but they finally came to some agreement. They looked up at the same time and signaled for me to try again. This time the motor started with a powerful roar that echoed through the narrow street. They slammed the hood and raced into the van. We were ready.
Just in time. An enormous mob was pouring around the far corner. I shuddered to see that that mob had closed off all our escape routes, while the engine sounded increasingly uncertain. If I turned it off, we were done for, trapped in the tight space in the van forever.
The sight was terrifying. The street was three hundred yards long. A high brick wall on one side and the back wall of a huge warehouse on the other formed a corridor about six yards wide. At the far end of the street, near the Seguritsa gate, an armored van, crammed with seven people, sat panting after sitting for more than month and a half. The other corner of the street was packed with undead. In a word, hell.
Shots from the AK-47s had saved Pritchenko’s and my lives, but the noise they’d made had drawn all the undead around. A tidal wave of hundreds of those creatures was headed down the narrow street right for us. The motor’s backfire drew them like a moth to a flame.
The din was deafening inside the van. The four Pakistanis chattered nervously, nonstop in Urdu, pointing at the mob headed our way. Pritchenko was pale, crouched in a corner staring, beads of sweat on his forehead. I’m no shrink, but I’d guess he was recalling his last moments in the Safe Haven. This time he had nowhere to hide. Kritzinev sat next to me, pale as wax, his eyes wide as saucers; the veins on his nose stood out like a map. Seeing those things through binoculars from the safety of the
Kritzinev shook my arm, shouting fast and furious in Russian. I shrugged. I had the same panicked look on my face. I wasn’t sure what to do. You’re never prepared for something like that. I released the handbrake, put the van in first gear, and let it roll slowly toward that roiling mass that took up the whole street.
The van’s engine panted noisily as the wall of flesh, bone, and bloodlust closed in on us in the middle of the street. At a hundred yards, we saw the first undead. We could guess at the mass behind them. It was like trying to clear a path through a demonstration or drive through an audience at a concert.
My mind worked feverishly. Adrenaline and panic urged me to charge the crowd. It was an obscenely inviting idea—floor it and mow down row after row of undead and then drive someplace where no one’s ever seen those things, not even in a picture.
The rational part of my mind got me back on track right away. Charging that shambling crowd wasn’t an option. A body projected against a windshield, no matter how dead it is or how shatterproof the windshield is, was still a 150-pound bundle thrown against glass. It could do a lot of damage to a vehicle. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. A broken window in the middle of that crowd was a death sentence.
I recalled forensic reports I’d read about people struck by cars. In most cases, the victim died, but not before doing serious damage to the undercarriage, suspension, tires, and steering of the vehicle that hit him. Real life is very different from movies. Cars aren’t indestructible; they break down easily and suffer serious damage, not to mention flipping over or crashing.
We had one option, but it required cool heads. I let the van move slowly toward the crowd just twenty yards from us as I quickly explained my plan to Viktor. We’d move through the crowd, practically idling, at the speed of a person walking. I was sure we’d gently part the crowd of undead. If any of them fell under our wheels at that slow speed, I didn’t think it would do any damage, considering we weighed more than three tons. To the van, that is; damage to the fallen creatures was another story.
The downside was that we’d be surrounded by those monsters for a very long time. I speculated that they’d hit the sides and windows of the van many, many times. If it weren’t for the armor on the vehicle, we couldn’t do it.
At that moment, those mutants—hundreds of them—engulfed us. Seeing their faces plastered to the glass was deeply disturbing. I assumed it was high-security glass, impossible to punch through. Still, I shuddered every time a fist hit the windshield. They saw us clearly, and that drove them crazy. They surged toward the vehicle with a hungry look in their dead eyes. The smell of urine filled the van. Someone had pissed himself in fear. Not a surprise. It was the most terrifying experience imaginable.
Purring softly, the van slowly penetrated the crowd until we were surrounded on all sides. We’d bet it all on that card, putting our trust in the weight and the armor of our vehicle-shelter. In there we were safe and secure. For a moment, I even felt a little confident.
The dense crowd plagued us from all sides. From time to time, we felt a jolt as we ran over one of those things that didn’t move fast enough or didn’t have room to get away and ended up under our wheels. It was gut- wrenching.
I noticed my vision was blurred. I rubbed my eyes and realized I’d teared up. I was crying out of sheer terror. We were going three or four miles an hour down the middle of a huge crowd of corpses in varying degrees of decay. They were all ages and all kinds. I saw middle-aged women, young men, the elderly, children…they were the most unsettling.
A girl about eight years old, with a dark stain on her torn Bratz T-shirt and a deep cut on her head, her dirty blonde hair plastered down with blood, stayed glued my window for about ten minutes. With one hand, she gripped the rearview mirror, and with the other she hit the window, moaning furiously. Up close like that, we got a good look at her dark mouth and her pale skin, riddled with dark, broken veins. After a while she started hitting her head against the glass. She seemed frustrated to be so close yet not able to reach me. At one point I heard the
ENTRY 63
I feel better, calmer. I want to leave a written record of every moment I’ve lived through, but some situations come back so strongly, it makes me nauseous. That half-hour ride in the van is one of them.
I was talking about the little girl. After ten minutes she let go. Maybe because she got tired (do these beings get tired?) or because a huge, muscular guy about thirty years old pulled her away. That bastard was right out of a nightmare. Half his body was burned and blistered from a fire. He was missing three fingers on the hand he pounded against the windshield as he clung to the hood with the other. With each blow, he let out an inhuman bellow. He hit the windshield with such fury that after a while his arm turned into a mass of red pulp that clouded the window. The bastard finally turned loose when the truck shook and squashed one of those things. Thinking about him made my hair stand on end long afterward.
Those are just two examples. I remember twenty or thirty more and could describe them perfectly, but I just can’t face it right now. It’s too scary. Hundreds of those creatures were all around us, shouting, wailing, and beating on every inch of surface of the van. The shouting outside contrasted sharply with the deathly silence inside the van, broken only by the monotonous, guttural whisper of the Pakistanis praying in Arabic. I was amused by the idea of praying to God when we were in hell, but I kept that thought to myself.
Kritzinev, his eyes bulging, clung to his flask like a drowning man with a life preserver. From time to time, he knocked back a long, deep gulp that made his Adam’s apple bob up and down. Pritchenko was pale and scared, but behind his huge blond mustache, he calmly studied the scene. I concluded he was the only guy in that van I could rely on if I wanted out alive.
All went well for about thirty minutes. Each time the vehicle threatened to go belly up, it put the fear of God in me. If the vehicle overturned, we’d be as good as dead. Either those mutants would kill us, or we’d die of hunger and thirst in the van, surrounded by an impassable crowd of undead. The best solution would be a shot to the head. Frankly I didn’t relish ending my life in a modern-day version of Numantia. At least in 133 BC those early Iberians were fighting noble enemies, the Romans, and not some freakish undead.
Occasionally the van rocked violently as several undead were crushed at once. More than once we nearly tipped over, but we managed to continue our slow, tortuous pace. Until we reached the tunnel.
