“Chase,” Dave said. His voice worked at pulling me out of my internal mental melee and back into our reality.

“I’m ready. I’m good. I’ll go first,” I said.

I didn’t need to go around that corner first, though. The Humvee pulled ahead. They must have realized we were looking for another way into the hangar, and were making sure the back of the building had clear access, should there be a second door.

The Humvee stopped behind the building.

Dave and I rounded the corner. “A door,” he said.

“It better not be locked.” We stayed close to the building.

“Smell that?” Dave said. He looked back over his shoulder toward the east. “Fire somewhere.”

“I do. Guessing a lot of the country is burning right about now,” I said. “The dry leaves piled up everywhere --people in homes with no furnace starting small fires indoors to keep warm. There are going to be a lot of fires.”  A lot of deaths. Smoke, and CO poisoning. We stood at the door. “You gonna try it?”

Dave wrapped his hands on the knob and twisted. We both heard the soft release-click. Unlocked. He looked at me. I nodded, signaling he should pull it open when he was ready.

He silently mouthed, One, two, three.

I stood in front of the doorway, machete in a two-handed grip, the blade pointed at the asphalt.

The door stood open.

It was so windy out that it was difficult to hear if there was any movement inside the hangar. There could be a party inside, and I wasn’t hearing it. “I’m going in,” I said.

“I’m right behind you.”

I stepped inside slowly, cautiously, looking left and right. There were no windows, not even on the doors. It was great to get out of the wind. Once inside, the noise from that wind subsided some. I listened hard for any sound of movement. It was too dark to see much of anything, and somehow, the room still felt large and foreboding. It reminded me of the time Allison and I drove through West Virginia on our way to Georgia. It had been the middle of the night and the road was full of twisted turns and curves and tunnels. You couldn’t see anything except what lay dead-ahead in the shallow beam of the car’s headlights. The Allegheny Mountains hugged every stretch of road, and despite a splash of light now and then from vehicles headed in the opposite direction, it was a pitch black that consumed everything and yet, you just sensed the size and greatness of the mountain range. They were a clear and obvious presence, both inducing a level of fear and comfort, perhaps because they have stood for centuries hidden at night by the nothingness of darkness.

I stepped to the left, backed up against the wall and felt around for a light switch. “Check along the wall by you for a light,” I said.

Somewhere, something fell over and rolled. The noise echoed and was loud enough that I jumped and banged my shoulder into the wall. It sounded hollow, like an empty paint can, or some kind of tin bucket. “Dave?” I said, and hoped he’d knocked something over.

“Wasn’t me. Guessing it wasn’t you, then?”

“No, not me. Shit.” It’s what I feared. My hand ran up and down the wall with a bit more urgency. There had to be a switch. Rooms all over the world kept light switches on the wall by a door. It was common fucking sense, to be expected. And yet, I couldn’t find a switch.

Lights came on, slowly, the long fluorescents buzzed and flickered, running along the walls and then finally lit the whole place with blinding brilliance.

I saw it and with no time to kill, dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way. The zombie was fast and lunged at me. Before I could get back up onto my feet, it was on me, knocked the machete from my hands and out of reach. It growled and grunted as it pinned me down.

Most of the thing’s lower lip was gone. The flesh peeled away and hung from the bottom of his chin. A steady flow of thick, slow oozing black blood drooled from the corners of its severed mouth. Patches of the thing’s hair were chunked away from its skull. One swollen eye was shut, the lid looked blistered as if severely burned. The days of zombie life had not been kind to this creature. If I got my way, things would get a lot worse.

At this angle, though, with me on my back and the freaking thing straddling me, I could not reach the machete. Only thing I could do was unclip the sheath on my hip and pull the hunting knife free. I shouted over and over, “Dave!”

I heard a struggle coming from somewhere else in the room. Sound echoed and carried and bounced around and against the walls like a fucking whacked out racquetball.

I took hold of the zombie’s shirt collar and pulled him down toward me. As I brought my other arm up fast, I punched the blade into the thing’s ear. Something popped and before it fell off me, an eyeball rolled free from the left socket.

I managed to get onto my knees and stand up. I gasped, a hand over my stomach and bent forward. There was no time to catch my breath. Dave was pinned on the floor and using a forearm to keep from being bitten. I scraped up the machete as I ran toward them. I took a final step closer and swung the blade around. Wasn’t looking to just make it to first base with that swing. I wanted a home run and aimed for the fences. The zombie’s head did not launch toward the hangar’s ceiling the way I’d envisioned, but fell away from the shoulders and bounced twice before it skidded to a stop on the cement flooring.

Dave pushed the remaining torso to the side. More of that thick, black blood oozed from this zombie’s neck and slowly drained from the corpse the way maple syrup pours onto pancakes. “Fuck! He smells,” Dave said. “These things seem like they’re rotting away.”

I kicked the corpse, the finally dead corpse, and offered a hand to Dave. “At least it was worth it,” I said.

“Worth it, how,” he said.

“Look,” I said.

Behind me was a twin engine plane. It filled a good portion of the front of the hangar.

“How do we fuel one of these things up?”

I shook my head. “I guess we need Palmeri now.”

As I walked toward the door we’d just entered, the Humvee horn blared.

I looked back at Dave.

His eyes were open wide. Horn could only mean one thing…

Chapter Three

The Humvee’s horn screamed like a bass siren. Palmeri wasn’t just honking it, she was laying on it.

I ran for the door, reached it in four steps and shielded my eyes from the Humvee headlights. The passenger door on the Humvee flew open. “Get back in the truck! Come on, get in!” Erway waved at Dave and me with frantic hand gestures.

“Dave!” I said.

“I hear it,” he said. “Zombies?”

“Gotta be!” We exited the hangar. I couldn’t see what caused the excitement.

“The plane,” Dave said. He pointed back from where we’d come out of, and waved it away, as if saying, ah forgiddaboudit.

I climbed into the Humvee. “There’s a plane inside.”

“Zombies coming this way,” Charlene said. She was looking out the side window after Dave got in and shut the door. “I mean, a lot of zombies are coming right at us.”

As soon as Dave was inside and the door closed, Palmeri gave the vehicle gas. Tires protested on pavement as she cut the wheel one way, then the other to get around the hangar. “They came out of nowhere!”

Then I saw them.

They must have come from the woods. They ran at us. Crazed looking. Some wore military clothing. Others were in flannel and hunting camo. Others were flat out naked, or wearing such torn and tattered clothing that nothing was identifiable.

“Holy shit,” Dave said.

“Now what? We don’t want to just leave the plane,” I said.

“We don’t even know if it’s fueled, or if it’s a plane I can fly,” Palmeri said.