“It colonizes them.”
“It leads them to utopia. To true communism. What neither Karl Marx nor Frederick Engels could achieve on Earth. Soon this crisis will end, all wars will end, delinquency, police, money. Little by little, the world will become communist.”
“What is the plan?”
“The same plan that I imagine those first bacteria who breathed oxygen in that primitive atmosphere had, surrounded by enemies who breathed non-oxidized air had. What we humans erroneously tried to do when we stopped just weeping over the trees in the Amazon and four dead pandas in China: terraform the planet. Force the rest of the species to adapt. The Z virus, or as I should say the Z hive, just took the lead in the evolutionary race. The human race has just fallen to the level of wolves. There are still some in Europe and the United States who feel safe in their woods and bite the owners of the world. We are like the dogs: we evolve, we’ll survive just as we survived the Revolution, the Socialist Block and the Special Period. China is already a zombie nation. Its citizens are ready to assimilate the Hive Mind better than anyone. Cuba is the next step. Then, little by little, and thanks to the exportation of the serum, the borders of countries will disappear.”
“That’s horrible.”
“You know better than I do that it’s not. You know that it doesn’t entail the eradication of humanity. Just eradicating its defects.”
She leaned forward. The glimmer of intelligence shone in her eyes again. She was the María I knew, intelligent and lovely. So intelligent and lovely that I’d never dared to touch her, or to kiss her. Now she stares at me, like she’s never looked at me before, as I’ve always wanted her to look at me. As if she knew what I was thinking.
“This is a gift from me. I’ve already spoken with the Hive Mind and it’s promised me that it won’t let you meld with it like I did. It will just let you see the world through the eyes of all the zombies of the world. But the final decision will always be yours. In this, the Hive Mind is also superior to Marxism-Leninism.”
And she kissed me.
As I’d always wanted her to kiss me.
And then she bit me.
As I was afraid she would.
XI
Three months have passed since the attack of the zombie mosquito inspector. We no longer bathe. We only emerge to pick up supplies and the meat ration. We move slowly. We speak in monosyllables. Just like the clerk at the store, the butcher, the police, and the neighborhood delinquents. They’re all zombies now. Or they pretend to be zombies to survive, as we do.
We never open the door.
Not even to the mosquito inspectors, or the fumigators, not even to the police if they were to show up. At night, we sleep with the windows closed and all the doors locked. Now, not even the dogs bark at night.
Panchito says that things must work better somewhere. Otherwise, there’d be no electricity, gas, or running water. Maybe he’s right and someone is trying to contain this epidemic. Personally, I don’t think so. In this country, things have always worked the same way: by inertia and pure miracle. The bodies of the zombies in the thermoelectric plants, or the aqueducts, remember their functions from when they were alive. They pretend to be humans while mechanically performing the same job as ever. I suppose that some day there will be truly complex failures and they won’t be able to fix them. Then darkness will come. And hunger.
But that’s already happened before.
Abuela is glued to the television. She’d always liked it, but now she searches desperately for some face that’s not robotic. The announcers repeat the news about imperialism, the sister nation of Venezuela and the Five Heroes. All with the same monotone of the public health inspector who came three months ago. She thinks that those up above don’t know anything about this silent invasion. She thinks that that’s why they’ve not taken measures against it. “But at some moment Fidel will find out, and then those zombies will see...” she says, while she clutches the remote control and switches channels compulsively.
According to Panchito, by now everyone must be zombies. The leaders, the generals, the members of the State Council, the Ministers, everyone. That’s why Fidel says he’s sick. He can’t make speeches of longer than one hour because he’s a zombie.
Mama, for her part, continues to claim that everything is the fault of the Yankees. “They’ll wind up dropping an atomic bomb on us like they’ve always wanted to,” she tells us. “The virus will just give them a justification now that we’re all zombies.”
In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if the bosses are dead or not. The zombies are good for everyone. They don’t complain about working extra hours, they don’t protest about the crammed buses, they don’t need stimulus payments in dollars, they don’t write dissident blogs, they don’t mutiny. Deep down this country, in some way, has always been a zombie country. At least it’s always functioned like one. We create and we accept the mechanism. The Z virus, as well as the CIDEZ serum, only created the ideal people to survive here.
And the Yankees? The United Nations? The World Health Organization? Those already gave us up for impossible before the first zombie. They limited themselves to watching our TV programs and imagining that everything was going well for us. Here there are no shootouts, no states of emergency, everyone is happy before the cameras and the challenges set by the Party are always met.
María was right. The Hive Mind didn’t let me merge with it. I can only know what is happening in the world. Little by little, things are changing and chaos is disappearing.
I no longer want to go to Spain. I’m afraid to find that it’s the same there as it is here. The serum formula was shared with the researchers of the University of Malaga. They decided to develop a commercial version of the serum. They sold it to private companies that distributed it throughout Europe. The worst of everything is that they paid us for it and we use the money to create stupid campaigns against the Yankees.
The United States are no longer the future. Nor Russia, nor China. The Z virus is the future. The end so foretold in 2012. The death of humanity at the hands of a Hive Mind, of an intelligent virus. But our serum gave us a change to survive. To convince that Hive Mind of coexisting with us in a Happy World like in Cuba.
And those private companies in Andalusia are creating that New Order. An orderly and organized world where humans live in harmony with the Z factor, without annihilating one another. A world where the individual is no longer necessary.
Only the common good.
The hive.
I’ve heard news about autonomous communities in Andalusia where there are no zombies in the streets. Communities that live outside the anarchy that reigns throughout Europe. People are starting to emigrate there. The old conservative right doesn’t care if these communities are suspiciously similar to the utopian dream of Marxism-Leninism. Like all humans, they only want to survive. To move to where there are no zombies. To live under the shadow of those who guarantee the safety of their children. It doesn’t matter if the communists are the ones who can guarantee this. It’s all part of the same plan.
I’ve burned my exit visa and my passport. I don’t want to board an airplane and land in an Andalusian Revolution. With Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Territorial Militias and Revolutionary National Police forces. With political posters and the empty glances of passersby. Without bodies half-rotting in the street trying to bite whoever is nearby. A zombified socialist society. A political model imported from the Caribbean to free them all from extinction.
It seems that finally, something of Cuba has conquered Spain.
I have no doubt that we’re living in a Zombie Period. The next stage in evolution, as María would say.
I observe abuela watching the December 2 parade. The living dead march, one after the other, with their camouflage uniforms, Kalashnikov weapons, and Vilma visors. They don’t tire, they don’t sweat, and they never fall out of step. They’re as perfect as Hitler’s troops. Too perfect for a disorganized is
land in the middle of the tropics. We Cubans have never done anything with such precision. One could say that this is our moment of glory.
There, under the tribune where the stars of the generals shine, right beside the great statue of José Martí, there is a white sign with large red letters, where one read the sentence that fate offers us:
ALONGSIDE THE ZOMBIES, CONSTRUCTING SOCIALISM.
Original Title: Recuerdos de un País Zombi
Translated by Lawrence Schimel
Victor Conde is a prolific and multi-faceted author who has written fifteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. Notable among them are El tercer nombre del emperador [The Third Name of the Emperor], published by Equipo Sirius in 2002; Mystes [Mystes], published by Minotauro in 2005; El teatro secreto [The Secret Theater], published by Poarnaso in 2008; Hija de lobos [Daughters of Wolves], published by Minotauro in 2011; and Crónicas del Multiverso [Chronicles of the Multiverse], published by Minotauro in 2010. Crónicas won both the Minotauro Prize and the Ignotus Prize, which is presented by the Spanish Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror. His only collection of short stories so far is El libro de las almas [The Book of Souls], published by Erídano in 2010. He is a member of Nocte, the Spanish Association of Horror Writers.
Conde has written in practically every genre in speculative literature, including hybrids, such as hard and metaphysical science fiction, adventure, classic and dark fantasy, horror, steampunk and zombies. Notable among his young adult books are El dragón estelar [The Stellar Dragon], published by Timun Mas in 2007; and the Heraldos de la luz [Heralds of Light] trilogy, published by Hidra. His short stories have appeared in most genre publications in Spain and Latin America. His 2011 short novel Oniromante [Dreamlover] inaugurated Planeta Publishing’s new collection of digital books, Scylaebooks.
“Light a Lone Candle” is a risk-taking short story that fearlessly explores the limits of narrative language, while its background reveals a profound criticism of social networks in their extreme evolution. It was inspired by an article published in a scientific research magazine.
1. Like
Drive. Drive, one more line. Another little barrier to nowhere disappears under the fender. A slow-motion parade of ants photographed by a camera with the shutter open. White-painted ants stretched by time —lines in the middle of the highway.
Drive.
Arrive. I must arrive. Miranda is waiting for me. Well, not for me —really for a miracle that could come from anywhere, anywhere, including heaven. Miranda’s injured. Miranda’s dying. Miranda is alone and the world wants to swallow her up the same way it’s already swallowed up so many things. It wants to absorb her —no, I mustn’t think about that, I mustn’t remember the world. Miranda and I, by God, just two. One and a half is a multitude.
The image of myself is reflected in the rear view mirror... and yes, I see someone who only wants to be me. I don’t hear the world yelling. Everything outside the window of the damned truck can stay out there, far away, in slow motion, passing lazily and tinted cobalt blue by the window, the
COLLECTIVE
of sleepers waiting to attack. To add me to the statistics, one more, one less, to put words into my mouth, feelings into my heart, dreams into my future —but not me. I don’t want that. I don’t want to disappear into the mass. I flick on a lighter, a little miracle of physics hiding in an alcohol flame that heats the dust in the bottom of a beaker. A mystic vapor begins to rise in the driver’s compartment.
I’ve never been so afraid.
A woman lunges out onto the highway, leading three children by the hand. One of them is crying, and the rest join in, infected. They’re not one person or four, they’re a group entity, a single thought: I like it. Like. Like, their Buddha-faces say, flying on an acid ship. They have no independent personality. They lost that a long time ago on the wings of epistemolia.
What a joke!
Epistemolia devoured them, leaving only a carcass to be filled when other group entities are nearby. Anxious for opinions, feelings, eager for a will to tell them what to do, where to go, why they should go on breathing, what to do with their free time, and what their sad lives should be like.
Without other people nearby, they’re nothing, just empty carcasses. That could happen to me if I’m careless. No, I won’t get close. I close the window. Accelerate. ChangegearsdamnedfastbyGod!
I shout
GET OUT OF HERE, SKINS!
and my wheels go smack-boom as I run over one of the children, one of the empty extensions of the group. I haven’t hurt it much. The rest of them are still together and functional. It’s as if an adult lost a finger in a night drowned in memories, acid, formaldehyde. It doesn’t hurt them much, or that’s what they’ve told me. I want to believe it.
None of them weep, but in my rear view mirror, they all look like they’ve been caught in the middle of a motion they’ll never finish in the epistemolia.
Pathetic.
Hurry, hurry, I have to get there before night. Miranda is waiting for me, and she won’t hold out much longer. The miracle is in the suitcase I stole from the New Holocaust collective when I stopped for gas. God, may I never have to get close to one of their cities again. I can’t stand the idea of imagining them inside those glass buildings, waiting, oozing anxiety, eating their own sweat and blood shared via tubes in a hundred extra circulatory systems. Masses of meat, mountains of sweat, hungry mouths, pulsing veins begging someone to stimulate their pleasure centers.
In the cities.
Piles and piles of them.
Heaped one on top of another like living blankets, signed, sealed, and delivered as the symbols of the sunset of a species.
Sleepers.
In the darkness.
Sharing everything, EVERYTHING, even their souls, the untouchable, the nonexistent.
Sharing what doesn’t exist.
They scare me.
The gas tank needle still hasn’t hit the little picture on the gauge, that one that blinks red as a heart when the engine begins to die. The mysterious voice on the radio chants its spell:
“...the holy counterstrike, the holy counterstrike, the holy counterstrike...”
It’s been doing that for days. I’m beginning to think it’s a recording.
A sign on the right, the next exit, two kilometers (one meter less, two meters, three meters), a sign that tells me the name of the sinkhole of damnation where I’m heading:
MADHATTAN.
Madhattan, the biggest concentration of shared flesh ever. The place where they invented the original software. The last place on earth where I want to be.
Where I have to go, I have to get there if I want to save Miranda.
The last injection is losing effect. I return to reality slowly, step by step. Every millimeter of this fall increases the danger index by one degree, adding up to a total possibility of one and a half that they’ll spot me and come for me. That they’ll begin to suggest crazy, stupid ideas, push the friend button, like, like, I likey, as if we were brainless babies.
And this, damn it, is what we already are.
I don’t know how I could have fallen in love with her. I met her in Joint Paradise, that pervert Nicolas Check’s refuge. Or Central Acid Control, as we liked to call it. The strays were there, trying to immunize themselves against fusing into one single mind, but few could. You can’t have the fucking implant behind your frontal lobe (What a lie, the biggest swindle in the history of syphilization!) and refuse to hear the call of the collective.
You can’t cover ears located inside your skull unless you slice it open with a scalpel and sink your hands into your encephalic mass. Big Bob, a friend at Central Acid Control, tried it once. Big Bob told us that he’d found a way to isolate himself from mind fusion. Big Bob is a drooling vegetable now.
While the wheels still stain the pavement with the blood of that mindless child, my mind still exists (Yes, I want to believe it. No, I’m sure. Wait... I can even prove it
!) and without permission it takes off into the distant past, bounces into the era of the dinosaurs, and hops to a time well before the Big Bang, more or less the moment when I was born. Which makes me think of the idea, epistemologic or not, of death.
They say your whole life passes before your eyes when your mind knows it’s going to die. I’ve been doing that little by little for years, one scene at a time, because I’m convinced that no fucking way will I have the time to reproduce my long, complex life in a tenth of a second. That’s just physics. Not even time for the “greatest hits” of my life.
That’s why I do it, that’s why I’m watching a bit of the movie at a time, thirty unedited years and without a stop to go to the bathroom, so that when the moment of my death arrives
(and I feel it closing in)
only the final credits will be left —and the surprise scene that sometimes comes at the end.
That way I’ll have time to make the cliché come true, and I can concentrate on admiring the damned fucking tunnel.
Death. What to say? Hi, honey, pleased to meet you.
Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction Page 16