Dark Days
( Apocalypse Z - 2 )
Manel Loureiro
The electrifying sequel to international best seller Apocalypse Z
The Russian-spawned virus that kills swiftly then ghoulishly resurrects its victims as ravenous cannibals has breached international borders.
The infernal progression…
From outbreak to epidemic and pandemic to sheer panic, the virus has shredded global civilization. Promised safe havens become deathtraps, lawlessness crumbles any remaining symbol of authority, and political violence in Spain threatens to erupt in civil war.
Trapped…
In the thick of the deadly madness, the young lawyer finds himself escaping to the Canary Islands in a stolen chopper with a motley crew made up of his Persian cat Lucullus, Ukrainian pilot Viktor “Prit” Pritchenko, 17-year-old beautiful distraction Lucia, and Sister Cecilia, who was trained as a nurse. The distant isle of Lanzarote is rumored to be the only refuge out of the virus’s reach. But with relentlessly multiplying hordes of the living dead—and equally fatal human treachery—blocking their every move, their quest for survival is quickly becoming a suicide mission.
Dark Days
Manel Loureiro
APOCALYPSE Z
DARK DAYS
Translated by Pamela Carmell
For Maribel, who didn’t live to see it, but who would have loved it the most
Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.
—Isaiah 34:3
PROLOGUE
SOMEWHERE OVER THE WESTERN SAHARA
A little lizard sat motionless for hours on a sun-baked rock in a bleak corner of the Sahara desert. His sides expanded and contracted as he breathed in air as hot as a blast from hell. He flicked out his rough tongue, testing the air, biding his time till nightfall when he could go hunting.
Suddenly, the lizard detected a sound too low to be heard by human ears. He cowered under the rock in case some strange, fearsome predator was making that noise.
After a few seconds, the sound overhead crescendoed from a slight hum to a deafening rattle. The sound grew fainter and fainter, and then was gone.
The little lizard cautiously poked his head out and blinked his gummy eyes in the fierce midday light. For an instant, he stared up into the ruthlessly bright blue sky as the Sahara shimmered in the heat.
If he’d stuck his head out thirty seconds sooner, he’d have glimpsed something completely out of place in that corner of the world: a huge, yellow and white Sokol helicopter, with the faded logo of the AUTONOMOUS GOVERNMENT OF GALICIA painted on one side and a cargo net, filled with fuel drums, hanging from its underbelly. The pilot, a small guy in his forties, with a bushy, blond mustache, had a tired but determined look on his face; some fingers were missing from his right hand. In the copilot’s seat was a tall, thin man in his thirties with a scraggly beard and sharp features. His profoundly weary eyes stared blankly at the unfolding desert landscape, his mind very far away, as he slowly pet a large Persian cat asleep on his lap. Rounding out the odd group were an older woman and a teenaged girl sitting in the passengers’ seats.
The thin man would’ve told anyone who’d listen that he’d had an uneventful life as a small-town lawyer in northern Spain, dividing his time among work, family, and friends. The death of his young wife just a year before the Apocalypse had left a huge, painful hole in his heart and turned his life into a relentless cycle of pain and routine. Until the Apocalypse nearly a year ago, when everything went to hell.
Everything.
At first, he didn’t pay much attention to the brief, conflicting reports in the press about a jihadist faction that had the brilliant idea to attack a Russian army base in Dagestan, a remote former Soviet republic; take hostages; and steal either chemical or conventional weapons to sell on the black market.
What those attackers didn’t know was that research into biological weapons had been carried out at that base. Some of the world’s most virulent strains of viruses were sleeping peacefully in test tubes there. To be fair, the jihadists weren’t really to blame. That base was a half-forgotten detritus of the old Soviet empire; Western intelligence agencies didn’t even know it existed. Compared to what came next, the break-in was small potatoes.
Depending on how you look at it, the attack was successful—or a horrible failure. The jihadists successfully took over the base, but they accidentally released a viral strain that should never have been created. Less than forty-eight hours after the attack, all the terrorists were dead. Or kind of dead.
The worst part was that that virus was now free. And nothing and no one could stop it from spreading like wildfire.
At first, no one knew anything about it. In the old, over-confident Europe, as well as in America and Asia, life went on calmly and peacefully. During those first seventy-two hours, something could’ve been done to get the pandemic under control. However, Dagestan was a very small, very poor country; its government didn’t have the resources to stop the virus. The virus was already past the incubation phase.
By then it was too late.
No one, not even our Spanish lawyer, became worried until a few days later. The first news of a rare hemorrhagic fever sweeping the Caucasus Mountains was just background noise in the newspapers and on TV, drowned out by the final picks for the European soccer championship and the latest political scandal.
Almost no one paid attention to that virus, so it just kept spreading.
A few days passed before anyone realized that something was terribly wrong. Large areas of Dagestan were dark and silent, as if there wasn’t a single living soul left. The government of that tiny republic took a closer look. Terrified by what it saw, it called upon Moscow for help. The Russians were so horrified by the situation, they immediately closed their borders with Dagestan—and with every country on its border. Too late to do any good.
The news started filtering out to the rest of the world, sounding at first like confusing nonsense. Then a series of conflicting reports from the Russian government, the CDC in Atlanta, and several other organizations claimed it was an outbreak of Ebola or smallpox or West Nile virus or the Marburg virus that first broke out in Germany in the sixties—or none of the above. Outrageous rumors, blown out of proportion, started to circulate. The shadow of darkness leapt from Dagestan to neighboring countries, as refugees fled “it.” Whatever “it” was. Putin’s government declared a news blackout in an effort to get the situation under control, suppressing freedom of the press within the Russian Federation, then finally broke down and requested emergency aid from the international community.
But, once again, it was too late.
By that time our lawyer and most of humanity were waiting in suspense for updates on what was happening in that corner of the world. It was no longer back-page news; reports were splashed across every front page. Despite heavy censorship, images leaked out, showing lines of refugees stretching as far as the eye could see and columns of soldiers just as long. The most observant commentators remarked that it was strange for the army to be battling the epidemic, but they were in the minority. Most people just paid attention to the official report. Finally, international aid teams were deployed to help control the epidemic. Fifteen days before, they’d have had a chance for success.
But not any longer.
A few days later, the epidemic went global when aid teams returned home, taking with them members of their group who’d been injured by those things. Although no one realized it, the pandemic was now definitely out of control. The logical thing would have been to “eliminate” anyone infected, since governments were beginning to understand what they were facing, but political
interests and public opinion overrode common sense.
The last chance to control the pandemic evaporated and the virus began its deadly march, turning the pandemic into an Apocalypse.
At that point, our Spanish lawyer was as terrified as the rest of the world. Reports of the pandemic raged nonstop on newspapers, TV, radio, and the Internet. He watched helplessly as the virus slowly gained ground, day by day. Soon there was no news from Dagestan. Russia went dark a few days later. Then Poland, Finland, Turkey, Iran, and on and on throughout every country in the world. Most European countries sealed off their borders and declared martial law but the virus spread like an oil spill across the planet. In an unprecedented move, the European Union unanimously agreed to form a single office of crisis management that continued to keep a tight grip on information and doled out the news in dribs and drabs. But reports kept turning up on the Internet. There were almost as many theories and unsettling rumors of the walking dead as websites, claiming it was an alien invasion, the Antichrist, genetic experiments, or monsters from the Underworld.
But everyone agreed on one thing: Whatever it was, it was very contagious and deadly. Anyone who got infected spread the disease.
That crisis, which had been described briefly in the news just two weeks before, finally reached Spain. The point was driven home to our lawyer the day he saw King Juan Carlos on TV declaring martial law, dressed in his military uniform the way he did during the attempted coup d’état in 1981.
Then, of all the misguided plans those governments came up with, they picked the worst. In keeping with overriding medical logic—isolate the healthy from the sick—they decided to concentrate the healthy population into enclosures around the country called Safe Havens, huge sections of town, surrounded by security forces. By then everyone understood that contact with an infected person ended very badly.
What our lawyer chose to do next turned out to be the best move. He didn’t want to go to a Safe Haven; it sounded suspiciously like the Warsaw ghetto. When the army’s evacuation team swept through his neighborhood, he hid in his house. Everyone else left, but he chose to stay behind. Alone. But not for long.
In a matter of days, the world began to crumble. Electricity and communication systems began to fail as crews didn’t show up for work or simply disappeared. Soon TV channels worldwide emitted only pre-recorded shows interrupted by news briefs that hysterically ordered everyone to gather in the Safe Havens. By then, censorship was completely breaking down. Officials acknowledged that infected people somehow came back to life after they died and became extremely aggressive toward the living. It was like something out of a B-movie and would’ve been laughable, if it weren’t true. And if the entire world hadn’t fallen apart in a matter of days.
That little monster accidentally freed from its test tube twenty days before finally showed its true face.
What happened in forty-eight hours was hard to explain. Infrastructure was falling apart everywhere; the electrical grid was failing all over the world and no one had a global vision. Safe Havens proved to be death traps; the noise and activity of the humans congregated there drew the Undead like a magnet. When hordes of Undead besieged those Safe Havens, panic broke out and those centers fell, overrun by the monsters. Most of the refugees were changed into Undead. The official message on the few surviving TV channels changed dramatically: Stay away from the Safe Havens.
But once again, that message came too late. The situation was beyond anyone’s control.
Our lawyer, isolated at home, in a deserted neighborhood, with only his Persian cat named Lucullus for company, watched in amazement. When the Internet finally shut down, he braced for the worst.
And it came quickly. Less than forty-eight hours later, the first Undead wandered down his quiet, suburban street in northern Spain. He was trapped in his own home. Over the next few days, he watched the relentless parade of Undead in terror from his window.
A few days later he decided to head for the Safe Haven in Vigo, the closest major city. He was desperate to see other humans, plus he was running out of food and water. He had two choices: Try to dodge the Undead to get some place safe, or die of starvation at home. Despite the warnings, a Safe Haven became his only option.
So he headed off on a perilous journey and for several days his life was in constant jeopardy. He drove through destroyed villages to the Port of Pontevedra, veering around car wrecks no one had cleared away. From there, he sailed for Vigo in an abandoned sailboat. When he finally reached the Vigo Safe Haven, his last hope collapsed—it was in ruins. No one was alive there and thousands of Undead wandered aimlessly.
He was seriously considering suicide when he spotted a rusty old freighter, the Zaren Kibish, anchored in the harbor, with a ragtag crew of survivors huddled onboard. Its captain recounted the horrors of the last hours of the Vigo Safe Haven and how it fell, like so many places around the world, from hunger and disease and the assault by the Undead.
Once again, fortune smiled on our lawyer. Aboard the Zaren Kibish, he met one of the few survivors of the Vigo Safe Haven, a Ukrainian guy named Viktor “Prit” Pritchenko. He was a short guy in his forties, with a huge, blond mustache and ice-blue eyes. He turned out to be one of the Eastern European helicopter pilots the Spanish government had hired every summer to fight forest fires. Another solitary man trapped far from home and family. Pritchenko decided to befriend our lawyer.
After several terrifying weeks facing the Undead and the Zaren Kibish’s despotic, mentally unstable captain, they finally devised a plan. They would try to reach the Ukrainian’s Sokol helicopter that was parked at the forest ranger base camp a few miles from the port. From there, they’d fly to the Canary Islands. Because those islands were so isolated, they were one of the few places in the world that had escaped the pandemic. According to the last news reports, remnants of the Spanish government and a few survivors had gathered there.
The only problem was they had to evade the deranged ship’s captain and his armed crew, who were obsessed with their plans to save their own hides, plans in which Prit and the lawyer were just pawns to be sacrificed. After a risky journey across the ravaged city of Vigo, they finally escaped with high hopes.
But one last test of their courage remained.
In an abandoned car dealership where they’d taken shelter for the night, Pritchenko suffered a freak accident while handling a small explosive device, causing second-degree burns and the loss of several fingers. In the past, that wouldn’t have been a life-threatening accident, but in those difficult days, it was. With his friend on the verge of dying, the lawyer scoured Vigo for a hospital. He knew he wouldn’t find a doctor and most likely any hospital would be infested with Undead, but he had to find the medicine his friend needed.
He didn’t figure on getting lost in the bowels of a huge, abandoned hospital, surrounded by Undead, its dark corridors, halls, and stairs a death trap.
Just when the situation seemed hopeless, Lucia came to their rescue. Seventeen, tall, slender, with long black hair and deep green eyes, she was the last person they’d expected to find in that cavernous building. Finding her in that grisly nightmare was so incongruous, our heroes thought they were hallucinating. When the girl told her story, they realized she was also a terrified survivor that fate had mercifully set down there.
During the migration to Safe Havens, Lucia had gotten separated from her family. She’d wandered around the area, trying to locate her missing parents, and had ended up there. Like thousands of people adrift in that confusion, she didn’t find her loved ones, but she stayed on as an aide to the exhausted doctors stubbornly trying to keep the hospital up and running.
When masses of Undead converged on the building, Lucia retreated to the safety of the vast basement of the hospital. It was well provisioned and watertight; its doors were heavily reinforced. Her only company was Sister Cecilia, a nun with training as a nurse, who volunteered to stay at the hospital until the end. They’d been holed up in the basement ever si
nce, waiting for rescue teams that never came.
When Lucia heard gunfire and human voices ricocheting through the halls, she left the safety of their shelter to investigate. She was equally surprised to come across the lawyer and the pilot. Instead of a battle-hardened rescue team, she found a pair of dirty, hungry, lost refugees, one of them gravely injured, both on the verge of emotional collapse. She sprang into action like a much older, wiser woman, dragging the two survivors and their orange cat to the basement, where Sister Cecilia, the only living nurse for hundreds of miles, tended to the Ukrainian’s wounds. After weeks of terror, the lawyer and his friend had finally found a true safe haven.
The next few months passed like a dream. Comfortably holed up in that basement, fortified with electrical generators and enough food for hundreds of people, the four survivors found some peace and respite in that underground existence, hoping to find a way back to the outside world.
But another surprise forced them to leave their cozy den and revive their plan to fly to the Canary Islands. A powerful summer thunderstorm started a fire a few miles from the hospital. With no one to fight the blaze, it burned out of control, across that deserted landscape of flammable debris and dry brush, right up to the hospital doors. The four survivors escaped that firestorm with barely enough time to grab their gear.
Two days later, they topped off the helicopter’s fuel tanks, stored drums of fuel in a cargo net hung from the chopper’s belly, and headed for the Canary Islands, where they thought they’d find vestiges of humanity. They had just one goal. To survive.
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“Prit! Prit! Can you hear me?” I asked. “You crazy Ukrainian,” I cursed under my breath. The damn intercom had cut out for the third time since we took off from Vigo. I grabbed a bracket on the wall as the heavy helicopter hit another pocket of hot air and lurched. Unfazed, Prit steered through it at top speed. Though Prit couldn’t hear me through the intercom, I could hear him happily humming his dreadful rendition of James Brown’s “I Feel Good.”
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