Dark Days (Apocalypse Z) (32 page)

Prit and I held our breath. If that snitch saw us, she’d raise the alarm and we’d have to explain ourselves to the guards stationed in front.

After a tense moment, that old biddy turned, muttered something under her breath, and went back into her lair.

We made it through the lobby and to the stairs without crossing paths with our neighbors. The soldiers at the front door must’ve scared everyone off, as we didn’t see a soul on the stairs that were usually crowded.

When we reached our floor, I wasn’t surprised to find the front door broken down. They’d given our home a thorough going-over. It looked like a tornado had hit it. Nothing was spared. They’d even ripped up the mattresses and cushions, searching for God-knows-what. My heart sank. If Lucia had left us a clue, they’d have found it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something rush through the door. Instinctively, I drew my pistol, but then I heard a pitiful meow coming from an orange blur.

“Lucullus!” I shouted as my cat bounded over to me. When I picked him up, I could tell he’d put on some weight. I scratched his belly and he purred ecstatically.

Lucullus shot me an angry look when I stopped petting him. I looked closely at his collar. All his life, he’d worn a black flea collar. Now strapped around his neck was a strip of red leather I knew well. It wasn’t a collar; it was a bracelet I’d given Lucia.

My hands shook as I unfastened the bracelet and turned it over, with Pritchenko peering over my shoulder. Just one word was written on the back in Lucia’s handwriting, a word only Prit and I would understand:
Corinth
.

51

It took us nearly two hours to reach the port of Tenerife. We had to do some tricky maneuvers to get out of the building without anyone seeing us, and to give the checkpoints a wide berth.

“It’s just a matter of time till someone links us to Lucia and starts circulating our photos, too,” Prit said.

I agreed. Plus, the hour the officer at the airport had granted us had long since expired. Prit and I were now deserters and fugitives. It wasn’t the triumphant welcome I’d pictured, but at least we were alive—and free.

By the time we reached the docks, we’d come up with a plan. We guessed that Lucia had hidden out in one of the boats anchored there. Only we knew about the
Corinth
, the boat I’d sailed to Vigo where I met Prit. Lucia’s cryptic message had to mean she was hiding on a sailboat… but which one? Surely she’d left us another clue, one that wasn’t too obvious.

When we reached the docks, our spirits fell. There were hundreds of sailboats anchored among dozens of rusting freighters and warships. Thousands of refugees had trickled in on those boats. When fuel became scarce, the government organized a fishing fleet that went out every morning to feed the hungry masses packed on Tenerife.

For a boat lover like me, it was painful to see those thoroughbreds of the wind buried in nets, fishing gear, and traps. But people had to eat. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t spot a boat like the
Corinth
under all that gear.

“What now? Which one’s she in?” Prit nervously asked. From our hiding spot between containers stacked on the pier, we watched dock workers head to work.

“If I knew, we wouldn’t be standing around wasting time,” I snapped. I struggled to hold on to Lucullus, who kept trying to launch himself out of my arms. My mind raced as my eyes searched for a sign. None of those boats reminded me of the
Corinth
.

I was about to give up when I spotted a small sailboat anchored at the end of the pier. I blinked several times to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Then I smiled. Flying from the top of her mast like a flag was a faded, old wetsuit.

52

The
Crocodile II
was an old twenty-four-foot sailboat. Once upon a time, she must have been a real gem, but when Prit and I rowed up in a dinghy, it was clear that she was pretty run down. You could tell from her teak decking and elegant steel fittings that her original owner had really lavished her with love, but all those months used as a fishing boat in less careful hands had taken its toll.

The rigging was a mess and damp lines were strewn around the deck. The bow was almost buried under a thick layer of nets—all shapes and sizes—that smelled of rotting fish. If Lucia had taken refuge there, it was an excellent choice. No one would’ve boarded that floating trash heap.

We rowed alongside the
Crocodile II
and climbed aboard. The deck was in complete disrepair. The front half of the cabin had been transformed into a hold for their catch. Peering in the cabin door, all I could see were white plastic crates stacked every which way and a filthy mattress tossed on the deck.

“No one’s here,” Prit said despondently. “I don’t think…”

Before he could finish, Lucullus jumped aboard the
Crocodile II
and took off like a shot between the crates. There was a muffled yelp of surprise and suddenly, a hand I knew so well pushed aside a stack of crates.

Standing before us, petting a contented Lucullus, looking at us through tears of relief was Lucia.

I grabbed her hands. Not saying a word, she squeezed mine as tight as she could. We stood there, speechless, until Prit coughed to get our attention.

“Sorry to interrupt this reunion, but we’ve got a lot to do. They’re looking for us and we don’t know how Sister Cecilia is. Maybe we should—”

“Oh, Prit,” Lucia dropped my hands and hugged the Ukrainian. Her pained voice broke and she started to cry. “Prit, I’m so sorry. They killed her right in front of me. It was horrible.”

“Calm down. Calm down,” Pritchenko managed to say, as he gave her a clumsy pat on the back. The Ukrainian was as pale as a ghost, his eyes like two black marbles. I knew my friend, and whoever killed the nun had earned a mortal enemy.

Lucia pulled away from Prit and leaned on me, sobbing, as she described the nightmare she’d lived through over the past two days, from the time she entered the hospital until she took refuge in that boat.

“How’d you know no one would find you on this boat? What about her crew?” I asked as I held her tight.

“They were admitted to the hospital for botulism. They ate some rancid canned food,” Lucia managed to say between sobs. “They were patients on my wing. I knew no one would come around for at least fifteen days.”

“What if we hadn’t found you? What would you’ve done?”

Lucia stopped crying. A sad smile lit up her face and she gave me a long kiss. “I was sure you’d come,” she said, calmly looking me in my eye. “I never doubted you for a minute. Nothing in the world—not human or Undead—can stop you.”

I hugged her tight. I’d never let any harm come to her.

I turned to Prit, who was sitting on the cabin stairs, crestfallen, his arms folded. Not only had he lost his best friend, he’d been robbed of the chance to get revenge. I knelt beside him. “Prit, don’t fall apart now. We need you, old friend. We’re comrades-in-arms, remember?”

The Ukrainian raised his glassy eyes. I saw a spark of life in the back of his eyes. “
Fatalism
,” he said, with a bitter smile.

“
Fatalism
,” I answered, returning his smile. “But I promise we’ll make sure that changes very soon.”

53

Five hours later, as the sun was coming up, the Tenerife fishing fleet set sail for the traps they’d set a few nautical miles away. From the shore, the sight of hundreds of sailboats spreading their sails on a dimly lit sea was unforgettable.

A veteran sailor might’ve noticed that the rigging of one of the boats was pulled tight on the leeward side, as if she were in a race. Her crew was scurrying around on deck, tying down loose ends.

Two hours later, when the boats reached the fishing ground, the same sailboat didn’t cast her nets like all the rest. Instead, the crew let out the spinnaker in the morning breeze and set sail for Gran Canaria. No one in the fleet noticed as the boat pulled away.

She grew smaller and smaller on the horizon.

And finally disappeared.

54

SOMEWHERE TWO MILES OFF THE COAST OF SENEGAL

Twelve-year-old Marcel Mbalo and his fourteen-year-old cousin, Yayah, had gone out on their fishing boat very early that morning to catch the trade winds at dawn. Although their long, dug-out canoe had an old noisy outboard motor, his uncle had forbidden them to use it unless it was an emergency, since the village had almost no gas left. So Yayah and Marcel had to paddle hard every morning to get past the surf at the beach and then let out the sails to reach their fishing ground.

Marcel thought it was an exciting life. A year ago, the men of the village would never have allowed two children to fish alone in one of their beautiful boats, but now there was no alternative. Most of the men had been forced to serve in the army when the demons from hell had taken possession of the souls of the living. None of those men had returned, so there were hardly any working-age adults left in the village.

The few who remained kept watch night and day at the small bridge over the marshes, the only access to N’Gor peninsula, where the village was located. Marcel’s uncle said that being so isolated was a blessing from Allah, but Marcel and Yayah didn’t understand what the advantages were, living in such a remote place, hundreds of miles from the nearest town. There were about two hundred men, women, and children in their village. They lived off those fish and the crops they grew outside
of town. No one went hungry, but they couldn’t afford any luxuries. At night, they all slept in the old school, which everyone thought was fun.

Yayah manned the tiller, while Marcel tightened the boat’s small triangular sail that propelled their canoe. His mind was wandering over the horizon when he spotted a white dot in the distance. That white dot turned out to be a sailboat approaching fast.

Marcel pointed out the sailboat to Yayah. Under those circumstances, an older, more cautious man would’ve sailed away from any stranger, but Marcel and Yayah were just teenagers with no sense of danger. Their curiosity got the better of them and they let their canoe drift toward the boat.

When they were about three hundred feet from the sailboat, Marcel unconsciously reached for his
gri-gris
, the amulet that hung around his neck to ward off demons. That boat scared him.

The vessel looked like it had been through a ferocious storm. The mast was broken in half and its cockpit was flooded with seawater. With no one to control it, the rudder rolled freely, driven by the wind. There wasn’t a soul onboard.

Marcel called out a few times, but no one came on deck. When Yayah brought the canoe alongside the sailboat, Marcel jumped aboard, clutching the machete he used to cut the heads off fish.

The little fisherman immediately wanted to turn and run away from that ruined, sinister boat, but his older cousin was watching. If he let on that he was afraid, he’d have to endure the taunts of the other children in the village. He took a deep breath and pushed open the cabin door.

The cabin looked deserted. A black assault rifle lay on the table next to a large knife. Marcel trod carefully across a carpet of broken glass. Spread out on one of the seats was a painting that caught his attention. It was a garden landscape with a statue and some white men talking in the foreground. Marcel thought the painting was ugly, so he tossed it onto the floor, where it floated face down in seawater.

After checking out every inch of the deserted cabin, he picked up the assault rifle and knife and started out. Satisfied with his haul, picturing Yayah’s face when he saw all that loot, he took one last look inside the abandoned boat.

In a corner, hanging from a hook attached to the ceiling was an old wetsuit, watching him, swaying to the rhythm of the waves.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is very hard to mention, in just a few lines, everyone who has been part of this adventure called
Apocalypse Z
. So many people helped make this possible.

First my wife and family, for their endless patience, love, and understanding in those moments when I ran aground on the reefs of bewilderment.

Of course, Juan Gómez-Jurado, my friend and fellow writer who opened doors, guided me through the rough parts, and illuminated paths that would have otherwise remained hidden to me. I know I can never repay my debt to him. He has been my Pritchenko (but without the mustache).