Manel Loureiro - Dark Days

Holy Christ! The whole thing was over in a flash—fifteen seconds, tops.

I inched up the wall and got to my feet, never taking my eyes off that Undead thing. As always after a fight like that, my stomach was in knots, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I tried to light a cigarette, but my hands were trembling so much, I couldn’t flick the wheel of the lighter, so I gave up.

I staggered out of the bathroom, with the bitter taste of vomit in my mouth, feeling the adrenaline coursing through me. I’d never get used to killing one of those creatures. I felt sick every time, even though I knew they weren’t alive. Every time my life was in danger, terror paralyzed me. And every night, for so many months, horrible nightmares were my bed companions.

I wasn’t the only one. Lucia tossed and turned at night, fleeing the nightmares that hounded her. Prit would wake up suddenly with a crazed look in his eyes. He’d stare blankly into space for hours, then knock back the better part of a bottle of vodka. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I must’ve had the same expression on my face. No one had gotten more than five hours of sleep for months.

I finally managed to light a cigarette and bolted out the door. I squinted in the sunlight, disoriented for a moment. I turned toward the Sokol, whose huge blades were slowly tracing large circles in the air. From the copilot window, Lucia was scrutinizing me, as Pritchenko checked all the fluids before taking off.

I dragged my feet through the dust as I walked back to the helicopter. Lucia watched me with a piercing gaze. She must’ve guessed what had happened. I was exhausted and emotionally drained. That little episode was a summary of what my life had become—a nightmare that never let up.

“Come in! Dabai! Dabai! Do you read me?” Prit’s voice rang out over the intercom amid crackles and pops. I was so lost in thought I hadn’t heard him. I shook my head to push the nightmares out of my mind and focused on the Sokol as it shot like an arrow across the Sahara.

“Talk to me, Prit!” I yelled into the microphone over the howl of the engines, as the helicopter traced a wide spiral above the ground.

“That might be a good place to land.”

I looked where he was pointing. We were flying over a miserable little town that clung to the Atlantic shore, where the sands of the Sahara sank under the cold ocean. There were about twenty houses and a whitewashed mosque ringed by fields of stunted crops. Half a dozen long, sun-bleached fishing boats rested on the beach. A dusty road ran north and south through town and disappeared in the distance.

At the southern end of the town was a large open space, about five hundred feet from the nearest houses, surrounded by a dilapidated wood fence and thorny bushes. Probably a goat pen once, but there was no sign of any goats. A perfect place to land.

With a long, graceful pirouette, Prit brought the chopper down, until we were hovering about twenty feet above the goat pen. The fuel drums clanked against each other as the cargo net settled on the ground. With a light flick of the controls, the Ukrainian landed the helicopter alongside the net. In just a few seconds, the Sokol was back on land, kicking up a sandstorm and blowing down the wood fence.

When the sand settled, we calmly scoped out the space around us. The silence was broken only by the wind filtering between the adobe houses. Instantly, we felt the sweltering heat. It must’ve been over 110 degrees. The air was dense, thick like hot soup; just drawing a breath was an effort. Even in the best of times, that bleak town at the barren edge of the desert wouldn’t have been a pleasant place to live. Now uninhabited and in ruins, it looked ominous.

On high alert, Prit and I ventured out of the enclosure to take a look around and stretch our legs after hours and hours of flying. The town’s main road was in horrible shape; huge potholes had swallowed up chunks of pavement and were then covered over with sand. No one had set foot on it in months.

We headed into town cautiously, picking our way down the middle of the road. That town was very close to where the Polisario Liberation Front had fought to end to Spanish colonial rule in northern Africa. Many of the roadside ditches in the area were strewn with land mines set by the Polisario or the Moroccan army. Getting blown to bits by a land mine so close to the Canary Islands would’ve really sucked.

One of the first houses we came to had a strong smell, like spoiled milk. It wasn’t the usual smell of rotting flesh. The softer, sour, even spicy smell confused us.

With a nod, we quietly cocked our rifles. We took a deep breath and darted around the corner, aiming wildly in every direction.

The Ukrainian looked completely bewildered. “What the hell is that?”

“No fucking idea, Prit.” I lowered my gun and scratched my head. “I’m just glad I wasn’t here when it happened.”

Stretched on the ground at the end of the narrow alley in front of us were about two dozen bodies that looked like so many others we’d seen. The difference was these bodies hadn’t decomposed. The scorching heat and the extremely dry desert air had mummified them. Their tattered clothing barely covered their skeletal limbs that the sun had scorched a dark mahogany. What skin remained was stretched as tight as a drum.

Cautiously, we eased up to the bodies. They reminded me of the mummies in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. When I kicked the nearest one, the sound was like a piece of firewood. They were completely dehydrated.

Almost all the bodies were mutilated and had numerous wounds, such as gunshots to the head, along with dried blood on their clothes. After months of living among the Undead, we knew what those beings had been before someone offed them.

Prit bent down and picked up a shiny copper casing lying on the ground. He took a quick look and said, “5.56 NATO. Probably from a rifle like the one slung across your back.” He didn’t need to say another word.

The Moroccan army still used the old 7.62 x 51mm CETME that the Spanish military sold them by the thousands when it upgraded in the nineties. That meant that the regular Moroccan army hadn’t done that. But who had—and when?

Suddenly a deep growl came from the pile of corpses. Prit and I jumped as if we’d been poked with a cattle prod. We heard the growl again, deep and raspy, but nothing moved in that motionless heap of human remains.

I nervously released the safety on my HK and shot Prit a puzzled look. The Ukrainian licked his dry lips, hesitated, then inched up to the mound as if it were an atomic bomb.

We heard that growl a third time. It was coming from a body sitting on the ground against a wall, legs outstretched, arms by his sides, and his head resting on his chest. The guy was riddled with bullet holes. Tainted blood stained the wall behind him, tracing the path his body had taken as it slid down. Both knees had been destroyed by gunshots; a couple of dried-up tendons were all that held one leg to his body.

I whistled softly. I couldn’t believe my eyes. That Undead guy had had the bad luck to survive the gunshots. None of them were to the head so they’d only crippled him. Abandoned in that alley for months, drying in the desert sun, he’d been unable to move and unable to die.

I leaned in for a closer look. His limbs were completely dehydrated and rigid; his flesh was slowly turning to jerky or wood. That son of a bitch couldn’t move a muscle, but there was still a glimmer in his withered eyeballs. For the first time, I felt sorry for one of those things. I couldn’t imagine the hell of inhabiting that piece of wood. I doubted he knew what he was, but deep down in that dried-out skull dwelled a furious, raving mad being, trapped in there forever.