The plane banked hard and the landing gear extended with a loud screech. The engines’ whine rose two octaves and the brakes groaned trying to stop the fifty-ton A-320 as it rushed down that short runway. I worried, like everyone else, that the noise was arousing the interest of all the Undead packed into that city, waking hundreds of thousands of them out of their slumber as the plane roared overhead so low it nearly clipped the roofs of buildings.
The phone on the bulkhead gave a loud ring. It connected directly with the cockpit a few feet away. Hauptmann Tank grabbed the receiver, nodded a few times, and hung up with a curt “thank you.”
“The pilot reports that we’ll be on the ground in less than a minute!” He shouted above the roar of the engines. “Our landing may be bumpy, so buckle up!”
I was scared shitless so I pulled my belt as tight as I could. Prit was muttering something in Russian, probably some comment about the pilot’s mother or Tank’s, or maybe he was pissed off he had to sit there, like the rest of us sheep, instead of being at the controls of the Airbus. You never knew with Prit.
“When the plane stops, Team One, take your positions immediately!” Tank shouted in his thick German accent, as he clutched a luggage rack and struggled to stay on his feet. “Sweep the area, check the perimeter. Shoot anything that moves! But if any of those helicopters parked on the runway gets the slightest scratch, I swear to God I’ll rip the guts out of the guy who fired the shot! Got it?”
A grunt of assent rose from twenty throats, while twenty pairs of sweaty hands cocked twenty HKs and strapped on helmets.
A sharp jolt shook us, then the landing gear gave a terrifying shriek. A dull roar rose from the engines as the pilot threw them into reverse at full speed to bring the huge Airbus to a stop in that small space.
“Too fast,” Pritchenko muttered, watching as the runway rushed past us.
Thick black smoke billowed from the wheels. The pilot had locked the wheels in a desperate attempt to slow down the plane. The cabin shook violently, as if the plane were breaking into pieces. The friction was shredding the tires. The smell of burning rubber was overpowering. If we had a blowout at that speed, the plane would likely tip and roll out of control down the runway, becoming a fireball. My balls shrank in terror. I was convinced we were going to die.
The Airbus gradually slowed down, but it still emitted sounds that weren’t very reassuring. Something came loose from the cargo bay and crashed noisily to the floor, but that was it. Finally, with a plaintive screech, the plane came to a complete stop, but its engines still rumbled, exhausted from the strain.
On cue, the legionnaires got to their feet in sync. Two of them manned the door while a third attached a rope ladder that unfurled down to the runway. Before I could blink three times, they’d slithered down onto the cracked pavement.
A few seconds later, we heard the first shot, then a couple of long bursts of machine gunfire and an explosion broke the silence on the runway.
Let the dance begin.
23
TENERIFE
Island heat slapped Lucia in the face as she left the apartment building. Out front, a dozen people waited patiently for the bus. Not a single vehicle drove by, except for an occasional bicycle and a beat-up wagon on retreads pulled by a worn-out nag.
Although the hospital was just a few miles away, getting there took a really long time. On account of the strict fuel rationing, there were almost no motor vehicles on the road, aside from the few engaged in essential services. There were very few draft animals and even fewer bicycles. A junk heap with wheels and pedals no one would’ve looked twice at before the Apocalypse was now worth a fortune. Under martial law, bicycle theft was punishable by hard labor. Gasoline theft was worse, punishable by firing squad. Draconian measures, true, but the fragile law and order on the island had to be maintained at all costs or it could collapse.
Lucia joined the line of hopeful people to wait for some kind of transportation that would take her close to downtown. Soon, Fortune smiled on her. A former Coca-Cola delivery truck came limping along, wrapped in a huge cloud of blue smoke produced by the low-grade diesel fuel refined on the island. Because it lacked chemical additives, engines that ran on it broke down from time to time.
Better than nothing, Lucia thought, as she scrambled aboard. The truck took off with a jolt. She and the other passengers clung to anything they could to keep from being thrown off. Lucia was reminded of the picturesque Soviet trucks and buses she’d seen on the streets of Cuba when she and her parents vacationed there a couple of years before. Those vehicles looked funny at the time, but she never imagined she’d have to ride on a similar conveyance one day. She smiled at the irony and wondered if the epidemic had reached Cuba. Of course it had! That damned TSJ had reached the farthest corners of the globe. It was the deadliest plague in the history of mankind. Only a handful of isolated places like the Canary Islands had been spared.
She knew all too well that the rumors were true. She and her friends had been the last survivors to reach the Canary Islands from Europe. Behind them was only death, desolation, and millions of Undead wandering around for eternity.
She was glad to have made it there. Life on the island wasn’t paradise, with all the rationing and overcrowding, but at least she could close her eyes at night without worrying that a horde of Undead would break the door down and end her life.
But the situation was far from ideal. Thousands of people suffered from hunger. Despite the government’s best efforts, food supplies were dangerously low. Every day, a fleet of fishing boats went out to sea, hoping to return with their holds full, but catches were meager. And while large areas of the island had been cleared for farming, their output was still very low. Specialists and farmers worked hard to get them going, but the shortage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides prevented a good harvest. The general feeling was that the volcanic soil was too weak to feed the multitude. Fresh meat was available only to a fortunate few. Most people were very thin, their cheekbones jutting out, their eyes shining with hunger. Very few people fared well, but no one said they wanted to leave the relative safety of the island. Not even in jest.
And then there was the matter of the Froilists.
Lucia remembered how confused she and her friends were when they heard people speaking matter-of-factly about “the others,” the Froilists. At first they’d thought that was how people on the Canaries referred to the Undead. They soon realized their mistake.
When survivors first crowded together on the Canaries, they had to face a painful reality: The system they’d known in the old world had gone up in smoke. For a little while, people acted as if nothing had changed.
Most of the government had disappeared in the mayhem before the collapse. Only a handful of ministers and a regional president had reached safety. A rumor went around that the Prime Minister’s motorcade was lost somewhere between his residence in Moncloa Palace, and Torrejon de Ardoz army base, but nobody knew for sure. The head of the opposition party and his family had made it to the islands, thanks to an old friend who owned an airline but, in a cruel twist of Fate, he died a few weeks later in a car wreck. Most of the Royal Family reached the Canaries, except for the king’s son and heir, the Prince of Asturias; the king’s daughter, Cristina; and her husband. Their fate was a mystery, but no one thought they’d survived.
At first King Juan Carlos had tried to form a government, although skeptics pointed out that, since the Peninsula was lost, there wasn’t much left to govern. Things went well for a few months, until one morning the king was found lying on the bathroom floor, dead from a stroke. His Majesty had the dubious honor of having the last state funeral that part of the world would ever see. Then the situation became almost more chaotic than when the Undead had first attacked.
Without a legitimate government, soldiers grew restless, not knowing what authority to obey, overwhelmed by the heavy responsibility of protecting and feeding more than a million people, with little administrative he
lp or a health care system.
Then, a group of generals took the bull by the horns. Since the king’s daughter, Infanta Elena, was next in line, she was crowned Queen of Spain at the town hall in Tenerife in a hasty ceremony few survivors knew about.
It soon became clear that the only goal of that coronation was to legitimize the military junta’s de facto power to govern the two plague-free islands—Gran Canaria Island and Tenerife. Queen Elena was just a puppet in their hands. Just three weeks after she was crowned, Queen Elena I was assassinated during a visit to a communal farm by a member of the Communist Party, or what was left of it.
Chaos erupted. For fourteen days the islands were embroiled in riots between the defenders of the Third Republic and the supporters of Froilán, Elena’s son and therefore the new king. Each side knew all too well that it was too weak to prevail and that a long civil war was out of the question.
Finally, the two sides called a truce. With little Froilán as their figurehead, Royalists (derogatorily called Froilists by the Republicans) would control Gran Canaria, under the protection of the military junta. Tenerife pompously declared itself the “Third Spanish Republic” and elected a prime minister and a “National Emergency Democratic Government.” The truth was, democracy was just a nice word that both groups hid behind as they took power and tried to survive. The way an old lady, down on her luck, holds onto a dress she wore in better days and her grandmother’s silver spoons, both governments tried to clothe themselves in the last scraps of legitimacy, while still throwing punches under the table. Although they weren’t officially at war, neither side recognized the other’s legitimacy. Raiding parties frequently stole supplies, leaving more casualties than the Undead had.
When Lucia and her friends reached the islands, confrontations between Republicans and the Froilists were at an all-time high. Both governments seethed with paranoia over enemy infiltration. Each side knew it had thousands of supporters on the other island… and thousands of infiltrators among their own ranks. It was only a matter of time before a fifth column would jump into the fray.
24
MADRID
Hearing the shots, I pressed against a window, trying to see what was going on. After they’d deplaned, the legionnaires had divided into groups of three. Four groups spread out on the runway around the Airbus, while the fifth group sprinted toward the terminal at the far end of the airbase. Those guys had clearly drawn the short straw. They were headed for the hangars, out of our line of sight. If they encountered any problems, they’d be too far away for help to reach them in time. But I felt sure they knew that.
I was taken by surprise by a new burst of gunfire coming from the terminal building. Through the doors that opened onto the runway staggered three Undead—a middle-aged man whose wide mustache was covered with clotted blood, and two women, one of whom had had her arm torn off at the shoulder.
There they were—the tireless fucking Undead.
I shuddered at the sight of them. The passage of time had had little effect on those things. I’d hoped they’d rotted after all this time, but their bodies seemed to be holding up well. I was sure they’d decayed in some way, but it was a slow, subtle change I couldn’t put my finger on. They just didn’t seem as “fresh” as they did at first. It would take years or centuries for them to “die,” a lot more time than we survivors had.
The clothes those three were wearing were in very good condition, so they must’ve spent most of the time inside the terminal, not subjected to the elements. The one with the bloody mustache had on a green jumpsuit like the airport cleaning staff wore. The other two looked like civilians or flight attendants, but I couldn’t say which since their clothes were covered in blood.
Those Undead didn’t faze the legionnaires closest to the door. They very coolly let them get about six feet away before they acted.
Their system struck me as odd. In each team, there was a long-range shooter, a short-range shooter, and one soldier who stood in the middle watching to make sure no Undead got too close without being noticed. The middle guy also loaded the other soldiers’ weapons. The two shooters switched positions frequently and if need be, carried out the same role.
Just then, the team slung their HKs across their backs, quickly put on plastic safety goggles, and drew their pistols. For almost a minute, they allowed the monsters to approach, until they were almost an arm’s length away. On the order of the group leader, they all pulled their triggers.
Almost simultaneously, the heads of the three Undead exploded in a fountain of blood, bone chips, and viscera. Their bodies collapsed onto the concrete, convulsing. I couldn’t suppress a loud “Fuck” as I involuntarily took a step back and fell backward over a seat. It was so unexpected and macabre I felt breakfast rising up my throat.
“Explosive bullets,” Pitt murmured, wearing a wolfish grin, as he helped me up. “Even a misplaced shot becomes a hit. Those guys know what they’re doing.”
The three legionnaires hopped over the bodies and kept running toward the building. Another group had already entered the control tower, while a third group hurriedly put new batteries in one of the airport’s electric vehicles. After a moment, the little bus came to life and started to roll slowly on tires that had gone flat after months outdoors. It wouldn’t run for very long, but long enough to check the perimeter.
More shots rang out inside the terminal. Prit jumped to his feet, with the look of a hungry hunter. The Ukrainian wanted to get off the plane and, as he put it, “shoot some ducks on the pond.” I wasn’t so eager to get out there.
“What the hell’re we waiting for?” the Ukrainian growled. “Let’s go!”
“Don’t be in such a hurry, Mr. Pritchenko.” Pauli stretched out her arm to restrain my restless friend, who was slipping down the aisle like an eel, headed for the door. “Listen to me, please! The legionnaires have drilled this operation for weeks. We have to stay in the plane until they’ve secured the perimeter. Then can we leave. Plus, your mission is to fly a helicopter. That’s it. Got it?”
“They may need our help!” Prit snorted, casting an urgent glance at the door. “They’re mopping up out there while we’re sitting on our asses in here, damn it!”
“They know we’re here,” I intervened, trying to reassure my friend. “If they need us, they’ll radio us. Besides, if we go out there now, they might confuse us with the Undead. We have to wait, Prit. Try to understand that.”
The Ukrainian turned his back, sulking and cursing under his breath. He wanted to take on those monsters, but he was being held back. How different we were! I’ll admit it—those Undead terrified me. Not only wasn’t he afraid, he hated them and wanted to unleash his wrath on them.
There was a crash of broken glass as a huge window in the terminal exploded. Through the shower of glass, I saw flashes from guns turn the room a sulfur yellow. Then several bodies with mangled heads fell out the window and landed on the tarmac with a thud. For a second, there was silence inside the plane. Suddenly, someone’s radio violently crackled, startling us.
“Alpha Three in position. Terminal secured. Doors barricaded from the inside. Twelve varmints down. No casualties of our own. Awaiting instructions. Over.”
“Alpha Three, hold your position,” Tank replied as he waved us down the rope ladder onto the runway. “Teams Two and Three, entering the building. Hold your fire!”
Tank turned to us, cocking his gun. His sea-green gaze rested on me for a second, then he surveyed the rest of the group. A chill ran down my back. I could guess what was coming next.
“We’re up, gentlemen. Let’s go!”
25
The rope ladder swayed violently; its rough surface burned my hands as we descended on it to the runway. Preceding me was tall, silent Marcelo. Unlike most Argentines, he was a man of few words, but he seemed confident in everything he did. Next down the ladder was Pritchenko. In his excitement, he was humming an indecipherable tune under his breath. Broto, the computer tech, and Pauli were
waiting for us on the runway.
My thoughts were a bit scattered, so when my feet touched the ground, I gave a little hop. “Once more into the breach dear friends,” I said, quoting Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth. I looked up at the plane, thinking how safe we’d be in there. The copilot watched us out the side window and gave us a mock salute, then slammed the Plexiglas window shut. Those sons of bitches. They’d be safe in there while we dragged our asses through Undead-infested Madrid. But that was how it had to be. There were only a handful of people left in the world who knew how to fly a plane that size, so they were worth their weight in gold. No point in brooding. We all had to play the cards we were dealt.
I joined the other members of my group. With sweaty hands, I grabbed the gun I’d been issued—a nine-millimeter Glock, like the one I took off the soldier back home a million years ago. I also had a dozen magazines stashed in my backpack and a sheath full of spears stitched to the leg of my wetsuit.
The legionnaires looked at me funny and made wisecracks about my wetsuit, but I wore it anyway. It was the main reason I’d survived. If something works, why the hell change? Plus, I was superstitious enough to believe that nothing bad would happen to Prit or me as long as I had it on. Bottom line, it made me feel better and that alone was worth it.
One of the legionnaires looked worried as he conferred with Tank. Something had gone wrong. I overheard him say that the group that had headed for the airport’s Aviation Museum wasn’t answering radio calls. Shit…
The hairs rose on the back of my neck and I broke out in a cold sweat. If we didn’t secure every access to the runway, thousands of Undead would overrun it in minutes. There’d be so many, the plane wouldn’t be able to take off. The engines would suck in dozens of bodies and explode, trapping us forever.
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