Their metabolism is so low they don’t seem to need nourishment. Those things could be—”
“Could be what?” An icy fist squeezed my heart. Deep down I knew the answer.
“Eternal,” Pons said in a hollow voice. “Humanity may have to live with them forever, unless we exterminate them… or they exterminate us.”
Her words echoed in my head like a gunshot. If I hadn’t spent a year living on the razor’s edge, constantly fighting those monsters, I’d have thought she was making it all up. I knew she wasn’t exaggerating, yet it all sounded so unbelievable.
“This is so… crazy,” is all I managed to say.
“Of course it is.” Pons stood up and walked over to a refrigerator. “Talking about people rising from the dead and attacking the living is crazy. The fact that they don’t need to eat, breathe, or sleep is also crazy. It’s crazy that they don’t decay or suffer any wear and tear—that they’re still moving around even though they’re dead as a damned doornail. No matter how unbelievable it all sounds, you know as well as I do, everything I’ve said is true.”
Alicia’s voice was muffled as she rummaged around in the refrigerator, clinking bottles together in her search. She scooped up a can of soda from the back of the refrigerator with a triumphant cheer. She stood up, turned around, and walked back to the table holding the can and a glass.
“Drink this,” she said, as she opened the can with a snap and poured half of its contents into the glass. “It’s always a shock to face events that reason and science say can’t be possible—and yet there they are. The reaction worldwide is very similar. And right now, you don’t look so good.”
I gratefully accepted the soda Alicia held out to me. My mouth was horribly dry. After I’d gulped down half the can, I felt a little better. But my head was still spinning.
“I was splashed with the blood and guts of those beings more times than I like to think about, Alicia,” I said hoarsely, trying to calm my nerves. “If TSJ is transmitted the way you say, why haven’t I gotten infected?”
Alicia stared into the empty glass on the table, her mind far away.
“You know, you shouldn’t have drunk that soda so fast. That stuff is getting scarce, even on the black market. I hear it’s trading at astronomical rates. It may be a long time before you can afford to drink another.”
Her sorrowful eyes came to rest on the half-empty can, then rose to my face again. “If you or your friends had been splashed with blood, saliva, lacrimal fluid, or nasal mucus from an infected being, you’d’ve turned into one of those things. By now you’d have had a fair amount of lead in your brain, my friend,” she said, as she poured a little more soda. “That’s what the quarantine is for, so we can be one hundred percent sure that new people aren’t going to be a…
Alicia settled back into her chair. “Clearly that didn’t happen to you all.”
That explanation didn’t reassure me. If I’d had an open cut when I’d been splashed or gotten some fluid in my eyes, my story would’ve ended right then and there. I’d have become part of the legion of the Undead.
“Once vectors of infection surfaced worldwide, the entire planet became a living hell in a matter of days. Health services collapsed first, when it became clear that the hundreds of infected patients in hospitals were beyond a cure. Those Undead transformed hospitals into slaughterhouses, death traps. By the time the army got involved, it was too late. We have no data from other countries, but we believe that seventy percent of the medical staff in Spain died in the first forty-eight hours after the initial outbreak.”
“Seventy percent?”
“That’s a conservative estimate. Judging by the number of doctors and nurses who survived and are currently on the islands, the number is probably much higher.” Alicia’s face darkened. “The same thing happened with the police, firefighters, and EMTs. Everyone who tried to help in the early hours of the chaos was exposed to TSJ.”
The air conditioning droned as Alicia’s words hung in the air. All the pieces of that dramatic tapestry began to fit into place.
“Once governments accepted that the world was falling down around them, the phones of various state departments rang off the hook. There was even a meeting of the European Union to address the issue.”
“I remember. Their faces said it all.”
“They finally got scared.” Alicia’s voice hardened. “However, even then they couldn’t agree on a plan that might’ve saved the continent, maybe even the world. All they did was appoint a Joint Crisis Committee and declare a news blackout, then tuck their tails and run back to their own countries, shitting bricks. Most countries armed their borders, hoping to head off the Undead.” She sipped her coffee and clicked her tongue. “But by then the Undead were in every country. Borders meant nothing to those deadly hunters.”
“You mean it was like that all over the world?”
Alicia laughed mirthlessly. She looked at me in disbelief, wondering how I could be so clueless. “Of course not,” she replied with a scowl. “It was worse.”
“Worse? How could it’ve been
“Faster, stronger, with worse consequences. For example, in the United States there were more vectors of infection at one time than anywhere else in the world because the Americans sent more medical personnel and more military to Dagestan than any other country. In addition to that, U.S. troops in Iraqi Kurdistan who oversaw the enormous camps of Dagestan refugees got infected too. By the time the U.S. government woke up, the virus was out of control in over thirty cities across the country.”
I whistled softly, picturing the virus spreading across a country the size of the United States.
“When reporters from CBS discovered what was going on, the network bypassed censorship and issued a special report. Immediately after the broadcast, panic spread throughout the country. Millions of people swamped airports and highways, struggling to get out of the cities. Families threw all their belongings in their cars and headed for rural towns where they thought they’d be safe. They didn’t know that many of them already carried the virus, so it spread rapidly across the country. The U.S. government rushed to copy the European model of Safe Havens, but it was too late. Mass hysteria had taken over. The nation’s institutions began to collapse as more and more officials didn’t show up for work, either because they’d fled or they were dead.”
With a chill, I pictured the horrific scene. The United States has an intricate network of highways and airports, so when thousands of infected people fled, they were like Trojan horses, spreading the TSJ virus to every corner of that huge country.
“We believe there are still a few Undead-free zones, especially in the middle of the country. Those areas held out thanks to vast distances, the deserts, the low population, and because gun ownership was widespread before the Apocalypse. We don’t know what the living conditions are like in those regions, if anyone is in charge or if anarchy is widespread. From what little intel we have, the situation varies greatly from one area to the next. Some places are trying to rebuild some semblance of an organized society out of the ashes. In others it’s the survival of the fittest. It can’t be easy living out there.”
“What about South America?”
“Well, it varies. Mexico was affected, almost to the level of Europe and the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Americans thought they’d be safe if they crossed the border. But all they did was spread the virus. Imagine the surreal situation facing astonished Mexican border guards when they discovered that their rich, proud neighbors to the north were now ‘wetbacks.’ They closed the borders, but it was too late. Thousands of panicked
“I remember hearing something about a war between Chile and Bolivia,” I chimed in.
“That’s right. In the midst of all that chaos, the Chilean army crushed the poor Bolivian army and pressed deep into the southern part of that country. But the chaos in their own nation forced them to turn back. That, and the hordes of Argentine refugees crossing its borders.”
“The Argentines?”
“In all that madness, the Argentines were dealt the most fucked-up blows,” Alicia said in a mocking tone.
I smiled. As the conversation progressed, Alicia’s language got more colorful. She seemed more comfortable talking to me and I felt the same.
