stacy reached down and ripped the eating woman from her, they then engaged in some sort of brawl.

Max’s first thought was go to the bathroom and stay there. Then again, what difference would it make? They were probably going to crash.

That was when he saw the pilot emerge from the cockpit.

Eyes wide, looking horrified, the pilot backed up.

“Hey!” Max called out.

The sound of his call alerted those in first class and at that second, every single one of those ‘things’ lunged for the pilot.

The pilot quickly jumped back and slammed the door.

The things didn’t stop.

Max needed to get into the cockpit. He wondered why, when he called out, those things only chased the pilot.

There were about fifteen of them, relentlessly pounding at the cockpit door.

Max whistled and shouted. “Hey, over here!”

They stopped, looked, then returned to the cockpit door.

“You’re shitting me, right?” Max shook his head. He made another attempt and called for them again. Only that time, they all turned and in a split second, blasted full speed his way.

He was done. Doomed. He was about to dive to his right when he heard the woman’s scream behind him.

With a quick turn of his head, he saw another flight attendant in the back of the plane, she stood by the bathroom. Every single one of them barreled right by Max toward her.

Max couldn’t see if she went back into the bathroom or if the ones in coach got her, all he knew was he had a clear path to the cockpit.

He quickly opened the bathroom door, grabbed the beverage cart, and formed a fast and weak barricade.

He knocked on the cockpit door. He only had a few seconds.

Come on , he thought. I’m not one of them. He waved his hands frantically at the camera. Shouting was useless, the pilot wouldn’t hear.

He kept looking over his shoulder. Some of them were making their way back.

At the point he felt doomed, the cockpit door opened, Max jumped in, and the pilot slammed it behind him.

“Thank you for opening the door,” Max said gratefully.

His feeling of safety was short lived.

The co-pilot, strapped to his seat, reached out, his mouth making that clucking sound as he bit at the air.

Max jumped back. “Holy shit!”

“Yeah,” the pilot replied, out of breath. “Any ideas?”

“Where’s your cockpit gun? Do you have one?”

“What! First, that’s murder. Two, you can’t fire that in here. If you compromise the shell of this plane we are going down.”

“I can take him out without compromising the cabin. Look at him,” Max argued. “This isn’t the man you knew hours ago, is it?”

“How can you be so callous?”

“Take a look out there. Look what others like him did to your passenger manifest, dude. Give me the gun.”

After some hesitation, the pilot pulled out the revolver.

After taking it, Max looked around the cockpit, saw a box of tissues, and shoved some in his ears. “Cover your ears,” Max instructed, then placed the revolver to the co-pilot’s head.

The co-pilot didn’t react to the weapon, though he still reached for the pilot.

“Why isn’t he going after you?” the pilot asked.

“I don’t know.” Max was certain firing that gun would have been easy, but even with the co-pilot looking as frightening as he did, and acting violently, it was hard. Max closed his eyes, said a prayer, double checked to make sure the revolver was flush against the forehead of the co-pilot, then turned slightly away and pulled the trigger.

In the closed in space, despite their clogged ears, they still rang.

The co-pilot slumped, and Max undid the belt. His dead body nearly rolled from the seat, Max caught him and placed him on the floor.

He stood, his body aching from his wound, and Max groaned.

“You hurt?” the pilot asked.

“I’m fine. It was before the flight.”

“I saw that.” He took his pilot’s seat and stared out.

“I’m not this cold.” Max moved closer. “This is just…what is happening, Captain?”