Santiago shoved her bags into the storage compartment of the bus, right before she climbed up the steps and found a seat. Like many other foreigners in Monrovia, evacuation was on her mind. She didn't want to leave just yet, especially with the fact that she wanted to get more juice out of the story that was unfolding the horrified eyes of the Africans and their European allies, but it was clear that the undead would, over time, overcome the defenses. Monrovia, as everyone in this part of Africa realized, was lost. The dead were coming too fast at them, in numbers too great, and kept attacking the too exhausted soldiers.
Abidjan was the only place that was surrounded by the undead and not threatened with collapse. For now.
For days, the defenders suffered more and more casualties. The men had to shoot the ones who were bitten by the undead and those that were not shot by their own comrades - they shot themselves instead. For days, the defenders received supplies and replacements but for days, they lost more ground to the undead. It wasn't worth it.
The best thing to do was to get out with everyone and everything that was still alive and that was still useful.
Santiago sighed as she settled into her seat when she felt her cellphone as it vibrated in her pocket. She took it from its place and answered the call.
"Hello? Santiago? Are you okay?"
It was her boyfriend. She smiled at hearing his voice.
"I am. I'm on a bus now. They're going to evacuate us. We're going to fly out of here. We'll be in Europe again."
"That's good. Are you bitten?"
"No, no. I'm perfectly fine. Why?"
"They say that if you get bitten, you turn into one of them," he told her. That surprised her because this kind of information didn't make it into the big news. Not in CNN, not in BBC, not even in the EFE. So how did he know? she thought about that as he told her, "You need to come home, Santiago."
"I am, I am," she sighed. She looked out the bus window and saw more passengers getting inside, men and women outside pushing against one another as they tried to get the last of the space on the bus.
Beyond that, the battle for Monrovia raged on. Distant gunfire reminded Santiago of typewriters. In the sky, two French Dornier Alpha jets let their engines produce a low howl that pierced the air as they dropped their bombs on the undead just thousands of meters from where the bus was. The ground shook and the bus rocked like a cradle, soft sceams and howls mixing with curses and cheers, as a mighty column of smoke flew towards the limits of the sky.
"Urrah! Urrah!"
A Caucasian man howled as he came from the front. He held his old AK-74 in one hand as the other was thrust into the heavens, at the same time that he yelled those words again.
He was dressed in a summer uniform that, to Santiago, reminded her of the kind of uniform soldiers from the east wore. She now remembered it in full. That red star sewn on the front of the hat he wore...and the filthy colors of his battle dress...
"Soldat soviétique!" That voice came from a man in a NATO uniform, with the sleeves rolled up, elbows dirtied by dried earth, with his hands wrapped around an assault rifle. "Soviétique! What's going on?"
The man looked at him and told him in heavily accented English, "The line! It is collapsing! This bus has to go!"