in large numbers, especially the latter. Medical personnel and the military had suffered huge losses, since they were the first line of defense in the losing battle against TSJ. The government was trying to rebuild the military and medical corps as fast as possible, but that took time.
And that’s where we came in. Prit was one of the few surviving helicopter pilots; all the flight hours he’d logged made him invaluable. As for me, the fact that I’d spent over a year in the Wild West, as the military called areas infested with Undead, made me a seasoned veteran, able to survive in a hostile environment and look out for less experienced members of my team.
As Viena spoke, I felt the blood drain from my face. He must be fucking joking. Me? A
I politely pointed that out to Mr. Viena. And, in case he hadn’t noticed, Viktor Pritchenko, although certainly an exceptional pilot, had lost half a hand in an explosion. We weren’t who they thought we were—just two exhausted survivors who wanted to start a new life. We’d do any job they entrusted to us, but we were no soldiers. Not for all the gold in the world would we go back to that so-called Wild West. I said all this in a long speech, then sat back and studied my interviewer.
Viena sat perfectly still for a moment, staring at us. Then he cleared his throat and spoke. “Gentlemen, I think you’ve misunderstood. I’m giving you an order that comes from much higher up. If you think you can resume the orderly life you led before the Apocalypse, think again. The world has completely changed and that change affects all of us.
I grabbed Prit’s arm to stop him from leaping across the table, as the Ukrainian muttered a string of curses in Russian.
“That brings us to the next situation.” Viena nodded, deep in thought, indifferent to Prit’s reaction. “If Mr. Pritchenko voluntarily enlists in the quartermaster corps, we could… how should I put this… find a solution agreeable to all parties in the matter of the
“As for you.” Now he turned to me. “Surely you can see how much we need a person of your experience to face those monsters. Our raiding parties have been to the Wild West three or four times, tops. However, you and your friend,” he stopped to glance at my file, “survived for more than a year out there. Few of us here can say that,” he said with a smile.
I sat there in silence for a few seconds. The way he put it made sense. They had Prit by the balls; he had to accept. Just the thought of turning my back on my only friend made my stomach clench. Plus, if I didn’t accept the assignment, I had no idea how the hell I was going to survive. I’d asked around and they sure didn’t need any more lawyers.
I looked over at Prit.
“At least we’re in this together, right?” he asked, resting a hand on my shoulder.
“Of course, Prit, don’t worry,” I replied, hiding my distress, my mind racing at top speed. Back into the fucking shit.
“Great, gentlemen!” Viena clapped his hands. He quickly signed some forms and set them in front of us to sign. “After you leave here, they’ll take you to your group’s headquarters. If you have arrangements to make at home, do it right away.” He peered over his glasses. “You head to the Peninsula tomorrow. I don’t have to tell
20
That morning was unusually cold for the Canary Islands. You could still see Venus twinkling in the sky. Our group rubbed our hands and stamped our feet on the concrete floor of the Reina Sofia Airport to fight off the bitter cold.
After our meeting with Luis Viena, we only had time to rush home, grab a few personal items and say good-bye to Lucia. The worst part was telling Lucia that we’d been “drafted” and that Prit and I had to return to the Peninsula as part of a support team. In those few hours, my darling girl went through several stages of grief: anger, indignation, tears, anger. She finally accepted the situation with resignation. But, this morning, when she said good-bye, she was distant and cold. I didn’t blame her.
She actually didn’t hold me responsible for the situation, but there was a wall between us. I didn’t understand until Prit explained to me what even a blind man could see. Lucia had experienced a terrible trauma, losing all her loved ones in a very short time. Prit, Sister Cecilia, and I were all the family she had. Now, the nun was fighting for her life and we were leaving on a very risky journey. Lucia was afraid it’d be a repeat of those terrible times in Vigo. I was so thickheaded, I thought she was mad at me. What a damn fool I was! I wanted to hold her in my arms and tell her not to worry, nothing in the world could stop me from coming home, everything would be okay, but I didn’t do that when I had the chance.
The past few hours hadn’t been easy for us, either. We joined our team at the military base at Tenerife North Airport for training on the weapons we’d use on our mission.
Fifteen minutes earlier, an officer decked out in full dress uniform drove us to an empty hangar at one end of the airport. He climbed onto the hood of a URO and announced our mission. As the words came out of his mouth, I was sure I was having a horrible flashback. It had to be a cruel joke. But it was real. And fucked up. They really were sending us back to the Peninsula. To Madrid, one of the most dangerous places in Europe.
Madrid wasn’t a quiet, abandoned corner of the world. Nearly six million people had lived in the city and its suburbs before the Apocalypse. Only about fifteen thousand of the refugees on the islands were from there, so that meant Madrid would be teeming with millions of Undead, just waiting for us.
“Our objective is Safe Haven Three, one of the city’s five refuges.” The officer shouted. “Said Safe Haven withstood the Undeads’ assaults for only four days. We believe more than three quarters of a million people lost their lives there.” He cast his eyes over the group as that chilling figure sunk in.
“But you aren’t going there to tour the battlefield! The largest building inside that Safe Haven was La Paz Hospital, which housed offices, stores, cafeterias, and dormitories. Next door to it was the largest pharmaceutical warehouse in Madrid. It supplied drugs to other Safe Havens by air.” He paused. “Unfortunately, the tide of Undead thwarted that plan.”
I looked at Prit, who was as absorbed as I was in the officer’s explanations. If the reports were true, tons of drugs had been seized from the warehouses of Bayer, Pfizer, and other manufacturers nearby during the last chaotic days and must still be there. Those drugs were as important as fuel or weapons. Maybe more important. Our health care system was already shaky due to a lack of medical staff. Without those drugs, it would revert back to the eighteenth century. The situation in Tenerife’s hospitals was grim. They needed antibiotics, insulin, serums, opiates, painkillers, sedatives—the list went on and on. Supplies were running low and production wasn’t keeping up with demand. On top of that, some medicines were impossible to produce, due to the lack of materials and know-how. We had no choice. We had to go there.
The hospitals on the other islands were either infested with Undead or had already been looted by teams like ours. To make matters worse, casualties on those trips had been very high. So they’d decided to try for the jackpot—Madrid.
Before the communication systems failed, Spain and France had shared a spy satellite, Helios II. Its central control was in France, but there was a substation on the Peninsula.
After several attempts, the few surviving computer programmers finally created a replica of that substation in Tenerife. The Helios II’s cameras were now our eyes on southern Europe. The fact that they hadn’t had any problems taking control of the satellite convinced me that either France wasn’t interested or there was no one left at the helm.
Aerial images of Madrid showed that the city was intact for the most part, except for some neighborhoods that had burned to the ground. The warehouse seemed to still be standing, but who knew what we’d find when we got there?
