“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
“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.
We were stopped in front of the main entrance to the Prado Museum. Through the trees, I’d gotten a glimpse of the cupola on top of that enormous building. Sitting on the roof, directly in front of that cupola, something with a Plexiglas windshield glinted in the sunlight. If the clouds hadn’t parted just then, we’d have driven right past it.
“Whadda you think it is?” I asked trying to control the emotion in my voice.
“I’d bet my life it’s the cockpit of a helicopter,” the Ukrainian said, after a few seconds. “It’s small, just a bubble cockpit, but hell, who cares? It’s a helicopter.”
My heart was beating so hard I thought it would fly out of my chest. If we could get that bird in the air, we’d have a chance to escape this hellhole.
“Perched up there, she seems to be in one piece,” said Prit, peering into the lens. “But until we go up there, we won’t know if she’ll fly.”
“Let’s get in the building. We can knock the door down with the Centaur and then find the stairs to the roof.”