She slumped into a chair and glanced around, discouraged. Since they’d come to the Canaries, everything had gone hopelessly wrong. First, they were quarantined on that damned ship for a month, stuck in a tiny cell, not knowing what was going to happen next. She’d wake up at night, breathing hard, covered in sweat, feeling the walls of the cell closing in on her. The only break in that routine was visits from doctors swaddled in their spectral hazmat suits. Out of the blue, they’d been released. Then, she was horrified to learn that a sadistic guard had beaten Sister Cecilia almost to death like those sadistic guards in Nazi concentration camps.
They’d filed a report against the guy the minute they set foot on land, but three weeks had passed and nothing had happened. The island’s bureaucracy was stretched so thin trying to settle the avalanche of refugees and minimally feed them, they didn’t have the staff or the time to investigate an alleged crime. And all they had to go on was what she’d seen before she passed out.
Since that day nearly a month ago, the nun had hovered between life and death in one of the island’s crowded hospitals, just one of the thousands of sick and wounded cared for by a handful of overworked doctors and nurses and a few exhausted volunteers with very few resources.
And that damned apartment! Before the Apocalypse, Lucia lived with her parents in a big three-story house. The apartment she lived in now was tiny and had practically no furniture. It reminded her of the Krakow ghetto she’d seen in Schindler’s List, where dozens of people were crammed into very little space. There weren’t any walls or guards in Tenerife, but it felt oppressive just the same.
They were lucky; they lived in a “good” sector. Since Prit was one of the few pilots on the island, he’d been classified as essential personnel, entitling the three of them to some advantages, such as better rations and a “luxury” apartment with fewer cockroaches. Lucia knew there were thousands of people living in overcrowded conditions that were much worse. Even the smallest village was crammed with refugees. Famine was a threat to everyone, regardless of housing or classification. Unless you had contacts in the black market—and something interesting to sell.
With her boyfriend and Prit around, Lucia felt safe and didn’t dwell on the terrible circumstances that weighed on her like a two-ton slab. She’d been carefree and blocked out everything she disliked. She’d focused instead on her brief, impromptu honeymoon with “Mr. Lawyer,” the nickname she’d given him because he rambled on about the injustices of the system and problems the government needed to address.
Lucia was deeply in love, as only a romantic seventeen-year-old girl can be. Some nights she’d lie in bed, trying not to wake him up, and watch him toss and turn, plagued by the monster-fueled nightmares. Lucia knew that she was the best medicine for him. Since they’d arrived, he’d slept better and even smiled a couple of times. Then suddenly, he and Prit had had to leave with almost no time to say good-bye.
They’d all known it was just a matter of time until authorities recruited the “guys from the helicopter” to head back to the Peninsula in search of God-knows-what essential supplies, but that didn’t make it easier to say good-bye.
And although she was on an island full of police and soldiers, with no Undead within hundreds of miles, Lucia was more terrified than ever. For the first time since this nightmare began, she was alone and had to rely on herself.
A knock on the door roused her from her thoughts. Dragging her feet, she went to the door and came face-to-face with Miss Rosario, the building manager. She was a small, dumpy, fifty-something woman with terrible varicose veins. She wore her steel gray hair in a tight bun on top of her head. Her dress was made of coarse brown fabric that made her look much slimmer than she actually was. Miss Rosario studied Lucia with her little owl eyes and tried to get a glimpse inside the room.
“Are you all right, dear? I thought I heard voices.”
“Don’t worry, Rosario,” said Lucia, pulling the door half-closed behind her. “Nothing’s wrong. I just spilled a little milk, that’s all.”
Miss Rosario had been given the title of “block leader” by the government and proudly wore her plastic badge. One of the first things Lucia discovered was that there were snitches everywhere. Last week, one of her neighbors, an agricultural engineer who worked on one of the farms at the northern end of the island, stopped her on the stairs. He told her that Miss Rosario was an official informer who was granted oversight of the buildings on that block by the authorities. Just like in East Germany, every building and every neighborhood had a “block leader.”
“That’s not the worst part,” the neighbor added, after looking cautiously over his shoulder. “Besides block leaders, there’re dozens, maybe hundreds of undercover informants. Even your boyfriend or roommate could be working for Information Services. It’s like the fucking Stasi in the GDR back in the old days.”
His bitter comments still echoed in Lucia’s head. She hadn’t paid much attention before. Everyone was almost obsessively paranoid. She thought his furtive comments were just the ravings of an old man who saw conspiracies everywhere. But now she knew her neighbor was right. Too bad she couldn’t tell him. Two days before, he’d been “transferred” to a different housing complex. That wasn’t out of the ordinary, but that transfer took place at four o’clock in the morning. And in an army truck instead of one pulled by a team of horses. He must’ve confided in the wrong neighbor.
“Don’t forget, young lady, no visitors are allowed on this block after four,” Miss Rosario’s jangling voice droned on. “If you have a guest, you’ll have to fill out a report.”
“See for yourself. There’s no one here,” grumbled Lucia and reluctantly opened the door wide to let the snoopy woman look inside. Just then, Lucullus materialized out of the dark hallway with speed that belied his size and slipped inside the apartment, brushing against Lucia’s legs, back from one of his mysterious walks.
Miss Rosario sniffed with a look of disgust that struck Lucia as really funny. The biddy’s face reminded her of a bulldog sniffing a particularly smelly turd on the sidewalk.
Lucia made a heroic effort to keep from laughing. She already had enough problems with that old hag and she didn’t want to add to the list. She was a newcomer and the only one in that housing complex who didn’t have a job in an “essential” sector. That made the manager especially suspicious of her, coupled with the fact that she was one of the few people in Tenerife who still had a pet that hadn’t been cooked up in a stew.
While her boyfriend and Prit had been in the flat, old lady Rosario had stayed away, but since they’d been called up, she’d mounted a ruthless siege. Because her apartment was especially coveted, Lucia suspected that Rosario was watching for the smallest slipup to justify evicting her. Or the old woman just had a wild hatred for a younger, prettier woman. In any case, she had to tread carefully.
“I swear there’s no problem,” repeated Lucia with a forced smile. “I have to leave right now. I have to go to hospital. My job, you know.”
“Yes, yes, of course, the hospital.” The old bat shook her head, and with a look of you’re not fooling me added, “It’s a good thing your husband got you that job at the hospital. That way you can take care of your mother and get out of the mandatory Agriculture Brigade. It’d be a real shame, dear, to ruin your delicate hands with a hoe.”
“She’s not my mother, she’s a nun,” Lucia said pointedly, as she grabbed her bag and slammed the door behind her. Rosario had planted herself like a tree in the hallway. To get past her, Lucia had to nudge the old battle-ax aside. The caretaker smelled of strong perfume and stale sweat. “And he’s not my husband; he’s my boyfriend. About my work…”