We were all speechless, in shock. I imagined the anguish of the people holed up there. As the months went by, their supplies ran out and no one answered their silent cries for help. They must have felt despair every time one of them died from hunger, disease, the Undead, or God knows what. For a moment I felt that suffocating panic. As time passed, they realized they were doomed. No one was coming to their aid.
“Look,” Pauli said. “The graves on the end are almost level with the ground.”
“Maybe at the end they didn’t have the strength to dig an actual grave,” someone muttered.
“Think there’s still someone there?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” said Marcelo. “Anyway, we can’t stop to find out.” He stared into my eyes. “You know as well as I do—this isn’t a rescue mission.”
I didn’t say another word. Marcelo was right, but I refused to accept it so coldly. I knew if I hadn’t left my house in Pontevedra, I’d have gone insane, wallowing in my misery, a prisoner in my own home. I imagined how I’d have felt seeing a helicopter overhead and not be rescued. I put that thought out of my head.
“Ready back there?” Tank’s voice boomed over the intercom. “We’re here.”
I craned my neck to see where we were and instantly regretted it. The massive buildings of the La Paz Hospital rose sharply on the horizon, like monoliths. Amid the shattered remains of what once had been Safe Haven Three, a roaring mass of Undead turned toward the noise that had awakened them out of their lethargy.
We waited. I couldn’t imagine how we would get through that crowd.
“How the hell can we land there?” Broto’s voice quavered. “They’ll make mincemeat out of us before we even get out of the helicopter!”
“Take it easy, che,” said Marcelo, curiously calm. “Don’t worry. We’ve got it covered.” He nonchalantly lit a cigarette as he kept an eye on the crowd below.
I wanted to be as calm as he was, but in my heart I was convinced the computer guy was right. As Prit flew lap after lap over the hospital parking lot, the situation grew worse. A crowd of five or six thousand Undead milled around below us. More monsters converged upon the parking lot by the minute.
The main door looked like the exit of a stadium at the end of a match. Dozens of those beings were crammed together, staggering and stumbling, trying to get out.
I watched in horror as some of them fell out the shattered windows and plunged to the ground. When the swarming mass on the upper floors saw our helicopter hovering overhead, their desire to reach us was stronger than their sense of survival. Thirsting for our blood, they threw themselves out the windows in an attempt to grab us. They somersaulted in the air, like bags of dirty laundry and crashed to the ground with a thud, some twenty feet below.
“I don’t fucking believe that!” Pauli muttered, nudging Marcelo. “That bastard’s still moving after falling from the tenth floor!”
The Argentine craned his neck to see where she was pointing. The poor devil was a young guy, naked from the waist up. His spine must’ve broken in the fall, because he was stretched out on the ground, dark liquid oozing from his body, probably his internal organs that’d been crushed upon impact. He jerked around, struggling to stand up. Too bad he hadn’t broken his skull and ended that nightmare.
“Don’t worry, Paulita,” Marcelo said matter-of-factly. “His days are numbered.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked. “What the hell’re you going to do?
My question was interrupted by Tank’s scratchy voice crackling over the intercom.
“That’s good! Most of them should be out of the building. Go ahead, Group Two!”
The helicopter traced a long ellipse, away from the plaza. Before I had time to wonder what the hell was going on, a raspy sound cut short all conversation in the cockpit. The helicopter leaned slightly as the entire crew moved to the windows, trying to spot the source of sound.
After a few seconds, I spotted two small dots in the sky heading right for us at top speed. As the dots grew larger, we could make out all the details of those planes that purred along, chewing up the distance between them and the plaza.
Totally amazed, I uttered a loud Fuuuuck. “What the hell are they?” I stammered. I felt like I was in a really weird dream.
“Buchones!” David Broto cheered, pressing his nose against the window. “Damn! Look at ‘em go! Incredible.” The computer guy bounced in his seat, pointing at the propeller planes as they made a graceful turn around the hospital tower.
“Will someone please tell me what the hell a Buchon is? Where did they come from?” I asked over the uproar in the helicopter. Everyone was talking and shouting at once. It was a madhouse.
“Those are Hispano Aviación HA-1112 M1L Buchones!” Broto shouted, not taking his eyes off those small fighter planes.
From the look on my face, he realized I didn’t understand. “After World War Two, Franco somehow secured the plans for some Nazi fighter planes and had them manufactured for the Spanish Air Force. But since the German factories were destroyed in the war, they outfitted them with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. They patrolled Spain’s African colonies till the late fifties. Now there’re just a few in museums. Two Buchones! Amazing!” he blurted out, his eyes glued to the planes.
Fucking Tank, I thought, marveling at the German’s audacity. In just a couple of hours, the other team had managed to start those relics that had been gathering dust in the Air Museum. The crowd of Undead was going wild because of the engine noise as those old birds hovered menacingly above them.
“Watch closely, che.” Marcelo made room for me beside him at the open window. “The show’s about to start.”
The Buchones made a final turn about a mile from us and headed straight for the plaza with a deafening roar. Only then did I notice that hanging underneath each plane’s wings were the red containers I’d seen the other team laboriously ferry on the airport bus. I suddenly realized what was going to happen.
“NAPALM!” I cried. I couldn’t contain myself. This was gonna be good!
The planes flew very low—around three hundred feet—over the parking lot. On cue, the red containers broke away, did a slow roll, and fell onto the crowd below.
The fuses were activated as soon as the containers hit the ground. Two huge balls of fire and black smoke exploded almost simultaneously. The flames rose to a staggering height and a tremendous explosion echoed across the city.
The helicopter lurched suddenly, as if it’d been punched by a giant fist of air. Prit let out a long stream of Russian words. The fireballs changed into a single, gigantic, orange ball, streaked with dark smoke. Globs of the gelatinous Napalm splattered everywhere. I had to turn away from the window. Although we were several hundred feet from the fire, the unbridled heat rising from that hell was suffocating. The tall buildings surrounding the parking lot transformed the place into a giant stewpot, concentrating the effect of napalm. The swirling air generated by the heat fueled the flames.
Judging by Kurt Tank’s comments on the radio, he was thrilled with the outcome of the operation. He had every reason to be. There wouldn’t be much left down there.
Those few moments seemed to go on forever, but finally the fireball died down once all the fuel was consumed. The columns of black smoke combined into a single tall column visible from miles away.
“Look at that!” howled one of the legionnaires. “Not a single one is left standing!”
Excited shouts erupted in the helicopter. The huge crowd that had been knotted together in the parking lot just a moment before was now reduced to just a few hundred smoking torches that stumbled around and finally collapsed. The vile blue or green flames the smoldering bodies on the ground gave off blended with the black smoke that blanketed the entire parking lot. The pungent smell of burning flesh stung my nose and made my eyes water. Dante’s Inferno couldn’t have been worse.