Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (38 page)

That was when Lucia showed up. She’s a baby, just seventeen years old (“almost eighteen,” she never tires of saying), but she has a sexy, grown-up body. She lived with her parents in Bayona,
a small tourist town about twelve miles from Vigo. When the order came to evacuate their town to a number of Safe Havens, the authorities attempted to carry it out in an orderly fashion. Somewhere they found a fleet of buses to move the people. While thousands of people waited at an inn on a small peninsula, buses tirelessly made the short trip over and over between Bayona and the Safe Havens.

In all the confusion, Lucia got on one bus and her parents got on another. Trusting she would easily find them at the Safe Haven, she made the trip without protest, overwhelmed by the situation like everyone else. However, the bus Lucia’s parents were on never reached its destination. Along the way, it mysteriously disappeared. Everyone feared the worst. Back then, attacks on the Safe Haven were getting worse as the undead swarmed everywhere.

Lucia nearly went crazy with despair. Alone, not knowing her parents’ fate, she was enveloped by the quagmire at the Safe Haven, crammed into a frozen-food warehouse along with three hundred other people. She decided to find her family. She reasoned that if they weren’t at the Safe Haven, the only other place they could be was Meixoeiro Hospital. So as rations dwindled and they recruited volunteers for reconnaissance groups, she was one of the first to sign up.

They issued her a camouflage jacket several sizes too big and heavy combat boots, but no weapons. There weren’t enough to go around, ammunition was getting scarce, and her frail appearance didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the officer in charge. So she served as a porter. When the team reached its objective, one group secured the perimeter while another group raided the place. The porters had to drag out many pounds of nonperishable food and any other useful items they came across.

Lucia spent three grueling weeks cheating death on every outing. She saw half a dozen members of her team die. She was nearly caught once by an undead crouched down in a warehouse. But she still went out, day after day, waiting for her chance.

Finally, she got that chance. When she calculated that that day’s objective was relatively close to Meixoeiro Hospital, she slipped away from the group and started walking down the road toward the hospital. That was the most frightening forty-eight hours of her life. At night she hid anywhere that was high and inaccessible. At first light she started out again, dodging the undead, forced to spend long stretches of time in hiding, waiting for her predators to move on.

When she finally reached the hospital, the soldiers were dumbfounded. For weeks they hadn’t seen a single soul in the area, apart from the throngs of undead that wandered their way. The sight of that young girl, dressed like a soldier, walking up in search of her parents was disconcerting.

That brave girl was devastated to learn the hospital had no record of her parents. She realized she was completely alone. She didn’t know what to do next.

But the worst was yet to come. The presence of a pretty young girl among a group of isolated, brutalized young men created sexual tension. More and more fights broke out among those soldiers, whose nerves were on edge. One night, one of the soldiers got drunk off his ass and tried to rape her. Fortunately, one of the doctors stopped the guy just in time with a well-aimed blow to the head, but the situation was out of control.

The lieutenant in charge ordered Lucia and Sister Cecilia to remain in Numantia. They weren’t to leave for any reason. Outraged protests from the sister and Lucia did no good. The lieutenant was old school. He didn’t want women fraternizing with the men under his command. End of story. For a couple of
weeks, they worked as cooks and helped out the doctors on the upper floors. Meanwhile patients died one by one of their grave illnesses, since the doctors lacked specialized drugs and couldn’t perform any kind of surgery. All the defensive team could do was wait.

But not for long. A couple of nights later, they lost radio contact with the Safe Haven. Hundreds of undead began to gather around the hospital. Instead of trying to fly under the radar, the lieutenant, an empty-headed, power-hungry idiot, ordered the soldiers to fire at will. The
clackety-clack
of automatic weapons drew an even larger crowd of those creatures like a magnet.

In the end, the undead managed to get in. Neither Sister Cecilia nor Lucia could explain how. They were entrenched in the basement as the drama unfolded above their heads. All they knew was that one of the soldiers, a very young, scared boy with a strong Andalusian accent, stuck his head in to Numantia and warned them to lock the door from inside.

For a couple of hours they heard shooting outside, explosions around the hospital complex, and then a bomb. The shooting soon ringed the interior corridors of the hospital. Then it stopped altogether. For two hours, the nun and the girl waited for someone to come tell them the fighting was over. No one ever showed up.

Steeling herself, Lucia took a risk and left Numantia to find out what had happened to the soldiers. She saw what Pritchenko and I found months later. Empty corridors, evidence of fighting everywhere, and not a single living being.

Since then, the two women have lived in that basement, protected from the outside. They had light, water, and food, and were safe from the undead. What they didn’t have was a clear idea of what the devil to do next. They knew the odds were not in their favor on the outside. On their own, they wouldn’t get very far. They concluded that their best option was to wait for the rescue party.

But all that showed up were two tired, injured, hungry, disoriented survivors. And a cat. Our arrival and the news from outside brought a mixture of horror and hope—horror at discovering there was nothing left of the civilization they knew; hope that, because of us, there was finally a solution to this complex situation.

Prit is a whole lot better. The minute we walked through the door, Sister Cecilia took him under her wing like a mother hen shelters her chick. Not only did she mend his shattered left hand with remarkable skill (although there was nothing she could do about his missing fingers), she also drew the Ukrainian out of the debilitating depression he’d sunk into. She diagnosed both of us as being shell shocked. It’s curable. Normally, a couple of weeks in a safe, quiet, stress-free environment alleviates it, but sometimes the sufferer never recovers.

Fortunately, Prit wasn’t one of those cases. His zest for life is too strong for a little thing like a nervous breakdown to get the best of him. I’ve seen his outlook slowly grow more positive. I’m sure the long talks he’s had with Sister Cecilia well into the night have contributed to his recovery. The nun and the Ukrainian have forged a close friendship based on trust.

Like many Slavs, Prit’s a devout Christian. Although Sister Cecilia’s Catholic and he’s Orthodox, her presence has comforted him deeply. During those long talks, he must have tried to make sense of this hell. Why did he lose his wife and child? Why did God unleash this catastrophe? I don’t know if he found any answers, but his search has been a balm for his wounded soul. Something inside his heart is broken forever, that’s for sure. Now at least he’s learning to live with the pain.

For my part, I prefer not to ponder it. Every minute of the day, I wonder what happened to my family. Damn, I never thought I could miss anyone in such an intense, hopeless way. It’s highly likely they’re mutants, I know, but I refuse to accept it.

I’ve had the same nightmare for weeks. I’m walking down a dark corridor. I can hear the sea splashing against one wall, but it doesn’t smell like the sea. It smells like something rotting. The corridor is littered with trash and shell casings. The walls are stained with something that looks like shit, but I know it’s dried blood. Suddenly, my sister and my parents come out of a door. They’ve been turned into those things. They walk toward me with blind eyes, after my blood. I’m armed in my dream, but I can’t raise my gun, and then...then I wake up, deeply upset, with an urge to throw up.

Undoubtedly, those who have changed into those creatures are in hell, but we survivors are living pretty close to that hell.

Yesterday afternoon, Prit and I were standing in the elevator shaft, discussing the fastest way to reach the SUV. We agreed we should drive it around to our exit in case we needed it in an emergency. Moving it from time to time it would also keep it in running condition. Winter was coming, and I was afraid the cold weather would damage the starter.

In the middle of our conversation, the Ukrainian straightened up suddenly, sniffing the air nervously like a retriever, with an intensely focused look on his face.

“Smell that?” he asked.

“Smell what?” I said. After nine months surrounded by trash and slowly rotting corpses, my sense of smell wasn’t as keen as it used to be.

“Fire,” Prit said as he closed his eyes and sniffed the air eagerly. His eyes flew open, boring into me.

“Fire? A fire? Here in the hospital?”

“Not in the hospital. A fire out there! In the forest! I’m sure of this.” Prit’s voice caught in his throat.

I trusted my pilot friend. After years of fighting wildfires, he could detect the faintest hint of a fire, fires the average person wouldn’t notice. I didn’t smell anything, but if the Ukrainian said he smelled smoke, that was the end of the discussion. The question was how it would affect us.

“It’s blowing in on the wind. Come here,” the Ukrainian continued.

“We should go take a look.”

“Yes.”

We stared at each other. The Ukrainian shook his head, and I cussed under my breath. We both knew what came next.

Shit, I thought. We had to get back out there. We had to stick our nose out of our little hole, whether we liked it or not.

After we’d made that decision, we headed back to Numantia to bring Sister Cecilia and Lucia up to speed. The look of dread on Lucia’s face when she heard what we were planning was almost comical.

As she helped me get into my patched wetsuit, she nervously chattered away nonstop, reminding me of a thousand things not to do. “Don’t take any chances, don’t go into dark places, don’t go near anything suspicious, don’t wander too far from Prit...”

I tried to calm her down, for my sake as well as hers. I was getting more nervous by the minute. Lucia isn’t a hysterical person, but the possibility that something would happen to us outside that refuge really got to her.

Finally, Prit and I were ready. We were armed with assault rifles the army had left behind. I was also carrying the speargun across my back, with a spear loaded and two more strapped to my right calf. The Ukrainian, decked out in an awful fuchsia tracksuit so bright it hurt your eyes, had a huge hunting knife tucked in a
holster. He chewed some gum mechanically and was surprisingly calm.

We agreed that the best way out was through the elevator shaft. We wouldn’t have to go back through the dark hospital, plus it was the fastest way out. Once we were in the storeroom on the top floor, all we had to do was open a window to get a view of the entire valley surrounding the hospital.

We soon discovered that climbing up the elevator cables was harder than it looks in the movies. They were covered in grease, and the noise we made as we climbed should’ve attracted a legion of those monsters. But as far as we could tell, things were going our way. At least for a while.

After struggling to the top floor, Prit eased the elevator door open, ready to duck back inside at the first sign of danger. I kept the cable as taut as possible. If there was trouble, we could slide back down to the ground floor.

Prit slithered behind the door like an eel and disappeared out on to the upper floor. For fifteen long seconds, I didn’t hear a sound. Just when I thought my nerves would snap, the Ukrainian slipped back behind the door and signaled that the coast was clear. Strangely clear.

For the first time in months, I felt sunlight directly on my skin. It felt so good that I stood stock still for a moment, enjoying that wonderful sensation. We were standing in a warehouse on the top floor. From there we’d ventured out into the ambulance garage. Sunlight was streaming in the heavy metal gate trucks used to drive through, which had been left wide open during the evacuation. That discovery made my stomach clench. With that door open, there was nothing to keep the undead from wandering around this huge room. But there wasn’t any sign of them.

Prit and I peered out. It was a beautiful late summer day. Although the sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky, the
windchill from a strong north wind made it very cold. That wind also carried the strong smell of burning wood. Even I could smell it now.

My gaze swept nervously from side to side as I tried to detect any suspicious activity, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. Only dozens of birds darting everywhere, completely disoriented. The air was so charged with electricity it almost crackled.

Suddenly Pritchenko elbowed me in the ribs. I looked in the direction he was pointing. Over the hills at the end of the valley, about a mile away, rose a thick column of smoke. Enormous black spirals twisted and turned with a fury. An evil glow dyed the horizon orange, adding a sinister, surreal touch to the landscape.

I stood there, horrified at what I saw. A fire. A huge, uncontrollable forest fire. A couple of days before, a strong storm with a lot of thunder and lightning but no rain had hit in the area. Maybe lightning from that storm started that fire. Or a gas cylinder left out in the sun for months. Or a hundred other damn things I could come up with. No way to say for sure.

All I knew was that with no one to fight that fire it was reaching terrifying proportions, destroying everything in its path. As if someone had read my thoughts, a powerful explosion shook the air. A huge orange fireball rose over the horizon. The fire had just devoured a car, probably more than one, given the size of the explosion. That fire was becoming a monster.