An airport is a terrible place to be during a zombie outbreak: sealed doors, huge crowds and few weapons. Airports will be seething hotbeds of infection when panic sets in and everyone tries to leave town. Plus, airports will be military targets if and when any one nation (possibly including your own) decides to bomb any other nation. What are you even doing at an airport during an outbreak? You should know better.
But let’s say that you don’t know about the outbreak and it catches you completely off-guard as you ready to board for a discount island getaway. Your blood pressure rises as you see sickening, dying and reanimating travelers in flip-flops and track suits.
Firstly, do NOT get on your flight! The only place worse to be than an airport during an outbreak is on an airplane!
Secondly, you must arm yourself. You definitely gave up all of your best weapons to pass through security, even if you travel with a decent-sized rock in your carry-on duffle bag, which you probably don’t, because wheeled suitcases are more fashion forward and those heavy stones tend to give you more backaches on uninfected vacations than they are worth. Perhaps you can pick your rolling case up by its handle and batter the shamblers with it a few times before it breaks, but likely you are going to need to find killing tools elsewhere.
If you are near security, perhaps you can retrieve your or others’ confiscated weapons. Sadly, most of the TSA’s collection will be toenail clippers, key chain pepper sprays and other purse-bottom riff-raff that is much harder to use lethally than they would have you believe. Best case scenario, you can team up with an individual officer or tackle one who is already infected and pray that her only armament is not a taser. More likely, you are going to get tased without ever noticing that the security line rope stands are pretty decent for swinging.
Some items that you can grab around any old airport may be useful: flag poles, greeting card racks or large bottles of tariff-free liquor can be swung somewhat effectively in a pinch. But head to the food court – their chairs and cooking utensils will likely be the best weapons in the area and if you really get stuck, you can lock yourself in a storage room and worry about the temperature and exit rout after you nibble on uncooked french fries and wait for the brain-eaters to get distracted by some other noise. Knives, serving spoons and table bases can take out a few more shufflers than unwieldy display cases and rolled up celebrity rags.
Your real goal here is to escape the revenant-riddled horror hanger. Spy the layout of your gate and terminal. Where are the locked doors? You probably can’t break the window glass, but after you arm yourself, you may be able to club an undead flight attendant or staff and steal their set of keys. Once you have obtained a set of keys, you will have to fend off your would-be diners while you search for the correct key to the correct door. Else you will need to fend off an entire airport full of hungry zombies on your way to the front door, where you will have to hotwire a car from the parking garage or lope away on foot. If you make it to a tarmac, mechanics’ tools and checked baggage will make for better deadly weapons that what you are toting from Panda Express. Re-arm and flee.
If you are stuck on an airplane during an outbreak, you are effed in the A without lube. Hopefully the pilots can land the plane while you happen to be the one who locked yourself in the bathroom at the first sign of trouble. Good luck fighting your way to an exit row. Would you rather be eaten and join the hordes or dehydrate to death in a coffin-sized shitter while the moaners claw at your cage door?
It is worth noting that after you are settled elsewhere in the midst of a walking dead world, airports can be a helpful place to raid for supplies: gas, mechanical parts, tires, small vehicles and other people’s clothing will be available in abundance if you are well enough armed and organized to break in rather than breaking out in the first place. Be very wary, however: most airport break-ins will kill you faster than an average burning wreck falling from the sky. Both require Xanax.
