I had just watched on the news American military planes bombing JFK airport in New York. The talking heads on the news were speaking of an unprecedented crisis facing the world. The news anchor was solemnly facing the camera and spoke the words that would chill me to the bone.

JFK Airport has been bombed this morning by the US military in an attempt to contain what is being described as a zombie outbreak.

I picked up my phone. There were no new messages, and so I opened up the social media apps. There was that word again repeated in post after post. Zombie. Disturbingly it did not seem contained to New York. I recalled the news yesterday of the planes quarantined around the world that had arrived from New York. There had been so many. I looked again at the locations where planes were affected. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, Geneva, Stockholm, Madrid, Milan, Istanbul and Moscow.

Looking at the stories it seemed that of these only three locations had situations where planes were at this moment deemed to be affected by the outbreak.

Moscow had footage of their plane being boarded by Special Forces, and the news from the Russian Government was that the threat was eradicated. Social media was reporting that everyone on board this plane was killed. Whether by the Special Forces team themselves I guess we may never know.

In Stockholm the Swedish government announced that an individual was contained on the plane during flight and that no further casualties were reported and that the remaining plane passengers have been moved to a secure facility for assessment.

In London it has been confirmed that a quarantined airplane at Heathrow Airport is contaminated. I read that word again. Contaminated. I stood up and walked over to my window on the tenth floor of my apartment building and looked out over the view of London. Contaminated.

I looked up at the skies. They were peaceful. The news had said all worldwide civilian aviation had been grounded for the moment. The city at this early hour was still quiet. I slipped on some running shoes and headed to the elevator. I exited the building and started a light jog. I normally listened to music on my run, but today I simply held my phone and ran in silence. There was light traffic on the roads but I saw no one else walking - on this road at least. At a road junction I stopped as I could hear an emergency vehicle approaching - it’s siren blaring. It was a police vehicle.

I remained in my spot as I heard additional vehicles with their sirens blaring too. Three more police cars and two ambulances roared past me at speed. Behind me I could also hear the rotors of a helicopter. I looked up and saw a small police chopper flying across the sky in the same direction as the road vehicles. Shortly after, the loud vibration of chinook military helicopters swept across the skyline too. All vehicles were heading west. That was in the direction of the airport some five miles away from me. I looked westward too and wondered what horrors the day would hold.

Somewhere far off in that distance I heard a loud boom.