Between the two points, the group had heard a loud but dry thud. It was Álvaro’s skull smashing against the ground, setting off alarms for both groups.
‘My foolish brother-in-law has already succumbed,’ Javier said jokingly, with his head under the light of one of the lit torches held by Diego.
‘What are you all doing down here?’ Carmen asked right at the entrance to the dark corridor, cupping her mouth like a megaphone. Her voice echoed between the walls.
There was silence, except for waves, groans, and moans.
Sebastián stopped walking and Diego stopped with a match in hand, listening, with eyes wide open and the fire of the torch hitting the ceiling. For a moment, he believed that the zombies had finally reached the second group waiting at the top of the tunnel.
‘It sounded like a blow,’ Sebastián said in a more worried voice. ‘I know this sound, it sounds like a cracked walnut.
Diego looked at him, where had he heard that phrase before?
‘I’m going to go check it out,’ Juan said, making the first move stepping with his right food.
‘He has fallen, another fool for the zombies…’
‘Can’t you just shut the Hell up for a bloody moment!?’ Diego shouted impatiently, with a strong and serious voice. His words bounced off the walls and the ceiling, arriving cleanly to the other end of the tunnel.
Juan moved forward into the dark tunnel, the heat increasing, when he found him on the ground.
‘Álvaro?’ Juan knelt down and supported his head in this hand. He felt something slippery in his fingers and smelt a sweet fragrance. It was blood.
Álvaro had his eyes closed, leading to Juan fearing for the worst. Suddenly, his eyes began to flutter, and Juan’s face changed to a more joyous expression.
‘Sorry, I must have slipped,’ Álvaro said with a tight, dry voice. ‘Thank you very much, mate.’
‘But you’re bleeding!’ Juan informed him, showing him his fingers stained with blood.
Álvaro looked in the shadows and blinked a bit more, looking somewhat surprised.
‘I must have fallen hard,’ he said jokingly, with a smile on his lips that Juan could barely see.
‘The floor is very slippery and wet, look,’ Juan said, pointing to the ground and Álvaro looking along. There was mould and algae inhabiting the area.
‘I should have been more careful, it’s very wet.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not something we would have noticed. Not even Sebastián had warned us about this.’
‘He must be used to walking through these halls,’ he said, lifting his head up with a sharp pain in his temples, before adding,’ Sebastián has many things more to tell us.’
Juan nodded in agreeance.
‘Did something happen down there?’ Susana asked, her voice bouncing wearily off the walls as if originating from a distant galaxy.
‘Nothing serious,’ Juan assured her, looking up towards the end of the corridor where there was a sordid light colour that resembled sand in the desert. ‘Álvaro slipped is all, but he is fine!’
At the opposite end of the corridor, the group heard the news, but not without a slight tinge of concern.
Meanwhile, the groans were becoming more intense.
CX
They came in droves into the supermarket’s automatic doors, which opened at the presence of the living, but not the dead and infected. The entrance to the supermarket, flanked with cash registers, the shopping carts, and bars was not saturated with people who were walking carefree before making their purchases, all before noticing those creatures with the strange eyes, and the cries from the people who were bitten in the hand or neck.
Although the zombies were covered in blood, many of those present believed them part of the carnival that would be held that night, already in costume. Some smiled at them, pointed, and took photos. It all culminated when a woman approached one of the zombies to take a picture.
The woman with mahogany hair, hailing from Madrid, had arrived to Águilas on holiday. She ran up to one of the zombies and threw her face next to it. The zombie was slow, as the victim had undergone cardiac arrest during the zombification process, and opened its mouth to the attentive gaze of the mobile camera. The woman smiled, and pushed the touch screen to activate the camera, snapping a photo.
In the photo gallery of the mobile, the woman saw the violet zombie with an open mouth and blood-stained teeth, with a distinct look and eyes that were difficult to comprehend. And next to it was her face, smiling happily.
Suddenly, while looking at the photo, the woman dropped the mobile as a searing pain originating from her neck and shot through her entire body, while the zombie began to lick the wound in her neck. Her cry was heart wrenching and the woman ran, coving her wound with her hand, thinking about the madman in the costume who had bitten her. Though, she was wrong, it was neither a man nor a costume. Suddenly, the woman began to feel dizzy.
Under her chest she could feel Thor’s hammer pounding against her chest, though her heart had not yet stopped. The virus was running through her veins now with the speed of a Formula 1 race car, and her eyes began to flutter in their sockets.
Two young children with baseball caps were pointing to the lady who appeared to be doing some sort of break dance, but soon their little eyes were filled with terror.
A man stepped to the side of her, pushing his shopping cart, oblivious to the chaos around him when, upon arriving to the entrance of the store, someone of no more than a metre in height, probably a child, bit his hand and the man shrieked in pain.
The supermarket floor was starting to fill with blood, and in the midst of the blood was thick saliva. This was not a publicity stunt for the tourists, this was real.
The woman who took the photo arched her back and her fingers began to contort into claw-like shapes, like a perverse monster, and her yes began to transform. Her heart beat during the entire process. Once the virus reaches the heart, the arteries stop. She moved quickly into the supermarket, hungry like a wolf.
Soon, screams followed and the people started to run into the supermarket, leaving behind their shopping carts and even babies, which would soon be devoured by the zombies. The rest began to shamble after their zombification, even the smallest had succumbed to the horror of seeing blood and guts strewn across the floor.
CXI
The dead continued their shambling from the cemetery. The two acolytes and the nurses, with mallets in hand, were still working to break open the tombs that cracked under the force of the blows and revealed the caskets, which were suddenly illuminated by rays of afternoon sunlight.
Did they have enough serum of life to raise all of the dead that had been buried? Some were only bundles of bones now, and they couldn’t serve. They chose only the most recent. There were some who were beginning to rot and were swollen by gasses, but they had lost most rigidity in their muscles after being revived.
The zombies dragged their feet towards the cemetery gates towards the road. There was still a lot of human flesh and flood in which to partake, as it was Saturday, and the flea market was in full swing. Many others were displaced from the cemetery, towards the city interior. There was also La Colonia and Poniente Beach. The zombies were now much more voracious, and disturbingly strange.
Father Martín was, on the other hand, covering his chest with his cassock and praying to the Heavens, extending out his arms, unlike his followers with their inert arms, hanging like the tree branches of a willow, groaning and growling and walking with new life that had been bestowed upon them.
Meanwhile, Father Guillermo and Father Isidoro repeated the same work again and again in unison:
‘Amen!’
CXII
The bullet landed square in the centre of Fátima’s forehead, who had now converted into an infected creature, collapsing to the ground after arching her back and growling a short series of shrieks. The smoke emanated from the barrel of the gun
that Tomás was holding in his right hand. Sara had the children in her lap, covering their ears with her hands, before Tomás had shot the gun.
A puddle of blood overflowed the area where Fátima laid, with bits of grey matter mixed in. Must be her brains, Tomás said to himself. He approached the puddle, letting the blood splash against his boots, and he wondered if all it took was contact with the blood to become infected. He did not know.
‘Can I open my eyes now?’ Daniel asked him, curled up under Sara’s arm, all still on the floor, sitting and leaning against the rough plaster wall.
‘No, it would be best if you didn’t look,’ Tomás said, lowering the barrel of the gun that no longer smoked. In the air, they smelt the scent of gunpowder and the little girl sneezed, still with her eyes closed.
‘Are we safe here?’ Sara said, crying.
‘Apparently not,’ Tomás responded, letting the silence invade the room for a few minutes.
CXIII
‘What has happened, Ángel?’ Carmen asked her husband with watery eyes.
‘They’re everywhere now, this is no flu!’
‘They’re all dead, mama,’ José said, sitting in a chair around a large table that occupied the entire dining area. ‘These are dead bodies that get back up and spread their disease to others.’
‘Then those infected become zombies as well!’ Antonio hastened to say, adjusting his jeans.
‘Ángel, what are zombies?’
‘They are these dead bodies that get up and walk around,’ Ángel insisted from the sofa. ‘Hopefully we will not encounter more of them, but they have apparently been both here and to the health centre already.’
‘Are yours and my mother walking as well, Ángel?’
Her husband’s face suddenly lit up with astonishment, while lying back in the sofa.
‘Your mother and mine are both already in the other world.’
‘How could you say such things?!’ And suddenly, the entire room was plunged into silence, with Ángel thinking that this was a possibility. Though he shook his head as if to shake those bad ideas from his head, like dust or sand.
‘One thing is clear, we cannot leave mama and dada alone,’ Mario began to explain, referring to all of his loved ones by their pet names. ‘Those things outside are very dangerous, they already killed Santiago and his brother. It’s a madness!’ Mario explained, imitating the way their hands contorted, bending his fingers like claws.
His five sisters turned their cat-like eyes to him as if expecting imminent danger.
‘Son, what do you mean?’ His mother asked him with tears in her eyes and a quivering lip.
‘Nothing mama, Santiago and his brother Kickass both fell victim to the disease.’
‘We had to crush their heads, as stated by the police yesterday,’ José continued with his arms crossed.
All of the family was there in the dining room, understanding little by little what was happening. They assumed the worse. They locked their doors and Calafria Street was empty.
CXIV
Juan approached the group that had been waiting in the central part of the castle and told them to follow. They all formed a line, clutching each other’s shirts and sliding down the wet corridor that led to the numerous other rooms that lacked windows and finally to the area lit by torches. Diego waiting and counted everyone to make sure that everyone was accounted for.
Sebastián pointed the way, when suddenly he had remembered something important.
‘We haven’t close the entrance to the corridor,’ he said, his words cooling the heat that occupied the area in spite of the fresh air and dead algae. ‘They could enter in here and follow us.’
‘The old man has fucked up,’ Javier stated, rolling his eyes.
‘Enough Javier!’ His wife shouted to him with serious countenance on her face.
‘And now the wife takes her turn,’ and his voice trailed off slowly as the waves crashed against the wall, breaking against the rocks.
‘How’s your head, honey?’ Carmen asked, looking into her husband’s eyes.
Álvaro shook his head, but still had his hand on the bump that had emerged from the scalp, avoiding the blood that ran between his fingers that was now dry.
‘Someone needs to return to the entrance and tighten the stone that protrudes out from the right side of the wall. The bearings will keep the wall closed,’ Sebastián explained in a tired voice.
‘I will do it,’ Juan volunteered. His index finger touched the damp ceiling and withdrew immediately.
‘And what of the ones in the sewers,’ Javier said, in a voice that carried above all others. He always knew how to point out the worse in people while ignoring his own, it was one of the reasons that his bother-in-law hated him so much.
‘Bloody git,’ Álvaro whispered without anyone hearing him.
Juan made his way from the corridor to the entrance, with the moans louder than ever. It is like a labyrinth with no exit, Juan thought to himself, rubbing his naked back to the moist walls of the corridor.
While Juan assured the closure of the entrance, Diego and the others were advancing, lighting new torches to light the way, with the old Sebastián shrunken and bent like a centennial tree, leading the way with his footsteps.
‘We will pass by to the next exit that takes us to the sewers,’ Sebastián said with a dry voice.
CXV
The majority of the zombies had already crossed the road and some were already approaching the fence that enclosed the flea market. Some tourists and potential buyers saw them and laughed while pointing out that they must have been carnival costumes.
Another horde of zombies walked slowly down the dirt path, bordering the area, in search of an entry. What was certain, however, was that they were inclined to follow their noses to the scent of warm blood. All of that blood pumping through the hearts of the tourists and citizens, opening the voracious appetite for blood that dwells within the zombies.
Akira Hins, the fastest of the recently resurrected zombies, had finally reached the entrance to the flea market, and, with opaque white eyes, smelled the odours of the crowd, but could only make out silhouettes. She stood at the entrance of the flea market, next to a grill with fresh chicken cooking.
There was a fat man with a stained t-shirt sweating profusely in front of the grilled chicken. The blade that pierced the pieces of chicken and held them over the grill to toast the flesh upon every turn was something that Akira could not comprehend.
‘Would you like a roast chicken, madam?’ The man asked while removing his small white cap that he had covering his bald head.
She didn’t reply.
The man continued, now frying potatoes in a deep-fryer with a giant tub hooked to an orange-coloured butane regulator. People came and went from the flea market, some with empty hands, and others loaded with bags. Though, all agreed on one thing: the woman dressed in white with a mink curled around her shoulders was strange. Many pointed towards her and thought that she was strangely covered up.
The man grilling the chicken had an assistant, a 17-year-old teenager with reddish hair, big freckles, and very thin.
‘David, bring me more potatoes,’ the man ordered, looking towards the zombie.
The boy skirted towards the truck and remained there, while Akira finally acted upon her urges and jumped like a cat towards the fat man. He thought that this attack was part of a performance, pushed her off and blushed. The fat man saw her arse and noticed that, under her mink coat, she had no panties.
A lady with dark hair and a protruding belly passing by with her bags full of vegetables just pointed and laughed.
‘This is funny!’ The woman exclaimed, still laughing as she walked away from there. She was also convinced that this had been some sort of performance, as it was very common to see people in the city of Águilas dressed up and being naughty in public. However, everyone was ignorant that, this time, it was not the case.
&nb
sp; The fat man’s face was red as a tomato, pulling the zombified Akira to his lap, when suddenly, he felt a searing pain that invaded his face and temples. As if something had ripped off a part of his face. When he looked into the zombie’s face, he saw an air of cruelty and hatred in its opaque white eyes, and in its teeth, a piece of meat and fresh blood dribbling down its chin. The man, now on the ground, crashed headfirst into the table of roasted chicken, which then broke in two, began to scream. The flea-market denizens, however, continued laughing. This was contrasted with the other sites of infection, as it was still seen as a performance.
The zombified Akira stood up and lunged towards the fat man’s neck with extreme rapidity, biting his jugular with her teeth and pulling out the blackened vein, leaving a torrent of blood gushing out in front of all the people who began to stop laughing. The fat man fell on his back, landing on the grill, with the flames licking his back between screams and movements of desperation.
The denizens of the flea market were no longer laughing.
Instead, they began to walk away from there awkwardly, but it mattered not. There was a horde of zombies waiting for them outside of the flea market with mouths opened. The people of the flea market began to succumb to the panic, which was now sweeping across the flea market like cholera.
There were no police, naturally, as they had all been killed in the past few days without even half of the city realising it.
Then, the redheaded lad came out from behind the truck with a bag of frozen potatoes, dropping it on the floor upon seeing all of the blood. Akira, who was moving fast, launched herself towards the boy, who only had enough time to raise up his hands in a futile attempt to protect himself.
The fat man’s heart stopped, but the zombification process was still rapidly underway. His gaze began to change and he began moaning and growling, while burning like a candle on the grill.
Infected, Zombi The City of the Zol Page 19