Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End

by Manel Loureiro

  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.

  ENTRY 32

  January 25, 2:36 a.m.

  * * *

  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.

  ENTRY 33

  January 25, 6:38 p.m.

  * * *

  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!

  Dozens, then hundreds, maybe thousands, I don’t know. On the surface that multitude could have been a demonstration or a crowd at a concert, except it was plunged into a stony silence, broken only by shuffling feet and occasional moans. The fucking mob was headed for the Safe Haven. Tireless. Immutable. Unstoppable.

  It’s clear why they were headed there. I don’t know how many people were crammed downtown, but any human crowd makes a lot of noise. In the silence, I could hear the crowd’s noise more than a mile away. Loudspeakers, electric generators providing light and heat, vehicles. A magnet drawing this violent mob, eager for human bodies with a heartbeat. They would fall on the humans, and there was nothing their victims could do about it.

  A few hours later, the shooting started, near downtown. First some isolated shots. Then the gunfire increased; for a while it was a loud roar. I swear for a moment I even heard mortar rounds. Although the BRILAT troops had withdrawn from several parts of Spain recently, there should still have been a sizable enough contingent to drive them away, no problem. The police band was jammed for hours with frantic messages from one unit to another. Distress calls, urgent requests for ammunition, surrounded platoons requesting backup, reports of casualties...Fall back. They’ve broken through. They’re overrunning us. Then, little by little, silence. The sound of firearms gradually ceased. At dawn I didn’t hear anything anymore. Radio frequencies were silent. Dead. A few of columns of smok
e rose above downtown, marking where my city’s Safe Haven once was.

  We’re screwed. A couple dozen of those monsters are walking up and down my street like automatons. One of them is beating monotonously on the door of the house next door, the doctor’s house. I don’t know why he’s doing that. The house is empty. He keeps it up for hours, setting my nerves on edge.

  It’ll soon be nighttime again. I hope I see the light of day.

  ENTRY 34

  January 26, 5:57 p.m.

  * * *

  This has been a really long day. I’m writing this in the upstairs bedroom. I don’t come out except to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. I have half a bottle of gin sitting next to my chair. It was full this morning. That doesn’t make me an alcoholic. A couple of drinks helped me cope. Shit, my nerves are shot.

  Today, when the sun came up, I was dozing in front of the TV. To save the batteries, I only turn it on once in a while. They’re still displaying the royal coat of arms, but it’s been hours since there was a news report. I woke up suddenly. Shooting. I heard gunfire close by. It went on for a while, then suddenly stopped. I don’t know much about guns, but it sounded like a couple of pistols and some kind of high-caliber gun, maybe a shotgun. This tells me something important: there are other living people around! Or at least there were...

  Miguel, my neighbor, is getting all worked up. He thinks staying here is suicide. The best thing to do is drive to the marina and get on his boat. I spent half the morning trying to talk him out of it. We don’t know if his boat is still docked there. Most likely it’s gone. Besides, the road will probably be closed in a dozen places, so we’d have to get out of the car and walk with thousands of those things everywhere. We wouldn’t last a minute. I think I talked him out of it, but who knows for how long.

  In a way, he’s right. Either we improve our situation here or move on. Soon.

  Those monsters are a constant presence on my street. When they heard the shots, hundreds of them headed down the main street toward the source of noise, including some that had been wandering around here for hours. The rest hung around here. Throughout the day, new ones showed up. From my window I see eleven of them wandering up and down. Four women, two children, and five men. One of them I named Thumper. He’s been banging his palm against a metal gate for hours. They all have the same dazed, distracted look on their faces. Their clothes are torn and stiff with blood. Some are horrifically mutilated. One woman’s rib cage is crushed, as if she’d been run over by a car. Her broken hip makes it really hard for her to walk.

  However, the one that interests me the most is a soldier in the BRILAT special forces. He has a horrible wound on his neck, and he’s missing a chunk of his cheek. I can see his teeth every time he goes slumping along under my window. The clotted blood has formed strange lumps on his jacket.

  But the important thing is the backpack he’s still carrying. And his belt, which has about a dozen pockets. And a gun. A gun! In a daze brought on by all the alcohol, stress, and sleep deprivation, I’ve feverishly plotted a dozen ways to get that gun and backpack. I need them. But all I’ve got is a scuba-diving spear.

  Assuming I can bring him down, I’d still have to get everything off him. In the time that would take, the rest of the monsters would pounce on me. After a while I devised a plan. It’s really horrible, but it’s the best I’ve got.

  I don’t want to ask my neighbor for help. He’s wound so tight, I can’t rely on him. Plus, if something happened to him, my guilt would kill me. No. It’s my plan, my risk, and my reward. I don’t have the slightest idea how to use a gun, but it would make me feel a lot safer to have one. With it, I’d try to get out of here. And I won’t hesitate to use it on myself to keep from turning into one of those things. That’s for sure.

  Now that I know what to do, I have to figure out when to do it. I’ll wait a few hours. I want to be sure there aren’t any more of those things out of my line of vision. I loaded the speargun and had some target practice in the garden. Pulling the trigger releases the tension in the band, and the spear shoots off like a rocket deep into the tree trunk. I sweated a lot getting it out. I couldn’t get a grip on it. I won’t have time to retrieve my spears. Since I only have six of them, I’ll have to be a very, very good shot.

  ENTRY 35

  January 27, 11:25 a.m.

  * * *

  My hands are shaking. I needed a long, long break and another swig of gin to be able sit down and write. Dear God, my nerves are going to explode!

  I started at the crack of dawn, when the light was good. Those things are deceptively slow; they can move really fast when they want to. I don’t know if they see well at night, but one thing’s for sure—I can’t see for shit in the dark. And there’re so many of them. I don’t intend to find out how many, at least for the moment.

  Thinking it through, I realize my plan is pure madness. But it’s the best I’ve come up with over the last feverish hours. I need to do something to relieve the agonizing tension that’s built up since those things arrived. Plus, the gun and backpack have become a symbol. I’ll get them at any price.

  All this excitement has infected poor Lucullus. He’s been running around the backyard all morning like a wild animal.

  After hours of watching those eleven monsters, I realized they only move when something gets their attention. At about seven this morning, a rat or a hedgehog or something was darting around at the end of the street. Several of those things headed after it but apparently didn’t catch it. Six of them—two children, three men, and a woman—remained at my end of the street, about forty yards away, with their backs to my front door. When I saw that, I realized that my plan might have a fighting chance.

  My entire plan hinges on the fact that there’s only one way on to my street, where it intersects with the main street. On the other end my street dead-ends at the embankment where the civil guardsmen and soldiers headed several nights ago. It’s steep, so I doubt any of those things can climb it. But I’m not 100 percent sure of that—one more unknown in my wonderful plan. I can see small groups of them wandering aimlessly on the main street. They don’t seem to find my street especially exciting. In the last two hours, a couple of monsters walked a few yards down my street but went back the other direction after a while.

  The soldier-monster is on the far side of the street, close to the embankment, swaying in the middle of the road. In addition to him and the six monsters with their backs to me, there are three women and one man, Thumper, who continues to haunt the house next door. One of the women is missing an arm and half her chest. She’s standing in front of my house, less than two yards from my door, staring at the wall. Nothing has changed in an hour and a half, so I’ve decided to act.

  I’ve racked my brain over what to wear. I don’t want those things to bite me or touch me. I don’t know if they sweat or if you can contract the virus through contact with their skin or their sweat. The sad truth is, I don’t know shit about them. I just know they’re dead, they’re aggressive, and they’re at my front door.

  After a lot of thought, I decided to wear my wetsuit. It’s superthick, top-grade neoprene—flexible and water resistant. I doubt they can bite through it. At most, I’ll get a bruise under that layer of neoprene. Plus, it’s completely smooth and thermo-sealed; there are no buttons or loose edges they could grab me by. It’s like a second skin. I wasn’t sure if I needed to cut the hood. It covers everything but my face, including my ears. Since it’s so thick, I can barely hear. I have to be able to hear those things coming up behind me. It also limits my peripheral vision.

  With a sigh I picked up the scissors and trimmed the hood. This baby cost me almost twelve hundred euros a year ago. I’ve taken it on many weekend dives, and now I’m destroying it. But what other choice do I have?

  Next, I put on winter gloves and tennis shoes because they’re flexible and—very important—quiet. I got a look at myself in the mirror. Jesus! I looked like some weirdo in my diving goggles, wi
th the speargun and a handful of spears on my back. I don’t know if I’ll take down that soldier, but one look at me and he might die laughing. That is, if he has a sense of humor. Damn, I’m delirious!

  I also grabbed an old umbrella and tore off the fabric and all the spokes. It had a mean ivory handle that must’ve weighed a ton. It’ll do in a pinch.

  I’m trusting my life to a speargun and a broken umbrella...great!

  Time to get going. I’ll leave Lucullus in the backyard. If something happens to me, I hope he’ll have the sense to escape over the wall. My poor friend. He doesn’t deserve all this shit.

  Before I unlock the door, I pick up my secret weapon. My whole plan depends on a silly little toy I found when I was rummaging through a drawer. If it works, I’ll have a chance. If not, I’ll be really in big trouble.

  ENTRY 36

  January 28, 3:45 p.m.

  * * *

  Human beings are extremely complex. If you’d told me a month ago I’d be capable of what I did yesterday, I’d have laughed my ass off. And yet—I did it! And I’m still alive.

  After I got my wetsuit on, I opened the upstairs window a crack to get an overview of my street. I shoved the speargun out the window and propped it against the windowsill. I toyed with the idea of shooting the monsters from the safety of my roof. What a stupid idea! There was no way I could hit a target the size of a human head thirty yards away with a speargun, even if the spear hit the target with enough speed and strength. I had to keep in mind I only had six spears. Only six shots...

  I started laughing hysterically. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about shooting people from my bedroom window! It was all so absurd and ironic. Those things down there were clearly not human. Once upon a time, they had lives, family, friends. And now they’re...whatever they are. The people they used to be had been either slower-witted than I was or not as lucky. That’s all.