“We could stash everything here and come back another day,” Eric whined. His enthusiasm was waning.
“There’s not going to be another day. Get my drift, pal? It’s gotta be today. We can’t take a chance she’ll wake up. Hey! Look! We found it!” Basilio pointed to a sign that said RECOVERY ROOM 12 with an arrow pointing to the right.
Basilio pushed the wheelchair faster. Before the Apocalypse, that room had been a parking garage for ambulances. Now, the hospital was so crowded, they’d turned it into a hospice with just a coat of white paint and four picture windows on the south wall. The stench of sickness and death was so strong, the two gunmen gagged as they walked through the door. The hospital staff called that room “the Morgue.” Many patients were brought there, but few left it alive. Most often, there was no way to heal those patients; they were the sad ghosts whose lives were cut short. In the old days, they’d have recuperated from their ailments in a couple of days. Now the desperate ill were locked away there so no one had to see them and everyone could go on with their lives, pretending everything was fine. It was way worse than hell.
Fifty beds filled the large room, lined up in two neat rows, with a wide aisle down the center. Most of the beds were occupied, except for a couple whose mattresses were rolled up to let their springs air out. A bloodstain on one of the mattresses made Basilio stop short for a moment. His eyes flitted from bed to bed, searching for the nun’s face among that dying crowd. Finally, he spotted her.
Two nurses in the far corner of the room were leaning over a patient in crisis. One of the nurses hurried out the far door for help. The other nurse had her back turned, so she didn’t see Basilio and Eric stop in the middle of the aisle. The Belgian got out of the wheelchair and pressed himself against the wall, beretta in hand, keeping an eye on both doors.
Basilio wasted no time. He stuck his hand into his pocket, pulled out a syringe filled with morphine and sidled up to the bed where the defenseless Sister Cecilia lay. The sailor-turned-hit-man studied her for a second. In just a few weeks, the old woman had shrunk. With that giant bandage on her head, she looked like an enormous insect in a cocoon. Sorry, old gal, he thought as he gripped the saline drip and injected the drug in the syringe he was holding. Nothing personal. You shouldn’t have gotten in the way…
BANG! The shot was amplified a million times in that huge room, startling Basilio out of his thoughts. He whipped around to face Eric, who’d gone down on one knee and fired the beretta three times in rapid sequence. At the back of the room, a doctor stopped in his tracks, as if he’d hit a concrete wall, then collapsed as a fountain of blood spurted out his neck. A nurse lay sprawled on the floor at his feet. The nurse who’d had her back turned was now draped over her patient in a strange, deadly embrace awash in blood and brains.
“Eric! What the hell’re you doing?” Basilio roared.
“That nurse saw us,” replied the Belgian, in a strangely slow voice. A demented smile drew up the corners of his mouth. “They were going to set off the alarm, Bas! What else could I do?” He shrugged as if to say Don’t blame me.
Basilio’s anger was oozing out every pore, but he didn’t lose control. Two thoughts fired through his cold, dark mind. First, he shouldn’t have brought that maniac Belgian along. Second, they had to get out of there—fast. People were yelling and screaming all over the hospital, and he could hear an alarm blaring in the distance.
“You’ve fucked things up real good, pal!” Basilio growled, as he finished emptying the contents of the syringe into the nun’s IV. He spent a few seconds of the little time they had to escape making sure every drop entered the old woman’s body. He wouldn’t have time to calmly smoke a cigarette and watch the old woman die the way he’d planned. He wanted to be sure the morphine was in her body and there was nothing they could do to save her, especially in all that confusion.
“Done.” He put the syringe in his pocket, cast a last glance at Sister Cecilia’s pale face and barreled out the door. “Let’s go before…”
Basilio’s words froze in the air. The old sailor’s eyes opened wide as saucers and he zeroed in on the two figures silhouetted in the doorway. One was a short nurse wearing a lot of makeup and a plunging neckline, but the other nurse… Basilio would’ve recognized that figure and those green eyes anywhere. They’d haunted his dreams for weeks.
“It’s her,” he muttered in disbelief. Then overcome by his rage, he yelled, “It’s the other bitch! Kill her!”
With a twisted smile that would’ve struck fear in the devil himself, the Belgian raised his pistol and licked his lips.
Two shots rang out.
29
The SuperPuma landed with a jolt on the parking lot, its blades sending up swirls of smoke. As soon as it touched down, there was the sound of tearing metal. Instantly alarms went off and red lights lit up the dashboard.
“Jesus Christ, Prit! What’s that?” I shouted, my voice shrill with fear.
“Don’t know…” The Ukrainian mumbled as he focused on controlling the plane. With just its two front wheels on the ground, it was spinning out of control, like a top. Everything that wasn’t tied down or screwed into the wall went flying, amid shouts from the passengers, who clutched their seats, white-knuckled.
After one very long minute, the spinning slowed down and the SuperPuma finally came to a complete stop. For a moment there was complete silence in the cabin.
“Everyone okay?” someone finally asked. A chorus of grunts answered as we stood up cautiously, afraid Prit might treat us to another crazed ride. We were bruised, but in one piece.
“Can somebody tell me what the hell happened?” Tank asked.
“Ask the pilot, sir,” a sergeant replied acidly. “I’m still trying to find my stomach.”
But Tank couldn’t ask the pilot. Prit had unbuckled his harness, bolted outside and headed for the back of the helicopter, leaping over charred bodies. After a few seconds, the Ukrainian hopped back in the cockpit.
“The tail rotor came loose,” he said calmly, as he unscrewed the top of his flask. “We can’t take off.”
“Whadda ya mean we can’t take off?” one soldier asked in a hushed voice. “How long till we can take off?”
“Never.” Prit answered, matter-of-factly, the way you’d talk about the game on Sunday, and scratched his head thoughtfully. “The napalm explosion or debris knocked the tail rotor rennet loose. Or maybe it just fell off. This Puma has been sitting out in the open for months, so it’s hard to say. I do know this bird is kaput. Dead.”
“Can’t you fix it?” Tank asked.
“Maybe… if I had a new propeller, a complete set of differentials, a case of beer, a couple of expert mechanics to help me, and twenty hours to do it. So, no, I can’t.”
“Whadda we do?” asked a voice that couldn’t hide the fear. “How do we get back?”
“Find other transportation,” Pritchenko said with a shrug. “What choice do we have?”
A chill ran through the plane. You didn’t have to be a genius to realize that our chances of survival were severely reduced.
“Prit,” I said in a frightened voice. “That means we have to go with them… in there.”
“I know,” he said casually, as if we were talking about a walk on the beach.
“How the hell can you be so calm!” I exploded.