Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (6 page)

On Friday afternoon I dodged the checkpoints in town to visit Robert. We’ve been good friends since we were kids. Robert is quiet, low-key, and methodical. He works as an accountant for an import company. He got married two years ago and has a cute baby girl only a few months old. When I got to his house, his wife was packing their bags, and Robert was gloomily watching the television. He said they were going to the Safe Haven downtown. They don’t know where they’ll be staying or what they’ll do there, or anything, but they’re still going.

I get it. I’m a single guy who lives with a cat, but he has a family to look after. Good luck, Robert. I think we’re all going to need it.

After I got home, I stopped to talk to my neighbor for a minute. His house backs up to mine. Before all this started, he was building on a deck. The smell of glue was pretty strong. Bits of sawdust wafted over the wall separating our yards. Lucullus sat mesmerized for hours, watching the dust twist and turn in a light beam. A few days ago the carpenters didn’t show up. I’ve never had much contact with the guy, but I got up the nerve to ask him for a couple of those heavy wooden posts to brace the gate in my front wall. If looters show up, they’ll have to jump over a
ten-foot-high wall or break down a wrought iron gate, reinforced with two wooden posts driven into the ground.

More than anything I need a project to keep my mind busy so I don’t think about what’s happening. Fuck.

On the official channels, there’s almost no foreign news. People don’t seem to care, either. It’s as if each country has turned inward to survive. There hasn’t been news of any kind out of Russia for days. Not even on the Internet. Zero. In northern Europe there are a few active blogs. Unfortunately I don’t know Swedish or German or Polish, so I can’t tell what the hell they’re saying. I notice their blogs are full of capitalization and exclamation points, so I gather they are nervous. Or surprised. Or scared. Who knows.

CNN is the only US channel I can still get via satellite. CBS and ABC display blue screens with the channel’s logo, and Fox News is broadcasting static. According to CNN, the population is being concentrated in the Safe Zones in each city’s downtown. Authorities warn that they can’t protect anyone outside those zones from “marauders.” There’s an unbelievable rumor going around on the Internet that the people in the San Diego Safe Zone—and maybe in those of many other US cities—have been massacred by marauding groups. From what I see, life is cheap worldwide these days. If you search for “dead” on Google, millions of links come up.

In Spain, the situation isn’t any better. Safe Havens are being organized in cities with more than fifty thousand residents. Day or night, on every radio or TV station, they urge people to congregate there for their own safety. I’m not going. They don’t allow pets, since space is limited. There’s no way in hell I’ll leave Lucullus. I’m not a nut case about animals, but after my wife died, having Lucullus around was all that kept me from doing something stupid. I owe him that. He’s my pal, and I won’t abandon him to get into some crowded ghetto and
share a room with fifteen strangers. Fuck the government and its Safe Havens.

The king is back on TV, in his uniform again, with an update. But this time he’s surrounded by generals. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any politicians on TV for days. The military has taken over. That sucks.

Now Channel 5, just like Channel 3, is only broadcasting reruns and a news bulletin every forty-five minutes. They’re saying it’s to ensure their employees’ safety. Apparently their studio is located in an unsafe area. There are gangs of bandits, they explain.

Cell phones are dead. The three main providers have suspended service and “relinquished” their network to the Provincial Security Corps. Now it’s going to be impossible to contact my sister. She’s a smart girl; I’m sure she’s okay.

I’ve got the shortwave radio on again, listening to the military evacuate people to the Safe Haven. Sporadic gunfire has kept up all day. Civilization is crumbling.

I listened all night to the security forces’ frequencies on the shortwave radio. It’s mostly trivial chatter—progress reports from checkpoints, situation reports from patrols, and little else. Occasionally a “hot spot” flares up, and then the situation gets out of control. Although the media is constantly warning us about “disturbances,” those are only a fraction of the incidents I hear about on the police band. Maybe it’s because I live in a small town, but the number of looters seems very small.

However, I’m hearing more and more about the “others.” A couple of days ago, you hardly heard anything about them. Their
numbers seem to be growing by the hour. On the police band there are increasingly more reports of “incidents” involving what the soldiers call “those things.”

Forty-eight hours ago, there were no cases in Pontevedra. What began as a trickle—a run-in with “those things” every twelve hours or so—is fast becoming a gusher of emergency calls, hysterical warnings from one unit to another, and a whole lot of movement by police and soldiers who seem unable to quell the situation.

What do they mean, “those things”? People infected with the virus? We all know that people who get infected are extremely aggressive, but why call them “those things,” not the “infected people”? What does that mean, exactly?

A few hours ago, I heard on the military band that security forces in Pontevedra have been ordered to retreat to the heart of the city. The outlying areas must be evacuated. A few minutes later, on the city television station, a captain in the Civil Guard dressed in combat fatigues read a statement from the commanding general of the province, ordering the evacuation. I think we’re under siege.

Just an hour ago, I heard a call to a patrol. Dispatchers reported an incident on some street and told them to investigate. The patrol (Civil Guard, I think) responded that they were already there. I haven’t heard a word from that patrol since. Fifteen minutes later, I heard another call, this time to BRILAT troops. Dispatchers told them to go immediately to the same location. The fucked-up thing is that the address given is just half a mile from my house. I swear I heard two shots. Then nothing.

Whatever happened, there were only two shots.

In general, things look piss-poor. From what I can glean from all the crap on TV, radio, the Internet, and military frequencies, the situation is deteriorating by the minute. The security forces
seem to be overwhelmed by events that have skyrocketed exponentially over the last twenty-four hours. There are police and military casualties. Some units, especially those made up of city police, are starting to desert. Something has gone fucking wrong.

A troubling rumor is preying on my mind. Of all the crazy theories repeated endlessly on the net, one is gaining momentum. People say that the sick are in a kind of suspended animation, or that they come back from the dead. They swear that these people are dead but still walking around. Yeah, right. That’s hard to believe, but in the last few hours, so many strange things have happened, I don’t know what to think.

Just a few minutes ago, a troop carrier and a transport truck stopped at the end of the two streets where I live. Soldiers got out and went house to house, banging on doors. I was in the kitchen, listening to the shortwave radio with all the lights off.

When they knocked on my door, I froze. I held the cat in my lap and waited in silence until they went away. I had to see what was going on, so I tiptoed up the stairs and looked out my window. I saw my neighbor’s wife, whose husband, the doctor, had disappeared several days ago, leave with her two daughters and a few suitcases. The soldiers helped them into the truck. Several of my neighbors did the same. They headed for the Safe Haven downtown, where they’ve cordoned off some streets. In theory, it’s well protected.

The trucks roared off toward downtown. Before jumping into the vehicle, a soldier painted a huge red cross on the pavement at the intersection. The trucks then turned the corner and
disappeared. The night was so quiet I could hear the convoy for blocks. I guess they had many more stops to make tonight.

Now the street is silent and dark. All the homes must be empty. If anyone’s still in their home, like me, they’re lying low. I went back to the kitchen and sat down with just the light over the stove on. I started to think. Clearly they’re evacuating the area. Correction—they
have
evacuated the area. So from now on, anything goes.

The sun is up now. It was a very, very long night. Just a few hours after the convoy left, I was struck by the enormity of my decision. I’m alone. Nobody knows I’m here. I’m in an evacuated area. A no-man’s-land.

After I blocked out that thought, I plunged into a project. I finished shoring up the front gate with the wooden posts. It’s stupid, of course—sooner or later I’ll have to go out that way. But it kept my mind busy, and I feel safer. Then I took stock of the situation. I have enough food for about three weeks, if I don’t mind a steady diet of frozen food. I have about twenty liters of bottled water. I still have running water. Having solar panels means electricity isn’t a problem. If I economize, I can be almost completely self-sufficient. That won’t be hard. I don’t plan on throwing a party any time soon.

Cooking gas is a problem. My kitchen has two ceramic burners and two small gas burners. The ceramic burners consume an alarming amount of electricity. For now, I have gas. Who knows how long that will last? Sooner or later they’ll cut the supply to the evacuated areas to prevent the risk of explosions.

Overall, my arsenal is bleak. I went through the house from top to bottom and gathered all my “weapons” on the kitchen table: a scuba-diving speargun and six steel spears, a butcher knife, and a dull hatchet I chop firewood with. Great. I picked up my speargun, by far my most dangerous weapon. Besides the fact that I’ve never shot anything bigger than an eel, it presents a number of problems. It takes around twenty to thirty seconds to load. Its range is short, only about thirty feet. At a longer distance, its aim isn’t very true. When all is said and done, it’s not a precision weapon; it’s only designed to spear an octopus at close range. If gangs of bandits show up, I’m screwed. My best option is to keep my head down.

The phone rang, and my heart nearly flew out of my mouth. It hasn’t rung for days—I’d forgotten all about it. I almost didn’t pick it up, but the need to hear a human voice is stronger than prudence, so I answered. It was my parents. I was so relieved I nearly passed out.

Tears ran down my face as I listened to my mother’s voice. She’d been trying to reach me for three days. They’re okay, there in my father’s hometown with some neighbors. They begged me to meet them there. I convinced my parents that that option hadn’t been feasible for days. I’m safer here than I would be traveling forty miles on roads clogged with checkpoints, with who knows how many maniacal gangs on the loose. Plus, Lucullus doesn’t like the country, I tell my mother, trying to take the sting out the situation. She’s really worried. My sister made it out of Barcelona before they sealed off the city and declared martial law, but my mother doesn’t know where she is now. The last she heard, they were headed for Roger’s place in the country.

There wasn’t much news about the rest of my family. Most of them are probably at a Safe Haven, like 80 percent of the population. Human beings are social animals and tend to cluster in dangerous situations; only an insignificant few don’t follow this
pattern. I fall squarely in that latter group. With a kiss, I said good-bye to my parents, promising to call at least once a week, if I can get a line out.

That calmed me down a little and let off the emotional steam that’s been building. My head is clearer. I’ve started thinking of practical things I can do.

First, the news. TV’s disappearing. Of the eighty channels I used to get, almost every one has gone off the air. I can only pick up Channels 5 and 3 and one that now broadcasts where Channel 2 used to air. Scheduled programming has been reduced to the bare minimum; basically it consists of uninterrupted movies, prerecorded series, and a mini report every forty-five minutes that consists of telling where the Safe Havens are and the best ways to reach them. They insistently repeat that in no way should you try to make contact with the infected. If they attack you, avoid being bitten or scratched.

A tired-looking soldier has come on to say they can’t guarantee the safety of anyone outside the Safe Havens. In case of attack, try to crush your attacker’s head. “Use a stick, a machete, a bullet, anything—just smash their head. Nothing else works.”

I was taken aback by that message, but things’ve been out of control for so long that nothing surprises me too much. Anyway, the news blackout seems to be relaxing. I guess there’s nothing to hide. Or almost nothing. Gangs of thieves are now a minor concern compared to the main problem of those who are infected and extremely violent.

There’s no agreement on those things’ real physical state. Some say they’re healthy, just deranged. Others say they’re at death’s door. More and more people claim they’re dead, incredible as that may seem. I haven’t seen any, but I guess that’ll change in the coming hours. For now, I’ll stay right where I am and take things as they come. I’ve gotten calmer since I realized that’s the closest thing I have to a game plan.

The Internet is also coming apart at the seams. Hours ago Google and Yahoo stopped working. The servers must be down. The same goes for a lot of other websites. Of the over a hundred contacts I have, only two dozen are still active, almost all in Spain, where there’s still electricity. Given what happened in northern Europe, the Internet won’t last long here either.

Military radio frequencies crackle constantly, reporting more clashes with “those bastards.” It sounds like there are lots of casualties. The fifty-two original forces have been consolidated into forty. The attacks are concentrated around the Safe Havens. Two Safe Havens, one in Toledo and one in Alicante, were attacked by hordes of infected people and have fallen. Tens of thousands of people died. Will thousands more die in the coming hours? You can bet your sweet ass I won’t be one of them.