I looked at my friend with dismay. He still clung to the hope that his family was alive. “Prit, I think you’re confused,” I said gently, trying not to hurt his feelings. “Extreme heat and extreme cold aren’t the same. I doubt those Undead would freeze to death, as long as they keep moving. Maybe in places where the temperature is fifty or sixty degrees below freezing, but human life is nearly impossible there, too.”
“But… I don’t understand why…” Anxiety contorted my friend’s face.
“Prit, think for a minute. The condition these bastards are in is the result of dehydration, not temperature,” I explained, pointing to the Undead at our feet. “The human body is largely made up of water; very high temperatures dry up all that moisture. No matter how cold it gets up north, there’ll always be enough moisture in the air to keep those bastards going.”
The letdown in Pritchenko’s eyes told me he understood what I’d said. The chances that his family was still alive in Germany were slim. Like my family’s chances, I thought bitterly. We were the Last of the Mohicans.
We moved away slowly, but not before Prit, out of hate or pity, jabbed his knife into the Undead guy’s eye. The creature’s grunts stopped immediately.
Exploring the rest of the town yielded no surprises. Whoever exterminated all the Undead had cleaned out the place. We found nothing usefuclass="underline" no food to replace our rapidly dwindling supplies, no fuel, no weapons, and no water. The village had a deep well, shaded by a shed, situated in front of the mosque. The villagers had used a motorized pump to draw up the water, but there was no trace of that motor. The looters had taken it. All they’d left behind were the bolts that had attached it to the floor of the shed.
The adobe walls of the houses had cracked in the sweltering desert heat. Strong winds had carried off some of the roofs. In a couple of years, if no one intervened, the desert would swallow up that town. It would disappear, as if it had never existed.
The sun was setting over the ocean, turning the sky a spectacular red and bringing the temperature down. We didn’t find any Undead lurking in any of the houses, so we decided to set up camp in the mosque, the only building with carpets on the floor, and spend the night there.
That night, sitting on the beach, cigarette in hand, under a starry sky, I relaxed for the first time in months. That was when it hit me… I’d made it—I was still alive. For the first time since I started that trip, I broke down and cried.
4
“Holy Mother of God! We’re saved!” Sister Cecilia’s voice warbled with excitement, as the hazy outline of Lanzarote loomed on the horizon. We’d reached the easternmost island of the archipelago.
I shot the little nun a surprised look. At the sight of land she’d come out of her trance and shrieked excitedly in those cramped quarters. Lucia kissed Prit and me and hugged us so tight, she nearly choked us.
We all had a right to rejoice. Our goal was in sight.
We’d taken off from Africa a couple of hours before and had covered the distance faster than we’d estimated, thanks to a tailwind. Now, Lanzarote shimmered in the sun like a mirage in the middle of that turquoise sea. It was the most beautiful sight I’d seen in months.
Prit nonchalantly announced that we’d touch down in about twenty minutes. “And twenty minutes after that, I’ll be drinking a nice cold beer. Better yet, a whole keg with a pocketful of Canary Island cigars.” Behind me, Lucia rattled on to Sister Cecilia about getting clothes that weren’t three sizes too big. “Something feminine that shows off my figure.” Even Lucullus got caught up in the excitement. He zipped around from one end of the cabin to the other, forcing us to put him back in his carrier amid yowls of protest. I was just relieved we’d made the nearly three-thousand-mile trip with no mishaps. Given the circumstances, that was no small feat.
I started fiddling with the radio, looking for a frequency so I could contact the island and identify ourselves. The last thing I wanted was some nervous finger to pull a trigger. We were new to the area and had to proceed with caution.
The concerned look on my face silenced the rejoicing in the cabin. No matter how much I turned the dial, I only got static. My gut froze into an icy knot. If the radio didn’t pick up any broadcast, it could mean one of only two things: Either the island was maintaining radio silence… or there was no one there who could operate that radio.
I felt sick. If the epidemic had reached the islands, our chances of survival plummeted. We were three thousand miles from Europe, flying over an island in the middle of the Atlantic, and the last of our fuel was running out. We couldn’t turn back or go somewhere else. We’d bet everything on the Canary Islands… and it looked like we’d lost.
In the silence, I could feel three pairs of eyes boring into my neck, as the helicopter covered the last nautical miles between us and land. In a few minutes we’d have what Prit called “dry feet.”
What the hell was I going to tell them? What the hell were we supposed to do?
“There’s no signal, is there?” Sister Cecilia broke the heavy silence, with a note of fatalism in her voice.
“No, Sister. I don’t think there’s anyone down there.” The Lanzarote coastline was flying past under our feet.
“That can’t be! That just can’t be!” Lucia shook her head. “Let me try.” She pushed me aside and grabbed my headphones.
I watched with fascination as Lucia’s slim fingers turned the dials with the delicacy and precision of a goldsmith, stopping at every little crackle or hiss, searching for a spot where a human hand might be behind the signal. I realized I’d let my nerves get the better of me and had handled the radio too roughly, compared with Lucia’s delicate touch. Suddenly her face lit up and my heart raced wildly.
“Here’s something!” She exclaimed, nearly frantic as she ripped off the headphones. “Listen to this!” Prit flipped a lever that connected the radio to the cabin, his eyes glued to the terrain stretching before him.
“Tenerife North Airport GCXO. Automatic emergency warning… headers twelve-thirty free, main runway clear… contact tower on channel thirty-six, do not land without authorization. Repeat, do not land without authorization. Report directly to the quarantine area. Tenerife North Airport GCXO, automatic emergency warning… headers twelve-thirty free.” The message was repeated twice more in Spanish, then it replayed in English.
“What does that mean?” Lucia asked. “What’re they talking about?”
“Tenerife North Airport.” Prit muttered under his breath. “Los Rodeos.”
I nodded. Tenerife North Airport was one of two airports on the island of Tenerife, along with Reina Sofia Airport at the southern end. The automatic signal indicated that someone had survived the epidemic. The part about a “quarantine area” convinced me of that. That was the good news.
The bad news was that we still had to get there. A quick glance at the fuel gauge made it clear we wouldn’t make it. A red light started flashing on the control panel and a shrill alarm went off. Prit pulled a small lever and the flashing light stopped; a steady orange light replaced it. We all looked over at the Ukrainian, confused.
“I just switched over to the reserve tank. We’ve got enough juice to fly for another fifteen minutes. After that…”
“What then?” I muttered.
“Lanzarote Airport’s radio signal is still broadcasting, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s powered by solar batteries, so the signal could replay for months. It doesn’t mean we’ll find anyone there.”
A heavy silence fell. We had no other choice.