Everything in the hospital was covered with sand. It wasn’t the kind of place you’d want to come to for help. There were sandbags in the windows and glass crunched underfoot as Santiago and Zeller walked around the room opening cabinets and drawers.
I felt it all over again, the resistance and the hop of the weapon as it hit Michael in the face. I’d tried not to hurt him. He’d be fine. Just a bloody nose, maybe even broken, but nothing serious.
I lay low in the bathtub, my eyes closed, listening to Santiago and Zeller talking about our next steps. They were laughing about the absurdity of everything we’d tried so far.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to leave,” said Zeller.
“But we can’t stay,” replied Santiago.
Then we could hear other voices. I couldn’t understand the language, but it was clear that we weren’t alone in the building.
“Easy,” Santiago said. “Stay down, Stantz.”
And then it was as if the world broke open from beneath us. And just as quickly it stopped.
Santiago leaned on the bathtub. He held a hand to his neck, but blood leaked out between his fingers, dropping on my lips and nose. I tasted blood as I tried to wipe it away.
“We’ve got to move,” he said. Zeller and I helped him to a table, where Zeller applied our last compound press to the wound. Santiago’s neck was a mess of flesh and muscle, but somehow the dark and serious veins were intact.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Santiago said, choking out the words. He was brightening the bandage quickly. He walked out of the room, leaving everything but his weapon. He left it all in a pile on the floor. I didn’t want to carry it either. Nor did I want to leave it behind. Under no circumstances did I want them to know who we were. I looked at the bag for what seemed like a long time, but then I heard Santiago and Zeller going down the stairs and hurried after them, stepping over the two bodies in the hall.
We looked at the compass and decided to head toward the ocean. We knew it couldn’t be far. A few people sat in doorways and gathered around fires that were burning in the streets. I couldn’t understand why anyone would possibly want to have a fire in this heat.
Then we came out onto a long boulevard. Bushes and trees had sprouted in the middle of it. Everything was the color of sand, the color of the desert, even at night. A woman emptied what looked to be a bowl of piss and shit on the side of the desolate street. She watched vacantly as we passed.
SEVEN
I WALKED POINT FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE HOURS. THEN we stepped over a sand dune and there was the sea, murmuring before us. Exhausted, we stood on the crest of the dune and looked back to make sure we hadn’t been followed. There was nothing there.
The moon was a slit in the night, and there were stars everywhere. Dawn couldn’t be more than a few hours off. For a moment my thoughts turned to Cooper, back in the hotel.
We collapsed into the sand. We were out of food and water. Santiago and Zeller checked their ammunition and discovered that they were on their last magazine. We divided up what remained, leaving us three full magazines each.
The wind was cool coming in off the ocean. I had goose bumps all over my body, but I was still on fire. I looked down at the shore, thick with foam.
“I guess we should just follow the coast out of the city,” Santiago said. “Eventually we’ll come across something. And besides, the helicopter pilots like to fly up and down the coast. One of them is bound to see us.”
It was true. In fact, I’d learned to fire a .50 caliber gun from a helicopter just a few weeks before as we flew along the edge of the ocean. When the crew chief tapped me on the back, I fired into the waves. Then we turned to fly back, following the same course, and Cooper fired out the opposite window.
We followed the coastline north, walking up from the shore only when rocks or other debris obstructed our path. After some time we came across what appeared to be a vast, abandoned shipping yard. There were old Russian fighter planes hulking in the darkness.
An old ship, half-submerged, peered at us from the ocean. It was the largest ship I’d ever seen, probably a tanker of some kind. I couldn’t imagine a ship like that ever having been new. It looked as if it had been built to be abandoned.
We wandered around the rusting machinery until we found ourselves at the end of a pier, then turned back to look for a way out of this place. Finally, we found a road that looked to lead back down to the beach. When it switched back under the docks, we left the road and walked back onto the sand. The sand felt softer and deeper on that side of the pier, and in no time I could feel it draining the energy from my body.
We walked down to where the ocean rolled up and hardened the sand. My feet and pants were soon soaked. As we walked we passed a series of ramshackle dwellings; there were no lights on in any of them.
There was no end in sight. As we walked I tried not to panic. I considered giving up and sitting down where I was. Let the Army find me, I thought. Let them come to our rescue. They were probably rolling toward us even now, the heavy machinery humming, guns at the ready. They had to be coming, didn’t they?
We came upon the dead end of a road that came right down to the shore. At its end we
