The Wanderers (10 page)

“
That’s very good,” said the voice. “But I still have another question. Where the hell did you come from and where the hell were you going?”

Juan sighed again. “Do you think that I could at least climb up? I don’t want one of those dead people to grab me by the legs. I’ll lay down on the ground, if you want, and answer your questions. I’m not dangerous, I’m just twenty-five years old and I don’t even weigh that much.”

Again a short pause.

“
Alright, let’s do that. But if you try something...”

“
You’ll shoot, I know,” interrupted Juan.

Very slowly, Juan helped himself up out of the sewer with his arms, and without looking around, he obediently lay down on the ground with his hands behind his neck. The ground was warm and dry, and after the hours he had spent covering the moist and cold tunnels, the sensation comforted him.

He heard the manhole cover being closed behind him.

“
You’ve done very well, Juan Aranda,” said the voice again. “I think there’s the possibility of us being friends, after all. Now tell me your story and we’ll see what happens afterwards.”

Breathing in, Juan told him his story in general terms, without going into detail. Some snippets of his adventures of survival in Rincon; the death of his family, how he had managed to hide from the looting and the violence of the last stages of the infection, and also how he had decided to go to Malaga, and his whole journey up until he had arrived there.

“
So, really, I wasn’t going anywhere. I looked through the gratings and sewer covers from time to time to see if I could find living human beings, but up until this moment, I haven’t had any luck. And even that appears yet to be seen,” he finally said, daring to show that he was beginning to tire of his attitude.

Then a pair of black boots stopped in front of his face.

“
Come, give me your hand and stand up.”

Juan looked up. It was a big man, of fascinating size, seven feet tall, and the width of his back was sculpted with muscles like the rest of his body. His buzz-cut styled hair conferred him the appearance of a United States Marine.

Juan stood up and still felt even smaller standing next to him.

“
Here they all call me Dozer, Juan Aranda,” he said, offering him his hand.

“
I can already see why,” said Juan, looking up to find his eyes. He returned the greeting, shaking his hand while experiencing relief when he saw his smile. It seemed sincere.

“
Forgive me for the Quentin Tarantino crap... these days you can’t trust anyone. We’ve actually had some trouble in the past, you know? And you scared the shit out of me!” he said laughing. “I was sitting there, cleaning the rifle when the cover all of a sudden opened. Fuck... I thought we were done for.”

“
Sorry... I didn’t know...”

“
Yeah, yeah, of course,” interrupted Dozer. “It’s alright, Listen, come... it’s lunchtime. The others are at eating now, I’ll introduce you to them.”

“
There are more?” asked Juan, excited.

“
Hell yes... we’re almost thirty, and there are still more arriving, like you.”

Juan stared at him, fascinated. His white smile seemed beautiful to him, because it was a
healthy
smile: he had spent too much time seeing dead people in different states of decomposition, too many mouths with black teeth, infested with dried clots due to wounds that had ceased bleeding.

When they arrived to the mess hall, Aranda felt his thin legs weaken. Seeing all of those people smiling at him and offering him a bite to eat was much more than he had dared to dream; although he had imagined some type of encampment where human beings survived, he had never materialized a concrete vision about it, and there were faces, kind words, pats on the shoulder, and even congratulations because had made it, for resisting, because he was
alive
. They let him bathe and gave him new clothes, because his own were in a more than deplorable state as a consequence of his journey through the sewers, and he finally sat down at the table with a group of people.

“
I hope you like pasta,” said a young woman dressed in a blue jumpsuit, putting a plate before him. “It’s what we have most of around here.”

“
Sure I do... pasta’s fantastic,” said Aranda.

“
Dozer told us you come from Rincon, that you got here in a boat,” said another man.

“
Yes. A small boat I found in El Palo. I almost didn’t make it. But I managed to get hold of a small overboard motor.”

“
You had a
lot
of luck, and balls as well,” said Dozer. “Most of the people who had boats left in them a long time ago. I don’t know if they managed to get anywhere, or if the sea swallowed them, but there aren’t any boats left anywhere.”

“
You’re going to like it here,” said the woman. “We’re very organized, and the lifestyle we have makes you get moving.”

“
That’s true. You should’ve seen what Susana was like in the beginning,” said the man, pointing at the woman who had given him the plate of pasta. “I’ll say she got moving... you should see how she uses those rifles, and I bet that each one weighs at least eight kilos.”

“
Four kilos,” said Susana, without taking her eyes off Juan.

“
Whatever, it’s still a lot to be running and aiming with them. Anyway, it’s the situation. It changes people, for better or worse.”

“
Like war,” said Aranda, thoughtfully.

“
Like the damn war, you said it,” said Dozer, finishing off a can of lemon
Aquarius
.

“
By the way, I haven’t introduced myself,” said the man raising both hands as if he had suddenly remembered that he had forgotten the gas valve open. “My name is Antonio Rodriguez and I’m a doctor, something scarce around here. So if you feel sick or need to consult anything, you can come to me.”

“
That’s fantastic!” said Juan, “A doctor...”

“
You can say that again,” said Dozer. “Thank Susana for it; she got him out of the Carlos Haya Hospital when it was full of zombies.”

“
Here we go again...” said Susana, sighing. “It didn’t happen like that. He got out on his own and we found each other. It was pure luck that we both made it... at a point, the area was zombie-free.”

“
Zombie free?”

“
Yes. They went somewhere else, but we still don’t know why, and I suspect that we never will, although I personally have a theory. I think that they went to the exits; the highway, the port... that’s where people gathered, those who tried to escape. When they began to come back, they did so like the tide. They came from downtown, in such numbers that for a moment I thought we weren’t going to make it.”

“
By then we were already quite a few,” said Dr. Rodriguez.

“
Exactly. So we had the idea of coming here.”

“
It was a brilliant idea,” toasted Dozer with his empty can.

“
Actually, it was. Everything was closed, so we didn’t have to clear the cadavers out. And the refrigerators in the kitchens were bursting with provisions, mostly conserves, but also meat. I think they were preparing for some event. There’s more frozen meat than we can consume in months.”

“
Wow...” exclaimed Aranda “And the water? And the electricity? How did you solve... ?”

“
Finish your pasta,” interrupted Susana. “We’ll show you around and see what you want to occupy yourself with.”

Aranda nodded, still smiling, and he put a spoonful of macaroni in his mouth that tasted like heaven to him.

The encampment was inside the Carranque sports center, in the far west area of the city. It was spacious, completely fenced, and located near the highway and facilities such as supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware stores, malls, several health centers and a hospital, the Carlos Haya. It had large illumination towers (that they had turned so that they illuminated the exterior and not just the sports fields), two covered pavilions, an indoor pool, an athletics field, an artificial grass hockey field, four paddle courts, a fronton for jai alai, two dressing rooms with showers, large rooms, a cafeteria and numerous storage rooms. The several office cubicles had been reconditioned to accommodate bedrooms. The pool, most of all, had proven to be a valuable good, mostly because the lack of electricity had ended up making water scarce as well. None of the faucets delivered the essential element anymore. For this reason, the pool was used as a community bath, and it was kept hygienic thanks to the chlorine and the germicidal powders that were stocked.

About thirty people lived in the encampment that some called
Macondo
, in honor of the book by Garcia Marquez, which was about survivors to a pandemic that had ravaged the world months before. Most of these survivors had experience fighting the wanderers; they each had survived more than one direct confrontation before they had arrived. Others, like Susana, had learned on the way. They also had many electrical generators: a complete battery of
Berlans 3000
that they had brought from the nearby Carrefour, and two large
Caterpillar 1250
taken from a construction site on one of the back streets. In addition, they had also found several three-phase
Wilson Perkins
in the installations that they had connected to the power supply.

They made many efforts to conserve electricity, because using the electricity meant using gasoline, and obtaining it represented increasing risks. Therefore, the whole encampment went to bed early, and did not use televisions or other frivolities that required connection to the power supply. They did have, most of the time, one or more radios turned on. The only transmissions they received were in English, although the sound was broken up and surrounded in static; and in spite of a few of them being able to read the language with certain ease, none of them understood much of what they heard on the radio. Nevertheless, they liked to feel that they were not the last survivors in a world full of resuscitated cadavers.

In the ensuing weeks, Aranda managed to become very popular in the encampment. He was very charismatic and was well liked by everyone almost instantly. He was calm, knew how to listen, and always had solutions for the problems that arose, no matter what kind: an unexpected problem with a pipe, improvements in the administration and management of food, or an improvement in the shift system. In short order, the words
“let’s see what Aranda has to say about it” were in everyone’s mouth.

Of the thirty people that lived in the sports center, a smaller group had become specialized in weapon use. Dozer and two others had been hunting enthusiasts and were also good athletes, and therefore were the ones to go for supplies when it needed to be done. They were extraordinarily good. They also took care of the undesirables that had regularly approached the camp when it was still young and there were not as many zombies.

One group of them, arriving on powerful motorcycles, had stationed themselves close to the main entrance driving their bikes in circles. They carried weapons, and along with shots into the air, they shouted that it would be best if some of the women left with them in order for them to perpetuate the species. Dozer and the others had fired several shots in rapid succession and every single one of the marauders’ weapons fell to the ground; the hands that held them had been reduced to bloody stumps. They left, bikes roaring, zigzagging among the living dead.

That had happened when there were still undesirables left on the streets. There were none left anymore.

Susana was a part of the smaller, specialized group. She proved to have a natural talent for weapons use, as well as extraordinary aim. She trained hard daily to improve her physical form, and had discovered that doing so did not just strengthen her body, but it reinforced her mental fortitude. She had changed greatly since she had abandoned her apartment, now several months ago, and she felt proud of said change, of having left behind a timid and indecisive Susana that she did not identify herself with any longer.

One morning, Juan went to the athletics track. It was an inclement, black day. He studied the specters’ movements, watching them hold on to the metal railing with their bony fingers. When he came into sight, all of their gazes concentrated on him. If he got close enough, he caused a great deal of commotion among their ranks: their brows furrowed, the teeth appeared, and their whitish eyes seemed capable of boring into him. However if he began to move away enough to be far from their field of view, they lost interest in him and began to wander. It was as if the zombies functioned with a very basic program, manipulating just a few variables. Something could be there or not, but it did not seem like they were capable of considering that he was
“there but in hiding”, for example.

An unexpected voice from his right startled him and broke his train of thought.

“
How’s it going, young man?” asked Dozer.

“
Fuck... I didn’t hear your coming,” said Aranda, excusing himself.

“
I can see that,” Dozer replied, somewhat amused. Although it was cold, he was dressed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt, a couple of sizes too small.

Dozer followed Aranda’s gaze.

“
They still give me the shivers,” Aranda said, looking out at the zombies. “A while ago, I saw one dressed with a SAMUR[2] uniform. It had a stethoscope around its neck and a hole the size of a golf ball in the clavicle area. Well, I asked myself what had been its story, how it ended up like that. Maybe the same person he had been trying to help had infected him. Maybe he never had a chance.”