want anyone in or out. Even in a plane. It had been bad enough getting shot at in the BMW. Getting shot at in a Cessna wouldn't end well. This one wasn't built to take bullets.
She turned toward the coast and dropped as low as she dared. She knew there were more power lines around, big ones that went at least a hundred fifty feet into the air. Not to mention the cell towers that reached up four or five hundred feet. Now it was Russian roulette with their flight path. Kelly squinted into the darkness. Something seemed wrong, but she couldn't put words to it. She was just about over the town line. She was headed northeast, out toward Cumberland and Yarmouth and Freeport.
That was when she figured out what it was. The lights in Cumberland were out. The plane wasn't high enough for her to see all the way to Richmond, but it looked like Yarmouth was the same way. It was like the power outage from the big ice storm back in '98. What lights there were looked like fires.
"Frank, I think we have a problem," said Kelly.
"What now?"
"The power's out. Not just in Calvert Falls, but all over. You see any lights up here?"
Frank looked out. He checked behind them, too, toward Portland. He told Todd and the kids, "All eyes outside the plane. Tell us if you see any electric lights. Street lights, that kind of thing"
"Sure," said Pete. He was shouting but that was because the plane was loud with the engine and prop noise. Pete was getting over the terror of the zombies and having fun in the plane. He was just bummed that he wasn't the one flying. He'd have to try and get another go later, if Kelly got tired and wanted to land somewhere and switch off.
Kelly dropped down a little lower to keep a low profile. No sense escaping hungry mouths to end up getting shot down. The terrain had small hills in it. She buzzed the treetops.
She saw a long, narrow clearing that cut straight through the woods in front of them, and that meant more power lines. She pitched up ever so slightly and the airplane started a slow climb. They went up at only a hundred fifty feet per minute, which was terrible.
They cleared the power lines by a more comfortable margin, but it was only a wingspan. Then Kelly dropped them back to treetop height. Her arms were cold. She felt her heart making shallow beats in her chest; her hands were clammy. She turned more east, toward the water. She could see the ocean in front of her. A dark line. Following the coast was crude but a good way to navigate in this neck of the woods. Ray had taught her that, too.
"Where to now?" Kelly shouted over the noise.
"How far can we get in this thing?" said Frank.
"I don't know. Looks like we might have half tanks, maybe more. A couple hundred miles, maybe."
Frank asked Todd, "Any lights on the ground yet?"
"No," said Todd. "Nothing. It's like the whole county went dark. But it's hard to tell from down here."
"Let's go for Boston," said Frank. "Maybe we can skim in real low and land outside the city. We'll be able to find out what's happening there."
The coast came up and now Kelly dropped the plane down even lower as she flew it above the water. She kept it at fifty feet, which took concentration. If the sky hadn't been glowing orange she wouldn't have been able to do this. She hugged the shore and the airspeed crept up to a hundred and ten knots. They were going flat out.
That was when Frank saw the flashes and knew this thing was bigger than he thought. The lights blinded him.
14
It happened over Portland. Both Frank and Kelly saw it from being in the front seats. The explosions were huge. Bright white flashes that stole their night vision.
Kelly swore and said, "Fuck. I can't see. Shit. I need to keep it level. Tell me if we're turning or descending."
The kids in back kept a lookout. Pete was looking over Kelly's shoulder at the attitude gyro in the panel and looking outside. No death spiral yet. Kelly had the Cessna trimmed out pretty good and they were keeping steady and level.
They flew like that for two long minutes before a night vision started to come back to Kelly a little bit at a time. At least she wasn't blind. She saw big balls of orange and yellow flame climbing into the sky over the Portland skyline.
Josie spoke up in the back. She said, "It's bad, huh?"
"Yeah it's bad," said Frank. "Looks like our friends in the armed forces decided to extend the cleanup operation." Frank felt a clenching in his gut. The fact that the power was out on the coast Portland was under attack meant that the outbreak had spread. There was no other explanation. And that was bad news for his daughter, Sarah. He had to get to her.
"Any telling how big this thing is?" said Todd.
"Can't say," said Frank. Now he couldn't help but worry for Sarah. She was up way north, toward T6-R8 where the girl's campground was on Matagamon lake. It was too far to fly there from where they were and there was no telling if she'd gotten news and evacuated in time. He hoped she had. Frank wasn't the kind of guy to panic but this was his daughter and he had to fight to keep his mind from going into full-on panic mode.
They flew down Casco Bay. Kelly was keeping an eye on the oil pressure gauge. It was near the bottom of the green arc and it looked like the needle was moving back and forth. She was pissed that she hadn't checked the oil before takeoff, that was something you were supposed to do every time, but she'd gotten a little rushed with the zombie attack. There wasn't much she could do now except get ready for a forced landing if the engine decided to throw a wrench into things.
"My family has a cabin up near Merrymeeting Lake, in New Hampshire," said Pete from the back seat. "We could hide out there. They have a freezer with food in it and they're on solar with batteries so it doesn't matter if the power's out there, too."
"Is there an airport nearby?" said Kelly. "I'm not doing a water landing. I'll probably drown us."
"No," said Pete. "Sorry. I thought maybe we could sorta crash it nice and slow in the shallow water by the house."
"Let me guess - you did that in the sim," said Kelly.
"It was an idea," said Pete. He was disappointed.
"Never mind," said Kelly. "I don't think we're going to New Hampshire. The plane might not make it that far." She looked at Frank for guidance but his expression had shifted and he wasn't helping. He was looking outside.
Kelly saw the oil temperature gauge reading higher. The needle was just past the upper limit of normal. And oil pressure was falling. Falling pressure and climbing temperature meant there was a leak. It also meant that their minutes in the air were numbered.
Kelly listened, trying to hear a change in the Lycoming engine. It was loud as hell but so far it was holding. She just didn't know for how long.
"Holy shit," said Todd. "Look over there." He pointed toward Portland again. There were white lights streaking downward from the sky.
Frank looked over. The light looked like shooting stars but Frank knew better. They were missiles. He'd seen them in action before. If the Air Force was in on it, lobbing missiles from on high, that meant bad things The only question was the payload. They'd hit any second.
"Do you really think it spread? The infection?" said Kelly.
"You mean the zombie thing? It looks like it," said Frank. He kept an eye on the white lights streaking downward. Now their speed seemed to be increasing, which meant the hit was coming. "Can you land us on the beach over there?" He pointed toward a little island just off the left wing. There was a small strip of sand by some rocks.
"Why?" said Kelly. "I might crack us up doing it. And we'll never fly off."
"Don't look over the city," said Frank. "Just land the plane. I think someone means business."
15
Kelly banked the plane and got them turned for a downwind landing in the sand. It was the shortest patch of earth she'd ever tried to land on. She extended the flaps but forty-five knots indicated over a sliver of beach still felt too fast. They came in a little high over the rocks and then when the wheels hit the sand she thought they were going to hit the rocks in front of them at the
other end of the beach.
The sand was wet. The airplane wheels sank in and the plane stopped in less than two hundred feet. They all lurched forward with the deceleration and Kelly reached down and cut the power with the Master switch. She exhaled. She couldn't believe that she'd landed them here. It was some damn good flying for a rusty student pilot. She looked at Frank. "What now?"
"We get out," he said.
That was when the first of the missiles hit. Frank and the rest of them couldn't see it from their side of the island, but it streaked into downtown Portland, initiating its detonation sequence at an altitude of five hundred feet AGL directly over the Civic Center. The other two missiles went for Augusta and Bangor and hit seconds later.
The missiles were low-yield tactical nukes designed for neutralizing small towns and cities. This was their first operational deployment, in a domestic security operation. With some changes to the timing and delivery vehicle, they could also be used for busting deep bunkers. With an atmospheric low-level detonation like they were doing here, the missiles had a guaranteed kill-radius of three miles. They created a fireball that consumed everything in its path. Outside the kill zone, there was the fallout danger. But that was harder to predict. It depended on winds and weather.
The President had authorized the strike himself, announcing it to the American People from the Oval Office on network TV and a streaming Internet feed on whitehouse.gov. He'd said