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BANGKOK Z

  Z Inferno, Book1

  By Stephen J. Carter

  Copyright 2013 Stephen J. Carter

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  Table of Contents

  1. Black and Fast

  2. Rahmani and Behrouz

  3. Zee’s

  4. Into the Wild

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  About the Author

  Other Titles

  Connect

  1 Black and Fast

  “I wish they’d just land!” Onteera said for the third time, her face pressed to the Airbus window. She had the seat next to mine.

  “Maybe the pilot is upset about those fires,” Fai on my right said.

  “I count eight down there,” Onteera added, referring to the deteriorating situation at the international airport below.

  We had seen fires in several parts of Bangkok on our flight in. The pilot had pulled the news channels and slotted in more movies before that, and they’d taken away our cell phones long before that, somewhere over the Pacific. We were all dealing with these strange events in our own way. Onteera and Fai were loud and in-your-face, Natt less so. She was sitting across the aisle, quiet and alone, like me I guess. Me, I’m Toey, flying home with three friends after my time in Toronto.

  As for that upset pilot – maybe his nerves took a turn for the worse. We suddenly lurched in a sad, drunken stagger to one side. A woman behind me screamed. The screaming was something I’d been expecting, I was surprised people held it together this long. She screamed just once, and shut-up real quick like her own voice scared her. The pilot overcompensated and we rolled over to the other side. Here we go, I thought. A guy two rows ahead was groaning, a pained born-of-tension sound. He’d been making weird noises off and on for a while.

  “I wish they’d just land!” Onteera announced again. Maybe she thought we might forget.

  There was something Natt said earlier, about the Odyssey, a book. She said it never gives the name of Odysseus’s ship. You don’t say? It’s just described as black and fast. Just then she leaned across the aisle, glancing again at all the people around us, most actually were sleeping, which struck me as strange. Then I promptly forgot about it.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said.

  I’d been thinking pretty much the same myself.

  At that moment our section’s steward, Luc, came running down the aisle from business class. Hours earlier he had poured much effort into getting to know Natt better, or trying to I should say. He went on and on about his stint as a French exchange intern at the old Bangkok airport. From my observation, Natt gives zero encouragement in that department. Nitro, meet glycerin. That hadn’t dampened old Luc’s enthusiasm in the slightest, which ordinarily many women would privately admire. Most men do wave the white flag and scuttle away at the first sign of rejection. I’m just saying. So I was surprised to see frisky Luc running our way. I leaned forward and looked Natt’s way – she rolled her eyes. Luc went sailing right on by. Natt laughed, half rose out of her seat, turned and watched his retreating back. I saw the glint in her eyes as she stood again and set off after him.

  Now, normally I’d say ‘you go, girl,’ but today wasn’t a normal day. And frankly I didn’t want Natt disappearing. I deftly stepped over Fai and followed her. We arrived in the back, back beyond the canteen station, to find Luc strapped into his fold-down steward’s seat, shivering and looking agitated.

  “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” Natt asked.

  He looked up and ignored her use of ‘Frai’, as he called her Thai attempts at francais. Sometimes I ignore his use of thancais, as I call his attempts at Thai.

  “Go to your seats!” he commanded. A poor choice of words, Luc. Natt’s hand shot out and took firm hold of his jugular.

  “Something’s wrong. Tell us!” she asked, reasonably enough.

  He tried to bat her hand away. Another poor choice. It just had the effect of tightening the grip about his throat. That’s O for two so far, Luc.

  “He needs his larynx to talk,” I suggested.

  She exhaled and loosened her grip.

  “Return to—”

  “You’re not listening,” Natt said.

  She was right about that.

  We could see in his eyes that his impatience with us battled his fear with whatever – and finally his warring emotions petered to a draw, and his shoulders slumped. Not a Gallic shrug, a slump. Natt released him.

  I half-expected him to start in berating us, but no, he surprised me.

  “We’re going down!” he rasped. “You both need to be strapped in.”

  He glanced over at the pair of fold-down seats on the other side.

  Just then the Airbus dropped several feet, and kept going. Uncanny, sure. We were bracing ourselves against the ceiling, but the Airbus’s down momentum cut out moments later, and we tumbled back down onto the floor, rolling into a crouched position. We crawled to the pair of seats and strapped ourselves in. I stole a glance at Luc. He looked worried.

  I leaned forward. “Luc, what’s happening?”

  “There’s something very wrong,” he said. “Not just here, everywhere.”

  “Like what?” Natt said. “Come on!”

  “Look around. How are your fellow passengers doing?”

  Natt shrugged. “Most are asleep. What of it?”

  “No. Some are asleep. Most are dead.” A regular Mr. Sunshine.

  Natt shook her head, leaning away from him.

  I unstrapped myself and quickly walked out into the aisle, checking the last couple rows. I shook the two sleepers seated on either side. They weren’t sleeping. They were dead. I reached over and tried the woman in the middle, she groggily half-awoke and turned away, closing her eyes again. I tried the next row – four dead, two asleep who couldn’t be woken. I looked over the seated forms on both sides further up the aisle.

  I couldn’t see a single passenger awake. But they had been screaming not long ago! – well, a few had. Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

  I ran ahead, suddenly worried about Fai and Onteera. I admit now the dread I felt. The aisle seemed to stretch out. It struck me how quiet it was, except for the noise of the struggling engines on each side. I kept running. Ten feet behind our row I called out to Fai, sounding loud in the Airbus’s static-laden silence. Her head whirled around, a startled expression on her face.

  “What? Why are you shouting, Toey?” she said, a laugh hitching her voice.

  “Why are both of you shouting?” Onteera said to my left.

  “Look, we’re in trouble,” I said quickly. “It’s safer in the back.”

  “What trouble?” Fai asked, looking around. “Things seem quiet to me.”

  I stood still, breathed deep, and gave them our preset code for ‘no debate, trust me, just do what I say.’ I spoke the two words.

  They glanced at each other, gathered up their stuff without a word and piled out into the aisle. Moments later we were back in the Airbus’s rear, strapping ourselves in.

  “What’s up?” Fai whispered.

  “Most of the passengers are dead,” I said.

  Fai smiled. “I get it. It sucks being us and—”

  “No, seriously. Most of the people on this plane are dead.”

  Luc leaned out. “It’s true.”

  Her smile faltered.

  Then we fell again. Believe me, falling from 30,000 to 20,000 feet in a single uninterrupted drawn-out swoop, like a “J” turne
d half-sideways, is right up there in the extreme sport category. Onteera, Fai, and Luc screamed blue murder. I heard nothing out of Natt.

  “What’s wrong with our pilot?” Onteera asked, as stating-the-obvious as ever.

  Luc shook his head. “Our zombie pilot.”

  We turned and looked at him.

  “I’m serious,” he countered. “All of the flight crew turned.”

  Natt looked ready to grab him again. Just then our so-undead pilot lurched into another real screamer of a “J” dive. He leveled off again, this time at about 8,000 feet.

  Then he dived again.

  I can’t speak for the others. I just closed my eyes and prayed.

  That first bounce-down on the runway was okay, but frankly just thinking about it now gives me a crick in my neck. The wheels crunched down – it felt like their housings just disintegrated. The engines roared and we bounced up. Then we dived again, this time our hellfire zombie pilot had his nose up and we slammed hard on what was left of the wheels. The engines had that weird mixed sound you get when reverse thrust is strangling a shrieking forward thrust. I lifted my head like I was moving through water and saw rows and rows of seats gyrating forwards and sideways like a slow-mo Sumatran necromancer. The engines’ low pitch thrust roared even louder and the Airbus’s nose slammed down on the tarmac. We skewed sideways and something must have caught our rear because we slid over the other way. Our wheels were surely gone by now – the airbus had that gliding-on-ice feeling you get just before a collision. Our fuselage was fishtailing across the pavement, our rear slid all the way around and we were tobogganing backwards down the runway. I looked out the small porthole window they have in the canteen stations, and saw bodies flying past outside. I craned my neck and just stared. People were deliberately running towards us outside, and then being plowed under by the Airbus.

  That was my first clue things could get a lot worse. Despite what Luc said about the flight crew, which of course I hadn’t believed, there was no denying this.

  Our forward momentum had almost bled out. A ripping noise brought my head back forward. The crack appeared about twenty rows ahead, in the walls on both sides. There was a sudden hot wind in my face, a glorious terrifying hell-sent blast of unfamiliar tropical air. I’d forgotten how sweet that could be. The deck underfoot further ahead was tearing open too, as if in solidarity with the ripping walls. We did one last half-fishtail as an encore before the Airbus broke apart like two ice-skaters coming out of a mistimed climax.

  I watched the other half, the forward half go skating away towards the grassy knoll of the runway, its nose high in the air and its torn-open end scraping along close to the pavement. Then that forward half was gone. Just gone.

  The gaping maw of our half swiveled sideways and we were rumbling along towards the terminal buildings. I looked up the aisle, our open end up high in the air, was canted about thirty degrees. Back here we were riding down low to the ground. More people kept coming towards us outside, and kept being plowed under, like red prairie wheat under a John Deere.

  We were really slowing now. We bounced up and down a few more times, several sleeping or dead passengers in that front row got thrown forward and went sailing right outside. One last heave sideways and our half slammed to a sullen stop. The heat hit like a hot air tsunami. In that moment it was almost peaceful. No grinding noise of airliner bodysurfing on asphalt. No engine roar.

  I looked over at Onteera. She was hunched over and making a low keening wail.

  Beyond her Fai gestured – time to leave.

  Sound suddenly poured in, the noise of air rushing to fill a vacuum, a background static buzz. Somehow it still felt loud.

  “Toey, come on!” Natt said, as she struggled to open the latch on the large rear door.

  Fai was giving Onteera a good shake. I stood up to give Natt a hand.

  “What are you doing?” Luc asked, his hand on Natt’s arm.

  She looked him up and down. “What I’m doing is getting out of here.”

  “Do you see what’s happening outside?”

  “Yeah, I see everyone running over to the other half of this plane.” She looked out the porthole again. “They’re climbing up inside.”

  “The undead attacking the dead,” Fai said behind us.

  “Let’s get over to that nearest terminal,” I said.

  “We’re safe where we are,” Luc protested. “They can’t climb in here.” He nodded to our open end, riding at least twenty feet high.

  “Once they discover us, they won’t leave,” I said quickly. “We’d be trapped.”

  I turned away and heaved with Natt on the latch. The door slid smoothly open. We pulled it back.

  “Come on, we’re going!” I said, and jumped the narrow gap to the asphalt. Natt and Fai followed, then Onteera.

  Luc stuck his head out and looked towards the plane’s other half. Strangely determined bodies were methodically climbing up over each other, rolling across into the open end. Inside was a nightmare vision out of Breughel. Luc shuddered and looked us over again, then stepped down.

  We set off on a low and silent jog towards the nearest building. It was one of a dozen long jetty gates that reached out from the long main terminal building. In happier times Airbuses and Boeings taxied right up to both sides of each jetty, like rows of sleek titanium piglets at a sow’s flank. Happier days, not today. Dark, abandoned airliners lay strewn about, like silent hulks in an online gamescape. A blood trail of ground-up body parts stretched into the distance behind our Airbus. We ran hunched over, strung out in single file. It was still strangely quiet except for an undercurrent of low throaty snarling from the plane’s front half.

  The Asian news channels in Toronto had said nothing about Bangkok airport being an undead war zone. All of this must have happened in the last 20 hours.

  Fai had climbed the stairs to the portable passenger walkway which normally accordioned out from the jetty to a newly parked airliner. She stood at the top and tried the door. No joy. I looked straight ahead to a baggage cart entryway beneath the walkway. I looked closer. Its door consisted of a row of wide vertical plastic strips. It still may have a locked inner door, but it was worth checking. Natt saw where I was looking.

  “Okay, I’m on it.” She loped ahead quickly.

  Fai had descended already, and came up fast.

  “Guess who’s coming to dinner,” she said, nodding behind her.

  The undead from the Airbus were coming our way.

  Fai tagged my arm and I turned and saw Natt waving at us from the baggage cart door. I pushed the others ahead, moving them off towards her, as I turned to watch the zombies behind.

  It wasn’t even clear they were pursuing us. They seemed to start out slow, jogging to one side while turning halfway round towards us. Were they struggling to read us, re-reading slowly, trying to figure out what we are? Then at a certain point, in a flash something coalesced, and they turned fully towards us and took off. Their speed was shocking. They self-released like a trained predator, smooth and sleek, where seconds before they had been halting, uncertain, almost shambling.

  I tore off, covering the last few steps to the entryway, ducking in as the muffled tread of dozens of feet grew loud behind me. As I slammed through the plastic strips Natt slid the steel door, on small wheels in a track, its last few inches till it clicked home.

  We stood in a huge baggage-handling area, breathing hard, looking around at several multi-level conveyer belts, overflowing with luggage that hadn’t left the system. There were dozens of motorized baggage trolleys all left in disarray, as were the airliners outside.

  That was when we saw what looked like walking outpatients from the world’s busiest morgue. It was another silent mob, much bigger this time, but moving with the same deceptive shambling gait as those outside. They stood a few hundred yards away.

  Fai laughed softly. “It looks like the Harlem shake.” Yes, Fai can be weird. “Shakers,” she added.
<
br />   “We need to get through this airport – fast,” I said.

  “And get a vehicle, and get our asses to Bangkok,” Natt added, her eyes following the highest conveyer belt, which stood empty about 30 feet up.

  “We could take a different exit – and return to the plane?” Luc suggested.

  “Maybe he’s right,” Onteera added.

  I glanced at Natt. “Let’s look for a way up to that belt.”

  “Over here,” Fai called.

  We ran over as she started up a steel ladder attached to the wall. It rose to the belt and carried on above to pass through a square hole in the ceiling.

  “I’ll check out the next level,” she called back as she climbed.

  I turned and watched the zombies coming across the large room. They were still smelling the air, or whatever it is they do, going slow in an awkward sideways prelude to the real attack. Again, they suddenly launched and came on, inhumanly fast, their gait smoothing out as they picked up speed. Onteera had leapt on the ladder’s lowest rung, and was scrambling out of reach. We tried to ignore the silent swelling mob below us.

  Fai’s head appeared above us.

  “Hey, I didn’t know shakers could climb!”

  Onteera took a frantic glance down, but the ladder stood empty beneath her.

  “Quit screwing around!” she called back.

  Fai gave her an innocent smile and the Obama finger. “They got plenty of those golf carts up here. I found two all juiced and good to go.”

  We climbed faster, going right up past the belt. Moments later we stood beside Fai in a very clean golf cart depot. There were nine carts parked along the room’s perimeter, all plugged into recharge stations.

  “Those yellow ones are fully charged.”

  “We should stock up,” Onteera said.

  Natt nodded slowly. “Who knows what conditions will be like out there.”

  I agreed.

  We piled into the carts, Natt and Luc in one, Fai, Onteera, and me in the other. Fai drove.

  Judging from a large display map we passed, the cart depot behind us was one of dozens. One stood at the base of each jetty, where they hooked into the interior wall of this long concourse. The distance to the next looked to be several hundred meters. We were in the southernmost section of the east concourse.

  Fai drove with her usual economy of movement. She glanced my way with a pixie smile as Onteera cursed, hastily reaching for a handhold as Fai banked into the turnabout at the next jetty.

  I smiled. Fai would joke even with a phi-am – a vengeful spirit that perches on your chest as you sleep. Onteera would likely complain to the same spirit. They had always been like this, since the day I met them at high school back in Surat Thani, ages ago.

  On our third turnaround Natt waved at us from the other cart, and pointed to a historical diorama (seriously?) in the duty-free section.

  They came alongside. “Weapons,” she said.

  Maybe Natt had a point. It struck me as strange we hadn’t seen any more of these zombie-like creatures since leaving the cart depot. I asked Fai to make a pit stop, and she veered left, pulling up opposite the duty-free.

  “Something brutal must have happened for everything to change so fast,” Natt said while deftly picking the lock on the back door into the diorama.

  “Yeah, 19 hours!” Fai said, lightly kicking the side of the building. “In 19 hours we went from total normalcy to a bug-out dying world where people are either dead or gone wild.”

  “Or gone undead,” Natt said quietly, stepping back.

  The door swung open and we walked in.

  “My life sucks,” Onteera said out of the blue. “And today sucks more than usual.” The world according to Onteera.

  We made our way down a corridor lined with supply shelves and came out into an open area. We just walked around, appreciating Thai history.

  “Let’s stick to what we know,” Natt said. “In this airport people are either dead or zombies. We’ve seen no one alive, not even on our flight – at the end they were all dead.”

  “Luc, what can you tell us?” I asked.

  “All commercial flights were grounded about sixteen hours ago,” he said. He didn’t prevaricate or qualify it, so he likely wasn’t lying.

  “Anything else?” Natt asked.

  “There was some sort of infection, a pandemic I guess. That’s all I know.”

  We stopped in front of the main diorama, it stood on a low proscenium stage.

  “Okay, let’s assume most major airports everywhere look about the same as this,” I said.

  We stood before Thai and Burmese warrior-mannequins depicting a battle from three centuries ago. The backdrop was almost better than the foreground figure action. It was a large projected overlap of filmed battle imagery, war-elephants in full regalia lumbered toward the soldiers right in front of us, while smoke swirled and toy-like rockets flew back and forth.

  “Did they have rockets back then?” Fai asked.

  “Who cares?” Onteera said.

  “This must be the battle that took back Chiang Mai,” Fai added.

  Onteera rolled her eyes.

  There were another four, smaller scenarios spread around the large room, two on each side. The ceiling lights were synchronized with the action in the background. It was an arrested moment in time, with the background action sort of lagging and leading that one moment. Lights! It sank in – there was still electricity here.

  “Luc, how much longer—?” I said, turning around.

  But Luc was up among the warrior-mannequins, his attention taken by the projected elephant charge. He turned and looked back at me.

  “Sorry, what is it?”

  “How much longer will the power stay on?”

  He hesitated. “Maybe another 36 hours.”

  “Generators?”

  “They’ll come on automatically.” He walked back towards us. “Power will be routed to some areas for another two days after that.”

  “Could we adjust it?” Natt added. “Change where and when power goes?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging. “Why?—I thought we were heading on to Bangkok?”

  Natt stepped up onto the stage and headed towards one of the mannequins.

  I stood next to Luc. “We’re leaving it open,” I said. “We could stay here awhile.”

  He shrugged and walked away towards one of the other dioramas.

  Natt stood by the leader of the forces of the Kingdom of Chiang Mai, whose weapons she had swiftly examined. She moved on to the next, and lifted a long tapered killing blade, like a bowie knife, from the second warrior’s hip scabbard.

  She smiled. “It’s real.”

  She walked on and retrieved similar blades from other mannequins.

  Onteera had joined Natt, and they walked along together.

  “The lances and arrows are just props,” Onteera said.

  They pulled out quite an array of slashing and stabbing instruments of war, good for no end of beheading and disemboweling.

  Luc walked back and stood by the diorama. “Are we fighting the Burmese army?” he asked.

  Natt gave him her look. “We’ll be attacked up close – what these weapons are designed for.”

  “We need guns,” he said. “Good at any range.”

  Natt smiled. “Sure, but we use what’s available.”

  “Well, normally guns aren’t available. But today is different.”

  “Where?”

  “In Operations. It’s the building out front beside the Novotel.”

  Natt glanced my way.

  “Let’s check it out.”

  Natt stepped down, the long killing knife scabbarded at her hip. She carried another four with belts and scabbards, and held one out to Luc.

  “For when you meet the Burmese army,” she said with a grin. He took it and slipped it on.

  I smiled as we all donned the knives.

  As they moved off towar
ds the carts I again approached one of the ancient Thai warriors. Joining my hands I proffered a wai and a silent prayer. I turned on my heel and went out to the others.

  2 Rahmani and Behrouz

  “Toey, there’s something you need to know,” Natt said as I climbed into the cart beside Fai.

  “There’s a business class lounge in the terminal,” Luc said quickly. “It has everything, and it’s like a fortress.”

  I nodded. “Lucky for us you didn’t stay on the Airbus.”

  He fished something out of his breast pocket – a card pass.

  “Keep it. Let’s get those guns first.”

  “Copy that,” he said.

  Natt smiled as they turned towards their cart.

  Fai and I had point as we set off for Operations. To get there we continued further into the airport’s inner core. We swung through another half-dozen jetties. There were more overturned luggage trolleys and corpses strewn about as we went along. But no undead. And it was starting to smell.

  We didn’t really know anything yet about these undead. We didn’t understand which dead would turn, or when, or why. Would the cemeteries start spewing them out? Or did the turning only hit those who died from the infection? I leaned towards the latter. I should talk to Natt. She says I’m better at building hypotheses and running with them. But she’s good at seeing where each one takes us, its outcomes and unintended effects, ruling in some and ruling out others. We both do strategy, but she does deep strategy. Such rigor came with a price though, or so she says. Luc was being more help than I’d expected. Frankly on the Airbus I thought for sure he’d crack when the shit hit the fan, which it hasn’t yet, not really. Things are going to get a whole lot worse, and soon. But I intend that we, the four of us, will survive. I let my friends down once before. Never again!

  We need Luc, and what he knows – what he knows and hasn’t told us. Here’s a for instance … if the turning was brought on by the pandemic, then what caused the pandemic?

  We veered as Fai turned into the main terminal. I saw we wouldn’t get much further in the golf carts. It was a bedlam of trolleys and suitcases, and more bodies. The floor was clogged with corpses, death made all too real, spread out in this airport canyon like an infernal landscape. This diorama is all too real. The smell hung here like a visible miasma.

  Fai leaned closer to me as she pulled to a stop on the periphery. “We need to be far away from here when they turn.” We shuddered.

  Natt stepped over and pointed to the row of check-in counters that stretched across the terminal. “Let’s go over there.”

  I nodded. It made sense. We could cross the terminal by staying behind the counters.

  She moved off, stepping between the bodies, Luc right behind her. At any moment one of these corpses could detonate – become undead. It might well have a cascade effect. It felt like a minefield.

  Fai touched my shoulder and nodded behind us off to one side. Opposite our counters was a VIP Express check-in – its doors had been closed when we arrived, I was sure. Now they stood ajar. Two figures stepped out and looked our way. They were clearly among the living. So far so good. One was enormous, a middle-aged man in a blood-spattered long flowing robe. He was watching us intently, a fixed expression on his bearded sallow face. Beside him a teenage boy stood in jeans and black T-shirt. The boy waved at us, with a look of disarming friendliness that couldn’t be more different from his companion’s. The big one stepped out among the corpses, distaste turned down the corners of his mouth. I swiveled and looked towards Natt. She, Luc, and Onteera stood motionless behind the counter, watching the newcomers. I motioned for her to stay where she was. She raised her eyebrows, but assented.

  I took a few steps towards the man and boy as they drew nearer, and surreptitiously lifted the blade a sliver out of my hip scabbard, feeling a bit ridiculous. The boy was smiling as they stopped opposite Fai and me.

  “We were so relieved to see your group,” the boy said. “I am Behrouz, and this is Imam Rahmani.”

  The Imam glanced at my knife, and said nothing.

  I nodded neutrally. I said even more nothing than Imam Rahmani. A silence settled between us, you could say. I looked at them with a frank curiosity, which was sincere enough. Fai stood at apparent ease beside me. In fact we both stood there in a state of hair-trigger tension. In my experience silence is a great teacher – it can often tell you more about people than a deluge of words. Also in my experience Westerners and Arabs don’t handle silence so well. They don’t like it. So I let it stretch out.

  “Like I said,” the boy resumed in his low voice, glancing over his shoulder at the doors they had just come through. “We’re glad to find you. Uh, could we—”

  “Don’t beg,” the Imam said suddenly, roughly grabbing the boy’s arm. He scowled at us.

  “Could we join your group?” the boy blurted.

  I didn’t trust this Imam Rahmani, not at all, but the kid seemed okay. He glanced over his shoulder again, and those doors suddenly flew open – bodies spilled out like worms out of a can. Rahmani dropped the boy’s arm and almost flew past me, very nimble on his feet for such a large man. We jogged fast after the Imam towards the check-in counter, stepping between bodies and trolleys. The zombies behind us were stumbling and falling over those still-dead corpses, rising and tripping repeatedly. We reached the counter and vaulted over, and set off at a right angle through the uncluttered counter area. There were floor-level baggage conveyor belts rearing up in our path every twenty feet that we had to clamber over, but otherwise we moved swiftly across the terminal.

  Rahmani had hold of young Behrouz’s arm and was haranguing the boy as they moved along with us. Our undead pursuers veered sideways, coming at us now on a diagonal across the terminal floor as we increased the distance between us. There were even more corpses and other objects in their path to trip over. In seconds the terminal had turned into bedlam.

  “What is your plan?” the Imam demanded as we pulled up at the end of the counter.

  Some instinct told me just to give him the truth.

  “We’re going to Operations,” I said. “It’s out front, inside the ramp turnaround.”

  Natt stepped close and nodded at the main entrance. “The doors have active security locks. We can’t disarm them here.”

  Fai grabbed my arm and pointed to an ATM alcove. Its outside door had an emergency crash-bar handle, and the inside glass separating wall stood open. We dashed across and ducked into the alcove. Rahmani had stumbled over a body, almost falling, and swore in Farsi as he clouted Behrouz. There was a black button by the glass partition at chest level. As the Imam passed by, I pushed the button. The partition slid out of the wall moving sideways towards a corpse that lay in its path. I lunged out, grabbed the feet and hauled the body out of the way – I leapt back and slid around the closing glass wall. A small warning alarm sounded as the inch-thick pane of glass clicked into place.

  Undead bodies immediately started beating on the glass wall above me. I stood up and backed out through the crash-bar door. Natt slipped a bank brochure between the doorjamb and the lock mechanism. The others stood outside looking in as a small army of undead gathered behind the glass, looking out.

  A day ago I was lying in bed in Toronto, without a worry in the world. And look at me now. At that moment I didn’t want to get up. I looked up at the faces of my friends.

  “Where’s Behrouz and the old guy?” I asked suddenly, and stood up.

  The others looked around, surprised.

  “They must have gone ahead to Operations,” Natt said.

  “I don’t trust that weasel,” Onteera said matter-of-factly.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “It’s down one level and over.”

  We started walking along the turnaround’s semi-circle. At both ends it swung and descended around to a long straight expressway that funneled traffic to and from the highway further north. Operations stood at one end in the large open area the turnaround
sectioned off.

  We looked over the ramp’s inner side and saw Behrouz and Rahmani, hemmed in by a mob of twenty undead. The two had retreated behind a low fence in a lot at the back of Operations. The zombie crowd had almost pushed down the fence by their sheer weight. Behrouz was on the building’s roof. He must have climbed over three plastic drums that stood in a loose one-sided pyramid against the wall.

  As the crowd pushed down the fence and poured across into the small lot, the Imam stepped up from one of the sagging lower drums to the next one up. One of the lower drums buckled under his weight. The whole precarious assembly trembled, wobbling away from the wall, and collapsed. The big man fell back with a shout of alarm, landing hard on his back on the oil-stained tarmac. He rolled over and tried to stand, but undead came at him from both sides. His long robe, torn and stained in places, flapped about his pale arms as he desperately flailed at his attackers. Two men as big as him came at him. Their open jaws – hurtling towards him in a vicious feral lunge – closed like jackhammers about his neck. There was something about how they moved. At the moment of attack all their zombie-like awkwardness was transformed into a panther-like predatory grace. I didn’t consciously think of that until later.

  A high-pitched shriek of pure terror ripped its way up out of Rahmani’s throat as the man’s blood pumped out and rose in a crescent arc, flooding his attackers’ faces. The blood drove the others into a snarling frenzy of blood-lust, and undead fell to rip and tear at his paunch and thighs. Within seconds his robe was a scarlet-drenched dripping horror. His screams reached a gurgling crescendo and then cut off abruptly. On the roof Behrouz had fallen to his knees, and turned away. I shook off the torpor of shock, ashamed of having stood rooted to the spot. It had happened with such visceral swiftness.

  “Around front,” Natt said to me, her voice strained, a croak.

  I nodded towards the access stairs that led down to Fire and Rescue, a building on this side of Operations, and we set off.

  At the bottom I turned to Fai and Luc. “Go to the front, get inside to the armory. Bring five pistols, and rifles, scoped rifles if they have them, out to the front. And wait there.”

  “And you?” Luc asked.

  An image of Rahmani on the ground, his blood spilling around him, rose in my mind. I pushed it back down. I thought instead of the truck parked beside the Operations annex. I had seen it from the ramp.

  “We’ll see you inside at the front,” I said. “Go!”

  Fai ran off, Luc following reluctantly.

  We ran low along the front of Fire and Rescue. The obscene sound of masticating undead jaws had died down. I listened harder, and there was no snarling, no auditory display at all, just a hard, lifeless, glutted silence. We arrived at the truck and climbed the cab to the roof. Onteera ran off to the front of Operations. I locked my hands, boosted Natt up, and she hauled me after her. We rolled over onto the roof. Behrouz knelt a short distance away, huddled over. He turned when he heard us, and came across quickly. We made our way back to the truck and ground level.

  3 Zee’s

  Onteera was waiting for us inside the front door. As the three of us trooped in she swung it closed. An awkward silence surrounded Behrouz. No one wanted to break that, so we left the kid alone. He wandered over to a large table off to one side where an array of weaponry was laid out – three Glocks, six Walther PPK’s, four rifles, two of those with scopes, and a small pile of ammunition boxes. I could see Natt was inclined to take it all, but too much can get you retired as easily as too little, sometimes more so.

  “There’s more ammo in back,” Luc said.

  “And there’s a couple of really huge …”

  “Rocket launchers,” Luc interjected.

  “Leave ‘em,” I said. I had an idea. “Do you think we can hotwire that truck outside?” I looked at Fai.

  She gave me a withering look and reached over to clap Behrouz on the shoulder. “We’ll load those in the truck later. You want to help me, kid?”

  He looked up at her and smiled.

  She was right, I realized. He just needs to be included, treated as one of us.

  “Thanks, Behrouz,” I said.

  “OK, there are thirteen pieces here,” I said, looking over the hardware on the table. “Pick out what you need, not what you want. And those scoped rifles, bring those for sure.”

  Onteera walked back into the room. “The zee’s have disbanded, my lovelies,” she said.

  “Zee’s?” Natt asked.

  “Zee – zombie.” She turned to me. “The video feed of the back lot shows them leaving. Except for two holdouts.”

  Behrouz turned away.

  “Which way did they go? Could you see?”

  “Back towards the terminal – the road that goes under the Arrivals ramp.”

  I nodded. “Natt, Luc, you two work out the safest route to this Business Lounge.”

  As they each grabbed a handgun, Fai and the kid went back to the storeroom.

  I opted for a Walther with a shoulder holster, and one of the rifles. As they suited up I went to check the video feed.

  The comms room occupied a good one-third of the ground floor. It was not for security, more for monitoring the airport’s many systems. It looked like the screens for this building were the only surveillance cams. Security was over past the Novotel, in a different building.

  Sure enough, the screen image for the back lot showed it was empty, except for the pool of blood around what was left of Imam Rahmani.

  I walked over to a separate section of three screens. They showed the two rescue stations on ground level under the ramp in front of Departures. I could see no undead anywhere there. But those that were here before went back that way, from what Onteera said. So who knows? The lounge Luc mentioned was over in the west Concourse, past the main terminal.

  It seemed that the undead – the zee’s – came off arriving flights, so for the present they’re concentrated in the east and south of Suvarnabhumi, in the concourse and jetties on that side, and upstairs in main Arrivals, but not in Departures. The north and west should be clear for a while. But gradually they’ll disperse everywhere, especially once the corpses start turning. I slammed the desk with my open palm.

  “We need more information,” I said aloud to the empty room, and the door opened. Natt and Luc looked in.

  “Toey, you ready?”

  I nodded and followed them out.

  I glanced at the truck as the six of us turned as a group the opposite way across the front of Operations.

  Natt caught me looking and smiled. “I considered it too,” she said.

  I sighed. It was tempting to just pile in and venture off the airport grounds entirely.

  “We’d be flying blind,” I said.

  She chuckled at my choice of metaphor. “Me and Luc can drive out and check the airport perimeter tomorrow,” she said.

  “Good idea. But let’s try and find out more first.” We jogged along east towards the other end of the turnaround.

  “Find out more – how?” she asked.

  By way of answer I turned to Luc. “Is there a computer section in this lounge?”

  “Of course.”

  We slowed to a walk crossing along the far side of the Aeronautical Radio Thailand building, and into the Terminal. But this time it was Departures. It was a ghost town.

  I turned back to Luc. “Sometimes business services transfer and store content in their hard drive from major business websites. So business executives have recent data if the internet fails, or is closed. Do they have that at—”

  Luc held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Toey. I have no idea.”

  “They probably do,” Behrouz said. “Or they might have even more.”

  I glanced at him, surprised.

  “In fact now most ISP’s data-mine, bundle, and download daily website history directly into customers’ drives – for important customers.”

  Natt turned to him. “Wait. Are you
saying we can read stored web pages, even though the web is down?”

  The boy nodded. “Up until the internet cut out. Nothing would have been stored after that of course.”

  I was impressed. “That’s good news. Thanks.”

  Natt said to me, “We can find out what happened!”

  I smiled.

  We turned and entered the east Concourse. It ran north–south, parallel to the west Concourse, a good distance away. We jogged along, our footfall echoing in the empty corridors.

  We arrived at the entrance to the Business Class lounge, a mahogany double door.

  Luc pulled out the card pass and placed it against the mag pad. The lock clicked softly, he depressed the latch, and the door swung open.

  We walked in like we owned the place.

  Passing reception we emerged into a low-ceilinged cavernous room. It made what was happening in the world outside seem unreal. The walls had a paneled lower half, and a billiards-green upper half. Muted lighting shone gently down from a ceiling groove along the room’s perimeter. We walked through into a long, sectioned dining room. Along one side were a row of buffet tables. Luc had worked in this very dining room before landing the airline gig. He gave us a quick tour of the kitchen, a smallish library, and the bizarre nap-cubicles and showers. We ended up in the computer section, where he turned on his heel and headed back towards the kitchen, with vague promises of a Gallic repast some time later.

  Natt and Behrouz dropped their gear on an empty table and we sat down at an elaborate work station. The system and monitor leapt to life, the screen reverting immediately to an offline menu. Behrouz pointed out the data backup icon, dropped into the local ISP field and scrolled through the file columns to a circle of icons, and clicked on one. A 30-day calendar window slid in from the side.

  “File storage broke off earlier today at 2 AM Bangkok time,” he said.

  I checked my watch. Almost sixteen hours ago.

  “Go back twenty-four hours before it went down,” I said.

  He cycled through three windows and pressed enter. The screen faded to black for a moment. It sprang to life, and next to the current time-cell in the bottom right there appeared a second one: 02:00:00.

  “This feels so weird,” Natt said.

  “For the computer, it’s now 2 AM two nights ago,” Behrouz said. “Any site you go to will appear exactly as it did then.”

  I looked at the screen, almost reluctant to begin surfing the world’s last day of normal, pre-pandemic online traffic. “New info will appear, real time, as it was added?”

  He nodded, and stood up. “I do want to know what happened,” he explained. “But … not right now.”

  “We understand,” I said.

  “You’ll tell me, later?”

  “We’ll tell everyone,” Natt said. “Over the dinner that Luc is slaving over, as we speak.”

  “Okay.” He smiled and wandered back towards the kitchen.

  As I watched him leave Natt laid her hand on my arm. “We aren’t your responsibility,” she said.

  “I know. I try to step back.”

  “But you can’t.”

  I shook my head. “It gives me a good feeling, looking out for all of you. You and Fai and Onteera.

  She pulled a face. “Only because you still blame yourself—”

  “I let you guys down.”

  “It was your job, Toey! If you’d gone against your orders—”

  “A lot of people would still be alive.”

  “You can’t know that. No one can.”

  I brought up the Drudge Report website.

  “You know I’m right,” she said, and sighed.

  I spent two years in Thai military intelligence. My job was basically a military version of internal affairs. I’d transfer in and out of units, get close to suspected cell members, and report back. They usually weren’t, of course. But to confirm that meant presenting a false front to those around me, constantly. It meant lying, constantly. Lying to friends, and then lying to real friends to cover the other lies. My job, really, was betraying friends. A mistaken report could lead to deaths. One of mine had. I knew it might, but I filed it anyway. Natt said if I hadn’t, even worse would have happened. I’ll never know. So I got out, which normally isn’t allowed. I blackmailed a regional Colonel, but I did get out.

  Then I came clean with Natt, Fai, and Onteera.

  So it felt good, now, to be looking out for them.

  I heard Natt inhale abruptly, in surprise. She was scrolling through a financial site’s headlines.

  “I can’t believe this!” she said.