chopper’s belly, and headed for the Canary Islands, where they thought they’d find vestiges of humanity. They had just one goal. To survive.
1
“Prit! Prit! Can you hear me?” I asked. “You crazy Ukrainian,” I cursed under my breath. The damn intercom had cut out for the third time since we took off from Vigo. I grabbed a bracket on the wall as the heavy helicopter hit another pocket of hot air and lurched. Unfazed, Prit steered through it at top speed. Though Prit couldn’t hear me through the intercom, I could hear him happily humming his dreadful rendition of James Brown’s “I Feel Good.”
I set Lucullus in his carrier. I envied the way that orange ball of fur could fall asleep, oblivious to the roar of the engines. How the hell could he stand it? Even muffled by our helmets, the noise was driving me crazy after five days straight. Cats can adapt to anything, I guess.
I peered behind me into the passenger cabin. Sister Cecilia was belted in tight, praying in a monotone voice as she slowly fingered her rosary. In her spotless habit and huge red helmet, the little nun was quite a sight, marred only by her slightly green face and her worried look every time the helicopter hit some turbulence. Flying didn’t sit well with the nun, but she’d been stoic, not complaining once.
Lucia was sound asleep, stretched out in the front seat, a vision even in frayed shorts and a tight, oil-stained T-shirt (she’d gotten dirty helping Prit at our last stop). I brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, trying not to wake her.
I sighed. My feelings for that girl created a big problem and I didn’t know how to resolve it. Over the last five days, Lucia and I had been stuck together like glue. I couldn’t deny that I was deeply attracted to her olive skin, long legs, her curves, and cat eyes, but I was trying to keep my cool. For starters, it wasn’t the time or place for an affair. And then there was the age difference. She was a seventeen-year-old kid and I was a thirty-year-old man. A thirteen-year difference was no small thing.
Lucia moved in her sleep and muttered something I couldn’t make out. The look of pleasure on her face made me swallow. I needed some air.
I inched down the narrow corridor connecting the cargo bay with the cockpit and dropped into the seat beside Pritchenko. The Ukrainian turned, flashed a big smile, and handed me his thermos. I took the thermos and knocked back a long drink. Tears filled my eyes and I coughed, trying to catch my breath. That coffee was about fifty percent vodka.
“Coffee with a kick.” The Ukrainian snatched the thermos out of my hands and chugged half its contents. He didn’t even blink. Then he pounded on his chest and belched loudly. “Much better for flying.” He passed the thermos back to me. “Yes sir. Much better.” He smacked his lips, satisfied. A big smile spread across his face. “In Chechnya, my squadron drank our vodka straight… but it was colder there,” he said with a laugh.
I shook my head. Prit was a lost cause. Inside the hot cockpit, the Ukrainian was shirtless, drenched with sweat. He was wearing worn fatigues, a huge black cowboy hat he’d found in a bar, and green mirrored sunglasses. His imposing mustache was the only part of his face I could actually see. He reminded me of a character in
There was no doubt that Prit was an impressive pilot. In Vigo, he managed to get that chopper into the air, even though it was loaded down with tons of fuel in its tank and several more in drums hanging under its belly.
Images of that trip played over and over in my mind. Every day, we grasped the true scope of the Apocalypse. And what we saw convinced us that human civilization had gone to hell.
The first few hours were the worst. As we’d headed south along the coast of Portugal just a few hundred feet in the air, we gazed slack-jawed at the widespread chaos and desolation.
The light caught our attention first. The air was unusually clear, almost transparent since factories had been closed for months and no cars were polluting it. If it weren’t for the smell of rotting flesh and trash all around, you’d have thought you were in an untouched wilderness from five thousand years ago. One look at the stiffs walking around everywhere shattered that illusion.
The highways were completely impassable. The twisted remains of cars dotted the pavement every few miles, and monstrous pileups often blocked the road entirely. We even saw a couple of collapsed viaducts and highways completely covered by landslides. An especially steep stretch of the highway that linked Oporto to Lisbon had become a wild, raging stream several miles long. Water from a broken dam flowed freely, creating little peaks of foam as it careened against reefs made from the remains of cars.
Nature was slowly reclaiming her terrain. Proud human constructions, wondrous feats of engineering, were slowly being devoured by weeds, water, earth, and whatever else God put in their way.
A crackling in the helmet’s intercom yanked me out of my daydream and back to the Sahara. The fucking radio had decided to work again.
“The fuel tank is almost empty.” Prit’s voice sounded metallic in my ears. “I’m going to take a pass over this area. Look for a good place to land.”
The other pit stops had gone reasonably well, but we couldn’t be too careful. I had to remember what happened the day before.
2
In a God-forsaken place between Portugal and Extremadura, a desolate region in western Spain, Prit landed the helicopter in a parking lot next to a roadside diner. The entire expanse of cement was empty except for a rusty Volkswagen SUV and a Fiat hatchback with four flat tires. The restaurant looked abandoned and lonely, its neon sign covered by a year’s worth of dust.
As it landed, the Sokol kicked up a huge cloud of dust and sand. Before it could settle, Prit and I jumped out of the chopper, pistols in hand, our hearts in our throats, peering desperately through that ragged cloud for Undead staggering around the area.
After we made sure the parking lot was deserted, my heart quit racing. When the Sokol’s engines were turned off, a deathly silence spread over the parking lot. There wasn’t a single sound, not even birds chirping. The roar of the helicopter must’ve frightened them all off. Or maybe there were no fucking birds left in the area.
For a moment, I got the uneasy feeling we were the last people left on the face of the earth. Just then Lucullus got spooked and let out a strange meow that woke me out of my trance.
Pritchenko and Lucia ran over to the helicopter’s transport net, unhooked it, and folded it back, revealing the yellow drums filled with jet fuel. Pushing aside the empties, the Ukrainian rolled a full drum up to the helicopter. With a flick of his wrist, he popped the cap open and inserted a rubber hose, connected the other end to the Sokol’s tank, and let the fuel flow into the bird.
During the few minutes it took to fill the tank, we were extremely vulnerable. With the chopper on the ground, its cargo net open and highly flammable liquid pumping into its tank, a fast takeoff was out of the question. If any Undead had showed up, we’d have been screwed.
After making sure nothing was moving in the area, I motioned to Prit that I was going to grab a cigarette. All I found while scrounging around in the cabin were a couple of squashed, damp Camels. That pissed me off. We’d taken plenty of supplies and medicine from the hospital, but we were running really low on smokes.
I gazed over at the restaurant at the far end of the parking lot: dubious. It was a dive, but I’d have bet a million euros there was a cigarette machine by the door. The place looked deserted, so I decided to check it out.
Before I headed for the restaurant, I turned to tell everyone I was going. Prit and Lucia had their backs to me and were in a heated debate about how to stack the empty drums in the net. Sister Cecilia was taking a quick
