Chapter 46 Morituri Te Salutant
MORITURI TE SALUTANT
Steely grey clouds gathered above our heads as we glided up the serpentine roads amid snow-capped, forested mountains.
There were only a few cars left abandoned on the way, and we approached the Swiss Italian border with close to pre-pandemic speed.
Einar stopped the Audi at the gaping maw of the concrete structure.
Mount Mort soared beyond it; its staggering peak submerged in a halo of unformed mist.
Einar got out, hand hooked in the belt at his waist, lined with two knives and two gun holsters.
He stood motionless and seemingly lost in deep thought, withstanding the harsh mountain winds with stoicism that could only be achieved by someone accustomed to harsh elements.
After a while, he shook his head and strode back towards the vehicle.
He opened the door and leaned in.
“Right,” he said, “we’re going to take all the weapons to the front. All but the grenades, those we wouldn’t want to use in a tunnel anyway. Dave, Kevin, help me do that, and then I’ll turn the car around.”
“Are we not going in there?” I asked hopefully, straightening up.
“We are,” he assured me, “but I figure that if there are hordes up ahead, we will be much better equipped to escape them this way. Granted, getting through the tunnel in reverse will be a nuisance and take forever, but—”
“It will allow us to retreat much faster if we need to,” I finished his sentence approvingly.
I was rewarded with a devastating smile.
“I promised you that we’d be cautious, darling. I’m not a man to break a promise.”
Indeed, he was not.
We did what he said. Audi, facing the way we had come, motor running, Einar marched towards the tunnel entrance with a gun in his hand.
“Hey, roamers!” he bellowed, firing a couple of shots inside the structure. “Come get me!”
Nonchalantly, he then walked back towards the car and leaned against its side leisurely, waiting. The noise he had made wouldn’t echo throughout the length of the tunnel, but if there were any furies at the front portion, it was bound to draw them out and allow us to fight them in the open.
Nothing happened. The wind howled all around, swirling the mist around the harsh granite face of Mount Mort. Trees around us bent with its force, and the blotches of snow still surviving on the ground here and there gleamed dully in the dim light.
After what seemed an eternity, Einar nodded in satisfaction.
“You drive, man,” he told Dave. “I want to be able to get in and out quickly if we need to shuffle any cars around in there or kill a few infected.”
Dave nodded in acquiescence, and soon our ears rang with the roar of the running engine.
The good thing about the St Bernard tunnel was that most of the Italian portion of it did not resemble a tunnel at all.
It was a concrete structure with a solid wall to our left but with nothing but supporting pillars to the right, granting us not only a glorious view of the surrounding mountains but also a possible escape route in case we were truly desperate.
Our journey was painfully slow and became slower still as we went on due to an increasing number of long-abandoned cars, lorries, and vans on the way.
It grew even more congested as we drove by abandoned tollbooths.
A solid wall soon replaced the pillars on our right.
It was very dark inside. I struggled to breathe, my chest closing in on me the same way the cement walls seemed to.
The road had been driven through recently, as much as we could tell, because a pathway wormed its way through the graveyard of vehicles, just wide enough for a car to squeeze through between the wrecks.
The problem was that it was a little too narrow for our Audi, making it nearly impossible to navigate through the metal maze in reverse.
Dave kept bumping into the boundaries, scratching the car’s side against them with a nasty, screeching sound of metal on metal that reverberated through the tunnel.
“Hold on.” Einar released his seat belt and forced the bulk of his body through the tight space that the opening of his door afforded him.
He began the slow, laborious task of pushing smaller abandoned cars out of the way, the muscles on his back and arms straining with the effort, his flanks wide and competent, thighs and rump burly with strength.
Soon, there were stains of sweat around his neck and between his arms, turning his shirt a darker shade of grey, but we were finally able to move on with more ease.
Still, it unnerved me to see him outside the safety of the Audi and exposed, visceral trepidation coursing through my veins.
I had never wished for anything more than to be out of that infernal place, surrounded by fresh air, with Einar smiling in the seat next to me.
It will be alright, I kept telling myself, we will get through and then it will be alright.
Abruptly, the character of the tunnel transformed into a futuristic chute of gently rounding ceiling and walls that shone white in our headlights. My neck hurt from craning back in an attempt to keep my eye on Einar through the back window.
I was just about to give my shoulder tendons a much-needed break by turning forward, when I saw him stop abruptly, his shoulders tensing so visibly it was as if he had turned to stone.
An acrid smell of blood that lingered in the air reached me through my open window. My heart nearly tore out of my ribcage.
There was an abandoned lorry to our left, its front facing the direction of the Italian side we had left behind us.
Its faded, grey canvas was torn to shreds in places.
A tiny, purple Toyota was crashed into its rear, entirely blocking our route ahead.
The red-tinged rear lights of the Audi illuminated a torn, faceless corpse by the Toyota’s door, only a few paces ahead of Einar.
He slipped on the puddle of cold, congealed blood as he went to take a closer look.
“Einar, get back in the car!” I yelled loud enough to be heard over the motor’s rumble.
As well as over the growls of roamers that leapt from the tears in the lorry’s canvas.
Einar shouted at the same time, whipping around upon regaining his balance.
“Drive!” His voice was clear, commanding, devoid of fear. “Drive before they block you in! David, get her away NOW!”
He brandished his gun in a concise movement, his face set grimly.
Then he fired three shots into the crowd of about fifteen infected, all closing in on him with outstretched hands.
Their postures were eerily reverent, like those of disciples surrounding their prophet, hoping to touch his divine body. Bile rose up my throat.
Dave stepped on the gas pedal, causing us to lurch forward, the bodies of two infected crunching underneath our wheels, and more chasing after us.
“NOOO!”
I couldn’t let him go on. Einar would have no light if we drove any further away. He would have to fight for his life in the dark.
I lunged at Dave. Not minding something solid that pressed itself painfully into my belly, I bit his ear, tasting his blood in my mouth, distracting him enough to pry the wheel from his hands.
I swerved right sharply, crashing into the lorry’s cabin.
Fortunately, the impact wasn’t severe enough to trigger the airbags.
Encouraged to still be hearing shots, I kicked the door open and jumped out with a speed I would not have thought possible.
Tossing the quiver on my back, I was already nocking an arrow.
Kevin and Dave followed me out, Dave swearing and calling me a lot of things I knew he would not have called me under any other circumstances.
Visibility was terrible in the red taillights, but the shooting range was short enough for me not to miss my mark, despite my recent struggles with stance.
I fired arrows with very poor aim but in rapid succession.
I was blinded by a furious single-mindedness that overpowered all reason, reducing me to a mental state not at all different from that of my adversaries.
The command of the heart breaking in my chest, overriding all instincts, including that of self-preservation, was not necessarily to kill the infected. It was to get them away from Einar. By drawing them to me if needs be.
One of Einar’s guns lay abandoned on the ground, its cartridge exhausted.
Einar himself was still standing despite the odds, grappling with a pack of three male and two female furies.
Another three were approaching in the unnatural, jerky movements of those infected months and years before.
I paid them no heed, focusing only on Einar’s immediate foes.
Let him last, I pleaded, unknown with whom, please, just a little longer.
Shots echoed as Dave and Kevin killed the three roamers nearer to me. Einar stabbed one of the two still attacking him. There was blood on him everywhere. Ugly gashes on his shoulders and a deep scratch on his face. But all that could be fixed. He was immune after all.
As long as they don’t tear him apart. Please, oh please, do not let them tear him apart.
Only one infected was left, engaged in a mad dance with Einar, their arms locked around each other in a semblance of an embrace. They grappled with each other, neither able to win an advantage over the other.
None of us could get a clean shot. There was only one thing to do. I walked forward, ready in my reckless despair to tear the fury off Einar with my bare hands. The roamer looked demonic in the shadowy red light.
And yet his posture, the slope of his shoulders, the dark receding hairline, the snub nose, and warm hazel eyes were all strangely and grotesquely familiar.
How could they not be? When they belonged to a man whose roof I had once shared?
A man who used to kiss me and hold me. A man whose baby I once wanted to bear.
“No,” I gasped as the air in my lungs evaporated. “Petr! It cannot be!”