Hi everyone! :) Story is now FINISHED (and renamed 'The Answer'). Woot! What an amazing trip. It actually gets darker than my previous story (Little Brown Bear), if you can believe, but there are some interesting and beautiful moments in here, including some Marcus moments (and memories, with a take on how he and R met) that are worth taking a peek at ;) Regardless, I hope you'll share your thoughts with a review, as they are always welcome and spur my writing. (Oh, and totally forgot to say that the Warm Bodies universe is not mine, of course, it's Isaac Marion's... but, you knew that right? ;) Guessing that's why you're here?)

"I don't know Jules," Rowan said, his voice carrying tinnily over the pilot's headset. "I really don't think it's a good idea."

Gazing over the instrument panel of the Cessna, he gave a little satisfied nod. Everything looked steady - they were cruising at just over eleven thousand feet, a little higher than normal due to the mountains in their path, they had plenty of fuel in the tank, and the controls were responsive and clean. Nowhere near as good as the jet of course, and he missed that, but the Colonel had confiscated it for deeper runs west where they needed the increased range and speed, leaving him with a choice between a newer Bonanza with minor rudder issues or an older Cessna 206, which his inner pilot had jumped at for some reason.

The west pulled at him though. He wanted to explore, to see just what was left of humanity out there, and he volunteered for those missions any time they came up. But the Colonel always declined, keeping him instead on the small supply hops to known contacts in friendly territories, like the one they were on now to the Davis Outpost up north.

Rowan didn't take it personally - he knew John's decision had more to do with Julie's insistence on joining him in the cockpit than the man's lack of faith in his borrowed flying ability. Many of the runs west, and further south, were first contact situations and always went with increased military guard. Dale and Ed, the Colonel's two military pilots, had returned from a few of these trips with stories of rushed evacuations under fire, and random pot shots taken at them in the air. It was some scary shit. Rowan had seen the bullet holes himself, and marveled at some of the close calls, and wondered how the hell they'd handled it.

The experience he was drawing on to fly came from a guy who'd done sedate charter runs just outside the city, and some basic instruction on the side - he'd never seen any action and sure as hell hadn't been fired at. A couple of close calls with a few of his students, sure, followed by stiff drinks in the airport bar, but that'd been it.

"What did you just say?" Julie's voice carried back through the headset, interrupting his thoughts.

Rowan glanced over at her. She was frowning at him from the co-pilots seat, a map folded in her lap, dressed in a light blue top and canvas jacket and jeans. The headset looked goofily large over her wild mass of blonde hair.

"I said I don't think it's a good idea," he answered, and his gaze returned to the heavy, angry clouds directly ahead, part of a wide storm front that was getting worse as he watched. They'd known they were going to get some weather today, they just hadn't figured on it coming this far south. Looked like things were going to get a little crazy.

Julie shook her head, "No, before that."

Rowan broke from his inspection of the clouds to peer back over at her. "Uh... I said 'I don't know'?"

Julie smirked. "You said 'Jules'."

"And?" Arching a questioning eyebrow at her, Rowan glanced down at the map she was holding in her lap, quickly tracing the route over again. How in the heck were they going to get around this front?

"You've just never said that before, that's all," Julie answered, looking out over the storm. "Jesus, that looks bad."

"Yeah," he agreed. "And it's just getting worse. And what do you mean, I've never said it before? I've said it loads of times."

Julie's stare turned as cold as stone.

Rowan stared back. "What?"

"Name one time when you've said it," she said, crossing her arms. Then she nodded out to the dark wall of thunderclouds. "We'll have to go around it R, they're counting on these medical supplies today."

Rowan frowned. Why was she being so sensitive about this? He adjusted the mic at his mouth, "Going around will throw us at least a hundred miles off course Julie, and there's no guarantee something else won't develop along the way. It's not a good idea." He started a gradual bank to the left, feeling out the wind impacts from the storm they were getting even this far out. Then he smirked as he remembered something specific about her nickname.

"Okay, that time we were at Burt's," he said, grinning her way, as he negotiated a small pocket of light turbulence while the plane rattled around them. "We were playing a game he'd just got on a raid, and you called me a cheat, and I said "You're a sore loser, Jules." He laughed then and shook his head. "You really were. You don't like losing at anything."

As he glanced over at her, the smile fell from his face. Julie was sitting completely still, watching him with eyes lined in pain.

"What?" he asked, surprised. Had he hurt her? "I wasn't trying to be mean Jules, I just-"

"Stop calling me Jules," she snapped back. "Just stop."

Before he could ask why, a sudden burst of turbulence hit them hard, and R's stomach leapt to his mouth as they dropped like a leaden stone through the air. Julie let out a panicked yelp, flailing for the map and supplies as they shot to the ceiling of the cabin, and he wrestled to level them off again, finally regaining control as the stick shook in his hand.

"Quit it!" he growled at the yoke, and pushed it and the throttle forward as he banked left again. They were now running parallel to the storm, and the plane was being buffeted by heavy crosswinds.

"Are you okay?" he called over to Julie, above the wind, and she nodded back to him, biting her bottom lip.

He smiled back. He couldn't blame her for being a little freaked. They'd experience turbulence on a few of these flights before, but nothing that bad. They must have dropped, what? A hundred feet? At least?

"Well that was nasty," he said, wincing over at her. "Sorry."

"That's okay..." she whispered into the mic. "But... yeah, maybe we should go back."

With a crooked smirk, he nodded back at her, but as he focused on keeping them level it became obvious real quick that they'd missed their chance. As he turned to race from the dark grey wall behind them, he realized another cell was building in front of them, effectively boxing them in. Punching through would only get them into trouble. The best bet was to return to their parallel course, push the engine and hopefully shoot into the clear between the two fronts before it got too insane.

With his heart starting a drumline in his chest, Rowan pushed the throttle wide open as he banked back to the parallel course. Glancing over at Julie, he tried to give her an encouraging smile.

"Secure what you can okay? Things are about to get rough."

"About to get rough?" Julie yelped, as the plane started to shudder around them again. "I thought we were going to go back?!"

Rowan shook his head, glancing past her at the angry mass of the advancing storm, before pointing over his own shoulder. "Got another cell developing, I'll have to squeeze between them."

"Oh shit," Julie mumbled, and quickly gathered the map and the food and other supplies that'd been tossed around the cabin in the previous drop, stuffing them into the duffel wedged under her legs.

Without warning, the plane was suddenly slammed sideways, as if some giant creature had tried to bat them out of the sky, and Julie shrieked as she was thrown hard against the passenger door. R reached for her, wanting to make sure she was okay, and they dropped like a stone again, pitching forward into a bank of clouds that had developed underneath the plane.

"Jesus!" he yelled, and pulled the yoke back hard, leveling them off in a world of grey, filled with the roar of wild winds and the hammering of heavy rain against the thin skin of the aircraft. "Julie, you okay?!"

"Yeah..." Her voice was thin over the mic, and he turned to look at her, worried.

"I'm okay," she said again, and he caught her eye as she gave a weak smile. "Just make sure we're okay." Her hands were locked tightly over the arm rest set in the door, her knuckles white.

Rowan wrestled with the yoke as the plane rocked violently, pitching them back and forth in their seats, and he swore as he glanced at the altimeter. They'd lost almost a thousand feet in the space of minutes. They couldn't afford too many more like that, not over the mountain range they were heading through.

I have to get out of these clouds.

"Doing my best," he muttered, and pulled the yoke back, trying to regain the altitude they'd lost. If they could just get above this bank, he'd be able to see again, find the gap. As it was, without GPS or weather satellite feed, he had no idea where he was pointed, though he was pretty sure they hadn't done a 180.

Pretty sure.

The altimeter spun wildly as they rose, buffeted by severe crosswinds that threatened to roll the plane, but finally the grey lightened, and a layer of clouds fell away beneath them as they shot up, bobbing wildly.

"Shit," he hissed.

The gap had disappeared. They'd surfaced into a pocket surrounded by heavy clouds, the darkest to their right, in the depths of which he could see the bloom of lightning. Rain spattered the windscreen, and the Cessna shuddered again under his hands.

The best he could do now was aim for the lightest clouds he could see, and hope the plane could withstand the winds that were threatening to rip them apart.

Rowan took a deep breath. What he was about to do was going to scare the crap out of Julie. Negotiating another jarring round of turbulence, he flicked the radio to send and adjusted the mic over his mouth again. Glancing over at Julie, he gave her a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Mayday, mayday! Cessna Seven Five Six Papa Yankee, caught in heavy storm, severe crosswinds, flying blind west of route, somewhere in the Adirondacks... exact location unknown, emergency landing necessary!"

"R?!" Julie squeaked, panic rising in her voice.

"Cessna Six Papa Yankee to Home Tower, please respond!"

With a deafening crack, the world flashed brilliant white in the space between breaths, and the yoke lurched violently in his hands as his headset went dead with a sputter of wild static. Julie screamed, and momentarily blinded, he fought to steady the plane, trying to find some calm in the ripping crosswinds.

"Just lightning, it's okay!" he yelled, as his vision slowly returned and he leveled them off again in deep cloud cover.

"JUST lightning?!" Julie screeched. She twisted in her seat to look out over the plane. "Did it hit us?!"

"Yeah," he yelled back, "but it can't hurt us Jules, we're not grounded!" Disturbed by the lack of anything through the headset, he flicked through the channels on the radio, but the unit was unresponsive.

The lightning had fried the goddamn radio.

"Fuuuck," he growled, ripping his headset off. Then he punched the dash, as the plane shook like an old washing machine around him. "Ancient piece of crap!"

"What?!" Julie cried, pulling her own headset off, "What happened?! We lose the radio?"

Nodding sharply, he stared out over the nose of the plane, through a windscreen sluiced in rain, and struggled to counter every attempt by the craft to roll. He couldn't stop the sliding, and the sudden updrafts and downdrafts that were throwing them through wild altitude loses and gains. They'd dropped another thousand feet, and trying to keep them steady was wearing him out.

Nothing but grey everywhere now, with sudden brilliant blooms of lightning flashing to their right and above.

They were deep in the storm, and he had no idea whether he was on his way out, or just flying toward its heart.

As the plane was swatted violently again, pitching down and rolling to the right, Rowan felt as if he was watching himself from the outside. Watching hands, that were surely his, darting back and forth between the throttle and the yoke, watching his feet dancing between rudder pedals, controlling this machine that he hadn't a clue how to fly up until six months ago. And yet he was doing it, drawing on knowledge and experience he'd ripped from someone else's head.

It was so incredibly strange at that moment, so surreal, that as the wind howled around them in the small cockpit of the plane, his mind seemed to suddenly empty, and he was left holding something in his hands that squirmed and bucked like a living thing, that he had no understanding of...

...with no idea what to do next.

Oh shit.

"Rowan?" Julie's voice shook over the angry roar of the wind.

Swallowing hard, Rowan gripped the thing in his hands tight and look over at her, his eyes wide. The language was gone. He was faced with a wall of switches and dials and buttons, that his hands had passed over effortlessly moments ago, but meant nothing to him now.

Nonono... oh fuck...

"What's wrong?!"

His mouth dry, Rowan stared at the panel, at the instrument right in front of him with a blue and brown ball inside, jittering wildly. Now, he knew what that one was. The brown was the ground, the blue was the sky, and the line in between was the horizon. Okay, he had that.

The horizon line was high above the little orange thing in the middle. That meant...

We're heading into the ground...

"Rowan!"

Pull up? Pull up, right?!

Without answering her, he yanked back hard on the stick in his hands, pulling it towards him as far as it would go, and was immediately crushed into his seat as the plane's nose arched up into the grey. Julie groaned beside him, pressed down by the same heavy force, and his eyes sought the instrument again. There, they were above the line now, that was good, right?

Way above it.

Jesus Christ, why was the thing shaking in his hands now?!

"R!" Julie yelled.

Wild eyed, he looked at her, feeling a boulder of dread in his gut.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled, arms jutting out to stabilize herself against the cabin ceiling and door.

"I don't know!" he roared back.

Just then a strange beeping sounded in the cockpit, and a red light flickered on the dash. Illuminated within, was a single word.

STALL.

But, that didn't make any sense? The engine was still running?

And then the world turned upside down, and the fear he'd been fighting hard to hold in swallowed him whole.

As they fell in a spiral from the sky.