March 5, 5:38 p.m.
It’s been days since my last entry. Up till now, my captors haven’t allowed me to board the Corinth to get this book and my personal belongings.
Ten days ago I sailed into the port of Vigo and dropped anchor. The Corinth rocked gently in a breeze blowing off the port. The waves at ebb tide splashed lazily around its long, thin hull. Without sails, the mast swayed gently, with an occasional clink as steel clips struck the aluminum wheel. There I was, in the midst of that bucolic scene, propped up on the deck, slumped against the hatch, a half-empty bottle of gin in my hand, eyes brimming with tears.
Vigo was dead. Totally, absolutely, horribly dead. A corpse. Kaput. Not a living soul in sight. I was anchored two hundred yards from the docks of what had once been a city of a quarter of a million people. The docks were crowded with those mutants, in numbers I hadn’t seen before. Amid unprecedented devastation, they wandered up and down the port.
The port looked like a battlefield. Charred vehicles, large warehouses blown apart by some powerful explosion, even a couple of amphibious Army personnel carriers with all their hatches open. It was a really creepy landscape. Thousands of bodies lay burned, decomposing everywhere. Walking around, oblivious to everything were the victors in that battle: the undead.
I was right. The Vigo Safe Haven had held out to the end, the last refuge of southern Galicia. But I’d gotten there too late.
The scariest part of that hellish landscape was the main docks. The masts and antennae of dozens of half-submerged boats protruded out of the water. Here and there you could see a half-drowned ship, and even some hulls belly-up, indecently exposing their propellers.
To complete the chaotic landscape, dozens of bodies hung like ripe fruit from cranes in the port. Some kind of hellish circus, right out of Dante’s Inferno, must’ve played out on those docks. There were signs of gun battles and fire everywhere. Pescanova, one of the largest fisheries in the world, was nothing but a charred heap.
Earlier that day, as the metropolis came into view, a chill ran down my spine. Through my binoculars, I could see ugly scars all across the city, made by huge, devastating fires. No firefighters were battling the still-smoldering embers. Storms had put out the flames. As I drew near the port, I was sure I wouldn’t find anyone alive.
For hours I sat there, leaning against the hatch, too stunned to react. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. Terrible dark thoughts crossed my mind. That scene was too shocking to be true.
After a few hours, a lot of alcohol, and tons of self-pity, I was able to focus on the one thing that stood out in that scene. Six hundred yards from shore, anchored peacefully, was an old freighter, painted red and white. Wide bands of rust were visible at the waterline. It had been through hard times, but was still in one piece. It was the only boat I’d seen afloat since I left Pontevedra. Its presence defied all logic.
I got up the courage to approach, since I had nothing better to do. Without much enthusiasm but with a gentle breeze at my back, I raised the anchor and let the Corinth drift toward that hulk, imagining how to board it and loot some supplies.
I finally made out its name and home port: “Zaren Kibish—Nassau,” it proclaimed in huge white letters. It was flying a limp, frayed Spanish flag and a piece of cloth so faded and wrinkled it could’ve been the flag of any country in the world. Next to that was the radar mast with its rigid antenna.
As I got closer, I could barely make out, in the glare of sunlight, a strange bracket incongruously hanging over the side. I wondered what the hell it was. Just then, the “bracket” jumped up and ran down the deck, yelling. For a moment I thought I’d gone crazy. It took me a second to realize that what I’d taken for a piece of steel was actually a person’s legs dangling over the side. A living being’s leg! Dear God!
An electric current ran through my whole body. I let out a whoop and rushed toward the bow, waving my arms and jumping up and down. The first figure multiplied into two. Behind them appeared another half dozen.
Tears ran down my cheeks as I brought the Corinth alongside the Zaren Kibish. They were the first humans I’d seen in weeks.
They threw me some lines so I could tie the Corinth by the bow and stern. Then they unfurled a rope ladder, which I scrambled up like a monkey, anxious to get on deck and embrace my new friends.
The first thing that greeted me when I stepped on deck was the black barrels of assault rifles aimed at my face. Behind them was a group of glowering, foreign-looking guys. I was not well received on the Zaren Kibish. Something was horribly wrong.
March 6, 5:26 pm
The sun beat down on the deck of the Zaren Kibish and bounced off the hulls’ steel plates. I didn’t move a muscle, waiting for the crew to make the first move. Sweat was running down my back. I couldn’t say if it was from the heat or from fear.
Those men were really puzzling. Half of them looked Asian; the other half looked like a UN delegation on a world tour. I cautiously raised my hands and said a timid “Hola.” Not one of them grinned. I introduced myself in English, Galician, Portuguese, and French, exhausting all the languages I knew. No one even raised an eyebrow in response.
The situation was getting ridiculous. A dozen people on deck, boiling in the midday sun, staring at each other, not moving a muscle. Worst of all, I was on the wrong end of their rifles, and my arms were cramping after five minutes with my hands in the air.
Suddenly, pushing through the sailors, a heavyset middle-aged man appeared. He looked Slavic and was wearing a heavy wool jacket; leftover food studded his bushy gold beard. From the respect the sailors showed him, I surmised that he was the captain of the Zaren Kibish. I was becoming sorrier and sorrier I’d boarded.
He came over to me and stood with his hands on his hips. He looked me up and down for a good couple of minutes, deep in thought. Finally he must have made a decision. He barked a couple of sentences in a language completely unknown to me, and the guys lowered their weapons.
Taking a couple of steps forward, he held out his ham-sized hands and crushed mine, regaling me with a huge smile. The atmosphere on deck relaxed. I was so relieved, I almost couldn’t speak.
The big man introduced himself in English with a Slavic accent. His name was Igor Ushakov, from Ukraine, captain of the Zaren Kibish. He welcomed me to that floating heap of junk. Before I could react, the sailors surrounded me, clapping me on the back, flashing huge smiles, speaking half a dozen incomprehensible languages. Fortunately Captain Ushakov barked some orders in his booming voice and saved me from being crushed by their displays of affection.
Questions raced through my head as they led me inside the ship. A couple of sailors climbed down to the Corinth to get Lucullus, who was meowing desperately.
When we got to the captain’s quarters, I realized I’d interrupted his lunch. With a sweep of his hand, the captain invited me to sit at his table. Before I knew it, I had a plate of something that that might loosely qualify as beef stew and a glass of cold beer. As I wolfed down the food, Ushakov kept looking at me, deep in thought. After I’d finished the surprisingly tasty stew, he started asking questions. Who was I? Where did I come from? Where was I going? Had I met many people along the way?
Leaning back, stuffed, I related the story of my life over the past two months. He seemed more interested in the current situation at the mouth of the inlet than in my close calls with those monsters, but he listened politely to the end. Then it was my turn to ask questions.
The ship was the Zaren Kibish. It sailed under a flag of convenience from the Bahamas, but its owner was a Greek woman, and her business partners were Estonians. It was loaded with forty thousand tons of steel spools. It had been anchored in Ria Vigo for over a month. As on most international carriers the majority of the crew was Filipino or Pakistani; the rest were from a mix of Third World countries. The only trained sailors on board were the captain and his first officer, another Ukrainian. He commanded the crew in a mixture of Tagalog and Urdu, with the Pakistanis or Filipinos acting as interpreters. The rest were cheap labor, wet behind the ears. They wouldn’t have passed even an extremely lenient inspection. A floating garbage heap, like thousands sailing the waters around the world—or that used to.
With a grunt, Captain Ushakov got up from the table, went to a cupboard, and took out a bottle of Ukrainian vodka and two delicate little crystal glasses. He poured two generous shots and handed me one, scratching his head as if he were rummaging through his sonorous English for the words to continue his story.
“We sailed into Ria Vigo right before the European Union closed all the ports,” he began. “They hadn’t ordered everyone to gather at the Safe Havens, so we saw nothing out of the ordinary. Vigo was the first port we’d seen in almost two weeks, so we were eager to go ashore and find out what the hell was going on.”
“Two weeks?” I interrupted. “Where the hell had the Zaren Kibish been?” I couldn’t believe it. While the world was going to hell, this man and his crew sailed halfway around the world, oblivious to it all.
“Port Pusang, South Korea. Our destination was the port of Rotterdam, but we had to dock at Vigo because the drive shaft was damaged after we sailed through a storm near the Canary Islands.” He shrugged and poured another round of that explosive vodka.
“And you’ve been here ever since?” I asked, astonished. “Why didn’t you get the hell out when you saw what was happening? Maybe head for the Canaries?”
“We couldn’t,” he replied laconically.
“Why not?” I said, stunned.
“I can’t change the boat’s course without the boss’s approval. Company policy.”
“But your company doesn’t exist anymore!” I replied, amazed at his stubbornness.
“Out of the question,” he replied stubbornly as he poured himself another drink. “I’d lose my job.”
End of discussion. He was loyal to the company, and that was that. Their boat had broken down. He’d anchored in the harbor to wait for instructions that never came. He wouldn’t dream of moving an inch.
In vain I explained it was highly likely his bosses were now wandering around somewhere in Estonia or Greece, turned into monsters like the ones on the shore, but there was no way to change his mind. Ushakov had been a captain in the Soviet navy and joined the civilian fleet when the Soviet Union fell apart. He still thought like a soldier. Without orders, he wouldn’t move a muscle. He was convinced there was still someone making the decisions. What if no one was in charge? Unthinkable!
Then I heard the frightening tale he had to tell. Reluctantly he began the story of the last days of Vigo’s Safe Haven to explain why they were still alive.
The military and civilian authorities thought the best place for the Safe Haven was the free trade zone at the port of Vigo. It seemed ideally suited to accommodate large crowds. It had a fence around the entire perimeter, large warehouses and storehouses stocked with nonperishable food, a desalination plant, and access to the sea for receiving supplies. The astonished crew of the Zaren Kibish watched two hundred thousand people mob the port. In just a few days, the multitude reached numbers they’d never dreamed of.
A place they thought would never fill up couldn’t handle this human tide. The overcrowding got out of control, as refugees from all over Galicia and even neighboring northern Portugal joined the original refugees. The Safe Haven was soon at maximum capacity, but refugees kept thronging to its doors. Plus, no one dared leave the Safe Haven. That’d be suicide, since the undead already roamed the area.
The Safe Haven was supposedly commanded by a civilian committee made up of the mayor, a representative of the provincial government, and two conselleiros of the Xunta of Galicia who happened to be trapped there. But the commander of a navy frigate docked in Vigo and an army colonel really ran the whole show. Together they directed the military forces defending the Safe Haven.
Ushakov stopped abruptly and looked up from the bottom of his glass. “Here’s where the story gets unpleasant.” He studied me. “Sure you want to hear the rest?”
I swallowed hard and nodded, unable to speak. With a sigh, Ushakov continued.
March 7, 6:42 p.m.
At first, everything went according to plan. The military forces at the Vigo Safe Haven—about six hundred men from various units of the army, navy, and Civil Guard, along with what remained of the local police—maintained the integrity of the perimeter. They had plenty of combat equipment, including several armored personnel carriers and a couple of helicopter gunships. Docked in the harbor were a navy transport ship and an F-100 frigate, fresh from the shipyard, equipped with a modern Aegis missile system. The civilian and military command center for the entire region was based in Ferrol, in northern Galicia.
“Their defenses easily took out the first waves of undead,” continued Ushakov. “They were well entrenched and had enough firepower to keep the undead at bay. But more and more came, and ammunition grew scarce.”
“How do you know all this?”
“During that time I went ashore with some of my men,” he said with a shrug. “One of my crew was in the hospital they’d set up in a warehouse. He fell and broke his hip during the storm. We visited several times.”
“Why not stay on land?”
“I couldn’t abandon my ship,” he replied, giving me a that’s-a-no-brainer look. “The Safe Haven authorities wouldn’t let us stay more than a few hours.” He poured another glass of vodka. “Their supplies were running low, and they didn’t want any more mouths to feed.” As the days went by, the Safe Haven filled to overflowing. Two hundred thousand people became 350,000 as groups from other Safe Havens and isolated survivors arrived. It was the only place humans controlled for 250 miles around.
From the start, there were problems with supplies and disease. A crowd that size consumes several tons of food every day. The supplies they thought would arrive by sea never came despite promises from authorities. There were no supplies to send.
The commanders quickly organized looting parties. Every day, columns of armored trucks, escorted by soldiers and volunteers armed to the teeth, left the Safe Haven and returned at nightfall with pounds and pounds of food. But that plan soon failed. Once they’d looted the shopping centers downtown, the expedition had to go farther and farther, with increasingly discouraging results. On a good day, they brought in about thirty tons of food, not enough to feed all those mouths. So they started rationing.
“Rationing,” I whispered, stunned. “How can that be? The malls around here are huge. There should’ve been enough food to last for years.”
“My dear boy,” Ushakov said, shaking his head. “Think about how much food three hundred and fifty thousand people eat every day. The biggest shopping centers could only feed a crowd like that for a week. Tops. Then supplies ran out, and there were no delivery trucks to replenish what they’d consumed.”
I was speechless, stunned. I pictured how desperate the looting parties must’ve felt, crossing the dead city, surrounded by thousands of those things, forced to strip every little corner grocery store, risking their lives for less than two hundred pounds of food. Damn, they must’ve been demoralized.
“Food was not the only problem,” continued Ushakov mercilessly. “Three hundred and fifty thousand people shitting and pissing generate a lot of waste. The plumbing system couldn’t handle it all. Soon the port smelled like a sewer.” A smile lit up his sad face. “Life aboard the Zaren Kibish looked like a dream to that mob of people on land.”
I couldn’t speak. The pressure in my chest tightened as the story unfolded.
“Disease quickly followed the filth, the way it usually does in situations like this. The port had maybe one or two thousand bathrooms. That’s an average of three hundred fifty people per crapper, nyet?” Ushakov was talking louder now. “Typhus and other diseases spread like wildfire.”
“Other diseases?” I uttered in a hoarse voice. My throat felt like sandpaper.
“Da, other diseases. Those in charge didn’t take that into account. Even in a crisis, people were still people. They had cancer or high blood pressure, children came down with childhood diseases, women gave birth…” He frowned deeply. “There were outbreaks of botulism from eating spoiled food.” He sighed. “A sailor on this ship came down with it. Diseases began to take their toll. Part of the port was turned into a cemetery. You can see it from our deck. In a few weeks several hundred mounds covered it.” The vodka bottle was almost empty. “They were the lucky ones.”
Ushakov snorted, hoisted up his huge bulk, and went to the cupboard for a second bottle. Then he continued. “Things spun out of control. Desperation and the law of the survival of the fittest undermined the Safe Haven. There were fights, thefts, and murders as people fought for food. The military declared martial law. Dozens of murderers and thieves were hung from cranes in the harbor as a lesson for the rest. Only the crows and gulls benefited from that as they feasted on the eyes of the hanged.”
The situation was dire. The need for food was overwhelming, so the fighting continued. The survivors had two choices: live in purgatory at the port or face the hell outside. They’d come to the end of the road.
“When things got ugly, a boat loaded with soldiers boarded the Zaren and searched for provisions. They couldn’t find anything, of course.” Ushakov winked at me. “We’d hidden most of our food in the hold with tons of steel coils. Thanks to that, we never went hungry.”
My first reaction was that he’d been incredibly selfish. Then I realized he’d made the logical decision. I’d have done the same thing. As I studied the pensive Ukrainian staring at the wall behind me, it struck me that this guy was devious. And very smart.
“What happened next?”
“Then things got really nasty. One dark night, the frigate and the military transport weighed anchor and quietly left the harbor. On board were all the navy personnel, civilian authorities, and two or three hundred people with connections, influence, or money.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where they were headed. The Canary Islands, maybe. Some place the infection hadn’t reached. They just took off and left everyone else in the lurch,” he said, knocking back another shot of vodka.
As I sipped my vodka, Ushakov told me that the next day, when the crowd discovered that the military vessels were gone, all hell broke out. The most surprised was the army colonel who commanded the three hundred soldiers left at the Safe Haven. He and the navy commander had crossed swords. The confrontation got so bad, no one let him in on the escape plan. Colonel Jovellanos was a strict disciplinarian in every way. The tense situation and the responsibility for the safety of all those people rested too heavily on his shoulders. It weighed on him so much that he lost control.
When the crowd discovered that the warships were gone, they went crazy trying to board any boat in the harbor. A rumor spread that the frigate was headed for the Canary Islands, the only place in Spanish territory the plague hadn’t reached. Any boat accompanying it would be allowed to dock. Jovellanos knew this rumor wasn’t true. To make matters worse, 80 percent of the boats in the port couldn’t make a journey of thousands of miles on the open sea, so he did what felt was right. He dispersed the crowd with bullets. It was a real massacre. Then he gave the order to shell all boats in the harbor and sink them. If there was no way to escape, survivors at the Safe Haven would have to fight to the end. What he didn’t know was that all hope for the Vigo Safe Haven was gone.
The Zaren Kibish was saved from being sunk because it was anchored quite a distance from the port, and its broken drive shaft prevented it from sailing off. Still, every day dozens of desperate people swam to the freighter, begging to be allowed on board. Ushakov was very strict and ordered his men not to even come out on deck. The Zaren Kibish couldn’t afford to host dozens of starving, sick, desperate survivors.
“That was the situation at the Vigo Safe Haven when it happened.”
“When what happened?” I asked.
“The day the Vigo Safe Haven fell,” he replied, ominously.
March 8, 5:13 p.m.
Thick clouds rolled in as we talked in the stiflingly close air of that unventilated cabin. A storm was brewing, but it was nothing compared to the earthquake inside me as I listened to Ushakov’s story. I couldn’t tear myself away from that story. I needed to hear it. I needed to know everything.
“Things really fell apart about a week after the boats sailed away.” His eyes clouded up. “That was to be expected.”
“Why was that to be expected?”
“Think about it, Mr. Lawyer. When the ships sailed off, all naval personnel were on them, plus a few lucky soldiers. That left the overwhelmed Colonel Jovellanos with only three hundred men to defend the entire perimeter of the Safe Haven and the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children crowded into it.”
“Yeah, so?” I admit that all the vodka I’d drunk had clouded my mind. I didn’t see all the implications. Ushakov, like any good Ukrainian, was used to the poison and didn’t seem affected.
“Well, that’s obvious!” He snorted. “They were so short of troops, he had to recruit volunteers from among the civilians huddled like rats in the harbor and equip them with combat gear.” He paused. “That was the only way he could continue to control the perimeter. Considering how low their spirits were, that was a recipe for disaster.”
Through my alcohol-induced haze, I grasped the situation as Ushakov mercilessly reeled off the events he witnessed from the deck of the Zaren Kibish. Jovellanos recruited several hundred civilians, armed them to the teeth, and had them patrol the perimeter or sent them on looting missions outside the Safe Haven.
But they weren’t soldiers. They were just armed civilians dressed like soldiers, with no notion of urban warfare and survival. Add to that, they were desperate and hungry. Casualties mounted dramatically. Every time a volunteer fell, his equipment was lost, so the defense capability was slowly but inexorably reduced.
“That’s when the captain started talking to himself. By now there were tens of thousands of those creatures mobbing the fence around the harbor. I could see them through my binoculars. It was a horrible sight—thousands of those prvotskje, packed together, silent, with their horrible wounds, all dead yet still walking.” His brow furrowed. “It is a punishment from God, I have no doubt.”
“What happened then?”
“What happened was what had to happen. Those monsters overran the port.”
“But how?”
He glared at me. “How? What difference does that make? The fact is they got in. That’s what matters. It could’ve been anything. Maybe some of the civilians on mission outside the perimeter got infected and weren’t brave enough or disciplined enough to report it until it was too late. Maybe those things found a breach in the perimeter. Or maybe one night someone forgot to lock a gate or didn’t double-check a padlock.” He spread his arms and shrugged. “They got in…and then it was chaos.”
I could picture the scene as Ushakov described it. Some infected creatures slipped inside the perimeter and wreaked havoc. Panic broke out. An avalanche of humans rushed aimlessly from one side to another, trying to escape those things. That chaos was their downfall. If Jovellanos had had more soldiers, he could have done something, but he didn’t stand a chance with his cobbled-together civilian militias and the remnants of military groups. The units he sent to restore order were trampled by a panicked crowd that wouldn’t listen. The few professional soldiers that remained tried to wade into the crowd and confront the undead. Since there so few of them, the crowd kept them from acting quickly.
“No matter how much firepower you have, if you’re alone on a battlefield filled with enemies, you’re screwed.” He scratched his head, looked at me gravely. “We learned that in Afghanistan years ago. It was the same here.”
The few surviving soldiers were cut off from the rest of their units. They put up a heroic, desperate front against the growing number of undead. Finally they were swallowed up by that tide. From that point on, the fate of thousands of refugees was sealed. They were unarmed, trapped, panicked, and helpless. The die was cast.
“Those who were crushed to death or suffocated by the crowd were the lucky ones.” Ushakov’s voice was almost a whisper. “At least they didn’t see what came next.”
I hardly dared to ask. But I had to. “What happened?” My voice broke.
“When the colonel saw all was lost, he applied his own type of ‘final solution.’ Weeks before, his men had placed explosive charges filled with highly volatile chemical fertilizers in the warehouses and barracks in the port. He reasoned that if everything went to shit, he’d drag all the fucking monsters he could to hell.” Leaning his hulk back, Ushakov rubbed his eyes and blinked. “But it went terribly wrong.”
“What happened?”
“He miscalculated the impact of the explosions.” He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and handed me one. I grabbed it, eager to have the taste of something besides alcohol in my mouth.
“Many people had taken refuge inside the warehouses. When the charges went off, the roofs crashed down in flames on their heads.” He lit the cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke. “They were burned to death or crushed almost immediately. They were very lucky.”
“Why do you say that?”
“For the thousands still on the port, running from one place to another, there was no escape.” His gravelly voice quivered. “Picture the scene that night. In the dark, lit up by just the glow of the fires, thousands of people ran nonstop, terrified, not knowing if the group behind them was human or the undead. From the Zaren we could hear the shouting, moaning, howling, and a few shots. The smell of smoke and charred flesh hung thick in the air. You wanted to throw up.” He bowed his head, looking feverish. “It was a window right into hell.”
I shuddered. I imagined the horror and utter despair those people must’ve felt, trapped in the port, cornered by those things. When they were bitten, those former refugees were now hunters, joining the pack of the undead, attacking their friends or relatives. The eerie glow of roaring fires lit up that madness.
“There’s not much more to tell. The carnage continued for thirteen or fourteen hours. We couldn’t see the shore because of all the smoke. Finally, all the noise stopped. We didn’t hear another thing except the occasional crackle of a charred building collapsing or the low moan of one of those things.” He paused. “Well, and that sound, of course.”
“Sound? What sound?”
“At first we didn’t know what it was. We were used to the racket hundreds of thousands of people made. Now the port was strangely quiet, the way it is now,” he said, pointing out a porthole. “The silence took us by surprise. That’s how we were able to hear the noise.”
“You still haven’t told me what the noise was,” I protested.
“You keep interrupting me!” he snapped. “As the dense smoke lifted, we figured out the source of the sound.” He shuddered. “It was the sound of thousands of feet, in shoes and barefoot, shuffling across the pavement.” He looked at me. “The feet of all the refugees who didn’t die before they got infected and became undead.”
I was horrified, crushed by the thought of hundreds of thousands of innocent people bitten and maimed, rising again, turned into monsters. Jesus, it was shocking. I felt dizzy. I needed some air.
“Evidently, not all the refugees succumbed. The most resourceful, the hardiest, a handful, maybe even a few hundred, found a way to survive that terrible night. They hid in the ruins of the port until the vast crowd of undead scattered. When only a few hundred undead remained on the pier, they fled in every direction, alone or in small groups,” concluded Ushakov.
“Yeah?” I looked at him, glassy-eyed. “How do you know?
“Simple.” He smiled, gesturing theatrically. “One of those survivors is on board the Zaren Kibish. I’ll introduce you to him,” he said. He stood up and headed for the cabin door.
I got to my feet to follow Ushakov. But as soon as I stood up, I felt nauseated. I realized that my delicate Western stomach couldn’t handle the combination of vodka, damp heat, the gruesome conversation, and the smell of food and motor oil. I pushed aside some chairs, threw open a porthole, and left a lovely pattern of vomit on the hull of Zaren Kibish. Terrific! I was making a great impression on my new friends.
I wiped my mouth, turned, and headed back to Ushakov, who was watching me from the cabin door with an ironic look on his face. He must’ve thought I was a wimp, but at least he didn’t say so. He simply nodded for me to follow him.
We walked down a short hallway crowded with pipes and cables and lots of doors. Overall, the ship was a complete wreck. It was amazing to think it had traveled tens of thousands of nautical miles from Southeast Asia. We came to a hatch at the top of a staircase that led down to the bowels of the ship. The damp, musty smell was stronger there, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed.
Through the open hatch, I saw a cabin laid out like the captain’s cabin, but smaller, with narrow cots instead of a wide bed. Sitting on one of the bunks was a heavyset man in his fifties. His face was very wrinkled, and his beak of a nose was covered with broken capillaries, on account of his fondness for alcohol. Across from him sat another man in front of an upside-down wooden box with a chessboard set up on it. He was about forty, short, muscular, blond, with piercing blue eyes and a droopy mustache. He reminded me of the comic-book hero Asterix the Gaul.
When we entered, Asterix and Drunk Nose were engrossed in the final moves of a game of chess. They jumped to their feet when they saw us.
Ushakov exchanged a few quick sentences with them in Russian. He pointed to me several times during the conversation. I felt very ill at ease. Ushakov and Drunk Nose were having a heated discussion about something. Asterix merely looked at them sadly and occasionally gave me a resigned look. Finally, Ushakov turned and beckoned me over.
“Mr. Lawyer.” I didn’t like the sound of that. It had a disrespectful ring. “May I introduce you to the first officer of the Zaren Kibish, Mr. Aleksandr Grigori Kritzinev,” he said, pointing to the man with the red nose.
I shook his hand cautiously, as Ushakov introduced me in a torrent of Russian I couldn’t decipher.
“My first officer is old school. He says he’s sorry he hasn’t mastered any language but Russian, so I pass his greetings along to you.”
“Tell him I’m happy to be aboard this ship and to meet all of you.”
“Such formalities aren’t necessary between friends, nyet?” Ushakov replied in a tone I was starting to dislike. “Let me introduce Mr. Viktor Pritchenko, Ukrainian like Alexander and me, and survivor of the Vigo Safe Haven.”
I studied the little blond guy with the mustache as he shook my hand and tried to keep the surprise from showing on my face. What the hell was a Ukrainian guy doing in Vigo? What a strange coincidence. I was totally blown away when the Ukrainian guy addressed me in halting, rudimentary Spanish.
“Nice to meet you, sir. My name, Viktor, Viktor Nikolaevich Pritchenko.”
“You speak Spanish?” I replied, astonished. He wasn’t what I expected.
“Da, I living in Spain for six months. I live in Spain several times before, since four years. I come Spain every year,” he answered, with a sad look in his clear eyes.
“What brings you to Spain?”
“I work. I work many years for Siunten.”
I was too stunned to ask what or who the hell Siunten was. There’d be time for that later. I realized a few things as I looked at the little man and his honest blue eyes. He wasn’t lying to me. But he was terribly afraid. Something had terrified him, and they’d kill me if I figured out what it was.
I could see that Ushakov, who didn’t speak Spanish, was uncomfortable not knowing what we were saying. He abruptly cut off our conversation, barking a couple of orders to his first officer and sending him and the Ukrainian guy up the stairs. He beckoned me to follow him. As we climbed the flights of stairs, he told me the rest of Viktor Pritchenko’s story. The night of the slaughter at the Safe Haven, he swam to the Zaren Kibish and shouted for help. When Ushakov heard him speaking Russian, he decided to take him aboard. He’s been there ever since. In the port, he worked as a longshoreman or technician or something like that.
Ushakov’s story made me suspicious. He wasn’t telling me the truth—at least, not all of it. What was he hiding? And why?
When we reached the top of the stairs, I was surprised to discover we were headed for the bridge. When we got there, Ushakov sat at his captain’s chair, his eyes boring into me.
“What’s going on?” I asked, more and more confused.
“Let’s see, Mr. Lawyer. If I remember correctly, you told me you’re from a town near Vigo, nyet?”
“Yes, Pontevedra, twenty miles away,” I replied, not sure where he was going with that.
“So, you know this city pretty well, right?”
“Well…yeah, sure.” I was more confused. I didn’t understand where those questions were leading, but something was in the air.
“Da, perfect.” He thought for a moment. Then out of the blue he blurted out, “Know where the main post office is?”
“Sure. What the hell is this about, Captain Ushakov?”
“Oh, come on. I’m sure a smart guy like you has figured it out. I need something from there.”
My expression must have been comical. From the post office? What was he up to?
“Two months ago, I received the last communiqué from the company,” he began wearily. “When we docked in Vigo, right after the storm, the first thing I did was phone the company’s agent in Spain for instructions. But the phones weren’t working in Estonia, and no one answered in Greece.” He stretched out in his chair. “He promised to mail me complete instructions from Madrid, but the evacuation to the Safe Haven prevented us from picking it up at the post office.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Isn’t it obvious, my young friend? I need that package. Someone has to pick it up. Someone who knows where the post office is. That someone is you.”
I just stood there, staring at him. Was he joking? This guy was asking me to go ashore, cross a city infested with thousands of undead, as if I were just going out for a loaf of bread? He wanted me to find the post office and deliver his damn package like some postman? The vodka had definitely addled his brain more than mine.
“Captain, you can’t be serious. I’m sorry about your package. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s in that post office, it can stay there till the end of time. You don’t know what you’re asking. I’ve been around those things. Let me assure you they’re monsters.” I was getting all riled up. I couldn’t help it. “It’s sheer madness! It’s absolutely impossible for a person to set foot in that city without those hellish monsters getting him! I’m dead serious!”
“Oh, you won’t be alone. My first officer and some of my men will go with you.” He smiled mischievously. “That package is from my employer, and you’re a stranger, so we don’t know if we can trust you. Your only job is to guide them there and back.”
He was nuts. I had to get far away from there.
“I’m sorry, Captain, but count me out,” I said as I stood up. “I appreciate your hospitality, but I think I’d better go. So, if you don’t mind—”
“Oh, I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong,” he interrupted. “I’m not asking you. I’m ordering you. If you don’t agree in five minutes, you’ll be floating in the water with a bullet in your head. You don’t have a choice.” That son of a bitch leaned back in his chair, looking very pleased with himself, and glared at me. We both knew he had me by the balls.
I swallowed hard. My blood turned ice cold at the sight of Ushakov comfortably seated in his captain’s chair, watching me. That bastard thought that was funny.
“Come, come, tovarich, don’t take this so seriously.” He leaned forward and whispered right in my ear, “After all, I’m just asking a small favor in exchange for another favor, nyet? I brought you on my boat. In exchange, you bring me the one little thing I need. That’s all.”
“You have no idea where you’re sending us, Captain. We could all die for one lousy package sent by someone who’s probably dead,” I said, forcing back my anger.
“I’m counting on your expertise to bring everyone back. You’ve made it this far without a scratch, nyet? I’m confident you can take that little trip without anything bad happening.”
“Do I have a choice?” I asked, grimacing.
“I’m afraid not.”
“I guess appealing to your good nature or your humanity would be pointless, right? You’re a real bastard, pal! Fuck you!”
The words were barely out of my mouth when Ushakov leaped out of his chair as if he were on a spring and grabbed my neck with one of his big, beefy hands, lifting me up against a wall. He caught me completely off guard. Who knew that such a big guy could move so fast? He held me a few inches off the ground and pressed his now demonic mask of a face right up to mine.
“I’ve been stuck in this hellhole on this goddamn boat with my crew for a month, understand?” he shouted, red with rage. “I’ve waited for someone in charge to send me that package. Know who came? No one! Absolutely no one!”
I was choking, spots dancing before my eyes. That psychopath was going to strangle me. He must’ve noticed my strange color, or maybe he realized if he killed me, he’d have no postman. Whatever it was, it broke the spell, and he let go. I fell to the ground, gasping for air.
“I need that package! I need it! A week ago I sent a team ashore, and we haven’t heard from them since. I can’t afford to lose any more men.” He sat back down, glaring at me. “You will get that package for me. And if you think about straying even a couple feet off the path, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in your head. So don’t try to fuck me over. Understand, Mr. Lawyer?”
I nodded, unable to speak, as I struggled to get up off the floor. That fucking nutcase was capable of killing me if I refused. On top of that, I couldn’t go anywhere. From the bridge I could see a couple of sailors relaxing on the deck of the Corinth, smoking, with AK-47s lying across their laps. And I didn’t know where Lucullus was.
“Okay,” I said, when I could get the words out. “You give me your word that if I bring you the package, you’ll let me go on my way?”
“Absolutely. You do your part, and I’ll do mine.”
I’ll believe that when I see it! And as a parting gift, a couple of blondes in bikinis and a keg of beer!
I had to be pragmatic and get control of the situation before it got completely out of hand. Taking a crushed Marlboro out of my pocket, I leaned against the wheel and fixed my gaze on him through a column of smoke. My mind was racing at top speed.
“Okay, but I have one condition. On shore, I’m in charge. Your guys will do what I tell them and won’t fuck me around. Agreed?”
“I totally agree.”
“I don’t know why I even care. They’ll probably kill us before we’ve been ashore ten minutes. Besides, I don’t know a word of Tagalog or Urdu. How the hell am I going to make myself understood? In Morse code?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. Mr. Pritchenko speaks Spanish. My first officer will go with you. You can talk to everyone through them.”
“Why not just send Pritchenko? Didn’t he live in Vigo before all this started?”
“Pritchenko never lived in Vigo,” he replied laconically.
“But you said—”
“Enough of this crap. You’ve got a lot to do,” he interrupted, and motioned for me to follow him.
March 9, 11:00 p.m.
I’m still alive. Banged up, bruised. My wetsuit’s in tatters. But I’m alive. I’m still trying to get over the shock. It was one very long day. All I want now is a few hours’ rest. This mission or “journey”—I don’t know what to call it—was doomed from the start. From the moment we set foot on land, things have spiraled out of control. We have no plan. We’re flying blind.
Right now we’re hiding in a ransacked mom-and-pop grocery store. The metal gate, or what’s left of it is, is off its hinges. We’ve braced it up from the inside with two steel shelves. The other survivors are crowded together, sleeping in the light of a kerosene lamp. Shafiq is standing guard, nonchalantly nibbling on a candy bar. I can’t sleep. Images of the last twenty-four hours are racing through my mind. I have no one to talk to about all this, no shoulder to lean on. I’m writing to keep from going crazy. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and think this was all a bad dream and I’m losing my mind. Hell, I don’t have a clue where to start. At the beginning, I guess.
For two weeks I was under heavily guarded “freedom” aboard the Zaren Kibish. The captain and his first officer spent all their time getting ready for the trip. I only left that wreck of a cabin to go to the bathroom, take a shower, and make quick trips on to the Corinth. Except for Ushakov, I only saw the cook, a pimply-faced, pockmarked Filipino who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. So I had plenty of time to think about how off the chart things were.
I was in the middle of writing when Ushakov himself came to my cabin and motioned for me to follow him. We climbed down the stairs to the deck where the rest of my “team” was waiting: Viktor “Asterix” Pritchenko, whom I hadn’t seen since I first came on board, so I guess he and I are both prisoners; the first officer, with a huge pistol hanging from his waist; and four Pakistani crew members. They were all wearing heavy navy-blue uniforms, with crammed backpacks on their back. They all carried AK-47s, except for Viktor, who was unarmed. He gazed at me, half-resigned, half-terrified. He was as fucked as I was.
“You volunteered, too, right?” I asked and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What?” he replied, confused.
“Nothing. Forget it.” Clearly he didn’t get my sarcasm. I turned to Ushakov. “What about my weapons?”
“You won’t need weapons, my friend. My men will protect you. Just guide them to the post office and bring me that package,” he replied and handed me a piece of paper. “The receipt for the package.”
I grabbed it with one hand and adjusted my wetsuit with the other. They all looked at me, astonished. They were probably asking themselves if I’d lost my mind. Did I think we were going surfing? When I read the receipt, I didn’t feel like joking anymore. Shit! No wonder the last team never came back. That package wasn’t at the main post office, which you could practically see from the harbor. The fucking receipt was from the VNT office, a local courier company. At the other end of town.
Resignedly I shook my head and put the receipt in the small, empty backpack they gave me. Clearly I wasn’t the one who’d carry the package back. I adjusted the straps and leaned on the railing to study the dead city. It looked grim and bleak. Beyond the devastated port, I could see the streets of Vigo, filled with abandoned cars, trash, dirt, paper, and plastic bags fluttering in the wind. In the midst of all that, those creatures wandered along a never-ending path. A damn Dead Zone. And we were headed right into it. I shuddered and turned to Ushakov.
“It’s getting dark. We’ll leave tomorrow morning, when there’s enough light.”
“No, Mr. Lawyer. You leave right now, under cover of darkness.”
“Do you know what you’re saying? We won’t be able to see!” I replied, agitated. I couldn’t believe it.
“They won’t be able to see you either,” said Ushakov, disdainful.
End of discussion. I couldn’t convince him that “they” didn’t need to see us to know we were there. Maybe he thought I was trying to delay our departure. Ushakov was a soldier, and he still thought like a soldier. In his mind, you had to infiltrate at night to have any chance of success. He was sending us off on a moonless night to a place filled with monsters. Things just got better and better.
A large Zodiac waited, tied to the side of the Corinth. As we were boarding, I saw one of the sailors clutching Lucullus. The guy had a couple of deep scratches across his cheek. My cat wasn’t happy with his captors either. As soon as he saw me, he let out a long, desperate howl and twisted around, trying to run to me. But the guy had anticipated his reaction and was wearing thick gloves. He skillfully moved his right hand and got my poor cat in a choke hold, immobilizing him. An inch more of pressure and he’d break his neck. Lucullus meowed plaintively as I looked on helplessly.
I saw red and took a step toward the guy. Someone shoved me hard toward the gunwale. Next thing I knew, I was climbing down into the Zodiac. As I took a seat at the bow, Ushakov leaned his huge hulk over the rail and cupped his hands.
“Hurry back, Mr. Lawyer! My Filipino cook hasn’t had any fresh meat for weeks. His culture has many recipes for cat!” He laughed. “I don’t know how long I can hold him off!”
The Zodiac’s motor started on the third or fourth try. We took off with a mighty roar. His threat rang in my ears. Fucking son of a bitch…
The light was fading fast. It’d be dark soon. As we approached land, I could make out the shore more clearly. I’d almost wished I couldn’t. It was a preview of what awaited us just a few hundred yards away. Suddenly I noticed the silence in the Zodiac. I turned around and looked into six pairs of expectant eyes. Drunk Nose barked at Viktor in Russian. He nodded and turned to me, his eyes round as saucers.
“Officer Kritzinev asks where get off, where land. He says you must guide.”
I nodded. Okay, I was in command, at least for the moment. I had to calm down. I had to think, if I wanted to get out of this nightmare in one piece and get my cat and my boat back. I got up the courage to scrutinize the shore, searching desperately for a safe place to land, a path, a sign…anything!
Suddenly I saw a place near the shore. Fuck it. It might be our only chance. I turned back around and signaled to the Pakistani at the tiller where to head. it was a crazy idea, but we didn’t have many options.
After so many days at sea, the feeling of solid ground underfoot was weird. As the shadows grew, I tried to make out the shape of the buildings around us. Behind me I heard the Ukrainians and Pakistanis rushing around, unloading the equipment. I breathed deep and instantly regretted it. The nauseating smell of decay, garbage, feces, and burned flesh was mixed with another, more subtle scent. I couldn’t describe it, but I’d noticed that smell for weeks. I think it’s their smell. Do they have their own smell? Or am I going crazy?
The Pakistanis and the Slavs were ready to head out. They seemed to be a pretty competent and well-trained team, except for Viktor, who seemed lost in his own world and resigned. The way they handled their weapons told me they weren’t just sailors. Damn. Those guys were pros. Who the hell were they? What were they really doing here? And what was in that package? Was it worth risking the lives of seven people?
We’d landed at the far end of the Safe Haven, between some huge industrial warehouses and the gigantic lot where the Citroën factory parked its new vehicles. From there the cars would’ve been loaded on to the tankers and distributed all over the world. Now hundreds and hundreds of cars sat on the lot, abandoned in the dark.
Nearby I could make out a long row of brand-new Xsara Picasso luxury compact sedans, their seats still covered in plastic. They were dirty and neglected. I ran my hand over the nearest one, leaving a deep swath. After sitting there for weeks, it was covered in a thick layer of dust and more. With a shudder I realized they were covered with ashes from the fires. Maybe even human ashes. Jesus Christ!
I turned away from the thousands of vehicles that would never drive along a sunny highway. That was the past. Now all I could think about was being smart enough to survive until the next day.
The corner where we landed had a special feature: a small, squat building sitting next to a narrow esplanade entirely surrounded by a high brick-and-concrete wall. What had drawn us there wasn’t the wall or the esplanade. We were interested in the huge Seguritsa sign on the building. It was the headquarters of an armored truck company. With hundreds of businesses operating in that tariff-free zone, it was logical they’d have a branch there. The port’s fish market alone moved a million euros a day. Someone had to guard all that dough and drive it to the bank.
The building was a veritable fortress. Those monsters couldn’t have climbed over the wall. If I was wrong, we were fucked. But we had no other option.
With a sharp wave, I communicated to Viktor that we should approach. I whispered that we should check the perimeter of the building. Nodding, the little Ukrainian slipped like an eel into the group that was hiding in the increasingly thick shadows. He relayed what I said in Russian to Kritzinev, who in turn gave instructions in Urdu to the Pakistanis. Quick as deer, they ran past me and melted into the shadows.
I felt uneasy about how complicated it was to pass along orders. They had to be translated several times and could’ve been misinterpreted at any point. The slightest mistake could send all of us to our grave. That’s just great! We handful of survivors made the UN look like a bunch of neighbors.
After five torturous minutes, one of the Pakistanis materialized out of nowhere, right in front of us, signaling that everything was okay. As we moved stealthily toward the building, I studied those odd guys. They were all in their twenties, thin and sinewy, with huge black mustaches and copper skin. They were very good at what they did.
When we reached the wall, we stuck to it like leeches. It was dark as the mouth of a well.
Although none of those things was close by, I could hear the noise their dragging feet made. That sound gave me the creeps. Something like rasssssssss-thump, rasssssssssssss-thump, repeated over and over. I could feel my balls shrink in sheer panic. Those things were on the other side of the wall we were leaning against.
I walked quietly to the door of the building. As I expected, it was a huge steel doorway with slits on the sides. I grabbed the doorknob and turned. The door didn’t budge. It was locked up tight.
For a moment I didn’t know what to do. The possibility that that door would be locked hadn’t crossed my mind. We’d come to a fucking impasse. We couldn’t go back, we couldn’t get into the building, and we couldn’t move on.
All eyes were fixed on me. Turning to Viktor, I shrugged to say, “What do you think? I haven’t got a fucking clue.” Kritzinev stepped forward, raised the AK-47, cocked it loudly, and aimed at the lock. Before he could go on a shooting spree, I grabbed the muzzle of the gun, aimed it at the ground, and raised a finger to my lips. Shooting this door would only advertise our presence. I pointed to the corner of the building and the parking lot. It was our only option.
We walked along quietly, trying to melt into the wall, in complete darkness. I don’t remember if the moon was out, but the sky was clouded over. The starless night made the situation even more unnerving.
I was beyond terrified, but in my defense, I wasn’t the only one. I felt some satisfaction when I saw the fear in their eyes. Fuck them. It’s one thing to watch the bullfight from the sidelines, quite another to jump into the ring.
When we reached the corner, I cautiously stuck my head out and saw absolutely nothing. The darkness was so thick I couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of us. We had to turn on a light, so I signaled for a flashlight. A huge Polar Torch flashlight, the kind the police use, appeared in my hand as if by magic. I grabbed it with sweaty palms and pointed its polarized lens into the blackness. For a moment, I panicked. What if I turned it on and spotted dozens of those monsters lurking around, with the light reflecting off their dead eyes? What if the light attracted hundreds of them? I hesitated. My finger was on the switch, and sweat was dripping down my back. Kritzinev nudged me. He whispered something Viktor didn’t have to translate. Something like, “What the fuck’re you waiting for?”
I was up shit creek. I pressed the switch, and a huge beam of light lit up the scene. All I saw was a huge, empty parking lot and a wall with a large metal gate on sliding tracks. It was still closed. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and realized I’d been holding my breath all that time.
We quickly crossed to the heavy gate. I looked at it in despair. Too large for us to force open. We’d come to a dead end. I stood there, stunned, staring at that huge gate, wondering what the hell to do. I knew the others behind me were waiting for me to make a decision. I had no idea what to say. Viktor walked up to the door and inspected it carefully. I just stood there, watching the Ukrainian in surprise. He ran his fingers along the edge closest to the wall. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, smiling, sweat beading on his forehead, and whispered a single word: “Broken.”
With a creak as loud as a gunshot, the door moved an inch. It wasn’t locked! I suddenly remembered I’d seen that kind of door when I visited a client in prison. It was a high-tech model that used electromagnetic locks. As long as there was electricity, it was impossible to force the lock. In a power outage, the battery could keep the operating system armed for days. But even the smartest manufacturer couldn’t have planned for a power outage that lasted several months. So the lock was turned off, and you could push it open with one finger.
How the hell had Viktor figured that out? Who was this guy?
The door slid smoothly on its tracks, and we got a look at the street outside the compound. The street. The outside. Where those things reigned unchallenged. But when we cautiously poked our heads out, we didn’t see any.
Feverishly I swung the light left and right, afraid I’d catch a glimpse of one of those monsters. I swear to God if I’d seen one close up, I’d have slammed the gate shut and never come out, not even at gunpoint. Now I almost regret that didn’t happen. We’d have been spared what came next.
Just when I thought I’d swept the whole street, I aimed the flashlight to the right and my heart almost stopped. A huge red eye, evil and bright, was staring at me, unblinking, less than three feet away. It was terrifying. I was suddenly mesmerized. When I snapped out of it, I jumped back and almost dropped the flashlight.
At least I didn’t scream. I was spared the embarrassment of explaining why I’d screamed like a girl over a beam of light bouncing off a piece of glass. What I’d taken for a huge eye was just the door reflector of a van parked partway up on the sidewalk.
The rest of the group hung back in the doorway, covering both ends of the street while I nervously approached that huge hunk of metal. Halfway there, I realized I was completely unarmed. If any undead were inside that vehicle, my health would be seriously compromised in seconds.
It was a yellow armored van with SEGURITSA written in bold black letters on the side. The passenger door was open. The reflector on the door lit up when you opened the door. I’d mistaken that for an enormous eye. I definitely needed a huge bag of pot. And a vacation in the Caribbean.
I inched up to the van, the way Lucullus approached a dog, ready to run my ass off. It was a huge armored van and must’ve weighed several tons. I placed my hand on the hood. It was completely cold. It must have been sitting there for weeks, even months. I stuck my head into the driver’s side. Empty. I eased into the plush leather seat and tried to think.
That van wasn’t parked. It’d been abandoned on the sidewalk. The driver must have been in a hurry. He hadn’t even bothered to close the door. The keys were still in the ignition. With a shudder, I pictured a couple of security guards in the backseat, turned into undead, closed up in that small space, their rotten teeth pressed to the dividing window that they smashed as they reached out to grab me…
I turned around, bracing myself, but the backseat was empty and dark. Shining the flashlight around, I saw bags with the company logo, covered in dust, tossed on the floor. I sighed with relief. False alarm. There was no one in the van but me. Those bags were filled with the euros people had coveted not long ago, before those monsters came on the scene.
On the floor was a folder on a metal clipboard. I picked it up and glanced over it. The guy’s last route was dated late January. Based on the number of bags and the markings on the side, the driver was near the end of his route when he saw something that made him shit bricks and race back to base. I could think of no other reason to leave behind a van loaded with millions of euros, its door ajar, in the middle of the street and the keys still in the ignition. I didn’t have to be psychic to know what that poor man saw. Where was he now…and in what condition?
That van just might get us across the city. There was plenty of room for all seven of us. It was armored, sturdy, and weighed enough to keep a pack of those things from overturning it. The more I thought about it, the more perfect it got. But one look at the ignition quashed my enthusiasm. The key was in the on position, but the motor was off. The driver had stopped the car so abruptly he’d left off the motor running. It idled for weeks until it ran out of gas and died. I had the perfect vehicle to cross a city of the undead, but not a drop of gasoline. And I didn’t know what shape the battery was in.
Just then, Kritzinev and Pritchenko stuck their heads inside the van, alarmed that I was taking so long. I almost fainted from shock. When I told them the van’s possibilities, they smiled.
March 10, 12:02 a.m.
False alarm. Those young guys out there have just been on edge a bit.
The situation couldn’t be any bleaker. We’re trapped in this shithole of a store, exhausted and hounded by those creatures. I tried to fly under the radar, but Kritzinev whispered a couple of times that this was all my fault and gave me looks that weren’t exactly reassuring. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
When we determined that the van was in good working condition, we got ready to set out. The more we thought about it, the better that vehicle sounded. An armored van is as close to a tank as you can get in civilian life. We had one parked right in front of us, with the keys in it, beckoning to us to get in. The problem was that its gas tank was dry as dried tuna. After idling for God knows how long, it was completely empty.
We came up with a solution, thanks to Shafiq, one of the Pakistanis. He’s a wiry guy, very dark skinned. His monstrous black mustache makes Viktor Pritchenko’s mustache look puny.
When we discovered the tank was dry, Kritzinev muttered a string of words in Urdu to this kid. While another Pakistani went back to the Seguritsa parking lot, Shafiq shrugged off all his gear and stripped down to his shirt and shorts with the ever-present Kalashnikov strapped across his back. Viktor and I were sitting with our backs against the wall, slightly amazed at the scene. The remaining Pakistanis kept an eye on the street through the half-open metal gate, watching for any unwanted visitors.
After a few minutes, the guy returned from the lot with a long piece of rubber tubing cut from a hose. Taking the rubber tube and a five-liter plastic jug, Shafiq headed back to the Zodiac, not saying another word. He untied the boat and paddled quietly toward the Citroën depot about fifty yards from us, disappearing into the black night. We could only hear his rhythmic paddling in the distance.
As I sat there, dying to light a cigarette, I could imagine the scene: Shafiq crouched down, running up and down the rows of cars ready to be shipped to the four corners of the world, the keys in the ignition and a couple of liters of gas in the tank, just enough to drive on to the boat and then the tractor-trailer. A trip they’d never make.
The plan was simple. He’d empty that gas into the jug and then fill the van’s tank. Since the jug only held five liters, he’d have to make at least a dozen trips. But we didn’t have any other containers, except for our canteens. The job would take a while. At least we’d have a vehicle to safely cross the city in. We wouldn’t have to walk. And we’d be setting out in daylight. Call me a coward, but I’d rather see what’s around me than head into a dark ghost town full of mutants.
As I settled down for a break, thousands of paranoid thoughts raced through my mind. What if he mixed regular gas with diesel? What if the cars only used regular gas? (The van, of course, took diesel.) What if the cars had already been cannibalized by the Safe Haven survivors? What if a former employee of the factory, now changed into the living dead, was wandering around? What if it snuck up on Shafiq as he worked? More and more fatal errors went through my mind. With each new terrifying thought, I felt less and less confident and sweated more and more.
All my fears were unfounded. Shafiq returned with a jug of amber diesel gas, wearing a huge smile. He didn’t make a mistake. He only got fuel from the diesel vans. Yeah, someone had already emptied a lot of the vehicles, but there were dozens more that still had gas. He’d have to go a little farther, but that was no problem. The area was empty.
I relaxed and leaned back against the wall as Shafiq set off again. It was strange. For those guys, being in complete darkness, an assault weapon in their hands, risking their lives, was the most normal thing in the world. It was their daily bread.
It occurred to me that the epidemic had hit the more advanced countries harder. In Spain only the army, security forces, and a few thousand people had guns. That’s how advanced Europe used to impose order, law, and comfort. In places like Pakistan, Liberia, Somalia, or God knows where else, even a child at his mother’s tit had a gun hanging around his neck or something more serious at the front door. There, you shoot first and ask questions later. There, having no electricity or running water has never been a problem.
Now the most advanced parts of the civilized world are defenseless, devoured by their own citizens. Maybe the undead haven’t had as much luck in more remote, primitive, isolated areas. Maybe they haven’t even made it that far.
It’s ironic. The poorest, most underdeveloped areas of the world are now humanity’s last hope. The rest of the world is one huge hell where a handful of scattered survivors are trying to escape.
The sun was slowly rising. The tank was filled just as the sun peeked over the horizon. Poor Shafiq, drenched and exhausted, was starting to stumble with the jug. Another Pakistani, Usman, ventured to the end of the street, where a Volkswagen Beetle with two flat tires was parked. He looked around the corner and came back to inform us that a few of those mutants were walking back and forth about ten yards away, unaware of our presence. The guy looked terrified. That was the first time he’d seen those things up close. I knew only too well that it was not a pretty sight. Hard to believe I was the veteran of the group.
When the tank was full, we got in the van. I was surprised when they gave me the driver’s seat. I guessed I was supposed to lead them in everything. With a sigh I got in and closed the heavy door. Kritzinev, Shafiq, and I crammed into the front seat, while Pritchenko and three other Pakistanis climbed into the compartment in back. I adjusted the seat and mirror and turned the key.
The starter didn’t even turn over. I tried again. Nothing. And again. Nothing. Kritzinev’s face told the whole story. Mine too. I leaned back, my mind racing. What the hell was wrong? My eyes swept across the dashboard for a clue. I looked down at the dashboard. The light indicator was on. Shit. The driver had not only left the motor running, he’d left the lights on too. They’d been on for weeks. The battery was dead.
I imagined the scene: the yellow flashing headlights all that lit up that dark street. The battery dying as hundreds of undead surrounded that van, abandoned on the road to the Safe Haven.
I had to think of something. I focused on the Volkswagen at the end of the street. It was less than three years old, so its battery was probably in good condition. I considered telling Kritzinev to send Shafiq back to the Citroën parking lot to look for a brand-new battery, but I was sure he’d say no. The sun was getting higher, we were behind schedule, and the Ukrainian was getting impatient. Besides, in daylight the Citroën parking lot might be too dangerous. And he wouldn’t want to waste any more time dragging the van next to the Volkswagen. There was nothing to do except get the battery out of that little round German car.
I turned to Viktor and whispered through the little window in the barrier what to tell Kritzinev. After a quick exchange in Russian, Viktor turned pale and looked at me with despair. I understood instantly. Kritzinev had ordered him to get the battery.
He quickly corrected me. He’d ordered both of us to go. Shit.
We got out of the van, amid the Pakistanis’ mocking jokes. Almost tiptoeing, we approached the Volkswagen; its lemon-yellow color was like a beacon amid all the dirt on the deserted port. It was parked at the very end of the street, near the corner of the wall. Cautiously poking my head around the corner, I saw half a dozen of those things standing at different spots along the road, as if in a trance. Who knows, maybe they were sleeping. One thing was clear—they were close. Too close.
Viktor was struggling with the handle of the Volkswagen. It was locked. Not everything would be easy, after all. Wrapping his fist in his thick peacoat, Pritchenko drew his arm back and, before I could stop him, slammed his fist against the driver’s window.
The window vaporized into a million little pieces, making an outrageously loud noise that set the undead in motion. We had to hurry. With the agility of a car thief, the little Ukrainian slipped into the car and popped the hood. I propped the hood up, one eye on the street corner, waiting for those monsters to show up.
A bunch of wires stuck out of the battery. I jiggled the battery, but the clamps slipped again and again in my sweaty fingers. Pritchenko looked at me expectantly as the Pakistanis knelt on the ground beside the van, calmly watching the show.
When the copper connector slipped out of my hands again, Viktor Pritchenko lost his patience. He gently pushed me aside and leaned over the battery, grabbed hold of the connectors, and yanked them off. Then he tugged on the handle of the battery and pulled it out of the engine well. He smiled and muttered something that sounded like “Better fix things old Soviet way.”
Just in time. Around the corner appeared the first undead, rocking along, drawn by all the noise we were making. It was a middle-aged woman, covered in blood. Her thick torso was bare, exposing one of her drooping breasts. Where the other breast should’ve been, there was only a gaping, bloody hole.
Pritchenko and I stood there paralyzed, staring for a few seconds. No matter how disgusting they are, a walking corpse inevitably awakens a morbid fascination in a person, a fascination as dangerous as a swaying cobra. I’ve written many times in this journal that those monsters are fast, damn fast, even if they are crawling. They’d be on us in less than twenty seconds.
The next guy was wearing just a bloody, dirty hospital gown tied in the back. The wind ruffled his very long hair. From his arm hung what had once been a drip. When he saw us, he stopped, stretched his hands toward us, and uttered a guttural, horrifying growl.
That broke the spell for me. Pritchenko still stood there, bewildered, leaning on the hood of the car with the battery in one hand, his jaw hanging open. We had to get out of there before they grabbed us, or we were done for. I grabbed his arm and whispered louder and louder, “Run…run…RUN…RUN!” We turned and ran like hell to the van. Those things were so close you could almost feel their breath.
The three hundred yards to the van looked like a hundred miles. A wetsuit is not exactly the most comfortable thing when you’re running like a deer. Two hundred yards. Pritchenko was like a soul running from the devil. Even his mustache was bristling with horror. It was a comfort to know I wasn’t the only one who was screwed. A hundred yards. I could see Kritzinev’s and the Pakistanis’ faces. My heart dropped when I saw them raise their guns and aim at us. For a second I thought we’d be executed on the spot. Fifty yards. We were almost there when they started shooting.
The sound of five AK-47s firing all at once is deafening, especially when it’s right next to your ears and you’ve never heard it before. I collapsed, panting, at the foot of the Pakistanis, next to a contorted Pritchenko, watching a barrage of bullets rain down on those undead. I watched with horror as the men shot into their bodies. I knew that didn’t faze them. I stood up like a crazy man and shouted to them to shoot them in the fucking head, but I realized I was shouting in Spanish, and those Pakistanis from hell didn’t understand me for shit.
Pritchenko jumped up almost in front of the AK-47s and shouted, “Head, head!” like a man possessed. It was a miracle they missed him, but he got the message across. The Pakistanis corrected their aim, and in less than a minute a dozen undead lay on the ground, definitely dead now, with some ragged holes in their heads.
I’m really hardened. Just a month ago, the sight of carnage like that would’ve made me vomit my guts out. Now I looked on the scene as detached as a child tearing the wings off a fly. It’s natural, but I don’t like it one bit.
Time was running out. That shooting spree had gotten the attention of every ghoul in the vicinity, and they were headed right for us. It was just a matter of time before they’d congregate there. I got into the driver’s seat, while Pritchenko and one of the Pakistanis tried to jump the van’s motor with the Volkswagen’s battery. I don’t know if it was an easy process or if Viktor was forced to reapply the “old Soviet ways,” but he suddenly signaled for me to turn it over. The van’s motor sputtered a couple of times and stalled, but at least the dials were lit. We had a battery, but something was wrong with the fuel.
I could hear a violent exchange in Russian and Urdu across the hood. They couldn’t understand each other, but they finally came to some agreement. They looked up at the same time and signaled for me to try again. This time the motor started with a powerful roar that echoed through the narrow street. They slammed the hood and raced into the van. We were ready.
Just in time. An enormous mob was pouring around the far corner. I shuddered to see that that mob had closed off all our escape routes, while the engine sounded increasingly uncertain. If I turned it off, we were done for, trapped in the tight space in the van forever.
The sight was terrifying. The street was three hundred yards long. A high brick wall on one side and the back wall of a huge warehouse on the other formed a corridor about six yards wide. At the far end of the street, near the Seguritsa gate, an armored van, crammed with seven people, sat panting after sitting for more than month and a half. The other corner of the street was packed with undead. In a word, hell.
Shots from the AK-47s had saved Pritchenko’s and my lives, but the noise they’d made had drawn all the undead around. A tidal wave of hundreds of those creatures was headed down the narrow street right for us. The motor’s backfire drew them like a moth to a flame.
The din was deafening inside the van. The four Pakistanis chattered nervously, nonstop in Urdu, pointing at the mob headed our way. Pritchenko was pale, crouched in a corner staring, beads of sweat on his forehead. I’m no shrink, but I’d guess he was recalling his last moments in the Safe Haven. This time he had nowhere to hide. Kritzinev sat next to me, pale as wax, his eyes wide as saucers; the veins on his nose stood out like a map. Seeing those things through binoculars from the safety of the Zaren’s deck was one thing; it was quite another thing to be there with nothing to keep them from coming at you. I was scared, very scared, like everyone else. Fuck ’em all, I couldn’t help thinking.
Kritzinev shook my arm, shouting fast and furious in Russian. I shrugged. I had the same panicked look on my face. I wasn’t sure what to do. You’re never prepared for something like that. I released the handbrake, put the van in first gear, and let it roll slowly toward that roiling mass that took up the whole street.
The van’s engine panted noisily as the wall of flesh, bone, and bloodlust closed in on us in the middle of the street. At a hundred yards, we saw the first undead. We could guess at the mass behind them. It was like trying to clear a path through a demonstration or drive through an audience at a concert.
My mind worked feverishly. Adrenaline and panic urged me to charge the crowd. It was an obscenely inviting idea—floor it and mow down row after row of undead and then drive someplace where no one’s ever seen those things, not even in a picture.
The rational part of my mind got me back on track right away. Charging that shambling crowd wasn’t an option. A body projected against a windshield, no matter how dead it is or how shatterproof the windshield is, was still a 150-pound bundle thrown against glass. It could do a lot of damage to a vehicle. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. A broken window in the middle of that crowd was a death sentence.
I recalled forensic reports I’d read about people struck by cars. In most cases, the victim died, but not before doing serious damage to the undercarriage, suspension, tires, and steering of the vehicle that hit him. Real life is very different from movies. Cars aren’t indestructible; they break down easily and suffer serious damage, not to mention flipping over or crashing.
We had one option, but it required cool heads. I let the van move slowly toward the crowd just twenty yards from us as I quickly explained my plan to Viktor. We’d move through the crowd, practically idling, at the speed of a person walking. I was sure we’d gently part the crowd of undead. If any of them fell under our wheels at that slow speed, I didn’t think it would do any damage, considering we weighed more than three tons. To the van, that is; damage to the fallen creatures was another story.
The downside was that we’d be surrounded by those monsters for a very long time. I speculated that they’d hit the sides and windows of the van many, many times. If it weren’t for the armor on the vehicle, we couldn’t do it.
At that moment, those mutants—hundreds of them—engulfed us. Seeing their faces plastered to the glass was deeply disturbing. I assumed it was high-security glass, impossible to punch through. Still, I shuddered every time a fist hit the windshield. They saw us clearly, and that drove them crazy. They surged toward the vehicle with a hungry look in their dead eyes. The smell of urine filled the van. Someone had pissed himself in fear. Not a surprise. It was the most terrifying experience imaginable.
Purring softly, the van slowly penetrated the crowd until we were surrounded on all sides. We’d bet it all on that card, putting our trust in the weight and the armor of our vehicle-shelter. In there we were safe and secure. For a moment, I even felt a little confident.
The dense crowd plagued us from all sides. From time to time, we felt a jolt as we ran over one of those things that didn’t move fast enough or didn’t have room to get away and ended up under our wheels. It was gut-wrenching.
I noticed my vision was blurred. I rubbed my eyes and realized I’d teared up. I was crying out of sheer terror. We were going three or four miles an hour down the middle of a huge crowd of corpses in varying degrees of decay. They were all ages and all kinds. I saw middle-aged women, young men, the elderly, children…they were the most unsettling.
A girl about eight years old, with a dark stain on her torn Bratz T-shirt and a deep cut on her head, her dirty blonde hair plastered down with blood, stayed glued my window for about ten minutes. With one hand, she gripped the rearview mirror, and with the other she hit the window, moaning furiously. Up close like that, we got a good look at her dark mouth and her pale skin, riddled with dark, broken veins. After a while she started hitting her head against the glass. She seemed frustrated to be so close yet not able to reach me. At one point I heard the clack her teeth made against the armored window. God, I still shudder when I remember that moment.
March 10, 1:05 a.m.
I feel better, calmer. I want to leave a written record of every moment I’ve lived through, but some situations come back so strongly, it makes me nauseous. That half-hour ride in the van is one of them.
I was talking about the little girl. After ten minutes she let go. Maybe because she got tired (do these beings get tired?) or because a huge, muscular guy about thirty years old pulled her away. That bastard was right out of a nightmare. Half his body was burned and blistered from a fire. He was missing three fingers on the hand he pounded against the windshield as he clung to the hood with the other. With each blow, he let out an inhuman bellow. He hit the windshield with such fury that after a while his arm turned into a mass of red pulp that clouded the window. The bastard finally turned loose when the truck shook and squashed one of those things. Thinking about him made my hair stand on end long afterward.
Those are just two examples. I remember twenty or thirty more and could describe them perfectly, but I just can’t face it right now. It’s too scary. Hundreds of those creatures were all around us, shouting, wailing, and beating on every inch of surface of the van. The shouting outside contrasted sharply with the deathly silence inside the van, broken only by the monotonous, guttural whisper of the Pakistanis praying in Arabic. I was amused by the idea of praying to God when we were in hell, but I kept that thought to myself.
Kritzinev, his eyes bulging, clung to his flask like a drowning man with a life preserver. From time to time, he knocked back a long, deep gulp that made his Adam’s apple bob up and down. Pritchenko was pale and scared, but behind his huge blond mustache, he calmly studied the scene. I concluded he was the only guy in that van I could rely on if I wanted out alive.
All went well for about thirty minutes. Each time the vehicle threatened to go belly up, it put the fear of God in me. If the vehicle overturned, we’d be as good as dead. Either those mutants would kill us, or we’d die of hunger and thirst in the van, surrounded by an impassable crowd of undead. The best solution would be a shot to the head. Frankly I didn’t relish ending my life in a modern-day version of Numantia. At least in 133 BC those early Iberians were fighting noble enemies, the Romans, and not some freakish undead.
Occasionally the van rocked violently as several undead were crushed at once. More than once we nearly tipped over, but we managed to continue our slow, tortuous pace. Until we reached the tunnel.
It wasn’t really a tunnel, but a passageway under an intersection. I remembered driving through it on the way to a meeting. It was three hundred yards long and very narrow, with a lot of support beams. And black as midnight. I didn’t know what was inside. If it was blocked, I’d have to back out in the dark with that crowd around me. I’d probably crash into a beam, and we’d be stuck there forever with a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving. I wouldn’t go in there even if Kritzinev held a gun to my chest.
So I told Pritchenko to translate that to Kritzinev. While Viktor talked, I watched the first officer’s reaction out of the corner of my eye. He shrugged and mumbled something in Russian, not taking his eyes off the crowd howling around us, pounding on the windows nonstop. Kritzinev was too out of it to make a decision. I gave the orders here. That made me feel more confident—maybe too confident.
If we didn’t drive through the tunnel, we’d have to use the overpass that was just two hundred yards away. The crowd had thinned out a little. For the last mile or so, we’d been able to speed up. We were driving on wider streets, dodging abandoned vehicles. That worked in our favor. Our pursuers had to maneuver around those obstacles. That slowed them down and gave us some time before they reached us. But they’d catch up with us in a few minutes.
We drove onto the overpass until we came to the middle of the bridge.
I braked hard. Across the middle of the road was a car crashed into some concrete blocks that had once been a roadblock. Some poor devil had driven too fast, fleeing God knows what, and been hurled into those blocks, wrecking his car. There were bloodstains around the chassis and the footprints of someone or something who’d splashed through puddles getting away from the car. If the guy had survived the accident, he soon suffered something truly horrible.
Kritzinev shook off his stupor when he discovered we weren’t surrounded by all those undead. He roared something to Viktor, who rushed to translate for me. “Ram that abandoned car,” that thug said. I shook my head. I told him he’d seen too many movies. It would destroy our van. He roared again, getting red in the face, spewing frothy saliva, screaming, choking. A drunk, scared, angry Ukrainian is a sight to see. That Ukrainian was calling me names that were anything but pretty. Viktor deftly edited out the worst parts and told me to change seats with Shafiq. He’d take the wheel.
I don’t make a habit of arguing with someone pointing a gun at my chest, so I gave my seat to Shafiq. In the process of switching seats in that narrow cabin, he and I got all tangled up. I ended up sitting in the middle seat of the van, with Shafiq on one side and Kritzinev on the other. I barely had time to turn around and tell Viktor to hold on tight, then turn back around. I fastened my seat belt just in time.
The Pakistani floored it and launched the three-ton van against the abandoned car, like a ram butting its head against a wall. I braced myself against the dashboard. The impact was terrible. I figured someone in back was thrown forward violently. There was a hard blow against the partition, followed by a long howl of pain.
I didn’t have time to find out what had happened. Putting the van in reverse, Shafiq disengaged from the wrecked car, which had moved about twenty inches to one side, and rammed it again. I held on tight as the heavy van lurched forward.
This time, the blow was accompanied by the sound of iron grating against concrete. The car spun around like a top, leaving a space open. Shafiq let out an excited shriek that drowned in his throat a second later. In the impact, the van veered to the left and skidded against the railing of the bridge. With a nasty crunch, the heavy vehicle splintered the aluminum railing and hung for a second from the bridge’s parapet, swaying. After a few agonizing seconds, the van fell twenty feet to the pavement.
Most trials involving traffic accidents have something in common: the injured parties narrate the incident in great detail. They say, “It felt like everything happened in slow motion.” It had always sounded like a cliché before, but when the Seguritsa van skidded out of control toward the railing, I experienced that feeling firsthand.
The aluminum railing tore like paper when the van skidded into it. One of the tires exploded as it ran over an uprooted post. Sparks flew off the concrete as the van swept along the bridge, dragging fifteen feet of the railing. It struck one of the concrete beams and came to a stop, swaying, its rear end suspended in the air.
The van stayed in that position for just a few seconds. It felt like time stopped. Slowly, it started to tilt backward under the enormous weight of its armor plating. I tried to reach over a dazed Shafiq to open the door, but it was too late. With a creak and the gut-wrenching sound of scraping metal, the van slid into the void.
The impact was mind-blowing. The van fell on its rear end from a height of twenty feet. When it hit the road, there was a massive crash of crushed metal and broken glass. It slid sideways, then came to rest on its roof in a thick cloud of smoke and dust.
For a couple of minutes, I hung upside down, strapped to my seat, too stunned to react. Colored lights flashed before my eyes, and there was a ringing in my ears. When I finally tried to move, I felt a heart-stopping whiplash. We’d fallen backward, and the rear of the van had absorbed most of the impact, but the front of the van had taken a brutal hit too. The seat where Kritzinev and I sat had come loose and been thrown against the bulkhead. The iron bolts that anchored it had absorbed most of the impact and been twisted beyond recognition, so he and I were miraculously unhurt.
I couldn’t say the same of the other occupants of the van. Shafiq was unconscious. His head had flopped to one side, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. In the rear compartment someone was screaming in pain. Along with the urine smell there was now the stench of vomit and blood. I had to get out of there.
Slowly moving my arm, I felt for the end of my belt and released the latch. Then I crawled over the unconscious body of Shafiq and pressed the button to open the door. When the lock on the driver’s-side door clicked open, I felt a profound relief. I couldn’t imagine how I’d have forced open that armored door, which was seriously dented by the crash. I placed both hands on the door frame, got some momentum going, and pulled myself out of the vehicle. I stood on top of the wreck to take a look around.
It was a disturbing scene. The van had folded like an accordion in back, reducing its length by about a third. The right front wheel was missing, and fuel was leaking out in a growing puddle. The road we’d fallen on to didn’t intersect the one we’d come from or any other road I could see. It was deserted, but it wouldn’t be for long.
Gravel fell next to me, pinging against the van. I looked up and saw a half dozen undead leaning into the gap we’d left in our wake. They seemed stymied by our being on a different level from them. For now, they weren’t jumping down, but I didn’t know how long that would last. We had to hurry.
Kritzinev was dragging himself out of the van, his eyes clouded over, a deep gash on his right arm. A guy his age and physical condition wasn’t up for this. For a second I felt sorry for him. Then I remembered the smug look on that bastard’s face when the sailor almost strangled Lucullus.
I let him struggle out of the cab on his own. I went to the side door and pulled the handle, praying it would open. The handle turned, and I pulled the heavy door open. The sight was terrifying. One of the Pakistanis lay on the floor, his neck at an unnatural angle; blood poured from a deep gash in his forehead. He was dead. His brains were splattered against the barrier window. That explains the vomit I smelled.
Another Pakistani, Usman, was holding his arm, screaming like a madman. It had broken in the crash, and splintered bone protruded through his skin. It looked like he had another joint between his elbow and wrist. That must’ve hurt like a son of a bitch. The last Pakistani, Waqar, was still strapped in his seat. He didn’t look hurt but his mouth was bleeding profusely.
Pritchenko was struggling to get out of his seat. That lucky SOB. Several money bags had cushioned his fall. The little Ukrainian was floating in a sea of fifty-euro bills, making that the most expensive airbag in the world. He just had a bump the size of an egg in the middle of his forehead. He gave me a big, toothy smile. Now he really did look like a cartoon character.
There was no time to stop and admire the scenery. We got Usman and Waqar out of the backseat. Viktor then helped a still dazed Shafiq out of the driver’s seat.
After a couple of minutes we headed downtown. Pritchenko carried the dead Pakistani’s AK-47, and I carried the gun belonging to the guy with the broken arm. But we were just porters. Kritzinev had ordered them to take out the ammo.
The light was fading. The place would be packed with undead as soon as they found a way to reach the road. After we’d walked for ten minutes in the heart of that ghost town, we realized we couldn’t go any farther. Waqar’s mouth was still bleeding, and he was getting weaker. The rest of us were dead tired and stiff. We needed some rest. Kritzinev was the first to spot the little shop.
It was a small neighborhood grocery store. Someone had rammed a massive armored personnel carrier into the door and then looted it. Piled up around the store were dozens of rotting corpses, all shot in the head. Someone had held those monsters at bay while a team from the Safe Haven searched for food.
It looked like a good place to spend the night.
The light was growing dimmer, and rain was starting to fall. As the rain splattered, soaking everything, we went cautiously through the gaping hole, single file.
My heart sank when I saw the inside of the store. The looting party had thoroughly trashed the place. Empty shelves and torn boxes were tossed everywhere, and broken display cases lay on the floor. It was a deeply disturbing sight.
I took a closer look and noticed some telling details. The looting was systematic, yes, but rushed—not surprising when you consider how quickly those creatures gathered when they located a human being. Packets of noodle soup had been torn open in the shuffle; the entire floor was covered with little stars. I don’t know why, but that image jolted me like an electric shock, more than any other atrocity I’d witnessed.
I collapsed against a wall, exhausted, eyeing all that pasta on the floor. I remembered how my mother and I had fixed soup on rainy days. That memory was intense and painful. I’d stored away that anguish, but now it flooded me in an unstoppable torrent. I mourned silently, big tears rolling down my face.
I hadn’t heard from my family for months. That was something I didn’t want to face. Now an overwhelming pain and emptiness filled me as I wondered what had become of my parents and my sister. I tried to imagine where they might be, wondering if their shelter had been safe enough. But this chaos was too powerful. No coping mechanism could have held up more than five minutes in all this madness.
They could be anywhere. They could be living; more likely they were dead. God forbid they were one of those things wandering around. I shuddered at the thought. If I came face-to-face with them, I don’t think I could defend myself. Not against them.
All the pain I’d accumulated over the last few weeks was unleashed. One of the Pakistanis sneered at me when he noticed I was crying. He must’ve thought I was weak or scared. I didn’t really give a damn what he thought. All I wanted was to get out of there alive and get my cat and my boat back. Then maybe I’d find a way to contact my family. In this apocalypse, I’ve learned that your plans have to be short term. The pain’ll always be with me, not just now but in the weeks to come. It can’t get any worse. Surely it will fade, like an ember. That’s enough talk about sad things.
We braced the battered iron gate with some display cases and shelves, and settled down to spend the night. I lit a cigarette. Pritchenko fixed dinner on a kerosene stove while Shafiq and Kritzinev set Usman’s broken arm.
Shafiq grabbed his countryman from behind, and Kritzinev stuck a wooden stick in his mouth. Then he grabbed the guy’s broken arm at both ends. With a sudden flick of his wrist, he set the bone in place with a crunch that made my hair stand on end. Usman’s eyes rolled back, and he fainted. The rest was easy. They improvised a splint with a metal bar and a roll of bandages. It would hold the arm in place, but it wasn’t the right way to set a fracture. If a doctor had gotten a look at that botched job, he’d have been hopping mad. That kid’s arm was going to be fucked up forever.
In this new world, where the Health Department no longer exists, we’re at the mercy of accidents, just like the cavemen were.
Waqar’s injury had gotten worse. The guy was really pale, and he was coughing up blood. The severe pain in his abdomen was constant, and he was getting weaker. He must’ve had an internal injury. Probably his spleen. That was very bad, considering there was no hospital nearby. We didn’t know what to do. Even if we did, we had no way to help him. Only a properly equipped hospital with a trained staff could help him. Unfortunately, in the entire continent, there wasn’t much of either.
The smell of a stew soon filled the room. We left Usman, unconscious, lying by the gas lamp. Propped up against the wall, Waqar refused to eat. Kritzinev, Shafiq, Pritchenko, and I dug into that warmed-up stew and listened to the raging storm outside.
The meal was sad and somber. In general, our “mission” was in the crapper. We didn’t know where we were, we had no transportation, we’d lost a member of the team, and two were wounded, one seriously. It was a joke.
Just then Waqar struggled to his feet and headed for the bathroom at the back of the room. That guy was looking worse by the minute. I felt sorry for him, so I got up to help him, since he was having a hard time moving. He was just a couple of yards ahead of me. On the bathroom door hung a colorful poster of a bunch of fat guys in nineteenth-century clothing. They looked like they needed to take a piss and were frantically banging on the bathroom door. Below that was written “Wait Your Turn” in huge red letters. The owner of the shop had a real sense of humor.
We’d made a huge mistake when we first arrived—no one had checked the bathroom. Waqar reached out and turned the doorknob. As he did, the door slammed open. Waqar fell on the floor with a cry of pain as that thing hovered over him.
I reacted instinctively. Waqar was lying on his back, trying to pull away from that monster that was biting the air, going for his throat. He was a young guy, in army fatigues that were too big for him and hair too long to be a soldier. A volunteer from the Safe Haven, I speculated as I sprinted the two yards between us. He’d gotten infected somehow so they left him locked in a bathroom. They couldn’t shoot an old friend; they weren’t that cold-blooded. They figured no one would open that bathroom door again.
I grabbed that thing by the back of his jacket and struggled to pull him a few inches away from Waqar. The undead are like junkies all strung out on cocaine or pills. It’s very hard, if not impossible, for one person to overpower them. Not to mention that if they bite you, you’re screwed. Waqar took advantage of this break to roll over and escape from his clutches.
In the process, I lost my grip and fell backward, giving that monster a chance to stand up and turn around. The son of a bitch saw me lying helpless on the ground and gave a grunt of triumph before pouncing on me.
Shots rang out, and the guy’s head exploded like a ripe watermelon, leaving a strange pattern of brains on the wall. His knees buckled, and he fell in slow motion.
I turned my head toward the door. There stood Sharif, the barrel of his AK-47 still smoking, looking at me with more respect than he had just a few minutes earlier. He’d saved my life. But the gunfire doomed us. They knew we were there.
March 10, 2:35 a.m.
Something’s horribly wrong with Waqar. I’m no doctor, but I swear that the internal bleeding, or whatever he has, is getting worse. Blood isn’t seeping out of his mouth anymore, but he’s deathly pale. His groin is very hard, and his skin is as taut as a drum. He also has a huge bruise on his chest, a deep scratch on his right arm, and a high fever. All we have is some Tylenol and a box of Clamoxil, a medium-strength antibiotic. We have absolutely nothing to relieve the pain. I gave him a couple of Tylenol and forced him to drink lots of water. Pritchenko puts wet compresses on his forehead every ten minutes. We’re the only ones caring for this poor kid.
Kritzinev found a case of wine, so now he’s completely out of it. The other two Pakistanis are praying and looking at us with anguished faces. Beyond that, they’re no help. From time to time they say something to us in Urdu, but neither Viktor nor I understand them. I feel absolutely powerless.
Outside there are plenty of monsters. We don’t know exactly how many, because the shutters—which fortunately are holding up well—are down. But we can hear their pounding and their enraged roars. We haven’t found any other way out. We’re trapped.
I’m worried about Waqar. He’ll kick the bucket in a few hours if we don’t get him out of here. It baffles me how completely irresponsible these people are. Coming to shore without even a basic first-aid kit, just a few odds and ends of medications! Our provisions are running low, too, I noticed when I rifled through the Pakistanis’ backpacks.
I guess they thought this would be a walk in the park: reach the VNT office, grab the package, and get back on board. Idiots! This is hell on earth, and in hell, any problem can become a tragedy in a heartbeat.
Like now.
It’s 2:46 a.m. I’m so exhausted I can’t sleep. Waqar’s starting to rave.
March 10, 2:50 a.m.
I don’t like this one bit. Waqar’s semiconscious. He’s still raving in Urdu, but from time to time, he goes into a kind of trance and has seizures. The wound on his arm is swollen and red and is leaking a clear liquid with a repulsive smell. When I tried to wipe it with gauze, he came to, screaming in pain, blindly pulling away from me. That reaction isn’t normal for someone with internal bleeding. I studied the wound more carefully. It’s more like a deep scratch on the inside of his arm, about eight inches long.
I can’t help thinking the worst. I don’t remember seeing the scratch when we pulled him out of the van. He must have gotten it later, and I can only think of one way. I looked up from the wound. Viktor’s blue eyes were wide, watching me intently. I didn’t have to say anything. He knows what I’m thinking. It’s just a scratch…could it be enough to change him? Waqar passed out again.
March 10, 4:30 a.m.
About twenty minutes ago, Waqar started death rattles. The gruesome wound on his arm is still oozing smelly pus. His insides must be getting worse. A reddish fluid is flowing from his intestines; he lost control of his bowels a long time ago. His panting sounds like a steam freight train climbing a mountain. He stops breathing suddenly, then gasps for breath as if he were drowning. His agony has put everyone on edge.
I take some comfort in knowing that he lost consciousness a couple of hours. If he were awake, his suffering would be horrible.
I feel absolutely helpless. A human life is ending before my very eyes, and I have no drugs or knowledge to prevent it.
Usman and Shafiq recite suras monotonously, clutching a Muslim rosary. If this is hard for me, it must be terrifying for them. They’re thousands of miles from home, watching a friend die. I saw disgust in their eyes when Waqar started shitting blood.
Violent death isn’t a pretty sight like in the movies, where the hero falls with a smile and some last words for his beloved. Death is terrible, dirty, and very painful, if you’ve got what Waqar has. Those guys don’t seem to know that. I didn’t know that either a few weeks ago, but I saw a few dead on the way here, and that hardened me.
Viktor and I have a very serious problem. We know, or suspect, what will happen to Waqar in a few hours, but we’ve decided not to do anything for now. In the first place, we’re unarmed. That severely limits our possibilities. In the second place, neither Usman or Shafiq will shoot Waqar. Not surprising. He’s their friend, after all.
I laughed bitterly at that. The group from the Safe Haven must’ve felt the same way when they left that poor devil locked in the bathroom. Now, thanks to their “love for their fellow man,” we have this freak show on our hands.
Kritzinev is totally drunk and out of it. He keeps mumbling incoherently in Russian. From time to time, he laughs, doubled over with tears running down his cheeks into his beard, as if someone’s told him an extremely funny joke. At one point he screamed like a madman at the gate, where the undead are still pounding away outside. He pulled out his gun, but Pritchenko leaped up like a deer and grabbed it before he could shoot. Kritzinev glared at him and then collapsed, unconscious, drunk as a skunk. Just as well.
Now we have a weapon. Neither Usman or Shafiq made any move to take it away. That’s something.
The undead are still out there, mercilessly beating against the door. It’s an awful, grating sound. I think their numbers are growing, but I have no way of knowing for sure.
Waqar’s death rattles are becoming more frequent, one every ten minutes or so. The end is near.
March 10, 7:58 a.m.
The sun is coming up. Faint rays of sunlight filter through slits in the metal gate. From time to time those things’ shadows block the light as they wander back and forth. The store smells of blood, shit, sweat, fear, and pus. Waqar died ten minutes ago in terrible agony. Usman and Shafiq are reciting a funeral oration that sounds like a mantra. They keep watch on the body with one hand on their AK-47s and the other on a Koran. Pritchenko and I are keeping watch, too, but for other reasons.
Waqar will rise again any time now. Or something that looks like Waqar. There are no words to define our anguish as we wait. My hand is trembling as I write this in my journal. It looks like a six-year-old’s handwriting.
Viktor and I are breathing fast, and our hearts are racing. We know we’ll see one of those things born from a comrade-in-arms, if not a friend. When he returns, he’ll be the predator, and we’ll be his prey.
Waqar’s agony has been horrific. Two hours after he lost consciousness, small purple spots, the size of a dime, spread all over his body. Waqar’s circulatory system failed. It couldn’t send oxygen throughout his body, so he slowly suffocated.
Three hours later, something creepy happened. Delicate capillaries and veins in Waqar’s circulatory system became visible on his skin. You could trace them perfectly, like in a med-school drawing. I had no way to measure his blood pressure, but I’d estimate he was running hot. His heartbeat was wildly irregular. Sweat poured off him, but I wouldn’t let Pritchenko dry him off without gloves. If the Ebola virus is transmitted by contact with sweat, this disease must be too.
The sad truth is, nobody knows shit about this disease. In another time, in a better world, this kid would’ve been fighting for his life, quarantined in an ICU, monitored by a regiment of doctors and nurses. Now he lay there in agony, in his own excrement, on the floor of a looted, dirty store in the middle of a city abandoned and dead. Like all of Europe and the whole fucking world.
At three and a half hours, his veins became visible; the vena cava and aorta were like thick cables. Excessive blood pressure burst the small, delicate veins under his skin. Waqar was starting to look an awful lot like the things that have tormented me for months. By now, we all knew, even the Pakistanis, that Waqar was becoming one of them.
After four and a half hours, he lost consciousness and started bleeding profusely from the mouth, ears, and eyes, and I suspect the anus and penis (no one had the courage to check). Except for Kritzinev, who was passed out, we watched that terrifying spectacle, frozen, not saying a word, too scared to react. In the background, a chorus of groans and thumps against the increasingly weakened gate greeted the birth of a new member of the legion of the undead.
At four hours and forty minutes, Waqar shook with spasms that looked like an epileptic seizure. His body arched to incredible heights, and his limbs flailed away on the ground. His head pounded rhythmically against the concrete. We couldn’t do anything. With each contraction, with each jolt of his limbs, he sprayed blood mixed with pus and excrement into the four corners of the room. Unless I’m mistaken, if even a drop of that goo came in contact with an exposed part of the body, it could be lethal.
I ordered Pritchenko and the Pakistanis to stay back in the front room while I used an old Plexiglas display case as a shield and observed this horrible death. I don’t know if Waqar could feel anything, but I prayed his mind was long gone.
Four hours and fifty-five minutes into the coma, Waqar’s body lay still. Even after ten minutes, I didn’t dare leave the precarious protection of Plexiglas to approach the still-warm body. He didn’t seem to be breathing. I wasn’t sure. I decided to get a little closer, just six feet. The body lay motionless in a pool of red liquid. The smell was nauseating. I squatted down beside the body to see if he was breathing (not for all the gold in the world would I have knelt in the middle of that mess). He wasn’t.
Suddenly, Waqar’s gummy, bloodshot eyes flew open. He opened his mouth and let out a deep death rattle. I got the fright of my life. With panicked scream, I jumped up, took a couple of steps back, and fell on my ass on the concrete. I was terrified that Waqar’s body would get up.
But nothing happened. As I tried to calm the runaway beat of my heart, Viktor, Shafiq, and Usman peered through the door, drawn by my unmanly shriek. I didn’t feel one bit ashamed. Anyone in my place would’ve been scared shitless.
I sat up and scanned the body again. That had been his last gasp. It was so violent and unexpected, I nearly died of fright. Waqar was dead. But for how long?
That was the least of our problems. The only way out of this place was the front door, and that crowd of monsters had no intention of leaving. That door would give way sooner or later.
March 10, 8:26 p.m.
I write this by the light of Victor’s flashlight. The last twelve hours have been worse than when those things turned up at my house, a million years ago.
Twelve minutes after Waqar’s last gasp, his body did a number of things that definitely weren’t natural. His chest wasn’t moving. I guess those things don’t breathe. His entire right arm shook. He was dead, and yet his arm twitched. It was incredible.
If that weren’t enough, his gummy, bloodshot eyes flew open and started moving spookily from side to side, not focusing on anything. The tiny broken veins in the whites of his eyes gave him a ghoulish look.
The tremor in his right arm spread to other limbs. After a few minutes, his entire body vibrated as if an electric current were running through it. In an ominous way, its body was coming alive. I say “its body” because Waqar’s soul, spirit, or whatever you call it had flown far away. A monster inhabited that body now.
We watched that unnatural spectacle, mesmerized. Usman was terrified. Tears rolled down his face, and he sobbed loudly and soulfully as he clung to his AK-47. The guy was about to lose it. It was too much for him.
Shafiq seemed unwilling to accept that reality and stubbornly bobbed forward and backward, sort of catatonic, obsessively reciting prayers from the Koran in a muffled chant that gave me the willies. In the background, we could hear the sound of hell—undead roaring and pounding at the gate.
Viktor gripped the huge gun he’d taken from Kritzinev with both hands. With a determined look on his face, he took a deep breath, cocked the rifle, and aimed at Waqar’s head. The thing was wobbling as it attempted to stand up. I shook my head and grabbed his arm to lower the gun. I wanted to see. I needed to know. Will he recognize us? Can we talk to him?
Kritzinev suddenly appeared at the door, staggering around, half-asleep. That crazed scene took him completely by surprise. He’d come to take a piss. On the way to the john, he came upon his two hostages now armed, two of his men totally overcome by the situation, and the third mutating into one of those things.
For a moment he didn’t grasp the situation. Then the light went on. He ran over to Shafiq and snatched his assault rifle. By then, Waqar had managed to sit up and was looking around, dazed and bewildered. A new monster had been born, twelve minutes after he died. It was scary. Kritzinev went up to Waqar and aimed, his hands trembling. His voice cracked as he shouted something in Urdu. Waqar didn’t respond and continued to try to stand up. He shouted again. This time Waqar, the monster, glared at him and let out a terrifying groan, revealing a dark mouth filled with blood and pus.
That was too much for Kritzinev. He took a step back and pulled the trigger. The AK-47 was set on automatic, and it jumped in his hands, unleashing a hail of bullets. Waqar’s head was instantly turned into red pulp, like a watermelon hit by a truck, soaking Kritzinev with brains and blood.
All hell broke loose. One of the Pakistanis threw up noisily. Waqar’s body fell backward, convulsing. Kritzinev was enraged. He jumped over Waqar’s body and pointed the gun at our heads. For a second I thought he had the DTs from all the alcohol he’d drunk and was to going to blow us all away. That would be an absurd, ironic end: survive the apocalypse and hundreds of undead, only to be killed by a hallucinating drunk in the back room of an abandoned grocery store.
Fortunately, Kritzinev got a hold of himself and didn’t fire, but he kept the gun pointed at us. Barking at Pritchenko in Russian, he forced us against the wall. He snatched the gun from the Ukrainian, who made no effort to resist. Smart move. Hearing the gunfire, both Pakistanis snapped out of their catatonic state and stood behind their boss, guns in hand, glaring at us, ready to pull the trigger if we made the slightest hostile move. The best thing was to look innocent and roll with it.
Kritzinev pounced on Pritchenko and violently punched him, sending him crashing against the wall. With a look of sadistic satisfaction, he turned to me and raised his arm, ready to give me my share. I cringed, bracing myself.
At that moment, the unsettling sound of ripping metal ricocheted through the store. The gate had given way. Kritzinev forgot all about punching me. He shouted something in Urdu to the Pakistanis and rushed to the front door with them right behind him. I hung back with Pritchenko. I heard them drag shelves over to build a barricade.
I helped Prit stand up. He had a bruise on his cheek and spat out some blood, but nothing that would kill him. No time to think about that. I went up to the storeroom door. The Pakistanis and Kritzinev had barricaded themselves in behind the metal gate, which was coming loose on one side. Each time the crowd hit it, plaster and rubble fell from the door frame. Some monsters had already stuck their arms through the cracks on the side and were pushing against the shelves. One of them even tried to push its head through. That gate would only hold for a few minutes.
Kritzinev turned, pointed his rifle at us, and ordered us back to the storeroom. He clearly didn’t trust us and didn’t want us in the middle at that fight. I didn’t want any part of it either. The Pakistanis were chanting what sounded like a hymn of martyrdom in Arabic. Shafiq had tied a piece of green cloth around his head and seemed calmer.
I shook my head. Fuck. It was getting ugly. Two guys who aspired to martyrdom and a crazy, drunk Ukrainian. I waved Pritchenko back to the storeroom and desperately looked for a way out. There was nothing. No window or back door or vent! Nothing!
Once again, life wasn’t like the movies. There were no back doors or windows that opened onto vacant lots or secret tunnels or trapdoors. Just a grocery store with brick and concrete walls too thick to kick in. We were trapped.
Suddenly Pritchenko dragged me behind a counter. Above a heavy table was a trapdoor built into the wall. Leaning a chair against the table, I climbed up and slid the door open in the foolish hope of finding a tunnel out of there.
Toilet paper. Dozens and dozens of rolls of toilet paper and paper towels neatly stacked. This was where the owner had stored items that wouldn’t fit on the shelves. I frantically pulled down package after package of paper as we heard the first shots in the front of the store. The final assault was starting.
It only took thirty seconds to empty the whole storage area and another thirty seconds for us to climb inside a space that was claustrophobically small, but safe and hidden. We had a liter-and-a-half bottle of water, two flashlights, a chocolate bar, and my journal. Absolutely nothing else.
We stretched out a bit. Viktor fit perfectly; he’s only five foot two. I was a little cramped, but comfortable. A small hole in the door allowed us to breathe and gave us a partial view of the storeroom. All we could do was wait.
From the front room came the clatter of AK-47s and the howling of the undead. The gunfire grew more intense. Three guns firing simultaneously in a confined space made a lot of noise. We smelled the gunpowder. I don’t know what the firepower of those weapons is, but in such an enclosed space it had to be devastating.
But the enemy outnumbered them. After a couple of minutes we heard piercing howls, and one of the guns stopped firing. The fighting moved closer to the door. A crazed, bloodied Kritzinev appeared, walking backward. He threw down his AK-47 and drew the pistol at his waist. Pursued by at least a dozen of those creatures, the Ukrainian emptied the clip, but for every one that fell, two more appeared.
Kritzinev realized the battle was lost and pointed the gun at his temple. Before he could shoot, an obese young guy in a striped shirt, covered in dried blood from head to toe, bit his neck and tore off a piece of flesh the size of a fist. Kritzinev dropped the pistol, uttering a cry of pain and surprise with anger in his eyes as he disappeared under a mass of those creatures. I don’t want to replay the sounds we heard.
Twelve hours have passed. The shop is quiet and dark. Oil lamps lying on the floor have burned out. There’re no words to describe the smell. We can’t leave the crawl space because a few of those creatures are still here, walking in the shadows, relentless. We have no idea what to do.
March 11, 9:38 p.m.
The human mind is amazing. After more than twenty-four hours locked in a tiny storage space the size of a closet, with no lights and hardly any sound, I started to hallucinate. I was sure I heard a TV. I could even make out the ads. It was agonizing. I knew perfectly well they were just in my mind, but they sounded so real. Oh, God. I covered my ears, but I could still hear everything clearly.
That closet was my undoing. I was sliding down the slippery slope of madness. I couldn’t take any more fatigue, terror, and pent-up stress after seventy-two hours of light and food deprivation. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was suffocating in there. The walls were closing in on me; the space seemed even smaller, crushing, squeezing me. The darkness was thick as oil; even the air was dark. I couldn’t breathe; my lungs pumped air like crazy but got no oxygen. I was choking. I had to get out of there!
I scratched at the door, desperately groping for the handle. Then two hands, hard as steel, grabbed my arms. Pritchenko whispered something in Russian, trying to reassure me. He had immobilized me with the strength of a karate black belt. He didn’t let go until my breathing calmed down and I regained control. That fucking Ukrainian’s looks are deceiving. He’s so small, and his huge blond mustache covers half his mouth, but he has an iron spirit and amazing resilience. He hadn’t collapsed under pressure; I’d been about to send us both to hell in an attack of claustrophobia.
I started to cry in silence, like a real idiot. I’d had enough. We’d been shut up in that closet-size hole for an entire day. I was hungry, thirsty, and sleepy. I had excruciating cramps and was completely disoriented. It was fucking hell, but there was no neon sign pointing to the exit.
With all that movement, I’m sure we made some noise. Fortunately those monsters were making far more commotion as they moved around the wreckage in the storeroom, stumbling over fallen shelves and the remains of our team. For the moment, they hadn’t noticed us. I peered through the little hole in the door. All I could see was half of the storeroom and the hallway that led to the front of the store. A little light was coming through the front door.
I could see the shadows of at least eight of those things still in the room. I knew there were plenty more in front of the store and out in the street. Those bastards hadn’t left when they finished off Kritzinev and the Pakistanis. They just stayed out there, searching for something…or someone.
For the first few hours, that room was crowded with the monsters drawn by the gunfire. Now, something (instinct?) told them there was still fresh prey in the vicinity. As time passed, most lost interest and moved outside.
Somehow they knew there were humans nearby but they didn’t know exactly where. Was it the heat we gave off? Electromagnetic fields? Some other sense that eludes me? They restlessly prowled around, frustrated that they couldn’t find what they were sure was there.
For four terrifying hours, a tall, gangly monster with a big gash on his back stood in front of the crawl space, slamming his fists at the bottom of the sliding door and roaring. We froze. We thought that bastard had discovered us, and that was the end of the line. But finally the guy lost interest and went back to wandering around the room, then retreated to God knows where.
Those things are strong and have a kind of sixth sense, but they aren’t very smart or persevering. Their coordination and ability to concentrate are limited; their motor skills are worse. After a while, they seem to get bored or distracted, except when a strong stimulus, usually a human, gets their attention. Then they’re relentless.
All this is just a guess. To my knowledge, nobody has any idea of how those creatures think. The epidemic spread too fast for anyone to do any scientific studies. If anyone is doing research in a bunker somewhere, he must be miles underground. A lot of good that’ll do us, surrounded by them.
And it wouldn’t fix my hallucinations: I thought I heard a siren.
Pritchenko squeezed my arms so hard I nearly howled in pain. He’d heard it too! It wasn’t a hallucination!
There were three long blasts, a pause, and three more long blasts. It was the hoarse, deep sound made by a powerful steam turbine coming from far off. A ship’s horn! The Zaren Kibish. Ushakov was trying to contact us. He must be getting worried, wondering what was taking us so long. We needed to answer, let him know we were alive. But that would have to wait.
The siren riveted the monsters packed inside the store. The room emptied out as they stumbled out the door, one by one, headed for that new sound only a human being—prey!—could make.
All but one. For some reason, an undead woman in her fifties wearing sparkly earrings, her face streaked with makeup and dirt, kept walking around in the storeroom. Maybe she detected human prey more intensely than the others. Or maybe she was dull-witted. Who can say? She just stood there watching, waiting. This was the chance we were waiting for. Pritchenko and I didn’t have to say a word. I shoved the sliding door aside and jumped onto the counter, Prit following.
The woman looked up, surprised. With a mad roar, she walked toward us, dodging the mangled remains of furniture and rotting corpses on the ground.
I tried to stand up, but my legs didn’t respond after a whole day tucked into that tiny crawl space. I just couldn’t get up. There was an unpleasant tingling in my legs as circulation was restored, but for all intents and purposes, I was helpless as a puppy.
Again Pritchenko rose to the occasion, drawing strength from somewhere. He crawled forward and grabbed the empty AK-47 Kritzinev had thrown down before he died. Using the rifle as a cane to help him stand up, he leaned against the wall, then grabbed the rifle by the barrel like a club and squared off against that harpy, whose breathing whistled softly between her teeth. That guy sure had some balls.
Prit didn’t have to wait for that creature’s response. She wobbled toward him. When she was within reach, he raised the AK-47 over his head and brought it down with all his might against the woman’s skull.
There was a loud crack as her skull split open, exposing her dark, infected brains. She rocked back and forth and staggered. Pritchenko leveled a second blow. Her head burst like a ripe melon and she fell to the ground. He bent over her, hitting her skull again and again until it was a mass of red pulp.
I struggled to my feet and grabbed Viktor’s shoulders as he gave the corpse the umpteenth blow. He had a maniacal look in his eyes and that woman’s brains all over his arms and chest. When he felt my hands, he spun around like a cobra. For a moment I thought he was going to whack me too.
His expression slowly returned to normal. Finally his weak legs couldn’t hold him any longer and he collapsed to the floor, dragging me down with him. Now he was the one sobbing convulsively, venting the tension that had built up over the last twenty-four hours, as adrenaline roared through his veins.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and helped him sit up. We didn’t have much time. We had to get out of that hellhole right away. Regaining his composure, Prit sniffed loudly and picked up Kritzinev’s gun. He said wearily, “We’re finally out of the closet.”
I burst out laughing as the Ukrainian gazed at me, wondering what had gotten into me. Every time I tried to stop laughing, the puzzled look on Pritchenko’s face made me laugh even harder. With tears in my eyes, I explained the slang meaning of what he’d said. Then the Ukrainian laughed too. That was liberating. For the first time in weeks, we laughed uncontrollably, as stress flowed out of us. Any silly comment would set us off again. It was fantastic. We were still human. We were still alive. We could still put up a fight.
We didn’t glean much from the gruesome scene. Kritzinev’s pistol was our only weapon. We found the AK-47s, but couldn’t locate the ammunition. Usman and Shafiq had had the ammunition belts, but there was no sign of them. They were probably wandering around, mutants now, packing dozens of rounds of ammunition. Fuck.
Before we left, I bent over Kritzinev’s corpse. The undead’s fury had been over the top; they’d ripped the poor bastard’s body to shreds. There was no way he was coming back to life. Part of his brain was missing; an arm and both legs and his stomach were torn apart as if a wild animal had attacked him. What a gruesome death. I reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the bloodstained receipt. I hadn’t forgotten about that fucking package. It was the only way I’d get Lucullus back.
We left the store, stepping around a huge mound of putrid bodies piled up at the door. The sun was blinding. As Pritchenko and I walked out of the store, I glanced around. I saw a couple of those things about four hundred yards away. They’d spotted us and were heading our way. Time to get a move on.
We ran up the street, limping, drained from lack of food and water. We wouldn’t get far in that shape. As we walked along the deserted street, more and more of those things came out of unexpected places to join the chase. Thousands of them! They were closing in on us.
Suddenly Pritchenko and I stopped dead in our tracks. Spread out before us was a gruesome scene. We were at the edge of a swath of Vigo charred by fires that had raged out of control. I’d seen those fires from the Corinth. The street we were on dead-ended in an area where scorched, collapsed buildings had fallen every which way. The city looked like it’d been bombed.
This was our chance. Prit and I climbed onto the ruins, crawling over piles of rubble and twisted, blackened beams. The undead couldn’t follow us into this shattered land. They weren’t coordinated enough to climb that rubble. That landscape looked as dead as the moon, riddled with holes, covered with beams, piles of rubble and mangled remains. It wasn’t much easier for us, given the shape we were in, but the important thing was, we could climb and they couldn’t.
After twenty minutes of wandering around in that hell, Pritchenko and I collapsed, panting, into a deep hole in the middle of the devastation. At the bottom of that hole was a large pool of rainwater. We drank like camels, then lay down to catch our breath, with the sun on our faces and a breeze in our hair. Spring had arrived in all its glory. We were glad to be alive.
March 12, 10:41 p.m.
I’m sitting next to a small campfire. A tasty chicken vegetable soup is bubbling away. Across the flames, I can see Pritchenko’s familiar silhouette wrapped in a blanket, snoring so loud he could wake the dead. For the first time in weeks, I’m in such a good mood I can even joke about this.
Yesterday we left that burned zone after languishing there for three days. Prit and I were completely exhausted. Fortunately, the Ukrainian had quickly spotted a place to take shelter and recuperate, which undoubtedly saved our lives.
It was hot at the bottom of that hollow. The sun in a cloudless sky beat down mercilessly as we lay like lizards next to a pool of rainwater that was evaporating before our eyes in that stifling heat. It was so hot the air vibrated. Debris seemed to tremble. The silence was complete, broken only by occasional snaps and pops from the ruins and crumbling buildings and the drone of flies. Once we heard dogs barking in the distance, but the barking stopped after a few minutes.
Prit and I tried to build a tent out of a torn sheet, but we had nothing to prop it up with. We were too weak to perform any feats of engineering.
Bottom line, our situation was pitiful. We were alone, essentially unarmed, lost in an abandoned, half-destroyed city, exhausted, hungry, with just dirty water to drink, surrounded by thousands of undead. Not exactly a tropical vacation.
We were sweating like pigs in that torrid heat. I walked to the edge of the puddle of water, made a bowl with my hands, and drank some water. I smiled ruefully at my reflection. Pritchenko and I looked strikingly alike. After all we’d been through, we both had beards; our hair was matted and dirty; our clothes (in my case, a swimsuit and a ragged shirt, since I’d stripped off my wetsuit in the storeroom) were in tatters; our skin was greasy and smeared with soot; our hands were dirty; our nails were broken; we had that sharp, bony, hungry look and, I suppose, a foul smell. A beggar from before the apocalypse would look like a movie star next to us.
I told Prit that if a client could see me like this, he wouldn’t recognize me. Laughing, he said that Siunten probably wouldn’t hire him looking like that.
A while back, I’d considered asking him what the hell Siunten was. That company didn’t sound familiar. I hardly knew anything about my friend, except that we’d spent three terrifying days together, and twice he’d saved my life. Just as I started to ask, the Zaren Kibish sirens thundered again, breaking the silence of the dead city.
That hoarse blast spread throughout the city. It’s amazing how sounds travel in absolute silence. We city dwellers are surrounded by thousands of sounds, so we don’t realize that. In such silent surroundings, the sound of an engine or a radio could be heard miles away. They probably heard the ship’s horn all over Vigo and in neighboring towns. The fools on the Zaren Kibish kept mindlessly blowing the siren. Bad idea. They’d draw all the fucking undead in the entire region right to us.
We had to move on. If we stayed where we were, we’d starve or die of sunstroke or God knows what. My questions for Pritchenko would have to wait. We dragged ourselves to our feet and crawled back over all the rubble and the charred remains of cars and buildings.
The smell of burned flesh hung over everything. Occasionally we saw piles of scorched bodies, but there was no way to tell if they’d been humans or undead, trapped in the voracious fires that devoured parts of the city.
I was stopped in my tracks by the terrifying thought that the VNT office might’ve been burned to the ground. If it was, we could kiss that mysterious package good-bye unless it’d been wrapped in an asbestos box. I tried to calm down. I reminded myself that when I scanned the city from the Corinth, the part of the city the office was in looked to be intact. Still, that was even more reason to hurry to our destination. Although it would only take a few hours to get there, we couldn’t travel at night, of course.
As the afternoon wore on, the temperature dropped. Soon Prit and I were shivering. Spring nights in Galicia can be chilly, no matter how hot the days are.
Prit and I hesitated at the edge of the burned-out zone. Before us stretched a wide two-lane street covered with dust, dirt, and soot, but unscathed. Maybe because of rain or a sudden change in the wind, the fire had stopped there and hadn’t continued down the street, devouring the city. From that point on, the rest of Vigo was intact, but dirty, abandoned, and infested with undead. Walking among the ruins had been torturously slow and difficult, but at least we were sure we wouldn’t encounter any undead. Now the road would be easier, but considerably more dangerous.
We had no choice. We stepped on to the street, trying to pass unnoticed. I couldn’t read the street sign; it was covered in soot. Night was falling, and the light was fading.
Although we were just a few blocks from the VNT offices, we had to stop and hide. It would be suicide to walk around, unarmed and unable to see where we were, in an unfamiliar area infested with those creatures. We hadn’t come this far just to fuck up as we turned a corner. Plus, we’d pass out if we didn’t get something to eat. Our growling stomachs would scare a bear.
Suddenly, a smile lit up Pritchenko’s face. He stopped and pointed. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was turning out to be a good day. He’d had found a great place to spend the night.
It was a small tavern sandwiched between a ransacked bank and a video store with bloodstained windows. Its facade was covered in dirt and soot. Hanging over the door was a rickety Coca-Cola sign with the bar’s name painted on it: THE OLD VINE.
To call it a corner bar would be generous. It was really a dump. Before the apocalypse, I wouldn’t have given it a second glance. The door was secured by a hinged gate that reached all the way to the ground and had a large, rusty padlock. Between the gate and the door was a pile of old, yellowed newspapers dating from before the epidemic and a lot of flyers, faded from months of exposure to rain and wind.
That hole-in-the-wall must’ve closed long before everything went to hell. It was unlikely we’d find undead in there, but we wouldn’t know that till we went inside. Our options were dwindling fast. It was getting dark; soon we wouldn’t be able to see past our noses. The sky was clouding up; a storm was about to break. There wouldn’t be any moonlight. Every minute we stood in the middle of the street increased the chance that unwanted company would track us down.
The door to the bank had been blown off its hinges. Judging from the scrapes on the wall and pavement, someone had dragged the ATM outside with a powerful vehicle. Probably looters during the chaotic days at the end. One thing was for sure—we’d be no better off sleeping in that bank than in the street. I wasn’t crazy about entering the video store, with all the blood on its windows. And I certainly didn’t need to rent a movie.
So our best alternative was the bar. While Prit fiddled around with the padlock on the gate, I peered in the window through ads, faded posters, and a list of local soccer matches. In the dusty, dark interior, there were bottles were lined up neatly behind the bar. Suddenly, I was obsessed with the idea of drinking a frothy beer, sitting quietly at a table. We had to go in.
Walking a few yards from the demolished area, I picked up a piece of cement rubble that weighed about ten pounds. I gathered my waning strength and threw it at the window. The thud startled Prit, and he jumped to one side as shards of cement rained down on him. I gave him a sheepish look, silently apologizing. The Ukrainian shook his head, still shaken up. The window was shattered, but not broken.
Safety glass, but bad quality. If it’d been high-quality safety glass, I could’ve thrown that boulder a hundred times and it wouldn’t have scratched the surface. But this was a seedy bar, not a jewelry store. After few well-placed blows, what Pritchenko called “the old Soviet way,” the window finally gave way, leaving a gap big enough for Prit and me to slip through.
There was dust everywhere, and the place smelled musty. I laughed at myself when I automatically reached out to turn on the light. Some habits never die. Prit leaned a table against the window to cover the hole, transforming the bar into a fortress against the undead. I slipped behind the bar to take stock while some light still remained. The cash register was empty, and the moldy carcass of a lemon was rotting in a bowl next to a rusty knife. I found a Bic lighter. Pritchenko pulled some heavy curtains across the window to block the view from the street. Perfect.
By the light of that lighter, we looked through the drawers and finally found a couple of candles. Once they were lit, we opened one of the refrigerators. In less than two minutes, Pritchenko and I had chugged half a dozen bottles of water and a couple soft drinks, sitting with our backs against the bar. You could almost see all that liquid running through my body, reviving me. My tongue rehydrated with each bottle of water, and I could feel my cells soaking up that blessed liquid up like a sponge.
Once we’d quenched our thirst, hunger became our next priority. As I was writing some lines in this book, I heard Prit tinkering in the little kitchen at the back. I was too weak to help. After a few minutes, he reappeared, smiling, carrying a huge pile of cans. The kitchen was pretty well stocked and relatively intact. It wouldn’t feed an army, but it would feed a couple of survivors for a few days.
That night we slept soundly for the first time in a week. When we awoke, sunlight was filtering through the curtains. After we washed up a little with bottled water, we assessed the situation. After some discussion, we decided to stay in the bar for another day to get our strength back. Through the curtains, we saw plenty of undead moving down the street, headed for God only knows where.
March 13, 7:30 p.m.
This morning we finally ventured outside again. The street was drenched. It must’ve rained during the night. As the Ukrainian and I traveled along the sidewalk, hiding behind abandoned cars, a weak sun began to emerge. Wisps of steam rose off the pavement as the humidity burned off. It promised to be another sultry day, but right then it was still nice and cool.
Pritchenko carried a huge kitchen knife hanging at his waist. I’d grabbed a small meat cleaver. It wouldn’t do much good against a horde of those creatures, but it made me feel a lot more confident.
To be honest, we got overconfident, and it nearly cost us our lives. We were less than ten minutes from the address on the receipt when we turned a corner without taking the time to scope it out and stumbled upon the girl.
She was in her twenties and quite tall. She had a spectacular blonde mane halfway to her waist and a nice figure. She wore a top that left little to the imagination and skintight jeans that fit really well. Her features were delicate, and she wore enormous rhinestone earrings. She was very pretty. A really great-looking girl. The only thing marring her beauty was the ugly wound that ran along her shoulder blade, leaving a messy trail of blood down her bare back. That and the fact she was a damned undead.
I didn’t see her coming, and before I knew it she was on top of me, struggling to bite me. Her saliva dripped on to my chest as she locked me in a deadly embrace. I shuddered. If she scratched me, I’d end up like the Pakistani guy. I cried for help from Pritchenko.
Prit coolly situated himself behind the girl, who had me backed against a wall. With a quick, expert gesture, he grabbed the girl by the hair with one hand and began to methodically execute her with the knife in the other hand.
It was a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. Black blood gushed from the girl’s neck as Pritchenko methodically sawed through muscles and tendons. When he reached the trachea, the knife made a scraping sound as it tore the cartilage. He was like some mad butcher. Blood gushed all over Prit and me. I couldn’t get free of her deadly arm, which held me against the wall. The woman twisted around, trying to attack Pritchenko, but now it was my turn to grip her tight. I could clearly see the hole in her esophagus through the blood clots. I was mesmerized.
When Pritchenko’s knife reached the vertebrae in her neck, it hit bone. He pulled out the blade and stood back while I shoved the girl’s bloody, trembling body into the middle of the street. Her head hung at an impossible angle on her back.
It was my turn. I hauled back and brought my cleaver down, trying to hack through the remaining piece of the thing’s neck. Her body swayed backward, and the blade struck her collarbone. Now she was bouncing around wildly in the middle of the street, her head hanging by a thread, her arm half severed. It was something out of a gory movie.
I whacked her neck a second time. My aim was true this time, and her head rolled on the ground. Her convulsing body collapsed.
Pritchenko picked her head up by the hair and gazed at it, deep in thought. It was creepy. That fucking head was still snapping its mouth and gnashing its teeth. It made no sound since it had no larynx or lungs, but if it could, it would’ve been screaming with rage.
With all his might, Prit threw it down the road. The head flew through the air in an arc, hit the ground with a thud, and rolled into a corner. If no one touched her, she might stay there until…when? How long can these beings live? Are they eternal? Questions and more questions and not a fucking answer.
Pritchenko and I were bathed in blood.
That episode gave me something new to think about. Prit had meticulously, patiently beheaded a girl in cold blood. His pulse didn’t even seem to rise. Calm and professional. I asked myself: Who the hell is this guy? A bit uneasy, I studied the Ukrainian as we got back under way.
The VNT office was just around the corner. I was sick of it all. I wanted to get out of this damn city as fast as I could.
Fifteen minutes later, we were surveying the wide street that stretched out before us. Plastic bags fluttered wildly on hot, thick air from one end of the street to the other while dust swirled in intricate patterns. Separating the two lanes was a median where nature was urgently reclaiming its place. The flowering plants that once grew there had succumbed to weeds. Vines, ferns, and brambles coiled around trees no one would prune again. Shoots of grass were poking up through cracks in the pavement.
Dozens of vehicles were parked on the shoulder or abandoned in the road. There were a lot of cars, some vans, and even a couple of huge, heavy trucks. The cab of a monstrous eighteen-wheeler was embedded in the window of a women’s clothing store. Dried blood trailed from the driver’s door.
Tattered curtains flapped through open windows. Windows in every building were shattered, and the pavement was covered by a thick layer of broken glass. The huge explosion at the port must have blown out all those windows.
There was no sign of life apart from dozens of rats and countless gulls hovering overhead. It’s funny. Since all this began, I’ve seen dogs, cats (my Lucullus), rats, and gulls, but not a single pigeon or horse or sparrow or any other animal. I wonder if this epidemic affects other living beings. One more question to add to the growing list.
Prit and I had taken up a position on the cab of a massive dump truck. It had a busted windshield and four flat tires and was parked partway up on the sidewalk on the corner. It had a perfect view of the street.
There wasn’t a single monster around, but drag marks in the dust on the pavement were unmistakable. We spotted a few tottering figures about two hundred yards away, at the far end of the road. Too far for them to see us, but still too close.
The ground was covered with trash and dirt, along with dozens of rotting corpses, all with gunshot wounds. Pritchenko thought they were the undead killed by the raiding parties from the Safe Haven. I didn’t know what to think. I was starting to suspect that the collapse of law and order in large cities like Vigo had been more terrible and chaotic than in small towns. Thousands of civilian sightings of the undead must’ve overwhelmed the security forces. Then it was every man for himself. Those bodies might be proof of that.
Across the street was VNT’s home office. It was in a mediumsize building with a glass door and a huge window on one side, where the offices were located. On the other side, a large black metal gate with the company’s gold logo painted on it sealed off the van parking garage. The place appeared to be closed up tight and deserted.
In the back of the eighteen-wheeler was a huge load of building materials. On its last trip, they must’ve been planning to install a pipeline; about fifteen PVC pipes, four inches in diameter, were stacked in the truck bed. Behind the cab were a number of tools, including a crowbar. We could use that to open the office door.
Several months ago, our firm defended a small-time thief. He gave us a detailed lesson in the art of breaking and entering. The guy was a real pro who’d been caught in flagrante after he’d cleaned out at least a dozen apartments, so we couldn’t get him off. He was probably in jail when all this hell began. I wonder what’s happened to that poor thief, and everyone locked up in prison. I shudder at the image of entire wings of starving prisoners. Even though they were criminals, I hoped at least some of them survived.
Grabbing the crowbar with both hands, I quietly crossed the road, Pritchenko on my heels, to try out what the thief had taught me. Knowledge never goes to waste.
It was easier than I expected. I struggled briefly and took a couple of chips out of the door frame. Then the door sprung open with a loud crack that chilled me to the bone. The sound probably didn’t carry more than ten yards, but in that silence it sounded like a gunshot.
We entered the lobby of VNT. We’d reached our destination at last. The customer service department was located behind a wooden counter, badly scratched by countless packages sliding across it. In one corner sat the dust-covered skeleton of a houseplant. Months-old newspapers and magazines were piled on a coffee table framed by two armchairs. The stale smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air, faint but perceptible. Someone in that office had smoked a lot, although nobody had lit a cigarette there for a long time.
That wasn’t the only odor. Partly masked by the smell of cigarette smoke was the intense, sickening smell of decay. The smell of death.
Prit and I were immediately on alert. Brandishing the butcher knife, I inched up the swinging door that led to the back of the store. Prit stationed himself in front of the door, aiming Kritzinev’s assault rifle. Sweating like crazy, I looked over at him. At his signal, I kicked the door open and leaped aside, giving him a clear shot.
I cringed, bracing myself for the blast of the weapon, but all I heard was Ukrainian’s ragged breathing. I looked over and saw Prit’s expression change. I turned around to see what he was staring at. I gagged as vomit surged up my throat.
A half-rotten corpse hung by a rope from a ceiling. The guy had looped the rope around his neck and hanged himself. He wore VNT overalls rolled down to his waist. The maggots covering his face looked like a beard.
It was a revolting sight. The body was decaying, and a stream of smelly liquid dripped from his body, forming a thick, dark puddle. The body was swollen with gas and looked obscenely fat. A thick purple tongue stuck out of his open mouth; dozens of green flies were buzzing around it. His eyes had receded into their sockets, and his swollen, bruised fingers looked like a cartoon character’s fingers after he’d been crushed. The stench was awful. Pritchenko and I covered our noses and mouths and went in, trying not to look at that grim spectacle or brush up against him. A quick look around the store told the whole story.
That poor guy had been stuck there from the beginning. He must’ve seen the first undead go staggering down the street. He reacted like most people: he locked himself in until help arrived. Unfortunately for him, help never came. That was the start of that poor devil’s personal hell. An empty snack machine, its glass broken, was proof that his only source of food soon grew scarce. Dirty laundry and some well-thumbed girlie magazines were piled up on the floor. He had sense enough to use one of the vans as the john and drink the water in the toilet, but that must’ve run out too. Poor bastard. After a while, he just couldn’t take the hunger, thirst, loneliness, and madness any more.
I shuddered to think I could’ve met the same end if I hadn’t left my house. I shook my head to drive away those dark thoughts. There was no time to grieve for a stranger. We had to look for the damn package.
And we found it—a black steel Samsonite briefcase, sealed with red plastic tape. Prit and I spent the afternoon in the stifling heat, digging around in that damn store, but we finally found it.
I can’t believe we’ve got the package. Thoughts whirled through my mind as we decided what our next move would be. My first impulse was to try to open the damn case to see what was inside. But a reinforced steel Samsonite briefcase wouldn’t be easy to break into, even if I did what that thief taught me. Only the key holder or a real thief could open it. Unfortunately Prit and I don’t qualify as either.
We got used to the smell of rotting flesh after a while. I suggested we take down the body and wrap it in a blanket, but the Ukrainian talked me out of it. Given the condition of the corpse, it’d probably burst in our arms and shower us with rotting guts. Better leave it there, in his words, “drying like a cured ham.” I was creeped out, wondering where the hell he’d learned that, but I didn’t ask.
I’ve saved the best for last. That Ukrainian is full of surprises. What I learned about him today amazed me.
While I was rummaging through an office drawer, looking for the keys to some cabinets at the back of the store, I absentmindedly set some government forms to one side and opened another drawer. Just then Pritchenko walked into the office and collapsed in the desk chair, stretching and yawning loudly. His eye fell on the forms lying on the table. He casually pronounced one word: “Siunten.”
I stopped in my tracks. I looked at the Ukrainian’s impassive face and his huge blond mustache and then at the forms on the table. I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Siunten? Siunten?” I asked, excited, pointing to the forms. “Is this Siunten?”
“Da, yes,” Prit replied, surprised at my reaction.
I had good reason to be surprised. Those forms weren’t important. The really interesting part was the logo in the corner of the file folder.
“Siunten” was Pritchenko’s distorted Slavic version of Xunta. The Xunta de Galicia. The Galician government.
A light came on. I understood everything. Not many Ukrainians worked for the Xunta de Galicia, and Pritchenko was one of them. Now I knew exactly what my friend did. An excited shiver ran down my spine. What an idiot I’d been.
I turned to study Prit’s affable profile.
I felt completely drained all of a sudden. We’d spent five terrifying days together to retrieve that damn case lying on an old wooden table. At least five people had died on account of whatever was inside. But we were still alive. We’d come within a hair’s breadth of losing our own lives a couple of times. Natural selection had been ridiculously harsh over the last few months. We survivors are the most skilled, the fittest…or we just haven’t made many bad decisions. All that was in the past. We had the case.
Now we had to get out of that fucking store, thanks to Prit. He didn’t know it, but he was one of the most valuable people left in that part of the world. Not even Ushakov, the Zaren Kibish’s captain, knew who Prit was. Otherwise, he would’ve exploited his skills, not blithely sent him ashore to almost certain death.
Prit was worth his weight in gold. Sitting beside me, quietly smoking a Chesterfield, his huge blond mustache drooping over his mouth, was Mr. Viktor Pritchenko: the only living helicopter pilot for hundreds of miles around.
Wildfires plague Galicia during the summer. Because the area is so heavily wooded, voracious fires destroy acres and acres of woodlands every year. Combating those fires takes enormous efforts, materials, and human resources.
The early 1990s were very dry years, with particularly large fires. The Galician government was overwhelmed. Using military aircraft to fight the fires didn’t cut it. Firefighting crews couldn’t get to the affected areas fast enough on the ground, and seaplanes weren’t very reliable. They decided to hire pilots from Eastern Europe.
The majority of those pilots were former Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian soldiers who were kicked out on the street when the Eastern Bloc fell. After paying ridiculous sums of money in bribes to save their planes and helicopters from the scrap heap, they earned a living in emerging Eastern European nations by giving air shows or transporting people and goods more or less legally from one country to another. They were experienced, tough, cheap, and had their own helicopters. The perfect solution.
They quickly proved they were worth every penny. Plunging into a forest fire was child’s play for those pilots, especially the ones with combat experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Where the terrified Spanish civilian pilots refused to fly, the former Soviet soldiers dived in with a recklessness bordering on madness, losing their lives on more than one occasion. What’s more, their old Soviet helicopters were tough, easy to maintain, and had a larger cargo capacity than their Western twins, making them ideal.
Since then, pilots from the East and their old workhorses fought fires in Galicia year after year, from March to October. In the winter they went back to Eastern Europe, loaded down with Western goods they resold on the black market.
Prit related all this in a monotone, lighting one cigarette after another. He was from Zaproshpojye, a tiny village in northern Ukraine, but he was a Russian citizen. He joined the Red Army when he was only seventeen. After basic training, he was assigned to a company of transport helicopters. He fought in the final days of the war in Afghanistan, where he was shot down once, and in the Second Chechen War, transporting Russian troops to the front. He had a bright future in the army. Then he married Irina.
He took a crumpled photo of Irina out of his wallet. His voice trembled, and tears welled up in his eyes. Irina was gorgeous, a little Slavic doll with blonde hair and huge green eyes. He met her on leave, and they got married a year later. Little Pavel came along a year after that, complicating the couple’s lives. A Russian military pilot’s salary was terribly low compared to what he could make in the West. Plus the Chechen war was getting more dangerous and out of control. Prit had a family to support, so the decision was easy.
Three months after getting out of the army, Pritchenko was working for a shady German transport company. He first came to Spain as a forestry pilot in 2002. He’d returned, year after year, while his family settled in Düsseldorf, Germany. He’d been considering bringing them to Galicia to live when the apocalypse started.
Prit was now sobbing. He hadn’t heard a word from his family since late February, when they took refuge in the Düsseldorf Safe Haven. He was sure they were dead. I didn’t dare give him any hope. What good would that do?
The question was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t dare ask it as Prit wept bitterly on my shoulder for people who’d been killed or turned into monsters months ago.
When he’d calmed down, I blurted out, “Prit, where’s your helicopter now?”
“Where I left helicopter two months ago, maybe,” he replied, his breathing still ragged. “At forest camp. Mount Facho, twenty miles from here.”
“What about the other pilots? Where are they? What did they do?” The questions shot out of my mouth.
“Oh, when everything kaput, they go. I don’t know where.”
My heart sank. Had Pritchenko’s helicopter disappeared in the chaotic days before the fall of the Safe Havens, or been stolen by another pilot or seized by the army? To my surprise, the Ukrainian shook his head.
“Not possible,” he said. “Helicopter damaged. Need cog tail rotor. Part small, but very expensive. Mailed from Kiev to Vigo.”
My temples throbbed as I guessed the rest. “Where’s that piece, Prit? Do you have it?”
The Ukrainian shook his head again. “Nyet. VNT make mistake. They know that part for a Ukraine, but give to wrong Ukraine.”
I plopped down in a chair, thinking at top speed. Ushakov or Kritzinev must have gone to the VNT office to pick up their fucking package. The employee couldn’t read the label in Cyrillic, so he gave him the package with Pritchenko’s part. The situation at the time was chaotic. A scared employee anxious to get the hell out and head for home wouldn’t have bothered to check IDs. The package was from Ukraine, and Ushakov was Ukrainian. When Prit showed up for his part, they discovered the mistake, but by then it was too late. The world was falling apart.
This is great. I have a pilot and a helicopter at my disposal. That changes the situation dramatically. I only need two things: a small helicopter part and a cat. And I know where they both are. On the Zaren Kibish.
March 14, 7:36 a.m.
The sun’s coming up. It’s really cold in the VNT warehouse. Prit and I plan to leave in fifteen minutes. The Ukrainian is checking the battery and tires of one of the delivery vans parked in the garage. They aren’t as safe as that ill-fated armored van we came in, but at least we’ve got four wheels to drive to the port. Or as far as we can get.
I’m jotting down these notes as my friend tunes up our transportation. We changed out of our torn, filthy clothes and into gray-and-black VNT coveralls we found in a dressing room. We couldn’t take a shower since there’s no water, so our odor and appearance still leave a lot to be desired. At least we don’t look like fugitives from the law anymore.
We talked at length about how we could swap the briefcase for Lucullus and the helicopter part. We finally had a plan. We spent hours working out all the details, but I think it’ll work.
This’ll have to be fast. Pritchenko’s just started the van and is signaling for me to raise the garage door. The engine sound will soon attract a mob of those creatures, and we still have to make a stop along the way.
I hope everything goes well. The next time I write in this journal I’ll have Lucullus.
Time to go. We’re off.