The Wanderers (8 page)

He looked inside his backpack and extracted a small cold chisel; only God knew how many times he had found use for that prodigious mechanism, and how happy he was now to have included it among his camping gear. Then he breathed deeply and began to walk slowly towards the shack
... one step, another, five, ten... above all, he did not want to attract the attention of the wanderers; it was of paramount importance. He was thinking that with a little bit of luck he could even get back to the boat without having a horde of wanderers trying to rip him to pieces.

...
nineteen... twenty-three...

The zombies walked slowly, the skin on their craniums contracted and covered in blisters due to the implacable sunrays falling upon their exposed foreheads, day after day.

...
thirty-two... thirty-seven...

The shack was already only a few steps away. He sweated copiously, although the breeze was cool and it was not too hot.

...
thirty-nine...

One of the specters stopped, inclined its head to a side, as if it was smelling the air. It then opened its mouth, pulling back its thin and dried lips, and letting out a blackish blood clot that heavily fell to the ground with a watery sound.

Aranda stopped, not even daring to breathe. And in that moment, as if in response to his worst nightmare, he found himself with the zombie
looking
at him. It was as if he was in a movie and there had been a cut, he had not seen the movement; they had taken out the frame.

He did not give himself any more time: he eliminated the distance that separated him from the padlock with a leap and began to use the chisel on the padlock’s small bar. The zombie bounded towards where he stood, proffering harsh sounds that stemmed from its throat. That seemed to activate the specter that wandered at a short distance, which became agitated, and it began to advance, wildly gesturing with its hands.

Aranda squeezed hard and the padlock flew to the sand. He pulled at the chain over and over again, but the links seemed to drag themselves through the metal loops. The zombies were jumping over the small railing that separated the promenade from the beach; the second one limited itself to twisting its hips over the rail, clumsily falling headfirst onto the sand. Aranda heard a cracking sound similar to a branch breaking in the quiet of a forest. The blow would have been enough to shatter anyone’s neck, but the specter naturally got back up, with its head glued to the shoulders and the eyes loaded with hate.

With a final pull, Aranda managed to take the chain off the door. It was dark inside, and he inhaled a mouthful of dust and rarified air when he leaned his head inside. It was a tiny little room with metal shelves full of fishing equipment, nets, lifesavers and cans of what seemed to be paint. And there, meticulously covered by a piece of yellow plastic bubble wrap, a small black off-board with the letters SEA-KING adorning its curved black lines, was hanging from a hook on the wall.

Aranda rapidly ripped off the plastic and took down the motor. It weighed a ton, which was totally unexpected, so he was about to let it fall to the floor. He embraced it with both hands and pressed it against his chest, curving backwards to help himself with his lumbar muscles. It was so heavy that it reminded him of the huge sacks of salt that his mother had sent to the house for the decalcification machine they had installed, so he calculated that the motor must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. He also noticed, with much satisfaction, the slosh of gasoline in the tank, and with that, another preoccupation disappeared.

He knew that he could not get to the boat with that much weight, not before the two zombies reached him, so with much effort he put it back on the hook and looked towards the doorway. At that moment, he heard a muted rap against the shack’s wall. They were already there.

He searched among the things he had around, knowing he barely had a few seconds to find some kind of weapon. Finally, among some big toolboxes, he located a hammer that seemed to be big enough to do what he had planned. He picked it up and turned towards the door in just one movement, and saw that did not have even a second more to spare; occupying the whole doorway was that repulsive being, still dressed in a worn dark gray jacket and its face furrowed with innumerable dried wounds, a few black teeth remaining in its half-opened mouth.

He had barely a few seconds to regret how he had done it all. He was trapped, locked in a tight space; he had let himself be cornered like an idiot. If the second zombie managed to get in as well, he was sure that he would not be able to make it. Despite that, a visceral, almost primitive impulse, moved him to hurl himself towards the specter and deal it a blunt blow with the hammer, right on the head. The zombie shook as if it had been shocked by an electric charge, and seemed to be on the brink of falling backwards, victim of a cerebral collapse, but when it felt the air with its putrid hands, it stumbled and regained balance, returning his gaze with renewed fury
. It’s getting excited
, thought Aranda, covered in the white mist of his growing terror.

Again, he ran towards the specter and pushed it with all of the strength he could muster. This time the suited form fell back onto the beach’s dusty sand, growling like an old beaten bear. Aranda stepped outside the shack, just in time for the second zombie to grab him by the arm. Its face was practically cadaverous, and its one remaining eye, rendered opaque by a viscous gray substance, furiously glared at him. He rid himself of his predator with a hard pull of his arm and moved a few steps away without losing them from sight.

Again, he counted on an action range ample enough to insure himself a minimal possibility of success. He had the hammer in his hand, but he noticed that his hand was trembling: the tool shook in his clenched fist as if it had life of its own. While the first specter got up, the one-eyed one threw itself at him; Aranda received it with a shower of blows from his hammer while avoiding being caught. As the cranium collapsed like a rotten egg, each blow he gave sounded worse than the one before. The specter did not stop moving. Next to it, the one wearing the jacket was rising without bending its knees, helping itself up with both hands. If it did manage to get up again, he was going to have problems.

Finally, looking at his enemy directly in its only eye, he thought of a plan. He lifted the hammer over his head and sunk it into the bulbous gray mass that surrounded the eye socket. The specter did not show any signs of pain, but began to turn its head as if it were searching for something. It raised its hands, feeling around. It was now blind.

Aranda moved out of the way so the specter could continue its erratic search, feeling a sense of relief. He turned around in time to find the other zombie, which had managed to get up. Its gaze was so full of rage that he could almost feel the sparks reaching him. He glided towards its back with a swift maneuver, grabbed the jacket and the shirt it wore underneath and vigorously lifted them, forcing it to lift its arms, until he left the clothes stuck at the height of its shoulders. The specter instantly lost its terrifying appearance: it looked like a puppet. Finally, he jumped on its back and forced it to fall on the ground.

That was it, because it would never get up on its own. It shook and struggled on the ground, incapable of getting rid of the jacket. The other specter wandered away, as if it had lost interest when it lost the visual stimulus.

He looked back at the promenade. The other zombies were still far away and did not seem to have noticed the scuffle, but he knew all too well that it was only a matter of time until more arrived. He went back into the shack and put his hands on the outboard motor. He was tired, and the blunt hammer blows he had dealt had taken a lot out of him. He loaded up again as before, and began his slow walk towards the boat. Cluck, clock... the gasoline sloshed from one side to another in the motor’s tank as he moved forward.

It took him a good while to arrive, and when he did, he felt that his lungs were not enough to inhale all the air his body demanded. His arms hurt and his back seemed to have suffered at the hands of an army of furious boxers. The whole way, he continuously turned his head, not just to keep the suited dead man and his blind friend in view, but also to ensure that no other wanderer joined the party. He was slightly dizzy, and knew exactly why: he was scared to death.

Putting the motor in its place was much easier than he had thought. Later he went back for a couple of rollers to push the boat; something he managed to do uneventfully. Pushing the boat, however, was a different matter. He discovered that the old wooden keel made a horrible, harsh, high-pitched noise when pushed on the rollers. He gave a start, as if he had put on a radio on full blast in the middle of a library. He pushed again.
Crrrrreeeaaaakkkk
. Was there not too much silence now? He looked behind him. He changed the roller and pushed again.
Crrraaaaccckkk
.

Suddenly, he heard the grunts of the dead, converging in a growing clamor that froze his blood.

Oh, shit.

He forced himself to move: to move the roller back and forwards, to push
... push... and move the second roller again, back and forwards. He looked again.

Oh, God
... no.

The zombies were on the move in large numbers. They arrived at a lively pace, letting themselves fall over the promenade’s railing. Sometimes, one of them would fall on another and be trampled, but that did not seem to matter to them, they worked like swarming termites, as if they listened to a common mind. They grunted and groaned and moaned.

“
My God... please...” he said aloud.

Barely a few meters separated him from the water. Aranda moved as quickly as his exhausted energy allowed. From back to front, pushing.
Crrrraaaaccckkk.
Back to front. Each time he had to take the roller out and put it back in the front he thought it was going to be the last time. He did not feel strong enough to continue pushing, but nevertheless discovered himself doing so, tears in his eyes and a tense knot gripping the pit of his stomach. Finally, he encountered the seawater lapping the sand beneath his feet.

He changed the roller for the last time: the next push put the boat at the mercy of the waves. He waited for the next wave to break to give the definitive push. Just in time, he saw when he looked to see that the living dead were just a few yards away, trotting towards him on their clumsy and twisted legs.

He jumped on the boat and lowered the motor so he could put the propeller in the water. The specters were already there. One of them, as if it knew its prey was about to escape, threw itself forward horizontally, grabbing the outboard with its hands. Juan started it immediately, and when the propellers moved, they threw miniscule pieces of flesh in every direction; the specter stood, lifting the severed stumps that were its arms. Its mouth was a perfect ‘O’.

The specters continued arriving and soon there were other hands trying to grab the boat, but the strong motor did its job and none of the living dead managed to hold on long enough. Only then, when the boat was getting farther away from the enormous group of zombies, Juan proffered shouts of joy, accompanied by roaring laughter. He lifted his hands to the sky and shouted, euphoric, until he could not shout anymore. Afterwards, he lay down and let the wind and marine breeze stir his hair. He told himself that it was like inhaling
life
in its purest form, and for several minutes, he only concentrated on breathing.

Chapter 11

The little fishing boat jumped at a good speed from crest to crest. Aranda almost felt guilty for not having thought of that solution much sooner.

In short order, he was navigating alongside Malaga’s port. The view of the city from that distance was discouraging. The port was a seething mass of living dead, their bodies swayed, and they wandered aimlessly. Every once in a while one would fall to the water and never resurface.

The popular and well known boat-nightclub
Santisima Trinidad
had its stern half-sunken; the rest showed signs of having been engulfed in flames, and it appeared to be the abandoned remnants of a shipwreck. Looking through the small binoculars he carried in his backpack, he could see that beyond the port the streets appeared to have been the scene of some battle. There were remnants of barricades made with sacks and overturned vehicles, blackened remains of fires that had burned uncontrollably, and fallen bodies all over the place. The buildings’ windows were testimony to old horrors: destroyed frames with curtains that hung outwards and lazily fluttered in the breeze, and others intact, but with dried blood on their streaked windowpanes. And of course there were zombies, more living dead than he had ever seen together in all of Rincon de la Victoria.

Aranda stopped the motor for a moment and remained impassive for a few moments. He had expected something else, that perhaps Malaga could be a stronghold, where the survivors would have controlled the madness of the zombie infection. What had happened to them? What had happened to the police, the officers, the Army, the Spanish Legion? All of the strong men and women who lived in Malaga? Did they all succumb? How? Why? Was it so hard to
resist
?
He
had made it.

He felt sad and angry at the same time. The sound of the water rhythmically hitting the boat’s hull brought him memories of better times, when everything was normal. If only he had paid more attention to life when it used to surround him, he told himself, while the guttural cries of the specters mixed with the lulled sound of the sea, far away yet omnipresent.

He shook his head to rid himself of those sad and unproductive thoughts. He had to think what he was going to do next. Malaga was a big city, surely there were survivors like him; people who had held out in their homes, or maybe in a civic center, a police station, or a department store. Obviously, disembarking at the port was impossible, so he decided to continue a little more to the west until he found a more hospitable area. Feeling better about the situation, he readied himself to start the motor.