It wasn’t really a tunnel, but a passageway under an intersection. I remembered driving through it on the way to a meeting. It was three hundred yards long and very narrow, with a lot of support beams. And black as midnight. I didn’t know what was inside. If it was blocked, I’d have to back out in the dark with that crowd around me. I’d probably crash into a beam, and we’d be stuck there forever with a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving. I wouldn’t go in there even if Kritzinev held a gun to my chest.
So I told Pritchenko to translate that to Kritzinev. While Viktor talked, I watched the first officer’s reaction out of the corner of my eye. He shrugged and mumbled something in Russian, not taking his eyes off the crowd howling around us, pounding on the windows nonstop. Kritzinev was too out of it to make a decision. I gave the orders here. That made me feel more confident—maybe too confident.
If we didn’t drive through the tunnel, we’d have to use the overpass that was just two hundred yards away. The crowd had thinned out a little. For the last mile or so, we’d been able to speed up. We were driving on wider streets, dodging abandoned vehicles. That worked in our favor. Our pursuers had to maneuver around those obstacles. That slowed them down and gave us some time before they reached us. But they’d catch up with us in a few minutes.
We drove onto the overpass until we came to the middle of the bridge.
I braked hard. Across the middle of the road was a car crashed into some concrete blocks that had once been a roadblock. Some poor devil had driven too fast, fleeing God knows what, and been hurled into those blocks, wrecking his car. There were bloodstains around the chassis and the footprints of someone or something who’d splashed through puddles getting away from the car. If the guy had survived the accident, he soon suffered something truly horrible.
Kritzinev shook off his stupor when he discovered we weren’t surrounded by all those undead. He roared something to Viktor, who rushed to translate for me. “Ram that abandoned car,” that thug said. I shook my head. I told him he’d seen too many movies. It would destroy our van. He roared again, getting red in the face, spewing frothy saliva, screaming, choking. A drunk, scared, angry Ukrainian is a sight to see. That Ukrainian was calling me names that were anything but pretty. Viktor deftly edited out the worst parts and told me to change seats with Shafiq. He’d take the wheel.
I don’t make a habit of arguing with someone pointing a gun at my chest, so I gave my seat to Shafiq. In the process of switching seats in that narrow cabin, he and I got all tangled up. I ended up sitting in the middle seat of the van, with Shafiq on one side and Kritzinev on the other. I barely had time to turn around and tell Viktor to hold on tight, then turn back around. I fastened my seat belt just in time.
The Pakistani floored it and launched the three-ton van against the abandoned car, like a ram butting its head against a wall. I braced myself against the dashboard. The impact was terrible. I figured someone in back was thrown forward violently. There was a hard blow against the partition, followed by a long howl of pain.
I didn’t have time to find out what had happened. Putting the van in reverse, Shafiq disengaged from the wrecked car, which had moved about twenty inches to one side, and rammed it again. I held on tight as the heavy van lurched forward.
This time, the blow was accompanied by the sound of iron grating against concrete. The car spun around like a top, leaving a space open. Shafiq let out an excited shriek that drowned in his throat a second later. In the impact, the van veered to the left and skidded against the railing of the bridge. With a nasty crunch, the heavy vehicle splintered the aluminum railing and hung for a second from the bridge’s parapet, swaying. After a few agonizing seconds, the van fell twenty feet to the pavement.
Most trials involving traffic accidents have something in common: the injured parties narrate the incident in great detail. They say, “It felt like everything happened in slow motion.” It had always sounded like a cliche before, but when the Seguritsa van skidded out of control toward the railing, I experienced that feeling firsthand.
The aluminum railing tore like paper when the van skidded into it. One of the tires exploded as it ran over an uprooted post. Sparks flew off the concrete as the van swept along the bridge, dragging fifteen feet of the railing. It struck one of the concrete beams and came to a stop, swaying, its rear end suspended in the air.
The van stayed in that position for just a few seconds. It felt like time stopped. Slowly, it started to tilt backward under the enormous weight of its armor plating. I tried to reach over a dazed Shafiq to open the door, but it was too late. With a creak and the gut-wrenching sound of scraping metal, the van slid into the void.
The impact was mind-blowing. The van fell on its rear end from a height of twenty feet. When it hit the road, there was a massive crash of crushed metal and broken glass. It slid sideways, then came to rest on its roof in a thick cloud of smoke and dust.
For a couple of minutes, I hung upside down, strapped to my seat, too stunned to react. Colored lights flashed before my eyes, and there was a ringing in my ears. When I finally tried to move, I felt a heart-stopping whiplash. We’d fallen backward, and the rear of the van had absorbed most of the impact, but the front of the van had taken a brutal hit too. The seat where Kritzinev and I sat had come loose and been thrown against the bulkhead. The iron bolts that anchored it had absorbed most of the impact and been twisted beyond recognition, so he and I were miraculously unhurt.
I couldn’t say the same of the other occupants of the van. Shafiq was unconscious. His head had flopped to one side, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. In the rear compartment someone was screaming in pain. Along with the urine smell there was now the stench of vomit and blood. I had to get out of there.
Slowly moving my arm, I felt for the end of my belt and released the latch. Then I crawled over the unconscious body of Shafiq and pressed the button to open the door. When the lock on the driver’s-side door clicked open, I felt a profound relief. I couldn’t imagine how I’d have forced open that armored door, which was seriously dented by the crash. I placed both hands on the door frame, got some momentum going, and pulled myself out of the vehicle. I stood on top of the wreck to take a look around.
It was a disturbing scene. The van had folded like an accordion in back, reducing its length by about a third. The right front wheel was missing, and fuel was leaking out in a growing puddle. The road we’d fallen on to didn’t intersect the one we’d come from or any other road I could see. It was deserted, but it wouldn’t be for long.
Gravel fell next to me, pinging against the van. I looked up and saw a half dozen undead leaning into the gap we’d left in our wake. They seemed stymied by our being on a different level from them. For now, they weren’t jumping down, but I didn’t know how long that would last. We had to hurry.
Kritzinev was dragging himself out of the van, his eyes clouded over, a deep gash on his right arm. A guy his age and physical condition wasn’t up for this. For a second I felt sorry for him. Then I remembered the smug look on that bastard’s face when the sailor almost strangled Lucullus.
I let him struggle out of the cab on his own. I went to the side door and pulled the handle, praying it would open. The handle turned, and I pulled the heavy door open. The sight was terrifying. One of the Pakistanis lay on the floor, his neck at an unnatural angle; blood poured from a deep gash in his forehead. He was dead. His brains were splattered against the barrier window. That explains the vomit I smelled.
Another Pakistani, Usman, was holding his arm, screaming like a madman. It had broken in the crash, and splintered bone protruded through his skin. It looked like he had another joint between his elbow and wrist. That must’ve hurt like a son of a bitch. The last Pakistani, Waqar, was still strapped in his seat. He didn’t look hurt but his mouth was bleeding profusely.
Pritchenko was struggling to get out of his seat. That lucky SOB. Several money bags had cushioned his fall. The little Ukrainian was floating in a sea of fifty-euro bills, making that the most expensive airbag in the world. He just had a bump the size of an egg in the middle of his forehead. He gave me a big, toothy smile. Now he really did look like a cartoon character.
There was no time to stop and admire the scenery. We got Usman and Waqar out of the backseat. Viktor then helped a still dazed Shafiq out of the driver’s seat.
After a couple of minutes we headed downtown. Pritchenko carried the dead Pakistani’s AK-47, and I carried the gun belonging to the guy with the broken arm. But we were just porters. Kritzinev had ordered them to take out the ammo.
The light was fading. The place would be packed with undead as soon as they found a way to reach the road. After we’d walked for ten minutes in the heart of that ghost town, we realized we couldn’t go any farther. Waqar’s mouth was still bleeding, and he was getting weaker. The rest of us were dead tired and stiff. We needed some rest. Kritzinev was the first to spot the little shop.
It was a small neighborhood grocery store. Someone had rammed a massive armored personnel carrier into the door and then looted it. Piled up around the store were dozens of rotting corpses, all shot in the head. Someone
