Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (7 page)

Sweat trickles down my back as I sit here, writing this. My hands are still shaking from the adrenaline rush. I’m scared out of my mind.

By midday, I realized I had to do something or I’d have a heart attack. I’d been cooped up for almost twenty-four hours, pacing like a caged animal. I had to do something. I had to get out of here. I had to take a look around. I had to know what was going on. Lucullus has been staring at me, wide-eyed, all day. He knows something’s up. I don’t know if his cat brain can grasp the enormity of the situation. The world’s going to hell by the minute—if it isn’t there already. Eventually it’s going to grab up everyone in its path. It’s not joking around.

I went up to my bedroom and put on heavy, thick-soled hiking boots. Winter nights in Galicia are wet and cold, so I bundled
up. It was late; the curfew had been in force for hours. I didn’t give a damn. I was going out. It wasn’t like I was going to run into a cop around the corner. Forty minutes before, I’d heard several vehicles on the main road. From the upstairs window I saw a collection of police cars, army trucks, and armored vehicles pass by, filled with exhausted, frightened soldiers headed to the Safe Haven downtown.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those soldiers were the last line of defense against the infected people. They’d held their position until all civilians were evacuated. Now they were retreating. That means there’s nothing between the Safe Haven and those things. They must be hot on their heels. I had to hurry.

I moved aside the posts bracing the door and cautiously stuck my head out. The street was deserted, the way it’s been for the last several hours. Newspapers, plastic bags, and trash went flying down the pavement. In the middle of the street lay a beige sweater. One of my neighbors must have lost it in her hasty evacuation. Seeing that sweater brought it all home. They’re gone for good. All of them.

I climbed into my car, which I’d parked right outside the door. As I sat behind the wheel, I remembered I hadn’t changed the oil. The can of oil had been sitting in the trunk ever since I bought it. Shit. This was not the time to be a DIY mechanic, so I turned the key, hoping my car wouldn’t leave me high and dry.

In the dead silence the motor sounded like a cannon. You could probably hear it for miles. I didn’t care. No way was I going to walk. I drove to the main road and headed for the gas station about half a mile from home and just over a mile from the Safe Haven. The gas station was in the middle of the evacuated zone, but I hoped someone was still there. I realized I didn’t have a decent road map. If I ever took to the road, I’d definitely need a map. Every gas station sells them. That’s what I was after.

The absolute silence on the road was shocking. Not a living thing in sight. I could be the last person on earth.

When I got to the gas station, I let out a sigh of relief. The lights were on. It looked open.

I pulled up to the pump and went in cautiously. I’m not ashamed to say I was scared shitless. There was no one was in sight—no customers, no employees. Where was the fucking manager? The cash register was open. I could’ve reached in and made off with all the cash. I grabbed a couple of road maps and all the candy bars I could stuff in my pockets. I also grabbed some two-week-old magazines. Their covers reported things that now seem completely surreal. Everything seems so absurd in this chaos! As I left the money on the counter, I thought I heard a noise. My blood froze in my veins. Someone—or something—was out there. Fuck.

Trembling, I grabbed some snow chains hanging on a display. They weren’t much of a weapon, but at least I had something sturdy in my hands. I spotted a man about a hundred feet from the station. He was too far away, and it was too dark to see him clearly, but he seemed to be staggering. I wasn’t going to hang around to find out. I jumped in the car and headed for home. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the guy stumbling along, trying to follow my car. Fuck that. I didn’t want to know anything more about him.

A few minutes later, I was back home with the door secured again. My legs are still shaking. I was gone for less than twenty minutes and only went about half a mile, but I feel like I’m back from a tour in Vietnam. This is really fucked up. I thought I’d feel like the hero of an action movie. Truth is, I feel like prey who doesn’t know where the hunters are.

I turned on the TV. There are only two channels left, Channel 3 and the public station, Televisión Española, which is
displaying the royal coat of arms and playing military marches. Very reassuring. There’s static on all the other channels. CNN is all that’s left on the satellite; it’s broadcasting images recorded a few days ago. News scrolls across the bottom of the screen: Atlanta has fallen. Denver. Utah. Baltimore. Cedar Creek, Texas. And on and on...damn, the list is endless. “Do not go to the Safe Zones. Seek safety elsewhere,” the message says. Is that what will happen here, too? Millions of “infected people” attacking millions of refugees in Safe Havens?

The Internet is almost nonexistent. Most servers are down. The only search engine still operating is the Spanish affiliate of Alexa. How the hell are they keeping it up and running? Backup batteries, I guess. They can’t last much longer, just a few days or hours. People have left messages on my blog. I don’t know how they found it, but their stories terrify me. They say it’s one of the few sites still operating. My Internet provider is a cable company based in La Coruña. How long before it goes to hell? How long before
everything
goes to hell? They’re coming—it’s just a matter of hours.

Today the power went out. A few minutes before six, the lights flickered and then went out. At first I just sat dumbfounded in the kitchen, in the dark. I’ve been spending most of my time there, listening to military broadcasts and watching the last two TV channels. After a while my eyes adjusted to the dark, and I sprang into action. I grabbed a flashlight and went down to the basement to connect the storage batteries. Those black 16-kilowatt beasts lay on the basement floor in two lines of
twelve. I was just about to throw the switch on the control panel when I froze. Before I connected anything, I made sure all the lights in the front of the house were switched off. The last thing I wanted was to call attention to myself with the only lighted house on the street. When I did connect the batteries, the bulbs’ soft glow made me feel so safe. It was fantastic—I can’t describe it. I never dreamed I’d be so afraid of the dark. I never dreamed any of this could happen.

I have a serious problem. They’ve cut off the gas, or maybe the pipes broke. Either way, I have no gas. That means the furnace isn’t working. And that’s nothing to joke about with the temperature outside down to 37 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve bundled up, but the cold is still biting into my bones, and my breath turns into puffs of steam. Lucullus is indifferent to this cold. After all, he’s a Persian cat, with long fur and a generous layer of body fat from years of living the good life.

I went outside to smoke a cigarette and think. I sat on the steps, staring at the walls around my yard, turning over and over in my mind the events of the last few hours. This disaster is picking up speed. It’s like an avalanche—first they’re just a few pebbles, then some boulders, and before you know it, the whole fucking mountain is sliding toward you at top speed. Shit!

On top of that, I’m more and more isolated. Channel 3 is dead; it stopped broadcasting around noon. During a repeat of
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
, the signal disappeared.
Poof.
As if someone unplugged the cable. I have no idea what happened. Spanish public television still displays the royal coat of arms and plays elaborate renditions of military marches. The news comes on every hour and a half, but the content has changed. They’re no longer telling people to go to the Safe Havens. In some places, like Almería, Cádiz, Badajoz, and Mallorca, they warn it’s highly ill-advised.

The Safe Havens were a logical idea—concentrate the population to defend it. But they turned out to be a disaster. The infected people are attracted to humans. Waves of them, maybe millions from all over the country, surround the Safe Havens. They overwhelm the defense forces with sheer numbers. Then chaos breaks out.

Not going to the Safe Haven was clearly a good decision. I think I have a better chance of surviving this chaos if I stay away than if I get herded there like everyone else. I felt a wave of relief for making the right choice. Then I was immediately overcome by grief; it was like a punch to the gut.

My parents. My sister. All my friends. Robert and his wife and child...I saw just them a few days ago. They were filled with worry as they packed their bags. All my friends and loved ones must be scattered among half a dozen of those damn Safe Havens. I don’t know which is worse—knowing they’re doomed or knowing there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Bile rises in my throat. I’m choking with an anguish I can’t describe, but amazingly I can’t shed a tear. The situation is so overwhelming no tears will come.

Incredible as it seems, authorities all over the world now admit that somehow the infected corpses come back to life. The virus, or whatever the hell it was that escaped from the Russians in Dagestan, causes a total breakdown of the host’s defenses, multiple infections, hemorrhages, and, within a few hours, death. After an undetermined amount of time, the deceased rises again. Not as he was, but as one of
them
. They attack every living being in their path. They don’t recognize anyone and don’t communicate in any way. Their only goal is to attack. There have even been cases of cannibalism. The only thing that seems to “kill them off” (pardon the sick joke) is destroying their brain.

I’m a rational, sensible guy. I should be roaring with laughter at this crazy theory, right out of a B movie. But I can’t. The last few days have shown me that anything’s possible. As wildly absurd as the report sounds, I believe it. The dead return to walk the earth and kill us. We’re fucked.

Immersed in such happy thoughts, I thought I heard a noise outside the wall. I bolted up like lightning, completely terrified. It sounded like someone dragging something heavy. I had to know what it was. I grabbed the garden ladder and leaned it quietly against the wall. Then I climbed up slowly, careful not to make the steps creak, and peered over the wall.

I saw my neighbor sweating, dragging posts like the ones he gave me a few days ago. Completely absorbed in his work, he was standing on his unfinished deck, boarding up his house. He went inside, and then I heard hammering. When he came back out, I called to him. Now he was the one getting the shock of his life.

His name’s Miguel. He’s middle-aged, burly, slightly bald. I think he has a medical supply distributorship. He’s divorced and lives alone with a small psychotic dog that barks at everything that moves. He says he “refuses to be crammed together with all those people at the Safe Haven.” He thinks he’ll be safer at home, and to some extent he’s right. He’s boarding up his doors and windows in case those things make it through the steel gate. He has a boat at the marina, so if things get ugly, we can escape in it. I said sure, but deep down I think it’s a stupid idea. I know his boat; it’s docked near my Zodiac. It’s only sixteen feet long. We wouldn’t even get out of the bay in it, assuming we could get to the port. We agreed to talk in a few hours.

Once inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’m not alone. There’s another person nearby. Then I remembered: he and I aren’t alone either. Somewhere out there are those things that aren’t human anymore. And they’re getting closer.

They’re here.

Shit. I’m watching them out the window. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of them. They’re everywhere. God help me. For Christ’s sake, how can this be possible? I think I’m going to throw up.

I’m calmer now. Last night was a real nightmare. In the light of day, the situation seems less terrifying. But I could clearly see the agonizing reality. In a few hours it’ll be completely dark again, and I won’t be able to see those things. (It goes without saying that the streetlights are out.) But I know they’re out there. And somehow they know there are humans around somewhere.

It all started around one in the morning. I’d been talking over the wall to Miguel. We could have talked by phone and spared ourselves the bitter cold, but the need to see a human face was huge. I came back inside and then moved my headquarters upstairs to the front bedroom. I haven’t slept in that room for two years. Now I have no choice. It’s the only room with a window facing the front, and it’s higher than the wall. From there I can see the entire length of my street and a small section of the main road. I brought up the radio, a laptop, a small TV, and my scuba-diving spear. I set everything next to the chair I’d pushed against the window, and sat down to wait.

At first I couldn’t make out what was happening. The sound was the first thing I noticed. In the silence of the night, I heard a
strange noise, like something dragging on the pavement, with an occasional groan mixed in. The hair on my arms stood on end. A moment later, I saw the first one: a man about thirty-five, wearing a blue plaid shirt and white jeans. He was missing a shoe. He had a terrible wound on his face, and his clothes were soaked with blood that was starting to get stiff. More followed behind him—men, women. Even children, for the love of God! They all had some kind of injury. Some even had gruesome amputations. Their skin was a waxy color. Their dark brown veins stood out against their pale skin like delicate tattoos. The corneas of their eyes were yellow. Their movements were slow, but not too slow. They seemed to have a problem with coordination. It reminded me of the way a drunk walks after a night of partying. Not bad, considering they’re dead. Totally fucking dead. There’s no doubt about that. Even though their wounds had been fatal, they walked around under my window as if those wounds were nothing. That’s frightening!