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  Alive! Not Dead

  R. M. Smith

  Alive! Not Dead

  Copyright © 2014 by R. M. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Brandi Doane McCann

  For my babykitkat

  BOOK ONE: THE FLIP

  CRASH

  I came to. I thought: Alive! Not dead. Yes!

  We made it! We crash-landed safely!

  Over a static-filled intercom one of the pilots told us that they weren’t sure what had hit the plane, but they told us to remain calm. Help would be on the way shortly. Don’t worry.

  There was movement around me. Surprisingly it looked like everyone had survived the crash. People were up in the aisle, checking on loved ones, talking loud to friends in seats further away. There was a whiff of smoke in the air.

  I unbuckled my seat belt, stood up, ducked under the overhead compartment, and looked around in the crooked plane. There was a baby crying somewhere in the back. People were leaning sideways to the right in their seats because the plane had crash landed at an odd angle.

  Passengers were asking questions: “What happened? Where are we? Are you ok?” A man sitting next to me was now slumped forward, his head resting on the seatback of the chair in front of him. The back of his balding head had a large dripping bruise on it. His glasses had gotten knocked off in the crash and were now sitting in his lap. “Hey are you ok?” I asked, leaning down toward him.

  He didn’t answer. Was he dead?

  I touched his shoulder. Shook him a little. “Hey…”

  He still didn’t move. Maybe he was just knocked out? I looked around for help.

  A lady across the aisle to my left was standing up looking around. She looked like she had a dripping bruise on her forehead, too.

  I reached toward her to get her attention. I motioned toward the fat guy “Hey, this guy…”

  She didn’t say anything. She slowly sat back down in her seat as she rubbed her forehead.

  “This guy got knocked out,” I told her. She leaned back, her hand in a fist on her forehead. She looked like she was in a lot of pain. Maybe she had a concussion? Did the plane hit hard enough to knock people out?

  From the front of the plane there was a loud ka-thump! People raised their heads to look. The first few rows of seats burst into flame.

  Everyone started screaming. Some still sat in their seats, shocked at the sight of fire. Others bolted for any exit door. It became a quick mad rush for any exit. There was an over-wing exit door open two rows behind me. My survival instinct kicked in. I had to get out of there!

  I rammed into the aisle elbowing someone hard in the ribs. Something caught my belt and my cell phone went flying, tumbling down onto the floor. For a second I tried to look for it, but it was lost in the rush. People were climbing over the backs of seats trying to escape. The fire was getting hotter. I felt it inching toward me. I bashed through all of the people. A man was in the aisle on the ground, wailing in pain. People were scrambling all over him, stepping on his head.

  I made it to the emergency exit. As I stepped down onto the damaged wing, the front of the plane exploded.

  The explosion threw me backward toward the tail. I barely missed the tail stabilizer. I flew under it, rolled and landed against the base of a small fern tree. I felt fern needles prickling my skin. The tree was bending from the force of the blast. Heat from the burning plane made my skin tighten. I saw people, chunks of the plane, and fire fly by me. Luggage went past me, on fire. I saw am arm, severed and burning, roll past me.

  Then another blast, this one larger, rolled me up the tree as the tree bent and snapped due to the force of the explosion. Fire engulfed me, so hot, singeing my skin, burning my shirt. I flew off the tree into some thick grass, landing next to another person who was engulfed in flame.

  Fire raged around us. All I heard and felt was fire, but there was no pain. My skin felt tight, but I was not burning. The shove of the second explosion had saved me somehow.

  Scrambling to my feet I ran away from the fire. When I was far enough away, I looked back. The whole plane was now engulfed in flame. Thick, white smoke whipped up into the mountain air.

  I saw bodies on the ground on fire. The grass around them was burning. A young girl was walking away from the wreckage, stumbling, completely on fire. She fell onto her face.

  We had crash landed on the side of a mountain 50 miles east of Seattle, Washington. It was Delta flight 3044 to Kansas City. We had taken off only minutes before.

  Let me describe a little better what had happened on the plane.

  It all happened so quickly.

  We were still on our ascent out of Seattle when something felt like it hit us. We weren’t actually hit by anything solid though, if that makes any sense. It felt like we were hit by the afterburner of another jet that had come too close.

  The plane dropped hard. The pilot came over the intercom. He said we were going down. He told us we needed to assume crash positions.

  Unbelievably, there wasn’t a lot of panic. Everyone dutifully leaned forward as the plane went down. Over the PA system, a flight stewardess kept reassuring everyone that we would be fine.

  I don’t really know how to describe the feeling that caused the crash. It wasn’t a hard or real sudden knock. It was like we had gone through a huge air bubble and popped out on the other side. It was like a grab-and–miss sensation - like trying to capture a fly in your hands, but you miss; or in dreams when you reach for something, feeling for it - but it’s really not there.

  This wasn’t just my personal experience. This was a feeling like the whole world itself reached and missed.

  We had a close call with something…a very close call.

  After the explosion and deadly fire, I managed to get up. I was surrounded by death and destruction.

  We were on the side of a mountain. I looked back toward Seattle. I could see the skyline of the city in the distance…did the buildings look different? Were they collapsing? Surely not - must have been my imagination.

  Down below on the highway I could see a red glow of flashing lights through the trees. It was late August, so no rain or snow yet but it was cool up here.

  I looked back toward the skyline of the city again just in time to see the whole horizon of the world suddenly rise up. It made me lose my balance because it felt like the whole world was going to flip over.

  The horizon rose up fast. I saw a wave of light come out of the horizon. It rolled up across the sky like an opening dome. Then an air wave came at me. It was accompanied by huge crashing rumbling sounds. The earth shook violently for a few seconds. A deafening crackling sound filled the air. As the air wave passed, the whole forest bent down like a wave of people in a football stadium. There was no wind in the wave. It was a force strong enough to knock me off my feet.

  After, everything was quiet as if nothing had even happened. Many of the trees in the forest had snapped in two.

  It was almost as if the fabric of the world had rolled up upon itself.

  But what did it mean? At the time I had no idea - mostly because I was still battered and confused from the plane exploding around me.

  Thankfully, unbelievably, I wasn’t injured.

  Looking for survivors I made my way around the burning plane. There was a man screaming somewhere out in the woods. I found him lying on hi
s back on a large rock. He had his elbows resting on the stone, his hands up, his fingers spread. The blast had ripped him in half at the waist. Most of his clothes and skin had burned off. I could see the bones in his fingers working as he lay there. The rock was covered in blood, shredded intestines and skin.

  He kept screaming: “Liz… Liz… Liz...”

  There was nothing I could do for him.

  There was more luggage scattered around him. Some of the bags had popped open. I looked through some of the open bags hoping to find anything to ease his pain, but I didn’t think I would find anything useful. One of the smaller bags had a cell phone in it. I checked it. There was no service way up here. Surely someone around had seen the plane go down and dialed 911.

  “Help will arrive soon,” I whispered looking back at him over my shoulder. He was already dead, his hands still poking oddly up into the sky.

  The flashing lights down on the highway beckoned to me. Should I go down there? I thought. Hopefully there was a mountain road leading up here. The ambulance would be coming up it soon.

  The forest was starting to burn on the south side of the crash site. I moved further north into a clearing. The sun was starting to set lower in the early evening sky. Still there was no sign of any rescue attempt.

  I kept trying the cell phone, hoping that maybe in the clearing the signal would be a bit better, but I got nothing. There wasn’t even a dial tone. It was as if the phone was dead even though the battery showed 89% charge.

  There was a rustling in the bushes behind me.

  It was another man from the plane crash. He was burned completely from the waist up. One of his shoulders was still on fire. He was staggering, limping toward me. His voice was garbled. I didn’t understand a word he was saying. His arms were outstretched toward me, the skin on his arms was smoking, dangling down like wet drapes.

  I stepped back, frightened a little at the sight of him. He lunged at me. He grabbed my arm. His hands were hot on my arm and the flesh on his hands crumbled as he squeezed me.

  “Hey…” I said. “It’s ok – help’s coming.”

  I knew there probably really wasn’t but I was simply trying to calm him down. The man was obviously in great pain. Not even able to talk or…

  He pulled my arm to his mouth. I yanked it away before he could bite me.

  Bite me!!??

  Why would this guy try to bite me??

  I stepped back from him. He still came toward me, arms outstretched, groaning at me, wanting to get close to me.

  I backed up a few more steps and bumped into something else.

  It was another person from the plane. This was a woman with only one arm. Her left side had been caved in. Half of her ribs and part of her lung was hanging out of her split open side. Blood was running out of her. She walked at me, reaching for me. She was groaning like she wanted to grab me.

  She had a dripping bruise on the side of her face.

  I shoved her back. She fell down; rolling a little way down the hill, then shambled back up onto her feet and came after me again.

  “What the hell? I shouted. I ran back down toward the plane on the side where the fire had now died out. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the two others still coming after me. They weren’t running, just shambling along, arms outstretched wanting to snatch me.

  What are these things? Zombies? What the hell’s going on here?

  I stumbled over something. It was a leg, just a bloody stump of one. A little further away, I saw the rest of the body. It was being eaten by two other people!

  What the fuck!!

  The two others were badly burned, too. They knelt there, leaning over someone, pulling skin, muscles, tissues, veins out of the person dead on the ground. Groaning and eating, their hands and faces were covered in thick blood.

  The person who was being eaten raised their head to look at me. A large bruise was on the side of his face, too. The other two who had been eating him stopped. They turned their attention to me. They were eyeing me as they scrambled to their feet.

  The other two were coming down the hill, getting closer.

  All around me I could hear shuffling. People were coming out of the forest, coming out of the burning plane, their arms reaching for me.

  This has got to be a dream!

  Some of the people coming out of the plane were dripping flames as they walked. Their skin was burning, melting off of their bodies. Their eyes were melting, but still I could see them looking at me, gargling, groaning, coming after me.

  I ran down the mountain, past broken trees, over rocks; I felt pine needles whipping my skin as I sprinted through the trees.

  I had no idea why the rescue vehicles hadn’t made it to the wreckage by now - but if they weren’t coming to me then I was going to them!

  As I got nearer to the highway the mountain got steeper. I had to hold my arms out for balance as I slid down the rocky embankment onto the side of the road.

  Traffic was at a standstill. Was there a wreck? Down on the right side of the road a RV camper had tipped over on its side. A little past it, cock-eyed on the highway, a jack-knifed UPS semi-trailer sat. There was furniture, cardboard boxes, clothing, broken dishes, and household appliances all over the road from an over-turned moving van. Loose papers flipped around on the road.

  On my left there was a six car pile-up. Most of the cars were burned beyond recognition. Inside the vehicles burned passengers were slumped in their seats. A little past them a fire truck was parked with its lights still on, flashing, but no siren. Red lights spun round and around.

  I looked back up the mountain. Deep dark billowing smoke was visible above the shattered tree line. I didn’t see any people…or wait, zombies following me.

  They must have found something else to eat.

  A large bent reflector highway sign showed me that I was at the Snoqualmie Pass exit. Snoqualmie Pass is in the western half of Washington state, so the plane hadn’t gotten very far before it crashed. I was in the westbound break-down lane of highway I-90. Further down the highway to the west I could see the caved-in red roof of a hotel.

  Both lanes in either direction were motionless. Cars and trucks littered the road here and there. There were no bodies. It looked like the vehicles had just been randomly dropped onto the road. Some cars were on their roofs, others were on their sides. Some had long skid marks behind them on the cracked pavement. I wondered if the horizon flip had done this damage.

  Where are the people? Did they try to eat each other here too? I need to find someone…what the hell is going on here?

  I made my way toward the smashed red roof of the hotel. It was getting dark fast. The fire on the mountain was putting out an eerie dark orange glow out above. Clouds were moving in.

  There was extensive damage at the hotel. The front doors swung on broken hinges, squeaking quietly. All of the windows had been shattered. Inside, the place was a wreck. On the walls large cracks ran from tiled floor to ceiling. Water was pouring down from the ceiling in one spot. The water was splashing loudly in the empty lobby. Wet papers and trash littered the soaked carpet. Furniture was tossed everywhere. More large cracks lined the floor of the lobby. There were no lights on. It was getting dark fast. I needed to find some kind of shelter. I knew it was going to get cold pretty fast after the sun went down.

  I should really look for somewhere safer to stay, I thought. Instead, with the sound of splashing water echoing behind me, I walked down a darkening cracked hall out of the lobby. I checked the first guest room on the right. The door was unlocked. It squeaked loudly as I pushed it open. The room had two double beds. Neither one was made. The curtains were open looking out into the parking lot. Several cars were out there, too, but no one was in or near them.

  I closed the curtains and lay down on the bed closest to the window. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep because I was so scared and confused. I had no idea what had happened or where the people were or what had caused the people to become zombies.<
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  The next thing I knew, it was morning.

  The smell of smoke was very strong as I woke up. For a minute, I thought the bed was on fire.

  Coughing, I yanked the curtains back. The vehicles outside were on fire. The grass and trees beyond were burning, too. As far as I could see, everything was on fire.

  I quickly ran back down the hall to the lobby. The water was no longer splashing down from the ceiling. Outside I was met by thick smoke and cool summer mountain air. The mixture of the two didn’t seem to make sense.

  The fire was behind me. I was running away from it, the hotel and the highway. Evidently, the fire from the plane crash had spread down the mountain overnight.

  I needed to get away from here quickly. I needed to find somewhere safe.

  Down a short embankment there were more parked cars. There were a few damaged houses a little further away, as well. The fire hadn’t gotten to them yet.

  I saw some people. They were in a group. Maybe they were making a plan – talking, trying to figure out what the hell happened here. They were all at the end of the parking lot where some other cars were parked. I waved to them.

  “Hey!”

  I put my hand down. They weren’t people. Well, they were, but they were zombies.

  I needed to run. But where? The fire was coming down the mountain on one side. Zombies were approaching me from the other. Looking around quickly I saw that the fire hadn’t spread very far down the highway. I ran up the embankment and started running toward Seattle in the eastbound traffic lanes.

  The fire was just on the other side of a moving van. The van had done a 180 and flipped during its crash. It had flung furniture and other household items all over the highway. I noticed some golf clubs. I decided that I needed a weapon to fend off any more zombies if I ran across one. The group that had been in the parking lot was on my tail now. I grabbed a 7 iron off of the gritty highway and stood there while I waited for them to approach.