Chapter Two
The Lakes Country
Logan had aged in the past few weeks and months. His hair had turned more silver, his beard more grey, and his eyes had dropped by just a big enough fraction to make the shadows under them noticeable. He didn't walk like he used to either. He used to sway his shoulders around like he owned any place he found himself in. There was a tiny stagger in his every step now, not so much a lack of confidence in his stride, but almost an imperceptible weight on his shoulders, driving him down into the dirt.
But he was still the same man. Through and through. There was just something new about him. Something that had changed or altered that made him more serious, less hostile but even more upsettingly, more distant than ever before.
Lizzie could hardly talk, and could never pass judgment. She had been distant with him too. Labored by the pressure of the new world they were in. Maintaining friendships now was both harder and easier at the same time though. They didn't have to talk all of the time, or catch lunch together, or have a wine night, just to stay friends. An unspoken bond locked them together instead. Maybe just a plain and simple survival instinct to band together.
She had lost a few pounds too, that much was for sure. Her belt was pretty much down to its last notch and her once perked cheeks and lips had sagged but only by a fraction of an inch. One thing they hadn't been short of in DC was food.
But it was a shame that it was so strictly rationed by Cygan and his men. It was sensible at the time. They were locked away in the lost Capital of the Free World, with no reason to think things were ever going to change. But now that the stores were lost, at the wrong end of a zombie horde and they were half a world away, Lizzie couldn't help but feel a slight amount of bitterness that they hadn't gorged on the President's hidden caches of food.
Logan had been leading the two of them in a quick-step march through what was left of the night. He was, of course, heading in the direction of the plane crash. Trying to follow the path of its final moments in the hope that the way might lead him to Jack. A stony path with patches of dead grass followed the stream so neatly that at times the two merged together in the bleakness of the dying night.
She followed him at his pace, just like she always had. The rocks crunched with the weight of their boots but that was really the only sound. Even the stream was quiet, at least it became imperceptibly more quiet the further they followed it up into the mountains and hills. The trickling water just blended into the night like a white noise machine.
Lizzie, if she missed anything at all from the world as she had know it, missed coffee. She was no morning person. Less so now the world had been crashing to an unromantic end. Logan hadn't said a word for the whole time they had been walking, and that was just what she wanted. She needed time to mourn Jack but she had to do it in her own way. She always had thought of herself as a loner, even though she wasn't deep down. She just slowly, as many people do, learned to deal with things in her own way. Having Jack ripped away from her like this was just another of those things.
It was cold. The wind wasn't violent but persistent and piercing. It wasn't strong enough to blow open the edges of her strong green shirt, which she had tucked into her belt for as much resistance to the cold as she could manage, but slow and piercing enough to cut right down to her bones. She wrapped her arms tightly around her thinning and protruding shoulder blades and shivered quietly to herself. She hadn't been looking for a reaction out of Logan though.
'I should have grabbed for my coat...' Logan never really knew what to say. That's probably why they worked so well together. He had left his leather jacket on the plane. The one with the stars on the shoulder that he had taken from his old office at the WDC so many months ago. He would have to grab it once he got back to the plane. If they could ever find the thing in this wilderness.
'I think you were too busy trying to find a parachute weren't you?' She chuckled. Even if it was just to humor him. It broke the ice though, Logan slowed to her side and wrapped his arm around her. Not in a way that gave any sort of impression of love or protection, but as you might to a fallen comrade to lend them some weight.
'Where are we?' She asked after another short but intense silence. 'Russia... Holland maybe?' She asked again before giving him the chance to reply.
'No.' He said plain and simple to her puzzled look. 'Not in the air for long enough... we might have just about grazed western Europe. Though we can't be sure the flight path he had taken was the right one. No more computer assisted flight remember?' Logan dared to cast her some kind of backwards triumphant look but it was short lived. She hadn't bought it. He was just pretending like he knew it all. She just looked at him cock eyed, which just about crossed the line between condescension and resentment. He let it linger but finally capitulated. 'There was a sign back at the landing zone.' He smiled confidently to himself. 'It was written in English.'
'Always did want to visit...' The conversation died off as Logan stepped up his pace again. There really was no point in filling an awkward silence with more pointless words. They were both just covering up the bigger issue. Both of them were going to miss Jack. And it hadn't sunk in yet that he was gone.
The shapes in the river had caught her eye some time ago. Logan's quick-step march had devolved into a shuffle under the continued strain of the increased incline of the path. The air slowly became thinner as the light grew stronger. She had dismissed them as a figment of her imagination. She protested the issue against her own better senses. She tried to just look ahead and not focus on them. But sheer curiosity kept her eyes darting back.
But she couldn't have been seeing things. Her imagination was none existent for starters and she prided herself on her acute ability to recognize detail. She was a New York City Cop after all. But sooner or later she had to square with the facts. There were shapes in the water. She begged her mind to be convinced they were rocks, and not people.
'Logan?' She couldn't take it anymore and finally broke the silence of their march. She raced to him and took him firmly by the shoulder. In a fit that might have looked like a child having a nightmare she forced him to face the water but he resisted her by turning away with an impossibly strong stance.
'I know.' Is all he said. Her face dropped and she took a few moments to focus her eyes in the ever emerging light. There really were flailing bodies inside of the water. But, predictably, they weren't fully dead.
'Where did they come from?' She had taken a tight hold on Logan's hand and wouldn't let him go until he looked at them. She would have liked to shoot them. To put them out of a torturous miserable existence as zombies. But they had no more ammo than whatever was left in his ageing Desert Eagle handguns. Those ones, painted in gold, that he dragged everywhere with him as a last token to some lost existence of his.
'Jack said he clipped another plane in mid flight...' Logan tightened his grip around her fingers. 'He didn't say it was a passenger jet but did say he hoped there weren't many people on board.' Logan, despite what everyone who ever met him inevitably concluded, did not have all of the answers. Lizzie gasped but didn't reply.
'I didn't see it go down...' Logan cast his eyes around the opening sky. The blues of dawn percolated through the odd dark and rainy cloud. The sheer scale of the deep glaciated valley came hurtling into view. Finding either of the planes in an environment like this was going to be hard.
'I guess it must have though.' Lizzie locked eyes with one of the three trapped zombies, pulled and held down by what must have been a deceptively strong current running under the surface. Even beneath the icy cold water it could still see her. But it could only thrash towards her in need of her flesh. It was trapped.
It was young. She even thought of the zombie as an "it". It was impersonal. If she gave it a gender, worse still a name, it would hurt, so she didn't. Logan had moved on. They weren't harming anyone, nor did it look as though they could, so he wasn't going to waste any time just staring at them like they were fish
in a sea life center. He just wanted to find the plane. Time might be everything if Jack still needed their help.
He didn't entertain the fancy that he might still be alive for long. He was probably walking all this way to burry his friend. Not save him. They walked longer in silence. The debris of one of the planes had made it into the thinning stream too. Parts of a white colored fuselage lay clumsily atop a jagged rock, or hung from a rock face atop a nearby hill.
Their transport plane, in truest military fashion, was green. So those bits in the stream had to be parts of the civilian craft that Jack had hit. Logan was never going to stop until he found the plane, and hopefully something left of his friend to at least bury, so there was no point in asking for a rest break. Not that she needed one.
He must have been chilled to the bone too. His stained combat trousers were still soggy from their river plunge, even though the growing morning sun was pleasantly warm, it didn't do much to dry them after the coldness of the night that came before it. The desert pattern he wore had faded into near sandy nothingness. His shirt, the same sandy color, was soaked right through. It was the same, buttons down the middle, style that Lizzie wore. The pace had taken its toll on him though because he had sweated through most of it.
Lizzie was by that time riding an emotional roller coaster. Of course she had feelings for Jack. Anyone could see that. From the second he blasted that stupid fire engine of his into her life she had been impressed by him. Even if she had been irritatingly critical of his stronger love for Jack Daniels.
A thought hit her, which was both cruel and optimistic. She hated the fact that the potential death of another person, if the price for it was Jack's safety, was exciting to her. Confused by the curious mix of elation and self hate, she put the question to Logan.
'Jack said he was about to try something... right there at the end.' She didn't fully know how or where to start. The thought was cloudy enough to her, so trying to express it to anyone else was even more so difficult. She had been rocked awake by the plane crash and could only recall bits of a fragmented, dream like conversation.
'He probably meant he was going to try to crash land a Hercules Transport plane while downing an entire bottle of Bourbon at the same time.' For anyone who didn't know James Logan, that would have come across as a horrible jibe at the recent dead. But for James Logan, that passed as humor. Even though he probably was right, she persisted with the question.
'The co-pilot.' She stopped him with an almost inaudible sigh and click of her tongue. 'Maybe one of them jumped?' To be fair to Lizzie, she had a point. As they fought torridly through the airport at DC against a whole mess of zombies, Jack had run into an air force polit. Didn't even catch his name, but dragged him on nonetheless. Hell, in fact, Jack probably saved his life.
'You now that drunk as well as I do.' Logan protested. He didn't mean to stamp on her hope out of cruelly. Even though he was terrible at reading his own emotions, and even worse at showing them, he was just a realist and a pragmatist. That's what years in the Air Force, working for ass holes like John Cygan, had done to him. Its what commanding the WDC (Weaponised Disease Control) had done to him too.
'If that was what he meant by saying he was going to try something... he would have thrown that kid from the plane with his bare hands before letting someone die in his place.' And with the final word he spoke, her heart sunk. Because he was right. As always. Jack would never let anyone die. No matter how well he knew the other person or not. That's just who he was.
'There.' Logan shouted and pointed up to a high point on the terrain ahead of them. They had been walking all of the morning. The sun was high in the sky, beating down upon them incessantly. She could just make out the thin outline of a cracked plane atop the tallest mountain in the distance. To call them mountains by American or Continental standards seemed silly. It was walk able in less than a morning. No climbing needed at all.
'There haven't been any bodies in the water for a while.' Lizzie pointed out. She was gasping for a drink. Everyone they met seemed drawn to her voice. It was somehow commanding, nurturing, trustworthy and calm at the same time. Just croaky enough to be attractive. The water was probably safe to drink now they were far enough up stream. Logan, too out of breath to answer, nodded to her and waved his arm to the nearby body of water. Once upon a time she might have turned up her nose at the thought of drinking from a stream. But such is life now.
They both took their fill and had to admit they felt far stronger for it. They could only really hope that nothing had died in the water even further upstream. It didn't look like it. Ahead the stream turned into a cascading waterfall that fell from one of the smaller peaks. It had probably been left untouched over the zombie apocalypse. Disease, at least anything other than the zombie virus, was simply something they had no time to worry about anymore.
With their fill of fresh, and hopefully clean water, they felt a surge of life and ability back in their feet. Logan even managed a jog as he climbed the steep rolling incline to the point he had seen the cracked fuselage of the broken plane ahead.
The mountain track changed slowly from grassy inclines to sheer rocky steps. But he was running on adrenaline, and Lizzie followed on nothing more than discipline, and nothing was slowing them down. He could feel his heart thundering inside of his chest. His ribs rattled with each beat and the oxygen surged into his mouth with each labored breath.
Rest stops weren't an option. The clock was ticking. At least in Logan's mind. It reminded Lizzie of her basic training, Logan of his countless warzones, but they were too strong to give up or give in short of their objective. All Logan could think of, and that kind of thought had been a driving force throughout his life, was that he might be too late. What if he arrived just as Jack drew his last breath? What if he died simply because Logan wasn't fast enough on his feet?
That was the General that he used to be. The man he used to be and indeed the man he had to be again if the two of them were at any hope of surviving the end of the world. What if the world died simply because Logan wasn't fast enough to save it?
Lizzie had taken to calling that attitude his superman complex. Because there was no guarantee that he was going to be able to save it at all. Fast or not. Logan would simply reply; "At least I can be fast."
The sun had moved across most of the valley before he mounted the last of the steep rocky steps and made for the wreckage. His breathing was irregular and labored by this point. His head was spinning too. Half from the exertion of the run and half from the thinning oxygen.
Lizzie dropped to her knees in similar exhaustion but tried to shout for Jack. All she managed was a feint whimper that had no substance to it. Logan, driven by his own demanding madness, pushed on. The whole of the plane was stretched out across the peak of the mountain, cracked like the buried spine of a skeleton.
It followed the rifts and contours of the land. One wing had slammed against a rocky face lower down on the mountain's side, the other was sprawled out across a slightly dipped bowl in the land, right in his way. The cockpit was grounded into the dirt directly ahead.
He waited for Lizzie to catch up, but not for long. He half dragged her across the outstretched and broken limb of the mammoth size aircraft and darted into the superstructure of the cabin via a blown off doorway. The first thing he saw was his trademark leather jacket. He pulled it on after making sure all was clear. It was dark brown in color and velvet like to the touch.
Even Logan hated his military mind. He hated his pragmatism and how cold it must make him look. But the compulsion was stronger than any will to fight it. He drew his weapons in suspicion. Jack was probably dead. Probably nothing left of his body to identify him. But these were strong planes. Built like tanks. By the pattern of the breaks on the fuselage of the plane, Logan quickly figured he had ground the tale of the thing into the Earth first, meaning the cockpit hit last, and might have survived the impact. The short version of his calculations was that there was a ch
ance Jack might have turned.
He coaxed his still sizeable frame through the door and dutifully took hold of Lizzie by his one free hand. He shuffled her to his left hand side. He let go and pointed to the floor. There was a flare gun discarded on the deck which she immediately picked up. Not quite the 9 millimeter standard issue Police weapon she was used to, but it would have to do.
He immediately reverted back into his military training and stepped lightly, heel first, to minimize sounds. His ears pricked up just enough to be noticeable. The cockpits on these kinds of planes was up a small ladder. Another reason to be cautious. The vibrations alone might have killed Jack, but chances were the cockpit was intact.
He took a tight hold of the first step in the ladder and pulled himself up one rung at a time. His gun stayed in prime position with one finger poised to gently rock back the trigger if he needed to. He finally made it to the latch of the cockpit entrance trapdoor. He sighed at his own pessimism and tapped on the door. If Jack had turned, he would have made some kind of noise.
Nothing.
He pressed lightly on the latch and the trapdoor swung open with a metallic clatter.
'Jack?' He whispered. Some part of him wanted to hear the groan of a zombie just for the sake of closure. But there was nothing. He pulled himself into the office sized cockpit. The pilots' chairs were dead ahead, facing the other way. One of them looked empty. The window was caved in but there was no glass on the inside of the cockpit.
The other seat held a set of arms, which hung lifelessly to either side of the black arm rests. Logan, void of emotion, booted the back of the chair and listened for the inevitable groan as it rocked back and forth. But nothing came. He should have put a bullet through the back of the chair just to be sure but he couldn't waste the ammo. He was running on empty and her 9mm was completely out of bullets. Lizzie joined him up the ladder not a moment later but said nothing.
Logan made his way slowly around to the opposite side of the cockpit to get a look at the corpse in the chair. He sighed with a subdued anger when he saw the body. Not angry because it was Jack though. Angry because he couldn't tell who it was. The face was nothing more than a flame scarred and blood soaked skull with minimal remaining flesh. The chest cavity had collapsed, again the result of fire, but one long since burned out. He had been shot by a flare. Lizzie took one look and had to stop herself from throwing up what little food was left on her stomach.
'Looks like he ate a flare...' Logan pulled back the unimaginably deformed body's shirt to find a spent flare cap lodged in his chest.
'But that means someone survived the crash.' The rising intonation at the end of her plea made it sound like a question. Hope had a funny way of clouding judgment, but this time, that is what it looked like. There was nothing on the helmet of the remaining body to identify which of them it was. The pilot, Jack, their friend. Or the co-pilot that no one knew the name of.