The Wanderers (25 page)

Finally, ignoring the proximity of the specters, the girl took his face in her hands, she placed it in front of her and yelled at him with all of her strength:

“
I WANT TO LIVE! LIVE!... GET ME OUT OF HERE MO, GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Moses looked at her, perplexed. Her hands were trembling and then her lower jaw moved as if it had life of its own. But Isabel’s eyes expressed both a plea and an order, and Moses felt a renewed impulse that made him react. He took Isabel’s hand and clumsily jogged towards the tunnel that moved them away from the crater.

“
YOU CAN’T ESCAPE! NO ONE CAN ESCAPE THE WRATH OF GOD!” the priest’s high-pitched voice screamed. Moses felt relieved when, as they ran in the middle of the darkness of the tunnel, he noticed that the priest’s voice disappeared little by little, becoming farther and farther away.

The dead were pursuing them.

Chapter 26

In just a few days, a consensus and approval were reached to try to make the helicopter in the police building work. There were a few detractors, but democracy spoke for itself and the majority imposed the voting results. The procession that would escort the pilot was composed of, as it could not have been any other way, Dozer, Uriguen, Jose and Susana.

They reached the police station using the sewage tunnels without incident, and located an exit in the back, where they found very few zombies. Barely four meters separated them from the same entrance they had used the last time, a small window in the wall, about six feet up, which guaranteed that none of the specters were going to follow them.

Once they were all inside, they followed their strict protocol of being prudent at all times, although by then it was already clear that the building was still as empty as they had last left it.

“
Relax, man,” said Uriguen giving Jaime a loud pat on the back. “Your ass is so tight, it’s like a childproof cap.”

They all laughed, even Jaime, who had seemed a little upset up until that moment.

The rooms were still empty, the tables overturned, papers scattered over the floor. Some battered metal cabinets formed a mountain in the middle of the main entrance hall, and while passing by, one would ask oneself what the story of that place was. What had happened while the authorities were being literally decimated in the streets in their attempts to detain not just the resuscitated specters, but also the civilian population that had gone mad; surrendering to the collective hysteria when they were not looting or committing violence for the sake of violence?

They climbed the stairs up to the higher floors and walked through the rooms for a while, searching for the access to the roof with the heliport. Jaime always remained in the rear, protected by Dozer. Finally, after going up a flight of narrow cement stairs, they reached the exit. There, the beautiful blue and white colored EC135 rested radiantly upon its two large landing skids.

For a few seconds, no one said anything. It was large, more so than they had imagined. The interior was spacious; they easily counted enough space for at least six passengers as well as the pilot. Jaime was walking around it with a strange expression on his face. Occasionally he would run the palm of his hand over its structure, or he crouched down to look at some detail.

“
What do you think, boy?” Dozer asked.

“
It’s fantastic,” said Jaime quickly. “This beauty can easily reach up to, I don’t know, let’s say a maximum speed of one-hundred sixty miles per hour, and it should give us a four-hundred mile range, maybe more.”

“
Six hundred kilometers... shit... that’s very good. I wouldn’t like to have to refuel just anywhere. Do you think you can pilot it?”

“
That’s what I’m going to see right now,” Jaime said, with a smile that was a mix between excitement and fear.

“
It might not work,” said Susana while Jaime, with his eyes wandering over the instrument panel, settled himself in the seat. “I mean, if the helicopter’s alright, why didn’t they use it to get out of here? When we were here last time, there were quite a few bodies inside the station.”

“
Maybe one of those rotten guys that we found was the pilot,” said Jose with a half-smile.

Susana grumbled,
“Yes, it might well have been just that.”

Jaime was concentrating on the controls. He was looking to his right and up, towards the controls located over his head, and he still had not even dared to lay his hands on the control levers.

“
Jaime,” said Dozer, “if you’re not sure about this, leave it whenever you want to. Remember that this it is just an initial look-see. Alright? We can come back at any time, you’ve seen how easy it is.”

“
No, no...” said Jaime, increasingly more amazed with the fact that he was seated at the controls of such an aircraft.

“
Let the kid be, man,” said Uriguen, “he can fly and blow gum bubbles out of his ass. Right, Jaime?”

“
Of course, I’m fine,” he said. “I can recognize almost all of the instruments, I think this could go very well. Look at this...”

Dozer looked into the glass cockpit.

Jaime pointed between his feet a small pedestal with instruments and a tachometer for the rotor speed. “Look, there’s the air speed gauge, the altimeter, the fuel flow gauge, the ignition button, and this here moves the pump that starts the fuel current to the motors.”

“
Well, it seems like you were born in one of these,” said Dozer, smiling.

As if it had been the take-off order from the control tower, Jaime flicked a few switches. The gauges lit up, and a few needles began to mark their measurements. The gasoline gauge marked three quarters full.

“
It even has gas,” Jaime said, unable to contain a small laugh. Then he activated some more controls to begin to pump the fuel and activated the electric motor that was connected to an accumulator.

The machine came to life. The tail rotor began to move slowly, making a loud humming noise, quickly reaching fifty revolutions per minute. Jaime looked at Dozer, amazed.
“This works... it works
fucking great
.” He activated the ram pumps and the rotor became stabilized, prepared for take-off. “Step back... I’m going to try to lift it a bit.”

Dozer blinked, unsure, but the boy seemed to know very well what he was doing. Aranda had been explicit with his instructions: only to become familiar with the aircraft, with extreme caution, and not to make any tests without knowing exactly what they were doing. But he supposed that trying to lift the aircraft could be included in the guideline of
“familiarizing oneself with the aircraft”
. He signaled to the others for them to move away from the helicopter.

With a loud sigh, Jaime pressed the ignition button and one of the engines immediately spouted a flame, which disappeared as the excess fuel burned off. In the broad daylight, the engines worked without the fire or smoke being too noticeable. The blades began to rotate, slowly at first, but they soon gained speed until they were no more than a sinuous pearl grey saucer. Dozer thought that the sound was exactly like what he was used to in Hollywood movies, but he had never imagined that it would be so loud. The wind it gave off was as spectacular as it was unexpected. Their shirts fluttered as if they were going to tear and fly off.

Jaime took the collective control lever with both hands. It did not transmit any vibration at all, and it felt firm to his touch. Finally, he gently pulled at it and the aircraft slowly began to rise. The feeling of euphoria was incredible. He had the other lever right there, the cyclic stick. He knew that he only had to push it for that white-blue beauty to begin moving forward. He felt invincible, as if he could fly through the whole city and land on the missing tower of the very cathedral.

Dozer watched as the helicopter ascended a foot and a half. As it did so, every one of his alarms went off. He looked to his friends, and he could see in Susana’s gaze that at least she shared his nervousness.
Not good
, he thought. Susana could see the signs; that woman had saved his life on more than one occasion with her sixth sense.

“
Jaime! JAIME! BRING IT DOWN!”

Jaime appeared to be engrossed, looking forward and at the control levers at the same time.

“
HE CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Uriguen screamed.

Dozer moved a little forward so that there was the possibility of Jaime seeing him with his peripheral vision. He moved his arms up and down, making wild gestures in an attempt to get Jaime’s attention.

“
BRING IT DOWN JAIME, THAT’S ENOUGH, BRING IT DOWN!

The helicopter barely inclined, and it moved several inches forward with a slight rocking movement. Dozer froze, incapable of deciding what to do next. Jose moved a few steps forward, as if he planned on holding on to the landing skids. But at that moment, the helicopter began to turn its tail towards the left and the small tail rotor began to hover above Dozer’s team.

“
JAIMEEE!” he screamed, shaking his arms wildly as the cockpit disappeared from his sight.

Susana retreated inside the stairwell, but Jose and Uriguen were farther away. Jose threw himself to the ground and put his hands over the back of his neck to let the rotor pass above him, and Uriguen pressed himself to the wall, in expectation of what would happen next. The tail continued its trajectory, gaining increasingly more speed. If it continued that way, Dozer calculated that he would not be able to land again; the shafts were practically hanging off the landing platform.

Then the helicopter turned with unexpected speed, dealing a powerful rear blow to Dozer, who was violently thrown to the ground and dragged several feet. The aircraft was out of control.

Inside the cockpit, Jaime noticed the collision against Dozer. He did not understand what was happening, either because the controls were more sensitive than the controls he had been using in his simulator, or because there was something about this one that he had not considered and knew nothing about. Gripped by nervousness, he understood that if he went on that way he could cause the helicopter to keel over to either side, and then the blades could hit the building, or even worse, reach the rest of the group. So he activated the controls and made the helicopter elevate towards the open sky; surely there he could understand the subtle yet definitive differences of the aircraft.

“
My God...” Dozer whispered from the ground, feeling a burning sensation growing from his ribs. He watched as the helicopter began the ascent.

Jose came running to his side, followed by Uriguen and Susana.

“
Are you alright?” Jose asked.

“
I’m pretty fucking far from being alright,” Dozer said, with his hand on his side and not taking his eyes off the helicopter. Jose followed his gaze: the aircraft was tracing a half-circle in the air and began to lean to one side at a very high speed. Then it straightened on its own and began moving forward with its nose pointed down, moving farther away from the building.

“
Dozer... the kid...” said Susana.

“
He’ll control it, you’ll see... he will.”

But the helicopter flew like a dragonfly in the middle of a cloud of hashish smoke. For a moment, it brusquely fell towards the street, a wide avenue with a traffic circle in the center. Afterwards, it gained height, spinning dangerously, and finally crashed sideways against the building that stood on the opposite side of the avenue. The impact was horrible: the noise of the blades became a mechanical nightmare that eventually stopped with a harrowing metallic sound. It lifted a tremendous cloud of dust, and large pieces of rubble fell to the street. Susana watched with both hands covering her mouth. When they could finally see through the dust cloud, they encountered the appalling sight of the aircraft embedded in the façade, with the tail poking outwards. The cockpit had ended up inside a bedroom, covered in rubble. There died Aranda’s dream of flying above the city, of searching for more survivors, of landing on the roofs of the shopping centers to obtain supplies, of easily moving the encampment to other, less inhospitable locales, far from the city.

“
Dear God,” Susana finally said.

“
No... it hasn’t exploded,” said Jose, without losing the wrecked aircraft from sight.

“
Jaime could be alive!”

“
He could be...” repeated Uriguen.

Susana looked over the border of the platform. The spectacle was terrifying: the zombies were moving frenetically; they howled and shook their arms like predators about to pounce on their prey. The impact had awakened them.

“
There are many of them. More than usual.”

“
It doesn’t matter, we have to go get Jaime,” Uriguen said.

“
And we will.”

“
Fuck yes,” Jose said.

“
I’m not going to be able to, guys,” said Dozer. “I think I’ve broken a couple of ribs. It hurts like hell. But if you move me close to the edge I’ll cover you from here. I can still shoot.”

“
Alright,” said Susana worriedly, “then it’ll be best if we hurry up. If he’s alive, time is essential, and he could need medical attention.”

They moved Dozer with all the care they could manage towards the border of the helipad and they gave him his rifle. It was a magnificent position: from there he could cover the whole traffic circle, and the way his friends would have to follow until they reached the building. They did not exchange many more words: they ran downstairs with a shadow of worry veiling their faces.

Chapter 27

They had lost count of how long they had been blindly moving through the tunnels. They had lost the flashlights, but their eyes did not take long to grow accustomed to the semi-darkness that was broken from time to time by light seeping through the small grilles that connected the tunnel with the street. They tried to go back the same way they had come, to the refuge house in Beatas Street, but they soon discovered that they had lost their way, because they were entering arched corridors that they did not recognize.