Chapter 6: Chapter 6 - A Meeting Of The Damned

Zoe frowned as Anton waltzed out of sight. There was a peculiar familiarity to the man. It felt like she saw him before, as though a friend pointed him out in a crowd and warned her about him, but she had since forgotten his face. Bella’s tugging at her shirt distracted her from this trail of thought.

Her shirt was too soaked with blood to be salvaged. Rather than lift it over her head and risk reopening the wound, Bella cut it off her with scissors from the first aid kit.

“What?” Zoe said when she saw Bella’s expression.

Bella tried to avert her gaze, but failed.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just, wow.”

Zoe rolled her eyes.

“They’re not real.”

“Oh, uh…”

“I’m a plastic surgeon. I dated a plastic surgeon. We operated our own clinic. The field comes with perks.”

“I’ll say.”

“Just help me out of my bra.”

“No need to get frosty.”

“Hey.”

“Don’t poke my eye out!”

“Are you done?”

Bella grinned.

“Never.”

They found Zoe a loose pinstriped button-up shirt and a woman’s navy blue formal blazer. A pair of clean sweatpants replaced the blood-soaked pair.

“I don’t know if it's business or casual,” Bella said with a critical eye.

“It’s survivor chic.”

“How topical,” Bella helped Zoe to her feet. “Are you alright to move?”

Zoe took a few steps and nodded.

“It’s weird. I know what blood loss does, and I sort of feel it, but it’s like an afterthought. I’m tired, I feel weak, but,” she lifted a full hard-plastic suitcase with one hand. “This feels like it weighs nothing. That’s not right, is it?”

She tossed the suitcase underhand. It flew down the aisle and crashed open against the wall. Clothes and toiletries spilled onto the ground.

Zoe grimaced.

“Ok. I’m strong, but moving still sucks. That was a bad idea.”

Bella’s smile faded as she inspected the window.

“It’s really covered in ice. What if that… that monster froze the entire plane?”

“There’s still the emergency exit.”

“Hinges might be frozen.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Zoe said. “Let’s go meet the other survivors.”

Bella led the way, and Zoe followed. Her mind felt like her body should limp. Why wasn’t she dead or dying? She felt some pain, but not enough. It was like waking up after a night of drinking and realizing you weren’t hungover.

Moving her left arm still hurt, and she didn’t want to poke the wound, but she could still move despite the blood loss. They moved through rows of dead bodies. No blackened eyes, only the mauled and battered corpses of those attacked by the undead.

It had been less than an hour since the system announced itself, and most of the passengers were dead. A shiver ran down Zoe’s spine that had nothing to do with pain.

And with that monster outside? How much longer until they were all picked off?

No.

Not all of them.

She intended to survive.

They headed toward the galley, where Zoe could see a group of maybe a dozen people milling about. Before they got too close, Zoe wanted to check something. She nudged the mental prompt in her head.

Status.

STATUS

Name: Zoe Chambers

Level: 2 (+1 free point)

Body: Metal

ATTRIBUTES

Might: 16 (+9)

Vitality: 9

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Dexterity: 9

Willpower: 15 (+9)

Insight:8

Skein: 50/57

Titles: Intrepid (+5 to all attributes), Lodestone (+5 might, +5 willpower, 200% metal attunement)

She did some quick mental arithmetic. Her Might sat at seven when she first checked her status. That was after she received the Intrepid title. So her starting Might was a two? If Might resulted in the strength coursing through her body, then she was eight times stronger than an hour ago.

It seemed Lodestone only affected Might and Willpower, and those leaped higher after selecting metal. She frowned. Judging by the Intrepid bonus, her Vitality was more than twice as high as before. That might explain why the blood loss wasn’t deadly.

With that thought, she nudged her internal consciousness toward the free point. It wiggled like a loose tooth, a sense of almost pain, almost incompleteness, almost pleasure before it snapped into Vitality. Now she had 10. Cold seeped through her, a minor amount, as though she sucked on an ice cube. The pain in her side diminished by the slightest amount. It seemed her theory about Vitality was correct.

She needed more information if she was going to puzzle out what it all meant. Especially that last stat, Skein. It was the total of the other attributes, and it depleted when she concentrated on her attunement, and when she tried to heal herself. If only that minor understanding removed the other mysteries surrounding what was happening…

Hopefully, she could talk to the other survivors, and they could pool their knowledge. Though she would like to avoid Anton, who watched her as she approached the group.

The rooftop screeched and buckled. Loud thumps. Scratching like nails on a chalkboard. And a wail that shook Zoe's ribcage.

The beast was trying to claw its way inside.

Survivors flinched as the scraping continued. They cowered by the galley. Looked for exits. But where were they to go? Everywhere looked the same. An environment as cornered and destitute as its occupants. The wail faded, and the beast stomped away, for now.

Zoe studied the group. Everyone looked wretched. So panicked they passed through tired and emerged in a state of manic exhaustion. The galley spilled open around them. A few packets of frozen food lay open and picked at, but most survivors clutched the tiny bottles of alcohol. From the empty ones on the floor, it looked as though they were going hard.

The expressions on people’s faces ran from the adrenaline-packed elation of a survivor to stunned expressions of disbelief.

Anton stood amongst the small group, leading them in a quiet conversation. Zoe could guess the topic when they all looked over at her.

Besides the group, an elderly couple knelt in the aisle. Stretched across the seats beside them was the body of a small boy. Blood dripped from his clothes. Their weeping was quiet, restrained, and without hope. Tears fell. The grief of those who wished for the strength to join their loved ones.

Zoe stopped. Her heart sank. She wanted to help, but what could she do? The little body yanked away the curtains of her focus. What was she doing? What was happening? She stared down at her hands. Gore on her knuckles.

This wasn’t surgery. Where she wore gloves. Where the blood was a prediction. The injuries calculated. Intended to heal.

Her fingers trembled. Had she killed those people? Those with burned-out eyes? At the moment, she thought about nothing but her safety. Hers, and Bella’s. If she hadn’t acted as she did they wouldn’t have landed the plane. They would be just another amongst the corpses. So many corpses, folded and crumpled where the impact threw them. The rich smell of blood crept up from the carpet into her flaring nostrils and she —

A young man walked up to her and Bella.

"So you two landed the plane, huh?"

Zoe turned from the grieving couple, her gaze passing over more bodies, mutilated unfairly, broken before their time, and faced the college-aged kid with the scruffy red hair.

"You're welcome," she said, "but Bella did the actual flying."

"Flying?" He scoffed. "You couldn't have at least tried to land us in the town? In the safe zone? Maybe then we wouldn't be —"

Zoe slapped him. The blow cracked loud and harsh and sent him tumbling into the seats. He looked up at her, eyes wide and stunned, his hand on his jaw.

“Wha? Wuh u…’

Her side flared with pain. She held the bandages and grimaced.

“That was a mistake.”

A college-aged South East Asian woman with a pixie cut rushed over to him. She checked his jaw and glared at Zoe.

“You broke his jaw you, psycho. What the hell is wrong with you?’

Zoe felt the worry and concern that threatened to overwhelm her a moment ago receding. More and more eyes looked toward her like she was a threat.

These people who she saved. Well, Bella did most of the saving. But who saved Bella?

She felt a grin forming.

“He was being an asshole,” she said. “Look, all of you, we’re alive. If you look around, you can see that’s better than the alternative,” she felt the gaze of the elderly couple upon her and hid the internal grimace at her words. “Right now we can’t fight amongst ourselves. We have to worry about that giant… thing… that’s outside. If you’re wondering why it’s so cold it's because we’re encased with ice. And I saw a giant praying mantis generate the ice with my own eyes. Don’t ask me how, I know as much as you, but I think it’s putting us into a fridge and saving us for later.”

The group of survivors stared at her with dull eyes. Anton smirked, Bella gave her a wry smile, and the college-aged couple glared at her.

“Great speech,” Bella whispered to her.

“Who put you in charge?” a slim and uncomfortably handsome flight attendant slurred from where he leaned against the galley shelf. “Just because your crazy strong and crazy you’re telling us what to do?” he swallowed a small bottle of vodka. “You’re crazy.”

Zoe sighed.

“I don’t want to be in charge,” she said. “I’m injured and annoyed. I just want to survive. As for why I’m strong?” she raised her hand. “Who here received a prompt saying they leveled up?”

Four of the eleven survivors raised their hands. The pixie-cut woman was amongst them. Anton didn’t raise his hand. Zoe frowned but decided not to deal with that right now. He seemed content to sit back and observe. The bottle in his hand was also full, and with its cap on. Was he pretending to drink?

She would deal with him later.

“If you leveled up, then you got a prompt to incorporate an element. If you haven’t done this, do it now. You’ll get boosts to your attributes, and we need those as high as possible if we’re going to survive.”

“How do you know all this?” the elderly woman asked her. “Do you know what’s happening? Do you know why my…” her words dissolved into sobbing.

Zoe shook her head.

“I’m sure we can figure it all out together,” she said. “I just know we need to get out of this place.”

“Oh, no, no, no. Don’t rush away, no, no, no…”

Zoe turned at the raspy voice behind her. She started.

A withered head grew from the shadowy wall behind her like a fungal growth. An old man’s head, smiling, and between his crooked yellow teeth, a bottomless pit yawned. He had no body, only fingers growing from the stump of his neck. Fingers that gripped the airplane wall with ragged nails.

“No need to rush out into danger,” he said with the charm of a car salesman. “No, no, no. Better stay, better stay safe. Why not make a deal? Once in a lifetime deal?”