"MERCY" KILLS

Skyline Airways Flight 447 cruised at 30,000 feet, with the cabin lights dimmed to an intimate glow. The captain’s voice crackled through the intercom, he was casual and reassuring, and mentioned slight turbulence ahead. Couples leaned close, whispering among themselves. Few passengers are asleep, a mother murmurs to her fussy toddler, cradling him against her chest until he is quiet.

In row twenty-three, a passenger sat hunched over, beads of sweat rolling down his pale forehead. He reached up and pressed the call button, his clammy fingers trembling against the plastic button.

Erica, working the aft galley, glanced at the illuminated panel. Row twenty-three. Again. That was the third time in twenty minutes.

She grabbed a bottle of water and headed down the aisle, weaving past a businessman absorbed in his laptop, and a cute couple sharing earbuds and whispering softly. When she reached row twenty-three, the man’s condition stopped her cold. His skin had gone gray, and slick with sweat. His bloodshot eyes tracked her movement with an unsettling intensity.

“Sir, are you alright?” She kept her voice light, professional and she smiled. “Can I get you anything?”

He opened his mouth but only managed a wet, rattling sound. His hand shot out, gripping her wrist. His fingers are ice cold.

“Water,” he finally croaked.

Erica gently extracted her wrist from him and handed him the bottle. His hands shook so badly he nearly dropped it. She watched him take a few sips each sending water dribbling down his chin.

“Have you taken anything? Medication?”

He nodded weakly, but his eyes had a distant, glassy look that made her stomach tighten.

“I’ll check back in a few minutes,” she said, already mentally running through the protocol for medical emergencies. But what could she do at 30,000 feet? They were still two hours from LAX.

As she walked back toward the galley, she felt the passenger eyes on her. They noticed.

A woman across the aisle leaned toward her husband. “Do you think he’s alright?”

“Probably just a bad flight,” the husband muttered, but his gaze kept drifting back.

Erica found Chelby restocking cups in the galley. “Row twenty-three is getting worse. Guy looks like death.”

“Airsick?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Something feels off.”

Chelby glanced past her down the aisle. “You want me to check on him?”

“Let’s give it a few minutes. If he presses the button again—”

The call light chimed. It’s row twenty-three, again.

“Fuck,” Erica muttered.

“I’ll go see what he needs.” Chelby said.

Erica watched from the galley as her colleague crouched beside the man’s seat, speaking in low, soothing tones. The man’s head lolled to the side. Even from this distance, Erica could see the tremors wracking his body.

Chelby returned, face tight. “We should tell the captain. He’s not well. I think he’s having some kind of seizure.”

Before Erica could respond, the intercom crackled to life. The captain’s voice, still relaxed, still casual: “Folks, just heard a story from our friends in first class. There was quite the domestic dispute at the gate; the wife actually bit her husband’s hand during an argument. Can you imagine? Anyway, we should be beginning our descent into Los Angeles in about ninety minutes. Sit back, relax, and let’s hope everyone keeps their teeth to themselves up here.”

A few passengers chuckled.

Erica didn’t, she picked up the intercom phone to call the cockpit when a sound cut through the cabin. It was a low, guttural moan that didn’t sound human.

Almost everyone turned toward row twenty-three.

The sick passenger was standing in the aisle, swaying. His mouth hung open, dark drool spilling down his chin, the tremors had stopped, and replaced by an unnatural stillness.

He lunged.

He snapped forward from the hips, head and shoulders leading, feet catching late. The impact came hard and immediate. He crashed into the passenger beside him, a young woman who had fallen asleep with her movie still glowing in her lap. His teeth sank into her shoulder before her eyes opened.

The sound she made wasn’t a scream. It rose sharp and thin, then broke into a wet gurgle as blood struck the window.

The blood splatter hits a few passengers as well and that was all it took for the cabin to explode with vocal panic and pandemonium. Passengers lurched from their seats, scrambling over each other. The businessman threw his laptop, crashing into the aisle, unbuckled his seat and ran towards the front of the cabin, pushing his way through. The couple sharing the earbuds, he’s wiping the blood from his face while she screams. Passenger twenty three ripened a chunk of the woman’s skin and muscle from her shoulder and began to chew, someone screamed, another screamed for help.

Chelby ran toward the attack, and Erica’s voice died in her throat, phone still in her hand as she watched the sick passenger release the woman and turn on her colleague with that same terrible speed.

His mouth clamped around Chelby’s throat. Erica couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but watch from ten feet away as teeth tore through skin with a sound she felt through her own bones. The ripping came next, fabric shredding as his nails, mouth connected to flesh. And then blood, so much blood, is pouring quickly down the front of Chelby’s uniform.

Erica’s brain snagged on something stupid that didn’t matter: Chelby’s uniform. The crisp blue pants and white top she always pressed before every shift. The blue and white scarf set at that perfect ninety-degree angle she fussed over in the bathroom mirror. All of it ruined now, soaked red, turning dark.

Chelby’s hands flew to her neck, fingers scrabbling uselessly, trying to hold herself together and push the passenger away. Her eyes found Erica’s, wide and pleading with her. Her mouth opened, trying to form words, but only blood came out. She sank to her knees, the passenger went down with her, her hands still fighting but weakly now.

Erica still couldn’t move. Chelby was dying. Right there and Erica couldn’t move.

The Air Marshal shoved past her, weapon drawn. “Get back! Everyone get back!”

But there was nowhere to go. The aisles were clogged with panicked passengers, people climbing over seats, trampling each other in their desperation to escape.

The marshal reached the sick passenger just as the man lifted his head from Chelby’s body. Pieces of flesh still hung from his mouth, jaw working as he chewed.

“Stop! I will shoot!”

He turned toward the marshal, lurched upright and lunged. The marshal fired once, catching him in the shoulder and cloudy pink-orange blood seeped through his shirt in thick clumps. It should have been enough to stop the passenger but he staggered and kept coming.

“What the hell?” The Air Marshal’s voice pitched higher as he watched the man.

The sick passenger covered the distance in a heartbeat, grabbing the marshal’s arm, already tearing through the marshal’s forearm before the man could pull back, grinding down through skin to muscle. The marshal drove his boot into passenger twenty-three’s knee and the bone cracked. The leg buckled, but the passenger held on.

Someone behind them screamed: “The head! Shoot him in the fucking head!”

The marshal stopped fighting the grip and shoved the barrel up under passenger twenty-three’s chin and pulled the trigger.

The gun went off, loud in the cabin. The top of his skull peeled back, gray matter and cloudy pink-orange blood sprayed the overhead compartment, the seats, across him and the passengers closest to the blast. Two rows up, the woman who hadn’t stopped talking since boarding was screaming now, the sound muffled and broken by sobbing. Bone fragments were scattered across the aisle, on his shirt on the back of seats. The body didn’t fall, it collapsed, skull cracking against the armrest on the way down — a sound nobody in that cabin would forget.

The marshal stood there, chest heaving. Blood ran down his forearm in thick ropes, soaking into his cuff. He looked at the body, the ceiling, then back at his arm. This passenger had killed Chelby and at least one other passenger before he got to him. Three bullets left. Too late for him, but maybe he could get ahead of this before it got worse.

In front of him, Chelby’s body convulsed, same as the woman who’d been sleeping before passenger twenty-three got to her. The seizure rippled through their limbs like electricity and they both jerked upright in sections, their arms and legs bending wrong. Their heads snapped up in different directions, skin gone gray and waxy, and when their eyes opened they were yellowed and bulging, pupils ringed in burst capillaries.

They rose in a single jerking motion.

“Fuck.”

He raised his gun but his arm wouldn’t cooperate, the barrel pulling toward the floor like something was anchored to it. His vision went white at the edges, blinding out. He watched Chelby throw herself at the older man two rows up, the one who’d sat frozen through all of it. His screams joined the rest. He wasn’t sure where the other one went, but he was positive it was the couple sharing earbuds who’d realized too late they should have moved toward the front of the cabin.

The marshal sank against the row and slid down to the floor.

He still had three bullets. He just couldn’t see well enough to use them.

“Callahan—” She called to him but stopped as she watched as the gray slowly creeped into his skin, the same waxy gray as passenger twenty-three and whatever she’d been about to say died in her throat.

Callahan heard Erica’s voice through the screaming and he could barely see her face, it’s all a blur, but he did see the change in her expression.

He tried opening his mouth and when he did nothing made sense.

Erica moved, finally. Stumbling backward through the chaos. She grabbed the intercom to call the cockpit but her hands were shaking so badly she dropped it. Through the mayhem she could see them multiplying, the infected tearing into the living, the newly dead rising with that same unnatural speed.

Someone slammed against the emergency exit, rattling it uselessly, panic-stricken and crying. “Open the door! Let us out!”

Erica ran for the cockpit door, shoving past passengers, going over seats, and dodging grasping hands.

She reached it and pounded with both fists. “Open up! Open up!” Her voice cracked, desperate and terrified.

There is no response from the cockpit. She kept pounding, screaming to be let in as the infected multiplied behind her.

Earlier in the cockpit, First Officer Terrence stared at the security monitor, watching a passenger tear into Chelby’s throat. His hand froze on the yoke. “Captain, we need to...”

“Stay in your seat.” Captain Stan’s voice was firm, but sweat beaded his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, the bandage on his wrist visible for just a moment.

Terrence’s eyes tracked to that bandage, and Stan had said it was nothing. A scratch from helping a passenger with luggage but as the screaming filtered through the cockpit door, that scratch started to look more like something than nothing.

“Captain, something’s wrong out there.” Terrence leaned forward, watching the monitor. Passengers were scrambling over seats, trampling each other, desperate to get away. “We should...”

“We stay here.” Stan’s jaw tightened. “Protocol. No one opens this door. Not for anything.”

Gunshots cracked through the bulkhead. On the monitor, Terrence watched the sick passenger attack Callahan before another shot rang out and he saw the passenger’s brain all over the cabin.

Terrence grabbed the radio. “Las Vegas Approach, this is Flight 447. We have an emergency. Multiple passengers down, violent attacks in the cabin. We need immediate assistance and medical care on the ground. Requesting priority landing.”

Static.

Beside him, Stan shifted in his seat, wiping sweat from his face again and his breathing had gone shallow.

“Las Vegas Approach, do you copy? Flight 447 declaring an emergency.”

More static, then a voice: “Flight 447, say again? Did you say violent attacks?”

“Affirmative.” Terrence’s voice tightened.

“Flight 447, maintain altitude and—”

Terrance watched Chelby’s body begin to rise on the monitor. She was getting up, moving wrong, and her eyes... She lunged at a nearby passenger, teeth sinking into flesh.

Terrence had seen this before. Not in real life, but enough times on screen to recognize it. The way the dead came back. He went back on the radio.

“Las Vegas Approach, we have... we have infected on board. The passengers are turning. Attacking each other, biting and eating. They’re... Jesus Christ, they’re coming back to life. We cannot land in Las Vegas. I repeat, we cannot risk landing.”

The radio dissolved into static. Terrence repeated himself but got no response from Las Vegas, just more static.

“We’re not...” Stan’s voice cut in, rough and strained. His hand gripped the armrest. “We’re not landing. Can’t... can’t risk it.”

There’s pounding on the cockpit door. “Open up! Open up!” It was Erica, her voice desperate and terrified.

Terrence’s hand twitched toward the door release, but he forced himself to stay in his seat. Protocol. If he opened that door, whatever was happening out there would get in here. The pounding continued, with Erica’s voice breaking with panic.

He turned to look at Stan and can see Stan’s face had gone completely gray, slick with sweat. The tremor in his hand had spread to his whole arm and his breathing came in short, shallow gasps.

“Captain...” Terrence’s voice was quiet. He already knew. “When did you get that scratch?”

Stan turned to look at him. For just a moment, something flickered in his eyes. There is recognition and regret. He knew what was happening to him.

“I’m sorry…sorry,” Stan whispered, as his body convulsed.

Terrence’s hands flew to the controls, trying to maintain altitude as Stan seized beside him. The captain’s back arched, and then he went still for just a second before his eyes snapped open. Yellowed pupils. Empty and with his mouth open he lunged.

Slamming into Terrence, teeth tearing into his shoulder. Terrence screamed, barely fighting him off, but Stan’s strength was inhuman. Blood sprayed across the instrument panel as Stan teeth found Terrance’s throat, ripping through flesh and artery.

Terrence’s vision blurred. His hand fell against the yoke, pushing it forward as he tried to shove Stan away. The plane’s nose dipped and the instrument panel screamed warnings as the altitude dropped. Their descent rate was increasing. His hands scrabbled weakly at Stan’s face, his uniform, anything to get him off, but the strength in his arms, from him was draining out of him with every beat of his failing heart. Blood poured down his chest, soaking into his shirt.

The pounding on the cockpit door stopped or maybe Terrence just couldn’t hear it anymore over the alarms. The light faded behind Terrence’s eyes as his hand slipped off the yoke.

The plane screamed toward the ground with the desert floor rushing up through the windscreen, dark and endless under the night sky.

Erica heard the shout and the muffled scream from the cockpit, then felt the slow descent of the aircraft. The floor tilted beneath her feet. She looked left and right in panic, trying to maintain her footing as the plane angled downward.

The first class flight attendant, Connor, was missing. Her eyes found the bathroom door occupied light on. He was hiding. Smart.

Oxygen masks dropped from the overhead compartments, dangling like useless jellyfish as the infection spread in waves. Passengers trapped in window seats clawed at the people blocking the aisles.

An infected passenger stumbled toward her, mouth open, reaching for her but Erica didn’t think. She ran for the other bathroom, yanking the door open and throwing herself inside. She slammed it shut, locked it, and wedged herself between the toilet and the wall.

The plane shuddered as the descent grew steeper and through the thin door, she could hear the screams. Erica braced her feet against the wall and prayed.

Dispatch had called it a commercial aircraft down, possible survivors. Lieutenant Sarah Harper had responded to plane crashes before; small Cessnas mostly, the occasional corporate jet. Never a commercial airliner, this was big.

The wreckage sprawled across miles of desert, burning metal scattered like broken bones against the night sky. Fire trucks and ambulances formed a perimeter, their flashing lights painting the scene in strobing red and blue. The heat hit her first, then the smell of burning fuel, scorched metal, and underneath it all, the sickly-sweet stench of cooked flesh.

Sarah climbed out of her patrol car, adjusting her radio. “Metro 7-14, on scene. Jesus Christ.”

Her partner, Rodriguez, stood beside her, face illuminated by the flames. “You ever seen anything like this?”

“No.”

Fire crews were already moving in, foam spraying across the largest section of fuselage. Paramedics assembled their equipment, faces grim but focused. This was the part Sarah hated—the organized efficiency of disaster response, everyone doing their job while bodies cooled in the wreckage.

She frowned when she saw the news outlet and civilians were on scene. “Let’s secure the perimeter,” she said. “Keep news and civilians back.”

They moved toward the crash site, boots crunching on debris. Bits of the plane were everywhere—a section of wing here, a row of seats there, personal belongings scattered like confetti. A child’s stuffed animal lay in the dirt, one button eye staring at nothing.

Sarah was marking off the southern edge when she heard the shout.

“We’ve got survivors!”

Her head snapped up. A firefighter was waving frantically near a section of the fuselage. Sarah ran toward him, Rodriguez at her heels.

Minutes earlier the impact came like the hand of God slamming down from above.

One second Erica was braced in the bathroom, feet against the wall, praying. Next, the world exploded into sound and violence. Metal screamed. The floor dropped out from under her. Her head cracked against the sink, and stars burst across her vision.

The plane hit the ground nose-first, and the fuselage folded like an accordion. Erica felt her body whip forward, then snap back. Something in her left wrist gave way with a wet pop that she felt more than heard. Pain lanced up her arm, white-hot and blinding.

The bathroom door ripped off its hinges. The walls buckled inward. Erica tumbled out into what was left of the cabin, slamming into a twisted seat frame. Her shoulder wrenched, the joint separating with a sickening crunch. She screamed, but the sound was lost in the cacophony of tearing metal and shattering glass.

The plane kept moving, skidding across the desert floor, spinning, breaking apart. Sections of fuselage peeled away like tin foil. Seats tore loose from their moorings. Bodies—living and dead—were flung like ragdolls.

Then, finally, it stopped.

The ringing in Erica’s ears was so loud. She lay on her side, pinned between a seat and what might have been part of the overhead compartment. Her left arm hung useless, wrist bent at an angle that made her stomach lurch. Her shoulder was on fire, the joint definitely dislocated. And her head... God, her head felt like it had split open. She reached up with her good hand and felt the wetness. Blood. A lot of it, running down the side of her face from a gash somewhere in her hairline.

She tried to move and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt so bad.

How am I alive?

Through the gap between twisted metal and seats, she could see the night sky. Stars and the smell of burning fuel and worse, much worse.

A noise cut through the ringing in her ears. It was the same sound the sick passenger had made before he attacked.

Erica’s blood went cold and forced herself to move, biting down on a scream as her dislocated shoulder ground against bone. She pulled herself free of the wreckage, inch by agonizing inch, dragging her useless left arm.

The cabin section she’d been in had broken away from the rest of the plane. It lay on its side maybe fifty feet from the main fuselage, which was still burning. Bodies were scattered everywhere. Some weren’t moving. Many were.

A figure stood up in the wreckage. A passenger, or what was left of one. His leg was bent backward at the knee, bone jutting through torn skin, but he was standing on it anyway. His head turned, scanning the debris with yellowed eyes.

Then another rose. And another and more rose.

Oh God. Oh God, they survived. They survived the crash.

One of them was on fire, flames consuming his suit jacket and hair, but he just kept walking, searching. His skin was already blackened, cracking, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

Erica pressed herself flat against the curved wall of the fuselage, trying to disappear into it. Her breathing tore in short pulls. Blood slid from her forehead into her eye. She raised her hand to wipe it away and stopped. Three of her fingers are bent sideways at the knuckle. She used her palm instead, smearing the blood more than clearing it.

She needed to hide, a hand grabbed her ankle.

Erica muffled her scream and looked down to see Chelby or what’s left of her. Her uniform shredded and soaked with blood. Her face was ruined, jaw hanging loose, but her eyes… Those yellowed, empty eyes are on her and mouth open drooling with terrible hunger.

Erica drove her heel down into Chelby’s face. The jaw snapped the rest of the way off. The grip didn’t loosen. Chelby hauled herself forward, mouth opening impossibly wide despite the missing jaw, teeth gnashing.

Erica grabbed a piece of twisted metal with her ‘good’ hand. Her broken fingers brushed the edge and white-hot pain spiked up her arm. She gripped with what she had and swung. The metal connected with the side of Chelby’s skull, and the sound is wet. She swung again and again until Chelby went still.

Erica scrambled back against the wall, chest heaving, cradling her hand against her chest. The broken fingers throbbed with her pulse. Tears ran down her face.

Off in the distance she heard the sirens. Help was coming but as she watched more infected rise from the wreckage, she realized help wasn’t going to be enough.

Three figures crawled from the wreckage.

One had a compound fracture, bone jutting through his thigh, but he was walking on it. Another’s head twisted at an angle that should have been fatal, neck clearly broken, but she kept coming. The third dragged himself forward on his arms, both legs twisted backward, fingernails scraping against the desert floor.

“What the fuck,” Rodriguez breathed.

A paramedic approached the nearest one; the man with the broken leg. “Sir, please stay down. We’re here to help.”

The man’s head turned toward her voice. His face was pale, lips peeled back from bloody teeth. His eyes were wrong. Dark and flat and he lunged.

The paramedic went down hard, the man’s teeth sinking into her shoulder. Her scream cut through the night, high and terrible. She thrashed, trying to throw him off but he held on, tearing and gnawing.

“Shoot him! Somebody shoot him!” The firefighter rushed forward, then froze as the woman with the broken neck grabbed his arm and bit down on his wrist.

He shouted, trying to shove her back, but she dragged him toward her and the gear took him down, all that weight working against him. He was still fighting her, trying to pry her jaw loose, when the second one dropped on top of him. Helmet on, gear on, none of it mattered. Teeth found his cheek and he let out a scream that turned into a wail. He stopped fighting the woman on his wrist and grabbed at the face pressed into his, trying to push it off, but he needed both hands for that. Teeth tore through the muscle, deep, grinding.

Sarah’s hand went to her sidearm, muscle memory taking over. She drew, aimed at the man attacking the paramedic, and fired twice. Dead center and it did nothing.

“Head shot!” Rodriguez yelled, as he fired at the crawler. The bullet went through the skull, and the crawler stopped moving.

Sarah adjusted her aim and fired again. The man’s head snapped back, and he collapsed.

But the paramedic underneath him was already convulsing, blood pooling around her. Her eyes rolled back, then snapped open—dark and empty. She surged to her feet with impossible speed and threw herself at the nearest person, a young EMT who barely had time to raise his hands before she was on him.

“Fall back! Everyone fall back!” Sarah’s voice cracked across the radio. “Shots fired, multiple hostiles, we need backup now!”

More figures emerged from the wreckage. Some were burning, flames consuming their clothes and hair, but they kept coming. Others were missing limbs, trailing intestines, skulls caved in. They moved in a tide toward the first responders, driven by something that wasn’t pain or fear.

The firefighter who’d been bitten began to convulse and Sarah aimed her gun and pulled the trigger. The young EMT just stood there staring at his arm with the blood running down his arm with a defeated look on his face.

Sarah fired until her magazine was empty, then she reloaded. Beside her, Rodriguez was doing the same. Around them, the scene devolved into chaos. Into gunfire, screams and the wet sound of flesh tearing.

“We can’t hold them!” Tatum shouted as he looked at Sarah and Rodriguez.

He was right. For every infected they dropped, two more rose. The paramedic, the firefighters, the EMTs—everyone who’d come to save lives was becoming part of the swarm.

Sarah looked over at Rodriguez’s arm. “We have to go now or we’re gonna be part of that.”

They ran for their patrol car, as the infected stumbled after them and around them. Behind them, the remaining first responders were being overwhelmed, dragged down into the mass of bodies.

Sarah’s radio erupted with overlapping as other police officers radio in their transmissions:

“—need backup at the crash site, officer down—”

“—they’re not dying, they’re not fucking dying—”

“—Metro units respond, we have multiple—”

She yanked open the driver’s door and threw herself inside. Rodriguez tumbled into the passenger seat. An infected firefighter slammed against her window, leaving a smear of blood across the glass as his fists hammered at it.

Sarah gunned the engine and reversed hard, throwing the firefighter off. Her headlights swept across the wreckage as the car spun around, and for just a second, she saw something that made her breath catch.

Behind a section of wing, partially hidden in shadow, she saw a woman in a flight attendant uniform. Blonde hair matted with blood. One arm hanging at a wrong angle and not moving with three infected converging on her position.

“Rodriguez, there’s someone—”

“We can’t!” Rodriguez’s voice cracked. “Harper, we can’t go back!”

More infected were spreading from the crash site now, shambling into the desert in every direction. The woman behind the wing was already surrounded and Sarah’s hands tightened on the wheel. Every instinct screamed at her to turn around, to try, but Rodriguez was right. Going back meant dying and becoming one of them.

She kept driving as Rodriguez radio dispatch.

“Dispatch, this is Metro 7-14.” Rodriguez’s voice shook. “We need to establish a hard perimeter around the crash site. I repeat a hard perimeter. Nothing gets in or out. The survivors—” He paused. “The survivors are infected with something. They’re attacking responders. We have multiple casualties, multiple—fuck, they’re turning. The dead are coming back to life.”

Static.

Then: “7-14, did you say the dead are coming back?”

Sarah looked in her rearview mirror. The crash site burned behind them, a beacon in the desert night and around it, shadows moved—dozens of them now, maybe more spreading outward like a stain.

“Affirmative, Dispatch. The dead are coming back to life and attacking. They are coming back to life and eating people.” Rodriguez answered.

The word hung in the air, absurd and absolutely true.

Behind the wing Erica’s vision swam back into focus, the darkness receding just enough for her to see them coming.

Captain Stan. First Officer Terrence. The businessman from row twenty who’d been working on his laptop. All of them moving with that terrible, jerking gait. All of them with those yellowed, empty eyes.

She tried to crawl, but her body wouldn’t cooperate anymore. Too much blood loss.

Stan reached her first. His burned face tilted, studying her with those empty eyes. Then his mouth opened wide.

Erica closed her eyes, the pain was brief.