Infected, Zombi The City of the Zol

by Hernández, Claudio

  ‘It’s the tunnel under the Águilas River.’

  ‘River?’

  ‘It’s the largest in Europe, it’s underground and leads to the sea.’

  An infected zombie approached Diego dangerously close with its mouth open, full of foam and blood. The infected was hit with the burning torch, detaining it for a moment.

  Carmen had been hit by an infected zombie and was screaming in pain. Álvaro, with tears in his eyes, knew that nothing could be done now. He was hit by two infected but luckily had received no scratches or bites. He saw his wife’s eyes change colour and her gaze went cold. Then, it was pure ire.

  On the wall, several of the young Asian tourists were transforming and the foam was dripping from the corners of their mouths, like they were having an epileptic seizure.

  A few of the tourists entered the dark tunnel, but three were taken and infected. These fell to the floor in a thud was mixed with cries of pain.

  Everyone was predestined to die or live miserably. So many days of resistance in the castle had served for nothing.

  ‘Oh Lord, please forgive them of their sins in your new life!’ Father Martín shouted, with Father Guillermo and Father Isidoro joining in like idiots from behind with amens.

  Javier tried to shoot again, but a zombie bit him in the ankle, lying on the ground. The pain was intense, like a bolt of lightning going through his foot to the backbone. His finger was stuck on the trigger. He looked at the zombie with eyes wide open and felt a sharp stinging in his chest. His heart pumped violently and his eyes twitched violently in their sockets.

  Susana was looking at everything after becoming infected. Blood brushed against her face and she began to lap of the blood that was on the ground.

  The petty light of the torches lit up their transformed faces.

  Álvaro had been released from the two infected that had had him pinned down and evaded them with a stool in hand, running towards Juan. He ran through the shelter and snatched the rifle from a convulsing Javier.

  ‘In the head! Shoot them in the head!’ Sebastián shouted before breaking into a fit of coughing.

  ‘You’re dead now!’ Álvaro said, his finger pressed against the trigger. There was an explosion that echoed throughout the refuge as his hand released the trigger and peppered the room with blood and grey matter, including Father Martín’s cassock.

  The body that he had shot was that of Father Guillermo, who had fallen to the ground with a thud.

  Álvaro had fired at one of the three priests. He laughed a sinister laugh before closing in on Father Isidoro, and pulled the trigger.

  CLXXX

  From north to south, and east to west, the civil guard vehicles advanced with the sound of shots and the righteous sun that lit it all up that summer morning.

  The city was under siege, and the zombies currently reigned, while the infected ran after the civil guard vehicles, with their fleeting lights on the roof, flashing as the sirens blared.

  Dozens of agents were hidden in strategic locations, shooting them in the head. They gave no notice.

  ‘No one is to leave their homes! Stay safe, and lock your doors!’

  After that were were shots and solitary bursts.

  The entire horde of walkers was plummeting to the ground, inert and lifeless. Eternity for them was finished.

  The helicopters buzzed across the sky of the besieged city, reporting where the living dead were still shambling. Minutes later, they were surrounded like cattle, and there were bursts of gunfire.

  There were no cries of pain, they felt no pain.

  They only inertly fell to the ground, falling apart at the joints, muscles, and jaws.

  There furious looks were replaced by nothingness, and for them it was all over now.

  CLXXXI

  They were still alive. They didn’t need brains, they continued anyway, crawling on the ground. Father Martín looked at Sebastián angrily.

  Álvaro squeezed the trigger and only heard a click. He had run out of ammunition.

  ‘Bloody Hell!’ He muttered with clenched teeth. He dropped the gun violently to the ground. All eyes were on Father Martín, who was disturbingly more violent than usual.

  ‘We are not something you can kill,’ Father Martín said, outlining a stupid smile like that of a clown killer. ‘Look here,’ he said, pointing to the hole in his chest. ‘My heart was here, and now there is nothing.’

  Álvaro was not surprised at all.

  In the background, he could hear the cries of Diego and Juan as the faced the infected.

  Akira Hins stood in front of Juan, showing him her violet face full of makeup.

  ‘Bloody bitch!’ Álvaro shouted without sense. His feet were starting to shake, thinking that here was where everything would end.

  He saw his wife, Carmen, dragging her feet and moaning like a zombie, and drooling. Naturally, she also had a new gaze.

  The screaming had stopped completely, now all had passed to new life and only grunts could be heard in the shelter.

  Álvaro looked towards Sebastián.

  He was still resting on the table, but with a very poor appearance. The flames of the torches were still forming strange shaped in the air and on his wrinkled face. His long hair, white as snow, was frizzy.

  ‘What happens now?’ Father Martín asked in a cynical voice. ‘Where is your God now?’ He asked, returning his gaze to Sebastián with a cynical, evnil, and malicious smile.

  Álvaro did not answer, instead looking towards Father Martín and Sebastián.

  Juan banged his head against Akira Hins’ head, which released a green liquid that stained his arm. John was now trembling. Akira Hins, in a feral rage, launched herself onto poor Juan. He saw her coming, but it was unfortunately the last thing that he would ever see.

  ‘Now the city is at my feet,’ Father Martín said, sowing off his baldness on the top of his head.

  ‘No.’

  It was a voice from beyond the grave. Serious, and powerful, it resonated throughout the refuge and the infected turned from Father Martín. It was there king, who was still alive.

  Father Martín closed his eyes when he saw Sebastián’s bright smile. It was him, he knew that it was him. Father Martín was momentarily lost.

  It was him.

  ‘Hins A Akila,’ Sebastián whispered. ‘Where have you been during all of these centuries? Look at the madness that his inept man had unleashed,’ he continued, pointing to Father Martín.

  ‘You only needed a bit of Akira Hins’ blood for eternal life,’ King Hins A-Akila said with a booming voice.

  He was hidden under a monk’s cloak, but his distinguishing dark beard and pronounced, Spanish nose gave him away.

  Diego convulsed on the floor and Akira Hins was now next to her king. All of the infected took to the king’s side.

  ‘And now what, Father Martín?’ Sebastián said with a smile, before coughing again.

  ‘I shall be their king!’ Father Martín exclaimed, showing his bloodstained Bible. ‘This is my God and I am the earth’s new king! I wanted to take away the pain of death, and I have given life!’

  ‘I am he who discovered the serum,’ King Hins A-Akila announced, raising a pointed finger to Father Martín.

  ‘But now it is mine,’ Father Martín said with a closed, violet fist.

  ‘Give it up,’ King Hins A-Akila replied.

  ‘I am as immortal as you are,’ Father Martín managed to interject.

  ‘I will give you something else.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Time.’

  ‘Time, for what?’

  ‘Time to rot away into nothing, until you are nothing but dust and bones. ‘

  ‘That won’t happen!’

  ‘It is happening now, as you speak.’

  Akira Hins showed off her teeth, bloodied, and her dried lips, consumed but painted black, just as she was buried.

  ‘I sha
ll be back! Mark my words!’ Father Martín threatened, entering again into the passage that had led him into the shelter.

  ‘You will all remember this moment forever!’ he continued.

  Father Martín disappeared into the darkness.

  Álvaro and Sebastián were now at the mercy of King Hins A-Akila.

  CLXXXII

  Several of the civil guard helicopters were flying over Águilas, from beginning to end. The city was in quarantine. Below they expected a horde of zombies wandering everywhere in search of human flesh. There were several pockets of survivors, as they were crowded at several strategic points and difficult to arrive to. Los Collados, Calabardina, and Los Mayorales.

  The helicopters flew over the castle and the entire city of Águilas, they sent a clear message by a powerful megaphone.

  ‘This city is quarantined! Stay locked in your houses! We are currently dealing with the zombie menace!’

  Meanwhile, the acolytes were still in the cemetery raising the dead, alien to everything that was happening, until their time came.

  CLXXXIII

  Father Martín managed to escape the city, and for two days, was walking along the dirt roads that led to Cocón, no man’s land. There, he collapsed on the dry sand of the river.

  He was soon to rot away into nothing, the memory of Father Martín was in the hands of time.

  Time that erases all.

  THE END

  Synopsis from the Beginning of Stephen King

  A writer from Maine, as many call him, was predestined to be the best horror writer in history. His literary career demonstrates it. In spite of having to endure hundreds of rejections for his stories and novels, his destiny was written: the nail that held the rejection letters finally fell on the floor.

  Stephen King began writing when he was barely eight years old, and at the beginning would publish already his first stories. The kids from school read them. It wasn’t easy at all until he was able to publish “Carrie”, a novel with which he began his professional walk. Previously he survived with many and various jobs, and the checks he received from his stories. Death and fear were always by his side since he began digging graves in the local cemetery in his adolescence, as his first paid job. His tenacity and perseverance made him to be recognized as the “King”, a tribute of his last name “King” that fit him like a glove.

  You’ll discover his beginnings here: from his great-grandparents, his grand-parents, his parents, poverty, his father’s manuscripts’ box, his first stories, the era from the institute he didn’t want to remember, college, his first novels, his job as an English language professor, his alter ego, his problems… and finally his success among the masses. This is a research of his first period, Stephen King’s purest, which marked everyone and who we call the king of horror.

  One day his finger rested randomly on a United States map, in Colorado, about Hotel Stanley and he continued the destiny he had marked to follow. Can you guess what story it is?

  Synopsis of Stephen King’s Box

  The horrors master Stephen King, found a box full of stories and manuscripts that belonged to his father. Since then, no one revealed what was inside or if this really influenced King in his work. This is a tribute to Stephen King and his stories. In “The stories’ box” Steve finds the mentioned box and as he grows from childhood to adulthood, he has recurring dreams and predicts the facts that would become books he wrote, until he reached success. In the “Undertaker” story. An undertaker about to retire, with a haggard and bony look, after 40 years of burying the dead at Boad Hill, never wondered when the time he died die would come and, not even who would bury him. And it’s no good to think much of the dead people. In the story “The Girl 10”, a married man has several affairs with different women, until one day Girl 10 shows up. She was a model and had sculptural beauty of long legs and great big eyes with green brightness in them. But after being with her in a room, he discovers the truth that she molted her skin and has claws in her hands. In the “Rotten Apples” story, Tom loved his fruit trees, especially all the apple trees, when in spring were a feast of colors. He loved his apples and each day, officiously he ate two of them. Until one day he finds himself tired and in place of his nails, he sees roots growing and his joints get stiff. In the “In the Worm’s Mouth” a loan shark from the XVIII century, recounts his money every night. He’s the town’s collector because he has the entire street of houses rented out, which he owns. And every night he counts all his coins kept in a safe box, until one day one coin was missing and he discovers a slimy spot. In the “The Bogeyman is Under the Sheets” Danny is terrified. The bogeyman is not inside the closet neither under the bed, nor in the darkness after turning his bedroom’s light off, the bogeyman is sleeping with him under the sheets. He fears for his sibling’s life. The “Everything You Have Lost” story is about a long trip in a carriage, going through a snow storm. The galloping horses while breathing profusely. Bad luck and destiny, want them to have an accident and the child called Bobby Brown, is trapped under the carriage. His leg hurts. His mother has died and his sister is pregnant. But Bobby gets a sudden appendicitis pain and his sister breaks water. Maverick, father and husband of dead Sue, has to confront with the difficult situation. In the “Is Time to Say Farewell” story, in a peculiar town, the ones that are going to die say goodbye to their family and go to the sacred mountain, where there’s a cemetery and after returning, not all is what it looks like. In “Never Pronounce my Name” story, don’t look at me and never say my name. The legend says that if you see them and jointly say their name, he would take a hold of you and turn you into a dark being. He’ll get the darkest side out of you and when you are most frightened, he’ll get a stronger hold of you. But that’s a legend and the reality is that a nut has escaped from the psychiatric ward and is loose at the mercy of his murderous impulses. The psychopath is disguised of “NoNameMan” and will kill all the campus kids that cross his path. But the legend really exists and at the end, when the house besides the campus is built and “NoNameMan” comes out from underground, the psychopath is shown before him, terrified and taking a hold of him. The murderer doesn’t know his name, but he feels really frightened and he enters into his mind, pushing him to do what he wants most, cut his neck to stop hearing his name. And he’s not alone.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I grew up and started writing upon being heavily influenced by the master of terror and drama, Stephen King. I am the author of his first biography as a writer. Furthermore, I have written an anthology based on a box that I had found that allegedly belonged to his father, who was also a writer. Now, I have dedicated my time to writing books of terror, suspense, and thrillers. In Amazon, I have already published my books, ‘The Beginnings of Stephen King’, ‘Stephen King’s Box’, ‘Tom’s Story’, ‘Infected’ a saga about zombies, ‘Midnight Fear’, ‘All Your Life at Your Side,’ ‘Arnie’, ‘Truck cemetery’, ‘Seven Books, Seven Sins’, ‘Bonmati’s House’, and ‘The guardian of the castle’, but these are not the only ones that I intend to publish this year.