Jaime didn’t remember how he’d gotten to the airport or where he’d come from or where he was going. His tattered clothes suggested he’d been in that state for several months. Nasty burns on his right arm indicated that, at some point, he’d gotten too close to a fire. Those burns would’ve been extremely painful if he were still human. But Jaime didn’t feel anything, not even the huge gash in his right thigh, which caused him to limp, where an Undead had bitten him. That bite had been his ticket to Avernus, the entrance to the underworld —hell.
Although Jaime couldn’t talk or reason, he could still feel basic emotions: hunger, excitement, and anger. A wave of anger mixed with desire and a ferocious appetite washed over him every time a living being crossed his path. Especially if it was human.
They were the tastiest prey. They ran around, screaming every time they saw Jaime or his companions in that nightmare. Some managed to escape. Some shattered an Undead’s head into a thousand pieces with the metal and fire instruments they held in their hands. But they were the exception. Most didn’t stand a chance.
Jaime had no idea how many humans he’d hunted since he’d become an Undead. He didn’t know that lodged in each lung was a bullet that should’ve caused respiratory failure. He didn’t know his appearance terrified humans—his long wind-blown hair, his shorts and Hawaiian shirt stiff with blood (some of it his, some of it human), his skin riddled with burst veins, and especially his lost, hate-filled glare.
Jaime didn’t know who was walking beside him; he probably wasn’t even aware they were there. All he knew was that he’d been wandering aimlessly inside that building when a sound from the sky had drawn him outside like iron filings to a magnet. Now, there were a handful of humans just ahead of him, running away, like they always did. Every cell in his body moaned with the desire to feel that warm, living, pulsing flesh, to grab it, bite it, chew it, feel that warm blood flowing into his mouth…
That was what gave meaning to his life—or rather, his non-life.
Jaime could see at least four people. Two of them looked more fragile (Jaime didn’t remember the difference between man and woman). They were almost at the foot of the tall building. Another one was dodging a group of Undead, with a small, furry, orange animal jumping wildly around his legs. The last human, a little guy, with a bushy, blond mustache and cold blue eyes, walked backward slowly, never taking his eyes off Jaime’s group. From time to time he lifted that metal thing to his face and a flame came out of the end of it with a bang. Jaime’s dead brain didn’t know what that flame was but he feared it.
Every time there was a burst of that flame, something whizzed past Jaime’s head with a painfully loud buzz, followed by a crack. Then splinters of bone and blood went flying, and one of the Undead fell to the ground but didn’t get back up. But that didn’t matter to him. Nothing mattered. He just wanted to get his hands on those beings and feel their living warmth.
The two smaller humans had reached the gates at the foot of the tower and were trying to clear away the debris blocking them. They were soon joined by the man with the little orange animal. The smaller man was just a few steps from Jaime’s group. He’d already picked up that man’s pungent, warm, alive, human smell.
Again, the small man raised that piece of metal, but this time there was no flash, just a click. For a moment the man stared at the metal thing; then he threw it with a furious shout at Jaime’s group and ran like hell for the tower.
The humans at the foot of the tower formed sounds with their mouths, something that Jaime and the other Undead could no longer do. Jaime didn’t understand those sounds, but they fueled his hunting instincts even more. The whole group of Undead picked up their pace.
When his group reached the tower, it was sealed off by a heavy metal door. Under normal circumstances, a door like that would’ve been an insurmountable obstacle for Jaime and his companions, but this one had been breached by an explosion from inside and didn’t fit snugly in the door frame.
Succumbing to his anger, Jaime beat on the metal door with all his strength. The crowd of Undead around him had the same goal and had nearly flattened him against the door. A single idea ran around and around in his brain, like a warped bicycle wheel: gotta get to them… gotta get to them… gotta get to them…
The warped door didn’t hold up long as the crowd pressed in against it. With a gut-wrenching screech, the door gave way and crashed to the ground. The path was clear.
Since he was in front, Jaime was one of the first to rush up the stairs that led to the top of the tower. He knew those humans were up there. He could feel them.
The feet of dozens of Undead echoed in the stairwell as they climbed in a mad rush, toward their prize. On the next step, Jaime nearly fell flat on his face when he collided with one of the humans. It was a guy in puzzlingly slippery clothes. He’d planted himself at the bottom of the next flight of stairs and aimed a strange set of sticks at him. The former Jaime would have recognized it as a spear gun.
That spear gun fired with a hiss. Jaime felt a piece of metal pierce the bone in his forehead and sink deep into his brain. Neither he nor his rival knew that when the tip of the spear reached his cerebellum, Jaime would feel pain for the first time in months. The pain spread through his body in waves, fueling his anger. He extended his arms toward that human, but he couldn’t take a step. He saw the ground rising fast but didn’t register that he was falling until his head hit the concrete landing.
He could see the guy cast a scared look at the crowd pursuing him then retreated to the upper floor. He could still detect the feet of the other Undead passing by, oblivious to him as they continued after their prey. But soon the world began to fade as darkness slowly flooded every corner of Jaime’s mind. After a moment, the unquenchable fury he’d felt all those months receded the way the ocean retreats from the shore.
In the last millisecond of his existence, Jaime once again knew who he was. Before his life was extinguished forever, he finally felt a sense of relief.
And peace.
The tower was cool and dark inside, a welcome change from the suffocating heat on the runway. When I reached the double doors where Sister Cecilia and Lucia waited, I stopped to catch my breath. My lungs had felt like they would burst as I raced a thousand feet stuffed into a wetsuit like a sausage. All those sedentary months in the basement of Meixoeiro Hospital had taken a toll. Lucullus, meanwhile, was hopping all around me, clearly glad to be out of his jail cell.
I watched Prit advance slowly down the runway, his back to me, his eyes glued to the Undead closing in on him. Every few seconds, he stopped, took careful aim, and fired with amazing success. Bodies of the Undead dotted the runway like a string of pearls, as pools of their blood dried in the sun. But each time he stopped to shoot, he gave up a few feet of ground and the remaining horde was gaining on him.
Suddenly, Prit’s face creased with worry—he was out of ammunition. Enraged, he flung his HK at the Undead and took off as fast as his bowed legs could carry him.
I turned to the nun and Lucia, who were struggling to reset the metal doors that an explosion had ripped from their frame.
“Come on,” I cried. “We gotta get that door in place or we’re screwed!”
“Stop talking, Mr. Lawyer, and give us a fucking hand!” snapped Lucia.
Chastened, I lifted one of the warped doors and brushed off the debris covering it. I was sweating buckets, cursing under my breath, as I struggled to set the door in its frame and shore it up. Lucia and Sister Cecilia were urging Prit on at the top of their lungs, as he ran down the runway as if the devil were on his tail. You could probably hear their damn screams all over the island. When the monsters heard all that yelling, they moved faster despite their wobbly gate.
Pritchenko finally reached us and shot through the gap between the two doors as if he were a mortar round, crashing into a pile of rubble behind us.
“You hurt, Prit?” I shouted, as I braced the door with a concrete girder.
