The zombie was by a red toolbox on wheels. It held a wrench in one hand. It didn’t look so much like a weapon as it did a tool, like the thing wanted to get back to work and make repairs on the plane.

What repairs did the plane need?

Then the mechanic-zombie charged. I raised my machete and used a sweep of my arm to push Charlene behind me before taking several steps forward. It came at me fast. I held the handle with two hands and let out a roar as I chopped at its head.

The blade buried itself more than an inch into the thing’s forehead and face, parting the bridge of its nose nearly in half. Its eyes rolled upward, as a thick black tongue protruded from the corner torn flesh of its mouth.

“Check around, and make sure this was the only one,” I said. The hangar didn’t have rooms. It was basically big, and empty, except for the large plane.

“Clear,” Charlene said, she held onto her machete with two hands. “I don’t see anymore.”

We encircled Palmeri, then, and waited.

“Well?” Sues said, finally. “Is it something you can fly?”

Palmeri nodded and walked from the back of the plane around to the front, and back again. The rest of us stood still, silent, and continued waiting.

“I’ve not flown one of these.” Palmeri pointed at the plane. “However, I have flown twin propeller planes before. Just not one like this, this…big.”

“So we’re driving?” Allison held onto Charlene’s hand. I saw how white their knuckles were. Alley must have been squeezing the hell out of my daughter.

“This is a cargo plane, but it can seat up to thirty people.” Palmeri moved a four-step ladder close to the door on the side of the plane. “With a full tank of gas, she’ll take us, three, three hundred and fifty miles?”

“Mexico is a lot further than that,” Sues said.

“It’s a three hundred mile head start. Will put us somewhere in, I don’t know exactly, like southern New York, or Pennsylvania?” Dave said. “How long will a flight like that take?”

“We should hit Pennsylvania for sure. And In this? It’ll take roughly a few hours. Figure we can cruise a little over two hundred miles an hour. Thing is, the plane’s not pressurized.” Palmeri climbed the steps and opened the side door.

“What’s that? I mean, what’s that mean?” Allison shook her head, let go of my daughter and walked toward the steps.

“It means the back door on this baby doesn’t seal right. Going to be a little loud and a little cold back there. Wasn’t exactly built for luxury. It’s a nice plane, though. Solid. It’s about fifty-eight feet long, with a seventy-four foot wingspan.” Palmeri sounded like she might be talking to herself, going over what she knew, and what she thought she might need to know to about flying this plane. She disappeared inside the plane.

“Chase, I don’t like this. Any of it. She doesn’t know how to fly this. She admitted it. She said she’d never flown a plane this big. What did she tell me in the truck, huh? She said if she couldn’t fly it, she wouldn’t. Sounds to me like she can’t fly it, so we shouldn’t risk it.”

“Give her a minute,” I said. “Let her look around, take a peek at the controls. If she sounds hesitant, we’ll drive.”

“We will? You promise? Because right now, I look like the crazy one.”

“You don’t look crazy. You look scared. It’s okay to be scared.”

“Promise me. Just say it. Say you promise we’ll drive if she doesn’t sound like she knows what she’s doing.”

“I promise.”

Charlene grunted and walked away.

Erway appeared impatient. She held onto her AK and walked around the plane. “I don’t think we can start this thing up in here.”

“We can’t.” Palmeri was at the doorway. “See that buggy? Once we open the hangar doors, it will pull us out of the hangar toward the runway. Once outside, we can fire up the engines.”

“Propellers,” Allison said.

“Can you fly it?” Sues said.

“I can. I’m going to need someone up front with me, assisting with the controls. It’s a two-pilot job,” she said.

Allison stared at me. I couldn’t say anything. Palmeri sounded confident.

“Shotgun,” Erway said.

Palmeri came down the stairs. She took a thick braided rope with a hook from the back of the buggy and hooked it onto the front of the plane. “Going to need to open the hangar doors and for someone to drive this thing.”

We all needed to take turns. It was the one thing that kept coming around. Just like there were a million things to volunteer for before now, there will be this instance, and then a million more after. Each time the threat of danger and dying would be possible, if not probable and prevalent.

“I’ve got it,” Sues said, and raised her hand like she was about to answer a question.

Dave grabbed her arm. She shrugged out of his hold. “Sues,” he said.

“I can’t sit anymore,” she said. “I can’t just be on the sidelines. We’re a family. Chase said so more than once. And we need to take turns doing these crazy things. We need to. This, driving that buggy and pulling this plane out of the hangar, this is my crazy thing I get to do. You need to let me, Dave. I need to do this.”

Palmeri pointed. “Dave, Chase, move those blocks set in front of and behind the wheels. Everyone else, get on the plane.”

“She’ll be okay,” I said to Dave.

“I don’t like this.” He sounded like Allison. “I’m opening the hangar door. She can pull the plane out, but I’m not getting on until she does.”

“I’m not arguing. That’s what you should do. It’s what I’d do.” I smiled.

“You would?”

“Yes. If it were Allison, it’s what I’d do. Same thing.”

“Okay. Good. Go get on the plane. We got this,” Dave said.

I moved the rolling steps out of the way, kicked it toward the hangar wall and hoisted myself up and into the plane.

“Where’s Dave?” Allison stood next to my daughter. They were still hand holding.

I’d never been inside a plane like this. Saw them in movies. To my right were roughly twenty fold-down seats, ten on each side of the fuselage. “Is this where we sit?”

“Did you see them?” Allison pointed. “Those don’t look safe to sit in at a picnic, much less going three hundred miles an hour thirty-thousand feet in the sky.”

“I think she said we’ll go around two hundred miles an hour,” my daughter said.

“Char,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“Why don’t you two go get buckled in,” I said.

“Wait. Dave. Where’s Dave?” Allison said.

“He’s going to open the hangar door for Sues,” I said. “Go buckle in.”

On the left was the door to the cockpit. I opened it. There was room to walk in, but then the pilot and co-pilot needed to climb up and over the center console to slide into their seats. Erway and Palmeri were packed in tight.

“We set in back,” Erway said.

“Seems like it.” I stared out the front window. Dave was just about to pull open the hangar doors. Palmeri had maps unfolded in front of her. “What are you working on?”

“Flight plan. GPS is down. Would have been able to plug in to in an airport, or something. Doing it old school. Charting our course. Good thing is, I don’t expect too much company in the sky. Think we’re going to have it pretty much to ourselves,” Palmeri said.

The hangar door was open all the way, and now Dave ran the hook from the back of the buggy toward the front of the plane. I lost sight of him.

The plane rocked forward. I held onto the cockpit walls for balance, to keep from falling backward. “We’re really doing this?”

“We are.” Palmeri held the W-shaped control wheel between her thighs, a hand on each grip.

We were slowly wheeled out of the hangar. Sues led us cautiously toward the runway. “That enough runway to get us out of here?”

“Has to be. They landed this thing here, right?” Palmeri said.

I shook my head. “Really doesn’t look long enough.”

Palmeri didn’t say a word. Possibly she agreed, and if she did so out loud, knew it would make everyone that much more apprehensive about flying.