“We could stash everything here and come back another day,” Eric whined. His enthusiasm was waning.
“There’s not going to be another day. Get my drift, pal? It’s gotta be today. We can’t take a chance she’ll wake up. Hey! Look! We found it!” Basilio pointed to a sign that said RECOVERY ROOM 12 with an arrow pointing to the right.
Basilio pushed the wheelchair faster. Before the Apocalypse, that room had been a parking garage for ambulances. Now, the hospital was so crowded, they’d turned it into a hospice with just a coat of white paint and four picture windows on the south wall. The stench of sickness and death was so strong, the two gunmen gagged as they walked through the door. The hospital staff called that room “the Morgue.” Many patients were brought there, but few left it alive. Most often, there was no way to heal those patients; they were the sad ghosts whose lives were cut short. In the old days, they’d have recuperated from their ailments in a couple of days. Now the desperate ill were locked away there so no one had to see them and everyone could go on with their lives, pretending everything was fine. It was way worse than hell.
Fifty beds filled the large room, lined up in two neat rows, with a wide aisle down the center. Most of the beds were occupied, except for a couple whose mattresses were rolled up to let their springs air out. A bloodstain on one of the mattresses made Basilio stop short for a moment. His eyes flitted from bed to bed, searching for the nun’s face among that dying crowd. Finally, he spotted her.
Two nurses in the far corner of the room were leaning over a patient in crisis. One of the nurses hurried out the far door for help. The other nurse had her back turned, so she didn’t see Basilio and Eric stop in the middle of the aisle. The Belgian got out of the wheelchair and pressed himself against the wall, beretta in hand, keeping an eye on both doors.
Basilio wasted no time. He stuck his hand into his pocket, pulled out a syringe filled with morphine and sidled up to the bed where the defenseless Sister Cecilia lay. The sailor-turned-hit-man studied her for a second. In just a few weeks, the old woman had shrunk. With that giant bandage on her head, she looked like an enormous insect in a cocoon. Sorry, old gal, he thought as he gripped the saline drip and injected the drug in the syringe he was holding. Nothing personal. You shouldn’t have gotten in the way…
BANG! The shot was amplified a million times in that huge room, startling Basilio out of his thoughts. He whipped around to face Eric, who’d gone down on one knee and fired the beretta three times in rapid sequence. At the back of the room, a doctor stopped in his tracks, as if he’d hit a concrete wall, then collapsed as a fountain of blood spurted out his neck. A nurse lay sprawled on the floor at his feet. The nurse who’d had her back turned was now draped over her patient in a strange, deadly embrace awash in blood and brains.
“Eric! What the hell’re you doing?” Basilio roared.
“That nurse saw us,” replied the Belgian, in a strangely slow voice. A demented smile drew up the corners of his mouth. “They were going to set off the alarm, Bas! What else could I do?” He shrugged as if to say Don’t blame me.
Basilio’s anger was oozing out every pore, but he didn’t lose control. Two thoughts fired through his cold, dark mind. First, he shouldn’t have brought that maniac Belgian along. Second, they had to get out of there—fast. People were yelling and screaming all over the hospital, and he could hear an alarm blaring in the distance.
“You’ve fucked things up real good, pal!” Basilio growled, as he finished emptying the contents of the syringe into the nun’s IV. He spent a few seconds of the little time they had to escape making sure every drop entered the old woman’s body. He wouldn’t have time to calmly smoke a cigarette and watch the old woman die the way he’d planned. He wanted to be sure the morphine was in her body and there was nothing they could do to save her, especially in all that confusion.
“Done.” He put the syringe in his pocket, cast a last glance at Sister Cecilia’s pale face and barreled out the door. “Let’s go before…”
Basilio’s words froze in the air. The old sailor’s eyes opened wide as saucers and he zeroed in on the two figures silhouetted in the doorway. One was a short nurse wearing a lot of makeup and a plunging neckline, but the other nurse… Basilio would’ve recognized that figure and those green eyes anywhere. They’d haunted his dreams for weeks.
“It’s her,” he muttered in disbelief. Then overcome by his rage, he yelled, “It’s the other bitch! Kill her!”
With a twisted smile that would’ve struck fear in the devil himself, the Belgian raised his pistol and licked his lips.
Two shots rang out.
29
MADRID
The SuperPuma landed with a jolt on the parking lot, its blades sending up swirls of smoke. As soon as it touched down, there was the sound of tearing metal. Instantly alarms went off and red lights lit up the dashboard.
“Jesus Christ, Prit! What’s that?” I shouted, my voice shrill with fear.
“Don’t know…” The Ukrainian mumbled as he focused on controlling the plane. With just its two front wheels on the ground, it was spinning out of control, like a top. Everything that wasn’t tied down or screwed into the wall went flying, amid shouts from the passengers, who clutched their seats, white-knuckled.
After one very long minute, the spinning slowed down and the SuperPuma finally came to a complete stop. For a moment there was complete silence in the cabin.
“Everyone okay?” someone finally asked. A chorus of grunts answered as we stood up cautiously, afraid Prit might treat us to another crazed ride. We were bruised, but in one piece.
“Can somebody tell me what the hell happened?” Tank asked.
“Ask the pilot, sir,” a sergeant replied acidly. “I’m still trying to find my stomach.”
But Tank couldn’t ask the pilot. Prit had unbuckled his harness, bolted outside and headed for the back of the helicopter, leaping over charred bodies. After a few seconds, the Ukrainian hopped back in the cockpit.
“The tail rotor came loose,” he said calmly, as he unscrewed the top of his flask. “We can’t take off.”
“Whadda ya mean we can’t take off?” one soldier asked in a hushed voice. “How long till we can take off?”
“Never.” Prit answered, matter-of-factly, the way you’d talk about the game on Sunday, and scratched his head thoughtfully. “The napalm explosion or debris knocked the tail rotor rennet loose. Or maybe it just fell off. This Puma has been sitting out in the open for months, so it’s hard to say. I do know this bird is kaput. Dead.”
“Can’t you fix it?” Tank asked.
“Maybe… if I had a new propeller, a complete set of differentials, a case of beer, a couple of expert mechanics to help me, and twenty hours to do it. So, no, I can’t.”
“Whadda we do?” asked a voice that couldn’t hide the fear. “How do we get back?”
“Find other transportation,” Pritchenko said with a shrug. “What choice do we have?”
A chill ran through the plane. You didn’t have to be a genius to realize that our chances of survival were severely reduced.
“Prit,” I said in a frightened voice. “That means we have to go with them… in there.”
“I know,” he said casually, as if we were talking about a walk on the beach.
“How the hell can you be so calm!” I exploded.
“Fatalism,” he said with a sad smile.
“What the hell’re you talking about?”
He took a long swig from his flask. “Well, the helicopter is damaged and can’t take off. But, staying here won’t fix it. It’s fate, kapish? It is what it is. Getting upset won’t do any good. Niet?”
I glared at him. “Sometimes you really piss me off! The way you think is too damn Russian for me!”
“Ukrainian,” Prit corrected me with an unflappable smile. “Ukrainian thinking. The Russians are farther north.”
“Whatever you say, Prit,” I answered, my spirits deflated. That guy was i
mpossible. Times like these brought out Prit’s Slavic peasant soul. He accepted hard times with resignation, like his ancestors had done for centuries. He just gritted his teeth and kept moving because there was no way to turn back.
Some of the team members had already slid open the door and were about to jump out. I hesitated. Suddenly I felt very cold, even though sweat was pouring down my back. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry as a desert. I patted my pockets in search of a cigarette, but my hand was trembling so hard I couldn’t unbutton the pocket flap. Anxiety squeezed my heart like an invisible hand. In that state I’d screw up before I took two steps outside. A thought flashed before me—I was going to die there. My vision got blurry, my head started spinning… Dear God!
“Hey! Take it easy.” Pritchenko’s familiar, reassuring voice brought me back to reality. The Ukrainian rested a hand on my shoulder and stared at me, a couple of inches from my face. With measured calm, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, lit one, and stuck it between my lips.
“Prit, I can’t go out there.” My voice cracked. “They’ll kill me. They’ll catch me in the blink of an eye. Fuck! What the hell’re we doing here?”
“You’ll be okay.” The Slav helped me to my feet with one hand and slung his rifle over his shoulder with the other. “You did great before and you’ll do great this time, too. Don’t worry. We’ve been in tighter spots, you and me, and we got out okay, right?”
I nodded hesitantly. Everyone else had climbed out of the helicopter. Tank was shouting our names as the rest of the team divided into their groups.
“Remember the little store in Vigo, with the Pakistanis?” A smile spread across Prit’s face. “We were in deep shit, alone, unarmed, no vehicles, surrounded by those monsters, crammed into that fucking crawl space. If we could get out of that, this is—how do you say it—a piece of cake!”
I nodded, with a shaky smile. Pritchenko was right. I thought being classified as “veterans” was strange, but few people had spent as much time among the Undead as we had and had lived to tell the tale.
I let out a long, deflated sigh. If we were the best hope the human race had for its salvation, things were more fucked up than I’d thought.
I took a deep drag on my cigarette and watched the Argentine attach the MG3 to its tripod with the tired look of an expert who’s done that a million times. Okay, so we were back in the middle of that shit, but at least this time we had a plan, and we were surrounded by people who were really good at what they did. Plus, Prit and I had each other and that was no small thing. Maybe those guys with the napalm would take another pass to clear the area. Maybe we’d get out of this with our hide still intact.
“Ready?” The Ukrainian cocked his HK.
“Ready, comrade,” I replied, cautiously pulling out my Glock. “Stick close, okay?”
“Okay. Lucia’ll kill me if anything happens to you and I have no desire to lug your cat around.” He gave me a sly grin. “Let’s go.”
When we jumped down onto what I thought was the surface of the parking lot, one of my legs sunk into what felt like a hole, and a putrid stench flew up my nose. Pauli watched me, half-worried, half-amused.
“Careful. You just stepped in that poor devil’s lungs,” she said with a smirk.
What I’d taken as the parking lot’s scorched surface was a carpet of charred, smoldering bodies. When I jumped out of the helicopter, my right leg sunk into the chest of a burned corpse, shredded its ribs, and came to rest on what was left of its spine. Grossed out, I stepped back and pulled my boot free, nearly losing my balance.
Tank’s steel grip on my arm stopped me from falling onto the charred remains.
“Stick with your team,” he said dryly, his shark eyes glaring at me. “Protect the computer guy. Without him, this entire mission is pointless.”
I shrugged him off, wondering what was so special about that fucker Broto and walked over to Prit, carefully stepping over all the charred bodies.
“We go with them,” Prit said pointing to Pauli and Marcelo. “Apparently we have to babysit that freaked-out computer hot shot.”
“Any idea why?”
“Not a clue,” Prit said with a sigh. “But surely in a few minutes—look out!”
The Ukrainian jumped back like he’d seen a snake and he shoved me out of his line of fire. I turned just in time to see two horribly charred Undead less than five feet away from us. They were burned so badly you couldn’t tell their ages or sex, but they moved pretty well, considering their condition.
Prit raised his HK and opened fire at the one on the right. In a split second the rattle of his rifle merged with bursts from other weapons. All the Undead still standing in that parking lot were headed right for us.
The napalm had killed most of those monsters, but three or four dozen still ringed the helicopter and were closing in. The roar of HKs mixed with the bark of the Glocks, and in the background you could hear short, rhythmic bursts from the Argentine’s MG3.
Our two Undead were awfully close and Prit and I faced them alone. The rest of the team was hurriedly shooting in other directions, focusing on their immediate area. The deafening noise drew more and more Undead. They just kept coming.
Pritchenko’s first shot ripped a hole in the Undead’s chest. It staggered back, shaken by the impact for a moment, but kept coming toward us. The Ukrainian corrected his aim and fired again, this time at its head, transforming it into viscous pulp that splattered in every direction. That Undead collapsed in a heap, but Prit and I didn’t have time to watch. He calmly aimed at the other Undead, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger. His gun emitted a horrifying metallic clank. We froze, as the Undead approached, unstoppable.
“It’s jammed!” Prit shouted. “Fuck! It’s jammed! Shoot at that one, fast!”
As if in a dream, I raised the Glock. I watched my thumb free the safety the way the instructor had taught me in Tenerife. I focused all my attention on the creature advancing toward us. I shut out the rest of the world. All that existed was that charred monster, the sight on that heavy Glock, and me.
I heard myself breathing. I felt my finger slowly press the trigger—and fired.
But the hammer made just a muffled clank.
30
TENERIFE
The gunshots got Lucia’s attention first. As she pushed through the heavy fire doors, she was struck by the eerie silence in that room. Next, her gaze flew to the burly orderly bent over Sister Cecilia, his head pressed against the nun’s head as if he were telling her a secret. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a red-haired guy sliding along the wall to her right with his hand behind his back.
That guy’s got a hard on like a horse in heat, she thought, puzzled and amused. Just then, the redheaded guy (who looked a lot like the lead singer in the Spin Doctors) drew his hand from behind his back and aimed a black gun at her and Maite.
Lucia didn’t believe the expression time stopped—not until five seconds after she opened that damned door. The instant that guy pulled the trigger, Lucia felt time stand still and become something very gooey and thick, like melted caramel.
The first shot sent slivers of the wall flying by her right ear and shook her out of her daze. She automatically stepped out of his line of fire. But Maite froze in the doorway, that cup of bad coffee clutched to her chest, her eyes glued to the shooter as he raced along the wall, raising his gun again.
The second shot hit Maite right below her heart with enough force to lift the small girl into the air, spraying blood and coffee in every direction. She pirouetted like a dancer in the Russian ballet, slumped against the door, then slid to the floor where she lay motionless, a bewildered look in her eyes.
“Not that nurse, you idiot! The other one! Get the other one! The tall one!” Lucia heard the orderly say.
That voice triggered a memory and Lucia knew instantly that the nun was a goner. If she didn’t run for it, her number would be up, too. Groaning in fear, Lucia retreated do
wn the hallway.
The hospital was in utter chaos. Alarms were going off everywhere. Groups of armed men (some in uniform, some not) ran past dozens of panicked patients and confused, overwhelmed doctors.
“Froilists! Fucking Froilists!” howled a guy in a military uniform Lucia didn’t recognize, as he led a group of soldiers into the building.
From another part of the building came a series of hiccups Lucia instantly recognized as bursts from HKs. Then came a muffled explosion and the rattle of another weapon she couldn’t identify (Pritchenko could’ve told her they were AK-47s). In the pandemonium of panicked civilians and soldiers afraid of a Froilists’ incursion, two groups of guards were shooting at each other. It was a fucking madhouse.
A gurney flew out of nowhere and hit Lucia in the hip, knocking her to the ground. A red-hot pain shot up her leg. The crowd and the shooting swirled around her as she struggled to her feet. She glanced down the hallway and spotted the redheaded guy with the gun standing next to Basilio. When he saw her pushing through the knot of people, he jabbed the gunman in the ribs and pointed at her.
Lucia wasted no time. Gripping the gurney, she stood up, knocking aside equipment that had fallen in the corridor. Knowing her way around the hospital gave her an advantage, but she had less strength to push her way through all the people running in every direction. Not daring to look back, she sensed that her pursuers were gaining ground.
Lucia spotted the intersection of two hallways. She knew if she turned right, she’d come to the exit. Even in all the chaos, there must be a guard at the door. She was just a couple hundred feet from the hallway.
As she approached the intersection, machine-gun fire nearly tore Lucia’s head off the minute she stepped into the hall. She instinctively dropped to the ground. Shots rang out behind her, coming from the same direction as the first shots. Before she knew it, she and fifty other people were caught in the crossfire between two groups shouting commands and rallying cries.
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