“But there must be something we can do…”
“If you’ve got a brilliant idea none of us has thought of, pal, lay it on the table right now,” she replied, half mocking, half serious. “I guarantee you’ll be the most popular guy on the islands.”
“But I thought civilization on the islands still worked. I assumed this was the real Safe Haven where we could all continue our lives!”
Alicia looked at me for a moment, then she stood up and motioned for me to follow her. “Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
15
We went back on deck. Twilight glowed red on the horizon as a warm, sand-laden wind blew across the harbor, turning the air into hot, thick soup. Each breath felt like I was shoveling boiling air into my lungs. As soon as we left the cool air conditioning inside, we started to sweat. I wished I still had some of that soda.
Alicia walked to the gunwale and absentmindedly offered me another cigarette. I shook my head. I was light-headed and my mouth was as dry as the desert. After a month in that cell, I had an attack of vertigo as I walked down the Galicia’s long runway. In silence, we looked at the city that encircled the bay. Lights started to glow as darkness closed in. I was just about to ask about the fate of my friends, but before I could say anything, Alicia pointed to the port.
“See that ship? The biggest one, across from those tall buildings.”
I looked where she was pointing. A massive ship painted bright blue, much larger than any other vessel in the harbor, bobbed lazily in the waves. It sat unusually high in the water, exposing a wide swath of its topside that would normally be underwater. That could only mean that the vessel had no cargo in its holds.
“That’s the Keiten Maru, a Japanese supertanker. It used to belong to one of the largest conglomerates in Japan before the Apocalypse. That monster can transport one-hundred-and-fifteen thousand tons of crude oil. As all hell was breaking loose, it was returning from the North Sea loaded with Norwegian oil, bound for Japan. Before reaching the Canaries, three crew members died of TSJ, including the first mate. Even as crew members were falling ill, the uninfected survivors managed to round up the Undead and lock them in a hold. But panic broke out, so they dropped anchor here. Then the world collapsed and the ship was stranded forever. Paradoxically, its misfortune was our salvation. Without the Keiten Maru, we wouldn’t have had a chance.” Alicia’s pale eyes seemed to look right through me.
“Why’s that? What linked that ship to the fight against the Undead?”
“That massive load of crude. We refined all that wonderful stuff into fuel,” she said, pointing to the towers that dotted the horizon.
Of course! The Cepsa Refinery.
“When the system collapsed and the islands were cut off from the world, we had enough fuel for two weeks, tops. The Keiten Maru brought us an adequate fuel supply. But, despite strict rationing, we’ve been burning through the last of our supply for a month. At this rate, we’ll use up the last liter in four or five weeks.”
“That’s bad, right?”
“Worse than bad. It’s catastrophic. Without fuel we lose all our technological advantage. No more airplanes, helicopters, boats, or cars. We’d have to go back to the candle and the horse. We would almost surely starve to death.”
“Why not sail over to Nigeria or Venezuela, connect a pump, and load more fuel?”
“It’s not that easy. When the chaos spread, many oil-producing countries sealed their wells. With no staff to run them, they were time bombs. Corporations shut down all Venezuelan and Mexican wells, but in Nigeria, no precautions were taken. Aerial reconnaissance shows that many wells have exploded, creating large oil spills. As for the pipelines… after a year with no one to service them, they’re just scrap metal.”
She swallowed cigarette smoke and glanced at me over her shoulder.
“Even if the wells were in good condition, operating the way they did before the Apocalypse, it would be impossible to pump anything out of them without deploying a huge security team who’d face who knows how many thousands of Undead in order to protect the technicians… if we had any technicians. They’d have to repair oil rigs with materials we also don’t have so they could pump crude through a pipeline that hasn’t been serviced in over a year, to a ninety-thousand-ton ship we can’t get to without the help of an experienced pilot who’s familiar with those waters, and without an army of tugboats to position it in a pumping station we’re not sure still exists. So, you see, it’s not that easy.”
“What about the Persian Gulf? It’s farther away, but that huge ship could make it there easily. Besides, ships there are loaded at sea through hoses that…”
“Nothing’s left in the Persian Gulf. Know who the Wahhabis are?”
I shook my head, bewildered. The situation looked bleaker and bleaker.
“They’re an ultrareligious branch of Islam in the Gulf that advocates a literal interpretation of the Koran and Sharia Law. The Middle East was one of the first areas hit by TSJ, since it’s so close to Dagestan. During the last weeks before worldwide collapse, the Wahhabis proclaimed that TSJ was God’s punishment for mankind’s greed and wickedness, and the only way to escape death and the horrible fate of the TSJ virus was through acts of purification. Money had corrupted mankind’s soul, and returning to a primitive purity was the only way to save civilization. Oil had flooded the Middle East with money, which, in turn, flooded the area with corruption and lack of faith. On the path to purification and salvation, fanatical mobs attacked and destroyed every one of the oil rigs in the Gulf, beseeching Allah to rid them of the infection.”
“That means…”
“That means hundreds of oil wells in the Gulf are still burning over a year later. The Middle East is not the answer. If we don’t find a solution soon, we’ll go from being screwed to being really and truly screwed. A new Dark Ages is right around the corner.”
I shook my head, overwhelmed. I realized that the golden paradise I’d pictured the Canaries to be, the oasis I’d dreamed about all those dark months, was actually a poor, desperate, besieged place where daily life was a struggle. I wondered what would become of me, and my friends. But then an obvious question flashed in my mind.
“I’m very grateful for your welcome, for catching me up, and taking care of all that paperwork, but one question keeps running around in my head. Why me? Why the hell’re you telling me this?”
“Because we have a serious problem,” she replied with a strange smile. “And we believe you and Mr. Pritchenko can help us solve it.”
16
For a second, I thought I’d heard her wrong. I was stunned by that last sentence.
“Prit and me? Why the hell do you need our help?”
“It can’t be any clearer. Mr. Pritchenko is a helicopter pilot with thousands of flight hours under his belt, many of those hours in combat, not to mention flying a helicopter from the mainland to the Canary Islands. He’s not only valuable to the community, but a gift that literally fell out of the sky.”