“Whadda you think it is?” I asked trying to control the emotion in my voice.
“I’d bet my life it’s the cockpit of a helicopter,” the Ukrainian said, after a few seconds. “It’s small, just a bubble cockpit, but hell, who cares? It’s a helicopter.”
My heart was beating so hard I thought it would fly out of my chest. If we could get that bird in the air, we’d have a chance to escape this hellhole.
“Perched up there, she seems to be in one piece,” said Prit, peering into the lens. “But until we go up there, we won’t know if she’ll fly.”
“Let’s get in the building. We can knock the door down with the Centaur and then find the stairs to the roof.”
Prit thought it over and said, “We’ll barely fit between the columns on the portico, but I don’t see any another option. Okay. Buckle up and hold on tight to Sarge. This is gonna shake a lot!”
Prit gunned the engine, steered the Centaur up the sidewalk with a bounce, and drove toward the door of the Prado at full speed. When we were just a couple of feet away, I realized that the space between the columns was way too narrow, but it was too late to change course. The tank’s sides scraped against the columns with a horrible screech. The window on the right collapsed with an unearthly crash. When we rammed the door of the Prado Museum, chunks of granite the size of a washing machine had glanced off the shield on the turret, smashing it to bits.
For a few seconds, all you could hear was the patter of stones falling on the Centaur’s roof. I felt like someone had yanked my guts out my mouth and then crammed them back in. My safety harness had held me against the seat, but under my wetsuit, I had one helluva bruise on my left shoulder.
“You okay?” Pritchenko’s reassuringly calm voice came from down at my feet. The Ukrainian had unbuckled his safety harness and crawled toward the control panel.
“Just great. You?”
“I’m in one piece. Let’s get outta here before any Undead figure out we’re here.”
I raised the hatch very carefully and stuck my head out. The front half of the tank was wedged inside the museum lobby. The back half was outside, buried under a huge pile of rubble and the toppled columns. A chunk of the portico, the size of a small car, was lying next to the Centaur. If that piece of granite had fallen on us, the tank’s armor wouldn’t have saved us. We’d have been crushed to death.
The museum was cool, dark, and, most importantly, empty. There was no sign of survivors and not a fucking Undead in sight. That didn’t mean there weren’t any wandering around inside the building, but I’d bet my last cigarette no one—human or nonhuman—was in the Prado. The palatial building, with its thick stone walls and barred doors, was like a fortress. Prit and I were probably its first visitors since the quarantine was imposed.
I was relieved to see that the debris and the Centaur’s chassis blocked the front door and would keep the Undead from getting in. I threw an arm around Sergeant Fernandez’s shoulders and lifted him up.
“Come on, Sergeant, hold on just a little longer. There’s a helicopter on the roof and we’re getting out of here.”
“Save your breath,” Prit said quietly, as he opened one of the sergeant’s eyelids and looked at his pupil. “He’s dead.”
I gently settled the sergeant’s body into the driver’s seat. I remembered how he’d praised the Centaur in such glowing terms just minutes before Marcelo shot him. I had to admit that that tank was as superb as he’d said—and it had saved our lives. Now, that Centaur would be his coffin. I buttoned the collar of his blood-soaked jacket and wiped the dirt off his face. Sergeant Jonas Fernandez had been very brave and he deserved a more dignified send-off.
I took one last look at the sergeant’s body, then dragged one of the heavy backpacks out of the Centaur. Holding the other pack, Prit stood in front of the tank, a few feet from deserted ticket windows and piles of dust- covered brochures and museum guides, taking stock of the building.
“It’s a shame about this place,” Prit said pensively. “One day a fire’ll burn half the city to the ground and no one’ll be around to put it out. Everything in here will turn to ashes. It’s a damn shame.”
I stood there, silent for a moment. Then, on a whim, I sprinted into the building. Prit followed on my heels, confused.
“Where’re you going? The stairs to the roof are the other way!”
“Just a second. Hand me your knife.”
“My knife? Sure. But why?”
“I’ll only be a minute, I promise.” I grabbed Prit’s knife.
My thoughts were racing. We could never save all those paintings, but at least we could take a couple. Out of that museum’s vast collection, which ones should I take?
We came to the seventeenth-century galleries. The figures in Diego Velazquez’s masterpiece,
It depicted a garden filled with cypresses. The plaque read MEDICI GARDENS IN ROME and below that, the artist’s name, Diego Velazquez. In the background was an elegant white marble bridge with an arch in the middle, which had been carelessly boarded up. In a niche to the right, the statue of a Greek god pensively looked out at the viewer. In the foreground, some well-dressed men carried on a relaxed conversation. In his genius, the painter had captured a calm, quiet moment on a hot summer afternoon. Surrounded by majestic portraits of kings and queens who died centuries ago, that little painting stood out. It had more strength and life than the rest of the paintings in that room.
I grabbed the painting off the wall and laid it face down on a bench. Normally, that would’ve instantly triggered an alarm; a half-dozen armed guards would’ve surrounded me before I could draw a breath. Now, there was only silence as I used Prit’s knife to pop out the staples that held the canvas in the frame. I carefully rolled the painting into a tube about forty inches long and only as wide as my index finger and stuck it into the empty sheath strapped to my thigh. Then I handed Prit his knife.
“Why’d you do that?” Ukrainian asked.
“I had to. Those drugs in our backpacks are important, but this”—I helplessly pointed to the paintings around us—“this is just as important. It’s our heritage, our legacy, the sum of who we are. When this is gone, in a few months or years, a part of us will be lost forever. Civilization won’t shine quite as bright. We can’t take all of those paintings, Prit, but we can save one.”
“Okay,” sighed the Ukrainian, dragging me by the arm toward the stairs. “But if we don’t hurry, we’ll share the fate of those paintings.”
I gazed at the famous paintings one last time. Astride his rearing horse, Charles V bid us farewell with a cynical look on his face, as if he knew we were the last to walk through that room.
47
We headed up the stairs tucked behind the guard booth. It was a narrow, very dark space; the only light filtered through a dirt-covered skylight. We eased up those stairs with Prit in the lead, knife in hand.
It took both of us to push open the bulletproof glass and steel door at the top. When we walked out onto the roof, we got a real shock. As far the eye could see, tens of thousands of Undead surrounded the museum. I took a step back, my head spinning.
“My God… look at all of ‘em!”
A chorus of groans rose when the crowd saw us head for the helicopter. We knew they couldn’t reach us up there, but that sound set our teeth on edge.
We rushed around checking out the helicopter. It was painted white with no markings except for the registration number on its tail. That told us nothing about its owner or why or when he landed there, but there was no time to investigate. If he was dead, he didn’t need it. If he was alive, well…he shouldn’t have left the keys
