“It’ll go away” I thought and turned around. In this house we already have one, we don’t need another pet. When I opened the door to the house, I turned back and it had already gone. As if by magic, it lost itself in the night at the same speed with which it had appeared. “Who knows, perhaps it has a refuge among the trash, which by the way they haven’t picked up since last night.” I tried to imagine it motionless among the trash. Waiting. Who knows what it would be waiting for. Technically, their bodies don’t need anything, but zombies insist on being near people. After all, they were people until recently.
And there it would remain until it smelled another human and once again rose up. To walk toward them. “Well, I suppose that it will also give my brother a big scare when he returns,” I thought before going to bed. There was nothing to fear in the night.
IV
On the wall of the lab there was a poster with the slogan:
ZOMBIES YES, YANKEES NO.
There were three computers spread around the room, in addition to a biological containment tank of some four square meters. Inside the tank was the experimental subject, catalogued as number 43. It banged its head against the armored glass repeatedly, baring its teeth in a useless attempt to bite something beyond its reach. It had inhaled the aerosol version of the serum, so it would soon cease to attack and prove to be as docile as a puppy. It was said that this version will have many uses. What’s certain is that we were under a lot of pressure to perfect it as soon as possible. It was whispered in the hallways that it would be put in the fumigation equipment. Many people here think that if it’s necessary to fumigate the entire city then the zombie problem is getting out of control. Others just say that we’re going to start to export the serum. But who are we going to sell it to? Venezuela perhaps? Right now, the whole place is a Z zone beside Colombia. The United States wouldn’t lift the embargo, even if we gave them the vaccine against the Z virus as a gift. And China is a bad place to do business. Would they exchange the aerosol serum for articulated omnibuses or televisions? Moreover, China says that it has the zombie problem under control. Although, of course, no one believes them.
Nothing that’s happening makes any sense.
That’s why, while we finished the experiment, I busied myself in finishing a three-dimensional model of the serum retrovirus. An alternative task that, according to my mentor, will transform the serum into a vaccine. I have little faith in it, but he is fervently enthusiastic. He belongs to a generation that believed in science as much as in Marxism-Leninism. It is said that his entire graduating year inoculated themselves against the Z virus to test the first vaccine. The Taino B was, of course, a failure. Now all his classmates are zombies and he travels to the University of Malaga every year to give a seminar on the development of the Cuban serum and its uses. He’s never answered the question of why he never took the vaccine. But it’s true that he is not one of the people who favors the serum as a solution to the Z problem. He is an old school researcher, searching for a vaccine.
Now he was arguing with another of the sacred cows of Cuban science, the very creator of the serum and head researcher. This man traveled to Düsseldorf three times a year thanks to the zombies and twice a day they call him from the OMS. He and my mentor argued heatedly about details of the zombie issue that I didn’t even know existed.
“As far as I know, there are only two population groups where unmutated versions of the virus can be found: in Haiti and the Ukraine. In both populations, the dead who return from their graves are friendly beings who remember their pasts. In both cases, clinical death is present, necrosis, a minimalization of cerebral function, but they always retain memory and passivity. The aggressive impulses arose with later mutations. First in the Ukraine because of radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, and then in the American South for unknown reasons.”
“We already know all history. And it’s tempting to think that if our serum manages to eliminate the aggressive impulse, it will also let them recover memories. But there is not a single registered case after “Z Day” where the virus was in its original form. And that business about their having memories comes from observations during periods when zombies were just folklore.”
“But if we model the most probable molecular structure of the unmutated Z virus on the computer, we could synthesize a regression serum.”
“I’m not seeing it. The most we’ll achieve, and I am basing myself strictly on the models we have of the virus...”
“Yes, of course, the model made by the Russians which the Japanese posted online before the mob of zombies attacked the Kobe Institute.”
“Exactly, because the North American model hasn’t been shared with us. Well, if we extrapolate an original virus with those incomplete models, the most that we’ll achieve will be an increase in cerebral function. And I am not sure as to which ones.”
“That is nonsense. How can we look for a vaccine for the Z virus, which mutates almost as much as AIDS? What we need is to redesign the retrovirus and control the situation with the aerosol serum.”
My mentor looked at him with those same eyes with which he must have looked at his classmates when he showed them the ampoules with Taino B. He left a dignified silence. His annual trip to the University of Malaga would depend on his next words. No matter what he said, his gaze proclaimed the phrase: “This is madness, don’t do it.” But the director assumed his silence was a sort of professional victory over a mentally inferior colleague. He left with the satisfaction of having won a fair fight. Then my mentor turned toward me, the weakest link in this food chain where trips abroad were more important than scientific categories.
“How is the model going, Ramón?” Now my trip to Malaga hangs in the balance.
“The structure is still not stable,” I say, and I don’t need to turn around to see his furrowed brow. “But perhaps with a better processor, I could estimate all the variables.”
“Keep trying,” he says, taciturn, and I start to fear for my job. “We’ll see what we can do later with the cluster. I’ve asked for time to run our modeling and iterate the basic equations, but I haven’t gotten an answer yet. I’ll have to speak with people at the UH to see if they’ll let us use theirs.”
The UH, the two-hundred-year-old University of Havana, the second in America. I studied there and I can assure you that the mathematicians are so possessive of their network that they wouldn’t let us use it even if we brought them a letter from the State Council. I think that my job has no future and this condemns me to not having any future. With a bit of luck, they’ll send me to the Biotechnology Institute to study AIDS.
But I still have some time until my mentor —and later the director— convince themselves that we’re on a dead-end street. My hopes are that the University of Malaga doesn’t realize this. Of course, they have other things on their mind. They were closer than anyone in the European Union to finding a vaccine for the Z virus, but when the CIDEZ created the serum they stopped all their research along that line. From what I know, there is an institution called the Office for the Transmission of Scientific Results, which as I understand is the interface with the business environment, that suggested they contact us. Since then, they make joint research projects with the CIDEZ. And what’s more important, they exchange specialists.
In my opinion, if the OTRI suggested that the University focus its efforts, and its resources, in perfecting the Cuban serum instead of a vaccine, it’s because this is more profitable. On that point, capitalism is more assertive than we are. They don’t care that our research for a cure is a disaster: if they can get an aerosol serum, they can sell it to all the autonomous communities that resist, isolated from the world, the zombie attacks in the European area. I guess a smoke bomb that could turn a mob of aggressive zombies into a contingent of obedient workers must be worth money, right?
According to the hierarchy of Cuban research institutes, this trip should be mine. But others were competing for this grant. And a trip to Spain at thi
s moment is very beneficial for the family economy. Let’s be sincere, for any of us, a trip abroad is a lottery. But everything depends on the support my research director made for me. That’s why I must concentrate on my job, even though I realize before he does that it’s a failure.
The head researcher left the place. Within the containment tank, number 43 had stopped grunting and banging the crystal. I hadn’t spoken to Maria since the day before. Nor had I heard anything about the zombification, although it was still in the work plan. Nonetheless, no one had touched the subject; it seemed, for things to work properly, it was necessary to use María’s method and protest about everything.
You can blame these damned tests with the aerosol serum.
V
Saturday.
The best day of the week. The day to sleep all morning. The best moment for housewives to prepare clothes to wash, for kids to watch cartoons on tv and for teenagers to get ready to go out at night. It’s the day of rest par excellence. The moment when the family is all together and without pressure. Perhaps that’s why Saturdays are when the inspectors of the Campaign to Fight against the Aedes Aegypti decided to stop by your house.
But first let’s go by parts.
Aedes Aegypti is the scientific name of a mosquito. And not just any mosquito: it is easily recognizable for having white stripes on its legs. But the quality that made it famous is that it is the mosquito that transmits dengue fever. Officially, the Cuban Revolution categorizes it as an Enemy and this gave rise to a campaign of almost-military proportions. Despite the fact that this year the “war against the mosquito” would celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, this tiny insect still wasn’t among the ranks of species in danger of extinction. Which calls into questions all those ecological discourses on the environmental impact of human activity.
As for dengue fever, it is a danger as real as the Z virus. But our government, instead of investing resources in eliminating stagnant water, paving the streets to avoid puddles and maintaining the hygiene of the city, decided on two things: to use those resources to pay expensive lawyers to free the five heroes who were prisoners in the United States and to cast the blame for the proliferation of the mosquito on the people. That’s how things are, the blame for the poor results of the famous campaign against the mosquito is our own. Why? Because we put out vases with water and don’t cover the toilet tanks. Then the Ministry of Public Health sends inspectors to every house to verify that everything is in order.
In practice, those mosquito inspectors only care about signing the visto and leaving. The actual name of the visto is the Control of Antifocal Visits, a small piece of paper that exists in every home. On it, the inspectors register their observations; then other inspectors come who supervise the work of the earlier ones and they check that there are annotations on the visto. And then other inspectors at an even higher level come to check that the two earlier annotations exists. In short, everything comes down to signing papers, interrupting the privacy of others, and leaving the poor mosquito in peace to lay its eggs in the puddles in the street.
The inspector who rings the bell of our gate, even though it’s open, is short, muscular, and tanned by working under the sun. He barely moves, barely speaks. Mama goes out to the door and shouts at him that we’re not going to fumigate today. The man’s face shows no objection. He asks for the visto, makes a few annotations on it, and leaves.
From the window of my room, which looks over the portal, I see how he walks dragging his feet as if he were a zombie. Unconsciously, I look toward the dead end. He approaches it and the sign on the wall remains the same as ever. My eyes look for the zombie from the night before. On the opposite sidewalk is a trash can; as always, it’s overflowing, and the bags of household refuse are scattered on the ground. This is normal, they’re always a few days late in collecting it. I see a movement among the trash, slight, almost imperceptible, as if it were alive. As if something lay within it.
Mama’s shout draws my attention away from the trash can. I didn’t have time to confirm if it was really the refuse that was moving, or if it were just an illusion of my tired vision from so much computer work. Now, two women have appeared at the door and they’re arguing with my mother. She calls me again and I hurry to go down.
The women are middle aged, overweight, and with beads of sweat running down their faces. They’re carrying folders stuffed with papers in their hands. Surely, they’re inspectors of something. Lately, there are inspectors for everything. Our government likes to keep us supervised at all times.
“They’re asking for your brother,” Mama says, opening her eyes widely as she looks at me, “they say they need to inspect him. I already told them where you work, but they insist.”
“Look, boy,” the taller of the two women interrupts, “we’re house inspectors. We’ve been told that there is a registered zombie in this house. We need to make a physical exam of him to verify that he’s really a zombie and not a fake.”
“Look, comrade,” I begin to say, “I work in the CIDEZ. Believe me, I would recognize a zombie when I see one. I work with them all the time and...”
“Look, sonny, the thing is we need to see him with our own eyes and report him, otherwise we have to give you a fine of one thousand five hundred pesos.”
“What are you going to give us a fine for?” Mama is about to lose her cool.
“Look, comrade, those are the rules. Without the approval of the Housing Office, none of the authorizations are worth anything. Because there are lots of people who are falsifying zombie certificates in order to get the extra meat ration and that’s illegal...”
“Are you accusing me of falsifying a document?” Mama is already shouting and things can get dangerously out of hand. I look to the house next door and don’t see the president, yet. “This is a lack of respect. My son is a CIDEZ researcher and...”
“I don’t care if he works in the Central Committee, lady,” the other woman says. “If we don’t see the zombie, there’s no meat ration. How do you like that?
“Mama, do me a favor.” I take her by the arm and signal to her by opening my eyes widely. “Why don’t you go inside and look for my CIDEZ ID. I think it’s on the dresser.”
“You listen to me, muchachito,” the shorter of the two women starts to say. Mama is already inside the house. “I don’t care where you work because I need to...”
“How much do you want?”
The woman remains frozen as if I’d pulled out a weapon.
“What?”
“How much money do you want?”
“No, comrade,” the tall one starts to say, “you’re very mistaken if you think that we...”
“Look, I’m not up to date on all the bureaucracy, but I know by heart all the zombie protocols because I was there when they were written. Believe me, while you were watching innocent Brazilian telenovelas about what went on the world, I was quarantined taking samples of the living dead. The Housing Office doesn’t look after zombies and I’m sure that if I were to go to the Poder Popular right now, you’d be in big trouble. Am I wrong?”
Silence. Now I’ve got them where I want them. Now everything needs to be done quickly before Mama comes back.
“But I don’t want any problems, least of all an uproar at the door of my house.” Out of the corner of my eye I look at the house next door; still no one there. “So it seems to me that three fulas should take care of our problems, shouldn’t it?”
I furtively pulled out a three dollar bill.
It’s important to clarify two things. The first is that it wasn’t three American dollars, but three convertible pesos, the equivalents for a dollar, which in practice were worth 24 ordinary Cuban pesos, the pesos with which the majority of salaries are paid. The other is that Fula was the name of an African tribe that was sufficiently belligerent enough as to give a bad reputation to the slaves that belonged to this ethnicity when they arrived on the ships. Since no one wanted a Fula slave, the term became linked with someth
ing bad or dangerous. How a term like fula came to become the equivalent to strong currency is intimately related to the traffic of money in the 80s, the depenalization of the American dollar in the 90s, and the creation of the convertible peso or CUC. But that’s another story.
The women kept silent. The taller of the two furtively took the three fulas and both of them left in silence. By the time Mama came out with my magnetic work ID, they were already at the corner.
“They left?”
“I finally convinced them.”
“Those two are shameless, I’m sure they wanted money. But they’re crazy if they come to try and blackmail me because I won’t give them even a kilo.”
“By the way, Mama,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Isn’t it strange that our president of the CDR didn’t stick his nose out to see what was going on?”
“He’s at the hospital. I think the dog bit his wife. I think they’re going to put it to sleep.”
Shouts and cheers from the bottom of my heart. It was a shame they weren’t going to put him to sleep, too.
VI
It was always strange when we were alone in her room and sat on the bed with our shoes on. María might possibly be the only Cuban woman who is not obsessed with cleanliness. After all, she has other things to think about.
I’ve been her friend since our University days. I’ve been a shoulder to cry on every time she had an emotional failure and her confidante every time she began a new romantic relationship. I’ve seen her one night a week, we’ve slept in the same bed all night, we’ve talked until we were exhausted... and nothing more.
Which is really a bitch if you keep in mind the fact that I’ve wanted to be with her since we met. But when a woman tells you her secrets and treats you like her little brother or her gay best friend, well, there just aren’t a lot of options.
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