The Wanderers (5 page)

After that, Antonio did not remember well how it had all happened. He remembered pieces, unconnected scenes. He saw himself searching for the doorknob and exiting to the hallway, panicking. Now he knew he was right: yes, he had been screaming continuously. In his flight, he bumped into Marisa, an assistant nurse on that floor, whom he had frightened terribly. She looked in the direction from which Antonio was fleeing and saw the dead exiting the Refrigerator. She froze: she did not say or do anything more. As he crossed the section’s double doors, Antonio looked back and saw Marisa with three of them on top of her.

He remembered the custodians trying to detain the immigrants; he remembered fallen bodies; he remembered screams. Most of all, he remembered a feeling of asphyxia and being frozen when, at some point, he made out familiar figures at the end of the corridor. There were two white coated figures coming closer. One was his assistant. His white lab coat was bloodied and he had a monstrous wound on his neck, yet he still walked, his head slanted to the side and his teeth exposed in an expression full of repressed rage. The other one was Marisa. Her half-devoured face would plague his nightmares every day for the rest of his life.

At some point, he found himself in an elevator, going towards the higher floors. Someone was screaming that downstairs was a slaughterhouse, that it was impossible to pass through there. Another spoke of the attackers, and a third of a gang of butchers.

Once they were upstairs, they were all very nervous. The terrifying screams from below reached their ears. Doctors, nurses and patients all came up, relating incredible stories. Antonio, in spite of having first hand information, did not speak much. He was as pale as a whitewashed wall and he surprised himself examining the desk lamp he was tightly holding in his hand, as if he did not understand what is was doing there.

The ensuing hours were by far the worst of his life. It was doubtless that the lower floors were the scene of a maddening battle. The echoes in the tall staircase brought all kinds of hair-raising sounds. The women cried, bunched together in a corner. Some found courage inside themselves and dared to go downstairs, but hardly any of them came back. Doctor Morales did come back, drenched in blood, but was unable to say anything. He had always been an upright man, devoted to his career, an author of several neurosurgery books and a lifelong member of a Catholic brotherhood. But those who saw the expression of horror that was etched in his eyes, knew that he would never be the same. They left him crouched on the floor, rocking back and forth, with a string of saliva slipping down the corner of his mouth.

They finally appeared, relentlessly coming up the stairs. They were not, however, the immigrants Rodriguez had seen downstairs. They were patients now, doctors, custodians, visitors. It was all of them, with shredded clothing, bleeding wounds, severed or partially devoured limbs, and hungry mouths. They moved forward erratically, dragging lifeless legs, gaining step after step before the crazed eyes of the last survivors on the last floor of the Carlos Haya Hospital.

Rodriguez did not remember much of what had happened after that. Panic had seized them all. He thought that they had run through the halls towards the interior of the floor, but there was no exit, just rooms with patients inside. There had been weeping and screaming in equal measure. Some of the rooms were locked from the inside. The emergency doors were blocked with a thick chain. Someone had called all three elevators, in hopes of finding a way to escape, but there were more of those things inside. Shaken by terrible spasms, they rushed out at the sight of human flesh.

Antonio Rodriguez shook his head, fighting to react; he had been hypnotized by the grotesque scene that was developing before his eyes. A man came running down the hall carrying a chair, and he charged at a couple of the attackers with some success. It was then that he cursed himself for his lack of initiative, for not being bold enough to face the living dead. He joined that man, hitting the assailants with the desk lamp’s metal bar. The assailants fell to the floor, their heads dented with wounds.

“
Come on, COME ON!” The man shouted, intoxicated by his success, the veins on his forehead noticeably swollen.

The combination of the chair and desk lamp was working very well. The iron legs pushed them back and the seat kept them away. Then the desk lamp punished them severely, sending blood and splintered bones flying. But they always got back up. Even when blinded by the abundant blood that flowed from their wounds, they scratched at the air and tried to bite even where there was nothing.

Thus, their momentum quickly flagged. Each time, it was harder to lift his arm with the desk lamp and deliver his enemies severe blows. The man with the chair was also showing signs of exhaustion, and the slow yet firm conviction that none of it would get them anywhere was parching their spirits. The dead, an arrhythmic wave of fatality, were now filling up the stairs.

Finally, a deformed claw ripped the clothes near the shoulder of the man holding the chair, and the chair fell to a side. Antonio looked at him; his face wore a painful grimace. They tugged, dragging him towards the crowd, and he disappeared in a maelstrom of arms and teeth. Antonio fled. He took his sanity and left, running down the hall as he had never run before. On the way, he stepped on a fallen body, but he could not even recall later on if it was a live person or if it was a wasted body. He escaped from the group of assailants, and he soon discovered himself to be inside a little office at the end of the floor. He did not close the door that had an enormous glass window on its upper half, and instead decided to hide behind the office desk. He stayed there for many hours while it all went on: blood-curdling screams, wails, and other clucking sounds he could not identify. Someone, a woman, was crying for help in a room close to his, but even that sound was diluted in the end.

Chapter 8

Malaga, as did countless other cities in the world, rapidly succumbed to the catastrophe. It is said that war produces heroes, but in those first days of Infection, the prevention and rescue protocols of the National Police Corps, the Armed Forces, and the different Emergency and Civil Protection services were not of much use, most precisely due to human nature.

When the first cases emerged, they quickly overcame the police force’s availability. Although there naturally existed protocols for a NBC (Nuclear Bacteriological Chemical) Defense, no one was really prepared to face that kind of menace. The victims turned into attackers with brutal swiftness; the doctors were attacked by their patients inside the ambulances, those who were aided by firefighters ended up turning into a lethal enemy, and even worse, the cop who was bitten proceeded to attack his partner, the brother was murdering his sister, the children their parents.

In a few days, the rescue units and Security Forces had been effectively reduced to an inoperative presence and the situation had grown even more dire. A new enemy had emerged, germinated in a dehumanized society that had been instructed in selfishness and overcome with materialism: pillage. Without anyone to watch over civic safety, the streets became dangerous. Murders quickly proliferated, and that caused a new and unexpected source of infection. When the blackouts began, the nights were filled with shots, screams and vehicles that drove at high speeds, causing serious accidents. Fires broke out, and they often burned without anyone doing much to contain them.

More or less organized gangs were starting to form on the streets, often by outcasts who found the opportunity to let their instincts rule, by conducting robberies and looting wherever and whenever the chance arose. Born from an improvised anarchy, it did not take long for them to disappear, victims to their own quarrels and the confrontations with the living dead.

In the middle of the chaos, a group of brothers of one of the many sacramental brotherhoods took one of their sacred statues out of its temple to carry it through the streets, remembering the Christ of the Epidemic, who was thought to be responsible for the end of the terrible yellow fever plague that had decimated the population in Malaga in 1803. They advanced little more than sixty feet, carrying the Christ upon their shoulders while they abandoned themselves to their prayers. The improvised procession ended in disaster when the specters pounced on them. The splendid carving split into two enormous halves when it crashed to the ground; Christ’s head, which remained turned to the side, was a silent witness to the abominable scene that took place before his eternal expression of pain.

The story of the Fall of Malaga, as that of countless other cities in the world, would not be complete without mentioning those who gave their lives for others. A mother voluntarily gave herself up to her pursuers to buy her son, who had turned ten years old the week before, a little time. Elsewhere, a man named Roberto held back the
zombies’
onslaught with a thick door that had been torn off its hinges so that his neighbors could have enough time to escape through the window. All of them unequivocally knew that their actions condemned them, yet they still carried them out.

Man, finally, had been driven off the streets; he had to go back to living in the caves that were his tall buildings.

In Ronda, the legion’s barracks
“General Gabeiras” counted on one of the largest companies in Spain, with more than two thousand employees. The Legion had always promoted the cult of combat, minimizing the relevance of death, the natural fear of dying. In Madrid, where they began to realize the psychological terror that this unexpected and formidable enemy was inducing, many thought that such indoctrination, the “legionary mysticism” symbolized in the legionary beliefs and the teaching of Japanese
Bushido
, would be ideal to control the situation. However, the legionaries had their own problems.

Nearly fifteen minutes after starting his shift, a traffic supervisor for the suburban train was observing his screen. Strangely, none of his co-workers had shown up for work that day. In addition, there was a red indicator on the enormous digital bulletin board where the trains’ statuses and their location were shown on the general topographic map. The red square indicated that there were serious difficulties in the optical fiber network, and when that happened, the system was prepared to transfer the whole control system to the local command posts.

He quickly pressed the call button to summon his supervisor. He did not like the idea of taking control without his co-workers, and even less without his direct supervisor. He had only been working in that office for a few months and still did not feel comfortable with the command post’s software. If something went wrong, and a train that should have gone to Cordoba turned off into the line towards the Malaga station it would be entirely his responsibility. And he knew very well how such mistakes were paid for. He observed the route panel with a worried frown.

The train lines under his supervision were in their normal state, and most of the indicators were green. That calmed him a little. The only orange situation was marked by a train that was arriving at the station in Ronda. It was supposed to drop the passengers off there and leave through the service line for a weekly routine check-up. A second train waited at the platform to take that same line to Bobadilla. The operator saw that the junction track was occupied, which indicated that the engineer had already accepted the signal to proceed and the train was in the transit area. The computer had automatically calculated that the time it would take the train to turn off to the service track was enough for the other train to reach that same point. While he sipped his coffee, preoccupied, an acoustic signal and several luminous indicators above the control panel notified him that, finally, the transfer had been made. His screen lit up with a myriad of different icons, informing him that he was in control.

The operator experienced the transference as one would feel a drop on a rollercoaster. His stress point, as he called it, which happened to be an undetermined spot somewhere between the center of his chest and the pit of his stomach, began pulsating with a burning sensation. Again, he pressed his supervisor’s call button, four, five, nine times.

Nevertheless, he brushed off his anguish with a quick shrug. There were several things he had to do urgently; afterwards he could twiddle his thumbs.

Before transferring control, the computer had created valid routes for the two trains circulating on the same track. In case of manual control, all of the orange situations had to be canceled; all of the statuses had to be put in
“Stop” mode and resolved one by one. He simultaneously pressed the incoming train’s origin button, and the emergency destruction button, and the route towards the deposit was cancelled. He had started to give the new orders when the situation’s status suddenly changed to “Alert”. A frame of red emergency lights lit up at the same time all along the informative panel.

The operator blinked, his mouth immediately drying up. He did not understand the red lights, did not know what has happening. Finally, he saw it clearly: the train on the platform was moving. It was moving on the tracks that would cause a direct collision with his train.
Oh my God... my God no no no...
The head of circulation at the Ronda station had green lighted the station’s exit signal at the same moment he had redirected the route. Since the collision route had not been created, the software had not warned him that the latest operation could result in a catastrophe.

He picked up the telephone and dialed the direct code to reach the stationmaster on his screen. He could still stop it, he
had to
. The train had not yet gained speed.
My God please God... don’t let it happen...
He watched the screen.

“
Hello?” said the stationmaster. The little rectangles that made up both trains were swiftly coming closer to each other. One of them had sped up enough, and the other had not yet slowed down enough. They were scarcely half a mile away from the station. “Hello?”