Manel Loureiro - Dark Days

I dashed inside the helicopter, bashing my shin against the steel post. I grabbed Lucullus’s carrier and groped around for the other HK we’d stashed behind the backpacks. Finally, my fingers touched the cold metal of the gun barrel. I swept aside the pile of our belongings, racking my brain for where we’d stashed the ammunition. Then I flashed to the image of Sister Cecilia and Lucia carrying a large chest—they’d packed it under the rest of our gear, behind the medicine boxes.

I started tossing bundles aside, but abandoned the effort after a quick glance out the cabin window. A group of about eight Undead was less than thirty feet from the helicopter. If they cornered me in that tight space, I was a goner.

Not looking back, I jumped out of the helicopter, cursing a blue streak. Just then, the rattle of the other helicopter’s rotors almost drowned out Prit’s muffled shots. With astonishing sangfroid, he retreated slowly to the control tower, covering Sister Cecilia and Lucia, who were running ahead. As cool as 007, the Ukrainian held the gun to his eye as he slowly walked backward. From time to time, he stopped, calmly aimed at the oncoming tide, and fired. Almost all of his shots left an Undead in a heap on the pavement, but the Undead were less than twenty feet away and he was running extremely low on ammunition.

I backed away from the Sokol, not taking my eye off the eight Undead surrounding the helicopter. Lucullus let out an enraged yowl, alerting me just in time. I turned and nearly bumped into four Undead. They must’ve come around the back of the helicopter and now cut off my path to the control tower. Switching Lucullus’s carrier to my left hand, I aimed the spear gun at the Undead closest to me and pulled the trigger. The spear entered the base of his neck and angled upward with a soft choop . He collapsed and flailed around on the ground as if he were having an epileptic fit. I lowered the spear gun and reloaded quickly, then turned to the other three Undead, who were almost within arm’s reach.

For a split second, I stared in amazement—two of those beasts were Moroccan soldiers. I could tell from their uniforms, but they were just as fucking Undead as the rest. The other was a teenage girl, in shorts and a yellow bikini top that had slipped off, exposing one of her breasts. That would have been a nice sight if it weren’t for the hole in her belly that was teeming with maggots.

The Moroccans advanced toward me, shoulder to shoulder, their arms outstretched. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I crouched down like an American football player, let out a yell that would’ve made a Comanche proud, and rammed them. That sudden movement took the Undead by surprise and they fell like bowling pins. However, my momentum caused me to stumble and I landed at the girl’s feet. She eagerly lunged for my throat.

Without thinking, I raised my left arm and slammed Lucullus’s carrier into her face. The carrier and the girl’s jaw shattered with a hideous crunch. I leapt to my feet but felt one of the Moroccan’s hands fumbling to grip my leg. Again, I said a prayer of thanks for my wetsuit. If I’d been wearing anything else, the bastard would’ve gotten a firm grip on me and I wouldn’t have had a chance, since the other eight were almost on top of us.

When I got back on my feet, I saw with dread that Lucullus was standing on the runway, stunned by the impact, looking first at me, then at the Undead as they struggled to their feet.

“Go on, Lucullus,” I said, as I cocked the HK. “Run!”

I don’t know if cats understand what their owners say, but they do have a strong survival instinct. Because of my shouting (or more likely, because of those creatures hunting us), Lucullus took off like a shot toward Lucia, who was silhouetted in the distance against the control tower.

I didn’t hang around to study the scene. I ran for my life!

Jaime wasn’t a bad kid. Midtwenties, tall, well built. He had a lot of friends, a girlfriend, a job, and a car. He played on a handball team and spent the weekends in the country, like everyone else. He’d grown a beard and let his hair grow long, which didn’t look good on him, but he liked it, along with the tribal tattoo he’d gotten a few years ago. A regular guy.

The only problem was, Jaime didn’t remember any of that. At the moment, Jaime was staggering around like dozens of other creatures, in the blazing sunlight that washed over the runway at Lanzarote Airport. He was one of Them now.

Jaime was an Undead.

Jaime’s mind, or what humans call reasoning, had shut down almost a year before when he’d become an Undead. If a doctor could’ve looked at his brain with a CT scan, he’d have been astonished to find that all the activity was taking place in the so-called “reptilian brain,” the most primitive part. In that hypothetical scanner, Jaime’s reptilian brain would be glowing with vivid colors, inundated by an abnormal amount of activity. The rest of the brain would be cloaked in darkness, like a city during a power outage.

Jaime didn’t remember how he’d gotten to the airport or where he’d come from or where he was going. His tattered clothes suggested he’d been in that state for several months. Nasty burns on his right arm indicated that, at some point, he’d gotten too close to a fire. Those burns would’ve been extremely painful if he were still human. But Jaime didn’t feel anything, not even the huge gash in his right thigh, which caused him to limp, where an Undead had bitten him. That bite had been his ticket to Avernus, the entrance to the underworld—hell.

Although Jaime couldn’t talk or reason, he could still feel basic emotions: hunger, excitement, and anger. A wave of anger mixed with desire and a ferocious appetite washed over him every time a living being crossed his path. Especially if it was human.

They were the tastiest prey. They ran around, screaming every time they saw Jaime or his companions in that nightmare. Some managed to escape. Some shattered an Undead’s head into a thousand pieces with the metal and fire instruments they held in their hands. But they were the exception. Most didn’t stand a chance.

Jaime had no idea how many humans he’d hunted since he’d become an Undead. He didn’t know that lodged in each lung was a bullet that should’ve caused respiratory failure. He didn’t know his appearance terrified humans—his long wind-blown hair, his shorts and Hawaiian shirt stiff with blood (some of it his, some of it human), his skin riddled with burst veins, and especially his lost, hate-filled glare.

Jaime didn’t know who was walking beside him; he probably wasn’t even aware they were there. All he knew was that he’d been wandering aimlessly inside that building when a sound from the sky had drawn him outside like iron filings to a magnet. Now, there were a handful of humans just ahead of him, running away, like they always did. Every cell in his body moaned with the desire to feel that warm, living, pulsing flesh, to grab it, bite it, chew it, feel that warm blood flowing into his mouth…

That was what gave meaning to his life—or rather, his non-life.

Jaime could see at least four people. Two of them looked more fragile (Jaime didn’t remember the difference between man and woman). They were almost at the foot of the tall building. Another one was dodging a group of Undead, with a small, furry, orange animal jumping wildly around his legs. The last human, a little guy, with a bushy, blond mustache and cold blue eyes, walked backward slowly, never taking his eyes off Jaime’s group. From time to time he lifted that metal thing to his face and a flame came out of the end of it with a bang. Jaime’s dead brain didn’t know what that flame was but he feared it.