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flash of movement through one of the cabin windows. Most of the shades had been pulled down, but three near the dirt-encrusted wing were half open. There. She saw it again. Something green, but moving too fast to identify any more detail than that. She grabbed Jay’s arm and pulled him behind her. He stumbled down the steps as she raised her axe.
    Before she could signal to him to back away, a small bird with bright green plumage shot out of the open door. Then there was another. And a third, and then, all at once, a great mass of flapping wings as a green wave exploded out of the plane and up into the sky.
    She ducked, the movement involuntary and unnecessary. The birds came nowhere near them. A smile crept slowly across her scarred face. The tension that had been plaguing her dissipated as the flock, perhaps a hundred-strong, flew up to circle the aircraft above them.
    “Are they parrots?” Jay asked.
    Tuck had no idea. “Probably,” she signed.
    “Did they come on the plane?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. But there’s a lesson here.” She pointed at the white and black stained wing. “We were so busy looking for the undead we didn’t see what was immediately in front of us. Guano.”
    “And so busy looking at it now, that we don’t realise what’s not in there,” Jay said. “No zombies, and now there are no birds. Come on.”
    He pushed past her and ducked into the cabin. She followed. As soon as she stepped inside, her nose tried to shut down as it was assaulted by a foul stench. She gritted her teeth and turned on her flashlight. It, like most of the torches the group used, was a wind-up LED model, originally part of a window display at an electrical shop near Farringdon. It wasn’t bright, but it added texture to a cabin otherwise only illuminated through the open door and a few half-closed window shades. There was a tug at her arm.
    “Where’s the raft?” Jay signed.
    Even in the gloom his expression was clear, the reason for it obvious. She grinned.
    “Don’t like the smell?” she signed.
    “It’s pretty…” he began, but couldn’t find the word.
    “Acrid?” she signed. He just shrugged. “Try underneath those seats there.”
    There were two rafts, both untouched since their last safety inspection.
    “Where do they keep the peanuts?” Jay asked as they dropped the second raft onto the tarmac.
    Tuck glanced at the birds. Most were still circling overhead, but a few had come to land on the wing and fuselage. They were as good as a guard dog when it came to the undead. She pointed Jay towards the rear of the plane whilst she headed to the cockpit.
    The cabinet marked with that familiar red cross was empty, but she wasn’t looking for a first-aid kit. As she had looked about the plane, an idea had come to her. It was only half formed, and the obstacles to it actually working were so great that she almost dismissed it as one of those idle fantasies that came whenever she saw a piece of old world technology.
    She bent over the captain’s seat, then the co-pilot’s, and then examined the control panel and the floor, finding nothing but a couple of shreds of paper. The rest, along with any other clue as to the plane’s point of departure, had become building material for the birds that had turned the aircraft into a communal nest. She returned to the main cabin, turning her eyes briefly to the seat backs, then up to the empty overhead compartments.
    “No peanuts,” Jay signed, coming to join her. “Birds got everything. What are you looking for?”
    “I wanted to know where the plane came from,” she signed. “So I could work out how far it had flown.”
    “Why?” he asked, as she led him back out of the plane and down to the tarmac.
    “Because… no, it was a stupid idea,” she signed, and picked up one end of the awkwardly shaped orange and red oblong. Jay grabbed the other side of the uninflated raft, and together they carried it