Tenerife Port was bustling with hundreds of people, going about their jobs, dressed in clean clothes, undernourished but otherwise healthy. They didn’t look particularly happy, but at least they were calm. They were probably still pinching themselves over surviving the Apocalypse.
The captain of the boat was a witty guy who had a lot to say. According to him, over eight hundred thousand people lived in Tenerife before the pandemic. That number climbed to several million in the early days of the Apocalypse, when wave after wave of refugees from Europe and America reached the islands. Now the population was down to a million and a half.
What the hell happened to that mass of humanity? Where’d they go? If what that guy said was true, there were a helluva lot of missing people.
A guy in uniform was waiting on the dock to check our documents. I was surprised to see flags flying everywhere, as if the survivors had had an attack of patriotism. Even the bus that took us to our new home sported flags, and not just the Spanish flag, but also the one with that strange blue insignia I’d seen flying from the Galicia’s mast. I didn’t know what it stood for—and nobody was in any hurry to explain.
18
It was a really surprising weekend. I’d vacationed on the Canary Islands several years before and had always wanted to go back. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine coming back under those special conditions.
At the dock, a sweaty, stressed-out guy in a uniform, who was doing five things at once, checked our documents, gave us a quick handshake and rushed off on urgent business. Prit, Lucia, and I just stood there on the dock, all our luggage at our feet, waiting for the bus. We didn’t know what else to do.
Something made me uneasy and set my nerves on edge. The look on Lucia and Prit’s face told me they felt the same. The Ukrainian licked his lips; his eyes flitted nervously in every direction as he reached for a gun he didn’t have. Lucia rocked back and forth almost imperceptibly as she clutched Lucullus. Even the cat was twitching.
Finally it dawned on me—that crowd of people was making us jumpy. People were dashing here and there, going about their business, bumping into us, barely glancing at our frightened trio. I had to close my eyes to keep from passing out. Noises engulfed us: shouts, snatches of conversation, laughter, a child crying, a horse neighing, the hum of hundreds of mouths talking at once in the background. After a year of tomb-like silence, that multitude was a shock to our nerves.
Lucia pointed something else out: There was no smell of rotting flesh. Thousands of smells floated in the air, some pleasant, some not. We were in a port, after all. But they were human smells.
The strangest part was we had nothing to do. We didn’t have to run away. Not a single Undead was on our tail. For the first time in months, we were absolutely idle.
However, that picture of normality was misleading. Before the Apocalypse, there’d never been a crowd like that on that dock. There were no cars on the road except for a URO, Spain’s version of a Humvee, but there were a lot of draft animals dragging carts made from car chassis. In fact, the “bus” that took us to our new home was actually a cart pulled by two oxen.
They put us up in a former three-star hotel, built in the seventies. For decades it welcomed legions of European tourists, eager for sun and sand. Although clean and neat, the shabby building had seen better days. Even before it was turned into refugee housing, it wasn’t the best hotel on the island. The former reception area was now a communal playroom for the screaming children of the families in the complex. We hadn’t seen many children since very few had survived. And the number of babies and pregnant women overwhelmed us. Half the women looked like they could deliver any day. A primitive survival instinct must compel survivors to reproduce at all costs. I’d read about a similar phenomenon among Holocaust survivors, but I never imagined I’d witness it first-hand.
The residents in that building were classified as Auxiliary Navy Personnel, like Prit and me, and lived there with their families. Most were mechanics, engineers, highly skilled construction workers, electricians, even a vet, with all the skills essential to the community’s survival. Everyone but me, I thought bitterly. I was there because the island bureaucracy had lumped Pritchenko and me together as “experienced survivors.” If that weren’t so tragic, I’d laugh.
We were assigned three adjoining rooms on the fifth floor. There was electricity for only six hours a day, from six pm till midnight, which proved to be a real pain in the ass. With no elevator, we had to trudge up all those flights of stairs.
Fortunately, the previous tenants had torn down the walls, connecting the rooms into an apartment. The rooms were dingy but clean, and there was running water, just no hot water. When the electricity was on, we could pick up the signal from the island’s TV station on the television screwed to the wall above the bed. All in all, things were okay.
The downside was, in twenty days, Prit and I had to report to a “special work group” at a barracks downtown. Something told me we weren’t going to like that “special work” one bit.
19
Hard to believe we’d only been on the islands for a few weeks and were already mixed up in a bad situation! I was so angry I wanted to scream. In frustration, I kicked a trash can as we were walking out of the office and sent it rolling down some stairs, making a shitload of noise. All that got me was a glare from a secretary and a sore foot.
We’d had a few short, happy weeks of vacation. We relaxed, gorged ourselves, slept like the dead, and baked on the beach. Then one morning, a messenger came to our home with a summons for Prit and me. At noon we were to report to the former headquarters of MALCAN, the command center and logistic support group on the islands, in Weyler Plaza downtown. Dozing beside Lucia, I could hear Prit arguing with the guy in the next room. He finally gave up and signed the receipt. I got up, my hair standing on end, my eyes bloodshot, and found my friend with a worried look on his face. That couldn’t be good.
“What the hell’d that guy want?” I asked, as I filled the coffeepot with the vile stuff they called coffee.
“See for yourself,” the Ukrainian muttered, holding out the paper. “They want us to start earning our keep.”
After breakfast and a shower, we headed out, our stomachs in knots. We weren’t sure what they wanted from us. To say we had our guard up was putting it mildly.
A beat-up URO was parked in front of the old hotel. At the wheel was a young kid, barely eighteen, in an ill-fitting uniform. I’d have bet a million euros that boy had just enlisted. He’d probably been a refugee like us just months before. During the first weeks of the Apocalypse, the military took a huge hit as it tried to defend the Safe Havens. Now they filled the gaps in their ranks with anyone they could find.
After five minutes on the road, it became clear the kid had little experience driving a heavy vehicle the size of a URO. He lurched through the crowded streets, laying on the horn like a Cairo taxi driver at rush hour, nonchalantly whizzing past cars, trucks, and pedestrians. He even drove up on the sidewalk. Every time he shifted, it sounded like he was going to rip the transmission to shreds. Forty minutes later, we miraculously reached Weyler Plaza in one piece.
When Prit and I looked around, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Most of the historic, art nouveau buildings that surrounded the plaza had been burned to some degree. Their walls were pockmarked by shrapnel and bullet holes, a sure sign the area had been the scene of a fierce battle. I wordlessly pointed to a dark black spot that stained the ground under our feet like a sinister carpet. Prit reached down, scratched the surface, and took an expert sniff. Shaking his head, he mumbled, “Napalm.”