Manel Loureiro - Apocalypse Z - The Beginning of the End

Engrossed in the screen, I almost didn’t see the pileup. Suddenly, rising up before me was a twisted mass of at least fifteen wrecked vehicles. I hit the brakes hard and desperately turned the wheel to the right, trying to avoid the inevitable.

Its tires screeching, the GL skidded sideways for a few yards and came to a stop just inches from the first vehicle. All of its flashers emitted a loud click-click . Everything else was silent.

I wiped off my sweat, grimacing. If it weren’t for all the safety features like minibrake assist and other technical marvels, I’d have plowed into that wall of twisted scrap metal. End of story.

I shuddered. We live on the razor’s edge, and we don’t know it. There’re no police, army, doctors, or anyone to help us if something happens.

We’re screwed.

We’re alone.

All alone.

I put the SUV in first gear, raced on to the shoulder, and drove off the highway. Engaging the four-wheel drive, I plowed through the low barrier at the outer edge of the highway that had kept animals off the road in the old days.

After ten minutes of violent bouncing off road through abandoned farms on weed-covered roads, I stopped under a clump of trees. It was cool, sheltered, and, above all, out of sight. There was not a soul around for hundreds of yards. Not human or undead.

A broken-down old washtub lay abandoned beside the road, almost hidden under blackberry bushes. A jet of cold water gushed from a pipe. I got out of the SUV and plunged my hands into the water. It was cool, almost cold, in contrast to the searing afternoon heat. It was delicious. I drank like a camel, filled up the canteen, then wet Prit’s dry lips. Half conscious, he wouldn’t or couldn’t drink.

I touched his forehead. He was burning up. Either he was suffering from shock or his wounds were starting to get infected. Whatever it was, he needed antibiotics immediately. I gave him a shot of morphine to ease the pain and got back in the car, leaving that brief moment of peace behind.

We peeled out in a huge cloud of dust. We still had a long way to go.

About thirty minutes later we had to cross a small stream. It wasn’t too deep, but the Mercedes, though luxurious, was not built to ford streams. I couldn’t keep water from coming in through the door seals and air vents. We were going to get a little wet.

The sky was clouding up, so we were going to get wet one way or another. After days and days of heat, we were due for a big storm. Lucullus was really agitated, something that only happens when there’s a storm.

We got on to a back highway about three miles from the hospital, according to the GPS. The muddy SUV skidded a little on the weeds growing on the shoulder, but thanks to its four-wheel drive, we made it back on to the deserted highway. I stopped to take a look at Prit. He was delirious on account of the morphine, fidgeting, half asleep. I looked up and down the highway. I didn’t see a single living being, not a fucking soul. Some weeds poked up through cracks in the pavement. No one had been down that highway for weeks. In a few months, the weeds would completely swallow it up.

I shifted into first and headed for the hospital. After a few minutes, I relented and turned on the lights. It was just six in the afternoon, but it was almost dark. A storm was on its way, and I couldn’t see for more than thirty or forty yards. Distant thunder rattled the SUV’s windows.

I concede I was spooked in the dim light, but the fright I got five hundred yards ahead still nearly gives me a heart attack. When I swerved around a small eucalyptus tree growing right out of the road, the headlights lit up a grinning skull, wrapped in a pile of rags, lying on the pavement. I was almost right on top of it, so I braked hard. I heard a crack under the front wheels as I drove over that pile of bones. I stopped the SUV and wiped the sweat off my face. The wind was rising. The first gusts of the storm were whistling through the trees. I was sure there was something huge right in front of the car, but in the dark night, I couldn’t see what it was. There was something sinister about that place.

I cocked the AK-47, painfully aware of how little I knew about firing it, and got out. The purring engine was the only sound except for the roar of the wind. I walked cautiously in the space lit up by the headlights. My shadow projected before me as I approached the black figure at the back.

I held the rifle tight. My hands were sweating, and my heart was pounding wildly. That shapeless mass took up nearly half of the road. I still couldn’t figure out what it was. The hot wind enveloped me like a blanket. Then the smell hit me. My God.

Stacked in front of me were dozens, maybe hundreds, of rotting corpses slowly decomposing, at the mercy of the weather and vermin. I leaned against the barrel of the AK-47 to keep from falling down. Oh, Jesus. My legs failed me, and I had to sit down. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from what I saw in the headlights.

The figure I’d spotted in the shadows was a pile of huge spools of reinforced concrete and some kind of metal container with barbed wire stretched in front. It was an abandoned checkpoint.

All the bodies had bullet wounds. The ground around the checkpoint was littered with shiny copper casings as far as the eye could see. It was a huge graveyard, reminiscent of Rwanda during their civil war in the 1990s.

I could guess what had happened. It was an army checkpoint in a strategic place, by the hospital. Suddenly hundreds of undead had converged on the road, attracted by human presence. Security forces fought them desperately, taking out hundreds of those creatures, frantically calling for reinforcements.

What happened next was clear. The dried blood splattered against the walls and a couple of assault rifles lying on the ground told me everything I needed to know about the fate of the checkpoint’s defenders. The undead had made it through. Just like in Pontevedra. And Vigo. And everywhere else.

I headed back to the SUV, tears streaming down my face. As I climbed into the car, lightning lit up the grim scene. In the space of a few seconds, the SUV crushed hundreds of rotting bones as I drove over that heap. I drove through the checkpoint and didn’t look back. We had to keep going.

April 19, 12:37 p.m.

The lightning was so bright that for a few seconds the whole horizon turned a sickly blue. Thunder rattled the SUV’s windows with a gruff, deep, terrifying rumble that lasted seven or eight seconds. Lightning and thunder followed each other about every minute and a half. The rain hadn’t broken yet, but the air had a strong smell of ozone. A helluva of a storm was coming.

Startled by the roar of the GL’s engine, a flock of crows and fat, glossy gulls flew up in the air. Over the months, I’ve learned to sort through all the haunting images, blocking out the ones that disturb me the most (too many, sadly). But I saw what those scavengers had been feeding on—another pile of lifeless bodies. The image of the half-decayed body of a little boy about three years old with empty eye sockets and pecked cheeks gut-punched me. I was fucking sick of being sick. True, all that bullshit is making me harder, but I can tell I’m getting crazier by the second.

According to the GPS, the county road abruptly intersected with a much wider and better-cared-for road half a mile from the hospital. The area was wooded; a dense mass of eucalyptus and pine trees was shaking wildly, whipped by the wind. The road was strewn with twigs, tree bark, and piles of rotting corpses. The undead had been through there in droves, but resistance must have been tough. I was coming to the scene of a disaster. I started to feel light-headed.