I thought for a few seconds. “We’re here, so head for Lanzarote Airport in Arrecife. It’s our only option.”
The Ukrainian nodded and tilted the heavy Sokol to the left, following the signal.
5
For six or seven minutes, we skimmed the rooftops in Arrecife. Before the epidemic it was a city of about fifty thousand, but we didn’t spot anyone on the streets.
It looked about like all the other cities we’d seen along our relentless journey, except for one thing: There were no signs of fighting, no pileups of abandoned cars, no buildings burned to the ground, or any other sign of the Apocalypse. The public gardens, although in ruins and wild, didn’t look like a jungle like other parks had after being abandoned for over a year. The streets were dirty, but there were no large piles of trash and debris and no papers fluttering around. The city looked like it was asleep, like any early Sunday morning. I almost expected to see a delivery truck filled with newspapers drive around a corner.
“There!” Lucia yelled. “On that plaza, in between those two green buses!”
Everyone looked where she was pointing. I swallowed hard. Just then two men stepped out of one of those buses. One was dressed in the uniform of the Spanish Legion. The other looked like an important dignitary in his forties, wearing a suit and tie, his hair tousled. They walked along as if they were two friends, chatting, oblivious to the roar of the Sokol overhead. Perfectly normal, except that the civilian was missing half his face and the legionnaire’s chest was crusted with blood.
They were Undead.
The epidemic had landed on that plaza.
I punched one of the helicopter’s struts as Prit let out a stream of Russian cuss words. Stunned, Lucia watched those two guys through her binoculars, unable to believe her eyes. Sister Cecilia had resumed praying to her rosary in a monotonous, broken voice. The old nun’s face radiated a strange peace. She was well aware we had a few hours of life left—at best—and she was settling her accounts, preparing to greet God… which would be soon, if we didn’t come up with a plan.
“Something’s wrong with this picture. The city is devastated, sure, but there’re no signs of struggle!” I shouted over the noise of the rotors. “Take a good look! There are very few Undead on the streets, a few dozen at most!”
“He’s right!” Prit was shouting, too. “The city looks like it was emptied out in an orderly fashion! I’d bet my last bottle of vodka those Undead down there came from somewhere else, after the city was evacuated!”
“That would explain why there’re so few of them. It doesn’t explain where everyone went or why they evacuated the city.”
“Or where those Undead came from,” Lucia added, grimly.
We were lost in our thoughts as the helicopter covered the last few miles to the airport. When I cocked my rifle, everyone flinched. Questions about what we’d find there raced through my mind. Though I was sweating hard, a shiver ran down my back. Before we arrived at the airport, I headed to the back of the cabin and struggled into my worn, patched wetsuit (some of the repairs looked like scars, mementos of past incidents), with a lot of grunts and contortions. By the time I’d gotten it on, the Sokol’s shadow was gliding down the runway at Lanzarote Airport.
“Look at that!” Prit said, pointing to the control tower. “There must’ve been some kind of dust up there!”
The control tower was demolished, scorched by smoke and flames. Piles of rubble and broken glass lay at its feet. The gaping holes in the windows at the top looked like cavities. The tower looked like it had been burned intentionally, not by a wildfire. The rest of the terminal gleamed in the midday sun, unscathed. Four small planes were slowly falling apart where they’d been abandoned. They were emblazoned with the name BINTER, the airline that had once linked all the islands.
At the end of the runway, a huge 747 lay on its side, its nose buried in a mountain of sand. It was painted white with the words TALA AIRWAYS written across the fuselage and tail in huge, red, block letters. I had no idea where that company was licensed. The colors could’ve been European, or Asian. Probably a charter airline. Lanzarote’s runway was clearly too short for that mastodon of the air to land, so when it touched down, it couldn’t stop and had skidded on its side off the runway.
But I saw no wreckage anywhere. The scene was scrupulously tidy, as if after that plane’s spectacular landing, someone had collected all the debris and cleaned up the area. As the Sokol flew its last lap, running on fumes, I could tell that parts of the plane, such as the flaps, had been carefully removed.
“Cannibalized,” Prit said softly over the intercom.
“Whadda you mean?”
“Cannibalized. In Chechnya, we had problems getting parts and supplies sometimes, especially when the Mujahideen learned how to use anti-aircraft missiles. To keep at least some of our planes in the air, we salvaged parts from damaged planes and used them in the planes we could fly.” He paused. “Cannibalized,” the Ukrainian said softly, as he focused on setting the Sokol down next to the airport’s fuel tanks.
A couple of minutes later, the helicopter landed smoothly. The hum of propellers trailed off when Prit shut down the engines. I immediately jumped out and ran toward one of the fuel trucks I’d seen from the air. As I got close to it, I felt my heart clench like a fist. That truck had been “cannibalized” too. All four wheels were gone and it rested on concrete blocks. Its hood was wide open, revealing a gaping hole where the motor had been. I knew right away that the gas tank would be as dry as the Sahara Desert.
I turned to Prit, but he and Lucia were running toward a small metal fence that surrounded what looked like a fuel pump. The Ukrainian shook the gate that was fastened with a simple padlock. He took a couple of steps back, got a running start, and let fly a powerful kick that destroyed the lock with a loud crunch. The gate hung off its hinges at an odd angle, leaving a gap just big enough for Lucia to slip through like an eel.
The Ukrainian shouted out rapid-fire commands as he struggled to connect a hose to the mouth of the fuel pump. “Press that lever. No, the other way! You’ve gotta push the button to purge the system. Not that one, the one next to it!”
I ran up to them to help but stopped short. A couple of wobbly figures, silhouetted in the distance, were making their way out of the terminal building. Behind them, dozens more sprang out of several doors, all focused on the four survivors, oblivious to the approaching danger as they struggled to connect a hose.
“We’ve got company!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
I’d heard that phrase in dozens of Hollywood movies. When the heroes said it in the heat of battle, it sounded confident, manly and strong, but to my ears, it sounded like the shrill screech of a terrified eunuch.
Lucia and Prit looked up, startled, and stepped up their efforts to start the pump. I set one knee down on the blazing hot ground and shifted my rifle off my shoulder.
I calculated the chances we’d make it out of this. I’m no math whiz, but I quickly realized there was no way we could fill the Sokol’s tank before that crowd reached us. For a moment I thought I’d piss myself.
What the hell. It was as good a day as any to die. At least we’d go down swinging.
My hands were sticky with sweat. Behind me I heard Prit and Lucia struggling to start up the pump manually since there was no electricity to run the motor. The nun had joined them, willing, as always, to lend a hand, but there was so little space inside the fence and she just got in the way. I understood perfectly why she was there. I wouldn’t want to be alone as those harbingers of death closed in.
I had my own problems. The Undead wobbled unswervingly down the runway toward us, dragging their feet. We were about fifteen hundred feet from the terminal, a considerable distance for those creatures to cover, so we had a little time. But it wasn’t enough to get the fuel pump running and load the fuel into the Sokol’s tank.