Airborne

Chapter 11 - Silence is Deadly

"It's so quiet" Some one muttered as all the passengers crowded towards the windows, eagerly awaiting safety in the arms of the military. Jack gazed out of the window, the entire airport seemed completely abandoned, trucks with luggage still on them remained stationary in the middle of the runway and the plane occasionally whirred into different directions to avoid the vehicles.

"Something is definitely wrong." David commented, who was sitting next to him. "We should be getting help by now." He said as the plane began to dock itself, since nobody was there to help dock it with the passenger walkway, the pilots parked it as accurately as they could, leaving a small gap inbetween the walkway and the plane.

People were eager to get out, and they all filed in an orderly line while simultaneously pushing each other forward. Jack kept Aiden close to him as he moved his way back out of the plane, looking back and seeing the piles of suitcases getting farther and farther away.

"Something is wrong.." David commented as he peered out a window, staring out into the empty runway. "We have to be careful."

"Right." Jack said as he led Aiden through the crowd of people, gripping his brother's hand tightly to prevent losing him again.

"What are you talking about?" Aiden asked Jack curiously.

"I'll tell you later." Jack responded, causing Aiden to shrug, he knew he would find out soon enough. Once they made it to the entrance of the plane, they had to jump over the gap in between in order to leave the plane. It felt like heaven to Jack, finally off that goddamn plane. However, something felt as if he would have to go back onto this plane soon. 

David dashed on ahead, trying to warn as many of the other students as possible. Jack glanced around at the other people walking with him. One could easily point out the passengers from the 3rd and 4th cabin (those who survived at least) compared to everybody from the 2nd and 1st cabin. People from the back half of the plane were paranoid, constantly looking for any lurking zombies, some nearly ready to attack anything that moved unusually with their suitcase, while people from the front half behaved normally, some giving the others weird looks.

After what felt like a day of squeezing through the passenger walkway, Jack and Aiden finally broke out into the gates, gate A18 to be exact. Everything looked relatively clean and tidy, but completely empty, not a single other person in sight. Benches in the lobbies were intact and no barricades or broken windows were visible. Jack glanced around and noticed among the crowd, not a single flight attendant was among them. Where did they go?

"Maybe the airport is closed?" Someone suggested as people began milling their way towards "immigration" shuffling past the abandoned restaurants and stores. Then, Jack noticed David with several other students in a group leaving the crowd and dashing into a bookstore with the security gate left up.

"Jack, over here!" He hissed motioning Jack over, dragging himself and Aiden away from the crowd of people and into the store. Within the store, all the books and novels were perfectly lined up, the floor was spotless with no sign of any apocalypse in sight.

"What?!" Jack hissed. "We shouldn't be here."

"No, we have to go back to the plane." David said, Jack glanced around, 5 other students had went with david, two girls and three boys. One of the girls was Amy, David's crush and the other was Erica, the girl teasing Jack a few hours ago, back when life was normal. The 3 boys, Jack recognized their names as Stephen, Ronald and Warit. 

"Why? The military is waiting for us here!" Jack responded, before being interrupted by David.

"Didn't you notice? None of the flight attendants got off the plane with us, I noticed one sneak off a different direction as well. Something is going on, and the safest place at the moment is the plane." David explained, with the five others nodding in approval.