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.
There were thirty bullets in the HK’s magazine and I had two more magazines clipped to my belt. I made mental calculations again and realized it was impossible for me to stop that Unhuman tide. Or even slow it down.
I had less than a hundred bullets against more than two hundred creatures. If that weren’t bad enough, I’d only fired the weapon a couple of times. A few days ago, in a field, the Ukrainian had given me a crash course. I wasn’t a great shot to begin with, even worse at that distance. I’d mostly taken the Undead out in hand-to-hand combat with a considerable amount of luck.
“What the fuck’re you doing?” Lucia yelled. “Shoot! God dammit! Shoot!” That girl could swear like a truck driver, especially when she was scared.
“Please! Stop them!” Sister Cecilia’s voice joined in, panicked.
Panic was creeping through me, cold and secretive. Time seemed to stand still. I couldn’t think clearly. Despite my friends’ cries, I stayed there on one knee, stiff as a board, in the middle of the runway. Suddenly, one of the Undead, a tall, middle-aged guy wearing shorts and a faded T-shirt, bumped into his neighbor and fell flat on his face. One of his flip-flops was long gone and his bare foot was completely destroyed from being dragged on the ground. At that moment, I saw every detail in sharp focus: the white bone sticking out of the guy’s foot; the sun shining in the distance; the delicate scent of decay blowing in on the wind; blades of grass shyly poking up through a crack in the pavement next to my knee…
“SHOOT!” Prit roared, red in the face, the veins in his neck about to explode, as he pumped the lever like a man possessed.
That shook me out of my trance. I lined up the sight the way the Ukrainian taught me, adjusted it to its maximum magnification, and aimed at the crowd, letting my mind go totally blank.
Through the sight, I saw that sea of monstrous faces as clearly as if they were right in front of me. Men, women, children, young and old, high class and low class, all with a sinister glow in their eyes. Those dead eyes filled me with dread and raised the hair on the back of my neck. On a dive years ago, I saw that same dark, detached look up close—in the eyes of a gray shark.
My first shot was high; it wasn’t even close to the Undead I was aiming at. The next several shots were on target, and four bodies lay limp on the runway. In that lapse of time, the Undead had advanced another hundred feet and were closing in. Seized with panic, I realized I could only bring down a handful of them, at most, before they were on top of us. Unconsciously I began to pray while I was shooting.
A cough came from the hose connected to the pump, then a series of clangs echoed from under the ground, and finally the pungent smell of benzene filled the air. The tank was open. A jet of fuel leaped from the mouth of the hose lying on the ground and stained the runway.
Pritchenko let out a wild cry of joy, while Lucia happily patted his back, but then his cry quickly died in his throat. In seconds, the jet of fuel went from a strong stream to a trickle and then nothing.
“That can’t be,” he muttered. “That just can’t be!”
“Lucia!” I heard him shout, as I replaced the magazine in my rifle. “Tell me what the pressure gauge says when I press this lever! Ready?” The Undead were within five hundred feet.
“Anytime, Prit!” Lucia yelled.
When the Ukrainian pressed a lever, a shrill whistle rang out as air that smelled of fuel wafted out of the pump.
“What does the dial say?” screamed Prit. “Tell me what it says!”
