Chapter 3: Chapter 3 - Things Can Always Get Worse

The dark plane fell through the night sky. Wind plucked at wings, spun them. The craft tilted, rudderless, swaying as it raced gravity to the ocean below.

Inside, Zoe groped for the cockpit door. Moonlight through the windows let her make out the outline of the handle, but the tossing plane threw off her aim.

When the notification shut down technology, she heard the door click. She hoped the door clicked. Because if the power outage unlocked the door, they could reach the pilots. They could reach the controls.

They could right the plane.

She found the handle and swung the door open.

All hope died.

The cockpit sat empty. Both pilots missing, somehow, like all the other mysteriously absent passengers on the plane. The corpses she understood, somewhat, but why were people vanishing?

She forced herself to step inside the empty cockpit. The space eerie and abhorrent. She scanned the controls. All dark. She expected blinking lights, lit computer screens, but nothing worked. Her plan’s futility sank into her stomach. She was a doctor. A surgeon. If something was wrong with the pilots, she could help.

She could fix the flesh, but she couldn’t fly a plane. Bella and the flight attendant looked over her shoulder. She turned to them.

“Either of you know how to fly a plane?”

Bella forced a grin through the panic on her face.

“How hard can it be?” She stepped past Zoe into the cockpit and stopped. “Oh, I guess kind of hard? Huh.” she grabbed the steering controls. “I know we can glide, we just need somewhere to aim…”

The flight attendant started hyperventilating.

“We’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! There’s nowhere to —”

“What’s that?” Zoe asked.

In the darkness ahead of them, visible through the cockpit windscreen, a fire glowed. A smoldering coal in the endless dark. Growing closer. It raged, as though a building burned in the middle of the sky.

“What in the hell,” Bella said. “Is that a mountain? A volcano?”

“It looks like a… floating island?”

With the plane stabilized somewhat by Bella, they could see ahead of them an island. Lit by the flames it seemed small. A patch of darkness against the starry sky. The moonlit ocean surged far below.

The flight attendant looked like she wanted to curl up and pass out.

“It can’t be real…”

Zoe understood the fear but refused to indulge the same impulse.

“If we act like it’s a dream, then we’ll never wake up,” she said. “We’re approaching it fast. Go see if anyone’s a pilot, would you? And hurry.”

The flight attendant nodded and rushed off.

Bella glanced up at Zoe.

“Don’t think I can land this bird?” she said through weak laughter.

“She needed something to do,” she said as she gestured over her shoulder at the flight attendant. “I have full confidence in you. Even though I just met you.”

“I have that effect on people… Say, what do you think ‘spawning monsters’ means?”

“Whatever it means I’m sure it isn’t —”

Zoe’s face paled as a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the plane. Wet snarling, shuffling footsteps behind her. She turned. The air dragged against her stunned muscles as she resisted the impulse to ignore whatever made the sound.

But how often does ignoring fear remove the source?

Silhouettes crowded the cockpit doorway. A mob of hands clawed toward her. Mouths groaned. Gnashing teeth. Wet and hungry moans.

Inhuman sounds.

“What do you want?” she said, her mouth dry. “We’re going to land the plane. Are any of you a pilot?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The closest figure stepped forward. A man in a plaid suit and a floral tie. Face obscured by shadows. He staggered, and the others crowded behind him. The sour stench of bile and bowels leaked from them all. He slurred as he reached up and clawed at his face.

Zoe backed into Bella’s chair.

“You need to get out of here if you can’t help,” her voice sounded so unnatural, as though she floated outside of herself. “You need to leave.”

The man ignored her. He slipped his fingers inside his jaw and stepped closer. Moonlight lit his face and Zoe gasped.

Charred holes for eyes. Blackened tears of blood down his face. His fingers dug into his mouth, knuckles to his lips, and yanked. Flesh ripped. His jawbone cracked. Snapped.

Bile rose in Zoe’s throat as the man threw his lower jaw to the ground.

The wet sound made Bella turn. Her eyes widened at the sight of the dead marching into the cockpit. Zoe placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Focus on landing the plane,” she said. “I’ll keep you safe.”

The island grew in the distance. A forest, a small town, a mountain, lit by fire and moonlight.

The jawless man lurched forward and grabbed at Zoe. Clumsy, awkward, like a puppet of a man. She grappled with him. Pushed back. She kicked at his guts with more force than her body should have conjured. Her shoe split skin. The jawless man gurgled as clotted blood spilled. Loops of intestine fell around his shoes. He stumbled into the others behind him.

Despite the grotesque gore, Zoe grinned. The cramped cockpit might be a deathtrap, but it limited the numbers that could approach.

A woman with long braids scrambled over the jawless man. She hissed as she swiped at Zoe. Her manicured nails sliced through the air. Zoe stepped back. Dodged a swing, but bumped into the copilot's chair. Razor-sharp nails dragged across her sides. Split flesh like water. Bounced off her ribs.

Zoe cried out and clutched the wound. Blood flowed hot through her fingers.

The hissing woman licked her scalpel-sharp nails. Her tongue split upon the wicked claws before she twisted and surged forward. Claws raised to finish the job.

Zoe punched her in the face.

Knuckles crunched through bone. The hissing woman sagged to the ground.

Once again, Zoe marveled at her new strength. There was no way she could punch that hard yesterday. Even if it was Ben’s smug face. But now? She felt her mind floating out of her body as it rejected the unreality of the situation. The jawless man grabbed her ankle.

No.

She wasn’t dreaming. Couldn’t let herself think she was dreaming. Questioning reality would wait until she wasn’t about to die.

Though we’re always about to die, aren’t we?

Laughter bubbled up from her guts and she let it spill. Cackling, she stomped and shattered the jawless man’s head under her heel like a rotten cantaloupe.

Cold spiked inside her body. A rush of ice from temple to taint. The inhuman voice echoed through her head.

[Level up! You are now Level 2.]

[Please select an element to incorporate:]

* [Sky]

* [Metal]

* [Blood]

What did any of that mean? Some understanding came instinctually. Level up was easy, and she knew that choosing an element was a pathway to more power. This knowledge formed inside her instincts like the knowledge of taking one step after another.

But the intricacy of the choice, of what it entailed, was lost to her in the moment. The echos of the voice faded. She ignored the words and continued to fight for her life.

An overweight flight attendant lurched forward. Zoe grabbed the woman’s arms, trying to keep her distance from a face of burned eyes and bubbled makeup. Even with her strength, the woman’s weight made it hard to keep her away. Pain flared in Zoe’s side from the slashes as her blood flowed. She winced, but there was nothing she could do.

A gurgling laugh sounded from the overweight woman as her jaw clicked out of place. Foul, blackened liquid gushed down her chin. Zoe recoiled in disgust, and the woman lumbered forwards. Each step driving her heel into the cockpit carpet like a bull’s hoof. She forced Zoe back until she leaned against the empty copilot chair. Face to face as the plane fell toward the island.

Bella shouted something from the controls, but Zoe didn’t hear.

The dead woman burbled the laughter of famished quicksand as a long, muscular tongue uncoiled from her distended jaw. Thick and purple like an oily snake. It wrapped around Zoe’s neck and squeezed. Zoe’s eyes widened as the constricting tongue choked her. She felt her heartbeat pulsing through her body. Faster with panic. Her vision narrowed. Lungs burned. The dark room grew darker…

Light bloomed and spiraled across the sky.

A coruscating rainbow lit the inside of the cabin in psychedelic patterns. Burning orbs trailed curtains of red, green, pink, and yellow. Multihued light draped the staggering corpses. The charred pits of their eyes. Skin rippled like worms in a bag as they lurched and contorted into the cockpit.

Toward Zoe and Bella.

The tongue tightened around Zoe’s neck and drew the dead woman’s mouth closer. Teeth wriggled in gums like maggots. Rancid stink of rot and coffee. Zoe gagged as her lungs emptied. Her last breath drawn out by the slippery appendage.

The plane shook.

“Grab hold of something!” Bella cried out. “She’ll be rough!.”

Zoe tried to look, but the gripping tongue wouldn’t let her turn. She growled. Knees buckling…

No.

She couldn’t let this happen.

Not with this new strength inside her. Just because the world changed, didn’t mean she wouldn’t survive. She couldn’t give up.

So she tried something desperate.

She released her grip on the woman’s arms. Immediately, the larger woman grabbed a hold of her. Clawed fingers dug at the bleeding slashes. Zoe screamed as her wound opened wider. She gripped the tongue with both hands and pulled. A wet tearing sound as she ripped the tongue from the woman’s slack jaw.

She kicked. Her shoe collided with the woman’s knee, shattering bone, but manicured hands continued mauling her side.

The tongue slid from around her neck. Zoe gasped. Screamed in pain. The woman toppled as her leg gave, and Zoe brought up her knee. The woman’s chin crumpled. Black blood oozed. Cold rushed through Zoe’s veins.

Rainbow light surged.

More of the dead-eyed figures stumbled toward the cockpit. Zoe drew a ragged breath and clutched her side. There was no time to worry about them.

She pulled herself into the copilot chair.

The island rushed toward them. So close now she could see figures running through the streets lit by flame.

A golden aura wavered around the town. The barrier of a safe zone.

“Hold on!” Bella looked over her shoulder down the plane’s aisle crawling with the undead. “Everybody, hold on!”

Zoe strapped on the seatbelt. Fingers wrapped around her throat from behind. A jaw sank into her shoulder. She cried out in pain as she gripped the wound at her side, trying to apply pressure even as her vision spun, as the plane rushed toward the ground.