Dark Days az-2

by Manel Loureiro

  When the door opened, the two gunmen walked in back to back. The room was deserted. A long table covered with beakers and microscopes stretched from one end of the room to the other. In one corner, a flickering monitor gave off a soft light. At the far end, a centrifuge was running with low hum. There was no sign of the girl.

  With a nod, Basilio told Eric to check out one corner of the laboratory, while he made his way to the other. His gut told him the girl was still there.

  Warning voices in his head that had saved his life more than once were shouting themselves hoarse that something wasn’t right in that lab.

  37

  MADRID

  In groups of three or four, we filtered through the armored door into the building’s dark interior. The beam from our flashlights danced nervously in every direction.

  “We’re an elite unit, so why the hell don’t we have night vision goggles?” Pauli grumbled, as she peered into the darkness. “We’re blinder than moles in a tunnel.”

  “Pipe down and keep your eyes open,” Marcelo snapped. “Drill any asshole you see full of lead.”

  Everyone was alert, watching for the slightest movement of Undead lurking in the shadows. Someone tripped over a metal trash can and sent it rolling to the other end of the room. It careened off a filing cabinet with a clang that echoed all the way to the top floor of that God-forsaken building. Tank let out a furious hiss and lunged at the poor jerk with the speed of a cobra. Glad I’m not in that guy’s shoes, I thought. My gut told me Tank had just chosen the next “volunteer” to be point man.

  The strong, musty smell of rotting garbage was making me light-headed. To take my mind off it, I examined the rooms we walked past. Most had been turned into offices. A thick layer of dust covered the empty desks, dark computers, and piles of paper.

  One of the offices was particularly disturbing. Its desk, chair, and filing cabinet were piled high with paper birds, too many to count, maybe three or four thousand, all colors and sizes. At first I was amused at the thought of some government official, sitting idly at his desk, folding paper birds all day. Then a chill went down my spine. That was the work of an obsessed maniac, not a bored bureaucrat passing the time. I could almost picture the guy, hunched over his desk in the dark, folding sheet after sheet into birds, his mind sinking deeper and deeper into a dark hole.

  With a shiver I backed out of that room and looked around for the beam of Prit’s flashlight, but I couldn’t see a thing. My stomach clenched when I realized I’d wandered away from the group. I was all alone.

  I traced my steps back into the hallway, as I tried to get a grip on the panic rising from the pit of my stomach. I’d come from the right, but that hallway branched off in two directions. My sense of direction had never been very good. I confess, I’d let Prit and the legionnaires choose a route through the building while I admired the view.

  Cursing under my breath, I stood in the intersection of the two hallways. I thought I heard a faint noise coming from the hallway to my right; it sounded like whispered commands. I checked my Glock, then headed for those voices.

  Along the way, I’d stepped over piles of empty army rations. There’d been a lot of them back at the armored door, but the number tapered off the farther I headed into the building.

  Turning a corner I stumbled upon the first body—a rail-thin guy, dressed in military trousers and a black T-shirt bearing his unit’s insignia: a fist clutching a sheaf of lightning bolts with the words FIERI POTEST written below it. Bracing myself, I bent down to check out the body. The guy’d been dead for months, judging from how decomposed his body was. In his right hand, he clutched a crumpled paper cup. I couldn’t make out what was in his left. I took a deep breath, trying not to throw up, and wrenched the object out of his desiccated hand. It was a picture of two kids, about five or six years old, smiling into the camera, their hair blowing in the wind on a sunny day at the beach.

  I looked up from the photograph and studied that decayed corpse again. There were no bullet wounds or visible injuries, although I could’ve missed them in my hasty examination. I was sure of one thing: That man’s last thoughts weren’t about a dark hallway. In his mind he’d been running along a beach on a bright summer day.

  Clutching the photo, I could almost smell the ocean and hear the seagulls. On an impulse, I stuck it in my pocket and carefully stepped over him, trying not to disturb his dreams.

  Twenty feet away, I found two more bodies sitting at a table. One guy had on a T-shirt with the same insignia and was also clutching a paper cup. The other guy was wearing a colonel’s dress uniform. On his chest gleamed three medals, like ancient jewels looted from a pharaoh’s tomb. In his right hand, he held a service pistol, the muzzle stained with the blood that had splattered when he blew his brains out.

  Voices in the distance drew me out of my stupor. I backed away from that macabre scene and followed lights reflecting off the ducts in the building’s massive ventilation system. With a sigh of relief, I realized I’d only taken one wrong turn. I was walking parallel to the group, but on the opposite side of the duct. All I had to do was follow that wall and turn right where it dead-ended and I’d run into my group.

  Obsessed with that thought, I started to walk faster. Wandering around alone in the dark wasn’t my idea of fun. Feeling abandoned in a building full of corpses was a thousand times worse, like walking through a haunted house.

  My imagination started to play tricks on me. A couple of times I almost shot at my own shadow reflected on the walls. Then I heard whispers or shuffling footsteps following me. In my fevered mind, I saw the colonel stand up and come after me, his medals clinking softly as he stretched out his fleshless hands to grab my neck and drag me back to that room and force me to stay there forever.

  Panic washed over me. I wasn’t walking anymore—I was running. Up till then, I’d controlled my fear, as a matter of pride. I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of the whole group. (What an asshole. He got lost the minute we entered the building. He’s so clueless he can’t take ten steps without screwing up. He was shaking in fear when we found him.) But by then, I didn’t care if I looked like a coward. I was calling Pritchenko, Tank, Broto, and every other name I could remember. I didn’t want to be alone in that darkness that smelled of despair, fear, and death.

  If I’d been paying attention, I could’ve avoided the body, but I was in a daze and I ran right over him. My left boot sank into something soft with a faint choooofff. There are no words to describe the nauseating smell that burned my nose. I got the wind knocked out of me when I fell on my side. My flashlight flew out of my hands, slid five feet, then came to rest upside down next to some clothes piled on the floor.

  For a few seconds I lay there, trying to catch my breath. Finally, I got up on all fours and dragged myself over to the flashlight, which cast a faint, ghostly glow. I grabbed it and shook it, muttering a prayer to all the gods that it wasn’t broken.

  To my relief, the beam glowed bright and steady. I shined it on the body I’d stepped on. It was the corpse of a woman in civilian clothes, bloated by gasses. My left boot had punctured her abdomen allowing all the fluids to drain. The body looked like a grotesque, inflatable doll. Disgusted, I looked away. When I passed the beam of light around the rest of the room, the horrified scream I’d held in flew out of my throat.

  38

  TENERIFE

  Lucia couldn’t see a thing. The chemicals had irritated her unprotected eyes so badly she could barely open them. What if my corneas are burned? As if I didn’t have enough to worry about.

  The first thing she noticed was a faint smell of ozone and the hum of the air conditioner. She felt her way along a wall until she came to a sink where she splashed her eyes with lots of water. When the burning subsided, Lucia convinced herself she wasn’t going to go blind, but she’d have a bad case of conjunctivitis for a few days.

  With water streaming down her face, she looked up. The airlock was closed again and the red light ab
ove the door was back on. Through the disinfectant steam, Lucia could make out two figures. Those bastards just wouldn’t give up.

  The disinfection process only lasted a couple of minutes. Lucia had spent half that time flushing out her eyes. That left very little time to decide her next move. In desperation, she reached for the phone on the wall. It didn’t have any buttons but she got a line out the second she picked up the receiver. Wherever the terminal was, no one was at the other end, so she hung up in frustration. Her eyes fell on a tray of surgical supplies. She grabbed a small scalpel the size of a butter knife. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing.

  A door at the back of the room caught her eye. When she opened it, she felt a gentle stream of air. A lab technician could have told her that it was an osmotic pressure lock and that the difference in the pressure in the rooms caused the air to circulate inward to prevent leakage. But Lucia didn’t know a thing about airlocks or osmotic pressure. She mistakenly thought there was a window that opened to the outside and that she could get out that way.

  Feeling confident, she strode through the door. Ultraviolet lamps lit up a corridor that led to a line of rooms with large windows. In the first room, someone who wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit was bent over a table, moving clumsily around something hidden by his body.

  “Hey! You! I need help!” Lucia pounded on the glass to get the technician’s attention. “Hey! Can you hear me?”

  When the man turned, the smile on Lucia’s face froze. The guy’s face was covered by the burst veins and had the vacant look Lucia knew all too well. He was an Undead.

  With a groan, the Undead guy pounced on the glass with such force, he shook the entire structure. Terrified, Lucia stepped back, braced for the glass to give way, but whoever designed that cubicle had done a good job. The window withstood the barrage of punches.

  A siren wailed nearby. The entry lock had just opened and her two stalkers were in the next room. Lucia fled down the corridor past more rooms. She was mesmerized by what she saw: Each cubicle held Undead in different states of decay. In one room, an Undead’s head and torso were strapped to a gurney. In another, a half dozen heads floated in formaldehyde in jars arranged on a shelf. To her horror, the heads opened their eyes and glared at her, snapping their jaws as she passed by.

  The back door opened into another laboratory similar to the first. Her heart pounding wildly, Lucia realized that that last door had a lock on the inside. She pushed with all her strength, closed the door behind her, and bolted it.

  She quickly backed away from the door and tripped over a chair that a technician had left in the middle of the room. She tried to keep her balance and for a second she thought she was going to stay on her feet, but she was falling too fast. She threw out her left hand in desperation to grab hold of a control panel, but her fingers slid over the buttons, pressing them randomly as she fell. The razor-sharp scalpel in her right hand cut a wide arc on her leg. The thin slit in her white nurse’s uniform was immediately stained red. That cut was thin and shallow but it was bleeding profusely.

  “Awwww fuck!” she cried out in pain and cursed her clumsiness.

  There was a thud on the other side of the door. Dragging her leg and cursing, Lucia braced herself on the control panel and got to her feet. Her eyes fell on the buttons she’d accidentally pressed. Horrified, she read the label on the panel: CELL OPENING SYSTEM. The muffled groan she heard outside the door told her exactly which cells she’d stupidly opened.

  39

  MADRID

  My cry of horror faded as my lungs run out of air. I was so overcome, I forgot to breathe for a few seconds. The room was a huge mausoleum, a scene from a movie that ends tragically.

  Dozens of bodies were scattered everywhere in twos and threes. Most were swollen like the body I’d tripped over, but a few were dried out like thousand-year-old mummies. There were an equal number of men and women, mostly civilians, but a few wore military uniforms. Everybody clasped the same kind of crumpled paper cup.

  “There you are!” I heard Prit’s familiar voice behind me as he rocketed into the room. “How the hell’d you get in here?” he asked, when he was sure I was in one piece. “If I hadn’t heard you screaming like a madman, I’d never…” Prit’s last words hung in the air.

  The two legionnaires behind him stopped short when they got a look at the scene. “What the hell…” one of them mumbled.

  A terrible thought occurred to me. I stepped carefully around a body and walked over to a table in the middle of the room. An enormous pan sat on a camp stove. Dozens of empty soft drink bottles were scattered around it, along with two smaller bottles. I picked one up and shined my flashlight on it. A skull and crossbones printed on an orange label smiled at me. Below it were a chemical formula and the hospital’s logo. Across the label, someone had scrawled “hydrocyanic acid.”

  “Mass suicide,” I muttered, letting the bottle fall into the pan.

  Any liquid left in that pan had evaporated long ago. No doubt it was once filled to the brim with soft drinks laced with that powerful poison.

  “Who are they? Why’d they do that?” Prit asked.

  “They are the last survivors of the Autonomous Government of Greater Madrid,” Tank said, “the ones whose evacuation convoy never made it to Barajas Airport.” My gaze wandered over those dirty, thin bodies dressed in suits and ties.

  One of the legionnaires whistled through his teeth. “That must’ve been a fucking bitch to discover all convoys had left.”

  “They must’ve felt so safe in this bunker that it didn’t occur to them to look outside until days later.” I looked down at the body of a middle-aged woman sitting in an expensive leather chair, her head resting on her chin, her arms limp at her side. She was elegantly dressed. Her very pricey pearl necklace was partially covered by her dirty, matted blonde hair. I shuddered when I realized who she was. Before the Apocalypse, I’d seen her at a number of press conferences.

  “They were stranded with no provisions or weapons,” Prit said as he picked up my train of thought. “They had two choices: throw their lot in with the Undead or slowly starve. The bravest ones probably tried to leave.” The Ukrainian clicked his tongue at the thought. “Those who stayed behind chose a faster, less painful way to escape.”

  “They had radios,” objected another legionnaire, pointing to a huge military radio lying between two bodies. “Why didn’t they radio for help?”

  “No power, kid.” Prit shined his flashlight on the dark lights in the ceiling. “They must’ve realized how bad things were when the generators ran out of fuel and died.”

  We were silent for a moment, imagining the anguish those people felt in their final moments. Tank and seven other members of the team walked in and broke the gloomy spell.

  “We found the stairs!” said Tank. For a moment he was speechless as he looked around. Even with all his Germanic stoicism, he paled. Then he blinked and shook his head wearily. “Come on, gentlemen, we still have to go down two floors. Our job is only half done.”

  Tank turned and walked out, not saying another word. We followed him, dragging our feet. That oppressive place was getting everyone down.

  The staircase was located at the end of the ventilation duct. The door to the stairs was crisscrossed with thick chains. My eyes met Prit’s. It was the same system they’d used to seal off the doors at Meixoeiro Hospital in Vigo. I pictured some military pencil-pusher drafting protocol for what to do if you were entrenched in a building during an invasion of Undead. I’d love tell that genius how well his brilliant plan had worked.

  Marcelo walked up with heavy-duty clippers and cut the chain with ease. He stepped aside and a group of soldiers crossed through the door. A second later, I heard a single shot, followed by, “Clear.” Then we all headed through the door. At the foot of those stairs lay the body of an Undead, bleeding from a shot to the head. I swallowed and eased past him.

  If there was one Undead on that side of the door,
there’d be more. A lot more.

  40

  TENERIFE

  For want of a nail… the kingdom was lost.

  On account of a stupid accident caused by a panicked, terrified girl trying to save her life, Chaos escaped from Pandora’s box again. But at that moment, no one knew. Not even the heroes of this story. And they never would.

  Eric and Basilio quickly checked out every inch of the lab. Basilio stepped to the door and motioned for Eric to stand in front of it. With a nod, the redhead took his position, ten feet in front of the door, gripping his beretta with both hands. Basilio slowly reached for the doorknob and flattened himself against the wall. If that damned girl was crouched on the other side, waiting to jump them, she’d be sadly disappointed.

  He looked up at the Belgian, counted off three seconds on his fingers, yanked the door open, then jumped to the side.

  A lot happened in a few short seconds. First someone completely naked barreled through the open door. Something, not someone, Eric thought, terrified by the Undead headed for him. The warm, sexual arousal the Belgian felt changed to cold, clammy fear. His eyes seemed to pop out of his head, he raised his beretta and shot the Undead twice at close range.

  The first bullet pierced the creature’s neck, releasing a jet of thick, black blood. The second bullet hit him in the face, leaving a gaping hole where his nose had been. The thing collapsed in a heap, but Eric couldn’t relax as three more creatures rushed in.

  Cursing in French, the redhead retreated a few feet from the creatures, firing his weapon as he went. Blood spewed like a fountain out of the gaping head of the next Undead, an African man, over six feet tall, and splashed all across Eric’s visor. Eric ran his gloved hand over the visor, which blurred his view completely and made matters worse.