Dark Days (Apocalypse Z) (29 page)

“Cheer up,” the Ukrainian said, patting me on the back. “It could be worse.”

“Oh yeah? How? How it could be worse?”

“Calm down,” Prit said as he picked up his knife. “We’ve gotten out of tighter spots, right? Don’t worry. We’ll get out of this mess, too. All we gotta do is start that thing. Now, think. Where can we get some battery cables before things get ugly around here?”

Just then I heard a groan behind me that made my hair stand on end. I braced myself, looking around for the Undead, but there were none in sight. I heard the moan again. Confused, I looked down and saw the sergeant’s hand move feebly.

“Prit! He’s alive!”

He had four bullet holes in his chest, but he was still alive. When I grabbed his hand, he looked up at me. He had a hard time focusing on my face and when he tried to speak, all that came out of his mouth was bloody foam.

“Take it easy, friend,” I said. His nametag read
Jonás Fernández
. “Listen Sergeant, keep your eyes on me, okay? Come on! Stay with me, Jonás. Prit’ll get the Centaur started, then we’ll get the hell outta here.”

“Shit!” Prit bellowed in a fury. “That bitch ripped out the battery cables! Even if we find a replacement, I can’t splice it without tools. This heap won’t start without a battery! Son of a bitch!”

The blood drained from my face. The Undead could show up at any moment.

“Prit.” I pushed a lock of rain-soaked hair out of my face and tried to keep the fear out of my voice. “This man’ll die unless he gets medical attention right away and we’re not going to be much better off if you don’t think of something, dammit!”

“There’s nothing we can do!” Prit said, pounding his fist on the side of the Centaur. “Without a battery we’re dead!”

The Ukrainian straightened up and stared at me. “We’ve got to think of a way out, fast! Maybe if we take that wide street… La Castellana. Or maybe the subway tunnels.” The Ukrainian’s mind was racing.

“Prit.” I pointed to the wounded sergeant. “What the fuck do we do with him?”

As an answer, Prit patted his knife. We couldn’t take him with us if we had to make a run for it, but we couldn’t leave him either. Helpless. A tasty snack for those bastards.

I took a deep breath, trying to muster up my courage. I could justify shooting an Undead monster but not taking a human life.

“Prit…” I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. Just then Sergeant Fernández weakly lifted his arm, trying to get our attention.

“Back… back… up…” Then he choked as a fountain of dark red blood gushed out the corner of his mouth.

“Sergeant, take it easy.” I loosened his flak jacket to make him more comfortable. “We’ll get some backup, don’t worry.”

“Back-up… you idiot…” Impatience flashed in the sergeant’s eyes as he coughed up red phlegm. “The… back-up… battery…”

“Back-up battery?” Prit pounced on his words. “Where is it?”

“In… the… turret.” Rain mixed with the blood pooled around the sergeant. “Same terminals… and… voltage.”

Before he finished talking, Prit had already scrambled up the Centaur like a monkey and slipped inside the turret. As the Ukrainian
tinkered around inside, I lifted the sergeant’s head so he could breathe better. I didn’t know what else to do. Even if I’d had some medical training, I was pretty sure Jonás was beyond hope. He must’ve known that too, as he stoically endured the pain that had to be tearing him up.

“Here it is!” Pritchenko stuck his head out the turret, triumphantly cradling a rectangular box. “Just give me a couple of minutes and it’ll be ready!”

We didn’t have much time. Around the corner of the parking lot appeared three staggering Undead.

“PRIT!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Hurry! We’ve gotta go NOW!”

I threw an arm around Sergeant Fernández’s shoulder and eased him as gently as I could through the Centaur’s hatch. Fortunately Sergeant Jonás Fernández, veteran of the Tercio Don Juan de Austria Regiment of the Spanish Legion, was feeling no pain; he’d passed out. Over my shoulder, I saw that the Undead had advanced half the distance between us and them. In a burst of bravery, I ran to the three backpacks we’d abandoned under the window back at the tower. The Undead saw me and started walking in my direction. I grabbed two of the backpacks and dragged them along the pavement. As I staggered toward the tank, I threw a wary glance over my shoulder. Those things were already about a hundred yards from us.

“Prit! Get that damn thing started! They’re right on our ass!” I shouted as I tossed the packs inside the tank.

“Almost… got it…” Sweat was pouring off the Ukrainian. His hands moved at lightning speed inside the belly of the engine. “All set! Get in! Get in!”

We scrambled into the Centaur and sealed the hatches overhead. Just in time. As we settled into the front seats, the Undead were roaring and beating on the sides of the armored tank.

“Start it, for God’s sake!” I yelled at Prit.

“Whadda you mean?” He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “I don’t know how to start this thing!”

“What do you mean you don’t know how?” My eyes grew wide. “You’re the damned pilot!”

“
Helicopter
pilot!” Prit replied angrily. “In the air force, we didn’t have anything like this box on wheels! I thought you knew how to drive this thing!”

“Me?” It was my turn to be astonished. “Prit, I’ve never been in a tank in my life! I didn’t even serve in the army. I was a lawyer, dammit!”

“Tell that to our friends outside! Do you or don’t you know how to start this thing?”

“No! Of course not!” Suddenly, a flash of insight struck me with force. “Wait! The sergeant must know! Hey! Jonás! Wake up! Come on, Sergeant, open your eyes! We need you!”

Sergeant Fernández took a while to come around. His breathing had become spasmodic. From time to time, he vomited blood, which mingled with the blood coming out the holes in his chest. It was a wonder he was still alive.

In a wheezing, shaky voice, he told Prit how to start the tank. The ignition system was very durable and it still worked after over a year out in the open. But it was also painfully complicated. Prit got the ignition sequence wrong twice and had to start over. Meanwhile, dozens of Undead had gathered around the Centaur. Some even had climbed up on it and were walking above us, trying to get in. Even though the tank weighed several tons, it shook with all the Undead pounding on it. The noise was deafening. If we couldn’t start the engine, we’d be trapped in there until we died of hunger and thirst. That was a chilling thought.

With a grinding screech, Prit finally got the tank in first gear and the engine coughed to life for the first time in a year. The Centaur lurched forward and stalled.

“Start it again! For God’s sake!” As soon as those words left my mouth, I started laughing hysterically, despite the seriousness of the situation. I couldn’t stop myself.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Prit looked at me as if I’d gone mad. “Think this is funny?”

He tried a second time. The Centaur bucked a couple of times, but didn’t stall. With a triumphant gesture, he looked at me and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He gave it some gas and the powerful diesel engine roared.

“Purrs like a kitten!” he said, satisfied, his eyes glued to the display panel. “Now, let’s get out of here!”

“We’ve got to get to Cuatro Vientos before they do. And they’ve got a head start.”

That wasn’t the only problem. The Centaur’s gas gauge was on reserve. I didn’t have a clue what obstacles we’d encounter in Madrid. I wasn’t even sure I could find my way to the airport.

“Get us the fuck out of here!”

Prit accelerated and the Centaur inched ahead, pushing against the mass of Undead in its way. After a few agonizing feet—and some crushed bodies—Prit finally got the hang of the controls and drove us out of the parking lot.

The Ukrainian and I looked at each other and high-fived. Our race against the clock had begun.

46

MADRID

“Prit, look out!”

The Centaur swerved and almost turned on its side as we dodged a pile of garbage containers in the middle of the street. With a groan, the vehicle righted itself and we continued down the center of the street as fast as we could. But after driving down La Castellana for a nerve-racking half hour, we had to face the fact that it’d take a long time to get out of Madrid.

That street was ten-lanes wide, so we had plenty of room to dodge the Undead along the way. Now and then, we had to zigzag around a car wreck or an abandoned checkpoint but otherwise, the road was clear. Side streets were cut off by mountains of cars that had served as barricades. Some of those piles had fallen over or had been pulled down by the Undead. Thousands of beasts were ambling down the street, like drunken pedestrians. Prit could drive around them, but their numbers were growing.

“Whadda ya think those barricades were for?” the Ukrainian asked, his eyes glued to the road.

“Looks like they tried to secure a corridor that connected with roads outside the city,” I said, pressing my eyes against the periscope. “That would’ve given them a pretty good escape route.”

When the Ukrainian swerved, my chin came down hard on the edge of the periscope. I cursed under my breath, as I got a taste of my own salty blood.

“So, how come almost no one survived?”

“No idea. Their escape route must’ve been cut off farther down the line.”

“So, how’re
we
gonna get out?”

“I don’t know. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.” I was lost in thought as we drove under the Gate of Europe, the twin leaning towers the locals called Torres KIO. One of those twenty-six-floor towers had burned to the ground. It was just a pile of twisted metal rising in the air like a rotten tooth. The Centaur shook like a cocktail shaker as Prit drove over scattered debris from those towers.

I got more and more uneasy as we moved through the heart of that dead city. La Castellana, usually full of traffic, was empty except for wrecks here and there. A thick layer of dust, debris, and ash covered the pavement. Trees had sprouted up, cracking the pavement. But what really got me down was the silence. The only sound was the growl of the tank’s diesel engine. The Centaur inched past several office buildings; their windows were broken out and looked like dark eyes glaring down at us. My heart raced wildly when I spotted what I thought was a group of friends gathered in the doorway of a restaurant. When we got closer, we saw it was a handful of Undead. They were coming out of the woodwork, drawn by the noise of the passing Centaur.

After a few minutes, we reached the Plaza de Cibeles—its marble statues and fountains had been a symbol of Madrid. Someone had broken off the head of the statue of the goddess Cibeles as she sat perched in her carriage. Across the goddess’s breast, a trembling hand had scrawled in red paint
ISAIAH
34-35, referring to the passage “for the Lord’s anger is against all the nations and his wrath against all their hordes…” The bowl of the fountain was filled to the brim with skeletons dressed in rags. Some very deranged person had neatly lined up dozens of skulls along the rim of the fountain. As we drove past, I felt the lifeless eyes of all those skulls, with their menacing smiles, following us.

When we came to the traffic circle at Plaza de Atocha, Prit braked hard, almost knocking me to the floor.

“What the fuck! Why’d you brake?”

“Look up ahead. We can’t go that way.”

Plaza de Atocha, with its fountains, train station, and wide streets, was once the hub of Madrid. It no longer existed. One of the buildings had been blown up and its debris blocked most of the road. Added to the rubble was a wide trench, ten or twenty feet wide, full of stagnant water. Completing the scene were several overturned eighteen-wheelers that formed an impenetrable wall, splitting that hub in two.

“End of the line,” muttered the Ukrainian. “Now whadda we do?”

“Back up,” I mumbled. “Let’s retrace our path and get on the M-30. Maybe we’ll make it farther on that highway. If that doesn’t work, we can take side streets and bypass this area entirely.”

Even I didn’t believe what I was saying. On a boulevard as wide as La Castellana, the Centaur had a chance of getting through, but on the narrow back streets, filled with wrecked cars and collapsed buildings, we’d get stuck in a heartbeat. Yet what other choice did we have?

Prit circled wide and headed in the opposite direction. In that neighborhood, the Paseo de la Castellana merged with the narrow, treelined Paseo del Prado. Prit had to maneuver the Centaur between downed trees anytime a group of Undead forced him to change lanes. I couldn’t say for sure how many of those monsters surrounded us, but it was way more than a couple of thousand. If the Centaur got stuck, we were goners.

My eyes were burning as I strained to look into the periscope. A bead of sweat slid down my forehead, so I pulled away to dry it off, then pressed against the rubber again. Out the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the sun reflecting off something shiny. I turned the periscope to the right and yelled, “Stop, Prit!”

“What’s the matter?” Ukrainian asked, alarmed.

“I saw something on that roof, over to the right.” Prit craned his neck to look where I was pointing.