“Did you chamber the first bullet, asshole?”
“Uhhhh…” The blood rushed to my face. Fuck. Despite the training in Tenerife, I’d never gotten over my fear of accidentally shooting myself as I drew the gun. I’d decided to take the first bullet out of the magazine, so there was no bullet in the chamber.
I knew perfectly well I had to cock the gun before I shot it, but in the confusion, I’d forgotten. The Glock hadn’t fired on account of my own negligence. I was mortified. I wished that that Undead lying at my feet had killed me.
“Who’d they send us? Rookies wet behind the ears!” one of the younger legionnaires shouted, spitting on the ground in disgust.
“Careful what you call me, you sniveling brat.” Prit turned on the legionnaire, a homicidal gleam in his blue eyes. “When you were still running around on the playground, I’d already slit a bunch of Mujahideen’s throats in Chechnya.” The Ukrainian’s voice was icy and controlled. He’d rip the guy’s guts out right then and there if the loud-mouthed kid gave him the slightest excuse. Prit pointed at me. “This guy’s been through more than you can imagine. He’s survived tight spots that would’ve scared you shitless. So shut the fuck up!”
The legionnaire glanced around for support, but the rest of his team was out of earshot. He swallowed, raised his hands and backed off. “Take it easy, pal! Just watch your ass, because I’m not going to lift a finger to help you. Got it?” He turned and walked back to the warehouse door with his tail between his legs.
“What happened to your HK, Prit?” Pauli asked, unfazed. “Did it jam?”
Not saying a word, the Ukrainian took the magazine out and pulled the hammer. A shiny bullet flew out and hit the ground with a clink. Prit scooped it up and handed it to Pauli.
“Oh, shit! It’s a series forty-eight!” The Catalan frowned and handed it to Marcelo.
He examined the shell and winced. “The motherfucker’s calibrated wrong!”
“What is it, Marcelo?” Clearly something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“We’ve used up a shitload of ammunition fighting the Undead,” Pauli said, as she checked her own gun’s magazine. “Each incursion consumes hundreds of rounds. Six months ago our supply of bullets reached a critical low. We had to start making our own. The problem was there were no machines on the Canary Islands to produce the shells with the necessary precision, so we had to build the machines from scratch.”
“But that’s good, right?”
“Not really,” Pauli said with a weary shake of her head. “Not all that ammunition met quality standards. Occasionally some defective ammunition can slip in. We lost a couple of teams before we figured out what was going on. We assumed the ammunition for this mission had been tested several times. Guess we assumed wrong.”
“A mistake?” David Broto asked, wide-eyed. All in all, the computer guy had survived his first contact with the Undead pretty well.
“Or sabotage,” one of the sergeants glumly interjected, as he checked one of his magazines. “This one’s defective too! Son of a bitch!”
“Froilists?” Broto asked.
“Could be.” Marcelo stretched like a cat and started walking toward his MG3. “All I know is, Tank’s not going to like this.”
Sabotage? My head was spinning. What was that all about? Before I had time to ask, Tank landed like a mortar round in the middle of our group, barking orders.
“What the hell’re you doing standing around? Get the lead out, dammit! We don’t have all day!” He pulled one of the legionnaires by his backpack toward the building.
Wrestling with my backpack, I followed the rest of the group toward the warehouse’s rusty fire escape a few feet away. Thinking about that defective ammunition sent chills up my spine. It could be the death sentence for a lot of our group.
32
Lucia ran down a hallway in an unfamiliar wing of the cavernous hospital. Unlike the rest of the building, it was deserted and was lit up by flickering fluorescent lights. There wasn’t a single bed or wheelchair… and not a damn thing to hide behind. She rubbed her throbbing hip where the gurney ran into her. She’d have one helluva bruise, but she wasn’t concerned about that.
She could hear the muffled sound of gunfire through a heavy double door she’d just slipped through and her pursuers’ excited voices. Dripping with sweat, she ran faster, hoping that the corridor led someplace safe or, better yet, outside.
Lucia turned a corner, then stopped suddenly at an abandoned checkpoint with a metal detector. There wasn’t a soul in sight. A newspaper lay on a table. Beside it was a cup of steaming coffee. A radio resting on a pile of folders softly played some music. The guards must have run down the main hallway when the alarms went off and were probably shooting on the other side of the door.
She searched the table for a weapon, tossing a pile of papers on the floor in her rush. All she found was a gun-lovers magazine and a penknife.
She jiggled the drawers but they were locked. Damn! Think fast or you’re fucked. Really fucked.
Her gaze fell on a colorful poster of smiling soldiers passing rations down from an army truck. The caption read “The Third Spanish Republic is looking out for you.” Below the poster was a file cabinet, its top drawer standing wide open. The guards had left in such a hurry they’d forgotten to lock the drawer.
Lucia rifled through it but all she found was a handful of magnetic cards and papers on a clipboard where someone had scrawled some names and hours. Lucia assumed it was a record of who’d been given the cards. Her heart sank. Just as she was about to toss the clipboard aside, she spotted something written across the top in bold: 71410NK.
She ripped off the sheet of paper, stuffed it in her pocket, and took off running. She could hear footsteps getting closer.
After a few feet, she hesitated at the top of a staircase, panting, swallowed hard. She’d been so sure that that hallway led outside, and yet here she was, at the top of some stairs headed down to the basement.
No, fuck no! What’re the odds I’d have to hide in a fucking hospital basement twice in a row? It’s almost funny.
About the same as winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. But one thing was certain, if she didn’t go down there, those maniacs would corner her. The look in that red-haired guy’s eyes had made her feel really scared—and dirty. She wasn’t going to stick around and argue with him.
She sighed and started down that long flight of stairs. It was well lit and meticulously clean with the faint smell of disinfectant. If it weren’t for the lack of windows—and people—those stairs would’ve seemed completely harmless.
Lucia ran all the way to the bottom. The ugly, light green tiles on the floor and walls were different from the upper hallways, but otherwise it looked the same. Red arrows and a symbol she couldn’t identify set it apart from the rest of the hospital.
Lucia stopped for a few seconds to catch her breath. She felt as if her heart would explode and the bruise on her hip was throbbing. The sound of footsteps flying down the stairs spurred her on. She followed the red arrows without hesitating, as a voice in her head screamed, What the hell will you do if it’s a dead end!
The hallway led to a square room. A heavy steel door with the same unfamiliar symbol took up an entire wall. She was sure she’d seen that symbol before, but she was so scared, she couldn’t think where.
Beside the door was a panel with numbers, buttons, and a slot. It was an alphanumeric keyboard, like on a cell phone; each key corresponded to letters and numbers. She grabbed the magnetic card from her pocket and inserted it into the slot. A screen lit up with a welcome message, along with a digitized photo of a confused-looking, gray-haired doctor wearing glasses.