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okay? We’ll sort this out on the plane. We need to get off the tarmac. No telling how many more of those things are coming this way. And like this--” I looked around, “--we’re sitting ducks. You know? We’re out in the open.”
    “Let’s just get you onto the plane,” Dave said.
    “Shoot me,” Sues said. “Get it over with. Just end this for me.”
    I got under an arm, and lifted Sues up off of Dave. He got under the other, and we hoisted her up onto her feet. “That hurts,” she said, and winced.
    “We’re almost to the plane,” Dave said. We weren’t. We shuffled forward, Sues’ feet nearly toe-dragging on the asphalt.
    Allison stood in the doorway at the top of the small set of stairs. “Is she okay?”
    “Gonna be fine,” Dave said.
    I kept my eyes on Allison’s. She knew better. No one needed to be a zombie apocalyptic expert these days to recognize bad when bad was thrust into your face. And for Sues, this was bad.
    Only thing was, it wasn’t Sues I was worried about. A bullet to the head, it didn’t sound like such a bad thing. We were struggling to survive, and I had my daughter to think of, but for what? Why were we doing this? Why were on the go, always moving, trying to get from here to anywhere else? There was no reason. The human race might be just about over, quickly becoming extinct. It could happen. Something wiped out the fucking dinosaurs. Doubt it was a zombie pandemic, but it was something. Their time to rule ended. People came next. Once we were destroyed, you couldn’t help but wonder what would be the next King of the Shit species.
    Allison came down the steps. She took Dave’s spot. “Go fix her a spot in back,” she said. “We got her.”
    Dave ran up the steps and disappeared into the plane.
    “This is wrong,” Sues said. “Please, with him gone, kill me.”
    “We’re not killing you,” Allison said.
    Not yet, I thought. The thing was, the time would come. What if it happened in the air and she turned on the plane?
    “You can’t let this happen,” Sues said. She felt frail and weak. Allison and I supported all of her weight. “You can’t put everyone else in danger. I saw what happened to that guy on the boat, on the Coast Guard vessel. He’d been bitten, and tried to hide it, but it caught up to him. When he turned, that was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen.”
    I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t going to happen to her. She knew it was going to happen. She knew she was on borrowed time, especially with how much blood she’d lost. And I remembered it, too. Nick Dentino. He’d been with two other civilian survivors rescued by Palmeri and the military. They’d all watched him go from human to fucking zombie right before their eyes. Then they shot him. They could have shot him first, saved him the agony and the suffering, maybe even the humiliation of the transformation. Instead, we’d all watched. Waited and watched. When it was complete, the military shot him.
    The plane’s engine started, and I nearly jumped back. I didn’t expect it to whine so loudly. It startled me. I almost needed my hands to cover my ears. The twin propellers spun slowly, gained momentum and then were twirled so fast I couldn’t see the spinning blades.
    The decision to kill Sues before getting on the plane was past. Dave was back at the doorway. “Hurry. We’ve got zombies coming out of the woods. The sound of the engine must be drawing them.”
    Allison and Dave got Sues up the stairs and into the plane. I climbed into the plane, and then on my belly , reached down and brought the rolling stairs into the plane with us before closing and locking the door.
    We were as safe as we could be in the plane. “Everyone buckle in,” I said.
    Allison helped Dave get Sues situated. They sat her in a seat toward the tail of the plane. At least she was away from my daughter. I hated to think that way , but I was a parent. What other way could I look at it?
    I made the motion of