In an aviation first, a zombie attack occurred aboard a commercial airliner today. It was a scene of horror worse than even passengers who routinely fly in the most uncomfortable coach seats, with the most restrictive fares, could recall experiencing in some time.
The plane, a Boeing 767 with 173 passengers aboard, at the start, was about half way through a six-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles when the attack occurred. Survivors recall that a woman near the back of the plane began screaming to the man next to her that being unhappy because he was stuck in the middle seat didn’t give him the right to dismember people.
The woman was the first of dozens of victims, many of whom had been waiting for the rear lavatories and did not run following the initial attack for fear of losing their place in line.
“Those of us who survived were really lucky,” said coach passenger Bob Payne, of Pelham Manor, New York, who had been in row 36-E. “If it hadn’t been for some of the things in our carry-on’s we’d forgotten to check, like machetes, calvary swords, and one fellow’s chain saw, I don’t know what we would have done.”
Payne said he’d noticed the man during boarding. “He was snarling and snapping at people, and dragging himself down the aisle, pushing a carry-on the size of a body bag. But you see a lot of that these days, so I didn’t think much of it.”
As soon as the rampage started, a flight-attendant, Enola Swift, who had escaped with only the loss of a leg, hopped up to the cockpit and explained the situation to the captain, who after checking to make sure the cockpit door was secure immediately requested that he be allowed to make an emergency landing.
“Unfortunately,” the captain later told reporters, “There was already a hijacking taking place on Southwest; a United flight had a family with a child who wouldn’t stay in his seat; and an American cabin crew had taken over a plane and was forcing everyone onboard to watch them perform a scene from Les Miserables. So air traffic control told us all available controllers were busy assisting other pilots and we’d have to continue on to L.A. as scheduled.”
Flight attendant Swift said that some passengers quietly accepted what was going on, as many usually do, and just seemed happy, as the people around them had the marrow sucked out of their bones, for the extra leg room. But others, Swift said, especially those whose assault had turned them into zombies, too, were almost unmanageable.
“They were banging on the call buttons, stacking the beverage carts with arms and legs and pushing them up and down the aisles, even smoking in the lavatories.”
The most difficult to deal with, Swift said, were the children. “Take an already cranky kid and turn it into a zombie, and that’s a flight attendant’s worst nightmare. I hope I never see that kind of behavior again.”
At the carnage continued, the surviving crew retreated to the forward cabin, which up until then had remained zombie free, and were able to temporarily keep their attackers at bay by pulling the curtain closed and making an announcement to remind coach passengers they were not permitted in First Class.
“Finally, though, they pushed in anyway and we were still fending them off (thank goodness for that chain saw) when the plane pulled into the gate, where we were met by a customer service representative,” Swift said.
Mobbed by reporters after deplaning, passenger Payne said that as horrifying as the ordeal had been he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the original zombie and the others he had turned into monsters.
“Watching as a First Class passenger who had been complaining about the noise was attacked by a horde of zombies and then stuffed down the toilet in the forward lavatory, you knew that deep within those tortured soles there was still some faint spark of humanity.”
In the aftermath of the incident, the nation’s airlines have come together as a group and quickly moved to reassure an on-edge flying public that any passenger who missed a connecting flight as a result of dismemberment or other major injuries would be reimbursed, upon presentation of receipts, for all meal, accommodation, and medical expenses, up to $25.
