Infected, Zombi The City of the Zol

by Hernández, Claudio

  ‘I have injected you with the serum of life. You can now walk without the need of your hearts. You have the give of the spoken word and the ability to reason. Something that others are not so fortunate to have…’

  ‘But we are rotting away and soon we will be unable to even walk!’ Father Guillermo interrupted, opening his hands as well.

  ‘The eternal serum must still be hidden in the castle,’ Father Martín explained angrily. This time though, a liquid mass came from his eyes rather than blood.

  ‘Well then, let’s go get it,’ Father Isidoro suggested, with a lewd smile on his face.

  ‘There is a resistance there in the castle, holding off the horde of zombies. They can’t last long; the zombies will enter. This castle hides more secrets than you can imagine.’

  ‘What more choice have we got?’ Father Guillermo said with a scornful smile.

  ‘Tomorrow at dawn, we will make our way up there,’ Father Martín said, raising his two long arms towards the ceiling of the church, the Bible still in his hand. ‘God Almighty, help us!’

  CXXXVI

  ‘Hins A-Akila,’ Sebastián said, sitting on his stool and pulling out a book to his right, with a gull feather marking the page. ‘Some scholars dedicated their lives to writing about King Hins A-Akila and his serums of life.’

  ‘’Those creatures who are out there?’ Juan asked after seeing the start of everything near the San José Church in the Spanish Plaza.

  ‘Correct,’ Sebastián said with a whisper. ‘Father Martín had found the recipe to preparing the serum of life. I had seen it on a certain occasion, years ago, in a syringe that he was carrying. He had injected it into an arm without anyone noticing. The arm moved slightly, as well as the hand. Well, at least one of the fingers did. But Father Martín had always been devoted to the Word of God, I knew that something bad was afoot.’

  ‘This sounds like some sort of sci-fi talk,’ Javier interrupted, his lips now swollen and red while pacing the bunker.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Diego howled back to him, giving him a furious glare. Álvaro had taken a seat in another stool that he had drug across the floor, producing enough noise. It was grossly abnormal. He did not respond back to his brother-in-law, but it was easily understandable when you realise that their hatred was mutual. Álvaro chose the wiser path; to ignore him. That didn’t make him a grand contributor to the group, but at this point it didn’t really matter. They were outside moaning and he was inside, safe.

  Sebastián took a gulp of air and from his lungs came a nasty hiss. His tired voice continued, almost whispering.

  Father Martín is a very ambitious priest. He always told me that if he were to find a way to return life to the dearly departed that he would. Sometimes, he would even say that God was not listening to us. I didn’t tell him nor impart any of my knowledge to him. Regardless, he always suspected me, as he would follow me everywhere, like a tick to my side. I couldn’t even look towards the entrance of the castle without him being suspicious of something,’ he said, stopping to breathe before continuing, ‘I think that he had already known that something had happened in the castle in the 11th century with King Hins.’

  ‘Father Martín was the priest that we saw on the first day,’ Diego said without averting his gaze from Sebastián, whose face was illuminated by the billowing flames of the torches.

  ‘I know,’ Sebastián replied.

  ‘What? You saw it?’ Diego asked, amazed.

  ‘Yes, from one of the upper rooms of the castle. He saw me.’

  Diego furrowed his sweaty brow.

  ‘Tell us more, Sebastián,’ Juan asked, taking a seat next to him. He grabbed another stool that creaked across the floor.

  ‘Hins has descendants. One of them, the most powerful, is named Akira Hins. It’s history,’ Sebastián said, not knowing that she had died a few months ago, now an aggressively infected zombie with the blood of Hins.

  ‘Blimey!’ Diego snorted, leaning his chin on his right fist.

  ‘If that serum should touch her blood, I don’t know what it would be called, but she could become a successor to Hins, in all respects, or perhaps only a few.

  ‘Could you maybe explain better?’ Juan asked, concerned and now with sparkling eyes.

  ‘Well, as I had previously explained, there are three types of the undead, or zombies as you call it,’ Sebastián began to explain, sucking in a gulp of salty air that filled his lungs. No one said anything and wondered if he had already explained it. A moment later, he continued.

  ‘You see, I will be frank with this, but it is important to remember things well. Know them in depth, so I will repeat it once more. There are the zombies, the infected, and the carriers. Hin A-Akila was invaded by the Berbers and the Turks, after which he lost his entire army. In this refuge, like any part of the castle which contains secrets,’ he said, taking a few more breaths that sounded like whistles, ‘Hins had found a secret formula that he called the serum of life which he could give his army. But, as irrational zombies, they are only guided by nebulous vision and smell. With that, he defended the castle and the entrance to what was then the Al-Andalus.

  ‘Wow!’ Diego exclaimed.

  ‘However, he also had found a way to operate the serum in order to remain alive. That’s to say, the heart stopped at the end of the zombification process, but you could still remain lucid. During this experiments, he discovered that he could infect others with as much as a mere scratch,’ he explained, twisting his hand into a claw. ‘This process creates rapid and more violent zombies that were infected and underwent the zombification process before dying. To these, Hins called them infected, but discovered that they still had no lucidity,’ he continued, touching his head with his finger a few times. He coughed deeply and inhaled before continuing. ‘This was what he did to his army fighting against the Turks. The zombies had done much damage against the Berbers. It is also said that he struggled with his army against the French and English. There are writings that place zombies even in the Spanish Civil War.’

  ‘Bloody Hell!’ Juan said, shocked. ‘And what became of these zombies and infected?’

  Sebastián shook his head under the glow of the torches, that danced in the shadows and on their dry skin.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied back.

  ‘In the later repairs to the castle, didn’t they ever find anything?’ Diego asked, almost whispering in his ear.

  ‘Yes, they did. These books,’ he said, pointing to the pile of hand-sewn books with thousands of yellowed and blackened pages.

  ‘Nothing else?’ Diego asked.

  ‘Well the truth is that I don’t know. I have not yet got to the bottom of this whole mystery. I have been studying these books for years, but they are very large for my tired eyes.’

  ‘And when did you first become interested in all of this,’ Juan asked, not really knowing the appropriate question to ask. ‘How did you find the best books? What made you think that these were the causes of all of this chaos?’

  ‘With respect to the books,’ he said, pointing to the stack of books on the table that dully shined under the yellowish and reddish light of the torches, ‘Well I have been the architect of the city hall for many years, and I was tasked with the castle reparations. That was when I found these books. I started to read them, and I was amazed and wanted to know more. Were it not for this finding, then we may not even know what those beasts outside are or may not even exist…’

  ‘How so?’ Diego asked, interrupting him.

  ‘Sebastián took advantage of the moment to take another gulp of air, his breaths still sounding like whistles.

  ‘For the simple reason that the leader wouldn’t even have access to the serum of life.’

  ‘Who is the leader?’ Javier asked, sliding his long fingers down the rifle barrels.

  ‘The priest,’ Sebastián shouted with furtive eyes.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be best to strike first?’ Javier said, the
other four looking at him

  In reality, he was right. They had gone several days without water and food and their insides were now a rumbling of confusion.

  CXXXVII

  The people were crowded together on both sides of the Parra Pass, and the zombies were in the parade queue. Some of them had walked right into the Hornillo district and another group around the auditorium, where hundreds of people were waving their arms and showing stupid smiles. The music blasted in the distance, going out to sea and reverberating against the city’s buildings.

  The first parade float came out from under the imposing light that projected the light and the noisy generators that hid behind the streets. The members of that first float began with their practised choreography by lifting their feet up in the air, revealing their panties and bikinis underneath their miniskirts, decorated with rhinestones.

  The ovation started at the sound of the speakers, which was tempered momentarily. The people applauded from the queue, screams were rising into the sky. Though, they were not screams of joy, but rather pain.

  The zombies had already begun their attack on the elderly float, with snapping jaws. Several of them had already succumbed to the zombification process. Soon, laughter became furrowed brows of concern.

  No one seemed to understand what was happening with the elderly women from the nursing home.

  Some of the elderly women fell to the ground, seizing on the asphalt, and then proceeded to stand up with a changed appearance and foam dripping from their mouths. Though they did not lift up their arms, just snarled and growled, snapping their jaws.

  The floats that followed behind were still ignorant to the situation. The noise, the joy, and the costume bonanza meant that no one could see what was happening in reality. There were many people masquerading as Dracula, and other zombies and mummies made from toilet paper.

  The float that followed was a float of men dressed like women with huge moustaches under their noses. They had short red skirts with padding in the shoulders and high heels that kept them from walking. All of them were already pissed with bottles of cuerva in their hands. Once in a while they would take the bottles to their mouths and take gulps.

  One of them approached an older woman who was dancing plaintively, while the other was drooling at the mouth. The young man approached the older woman who was brandishing a glass of cuerva in her hand.

  ‘And what has happened to all of the other older women?’ The young man asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Some of the older women have fallen to the ground,’ the young man explained, his voice carrying over the rumble of the speakers. ‘That can’t be good!’

  ‘Oh! I don’t know why, they must be pissed.’

  ‘Just be careful,’ the young man warned, taking his bottle to his mouth.

  At that precise moment, when the old woman was set to answer, one of the infected older woman caught her by the arm and pulled it to its mouth. Right in front of the young man, with glued dentures in its mouth, it took a bite, ripping off a considerable amount of flesh.

  The young man’s eyes went as big as saucers. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen. The zombie looked at him, with foam in its mouth, while the old woman began to change and bleed. The zombie continued walking and chewing.

  ‘Bloody Hell!’ The young man cried out in a voice that superseded the screams of the old woman, rising above the festival music.

  ‘It hurts!’ she screamed, her voice trailing off, as well as her heart.

  ‘Does it hurt a lot? It seems to be bleeding a lot. Do I call the Red Cross?’ The young man asked frantically, he did not know how to manage the situation. But the old woman was already dead.

  The Red Cross wasn’t even present that day.

  CXXXVIII

  Tomás held the gun between his two hands, the barrel pointed directly at the head of the zombie that had managed to enter the building. There was more, there had to be more. It was as if they could think. Though he still didn’t know that they are attracted to the smell of blood. The sweet, pleasant smell of blood.

  Sara was behind Tomás, curled up in a ball on the plastered wall with the little ones, their heads buried in her lap.

  The noise of the shot was deafening and the little girl let out a cry at the same time, covering her ears.

  The zombie’s brains and a large amount of blood peppered the two walls of the room entrance. A piece of grey matter stuck to Tomás’ forehead. The smoke that came out of the barrel rose into the air and disappeared silently.

  The zombie fell to the ground with a loud thud, like a huge fish dropped to the ground. Its guts also fell out, already in the process of decay. It was one of the zombies from the cemetery, where the two acolytes were still breaking open tombs under the dim light of the moon.

  Tomás put his hand to his forehead and ran his fingers through the sticky grey matter. This became trapped between his tiny fingers and he threw it to the ground, sticking like a ball of snot.

  Tomás’ face creased and he pursed his lips and spat on the floor.

  ‘We are not safe here,’ he stated to himself.

  He heard some new moans going up the stairs.

  They had found another way in.

  CXXXIX

  Antonio and his brothers had now arrived to the corner of Juan Carlos I Avenue and hid near the steps of Sabadell Bank, where there was a homeless man lying on the ground, on what looked like a blanket or a double sheet. The man was not dead, and his hand was still clutching a little bottle of beer. There were more empty bottles strewn about on the ground, leaning next to the cash machine that flashed green.

  Through the glass of the door, Antonio and his brothers saw people in costume down the avenue, dancing and giving peculiar movements. Zombies dragged their feet, so these must have been zombies, as Antonio and his brothers recognised, but the people kept smiling and drinking. Some of the young boys fell to the ground while their mates continued on, not noticing. In reality, they probably wouldn’t have believed what was happening. However, one seemed to take quick notice of the situation.

  One of the youths, who was on the ground, palms raised towards the dark sky, turned in pain, with a white t-shit that was now stained with blood. The young man had been bitten by a zombie with a funerary shroud, full of shit and faeces, in the stomach.

  The young man who had seen the scene ran away scared, confused, and with mixed feelings.

  ‘They appear to be everywhere,’ Antonio said from behind the glass of the door. ‘No one else seems to realise it because they think that they are in costume.

  ‘Yes, but it has already been a week,’ Jesús explained, crouched at his side.

  ‘Indeed, but Águilas is a very large city.’

  ‘They can’t all be aware,’ José babbled from behind.

  ‘Everyone will become aware of something happening in the next day or two, when there are no more police and physicians, and relatives begin to go missing from this evening,’ Antonio explained, with the sole desire to have a smoke to his lips. He must have forgotten his pack of cigarettes at home.

  He had dropped the Marlboro that he had had on the ground. He had smoker’s syndrome. He coughed a few times, cleared his throat, and said.

  ‘We have to get out of here. Let’s get to the garage already.’

  He was correct. The garage was on Sepulcro Street, which was only about ten metres from where they were, perpendicular to the avenue. Along that street there were vendors that grill chicken and prepare meals, but they were evidently closed down. Antonio suddenly had a craving for the good taste of roast chicken.

  ‘Okay bro,’ Mario said, standing up first. The background music was loud enough to imperceptibly vibrate the glass door. Putting your hands on the door would make it only that much more noticeable.

  When Antonio reach Sepulcro Street, he looked back and saw one of the zombies entering the Sabadell Bank cash machine. He did not wa
nt to imagine what lay ahead for that alcoholic homeless man.

  He turned away and saw an ad shining in the night advertising grilled chicken. It was a fluorescent light that seemed to oscillate slightly with the advertising panel. Back behind them were many people in costume, and amongst them, the undead. The people continued laughing and drinking, looking at the zombies but remaining ignorant to the reality of the situation. All they saw were drunkards in zombie costumes.

  Antonio heard a new cry and his first thought was that someone else had fallen victim.

  He continued ahead, his five senses on alert for the walking dead, until he reached the slope that would take them directly towards the garage. There, he saw two of them.

  They headed straight for them.

  Anotion stopped and wielded his blunt object valiantly with both hands, until his knuckles were white under the light of the street torches. Mario raised his blunt object over his head. The zombies, wandering, shambled in an irregular line towards them, croaking and moaning. One of them had a swollen belly and was violet in colour. There is no doubt that this was one of the dead resurrected in the cemetery, though the brothers did not know of the activities that took place there. They caught them prepared, but they were still blue and very smelly, staining the asphalt with a fetid liquid that oozed from their feet with every step.

  They advanced towards them with snapping jaw, with dead, matted hair that stuck to their heads, sticky and stiff.

  The four brothers approached them and they raised their hands into the air, over their heads, and when they were close enough, lowers their blunt objects with the force of two men over the zombies’ heads, that groaned at the beginning, and grunted upon death, with rabid looking eyes.

  The music that emanated from the Parra Pass did not exceed the noise level of cracked skulls. One of the zombies, already dust and bones, snapped in two, thanks to the more eager José.

  Blood and grey matter mixed together, but this time on the asphalt. The swollen body collapsed to the floor, falling with a noise similar to a splat.