Dark Days (Apocalypse Z) (6 page)

When I got back on my feet, I saw with dread that Lucullus was standing on the runway, stunned by the impact, looking first at me, then at the Undead as they struggled to their feet.

“Go on, Lucullus,” I said, as I cocked the HK. “Run!”

I don’t know if cats understand what their owners say, but they do have a strong survival instinct. Because of my shouting (or more likely, because of those creatures hunting us), Lucullus took off like a shot toward Lucia, who was silhouetted in the distance against the control tower.

I didn’t hang around to study the scene. I ran for my life!

7

Jaime wasn’t a bad kid. Midtwenties, tall, well built. He had a lot of friends, a girlfriend, a job, and a car. He played on a handball team and spent the weekends in the country, like everyone else. He’d grown a beard and let his hair grow long, which didn’t look good on him, but he liked it, along with the tribal tattoo he’d gotten a few years ago. A regular guy.

The only problem was, Jaime didn’t remember any of that. At the moment, Jaime was staggering around like dozens of other creatures, in the blazing sunlight that washed over the runway at Lanzarote Airport. He was one of Them now.

Jaime was an Undead.

Jaime’s mind, or what humans call reasoning, had shut down almost a year before when he’d become an Undead. If a doctor could’ve looked at his brain with a CT scan, he’d have been astonished to find that all the activity was taking place in the so-called “reptilian brain,” the most primitive part. In that hypothetical scanner, Jaime’s reptilian brain would be glowing with vivid colors, inundated by an abnormal amount of activity. The rest of the brain would be cloaked in darkness, like a city during a power outage.

Jaime didn’t remember how he’d gotten to the airport or where he’d come from or where he was going. His tattered clothes suggested he’d been in that state for several months. Nasty burns on his right arm indicated that, at some point, he’d gotten too close to a fire. Those burns would’ve been extremely painful if he were still human. But Jaime didn’t feel
anything, not even the huge gash in his right thigh, which caused him to limp, where an Undead had bitten him. That bite had been his ticket to Avernus, the entrance to the underworld—hell.

Although Jaime couldn’t talk or reason, he could still feel basic emotions: hunger, excitement, and anger. A wave of anger mixed with desire and a ferocious appetite washed over him every time a living being crossed his path. Especially if it was human.

They were the tastiest prey. They ran around, screaming every time they saw Jaime or his companions in that nightmare. Some managed to escape. Some shattered an Undead’s head into a thousand pieces with the metal and fire instruments they held in their hands. But they were the exception. Most didn’t stand a chance.

Jaime had no idea how many humans he’d hunted since he’d become an Undead. He didn’t know that lodged in each lung was a bullet that should’ve caused respiratory failure. He didn’t know his appearance terrified humans—his long wind-blown hair, his shorts and Hawaiian shirt stiff with blood (some of it his, some of it human), his skin riddled with burst veins, and especially his lost, hate-filled glare.

Jaime didn’t know who was walking beside him; he probably wasn’t even aware they were there. All he knew was that he’d been wandering aimlessly inside that building when a sound from the sky had drawn him outside like iron filings to a magnet. Now, there were a handful of humans just ahead of him, running away, like they always did. Every cell in his body moaned with the desire to feel that warm, living, pulsing flesh, to grab it, bite it, chew it, feel that warm blood flowing into his mouth…

That was what gave meaning to his life—or rather, his non-life.

Jaime could see at least four people. Two of them looked more fragile (Jaime didn’t remember the difference between man and woman). They were almost at the foot of the tall building. Another one was dodging a group of Undead, with a small, furry, orange animal jumping wildly around his legs. The last human, a little guy, with a bushy, blond mustache and cold blue eyes, walked backward slowly, never taking his eyes off Jaime’s group. From time to time he lifted that metal thing to his face and a flame came out of the end of it with a bang. Jaime’s dead brain didn’t know what that flame was but he feared it.

Every time there was a burst of that flame, something whizzed past Jaime’s head with a painfully loud buzz, followed by a crack. Then splinters
of bone and blood went flying, and one of the Undead fell to the ground but didn’t get back up. But that didn’t matter to him. Nothing mattered. He just wanted to get his hands on those beings and feel their living warmth.

The two smaller humans had reached the gates at the foot of the tower and were trying to clear away the debris blocking them. They were soon joined by the man with the little orange animal. The smaller man was just a few steps from Jaime’s group. He’d already picked up that man’s pungent, warm, alive, human smell.

Again, the small man raised that piece of metal, but this time there was no flash, just a click. For a moment the man stared at the metal thing; then he threw it with a furious shout at Jaime’s group and ran like hell for the tower.

The humans at the foot of the tower formed sounds with their mouths, something that Jaime and the other Undead could no longer do. Jaime didn’t understand those sounds, but they fueled his hunting instincts even more. The whole group of Undead picked up their pace.

When his group reached the tower, it was sealed off by a heavy metal door. Under normal circumstances, a door like that would’ve been an insurmountable obstacle for Jaime and his companions, but this one had been breached by an explosion from inside and didn’t fit snugly in the door frame.

Succumbing to his anger, Jaime beat on the metal door with all his strength. The crowd of Undead around him had the same goal and had nearly flattened him against the door. A single idea ran around and around in his brain, like a warped bicycle wheel: gotta get to them… gotta get to them… gotta get to them…

The warped door didn’t hold up long as the crowd pressed in against it. With a gut-wrenching screech, the door gave way and crashed to the ground. The path was clear.

Since he was in front, Jaime was one of the first to rush up the stairs that led to the top of the tower. He knew those humans were up there. He could feel them.

The feet of dozens of Undead echoed in the stairwell as they climbed in a mad rush, toward their prize. On the next step, Jaime nearly fell flat on his face when he collided with one of the humans. It was a guy in puzzlingly slippery clothes. He’d planted himself at the bottom of the next
flight of stairs and aimed a strange set of sticks at him. The former Jaime would have recognized it as a spear gun.

That spear gun fired with a hiss. Jaime felt a piece of metal pierce the bone in his forehead and sink deep into his brain. Neither he nor his rival knew that when the tip of the spear reached his cerebellum, Jaime would feel pain for the first time in months. The pain spread through his body in waves, fueling his anger. He extended his arms toward that human, but he couldn’t take a step. He saw the ground rising fast but didn’t register that he was falling until his head hit the concrete landing.

He could see the guy cast a scared look at the crowd pursuing him then retreated to the upper floor. He could still detect the feet of the other Undead passing by, oblivious to him as they continued after their prey. But soon the world began to fade as darkness slowly flooded every corner of Jaime’s mind. After a moment, the unquenchable fury he’d felt all those months receded the way the ocean retreats from the shore.

In the last millisecond of his existence, Jaime once again knew who he was. Before his life was extinguished forever, he finally felt a sense of relief.

And peace.

8

The tower was cool and dark inside, a welcome change from the suffocating heat on the runway. When I reached the double doors where Sister Cecilia and Lucia waited, I stopped to catch my breath. My lungs had felt like they would burst as I raced a thousand feet stuffed into a wetsuit like a sausage. All those sedentary months in the basement of Meixoeiro Hospital had taken a toll. Lucullus, meanwhile, was hopping all around me, clearly glad to be out of his jail cell.

I watched Prit advance slowly down the runway, his back to me, his eyes glued to the Undead closing in on him. Every few seconds, he stopped, took careful aim, and fired with amazing success. Bodies of the Undead dotted the runway like a string of pearls, as pools of their blood dried in the sun. But each time he stopped to shoot, he gave up a few feet of ground and the remaining horde was gaining on him.

Suddenly, Prit’s face creased with worry—he was out of ammunition. Enraged, he flung his HK at the Undead and took off as fast as his bowed legs could carry him.

I turned to the nun and Lucia, who were struggling to reset the metal doors that an explosion had ripped from their frame.

“Come on,” I cried. “We gotta get that door in place or we’re screwed!”

“Stop talking, Mr. Lawyer, and give us a fucking hand!” snapped Lucia.

Chastened, I lifted one of the warped doors and brushed off the debris covering it. I was sweating buckets, cursing under my breath, as I
struggled to set the door in its frame and shore it up. Lucia and Sister Cecilia were urging Prit on at the top of their lungs, as he ran down the runway as if the devil were on his tail. You could probably hear their damn screams all over the island. When the monsters heard all that yelling, they moved faster despite their wobbly gate.

Pritchenko finally reached us and shot through the gap between the two doors as if he were a mortar round, crashing into a pile of rubble behind us.

“You hurt, Prit?” I shouted, as I braced the door with a concrete girder.

“Just my pride,” said the Ukrainian, laconic as ever. He brushed the dust off his pants and grabbed my HK off the ground. “Think it’ll hold?” he asked skeptically, as he studied the barricade holding up the doors.

“Doubt it. Not with that crowd pushing against them. But they’ll buy us some time,” I said, as I shoved the last beam in place.

We could barely hear each other over the roar of the helicopter as it circled the tower. I could see its crew taking stock of the scene below them. For a moment, I wondered what the pilot was thinking as he looked down on that multitude pressing against the tower and the Sokol abandoned at the far end of the runway.

“Head for the top of the tower!” Prit cried, as I loaded my spear gun.

The first few Undead had reached the doors and were pounding wildly on them. A mad jumble of moans exploded out of their throats. The chilling memory of that claustrophobic day cooped up in a dark crawl space in that store in Vigo came racing back. My hands started to shake and I was helpless to stop them.

Sister Cecilia and Lucia, with Lucullus in her arms, labored up the stairs behind Prit. From time to time he had to clear away a pile of rubble blocking the stairwell. The debris crashed to the floor below, where we’d just been standing, raising such huge dust clouds I could barely make out where the doors were.

I crouched down on the first flight of stairs, coughing uncontrollably from all the dust, and waited, looking down at the doors every time that roaring mass pushed especially hard. There was absolutely nothing I could do. That barricade wouldn’t hold for long.

I started up the stairs in the dark, till I came to the third floor landing, where I had to sit down and catch my breath. A huge bang, like an
explosion, startled me. The groans of the Undead got twice as loud. The doors had fallen.

They were inside.

Their halting steps echoed on the metal stairs. I swallowed hard and waited. My sweaty hands gripped my spear gun even tighter as I leaned against the railing.

The first Undead suddenly appeared on the staircase, silhouetted in the light from a small window. He was a young guy, in his twenties, with long hair and a beard. His clothes were in tatters and he had two gaping bullet holes in his chest. A huge gash on his right leg made him limp but didn’t stop him from climbing the stairs. His face and clothes were covered in dried blood; his dead eyes glowed with hate. Cement dust had settled on his body, making him look even more diabolical.

A terrible sneer spread across his face when he saw me. As he took a few halting steps toward me, I took a deep breath and aimed the spear at his head. At less than five feet, I couldn’t miss. With a squishy
chuff
, the spear cleanly pierced his forehead, planting itself deep into that hellish creature’s brain.

He looked confused for a second and then crashed onto the concrete landing. I didn’t hang around to admire the landscape; I turned and ran to the top of the tower. The helicopter rumbled right above our heads.

A charred skull smiled down at me at the top of the last flight of stairs. With a shiver, I jumped over it and headed for the ladder to the trapdoor that opened onto the roof.

As I climbed up, I heard the Undead stream into the cupola of the tower. Prit grabbed the back of my wetsuit and pulled me up. Sister Cecilia quickly drew the ladder up behind me. I gasped when I looked back down through the trapdoor. Dozens of rabid Undead were crowded around below, trying to reach us.

I’d made it by a hair.

Relieved, I looked over at Pritchenko but his shocked expression made me turn around. I peered at the helicopter hovering overhead and was stunned by what I saw. And yet, there it was, right in front of my eyes: the helicopter, painted in camouflage, had tilted when they threw us a ladder. On the door, in big, bold letters were the words
ARGENTINA AIR FORCE
.

9

An army helicopter from Argentina.

In the Canary Islands.

Moroccan soldiers, Argentine helicopters… What the hell was going on? I hoped someone at the top of that ladder had the answer.