The Wanderers (17 page)

He ran up the stairs. The dead seemed to be reacting to his running; they were becoming excited and moved faster with each step, uttering unintelligible grunts with more and more frequency, and they looked directly at him while they were stretching their arms towards him, grabbing for him.

“
You offspring of vipers!” the priest said. “How are you going to escape the Divine Judgment?”

Right then, Roberto stumbled and fell on the stairs. His right knee exploded with intense, sharp pain. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to control the pulsating burning sensation, and then he looked back to see who was pursuing him. John was already there, stretching out his hand to grab his foot.

The Mexican reacted quickly. He withdrew his leg and kicked John hard. It was like beating a pillow; John did not suffer any pain. He took Roberto’s foot and pulled towards himself, searching for flesh with his dead mouth. The speed at which Roberto rained blows on him managed to free him from the hand that was gripping his foot. Right on time; the others were arriving. Their crazed eyes gave him the strength to stand up and run.

“
MARY!” he yelled, running on the landing and looking at every door around him.

“
Up here, Roberto!” Isabel called. “On the roof!”

“
We’re screwed!” Robert said, beside himself, when he arrived upstairs.

Isabel closed the metal door when her friend passed through. The latch was on the other side, but they did not think a latch would have been much help, anyway. They had always thought they could resist against brainless living dead, incapable of solving simple problems like a latch, or a door closed by iron bars, but now they faced a new, unknown horror.

“
It’s a man” Roberto said. “He knocked down the entrance door with a club and brought those things to us!”

“
Ho-how are we going to get out of here?” Isabel asked, looking around. The sky was overcast, but the day was bright. The roofs of the city extended all around them, separated by the abysses that were the streets.

Roberto looked at Mary. She was looking at the floor, her head bent. She had switched off, given up. The Mexican turned around
... there was nothing there they could use, and there was certainly no way out. They were trapped.

Chapter 19

“Let’s see... try with this,” Cripple said, handing Moses a wire curled on a fork. “In the clink we had one just like it, for the small TV, and boy did that fucker work well.

Moses examined it. One of the ends was loose and it extended some eleven inches.

“
Yes... I think so!” he said with a smile.

He took the small radio to the window where he attached the fork to the frame using a small piece of adhesive tape, then inserted the wire into the antennae hole.
“Let’s see if we can pick something up now.”

He pressed the power button and turned the dial. The regular stations were not broadcasting. None of them, from the big ones like the National Radio of Spain to local ones like Radio Pinomar. The whole spectrum was silent.

“
It can’t be...” Moses said, turning the dial slowly from one end to the other. “Is there really
no one
left?”

“
That’s impossible... it’s impossible, man. Remember those shots we heard the other day? There are people alive, I’m sure that there are people in more places than we imagine. Like us! Holding out...”

He continued turning the dial slowly, but was discouraged.

“
It’s this fucking piece of crap, man!” he said. “We need a better receiver. It has to work, don’t you see? Television’s much more complicated, I understand that. Who knows what’s happening today with the relay stations, with satellite signals? I don’t know how many smart guys are left to keep the show running, you know? But the radio’s another story.”

Cripple shrugged. “Well, that’s it man. We can go to fucking Eroski and buy an awesome sound system. Fucking incredible.”

Moses snorted.

Moses and Cripple had survived the slaughter well so far. They lived in an attic on Beatas Street, located right in the center of Malaga. The rest of the building was empty. Because of this, it had not taken much effort to block the stairs so the specters would not enter. From their windows, they had seen many horrifying scenes, but they had also helped many people to escape the zombies, and they had seen to finishing off a good number of them, when it was necessary. They did not bother anymore: there were always new specters arriving that filled the place of the ones who had fallen, and there was another fundamental problem: the sun quickly decomposed the bodies and the sickly sweet stench would rise up to the house, pervading everything. They did not see anyone else anymore. They were alone, and Malaga was Death’s playground.

Although they did not manage the zombies badly, which were generally slow and clumsy, there was another reason why they avoided outdoor excursions whenever possible. Cripple called them
runners
. They did not know the cause, but it was as if some of the dead
awakened
and were capable of developing extraordinary speed and uncommon fury. Once, they had heard shouts out in the street and had leaned out of the balcony to look down. At first they thought it was two men running. The first one was shouting, and his arms and legs were flailing with each step as if he would fall on his face at any moment. The one behind him ran unnaturally, his arms forward and slightly leaning, wolf-like. They then understood what was happening. Moses and Cripple had shouted at them, but were unable to do anything to help. Some hundred meters away, the wolf reached its victim. It grabbed him by the back and threw him against the wall. He was still smashing into it when the wolf had already mounted him, sinking its face into the curve of the man’s neck. Blood gushed forth. A trembling hand attempted to get rid of the mortal load he had on his back, but he fell heavily to the ground. The wolf quickly lost interest. It ran to the sidewalk on the other side of the street, hitting a shop window with its fists and, while the breaking glass was still crashing to the ground, it was already running down the street until it was lost among the buildings. It was all so fast and brutal, that they could only stand there on the balcony, their hands covering their mouths; horrified.

They had encountered another runner on a different occasion, when they were exploring the neighboring building. That time they were about to join the ranks of the living dead. They discovered it was strong,
extraordinarily
strong. Even between the two of them it took nearly superhuman effort to free themselves from its constant swipes, kicks and bites. When they finally managed to escape from it, they were exhausted. Their arms hurt and their breath was labored. Moses had asked Cripple what would happen if instead of one
runner
they had had to face two of them. Cripple answered that it would probably be as bad as catching your balls in a car door. They laughed for a good while, but in the next days they both had uneasy dreams in which the episode repeated itself incessantly.

They counted on vast amounts of land force rations from the army, including packs of army bread, enough for at least three months. A friend had asked them to hold on to it “for a while”, so they could sell them later on eBay, because those products usually sold at between 15 and 40 Euros. Cripple thought that the land force army should have included Almax pills in each one of the damn packages for the heartburn they produced, undoubtedly due to the excessive preservatives. Otherwise, the rations were interestingly varied: mackerel, hake, beef, meatballs, salads, chorizo and green beans, lentils... and more than one additive to be thankful for like condensed milk, vitamin C pills and varied fruit purées.

“
We can reach the San Juan Bazaar, that’s for sure,” Moses said.

Cripple looked at him. He was eating some marmalade with cookies from the campaign rations. “Forget about it, Flanagan. Although I’d like to get something cool... Like a flamethrower!”

“
That’s an outrageous idea. If a zombie coming towards you is bad enough, imagine one on fire, covered in flames, that does not suffer any pain.”

“
Fine, smartass. Then a box of grenades, or one of those hardcore machine guns. How long would it take to clean a street with one of those?”

Moses was hardly listening to him, plunged into his own train of thought. “Why not? Shit, we could even get a vehicle—a Hummer, or a Jeep if we can’t find one, a big, tall one, with big wheels. We could reinforce it, maybe and get the fuck out of here,” he blinked and looked at Cripple. “Where would you go?”

“
There are a bunch of gated communities on the coast, all of them are really cool. We could go to one of those luxury villas with a big outside wall, pool, tennis,” he thought for a second and added, “and I bet there aren’t as many zombies as there are here in the middle of the city.”

Moses considered the idea. In his mind, Josue’s words were becoming defined shapes. He could already see the bougainvillea climbing over his terrace door, could almost feel the sun’s warmth on his face while he sat there with a good beer within reach.

“
Why not?” he said slowly, more to himself than in answer to his friend.

The next day, the warm rays of the noon sun entered through a small window and spilled over the bed where Cripple slept. His dreams were always uneasy, and he tossed and turned, which was why it was not unusual to see him wake up curled into a ball, the comforter wrapped around his body.

He lazily opened his eyes, and when he opened his mouth, he discovered that half of his face was stiff, and he felt a warm, sharp pain located in some point of his lower jaw. He put his hand to his cheek, moving his mouth in a vain attempt to shake off the pain.
Shit, it’s my fucking tooth
, he thought.

“
Mo!” he called in a hoarse voice. He received no answer. He sat on the bed, trying to clear his head.

He probably went to buy bread,
he thought, amusedly. However, the pain he felt cut his humor off short. He looked towards the bathroom, at the little cup where the toothbrush aged like a broken and ancient toy. How long had it been since he had brushed? It was as if the end of the world had broken old habits.

“
Sometimes mothers are right about these things,” he said to himself, standing up. “Hey, Mo!”

He went inside the bathroom and tried to brush his teeth. Maybe it was some food particle that had become stuck between two teeth and some scrubbing would remove it. At least he hoped so. When he finished he looked into the mirror. It seemed like it hurt a little less, and there was no sign of swelling. Once when he was in jail, his cheek had swollen up, and they called him
bunny rabbit
for the three days the antibiotics had taken to work.

“
Mo!” he called again.

He went to the living room to take a look, but Moses was not there. The window of the little balcony as open, and he saw that Moses was not out there. He checked the bathroom, Mo’s bedroom, and the small kitchen. He was not home. Cripple looked out the balcony and down towards the street. There were a few specters, but otherwise there was nothing unusual. He took a moment to enjoy the feel of the warm rays of the sun on his face. Those were the first after many days of many cloudy days, and Jesus, they sure warmed him up. It was like putting in new batteries.

Cripple went back to the living room. The pain spiked, and he had to stop for a moment.
Where the hell did he go?
He felt the painful throbbing wave gripping his brain. He did not even have a simple aspirin to mitigate the pain. Frowning, he took a look at the can of marmalade he had enjoyed the day before and cursed all of its delicious sugar.

He opened the front door and looked out the hallway, but he did not find his companion there either.

“
Hey Mo!” he called. Silence.

He closed the door, upset. The pain was not excessive, but it was constant. It had not even been a few minutes since he had awakened and he was already losing patience. He considered the possibility of finding a surviving dentist laughable, and later he pondered the possibility of finding one in the next twenty minutes, and concluded that he would need to find medicine on his own, and soon.

We went back to the balcony. It was true; there were fewer zombies wandering around the streets. They even seemed to be more disoriented than usual. There was one dressed in a white robe that, kneeled in the middle of the street, stared with interest at its own leg, spread in front of him.

He found himself thinking of the possibility of going out on the street. Where was the closest pharmacy? He thought he remembered that there was one in el Molinillo, and there were at least a couple in Santa Maria.
“So close and yet so far,” he said to himself, discouraged. Wasn’t there one at the Plaza de la Merced? If that was so, he would only have to go straight down Alamos Street, cross the plaza, go inside and get some anti-inflammatory medication and some antibiotics. And maybe one or two sleeping pills.

“
What the hell,” he told himself, touching his shorter leg, “on the way I’ll get the newspaper and sit at one of the terraces and wait until it’s lunchtime. I might just get myself a potato salad tapa and a cold beer.” He knew very well that without Moses’ help, the possibility of surviving alone such a long way was little more than ridiculous, even without
runners
added to the equation. Moses was different. Cripple did not know how he did it, but he acted as if he had control the whole time. When Moses confronted the dead, he did not hurry. If it was necessary, he would hit them with precision and force, and whenever it was possible, he would limit himself to dodging them.