XXVII
In an old and abandoned warehouse in Tápenas, located near a passage where the commuter train passed, silence and darkness had reigned for a long time. This warehouse, when production in Tápenas had ceased, fell into oblivion and the passage of time, where only rats and drug addicts dwelled, further throwing it into ruin. All the while, it was primarily empty, with continuous torrential downpours collapsing the roof and making flooding frequent. It was located close to the centre of the town, making it the primary reason that most drug addicts would use the abandoned warehouse for their hit, leaving them lying in the wet earth. The rats were the only permanent residents, alongside the loneliness and fading shadows that formed odd shapes on the walls, like ling fingers that ended in razor sharp fingernails, scraping against the walls.
For a while, this continued and the structure continued to weaken, until it was officially condemned. Now, however, it was home to a small group of two men, three women, and two children. In fact, the little girl was only five years old. In their streets, which were raised up several metres above the centre towards the Polígono, they had seen strangely coloured men and women biting people.
This wasn’t the only place affected, and they weren’t the only population.
XXVIII
Near the Collados area, formerly known as Geranios, peace and serenity reigned supreme. One could call this more of a hamlet that a town, as it consisted of a few streets that face the sun, toasting the ground all day, which was perfect for such things as solar panels, from which Collados received much of their power. They were also quite above the see level, with abundant views of the sea wherever you looked. However, the small town was very distant to human eyes. Only the bright spots of light under the sun’s rays indicated that there were white houses, and those that didn’t were blocks of flats. It was also possible to observe the mountain range that separated the Murcia region from the Andalusian community. This was a sharp and tall mountain range, full of irregular shapes. No one peak coincided with another. It was like a metal saw with big notches on its teeth. However, from the west one could see the whole strip of Mediterranean as far that the eye could reach, at least until Garrutcha, which was already deep into Andalusia. And the whole see was a shimmering blue, and disturbingly quiet.
‘Today is quite sunny,’ said a retired man, with tense and wrinkled skin like a tortoise.
‘As it always is, as always,’ his neighbour replied, grinning from ear to ear.
They were both pensioners in their late seventies, and both were petty and thick. The retired man had long, languid, bony arms that set a pattern showing the passage of time. Both of these pensioners were from the UK. They also had a neighbour from Germany and another from France. Portugal was even represented. There was an entire rainbow of races lined up there, that day, soaking up the summer sun.
‘Your neighbour has woken up late, today,’ the first pensioner said to the second.
‘He’s German,’ he said, pausing, then continuing, ‘You know how they are, they sleep longer.’
The other pensioner gave him a contemptuous smirk and his tiny eyes glowed with the contrast of his reddish skin surrounding his face.
His neighbour, known as Roland, last name unknown, was a robust man with an almost exaggerated oily complexion. He moved slowly, was close-mouthed, with unwrinkled skin. He was younger than they, at sixty-five years old, and his hair was blonde. His eyes always admired the landscape with a certain sense of gloom, regret, sadness.
Half an hour later, while the two pensioners smiled and laughed, the German had woken up and went out onto his terrace. Then, there was silence. There was a simple, cordial greeting, and nothing more. Short and sweet.
‘Today is quite sunny,’ he said.
They lived outside of Águilas, so they were unaware of all of the commotion going on in the Águilas city centre. However, they could see the San Juan Castle and the glint of Álvaro’s shiny rifle. Though, they cared not. The zombies were down below, hidden like ants in the grass surrounding the anthill.
Though, they would be arriving soon…
XXIX
They had taken refuge in the abandoned Tápena warehouse, but it wouldn’t last very long. Just a short way up, only a few metres, there was the poorer area with hundreds of houses where the Moors and gypsies lived. They were being taken over in short order, having been bitten in their jugulars and arms. They were not privy to the details of the zombies, only recognising their peculiar gait, opaque, white eyes, and open mouths, with two rows of yellowed teeth, punctuated by spaces where teeth had formerly been, but only thinking that they were drug addicts or mad alcoholics.
There had been shots, and dry noises followed by several echoes that bounced around the expansive walls of the warehouse, where the two men, three women, and few children had taken refuge.
‘They’re close, very close,’ one of them whispered, nibbling on a toothpick that he had found on the floor. It was the more nervous of the two men, barely reaching a metre and a half, with a bony and nervous body. His veins could be seen through his skin, like blue branches on a tree.
‘Do you think that they will find us here?’ One of the women ask, a blonde woman with darker streaks and dark eyes, which now resembled two white billiard balls.
‘They’re very slow,’ the nervous man said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She was curled up in a corner, against the wall, with her arms folded.
‘Yes, it seems that they don’t walk very fast at all,’ the other man said, much taller and somewhat chubbier. ‘They are all probably drunk or on drugs.’
‘Doubtable,’ the smaller one said.
‘Then how could it be explained that they move so slowly?’ The man with the building belly said, taking a step forward towards the other man.
‘And why are they biting?’ the thin man said, looking up towards the shadows of the room that were blurred by the broken windows, lodged within the broken bricks of the warehouse, trying to make out the other man’s face more clearly.
‘Yes, then they die. I have seen them, they have very pale skin with a hint of blue to it,’ he paused, then added, ‘As though they were dead.’
The seven-year-old let out a dry chuckle, though it was a nervous chuckle that lasted only a couple of short seconds.
BAM! Another gunshot sounded. It was a hunting rifle, judging by the loudness of the shot.
They all instinctively lifted their heads. Then, for a long moment, silence invaded the Tápenas warehouse.
XXX
Álvaro and Javier began to distance themselves even more, in spite of the situation that they found themselves in, with their wives and twenty something tourists that were crowded into the castle.
‘There will be no peace between us,’ Álvaro whispered silently, being unheard by everyone else. More like a loud thought. In his gaze, one could see contempt and a debt to pay. Álvaro never felt well with Javier always looking over his shoulder, though for them, their wives, and the rest of the castle’s inhabitants, they would have to communicate with each other. Though, reconciliation was simply not possible in this moment, not even with the army of the undead groaning on the hills at the foot of the castle, between Father Martín’s loud ranting, dressed in his dark cassock underneath the implacable summer sun.
‘What do you intend to do?’ It was Carmen, Álvaro’s wife, who tried breaking the ice.
The morning, which was beginning to peak fast, was warm like an oven heating up. Javier could feel the first drops of sweat sliding down from his forehead to his cheeks with frightening rapidity. Covering his arms with his face, he finally spoke to the pair.
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s all?’ Susana replied back, complaining, raising her arms as she rose from the floor with the cracking of bones, staring into his eyes, as the scorching morning sun hit them.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Javier continued, now sweating profusely. He
had passed the rifle from one hand to another to wipe away the sweat, to shield himself from the first rays of the morning sun, lowering his weapon to one of his legs. He was caught off guard.
Carmen looked at him out of the corner of her eye, frowning and tightening her lips into a single, straight line. It was a look of uncertainty, of disappointment.
‘Who is the leader now?’ Álvaro asked with a smirk forming on his face, which soon changed to a cold and markedly worries expression as he looked down towards the zombies that were restlessly moving, raising their purple toned white arms towards the castle and opening their mouths.
Only one night and a day had passes, making it two days. Two days without an answer, without a leader, without plans, and the two guards at the top of the castle. Yes, it is true that it was a security measure that the zombies could not climb the high castle walls. They were slow and clumsy, and Father Martín was a spectacle, in and of himself, constantly shouting his prayers among the zombies. A shadow within the light, Javier thought to himself.
But they could not even begin to consider being up there the entire time. For how long could they last? It was hot, and water was scarce to begin with, with half-empty water bottles that some had contributed. Others carried empty beer cans, and the food was rationed off. Not one had collected it, because no one had expected events to unfold as they had been. No one could believe that the dead had been summoned and were now walking. Or perhaps, they were all just drugged? No, Father Martín had already exclaimed that the dead were walking, and following him.
This is all so mad.
XXXI
Several civil guard helicopters flew over the city of Águilas, and with a trembling voice, announced through a squeaky megaphone, that they should all seek shelter, something secure and safe, until reinforcements soon arrived.
Álvaro leaned his head back to get a look at the helicopters passing over his head, like giant insects, leaving a muffled, noisy rattle.
Over in the Collados area, the helicopters had been seen, but at a long distance, seeming to them like tiny dark spots under the strong light of the sun.
The small group of refugees in the dark Tápenas warehouse could hear the echoes of the motors that bounced around in the building like small blows that threatened to take down the warehouse’s flimsy walls.
In the Águilas city centre, two of the helicopters flew past several balconies and terraces on the highest floors of the buildings, watching the maelstrom of disturbingly slow undead making their way through the streets. The Spanish Plaza, children’s park, and the Las Delicias Beach has been completely taken over by the undead, and they aimlessly shambled, with their inert arms hanging to their sides, with the gait of a drunkard or a drug addict, with the added exception of an arch in their back that was further accentuated with each step they took. Some movements they made proved too difficult, causing them to fall to the ground, where they remained.
‘This is outrageous!’ One of the civil guards commented, leaning back into his seat, with machine gun in hand.
With that, they took off and left.
XXXII
‘What is going on with all of the helicopters this morning?’ one of the pensioners asked, nothing the dots in the sky that were now moving away.
‘Probably drug raids,’ his partner said with a scowl.
The German, however, remained silent.
‘I smoke my own, home grown marijuana,’ the first pensioner commented, with a short, dry laugh.
The other pensioner looked at him with an air of carelessness, with his white hair moving in the gentle breeze. His mouth was closed.
Finally, the German, with a hoarse and bitter voice, said:
‘You bloody drug addicts!’ And with that, he entered into his home through the white-painted, metal sliding door, which he closed firmly.
The two pensioners looked at each other astonished.
Though, they remained there, under the shining sun. In the distance, Águilas seemed calm. Though only in appearance. In reality, it wasn’t.
Nothing was what it seemed.
XXXIII
‘Two days,’ Javier said, then adding, ‘It’s been two bloody days and this one is just beginning.
But the truth of the matter is that it hasn’t been only two days. Father Martín was already experiences with excising corpses from the cemetery, for a month, or maybe more. The various dead body parts that appeared littered around the city, such as by the train tracks, could all be attributed to him. Juan realised it when he saw that hand move, yes, it did indeed move, up until the first infection with the police officials in the church. Notwithstanding, it had only been two days since the big infection, only two. Fortunately, some zombies were already falling to the ground like marionettes cut from their strings.
‘Why do you think that they are falling?’ Susana asked, with her hand covering her eyes like a visor.
‘I suppose that they are rotting away, it seems clear,’ Álvaro said, pragmatically holding his hand up to shield himself from the sun as a zombie fell to the ground, rotten.
‘Though, it’s strange. It seems like it all only started yesterday,’ Susana said, lowering her hand from her forehead.
‘Just from what we have seen, yes,’ Javier replied. ‘But who knows for how long this has been really happening. The dead do not walk, nor would they rot in a single night. Perhaps their wounds have become infected that they are putrefying, but it wouldn’t happen in less than twenty-four hours. And even then, they seem to collapse before, there is a stretch of time unaccounted for.’
‘Though, when we had arrived to Águilas three days ago, there were no such events,’ Susana said, looking at her trembling hands as if hoping to find something interesting, and added, ‘Nothing from the city hall to the beaches.’
‘Perhaps they are coming directly from the cemetery,’ Álvaro interrupted, turning his back to Javier, though still facing Susana, who was still trembling in the same position for some time.
‘Bah!’ Javier grunted, sounding like a small belch surging from his mouth.
‘Don’t start now!’ Carmen exclaimed, knowing of their history. Their differences still existed.
‘You’re right,’ Juan replied back, in a somewhat louder tone. He peered over the edge of the castle wall and saw a zombie stumble and fall to the ground, jolt back up, and fall back down in a perfectly audible groan.
Javier and Álvaro both looked at each other at the same time, as if seeing something that doesn’t belong. Álvaro had a scowl on his face.
‘I think that this had started a few weeks ago, now I am starting to recall.’ He chatted along, while everyone heard his voice and the waves breaking on the shore. ‘There was one person that had found an amputated hand on the train tracks. He told the police that he swore that he had seen the hand move, and a week later, in the morgue, a deceased man had left his coffin. No one had seen him do it, of course, but the next day, they found him out of his coffin, leaning against the window, as if it had tried to escape from there…’
‘Catalepsy!’ Javier cried out, now looking at the celestial sky, spotting with a glance a seagull that had been flying low.
Susana began to copiously sweat. Her nerves were now a bundle of wires tightening in her stomach.
‘Don’t interrupt,’ she said with a slight whine in her voice.
‘It’s fine, quite fine,’ he said, lifting his hands up and turning his head with a stupid grin on his face. ‘Let’s listen.’
The seagull appeared overhead, flying and squawking with a large piece of bone in its beak. One of the tourist below had taken a photo of it with an Olympus Digital Camera.
‘I don’t think that it is the result of catalepsy, because in the end he was buried a day later. Though, for about a month, the body parts had appeared near the northernmost side of the cemetery and on the train tracks, about four hundred metres away. There is a crossing there. I think that the first encounter
was made by someone named Juan,’ For a moment, he was silence, trying to remember, and finally he continued, ‘Yes, that I do believe that that was his name, and it was him who had found the hand. A hand whose fingers moved. Though, the police saw nothing and didn’t believe him. Nothing more was said on the subject. Though the people in this town, well, I say it’s a town, even though it is considered a city, also witnessed several similar events. It was even reported that the hand was chopped off because it tried to strange him at night, and the fingers needed to be severed because it wouldn’t stop wanting to strangle him.’
‘Yes, the details of the events began to change, like in the Telephone Game,’ Álvaro explained, getting closer to his rifle.
‘What?’ Susana asked, not understanding the reference.
‘It’s a game where someone begins by stating a situation to their partner, which is then repeated to someone else in a type of human chain. The situation is almost always distorted when it gets back to the producer because of small changed in the narrative,’ Álvaro explained, laughing. What a good time to be laughing, Javier thought to himself, looking at him with disgust. Carmen shook her head.
‘And that was when all the trouble began,’ Diego interjected, with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the castle wall that overlooked the sea, with one leg bent back, relaxed.
‘Of course,’ Álvaro said. ‘We had seen the entire thing from here. The shots, the blood, all of the chaos that was unfolding,’ he explained, pointing his index finger towards the Spanish Plaza, the port, the adjacent streets, the children’s park, and the two beached, ‘Just about everything could be seen from here.’
Diego nodded.
‘Though still, that does not explain everything, like why they fall so fast,’ Álvaro insisted.
‘I imagine that among the infected are the dead who originated from the cemetery. Well, it’s the only explanation that I can think of,’ Juan said, peering over the edge to see the zombies. ‘Bloody zombies!’
Infected, Zombi The City of the Zol Page 6
