The Wanderers (30 page)

She did not make it. By the third night, she hurled herself out to the streets, robbed money from a taxi driver who was standing around talking with some colleagues and she went to get a gram of the first crap she could find. She awoke at about six-thirty, as cold as ice, on a bench on Alameda Street. How she had gotten there, she did not remember, but as soon as she managed to stand, she had an objective to get a little more. Just a little more and she would continue coming off it.

It was her neighbor Miriam who confronted her on the landing of the apartment where she lived, after two days of not hearing from her. Sandra’s face was livid, and the rings around her eyes were so marked that she looked like she was wearing cheap make-up for a child’s Halloween party. Miriam took her to her room and sat her on the bed; she became angry with her, she yelled at her, she shook her, and she hugged her, and she finally convinced her to enter a Human Project
[4] program. Although it took her a couple of months to even pass through the building’s door for information, it was there that she managed to free herself from the enormous tombstone that was her addiction.

When she completed the program, they found her an apartment and a four-hour morning job as a cashier at a large supermarket chain. The girl did well, and they renewed her contract after three and six months. She was beginning to raise her head. She was getting her own money and going to classes subsidized by European funds in the afternoons; cooking classes, massage lessons, and aesthetics classes.

One night she was tempted by a few co-workers to go out to have a few drinks. It was someone
’s birthday and she promised herself to take a couple of sips and run back home, far away from the night, like they had taught her in the program. But in the first watering hole she went to, she met a boy with bright eyes and a spectacular smile. He was so diametrically different from the young man who had gotten her pregnant that she felt immediately attracted to him. He was attractive, and his whole body language seemed to say “sex”. They danced and drank expensive vodka, gin and tonic, and rum cocktails, and they laughed... how they laughed, until he ran a finger over her lips and signaled to her to go with him into the bathroom.

Sandra, intoxicated by the warm alcohol induced daze, wanted to give him everything. She wanted him
so much
. But when they entered the small toilet cubicle and she searched for his lips with an almost animal desire, her eyes encountered something that he held in front of her eyes; her old lover, the absolute owner of her soul. A little bag of plastic with white powder inside.

Four weeks later, Sandra had lost her job. She received several control calls from the people at the program, but the phone
’s ringing was like a meaningless litany resounding in the margins of her conscience.

Shortly afterwards came the Infection. The old cocaine distribution networks were broken; there was no one left to sell that shit to, and hardly anyone that wanted to buy it. The streets began to empty. Sandra had to face the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse for the third time: she was jonesing, but by the time she was prepared to confront the streets again, it was too late
—nobody answered the phone; her neighbor was no longer there. The world had ended.

She survived as well as she could. She owed her life to a fifty-something year old named Pablo, who helped her during the hard days in the beginning. For a few days it went very well for them. Eventually, they reached Carranque, where they saw the survivors on the other side of the fences. They had been trying to leave the city through the west, on the way to the highway that would lead them to less populated areas. Pablo did not make it, by just a little. In the last minute, a zombie knocked him to the ground where he disappeared underneath a mountain of bodies. Dozer and Jose came running and shot at them all, but it was too late: before dying, Pablo struggled for a few seconds with a spring of blood gushing out of his severed Adam
’s apple. Jose prevented him getting back up again with an accurate bullet to his head.

The small community of Carranque was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Now she had an occupation and tasks to attend, in a way that every day she felt part of something; something important. She spoke to one person and another, and she felt that the flow of affection circulated in both directions. She also followed Aranda
’s simple instructions to overcome her memories and her lack of self-esteem; to take care of herself as she had never done before, beginning by simple, physical, tangible things, with immediate results. She chose her hands. She cared for them with dedicated effort, hydrating them with creams, sanding the hangnails, as she never had before, delicately molding her nails with the help of a small nail file. When she looked at them, and observed the beautiful work she had done, she felt strengthened, and she knew in that second that she could continue with the rest of her body; first on the outside, and later on the inside. Therefore, each morning she welcomed the new day with renewed energy and the specters that crowded behind the fences mattered less and less to her.

That morning, she went down to the basement, according to the task plans of that day. Her day began with cleaning the lower rooms using a mop. They did not have any water to waste, but they used non-soap floor cleaners and copious amounts of bleach, products that they had in industrial quantities. It was an area in which there was much movement lately, since they were watching the sewers for the madman that had finished Moses
’ and Isabel’s friends off, so it had to be cleaned at least twice a week. It was a part that she did not like too much, mostly because it was a solitary activity, but afterwards it was her turn in the kitchen, and there she always talked about almost everything, and it was also the gossip central of the community.

When she had already cleaned half of the lounge, Alan appeared in the room. He came from the adjacent chamber, from one of the sewer accesses. He was carrying one of the rifles with which the death squad was so familiar.

“
Good morning!” Sandra greeted him.

“
Hey, girl,” Alan said listlessly.

“
How did it go?”

“
Damn... I’m beat. The whole night in the sewer, in the dark. It really sucks...”

“
I can imagine.”

“
I had to smack myself a couple of times to avoid falling asleep. I swear we’re going to get sick if we go on breathing in all of the shit that’s down there. I hope they’ve hunted down that fucking lunatic bastard and we can stop doing this.”

“
We’ll see,” Sandra said. “Who’s replacing you?”

“
I think Ivan is. Have you seen him?”

“
No, I haven’t seen him.”

“
Fuuuck,” he said slowly, dragging the word out. “If he’s overslept I’m going to smash his dick between two rocks.”

Sandra let out a small laugh.

“
I can’t handle any more of this. I swear I’m falling asleep on my feet,” said Alan.

Sandra could see that he looked truly exhausted.
“Leave if you want to. When Ivan gets here I’ll tell him you had to go.”

“
I don’t know...”

“
In the end he’s the one who’s late, right?”

“
That’s true. What the hell?”

“
Well come on,” said Sandra, smiling, “off to bed, champ.”

“
Well yes! I’m leaving... see you later.”

Alan disappeared down the corridor and Sandra stopped a few seconds to watch him move away, until he disappeared upstairs. She thought that she liked Alan, at least a little, but she did not want any complicated relationships or messes. She felt fantastically good. She held the mop in both hands and concentrated on the task, whistling the first tune that came to mind.

She had almost finished when a small metallic sound startled her. It came from the other side of the corridor, where the sewer access was. For a moment, her mind devised old fears in the shape of scenes in which a mob of the living dead burst in through the hall, but her new optimistic outlook on life pushed aside her gloomy thoughts and quickly turned to Ivan. It had to be Ivan, moving around to plunge into the tunnel to keep watch.

“
Ivan?”

There was no answer.

She tried again, with her voice at a higher volume, but again she found herself in silence. For a few seconds, the cold claw of fear gripped her; she noticed the blockage at the base of her brain, paralyzing her legs and oppressing her chest. It brought her dark memories of remote times, when she rode upon the back of the Fifth Horseman. But she soon felt stupid, and made an effort to overcome her state.

She resolvedly made her way towards the room where the sewer access was. They had installed a metallic bar around it to allow them to comfortably go down and up, but the cover had been taken off, laid to the side like a gigantic and discolored button. The hole, however, was another thing entirely; a strange and deep black eye that menacingly glared at her.

“
Ivan?”

Then something pulled her hair down, painfully forcing her to bend backwards. She wanted to scream, but she discovered that she could not; suddenly her neck itched, it was some sort of an intense and painful burning sensation, and immediately she had a strange sensation, lukewarm, as if someone had spilled a bowl of warm soup over her chest. Her legs faltered, and she crumpled to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Sandra lived the scene as if a movie were being projected in her mind; a movie that had begun to lose color and become blurred, in which a black mist began to smudge the edges of her sight.

She fell to the floor on her side with a dull sound. She had the blurred image of her own hand. She was thinking in slow motion; it was hard for her to compose the words correctly, and breathing was becoming increasingly difficult. She had the asphyxiating sensation of having something caught in her throat, but even though she wanted to cough, her body was not responding anymore. She wanted to move her fingers, but she did not manage this either. She blinked, trying to focus on her hand, and she discovered that it was covered in blood.
This sucks
, she thought somewhat incoherently.
It’s going to take me forever to get all of that crap off... my nailfs... the hangnailfs... myff hfndfs...

Sandra died staring at her hand.

Chapter 33

The squad went back home at a little over half past eight. They did not enter through the room in which Sandra was coming undone in a thick pool of blood, but through another entrance that was closer, located to the north.

“
Did you have any luck?” he lookout asked when he saw them arrive.

“
No, man. The son of a bitch didn’t come.”

They went directly to inform Aranda, who waited for them in the main office. It was from that office that they kept control of the Community. There were large papers with timetables, lists and plans hanging on the walls. They had provided several tables, where other members of the community were often dedicated to administrative tasks. That morning, however, Aranda was alone, sipping a cup of instant decaffeinated coffee.

As soon as they entered the room, Aranda knew from their faces that the hunt had not been successful.

“
Nothing... right?” he asked, more to begin the conversation than to confirm what he already knew.

“
No. He did come.”

“
Even so, it’s possible that he might in the next few hours. Maybe he got up a while ago and caught sight of the enormous smoke column. I’ve seen its trail not ten minutes ago, from the roof. It’s still smoking quite a lot.”

“
Yes, for sure,” Susana said.

“
Why did you come back then?”

“
The night has worn us out more than what we had imagined. If he would have appeared now, in the morning, we are not sure we would be able to act as safely as we could’ve in different conditions.”

Aranda clucked his tongue.
“I understand,” he said. “You’ve done well in coming back.”

He stood up then, and slowly went towards the window, crossing both hands behind his back and looking outside with absent eyes. Jose, unbuttoning his bulletproof vest, let himself fall heavily on one of the empty chairs. He looked discouraged and tired.

“
Finding that priest as soon as possible is our priority,” Aranda said in a low voice. There was a trace of sadness in the tone of his voice that was only obvious to Susana. “Guarding the sewers is not enough; there are thousands of ways in which that lunatic could approach us in silence. Last night I had a dream, a horrible dream. It’s the first one I’ve had since all of this has started, so for me, it’s significant.”

He turned, searching Susana
’s intelligent gaze. “I suggest you all get some sleep,” he continued. “Whatever you need to get back in shape; we need to move. I’ll meet up with the Committee in a while, to present the situation and study what other actions we can take. But when you wake up, I would like for you to go back there, to see what’s going on. With utmost care, without any shots, just to observe, to scout, spy... do you understand?”

“
Of course,” Jose said. He was running a finger between his eyebrows, as if suffering from a sudden headache. “Although I would have preferred Dozer had not screwed up his fucking rib.”

“
I know, but-”

“
It is what it is,” Jose interrupted him, “I know.”

Aranda nodded. “Otherwise,” he said, “I’ve included observation with binoculars on today’s task list. Of all of the areas near to the fire that can be seen from here, for the rest of the day. On the improbable chance that this madman decides to come walking down the street from that area, we’ll see him before he sees us.”