The Wanderers (13 page)

They were not attacking him! They were not ripping his flesh to shreds, they were not biting him, or suffocating him with their cold hands from the grave! He watched their fleshless faces with a mixture of fascination and repugnance. One of them, dressed in a brown corduroy suit, sported a hair-raising wound on its neck, deep enough for its head to nod when it walked. The one behind it was missing its lower jawbone, and its tongue lolled to the side, flaccid, gray and swollen. Another one walked with a thick metal bar piercing its chest, right underneath the heart. None of them, however, seemed to be interested in him. Not at all.

Why?
He asked himself.
Why me?
He incessantly jumped from one explanation to another, but he rejected each one fast as it came to him. Meanwhile, the cadavers began to move in every direction. It was clear that the church, which had been completely occupied, was no longer a target for them.

Suddenly, in the middle of that infected river of death and putrefaction, and tormented by those thoughts, he understood. And the comprehension of the indisputable fact that he was safe, that he had been judged and found chaste and free of all sin, made him stagger.

“
Oh Father...” he said, looking up to the sky, filled with stars, and feeling fresh tears spring to his eyes, which were saturated by the spectral shine of dementia. “Guide me God Almighty, what... what should I do now? Where should I go?”

However, up there, the stars twinkled, and said nothing. He looked everywhere, imploring, searching for an answer, a sign, a message that he could interpret. It is true that, in such a mental state, Father Isidro could have even interpreted the erratic flight of a fly over a pile of shit, but chance was much more capricious that night.

The wind was becoming stronger. A small sheet of paper, blowing in the wind, shook him out of his reverie; it stuck to his chest, near his neck. Father Isidro took it, blinking. It seemed to be a manuscript text in large script.

WE’RE ALIVE

We’re at number 53 of the Plaza de la Merced. We’re besieged. We are 6 survivors and we urgently need medical help. We’re running out of food and WATER. Please, come rescue us, access by the roof is possible.

URGENT

“
Alive...” murmured Father Isidro, looking at the note, and rereading the words over and over again.

That was the sign. Everything fit so smoothly into the puzzle of his destiny that he could almost feel the
strings
with which God was governing him. How did those six impure ones dare try to escape the sacred Final Judgment? He examined the handwriting, the missing
e
in the word “rescue”. Young people, most likely, or low people, the bad kind that lived their lives in sin. He could almost imagine them, locked up for so long in that refuge, subjugated by indecency and... may God forgive them... fornication.

“
I will be the Water...” he began to say, taking small steps forward, towards the Plaza de la Merced. His eyes were two turbulent oceans tainted with madness. “I will be the water to cleanse you, because I have been judged. I will be the Door that will conduct you back to the Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Lord...”

The darkness swallowed him.

Chapter 15

“We have to leave” Aranda said. “You know that, right?”

Susana did not respond immediately. She was looking through the large window while the rain fell copiously. Outside, the city she had loved so was sinking into darkness, lacking the electric power that in the past had illuminated the windows and streetlamps. Without it, the buildings were deathly masses erected without any apparent arrangement; totemic blocks, vestiges of a culture that would rapidly disappear.

“
I’m ready,” she finally said.

The young man consulted some papers he had fastened to a green folder.

“
Well, today we have...” he approached the window and, with his eyes half-closed, searched among the buildings they had in front of them. Thereafter, he looked at his documents and finally pointed at a large building made up of many floors and with a curved appearance that was outlined against the leaden sky. “That one over there.”

Susana studied the building. “Who’s coming?”

“
Us two, Uriguen and Dozer.”

Susana nodded. “Good. That’s better.”

* * *

The encampment had its cleaning guys, a group that made practically daily expeditions to the surrounding buildings. Their mission was none other than cleaning each apartment and closing them up. They threw the dead out, and took out the bodies. When they found a scene of butchery, complete with blood puddles, they cleaned it using generous amounts of disinfectant. These tasks were a part of the plan to increase the Carranque encampment’s perimeter, and although it seemed discouraging due to its magnitude, it helped them a lot psychologically. Although it was a very hard job, they felt good doing it. Each clean building was a small step towards sanity. They liked to see the rooms without the living dead, rooms without the horror of blood staining the floors and walls. It was as if they were reconquering the city little by little.

One of the large projects they had always wanted to undertake was to move the cars that blocked the streets adjacent to the installations. That would allow them to access the highway again and cover the whole coast searching for other survivors. Aranda had suggested a bus, with some modifications to protect the large wheels. There were luxury buses all over the place that would perfectly resist the onset of all of those dead things. He had also suggested two wedges for the front, in case it was necessary clear the way in a crowd of zombies. But before undertaking those tasks, they needed to expand the area’s perimeter.

Uriguen protested when he was summoned for the expedition. He did not like cloudy days, but he liked rainy days even less.
“Zombies and rain, what a delightful combination. Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“
Come on, big guy,” exclaimed the young man, holstering a Star 28 PK under his arm. It was the local police force’s regulation gun. He had “borrowed” it from a police station that was a half a mile away to the south. They had also taken many Heckler and Koch rifles that had become an extension of their own bodies during their incursions. Aranda had had the idea of attaching magnetic lanterns that remained firmly fastened to the barrels and were easy to attach and detach.

“
Where’s the little couple?” asked Dozer.

“
Jose has gone to look for Susana. I don’t think they’ll take long.”

“
Good... perfect time for me to have a smoke. Shit,” Dozer said, patting the pockets on his shirt and pants. “I can’t fucking believe I left my cigarettes in the room.”

“
I have some,” said Uriguen, passing him a pack of
Benson & Hedges.

“
Benson, you bastard...” laughed Dozer.

“
I’m not going to smoke
Gold Coast
now that cigarettes are free.”

Dozer let out a loud guffaw. “I don’t even know why I’ve started the habit,” he said, exhaling the smoke of his first drag.

“
You didn’t use to smoke?”

“
Actually... no.” He held the cigarette with two fingers and stared at the lit end. A faint column of smoke lazily ascended. “I smoked the first one locked in an elevator, a few days after everything went to hell. There was a girl and me. I think her name was Sandra. You could say that it’s weird to smoke in an elevator, but we had opened a maintenance grate in the ceiling, and she was very nervous. The light had gone out... do you remember how much the light went out in the first days?”

“
It’s true...” commented Uriguen, his gaze indirect, not looking at any spot in particular.

“
It was because of the reconnections. There are two power plants in Malaga that produce 400 megawatts each, but the Costa del Sol needs 1.300, that’s why a part of the energy comes from cities like Cordoba or Jaen, and another part is provided by other alternative energy sources.”

“
Like solar panels and wind turbines, like the ones in Velez Malaga?”

“
Uh huh, exactly. Well this girl, Sandra, was very nervous because of the lurching movements of the elevator and practically begged me to let her smoke a cigarette. I felt very sorry for her, you know, she was so small... that I told her what the hell, that I’d smoke one with her. That got her spirits up... boy did she change when she felt the nicotine galloping through her veins.”

Uriguen laughed, thinking about the famous song by Queco.

“
We were locked in there for a couple of hours, and when we got out...” Suddenly, the expression on his face darkened. “Well, when we got out things would never be the same again.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. “It was the elevator inside El Corte Inglés, you know? We did not know it then, but when the generator technician went to check if it was resisting the power cut well, he was electrocuted and fried instantly. That’s why the electric system ended up failing, and we were in the dark for so long.”

“
Did the technician... ?”

“
Did he turn into a fucking zombie? He sure did. Hell and he was fast... you know that you can never know how long it can take someone to come back to life, but this guy must have been the fucking Carl Lewis of the living dead.”

Uriguen laughed like crazy at the remark.

“
He... well, I can only imagine what happened... I imagine that some floor manager or maintenance boss went down there to see why the generator system wasn’t working. They must have been pretty pissed off—imagine all of the looting caused by the practically complete darkness on every floor,” he said with a half -smile on his lips. “Anyway, I think that there’s no need to mention that whoever went down there encountered a nice private party. And I think that, perhaps, a little later, someone else went down, until they became an interesting enough group. Maybe those things then found the exit door to the commercial floors.”

Uriguen did not say anything. He could draw the scene in his mind: a group of zombies violently opening a pair of metallic double doors where the words
Authorized Personnel Only
were written, wearing work clothes and uniforms with the logo of El Corte Ingles. The worst thing about zombies, he reflected, was seeing them dressed in the clothes they wore in life, at the moment of death. You would see them in their suits and their cleaning personnel uniforms. And even worse, you would see them dressed in the delicate lace blouse a young woman acquired for thirty dollars to impress her boyfriend; then you looked up and encountered a world of madness that overflowed in the blackish and lifeless pupils of what once was a beautiful girl full of life.

“
Being in there” continued Dozer, “in the darkness of the elevator, and hearing the far-away screams of the people almost finished us. Imagine the darkness, the confusion...”

They remained silent for a few seconds. The cigarette burned away.

“
How did you get out of there?”

“
When the light came back we managed to reach the next floor and open the doors. There was blood all over the place.”

“
God...”

Dozer brusquely stood up and began to secure the straps of the padding he wore on his shins and thighs, as if he wanted to change the subject. Finally, he broke the silence again.

“
Have you ever been to the cemetery?” he asked quietly.

“
No. It wouldn’t even cross my mind, not with things as they are.”

“
I have,” he said. “Go someday, if you have the balls. Go and sharpen your ears. Lie down on one of those tombstones and listen...”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Some of them are alive. In their graves. Down there. Some are alive.”

Chapter 16

They never used the street gate to leave the facility; there were too many cadavers stalking the fence to even consider it. Instead, they used the sewage system to move underneath the city from one point to another. They went down to the sewer using a metal ladder that descended five meters, something that made that entrance completely impregnable. Aranda was also fascinated because there was not one rat left anywhere. It was like the old story about rats abandoning a sinking ship, and Malaga, in fact, was sinking in tempestuous waters.

That morning, the Death Squadron of Carranque advanced through the sewers. They had also obtained a map of the tunnel structures and pipes in Malaga, and thanks to it, they moved at a good pace. At their feet, a black flow of unidentifiable substances flowed through a cement channel. Truth be told, there was not much danger. There was plastic police tape (also acquired at the police station) in all of the corridors that criss-crossed the tunnels. That way, if any one of those things entered the sewers they would immediately know by the broken tape.

They finally reached the sewer cover they used as an exit and proceeded as usual. Jose quickly exited
—as he was the most agile and was the most precise shot of the four—and kneeled on the ground as lookout to cover those who followed him. It was raining, and the visibility was not very good, but Jose quickly scanned the perimeter. They were always careful not to shoot in the street unless it was absolutely necessary. They had learned that the sound of shots attracted the wanderers’ unwanted attention and that was obviously a problem.

Today there were not many wanderers, and those that were present were dispersed around the large traffic circle where they had appeared. There were several around, but the one that worried them most of all was one dressed in some sort of a blue jumpsuit that had its back to them: it was enormous, almost as big as Dozer, and Jose knew that that type of zombie could develop disproportionate speed and strength. He thought of blowing its head off to avoid problems, now that he had it within range, but Uriguen put a hand on his shoulder. All of them were already outside; it was time to move.