Dark Days (Apocalypse Z) (22 page)

She could hear the muffled sound of gunfire through a heavy double door she’d just slipped through and her pursuers’ excited voices. Dripping with sweat, she ran faster, hoping that the corridor led someplace safe or, better yet, outside.

Lucia turned a corner, then stopped suddenly at an abandoned checkpoint with a metal detector. There wasn’t a soul in sight. A newspaper lay on a table. Beside it was a cup of steaming coffee. A radio resting on a pile of folders softly played some music. The guards must have run down the main hallway when the alarms went off and were probably shooting on the other side of the door.

She searched the table for a weapon, tossing a pile of papers on the floor in her rush. All she found was a gun-lovers magazine and a penknife.

She jiggled the drawers but they were locked.
Damn! Think fast or you’re fucked. Really fucked.

Her gaze fell on a colorful poster of smiling soldiers passing rations down from an army truck. The caption read “The Third Spanish Republic is looking out for you.” Below the poster was a file cabinet, its top drawer standing wide open. The guards had left in such a hurry they’d forgotten to lock the drawer.

Lucia rifled through it but all she found was a handful of magnetic cards and papers on a clipboard where someone had scrawled some names and hours. Lucia assumed it was a record of who’d been given the cards. Her heart sank. Just as she was about to toss the clipboard aside, she spotted something written across the top in bold: 71410NK.

She ripped off the sheet of paper, stuffed it in her pocket, and took off running. She could hear footsteps getting closer.

After a few feet, she hesitated at the top of a staircase, panting, swallowed hard. She’d been so sure that that hallway led outside, and yet here she was, at the top of some stairs headed down to the basement.

No, fuck no! What’re the odds I’d have to hide in a fucking hospital basement twice in a row? It’s almost funny
.

About the same as winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. But one thing was certain, if she didn’t go down there, those maniacs would corner her. The look in that red-haired guy’s eyes had made her feel really scared—and dirty. She wasn’t going to stick around and argue with him.

She sighed and started down that long flight of stairs. It was well lit and meticulously clean with the faint smell of disinfectant. If it weren’t for the lack of windows—and people—those stairs would’ve seemed completely harmless.

Lucia ran all the way to the bottom. The ugly, light green tiles on the floor and walls were different from the upper hallways, but otherwise it looked the same. Red arrows and a symbol she couldn’t identify set it apart from the rest of the hospital.

Lucia stopped for a few seconds to catch her breath. She felt as if her heart would explode and the bruise on her hip was throbbing. The sound of footsteps flying down the stairs spurred her on. She followed the red arrows without hesitating, as a voice in her head screamed,
What the hell will you do if it’s a dead end
!

The hallway led to a square room. A heavy steel door with the same unfamiliar symbol took up an entire wall. She was sure she’d seen that symbol before, but she was so scared, she couldn’t think where.

Beside the door was a panel with numbers, buttons, and a slot. It was an alphanumeric keyboard, like on a cell phone; each key corresponded to letters and numbers. She grabbed the magnetic card from her pocket and inserted it into the slot. A screen lit up with a welcome message, along with a digitized photo of a confused-looking, gray-haired doctor wearing glasses.

GOOD AFTERNOON, DR. JURADO. PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSCODE.

Lucia froze. Then she remembered the code scribbled on the piece of paper. With trembling fingers, she pulled the paper from her pocket and punched the code into the keyboard. The screen went blank for a millisecond and then a new message appeared.

WRONG PASSCODE. YOU HAVE TWO (2) TRIES LEFT. PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSCODE.

Lucia brushed a sweaty lock of hair out of her eyes. “You idiot, you can’t even type a damn code right!”

She typed it in again, as calmly as she could, making sure it was correct. She pressed ENTER and the screen went blank.

WRONG PASSCODE. YOU HAVE ONE (1) TRY LEFT. PLEASE ENTER THE PASSCODE.

She felt her stomach clench into an icy fist. If this wasn’t the passcode, she was done for. She wouldn’t get another chance. Plus, those footsteps sounded really close now. She beat her fist against the door. That was stupid. The second to the last character of the code was not the letter
O
but a zero. She typed it in a third time, this time her fingers flew over the keyboard, as Basilio appeared around the corner, breathing like a bellows. The screen flashed a third time and a new message appeared.

WELCOME TO THE ZOO, DR. JURADO. HAVE A NICE DAY.

The door opened with a hiss. Lucia had just enough time to slip in before a blast from an HK kicked up splinters of plaster from the wall she’d been leaning on. Another bullet hit the control panel. It exploded with fireworks and gave off a faint singed smell. Lucia tried to close the door, but the system had been fried when the panel blew up. With death at her heels, Lucia headed into that room. As she did, she recalled the meaning of the biohazard symbol emblazoned on the door.

Then an alarm went off.

33

MADRID

The spiral staircase creaked and shook beneath our feet. Flakes of rust showered down as we climbed flight after flight. That staircase was in such bad shape, it mustn’t have been used before the Apocalypse. A thick layer of ash and dust rose up in white clouds making us sneeze and giving the stairs an unworldly, sinister look. Someone behind me whistled through his teeth nervously.

When we finally reached the third floor, an emergency door, crisscrossed by a thick chain, cut us off. I collapsed onto one of the last steps, like most of the group, gasping for breath. The bone-dry air, the heat generated by the napalm, and the dust swirling around us made us desperately thirsty.

With clumsy hands, I unscrewed my canteen and took a couple of long gulps. I passed the canteen to Broto, who’d flopped down next to me, his two-hundred-plus pounds shaking the staircase. The computer geek took a very long drink. I couldn’t take my eyes off his Adam’s apple, bobbing up and down as he gulped down half the canteen. Finally he took a deep breath and handed it back to me, with a loud belch.

“How’re we gonna get that damn door open?” he asked, after a long silence.

“No idea, but I’ll bet Tank has thought of something,” I said, rummaging around in my backpack for a cigarette. Then I remembered I’d left my last pack on the SuperPuma.

“Everybody get back!” One of the legionnaires was unrolling a cable away from a plastic substance that one of his team had stuck around the frame of the door. The cable was connected to a metal box the size of a cigarette pack with a button on top.

“Shit! That’s going to make a lot of noise. Let’s go, pal,” Prit muttered as he pulled Broto to his feet. Our computer whiz had gotten his backpack stuck between two rungs in the staircase. He looked like a huge snail as he struggled to get free. Prit and I jerked him free and got the hell off the landing.

We stood behind the legionnaire with the detonator. When he was sure no one was on the upper floor, he flipped up the lock on the button. I opened my mouth to keep my eardrums from bursting in the explosion, the way I’d been taught back on the island.

Just then machine-gun fire and excited shouts rang out from the bottom of the stairs. The Undead had started up the stairs and the guys in the rear were taking them out. Their position gave them an advantage, but with so little ammo, they couldn’t hold them long.

The same thought must have occurred to the soldier with the detonator. With a flick of his wrist, he pressed the button. A muffled explosion and a cloud of chemical smoke wafted down over us. A large piece of concrete shot over the railing and landed on the crowd of Undead below, but that was as much as we could see.

“Get climbing!” Tank roared. “You guys in front, move your fucking asses!”

Prit and I looked at each other. We’d been the last to get off the staircase so now we were at the front of the line, along with the explosives expert and the sweaty computer guy. The rest had known what was coming and had “allowed” us to take the lead. They got a good laugh as we wrestled Broto to his feet.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we, pal?” I asked as I pulled on the top of my wetsuit.

The Ukrainian gave me a wry smile, as he checked the clip in his HK for the umpteenth time. “Who knows… but stay close, got it?” And
with that, he scrambled up the last flight of stairs, ready to enter the building.

Remembering all the dead Tank had left in his wake on previous missions, I climbed the last flight of stairs on Prit’s heels. The door on the landing looked like a giant hand had ripped it off the wall. It lay twisted against the railing where we’d been sitting. A fine rain of concrete and pulverized brick trickled out the holes where the hinges had been.

Prit knelt in the doorway, his HK pointed inside. Panting, I stood next to him, waiting for his next move. The Ukrainian handled situations like this much better than I did.

“It’s darker than a cricket’s ass in there,” he said softly.

“Wait,” I said, turning back. “Broto! Broto! Get your fucking ass up here, dammit!

As he trotted to our position, the computer guy dropped his rifle. Flustered, he stooped to pick it up, but in the process he swatted the legionnaire behind him with his backpack. A stream of curses trailed the poor geek.

“Hey, pal,” I laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Stay calm, okay?” Broto nodded, rolling his eyes, clearly wishing he were anywhere else in the world.

“Got a flashlight in your backpack?” I asked.

“Uhhhh… yeah…” Broto dug around in his backpack and finally pulled out a Polar Torch, like the one I’d had that day a lifetime ago when I had to leave my home in Pontevedra behind, or stick around there and starve.

I shook the flashlight and turned it on, aiming it into the building. The smoke and dust from the explosion hadn’t cleared completely. Millions of little specks danced wildly in the beam I shined in every direction.

Suddenly a loud explosion shook the air. The whole staircase trembled violently, followed by a heart-stopping rip, as if a giant sheet of paper had been torn in two.

“What was that?” I asked, alarmed.

“They must’ve blown up the stairs below us,” Prit replied, glancing over the railing. The rusty step he was on slumped under his feet with a
groan, sending up a cloud of rust. He backed away carefully, casting a wary glance at the landing.

“The whole fucking staircase could come down at any time, even without explosives,” he said, dragging our backpacks to the door. “Let’s get out of here while we still can.”

Prit was right. The staircase had been on its last legs before we got there. Now it was at a breaking point. The explosion to cut off the Undead had been the last straw. That old structure could collapse any second from the intense heat of the napalm and the vibrations we made as we climbed up. It was creaking and shuddering; cement dust streamed down all around.

“Get a move on!” someone yelled behind us, spurring the legionnaires on. I recognized Tank and Marcelo’s voices hustling their men up the stairs.

The situation was growing worse by the minute. The foot-long bolts holding the staircase to the building became deadly projectiles as they flew out with a clang. A section at the very top came loose. With a loud bang it bounced down several floors then came to rest on the ground, hundreds of feet below. I heard a cry of pain when someone was hit by a piece of steel, but I couldn’t see who it was. A cloud of cement dust enveloped us and I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

I grabbed Broto by the sleeve and vaulted into the building. Prit followed, leaping like a gazelle. Right on his heels, a knot of two dozen terrified legionnaires rushed up the tottering structure. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be first inside.

It was pitch black inside, but wonderfully cool compared to outside. Even with the flashlight, I could barely see through the dust. Broto recoiled with a muffled shout; someone must’ve run into him. I turned, my arms outstretched, blindly feeling my way. I took a sharp jab to the groin and doubled over in pain, trying to breathe. A shadow knocked me down and a heavy boot tripped over my leg. All around, guys were shouting, cursing, and gasping for breath. We couldn’t see a thing with all the dust in the air. Just then, the ladder fell completely away with a monstrous roar that shook the building. A second later, we heard hundreds of tons of rusted steel crash onto the parking lot; the Undead answered with an enraged roar. The structure had crushed
hundreds of those bastards. A drop in the bucket, but at least it was something.

Coughing, I tried to sit up. All around me the shouting multiplied. I heard Tank yelling orders and another voice shouting for a john, but everything else was gibberish.

Tank gradually regained control of the situation. Here and there flashlights gradually lit up the room with a dull glow. I looked around. The first image that came to mind was of the firefighters at the World Trade Center on 9-11. Covered in a thick layer of dust and ash, we all looked ghostly. When the staircase fell, the plaster ceiling in the room came down around our heads. The floor of that airless room was covered with a layer of ash nearly a foot thick. When we rushed in, we’d stirred it up. Through a crack in the door, I could make out the faint afternoon light falling on Madrid.