‘My goodness,’ she said, submerged in the shadows of the warehouse.
What had at first seemed like burps now became more of a groan, then the grunting of a beast showing its claws.
‘Blimey!’ The tall man shouted, standing completely erect, being pushed back as though by a spring, as straight as a torch post. His heart began to beat faster, and the plump man remained sat on the ground, flat and unmoved by the events currently unfolding.
‘Something is happening to this lass,’ the tall man commented, sliding alongside the splintery wall, scratching his back as if being rubbed by thousands of nails. He was not wearing a shirt, he has removed it for a moment before hearing the guttural noises being emanated by the woman in red panties for the heat.
Now, the noise that had come from the woman’s throat with spasms all over her body became a very loud growl. She began to vomit blood and, although they did not directly see it in the darkness, they could very well hear it.
‘Shit!’ The tall man exclaimed, beginning to sweat copiously, pressing himself against the wall, his back bleeding against the splintery wall. The damp soil came alive with the rotten, yet sweet smell of blood.
The woman with the straight hair in the red panties, who had only moments ago passed through the makeshift exit to piss, had now got to her feet. In the shadows, she was warned not to come any closer. Suddenly, grabbing a piece of board from the wall, the afternoon sunlight entered the warehouse like a petty bulb, but the woman could clearly be seen, with her lips and chin now dripping blood.
‘Blood! There’s blood!’ The five-year-old girl exclaimed, jumping from fright in the damp, muddy ground.
The two women held the children firmly, pushing hard against the wall as if trying to knock it down with their own weight.
The tall man’s great blue eyes finally could see, yet felt useless. He could really use a line of cocaine about now for courage.
The dim light that had entered through the hole left by the piece of wood shined upon the face of the plump man who was still sitting, without a trace of fear in his face. His face was that of a lunatic, making a plan. He suddenly got up to his feet.
The woman raised her arms and they convulsed into strange shapes and figures. Her head tilted back and forth and her gaze turned cold and dull. Her uneasy pale skin informed them that something terrible was inside of her.
‘The bitch has finally gone mad like the ones outside!’ The tall man exclaimed with a slight tremor in his dry lips. Now more than ever he could use a line of cocaine.
‘I’m afraid!’ The little girl stated, squeezing the woman tightly.
The woman in red panties, now a zombie, began to slowly shamble over the muddy ground as she scratched the dirty floor with the heel of her slipper.
The taller man, who seemed to be the calmest and strongest, was about to scream, when the plump man began to rise with the same passivity of a shitting turtle. A single moment later, and his pistol was removed from its holster.
The hole of the barrel glimmered, his face reflected in the shine like a madman. His eyebrows had been raised and his lips were tight. He approached the zombie, and it turned to him as well, opening and closing its mouth, clicking its teeth.
The little girl turned her head away to not look.
Then the cannon of the pistol landed directly on the zombie’s angry eye, and the trigger was pulled with the simplicity of bending a finger. The explosion was cold and more muffled than a real shot. It was only a compressed air gun.
‘Shit! Is that all?’ The tall man said, who was now standing with the women and children.
A shot sounded again, drowned out and scattering the air coming out of the end of the barrel. Her eye moved from its socket to the side. A viscous fluid and blood poured out of it as he pulled the trigger two more times. The shots pierced the small hole and were now embedded in her brain.
The zombie collapsed to the floor like a heavy, long blade, closing the other eyelid in the process. She was like a fragile branch. The blow sounded more like a splash. Nothing happened afterwards.
‘That was easy,’ the plump man stated, lowering his arm and showing a stupid smile on his face. It was just once, but it was a smile.
XLIX
The sirens began to sound from the last street in the One Hundred Houses district. At the end of Jiménes Ruano Avenue, perpendicular to Calafria Street and behind Los Comarcales Secondary School was the local police station, directly in front of the fire station. Many of those who worked in this station had already succumbed to the disease in the Spanish Plaza the previous few days, but there were still two more active units in the station, which were now needed in the Calafria Street central plaza.
The air was now impregnated with the smell of burning rubber as the blue and white patrol cars stopped suddenly. The tyres squealed and slid a few metres on the asphalt before coming to a full stop. There was a zombie that was hit by one of the patrol cars, a dry blow that had been sudden. The window now had a spider web pattern, with the zombie in the direct centre and a patch of blood after the impact. The passenger cop leaned back into his seat with a look of disgust in his face. He had not been wearing a seatbelt and was glad not to have been touched by the blood. With his foot, he kicked the glass and it came off with a bit of effort. The policeman had his gun in hand and fired two shots. Both officers were already privy to the zombie details.
‘In the head!’ His partner shouted, as two zombies fell limp to the ground.
Father Martín turned to them, with his arms still stretched upwards and praying his crooked prayers while grasping his Bible. He was full of blood. From one side of the Bible was a long, red string, marking his Bible verses.
L
Javier whispered to himself like one does to a horse while stroking his rifle. The sun was now already beginning to set, one more day passing. Now his rifle wasn’t shining with as much intensity as it had been. The heat though, was still unbearable, possibly even worse, since the sea blanketed the entire places like a fog. Humidity reigned over Águilas. The waves continued breaking against the rocks and the swell was now more relaxed with a patient rhythm. Javier watched the seafoam forming everything the waves crashed against the lower part of the castle, occasionally closing his eyes to think. To meditate. Though, his thoughts took him nowhere. He was waiting just as the seagulls wait from above for food. Javier was tall, weighing about sixty kilogrammes. He was full, but not fat. Though he enjoyed a beer at just about every meal, it didn’t show. His short, brown hair covered a thinker’s head. He was always clean-shaved and his lips were an eerie shade of red. Now though, he had a two to three-day-old beard with parched lips.
Álvaro, on the other hand, was rather plump, with a protruding belly. It wasn’t a beer-belly, but rather filled with good food. He did not like beer all that much. His hair was brown, his nose was aquiline, and he had thinner lips. He was now leaning against the edge of the wall, watching as the ghostly zombies continued down below. As he watched them make their way to the castle on the hill, he counted more than thirty zombies. What was more bizarre was how they all croaked like seagulls; more guttural, but similar. At a distance, he could also make out the presence of other zombies, trying to walk and losing their balances for a moment. All with inert arms lying to their sides and moving their hips, limping as through one leg were shorter than the other.
‘There are more,’ he quietly announced.
No one paid him heed.
Though Álvaro had come to expect this response, so took it as though they confirmed with an “okay”, “it can’t be helped”. This time, he was not stroking his rifle, but rather leaning against the sandy but consistent wall via his fingertips.
The young men were not lying on the ground as if they were taking a nap, all in a row, silent. Though, they were all fully awake, some of the men shirtless, but the women fully clothed. They were the ones that sweat the most, especially between their cleavage.
Juan had his foot raised high on the side and was looking towards the sea, as calm and dense as he has always thought. He couldn’t think of anything else for the moment, nor did he remember the horrible events that took place at the city hall, though he did have vague recollections of Father Martín with his arms forever extended.
Diego was sitting next to Carmen and Susana, all three of them in silence, not even looking at each other. There was a prudent distance between them, as if the husbands had demanded such a thing. Not that it mattered much.
But the dead would return from death, though with hearts stiffer than stone. Nevertheless, they walked. And they walked behind him.
Sometimes.
LI
‘Shoot the head! You have to shoot the head!’ One of the officers shouted to the other car, pulling out his gun with both hands. He fired a shot, a shot that left the zombie with a good amount of blood and grey matter that dispersed in a shower of droplets, and the zombie fell to the ground with a thud.
Mario, another one of Ángel’s children, making him the fourth of Ángel’s genealogical tree, stepped forward in front of his father with a huge knife in his right hand. The steel edge shimmered under the last rays of afternoon sun.
‘Back off dada, come inside dada!’
Another shot sounded and a new zombie succumbed to the priest’s enraged eyes and syringe that injected him with strange blood.
‘Damn you, you are hurting my children, my parishioners, my followers!’ Father Martín shouted, approaching dangerously close to one of the officers, with a weapon that was, literally, smoking. The gun was an open, dark mouth, deeper than a well, but reached high temperatures when a bullet was forced from the small tube.
‘Step away, Father. I don’t want to have to shoot you, too,’ the policeman said, being no more than thirty years old, but bald with a dark and thick set of eyebrows.
‘I will purge you, my son,’ the priest said, drawing closer to him.
Another shot flew through the air a few metres from the, and the air was filled with the smell of gunpowder and burnt flesh, a disgusting smell that dwells in one’s throat like a hunk of coal.
Mario approached one of the zombies, with its mouth agape and a piece of flesh hanging from it, and dealt a deadly blow with the butt of the knife. The zombie’s head was instantly fractures, but the man with the bloody face and bare chest was still standing. It didn’t fall to the ground, so Mario gave another blow. Blood poured from the zombie’s skull like wine from a casket, and the zombie was still. Mario raised an eyebrow, and suddenly a mixture of concern and anger filled his face. This time, he sank the steel metal of the blade into the zombie’s skull. Upon removing the blade, the zombie’s head oozed a white puss and finally, with its opaque white eyes sinking into its head, fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, judging by the thud it made upon falling.
Ángel, Mario’s father, had his back the entire time. Now, he came up from behind and put his hand on his son’s head. His brown skin showed no change in colour or texture, only his lips traced a thin line stretching across his face.
Porringui said something unintelligible from the other end of the street. He hid himself inside of his house, moving his hands erratically. His grey hair was the last thing seen has he ran into his house and slammed the door.
The family of gypsies had already climbed the fence to the green area between the main road and the sporting centre, fleeing like souls hiding from the Devil, all while the patriarch’s wife continued to scream without letting go of the bars from the front door.
Antonio, Ángel’s eldest son, dealt another blow to another zombie, formerly their lifelong neighbour, in its head, with one of its eyes shooting out like a bullet and falling to the asphalt. The zombie’s skull cracked like a nut and the zombie fell to the ground.
Among the maelstrom of madness that was unfolding, it is necessary to be able to distinguish the undead from the living; an easy task. It was understanding the concept of the zombie that was the problem, though here they had it in front of them. It was like being in a George Romero movie.
‘Please, do not come any closer!’ The young officer said to the priest, beginning to sweat copiously from his bald head to his chin. His hands began to tremble. In addition, there was another zombie that was heading towards him. ‘Do not approach or I will shoot!’
Father Martín, holding his Bible in his left hand and his arm in a state of repose, stopped when the barrel of the gun touched his chest. Slowly, with his right hand, he grasped the end of the barrel and push it further into his chest, putting it exactly where his heart was.
‘Father!’
‘Spare me, my son, and I shall purge you. I shall show you eternal life.’
And there was a hollow boom and pushed Father Martín back a few centimetres. There was no blood from the injury caused by the bullet, and Father Martín gave him a stupid grin from ear to ear, while raising both hands.
‘You see? I am still alive. This is eternal life…’
‘In the head,’ his partner said, wearily. ‘He’s crazy. Shoot him in the head, fuck the priest.’
Suddenly, the young officer felt a sharp pain in one of his legs. He looked down at the floor and saw a zombie grabbing at his leg. It had bitten him.
‘Now you will live forever,’ Father Martín said, smiling.
The wounded officer shot the zombie twice in the head, succumbing to the bullets in a pool of blood and grey matter.
LII
In the Geraneos area, the two English pensioners continued chatting and pointing towards the city. They thought that they had heard something like an explosion of firecrackers, though they had attributed it to the celebration that was to be held the next day. Just a week prior, on the 15th of August, the Águilas Carnival began, of domestic and international interest, and today was the day that the city of Águilas was to launch their fireworks.
‘They must be getting ready for the celebration,’ one of them noted, holding a glass of water in his rough hand. ‘Carnival, and later rocket day.’
‘Indeed, tonight drunken tomfoolery and tomorrow to face the world,’ the other pensioner explained, smiling. His white hair was neatly brushed backwards.
The Englishman drinking water began to cough up his drink with a sudden burst of laughter.
In the meantime, the zombie threat had not reached them, but it was soon. This zombie threat was still far from over.
LIII
‘Tell me about this castle. It’s foundation, its construction, its history. What about it?’ Álvaro was really interested in knowing some details, after having spent two days in the castle, with the third day approaching.
Diego, with a look of surprise in his eyes, began to explain a bit about the castle.
‘This castle was supposed to have been built next to a churchyard,’ Diego said, pausing, then looking into Álvaro’s disquieting eyes. He continued, ‘This churchyard was located on the lower part of the hillside, as most of these hills are too rocky. As you have noticed, the castle is made up of two towers,’ he explained, pointing to the area opposed to where they were, and back to their location. ‘The castle itself is called San Juan de las Águilas, named after a certain San Juan Bautista Antonelli in 1576. Apparently, the then king, King Phillip II, had several strongholds built in the kingdom of Murcia. This castle would therefor belong to the kingdom of Lorca.’
Álvaro rubbed his beard, listening with great interest.
‘San Juan Bautista made his strongholds using the most advanced Italian engineering techniques of the time, but soon after this castle was built, there were modifications made on the original. Before, the tower of San Juan… ’ he began, pointing to the floor where they were sitting, ‘… was hexagonal and about four and a half metres high on the base of the escarp… ’
Álvaro understood not this word, though it did not matter, he continued nodding.
‘In these four and a half metres of s
pace, the main door was opened, and the tower was divided into two parts, with a cistern in the centre. On both sides, there were rooms and vaults. There was, and still is, a spiral staircase that rose from the floor to this outer hallway, where we are now seated. The tower where all the tourists are together is the San Pedro tower. Hence the great separation between the two towers and along this corridor.’
‘Very interesting,’ Álvaro interrupted with a whisper, though quickly realised this was rude. ‘Please, continue Diego, sorry for the interruption… ’
‘In the two towers, there is a surveillance post, like the one we are currently in, except that it was once composed of a corporal and three soldiers who were responsible for making fire at night and smoke signals during the say, to signal enemy approximation. The tower of San Juan was continuously attacked by Berber pirates, and in 1643, King Phillip IV was that the tower had been abandoned. Thus, during the first have of the 18th century, the castle was half ruined. So much so, that in 1751, two façades of the castle had fallen, taken down by heavy artillery on the terrace. Needless to say, in later years, it was decided that the entire castle should be rebuilt, with heavy artillery to be placed on the terrace. The last decision was the construction of the San Pedro deck,’ Diego explained, pointing again with his index finger to the young tourists near the bottom. ‘That little plaza down there is triangular, and, as you can see, there are three holes for the artillery, pointing towards the northern defence. Though, after a while, the San Pedro deck was modified again, and three rooms were built, in addition to the San José and San Felipe strongholds.’ Diego paused for a moment to catch his breath, and noticed that Álvaro had his mouth opened up like a fish. Regardless, he continued, ‘From there, more modifications were added and more vaults were opened between the two towers where the gunpowder could be kept. In addition, in 1785 it was decided that the back of the castle, facing the south, should also be covered up, with access by means of a staircase that worked on a drawbridge, with the artillery being replaced by sharper defences, following along the vaults where the gunpowder was kept. There was also the kitchen, and the dungeons were added in the deepest part of the castle. Then came more attacks from the Turks and the Berbers. Further changes and new doors were added in the next century, when the French and English began to attack each other. The castle is well fortified with a settlement lime floor, and paved with slabs of grey sandstone and hand carved rock. The cistern, which you may have seen while climbing up to here, is partially dug into the rock, and is made of solid brick.’ Diego’s knuckles knocked twice on the ground, with the echo stopping quickly.
Infected, Zombi The City of the Zol Page 9
