He moved through the town cautiously, keeping to the shadows of buildings as much as possible while scouting his next move through the open. Most of the houses had been gone through in the neighborhood, their doors open. Some of them opened by him in previous trips. He sagged against the wall of a house and wondered at the futility of it all: with nobody producing any food, it was only a matter of time until everyone was either dead or undead. His work on a cure would be for naught.
“I don’t think this is a good idea. Every time we stop in a town looking for gas we end up running for our lives. There’s got to be another way to get out of this fucking country.”
Carlos froze at the sound of an American voice speaking English. A female voice. He cradled his AK-74 in his lap and listened harder.
“Yeah, well, Kate, the only place to get gas in this third-world hell-hole is towns like this. So it’s not like we have a choice. It’s this or walking, and the last time we tried walking we all nearly got eaten.”
A man’s voice. Carlos started scanning the area: they were near. He moved away from the wall he was leaning on and stepped several feet closer to the sounds of the voices.
“Quit arguing, you two, there’s a dozen or so cars still parked on this street. We can get the gas out of them and we’ll be on our way.”
A different man’s voice. Carlos edged his way along the side of the house, getting closer to the road. He peeked around the corner of the house and saw four Americans standing at the front of a beaten up Ford pick-up. They were college kids. Probably stuck in the country since a spring break vacation just before the plague outbreak. None of them seemed armed with anything more dangerous than kitchen knives and camping axes. He was amazed they were still alive.
“Maybe we should check a couple of houses for food while the rest of us are getting gas?”
That was a brunette with her hair pulled back into a ponytail that fell to her mid-back.
Another young man nodded. “Why don’t Gail and I check a couple of the houses for something to eat while the rest of us syphon?”
Carlos stayed still for the next thirty minutes, watching the Americans at work. He could tell they had been doing this for a while, syphoning gasoline from abandoned vehicles. Maybe all they needed to survive were knives and axes? The zombie apocalypse had had a side-effect he hadn’t anticipated, which was that it honed the survival instincts of those who remained alive. In any case, four was more than he could handle, even with a machine-gun.
And then he noticed a pair of the undead stagger from between two buildings down the street, between the American’s car and the De La Revolucion Mexicana highway. Carlos found it curious that after turning onto the street, the two zombies paused, swayed, their heads turning in what seemed uncertain scans of the area. Carlos looked up the street and saw the two Americans on syphoning duty comparing their take, discussing whether or not what they had filled into their plastic containers was enough. Talking too loudly, like typical Americans.
“Yo, guys, this neighborhood has been totally picked out,” said a shaggy-haired blond man holding a can in each hand. “We’ve been in about fifteen houses and pulled out a can of pork-and-beans and some Chef Boy-ar-Dee beef ravioli.”
One of the men with a gas can laughed. “Mexicans eat that stuff?”
“Holy fuck, runners!” said the other man, dropping his gas can to point down the street.
Carlos turned his head and saw the two undead skip-hopping madly toward the three on the street. These ones were fast. Without thinking, Carlos raised his AK and drew a bead on the zombie on the left, followed it for a few beats and squeezed the trigger. The bullet tore into the walker’s shoulder and caused the creature to stumble into the one next to it. Carlos aimed again and put a round through its skull, breathed shallowly and plunked the other runner through the ear, shattering its skull.
Carlos kept the rifle snugged into his shoulder and took several steps out of the shadow he had been in, scanning down the road toward where the pair of zombies had come. He was sure there would be more. There always were more.
And there were. Within seconds streams of the undead erupted from between the houses, shuffling toward the street. Forty? Eighty? More? Carlos pointed his weapon at them and swept it between the groups for a moment, wondering if he should shoot. He looked over his shoulder at the Americans, all of whom were now armed with bladed weapons, and turned back to the zombies. The Americans would not be getting back to their vehicle today.
He backpedaled toward the Americans, weapon pointed at the zombies.
“If you want to get out of here alive, come with me,” Carlos said in fluent English.
“Mike, what the fuck are we going to do?” Gail asked.
The shaggy blond man shook his head. “I think we listen to the guy with the gun.”
The Americans stood still a moment longer, as if sizing up their ability to fight the horde and make it to their vehicle. Carlos was nearing his own panic threshold, staring at the streams as they formed into a horde and came at them. He focussed.
“Please. Come with me. My truck is two blocks away. We can come back tomorrow and get you on your way, but right now, we have to go,” Carlos said.
A runner broke from the pack, spittle spewing from its mouth. Carlos shot, missed, shot again and brought it down.
“We have to go now.”
“Mike?” Ken said.
Mike looked at Carlos. “Let’s go. Lead the way.”
Carlos looked at them and motioned over his shoulder with his head, and then began a slow run toward his truck. He looked behind himself several times and was pleased the Americans were following him. The zombies had fallen far behind by the time he broke from a yard onto the street where his Chevy Suburban was parked. He pulled the keychain from his pocket and clicked the “unlock” button, the car emitting a bleat to the world. He pressed the button on the fob for autostart and pointed to the car as Ken came from between the houses.
“There, the blue Chevy truck, go,” Carlos said.
Ken stopped alongside him and turned toward his friends.
“Come on, we’re almost there, the blue Suburban right over here,” Ken said, waving his friends him and pointing toward the idling vehicle.
“Shotgun!” Mike said as he tore across the front lawn toward the truck. Carlos looked at Ken and saw he was smiling and shrugging. No gun was involved.
Moments after Mike rushed by him, the two women rounded the corner and followed Ken’s direction to the truck, both piling through the same door and shouting for Ken to hurry up while Carlos back-stepped toward the vehicle, rifle raised. Carlos entered the truck and passed the rifle over to Mike, who put it on his lap and turned his head to look out the passenger side window. For an instant, Carlos wondered if he had just given up control of the situation, arming the American with the AK. He let go of that fear quickly and tapped Mike on the shoulder.
“You know how to use one of those?”
Mike glanced down at the gun, shrugged and smiled. “Just point and shoot, dude. I’ve had to use a couple of AKs in the last year. No worries.”
This perplexed Carlos. “Why aren’t any of you armed if you’ve had weapons in the past?”
“Guns are easy to find here in Mexico. Bullets, not so much,” Mike said. “We got a boatload of guns in the back of the pick-up, but none of them have any bullets in them.”
“Zombies right behind us!” Kate yelled.
Carlos glanced into the rearview mirror and started the car, peeling out on the gravel and fishtailing as he pressed down on the gas. Carlos eased up, calmed down and began to drive quickly through a few turns of city streets before taking a road out of the city. The countryside flashed by, a mixture of abandoned farms and empty landscapes. In the backseat, the two girls and Ken talked about how close a call that had just been, and Carlos smiled: he had saved quite a few people from the clutches of the undead, but never any foreigners. Perhaps his luck was going to change, and he’d make
some progress in figuring out how the zombie plague spread?
They drove for about fifteen minutes before Carlos turned the truck off the main paved road and down a dirt driveway. As they approached a gate in a fence that extended off to either side of the road, Carlos pressed a button on a box attached to the sun visor and the gate slowly swung open. He sensed Mike looking at him and turned his head and smiled.
“My home, my new friends, is your home for the night.”
Carlos parked the truck on a paved driveway in front of a sprawling mansion, alongside a blue Toyota Prius and a silver Porsche 911, both covered in thick dust. He walked away from the truck and to the front porch and turned to await the Americans as they exited the Suburban. He could tell they were dumbfounded by their luck by the way they stared at the house. He was happy they felt safe. They walked up to him as a group and stopped. Federico opened the front door to the house and stepped outside and gave a look to Carlos that only he would know meant Federico was surprised by the sudden arrangement.
“I still have hot and cold running water, but there isn’t any electricity, so if you want to bathe, I suggest you do it soon, before the sun goes down. My assistant Federico here will show you to your rooms.”
Ken looked at the others and smiled. “Hot showers? Rooms? I think we’re finally on vacation!”
Carlos took the rifle from Mike and looked at the group of smiling Americans. He checked his watch and glanced at Federico.
“Cena en, digamos, una hora y media?”
Federico nodded and looked at the group of Americans, motioning for them to follow him. “De esta manera, por favor.”
“Please, follow Federico. He’ll come and get you for dinner in an hour or so, after you’ve all cleaned up.”
Carlos walked through the house filled with joy. He stopped in his study and set the rifle in a corner, twisted open a bottle of tequila and poured two-fingers worth, swirled it and wished, for a moment, for an ice cube and sliver of lime. It wasn’t too long ago Americans would’ve run from a Mexican armed with a machine gun, not to one. He smiled at his luck and left the study for the observation room.
She had risen. He looked down into the dirt-floored chamber and watched Noelys Sanchez stumble around, trying to gain her bearings. He wasn’t sure about that. No zombie, not even the runners, were very certain on their feet. Autopsies had revealed nothing wrong with the muscles or ligature other than that it was dead tissue. Examinations of brain tissue had showed nothing obviously wrong, at least with what he could tell using the equipment he had on hand.
What the yellow-tinted glow he had observed in bodily fluids meant, he had no clue. He hadn’t been able to determine a source in the samples he’d examined, but he was certain there was a yellow ... glow.
Carlos picked up the paperwork and looked it over. Noelys had been dead for fifteen hours, nineteen minutes before reviving as a member of the living dead, well within the normal range of resurrection. But now he had a clue as to the delivery systems of the virus: prolonged skin exposure to at least 60 milliliters of infected bodily fluids was enough to turn a person. He smiled: it was a good day for science.
Carlos heard the door open and turned. Federico entered.
“I killed two of the chickens to feed our guests.”
“Good choice.”
“Anything else?”
Carlos nodded. “Get out a couple of bottles of the 1998 Barolo and chill them a little, tonight is a night we celebrate. I want our guests to feel welcome. They got out of a narrow scrape today. They should be dead. They made it this far from some tourist resort on the coast by siphoning gasoline from cars and scrounging for food.”
“What do we do with them?”
“Leave that to me. ”
Federico served the chicken with a tamed-down mole sauce, uncertain if the American’s taste in spicy food was as intense as his fellow Mexicans. They gorged on it and the rice-and-beans side-dish he prepared. So did Carlos. None of them had eaten such a feast in a while, and Carlos remembered when such a meal was commonplace for dinner. He nodded approvingly to Federico and with a motion of his eyes Carlos let Federico know he should help himself to the meal before it was devoured.
“I thought it was all bullshit, at first, Doctor Carlos,” Ken said, drinking a glass of wine. “A pandemic? In this day and age? I mean, the CDC and the World Health Organization and who knows who else is out there watching the world, and then, suddenly, there’s this fast-moving bug infecting the planet? I just ignored it and figured the government knew what it was doing, that it would fix it.”
Carlos laughed. His government had never been able to fix anything, except, of course, who was in the government. He knew: he was in the government. Chief coroner for the city of Monclova.
“From what I understand, your government fled to West Virginia when the first infected were found in Washington, D.C.,” Carlos said. “Apparently, there’s a bomb shelter somewhere big enough to house your entire Congress so that it can continue to govern your country during a nuclear war. And your president is on an aircraft carrier somewhere. He broadcasts a radio message every Wednesday at noon and says your government is doing everything it can to work on a cure and keep your country safe. But he’s still on the aircraft carrier, so I don’t believe he’s made any progress on either claim.”
The four Americans turned and looked at each other. It was the first news of any kind they’d heard about what was going on in America.
“Do you know anything else?” Mike asked.
“About America?”
Mike nodded.
Carlos shrugged. He’d caught a couple of Mexicans returning from America after the plague had taken hold, and they’d all told him America - the border states at least - were in chaos. The rule of law had disintegrated and people were fleeing in every direction, nobody knowing where to go. By the end of the fourth month of infection, America had become a wild country filled with the undead and littered with pockets of heavily armed Americans who wouldn’t take his countrymen into their newly formed tribal units, forcing them to hope for a better chance in their home country.
But the reactions of his people had been the same, closing down communities and shunning strangers. Carlos figured that only fools would trust the comfort of strangers in these times.
“America is not safe,” Carlos said. “No place is safe where there the undead roam.”
The room grew quiet and the Americans stared at each other glumly. Kate tilted her glass of wine into her mouth and drank it in three gulps, grabbed a bottle and poured her glass full.
“I thought there was hope, but there isn’t,” Kate said softly.
Ken turned to her. “There is. There always is. Kate, we’re going to find a way through this and get back to our families.”
“Or die trying?” Gail said. “We’ve been on the road for three weeks after a year of being holed up in a series of fucking hotels up and down the coast, waiting for a cruise ship or the Navy or somebody to come and rescue us. And we find out now that everyplace is just as bad? Where are we going to go?
“We’re going to stay with the plan, Gail, and drive you and Kate home first,” Ken said. “And then we’ll figure out what the next step is. Doctor Carlos said there are groups of people still out there. All of our families could still be okay. Let’s not assume the worst.”
Carlos raised his glass and tapped the floor with his foot. “Look on the bright side, you lived another day in the zombie apocalypse, be proud of yourselves; not everyone can say that. Celebrate a victory and take the day off. Tomorrow, you can return to your quest.”
He pushed himself away from the table and stood. “Please, enjoy the wine and eat some more. I have more work to do. If you need anything, Federico can help you.”
Carlos watched from the upper level as the American named Ken awoke on the cot in the center of the observation area. Ken coughed roughly and shook his head a little, as if trying to orient himself. He realized he was on a cot
in the middle of a large dirt-floored room and scratched his forehead.
“What the fuck?” he said quietly, calmly.
Carlos wrote down the time of his awakening on the medical form and watched. Ken sat still and looked around the room, located Carlos on the upper deck and stared. Ken blinked hard.
“Is that you, Doctor Carlos?” Ken asked. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m just observing your awakening is all,” Carlos said.
“Why am I here? I’m pretty sure I went to bed in one of your guest rooms.”
“You did. We moved you here after you were asleep.”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“That’s what I’m trying to observe,” Carlos said. “You were exposed to what is an aerosolized amount of the zombie contagion, albeit at a lower parts-per-million content than I’ve previously observed. I’m trying to determine what the threshold level of airborne infection is, because this plague spread much more quickly than through bites from the infected. There has to be an alternate method of infection. The stories of people just suddenly waking up infected or becoming infected while at work are too great to ignore, so, somehow, the alternate methods of transmission need to be determined.”
Ken stood and took a few steps, stopped, and tried to center his balance.
“Are the other guys okay? Is it just me?”
“Yes, they’re just fine,” Carlos said. “We’re just going to watch you for a while and see what happens.”
Ken nodded. “I feel kinda drunk ... or drugged.”
“Tell me every sensation you are going through. It’s important for me to know what’s going on with you so that I can figure out how to stop it.”
Ken stumbled a few steps and almost fell. “I’m hot ... I’m thirsty.”
Ken’s head rolled around his shoulders aimlessly and his body quivered. He suddenly coughed up a small amount of blood and mucus. He turned and stumbled back to the cot and fell onto it. Carlos wrote a note and motioned to Federico for them to leave the observation deck.
Inside the next room, Carlos and Federico took off their face masks and placed them on the table.
Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse Page 19