The Wanderers (38 page)

But Aranda stood up from the chair and left him to prattle on incessantly, no longer interested in hearing what the priest had to say. He approached Moses and the doctor. “Let’s go outside for a moment.”

Once they were outside of the doctor’s laboratory, Aranda let out a deep and sorrowful sigh. “What do you think?” he asked them.

“
That he’s fucking nuts,” Moses said, shaking his head. “I almost feel sorry for him. He needs a Prozac bath and electro-shock in his fucking lunatic head.”

“
However,” said Rodriguez reflectively, “something he said was interesting.”

“
What?”

“
What he said about God calling him to his side and all that. Anyway, I used to work at Carlos Haya Hospital as a forensic doctor, and I used to have lunch daily with other doctors. Near-death experiences are very well documented, and we call them NDEs. They’re interesting. Except for a certain degree of intercultural variability, NDEs exhibit several common patterns such as outer body experiences, the passage through a realm of darkness towards a brightly illuminated area, and encounters with ‘celestial’ beings. If you have ever heard a NDE account, and believe me, I’ve heard many, this man is doubtlessly one of them.”

Aranda blinked.
“Are you joking, doctor?”

“
Absolutely not. The Gallup Institute conducted a study, which was in turn based on an analysis made before it by another, less renowned investigation group. It was determined that of every hundred people who had been declared clinically dead, forty per cent of them have had experiences similar to the prototypical NDE that I have just described.”

“
Where do you want to go with this?”

“
I won’t go into if something happened, or not. I don’t think it’s the time or the place for such speculation. What I want to say, is that our priest really could have had that experience... that he, due to his personal circumstances, identified as religious. This brings us to identify an obvious premise; that the father was, at some time, clinically dead.”

“
Alright,” Aranda slowly said, “now I think I know what you’re saying.”

“
That he’s some sort of...
zombie
?” Moses asked, confused.

“
Well, I wouldn’t say that. But if he was clinically dead for... I don’t know, maybe a minute or slightly more, it is possible that the pathogen agent I have identified in all of the wanderers we’ve analyzed had taken control of his brain, at least partially. But I can’t explain how he could have survived it. The virus we’re talking about is extraordinarily aggressive. We know that it’s in the air, all over the place, and that it infects every human being who dies, taking control of all of the levers, so to speak, making them come back into a prolonged semi-living state that we know all too well. But I don’t know... how did he manage to control it? Once the agent settles in the blood, the process is unstoppable.” He reflected for a few seconds before continuing. “I would like to examine him. Analyze his blood, his cell tissue... everything I possibly can.”

“
Doctor,” Aranda said, “I frankly hoped you’d say that.”

Chapter 43

Doctor Rodriguez spent as much time as he could locked up in his little laboratory. He asked for his food to be taken to him, went to bed very late and got up very early. Aranda spent long hours in his company, although he perceived that when he was running tests and analyzing them, the doctor preferred to work in silence. The priest was moved again to one of the adjacent rooms; from time to time, he entertained himself with excited speeches full of ominous quotes of the Apocalypse, or he dedicated himself to the task of prophesying horrible disasters for all of those who were hiding in the encampment.

Each time he went back, Aranda asked if there was any news, but the doctor would protest in a low voice with unintelligible grunts and afterwards declare that he did not want to make any mistakes, and he asked him for patience.

Susana was already feeling surprisingly well. After a long and restorative sleep, she accepted an invitation to play cards and spent a pleasant afternoon in the company of Jose, Uriguen and Dozer. Dozer was also feeling much better, and although during the game he was lying on the bed on one side of his body or the other, he did not notice any pain.

Aranda also tried to speak to the priest on several occasions. He never gained anything, not even his real name. By that time, his passionate deliriums inspired Aranda more compassion for his mental state than anything else.

As far as Moses was concerned, he spent almost all of his time with Isabel.

“
I feel like some sort of a death angel,” she told him while they sat sharing a sunset filled with orange and pink hues.

“
What do you mean?” Moses asked.

“
I don’t know, Mo... first, it was the house at the Plaza de la Merced. After that, your house on Beatas Street. Now it’s happened here too.”

“
Isabel,” Moses said, running a hand over her shoulder, “you’re not at fault for any of this. The man that has caused all of those disasters is in there, with the doctor.”

“
I thought about going to see him.”

“
You don’t want to see him. He’s a poor lunatic who has lost his mind. And you know the strangest thing about it? If the doctor is really able to discover the reason why the living dead ignore him, then we can say that maybe God did appoint him among all men, but as it usually happens, we misinterpret his plans, and what could have been a vehicle for the salvation of all of us who have survived, it almost became the guillotine blade.”

Isabel reflected upon his words. “What will they do with the priest when they finish examining him?”

“
Lock him up. Like any other criminal. We’ll keep him locked up somewhere. He’ll be able to go on walks and on Christmas he’ll have special food. What else can we do?”

Isabel nodded. “Do you believe in God, Mo?”

“
Yes I do. He helped me get out of the life I was living. Before... well... I was a lot different from how I am now. I drank a lot, I lived locked inside myself, for myself. I was angry with Him not long ago. You know, when he took Josue away from me. God, how I loved that man. And I was angry at Him for letting all of this happen. So many have died, Isabel.
So many
. But now, I think differently. I heard that poor madman speak, I listened to his story, and now I’m convinced that He has brought us that man, who holds the solution to all our problems. That we’ll make it. That He squeezes but does not choke, and as my mother used to say, every time He closes a door, He opens a window.”

Isabel sighed, observing how the clouds moved before her eyes. The light changed every once in a while, bringing out brilliant sparkles in the highest formations while the darkness slowly fell upon the encampment.

“
Mo,” said Isabel in a low voice.

“
Yes?”

“
Hold me.”

Moses surrounded her with his arm again and drew her towards him. She snuggled up to his side, resting her head against his shoulder. They remained silent, not saying anything, while another day passed. One more day. Just one more day.

At 6:15 the next morning, Dr. Rodriguez knocked on Aranda
’s bedroom door. He received him half-naked and sleepy.

“
Antonio, tell me, is something the matter?”

“
I think I know what happened,” he said, with a half smile on his weary face.

Aranda stared at him, perplexed.
“Alright,.” he said, finally reacting, “please give me just a minute to put something on and you can tell me about it.”

Ten minutes later, they were in Rodriguez’ laboratory again. There was a good collection of empty caffeinated drink cans on the table; it was evident that the doctor had been working all night long.

“
Look at this,” he said, inviting Aranda with a gesture of his hand to look at the microscope slides.

“
What am I looking at?” Aranda asked, after leaning over and taking a look through the lens.

“
Oh, sorry. Well, they are traces I’ve found in our priest’s blood. Naturally, I must say firstly that yes, indisputably, the man is infected to the core by the same pathogen agent that can be found in any one of our zombies, with one subtle difference, but we’ll get to that later.”

“
I thought so,” said Aranda, taking another look through the microscope lens. He saw some round corpuscles lazily moving, surrounded by several black dots that were nervously shaking.

“
Of course!” the doctor said. “But I found something else... there were signs of an old illness known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome. It is a very serious disease, Juan. It’s a type of acute and autoimmune neuropathy that affects both the peripheral and the central nervous system. It is thought that it occurs as the result of an acute infection process, in which there’s a lack of control over the immune system, but that’s not relevant now. The important thing here is that it is a severe illness that is never overlooked; it begins as an ascending paralysis with a loss of strength in the lower limbs and subsequently extends to the higher limbs, reaching the neck and face, with the consequential loss of deep tendon reflexes.”

“
Is that the disease the priest had?”

“
He did at one time, at least. Here’s the interesting part: it’s obvious that our father must have been treated—I’m referring to hospital care—or he would have died, no doubt about it. Well then! The recommended treatment for Guillain-Barre patients is... plasmapheresis!”

The doctor looked at him with a radiant smile.

“
Doctor, I don’t really get all that about-”

“
Oh, yes, right... plasmapheresis. Well, it’s a procedure that is done by a cellular separation machine to extract the global plasma. Do you understand?”

“
To change the blood? Like a dialysis?”

“
Not at all, plasmapheresis is
global
plasma extraction,” he said, “all of the blood is changed and renewed.”

“
I understand.”

“
It has many complications, that’s why I think it fits. From hypotension to paresthesias, or gingival hemorrhages—I’m talking about heart failure, Juan.”

“
Heart failure,” Aranda repeated, “that could have brought about a state of clinical death?”

“
Of course. If that happened, it is possible that the pathogen agent we have identified began to invade him, to act. And it might be that, after he recovered, after they had brought him back, the plasmapheresis processes were soon resumed. After all, it was either that or risking his disease killing him in the end.”

“
I follow you,” Aranda said, deeply interested.

“
You see,” the doctor said, running the tip of his tongue over his lower lip, trying to find a simple way to explain his theory to Aranda, “the problem with antivirals is that they attack the agent. I once read an interview with Carlos Bonfil, an investigator at the University of California. He postulated that antivirals are like mousetraps, that it’s preferable to let each person’s system control the virus, and when that happens we won’t have to worry about finding where the virus is. The immune system locates it and finishes it off. Medicines do not have that ability, because they work against just one type of virus just the way it is and it acts in the moment they’re used. That’s what I think happened in our priest’s case, that the plasmapheresis gave his immunological system a respite, and it was able to react in time and control the infection.”

Aranda let himself fall into a chair that was close by.

“
But does that explain why the dead ignore him, Antonio?”

“
I don’t have enough equipment to make the necessary tests, but of course, it can be the cause among other things. Perspiration constitutes a natural process to eliminate the organism’s toxins, and the fact is that certain diseases like diabetes, or others related to liver problems, produce characteristic smells. It is possible that the zombies identify it somehow, like what happens with pheromones, the real passports of the insect world.”

“
Yes, I’ve read about that,” he said, running his gaze over the analysis table. He had just one question running through his head, but he was almost afraid to formulate it. “Okay, what I want to know is... can the priest’s blood be used to reproduce the effects of his... immunity to zombies?”

“
That’s the subtle difference I was telling you about at the beginning. You see, it would be impossible to create a vaccine with the resources that are at my disposal. Those viruses are isolated in a laboratory and are manipulated by erasing their function from their DNA to implant a new one inside them, to destroy viruses of their same genus. They are provided with a chemical substance they use as a lethal weapon against their ex-fellow viruses. And they do more things, like introducing limits for the replicates to avoid overpopulation. All of it is done with expensive equipment and large human teams. But it can also be done the old-fashioned way.”

“
How is that?”

“
It’s the history of vaccinations,” continued the doctor. He took another chair and sat across from him. “In China, they would pick off the dry pustules of patients who had light forms of smallpox, to crush them and obtain a powder that they would later introduce in their noses to become immune. The Turks already did it in the year 1700; they inoculated themselves with fluids taken from light cases of contagious diseases, and boy did it work. The good news is that we already have a ‘light case’ of zombification, or whatever you want to call it.”