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.
ENTRY 60
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.
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