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

warped door didn’t hold up long as the crowd pressed in against it. With a gut-wrenching screech, the door gave way and crashed to the ground. The path was clear.
    Since he was in front, Jaime was one of the first to rush up the stairs that led to the top of the tower. He knew those humans were up there. He could feel them.
    The feet of dozens of Undead echoed in the stairwell as they climbed in a mad rush, toward their prize. On the next step, Jaime nearly fell flat on his face when he collided with one of the humans. It was a guy in puzzlingly slippery clothes. He’d planted himself at the bottom of the nextflight of stairs and aimed a strange set of sticks at him. The former Jaime would have recognized it as a spear gun.
    That spear gun fired with a hiss. Jaime felt a piece of metal pierce the bone in his forehead and sink deep into his brain. Neither he nor his rival knew that when the tip of the spear reached his cerebellum, Jaime would feel pain for the first time in months. The pain spread through his body in waves, fueling his anger. He extended his arms toward that human, but he couldn’t take a step. He saw the ground rising fast but didn’t register that he was falling until his head hit the concrete landing.
    He could see the guy cast a scared look at the crowd pursuing him then retreated to the upper floor. He could still detect the feet of the other Undead passing by, oblivious to him as they continued after their prey. But soon the world began to fade as darkness slowly flooded every corner of Jaime’s mind. After a moment, the unquenchable fury he’d felt all those months receded the way the ocean retreats from the shore.
    In the last millisecond of his existence, Jaime once again knew who he was. Before his life was extinguished forever, he finally felt a sense of relief.
    And peace.

8
    The tower was cool and dark inside, a welcome change from the suffocating heat on the runway. When I reached the double doors where Sister Cecilia and Lucia waited, I stopped to catch my breath. My lungs had felt like they would burst as I raced a thousand feet stuffed into a wetsuit like a sausage. All those sedentary months in the basement of Meixoeiro Hospital had taken a toll. Lucullus, meanwhile, was hopping all around me, clearly glad to be out of his jail cell.
    I watched Prit advance slowly down the runway, his back to me, his eyes glued to the Undead closing in on him. Every few seconds, he stopped, took careful aim, and fired with amazing success. Bodies of the Undead dotted the runway like a string of pearls, as pools of their blood dried in the sun. But each time he stopped to shoot, he gave up a few feet of ground and the remaining horde was gaining on him.
    Suddenly, Prit’s face creased with worry—he was out of ammunition. Enraged, he flung his HK at the Undead and took off as fast as his bowed legs could carry him.
    I turned to the nun and Lucia, who were struggling to reset the metal doors that an explosion had ripped from their frame.
    “Come on,” I cried. “We gotta get that door in place or we’re screwed!”
    “Stop talking, Mr. Lawyer, and give us a fucking hand!” snapped Lucia.
    Chastened, I lifted one of the warped doors and brushed off the debris covering it. I was sweating buckets, cursing under my breath, as Istruggled to set the door in its frame and shore it up. Lucia and Sister Cecilia were urging Prit on at the top of their lungs, as he ran down the runway as if the devil were on his tail. You could probably hear their damn screams all over the island. When the monsters heard all that yelling, they moved faster despite their wobbly gate.
    Pritchenko finally reached us and shot through the gap between the two doors as if he were a mortar round, crashing into a pile of rubble behind us.
    “You hurt, Prit?” I shouted, as I braced the door with a concrete girder.
    “Just my pride,” said the Ukrainian, laconic as ever. He brushed the dust off his pants and grabbed my HK off the