Pritchenko’s body collapsed like a felled oak tree onto the lobby floor. His clenched hand scratched at the ruined parquet floor a couple of times, then stopped.
At the top of the stairs stood Reverend Greene, gripping his smoking Colt, his dark eyes glaring at Prit. A dense, black shadow behind him seemed to draw more life.
54
One down, one to go. But the second guy had me pinned down. He wasn’t shooting wildly; he was saving ammo, waiting for me to pop up and fire.
The Green Guard turned in surprise when he heard the grenades explode. Acting on instinct, I stood up and fired. I emptied half a clip into his chest.
The Aryan spun around in a wild dance, then collapsed. Then everything was quiet on that wretched street. I looked around. No one was standing. The wounded moaned softly and crawled for cover. The ones in better shape crept away slowly. The most seriously injured watched helplessly from where they lay on the ground as the huge fire sped toward them, about to swallow them alive.
I couldn’t hang around to help. They’d have to fend for themselves or die trying. I had one thing on my mind as I limped on my broken ankle toward city hall. We had to get out of there. Time was running out.
I finally staggered up the front steps of city hall. Leaning against a doorpost was the headless body of a man thrown there by the explosion. His clothes were so drenched in blood that I couldn’t tell which side he was on. At that point, I didn’t care.
When I entered the lobby, I froze, paralyzed with shock.
Grapes lay motionless in a huge pool of blood. Next to him another body lay facedown. His hair was unmistakable. No. Oh, no, please, oh, no, it can’t be . . .
I fell to my knees next to Prit and turned him over. A high-caliber bullet had torn through his back between his shoulder blades and exited out the front. My old friend was covered in blood.
“Prit! Prit, say something! Come on, man, say something!” I was too distraught to think clearly. I whipped off my shirt and tore it into strips to plug up his wound. Those dressings were soaked the minute I laid them on the gaping bullet hole. No way was a shirt going to stop the bleeding. I didn’t want to think about Prit’s internal injuries.
Prit groaned and opened his eyes a slit. He swiveled his head around until he found me. His skin was freezing cold, but he wasn’t even shivering.
“You . . . finally . . . made it . . .” Pritchenko whispered, his voice rising and falling, like a radio signal about to fade out. “You . . . took your . . . sweet time.”
“Prit.” I choked up as tears welled up in my eyes. “Prit, don’t die. Please, don’t die.”
“Don’t think I have a choice . . .” Deep coughs racked his body. Bloody saliva flowed from his mouth and tinted his mustache a sinister red. “You have to live . . . you and Lucia . . . Do it . . . for me.” He gripped my hands and fixed his gaze on me. “Promise me you will!”
All I could do was nod. Tears streamed down my face as I gripped Prit’s hands.
“Greene . . . is up there.” Pritchenko raised a bloody hand. “He did this . . . Be careful . . . OK?” More deep coughs interrupted him. The Ukrainian said in a faint voice, trying to smile, “I . . . told you . . . we’d see each other . . . on the other side.”
Pritchenko’s face contorted in pain. His body tensed, then went limp, and a peaceful expression spread across his face. Then he was gone.
I don’t know how long I knelt there, cradling my friend’s body. I know I cried and cursed at the top of my lungs. I dragged his body into the street so his blood wouldn’t mix with Grapes’s, and propped him up against a car, his skin so pale, his hair falling in his eyes. I ran back into the burning building, muttering over and over, “Greene, you’re a dead man.”
55
City hall was now an inferno. Sparks blew in through gaping holes in the shattered windows and fell on papers strewn everywhere. Flames shot up from those papers almost instantly. Parts of the building were already ablaze. What had briefly been my office was a cauldron of fire.
I ran toward the passageway that led to the old bank building where the labs were. The smoke was getting thicker and I couldn’t stop coughing. My throat was as dry as sandpaper, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. But the flames hadn’t reached the passageway, so fresh air still streamed in through broken windows there.
I reached the guard post where Green Guards had stood watch what seemed like a lifetime ago. Their girly magazine still lay on the floor. I trampled it as I eased inside the lab.
In the first room, I came upon the body of a middle-aged woman in a lab coat; she’d had the misfortune to be on the night shift. She’d been shot once in the heart and once in the forehead, mafia-style. Whoever did that knew what he was doing.
The next body was Dr. Ballarini’s. The Italian wore a trench coat over his pajamas. When he heard the shooting and the explosion, he must’ve jumped out of bed and run in to protect his precious lab. Someone had stopped him along the way. The scientist’s execution was messier, less professional. He had a huge hole in his stomach. His face was twisted in surprise, as if he couldn’t believe he was dead. One of his slippers lay three feet away. There were drops of blood on the toe.
I heard metallic clangs coming from the floor below. I cocked the AK-47 and descended the stairs to the old bank vault. The overhead light blinked a few times, then dimmed. The backup generator automatically kicked in. I crept the last few feet in silence and looked around the door of the chamber.
There was Greene. With him was a beefy Aryan, his arms the size of hams. He was whacking away at the steel vats where they fermented the Cladoxpan.
He’d already broken all the vats except two; a small lake of medicine covered the floor and trickled down a drain. Greene watched with a fevered look on his face. His gun was in one hand and in the other was a metal bucket that held that white, knobby brain-sized thing that was the planet’s salvation. The reverend planned to destroy all but that one fungal cultivar.
The guard finally managed to overturn the vat; it fell over with a big clang. The Cladoxpan spilled out in a huge wave that splashed almost to the men’s waists, before rushing down the drain and out the door. I formed a bowl with my hands, plunged them in the little river as it passed by me, and took some greedy sips.
The liquid burned my throat. It was more concentrated than I’d ever tasted. The adrenaline rush was brutal and I felt dizzy. The cuts, bruises, and burns dotting my body stopped hurting as if by magic. When the effect passed, the pain would come back a hundredfold, but right then I felt great.
I planted myself in the doorway. At first, they were so busy attacking the last vat they didn’t see me. Then Greene grabbed his right knee as if he’d been hammered by a horrible pain and turned, wide-eyed.
“You!” he shouted.
“Yeah, it’s me . . .”
I shot the guard before he could grab the Beretta he’d set on a shelf. The first bullet hit him in the leg and he fell to the ground. The second tore through his heart.
I turned to Greene. The reverend was trembling in fear and anger as he relived his terrifying nightmare, unable to tear his gaze from me. He thought he was seeing a ghost. He aimed his huge Colt at me, his hands shaking.
“You’re the spawn of Beelzebub,” he said in a guttural whisper. His Stetson hat had fallen off and his hair was a tangled mess. “You’re the Devil, the Antichrist, an abomination in the eyes of the Lord! It’s time for you to join Satan forever!” Then he pulled the trigger.
At that moment, the generator flickered for the last time and the lights went out. I threw myself to the ground as a ghostly flash from Greene’s gun lit up the room, and the bullet whizzed by like an angry wasp, just inches from my head. From the ground, I fired blindly, hitting the reverend in the arm. He screamed in pain and dropped the Colt. He bent to pick it up, but I was already on my feet.
In a homicidal rage, I jumped on Greene so hard he fell backward. The preacher’s hands clawed at my face, his jaws snapping furiously as he tried to bite my neck.
“You can’t kill me! I’m the Prophet! I AM THE PROPHET!”
The last vat of Cladoxpan was right next to us. I grabbed Greene by the lapels and lifted him up the way a cat shakes its kitten.
“You’re not the Prophet,” I hissed in his ear. “You never were, you crazy son of a bitch.”
Greene looked at me with terror in his eyes. His right leg had not stopped shaking throughout the fight. Then suddenly it was still. “It stopped hurting,” he murmured in disbelief. “That can’t be . . .”
“Well, this’ll really hurt, you bastard.” And I plunged his head into the vat.
The reverend struggled wildly, trying to surface so he could breathe. I held him tight as the Cladoxpan spilled over the edge. After a while, his body stopped writhing.
I collapsed on the floor, panting. I should’ve felt good. I’d killed the man who infected me, who took Pritchenko’s life, and who convinced thousands of people to follow him in that orgy of pain and destruction against their fellow human beings. But all I wanted to do was close my eyes and rest.
A loud boom sounded overhead. Something on the floor above had collapsed. The air was very hot and I smelled smoke. I struggled to my feet and picked up the ax the guard had used to destroy the vats. I went back to Greene, raised the ax over my head, and, with one blow, decapitated the old man.
“Let’s see you come back from the dead now, asshole.”
I slung my rifle across my back and darted out of the vault with the bucket in one hand and the reverend’s head in the other. The corridor was pocked with small fires.
I climbed the stairs through the stifling heat and rushed from the burning lab back over the passageway and through the lobby of city hall. Blinded by the smoke, I felt my way down the front steps. When I finally got outside, I collapsed to my knees and threw up.
Flames were slowly engulfing Gulfport. Only the Bluefont ghetto was spared from the fire’s fury, thanks to the channel that formed a natural barrier.
I raised the reverend’s head to eye level. His face was frozen in anger and his mouth hung open, baring his old, worn teeth. I spat in his eyes, swung his head over my head, and cast it into the inferno that city hall had become. Moments later, Greene’s head disappeared into that enormous pyre, black smoke rose above the flames, and I heard an inhuman howl. The smoke twisted and turned with a life of its own.
The roof came crashing down as a sea of fire washed over everything.
56
PONTEVEDRA, SPAIN
SIX YEARS LATER
I drove the Jeep SUV slowly through the bushes and weeds that had grown up through cracks in the pavement. Most of the houses were weather-beaten, and some were on their last legs. Aside from that, not much had changed. As we drove, crushing piles of rotting, bleached bones under our tires, I pointed out landmarks to Lucia, as excited as a child to be back.
We finally came to an intersection and turned left. I could barely make out the paint a long-dead soldier had sprayed there years before, during the evacuation.
I stopped the car and turned off the engine, but I couldn’t get out. There were too many memories.
“Is this it?” Lucia asked softly, putting her hand on mine. She was very pregnant, so we’d need a place to settle down—soon. At least for a few months.
I nodded, choked up. My house. I was home.
“Are we there yet?” asked a high-pitched voice in the backseat.
“Yes, Viktor, we’re here.” Lucia turned around. “But wait until Daddy opens the door before you get out.” Little Viktor shot us a mischievous look and nodded. He was a calm, alert boy with his mother’s vivid green eyes.
“Is that where we’re going to live?” he asked, wrinkling his brow. “I don’t like that house. It’s old and dirty.”
I laughed and tousled my son’s hair. “Don’t worry, there’re plenty of empty houses. We can live anywhere in the city, I promise. But Daddy wants to pick up something.”
I got out of the car as Lucia checked that our Cladoxpan starter had enough water. Caring for that strange fungus has been part of our daily routine for so many years now.
I walked up to my house with a heavy heart. How many years had it been? Eight? Nine? I still recognized every brushstroke in the paint. Even the smell was familiar. We were back.
A ball of orange fur shot past me. Lucullus didn’t move as fast as he used to, but he could still zip around when something interested him. He meowed, switching his stump of a tail, and looked at me questioningly.
“You remember this place, don’t you, buddy?” I whispered as I petted him.
It was the end of a very long journey. It had been six years since we left the ruins of Gulfport. Six years of constant travel, meeting small groups all over a world that was slowly rising from the ashes.
But the world was still a dangerous place. No one had seen or heard of any Undead for over four years, but not all human groups were friendly or peaceful. Little by little a precarious new social order was falling into place, but it couldn’t hold a candle to what the world was like before the Apocalypse. The Second Middle Ages, some called it.
On top of that, the TSJ virus still circulated through the veins of many survivors. For some mysterious reason, little Viktor was immune, even though Lucia and I were infected. When transmitted from mother to child, TSJ mutated and lost all its virulence. In a few generations, it would be just a bad memory.
The door was still open, the way I’d left it years ago. I carefully entered. Lucullus shot like a rocket to the backyard where he’d spent so many good times.
My house was a mess. A family of foxes had made its den in my living room. A water pipe had burst on the second floor, ruining the rugs. The furniture smelled musty and the paint was peeling off the walls, but I was happy to be home.
I went into the living room and opened the top drawer of the china cabinet. There, in a plastic sleeve, were my family’s photo albums. My last link to the past.
Lucia and little Viktor came in behind me, holding hands. My son looked at everything with curiosity—and caution. He knew that a dilapidated house could be dangerous. Children of this new world knew things that generations of children before the Apocalypse hadn’t.
“What next, Manel?” Lucia rested her head on my shoulder. “Where’re we going next?”
“I honestly don’t know. But it doesn’t matter.”
We were alive. We’d survived the toughest test of humanity. The world was ours.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
After a journey of three years and a thousand pages, it’s hard to acknowledge all the people who made this adventure possible.
First, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of anonymous readers online and the tens of thousands who followed. Your word of mouth turned a little story of a frightened survivor into this trilogy. I’m lucky you gave me such a boost. Thanks for paving the way.
A big thank-you to everyone at Plaza & Janés Editores for your patience, understanding, and unflagging support. You’ve been a great team, from beginning to end, and have made this trip easier and more enjoyable. A special thanks goes to my editor, Emilia Lope. Thanks for having confidence in me, Emi.
To Sandra Bruna, my agent, and her fabulous team in Barcelona for putting up with my ramblings and getting this story read in so many countries and in so many languages.
To Juan Gómez-Jurado, outstanding bestselling author, but above all, my friend. You’ve been my guiding light. I always learn something new from you. And to his wife, Katuxa, for stoically putting up with two writers camped out in her living room.
To Freskor Itzhak in Berlin, and Manuel Soutiño in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, for showing up at the right time and solving problems with the po
wer of a cyclone. To Aurora and Manolo, for giving up their home in that beautiful, remote corner of Galicia so I could finish this book.
To my family, for their patience and support. My parents—steady as a rock, an island in the middle of a storm—and my tenacious, smart sister, who continue to be the pillars of my life.
And of course, to Lucia, my wife, my first reader and harshest critic. Every time I look at her, I understand why men risk death for the sake of a woman with a smile on her lips.
Now brace yourself. The journey has just begun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Pablo Manuel Otero, 2012
An international bestselling author, Manel Loureiro was born in Pontevedra, Spain, and studied law at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. After graduation, he worked in television, both on-screen (appearing on Televisión de Galicia) and behind the scenes as a writer. Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End, his first novel, began as a popular blog before its publication, eventually becoming a bestseller in several countries, including Spain, Italy, Brazil, and the United States. Called “the Spanish Stephen King” by La Voz de Galicia, Manel has written three novels in the Apocalypse Z series. He currently resides in Pontevedra, Spain, where, in addition to writing, he is still a practicing lawyer.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Pamela Carmell received a Translation Award from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate Oppiano Licario by José Lezama Lima. Her publications include Matilde Asensi’s The Last Cato, Belkis Cuza Malé’s Woman on the Front Lines (sponsored by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry), Antonio Larreta’s The Last Portrait of the Duchess of Alba (a Book-of-the-Month Club selection), and the short-story collection Cuba on the Edge. Her translation of poetry by Nancy Morejón is forthcoming. She is also published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. This is her third translation for Manel Loureiro’s internationally bestselling Apocalypse Z series.
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