The Wanderers (33 page)

“
There are many of them, too many,” Aranda answered. “How many bullets do you have in there?”

“
Four clips, about a hundred shots.”

“
Can we make our way downstairs? We have to get down there to restore order before they end up spreading all over the damn building.”

“
Shit, the infirmary,” Jose said suddenly, opening his eyes wide. He was thinking of Dozer, Jaime and whomever was on watch.

“
I know, but let’s not get nervous. Can we get down there?”

“
Sure we can,” replied Susana, who had just reached them. “I have three more clips. Uriguen doesn’t have his rifle, he took it back to the warehouse before going to bed.”

“
Shit!” Jose spat.

“
It’s you and me.”

“
Come on, come on,” Jose urged, forcing his way through the second and third rows of men that were holding the mattresses in place.

He tried to find a gap to fire from, but it was not an easy task. The mattresses were being subjected to a terrible struggle, and they were in continuous movement blocking the gaps that they found. Finally they passed a chair to the first line of combat and, climbing up onto it, he had a straight line of fire to the besiegers. From that position he opened fire, one, two, six times, all of them true shots to the head area; the bodies, deprived of the wretched breath that moved them, fell to the floor, really dead this time, one upon the other, forming a bloody and terrifying pile.

“
Isabel? Isabel was upstairs with us!” a woman was telling Moses at that same moment. “She helped us place the rain containers. She was on the roof!”

Moses, invaded by a new wave of panic, began to go up the staircase. His head was telling him that it was too long ago for her to have not come down already. When he had already climbed two whole flights, he was delighted to see her, though she was trembling and downcast, being helped down the stairs by Michelle.

“
Isabel!” he exclaimed, his eyes stinging with sudden tears. Tears of relief.

“
Elle, est elle?”
Michelle said, halfway between French and Spanish. “She is OK.”

But Isabel, who had now heard Moses’ voice, literally threw herself into his arms, weeping inconsolably. Moses embraced her strongly, whispering in her ear that everything was going to be alright, and that there was nothing to worry about.

Michelle waited a reasonable amount of time to allow Moses to calm Isabel. Jose
’s shots, strangely rhythmical, came up through the stairwell, crashing into dragged-out echoes.

“
Les morts, sont ils morts?”
she finally asked.

Moses nodded. “They’re on the stairs, but they’re finishing them off with the rifles.”

“
Rifles?” Michelle repeated, somewhat confused.

Moses broke his embrace with Isabel. “Are you alright?” he asked, searching her eyes.

“
Y... yes. I’m alright,” she answered, still stammering. “I’m good now. I didn’t want... I didn’t want to come down. I didn’t know where you were and-”

“
We’re all together, you’ll see. Do you want to stay up here?”

But Isabel looked at him with reddened eyes. It was a direct, determined gaze. “No. I want to go with you.”

Moses seemed to consider the possibilities for a few seconds. “Okay,” he finally said, “let’s go down.”

At that moment, the lights went out.

The fight on the stairs became very complicated from that moment on. The flashes made by the rifles was the only light they had as a reference. Jose made the most of the flashes to aim at the next objective, but the specters moved like a wave, forever changing, and his shots were beginning to be less accurate. Each explosion of light brought with it a new image of horror, like small instances captured in a photograph, and he realized that he was not hitting them in the head anymore, and that was the only possibility of bringing them down. One shot made one poor wretch
’s jaw fly off, the next one tore a piece right off the neck of the zombie he had right in front of him, but the third one was lost without having any effect at all.

“
That son of a bitch is in the maintenance basement, with the generators!” Aranda said. It was impossible for them to reach the basement without clearing the stairs. He clenched his teeth hard.
Bam. Bam
. The flashes transformed the scene into a macabre black and white movie, and the air became filled with the loathsome stench of gunpowder and blood.

In the adjoining building, which they used as the infirmary, things were not any better. Carmen, or
Carmencita
, as they all called her, gave a considerable start when the first shot caused her to snap her head up from the old novel that she was reading. The sound was definitely different from that of a thunderclap, briefer, more intense, like that of a firecracker. However, it was raining with too much intensity for someone to be practice shooting, and she knew perfectly that the death squad boys were on their mission that night.

Disturbed, she looked outside. The novel slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. There were
zombies
out there, inside the premises, scarcely ninety feet away. They moved around erratically through the area between the buildings and the sports fields. She raised a hand to her mouth, overcome by a wave of panic like she had not experienced in a long time, but she reacted quickly and moved away from the windows, out of their sight.

She ran down the hallway and descended the few steps that separated her from the office where Dr. Rodriguez did his best to analyze the results of his investigations. He had arrived at about five o
’clock in the morning, unable to sleep anymore, and he had been trying without much success to isolate the pathogenic agent that he had found.

“
D-Doctor...” she said. Her voice sounded unknown to her, more high-pitched and quivering than usual.

Dr. Rodriguez lifted his gaze up to her, looking at her over his glasses. Carmen was as pale as a sheet, and he quickly realized that something was wrong, definitely wrong.
“What’s the matter, Carmen?”

“
The... the... they’re right here...”

Dr. Rodriguez blinked, trying to decipher her words. “What?”

But then, the sound of shattering glass reached their ears. By the intensity of the sound, it was clear that it was the infirmary access windows.

“
Jesus,” Doctor Rodriguez said, suddenly panicked.

“
They’re inside, Doctor,” whispered Carmen.

“
Are there many of them?”

“
Many...”

“
Come,” Rodriguez said, “we have to push Jaime’s bed and take it to where Dozer is, that’s the only way we can ensure that we can hold out for a while, until someone comes for us.”

They were swiftly on their way, trusting that they would still have a couple of minutes before the zombies reached them. Jaime was still dozing when they arrived; knocked out by the codeine they had given him the previous night because he was suffering from intense chest pains. When they began to push the bed out of the room, they were thankful that it had wheels. In just a few seconds, they arrived where Dozer was and closed the double door behind them.

“
What’s the matter?” Dozer asked.

“
Carmen says that the zombies have gotten in. We heard them break the entrance window, they may arrive at any moment now.”

Dozer blinked, trying to process the information. When he spoke again, he discovered that his mouth was completely dry. “Doctor, do you have any weapons in here?”

Rodriguez shook his head.

“
Well, that’s a mistake that we may pay for dearly. We have to block the door.” He looked around. There was a small medicine cabinet, but it did not look too heavy; however, they did not have anything other than that and the beds, which to make things worse, were equipped with wheels.

“
Can you push both beds against the door?”

“
Yes.”

Suddenly, they heard a noise behind the door. Carmen jumped a little. Dozer raised a finger to his lips, pleading them all to be silent. When he began to speak again, he did so in a whispering voice, as low as he could.

“
Doctor, push the beds, but slowly. If they don’t know that we’re here, they won’t even be interested in the door.”

The doctor and Carmen began to push Dozer’s bed as carefully as they could, and they made sure that it was pressed up against the double door. Afterwards, with the same caution, they did the same with Jaime’s bed.

“
Can the wheels be locked?”

The doctor crouched down, and gratefully discovered that the wheels had a safety latch and he stood up, lifting his thumb.

“
Good... good...”

They all remained silent, looking at the white doors and just concentrated on listening. In the distance, they could sense the incessant murmur of water falling, but that was all. If there were any zombies out there, they could not be sure. Carmen, without even intending to, approached the doctor and embraced him by the waist. She was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

Chapter 36

In the main building, Jose was already loading the second clip. The stairs had witnessed unrestrained barbarism: lifeless bodies were scattered in every possible posture, piled in a monstrous amalgam of arms and legs. But even so, they continued coming.

They had let the mattresses down to a medium height so that Susana could open fire against them. With her help, they gained more ground in overcoming the onslaught.

Aranda saw clearly what needed to be done.
“We have to move forward!” he shouted at them, helping the men that were holding up the bed bases, but the din of the rifle fire did not allow his voice to reach Jose. Finally, he passed through the arms of the man that was to his left and he was able to get close to him.

“
Jose! Jose! We have to move forward!”

“
What?” Jose screamed, leaning over a little to get his head closer.

“
We have to move forward! We’re going to run out of ammunition, Jose!” he signaled with his extended hand, indicating the stairs that led down.

Jose quickly nodded and made a similar gesture to Susana, who always had an eye on him. Susana lifted a hand to signal that she had understood the message.

“
Forward, little by little, push!” Aranda shouted at the men he had at his side. Then they moved as one, step by step, tightly holding the mattresses and the bases. It was a tremendous effort, and in a short time, they encountered the added problem of having to pass over the first fallen bodies. One of the men began to scream while he looked at the floor. The sight was horrible, and felt repugnant to them; they were stepping on soft, half-decomposed flesh that frequently yielded underneath their weight and broke open with a viscous sound; or they faced the maddening sight of a hand shaken by residual spasms of a nervous system that was still stimulated by the pathogenic agent that had caused the zombie infection.

“
Don’t look down!” Aranda screamed, “Move forward, MOVE FORWARD!”

They were not just facing the broken images that the glare of the shots revealed; there was the smell to contend with as well: an intense smell of putrefaction that completely invaded them. Their throats closed up without them being able to avoid it, as if someone had emptied the building of oxygen. One of the men could not stand it anymore and violently vomited.

“
NO!” Aranda screamed.

Then the mattress yielded on that side and became destabilized. A pair of thin and fibrous arms with long, tensed fingers appeared over it, forcing them to lower it. Its face was contracted by the innumerable wrinkles that a colossal expression of rage drew upon it.

Susana did not take long in turning her rifle and striking it in the middle of the face. It fell backwards, pushed by the inertia of the shot, its face having become an abhorrent confusion of blood and flesh; the arms were still outstretched, surrounded by tensed muscles.

Step by step, they managed to reach the bend in the staircase, the last phase of the flight before the stretch of steps that would lead them to the lobby. There, the daylight, although gray and faded, allowed them to see a little of what they were doing, and thanks to that the shots became accurate again. Jose, however, was really showing signs of his lack of sleep; his rifle felt like it weighed more that it usually did, and he felt his arms trembling due to the effort. He was also sweating excessively, and his face was itching; caused by the effects of the toxins he had not liberated during his sleep, but he concentrated on shooting and not missing. He knew that the survival of at least twenty people depended on him.

Bang. Bang.

Finally, when it clumsily fell to the side, one of the bodies revealed the reception room behind it.

“
Come on!” Aranda exclaimed; pushing the bed bases a final stretch. “Now!”

As they entered the room, they opened the flanks to the right and left, and Jose and Susana quickly covered them, opening fire upon the specters that were clustered there.

Aranda was continuously trying to look over the bases to his left, until he finally caught sight of what he was looking for. It was the door that led to the warehouse where they kept the supplies: the rest of the weapons, the frontal pieces, the flashlights, the police vests
... everything. Thanking God for small favors, Aranda verified that it was still closed.

“
To the right, to the warehouse, to the warehouse!”