Dark Days (Apocalypse Z) by Manel Loureiro Read Free Book Online

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 fumblingto 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!

7
    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 feelanything, 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