Friday, December 30, 8:40 a.m.
Today’s going to be insane. When I got up this morning, it was pouring down rain. It was still raining as I fixed myself a cup of coffee. I took a shower with the news blaring on the radio.
Some things never change. One day Spain’s broke, the next day it’s not. Today I have a meeting that could mean the difference between living like a king for the next six months or fighting with stockholders who have no idea what’s best for them. It’s their money, not mine, but if the merger goes through, I could kick back and live on my commission for the next few months. I need to relax, motor around on my little Zodiac, and do some scuba diving in the Ria Pontevedra…
I drank my coffee and looked out the window that opens on to the garden. This house was a good buy, but so many things still remind me of my wife. She chose it, she decorated it, she…I guess that doesn’t matter now. I thought my doctor’s advice to “unburden myself” to others would help me get over her, but time goes by and I still feel her presence everywhere. “Write a blog,” my psychologist told me. “Talk about anything you want, any topic. Just talk.” Well, that’s what I’m doing right now, but it’s not doing much good. What the hell. I’ll give it a try.
The garden is green, damp, lush, and overgrown. It’s been raining nonstop for three weeks here in Galicia. The humidity has permeated everything. If this rain keeps up, I’ll have to cut the grass and clear the vines off the garden walls. It was her decision to surround the house with these high stone walls; water’s trickling through them now. “We need privacy,” she said. Now she’s gone, and I feel like I’m living in a fortress.
I straightened my tie, grabbed my briefcase, and turned off the radio. The newscaster was talking about an explosive situation in a former Soviet republic in the Caucasus Mountains, someplace with a name ending in -stan. Something about a rebel group attacking a military base where Russian troops were stationed. Too bloody for me. I snapped off the radio. I had to get to the office. I was running late.
January 3, 1:15 p.m.
I haven’t updated this blog for several days. The meeting with the company reps went great! Now I can splurge and take a nice vacation on what I earned last month.
On New Year’s Eve, I had dinner at my parents’ house in Cotobade, near Pontevedra. They moved there years ago, after they retired. In addition to my parents, my aunt and uncle were there, along with my sister and her boyfriend, in from Barcelona, where they work. She’s a lawyer like me, although we work in different fields. She’s lived there for years and has fit into life in Catalonia. I’ve always preferred Galicia.
During dinner we discussed the big story in the news: the conflict in the Caucasus. Apparently, a group of Islamic guerrillas from…Dagestan?…attacked a former Soviet base still under Russian control there. My sister thinks they were looking for nuclear material. I hope she’s wrong. That’s all we need—another terrorist attack like in Madrid on March 11 but with nuclear bombs.
What few images there are on the news are hazy. The base that was attacked was top secret, and authorities aren’t allowing anyone to take pictures. Reporters have to broadcast from the hotel roof, using images on file and street maps. They say hundreds have died, and Putin has put all of Russia on high alert. Images of soldiers and tanks occupying the streets are chilling. They must be afraid there’ll be more assaults or attacks throughout the country. I’m glad I’m not there.
January 3, 7:03 p.m.
I’m watching TV. Channel 5 has interrupted its broadcast for a live report on the Russian Federation closing all its borders. All flights in and out of Russia have been canceled. The launch of a Soyuz rocket has been postponed sine die. On CNN they’re discussing what this shutdown means—either the situation in Dagestan has gotten out of hand, or Putin wants to increase his power. A cautious analyst on some talk show is sure there’s no cause for alarm; it’s all a political maneuver. I don’t know what to think.
The electricity came back on first thing this afternoon. I can’t take the electric company’s damn outages anymore. I’m living in a housing complex just a mile or so from Pontevedra, a city of eighty thousand people! “Problems with the power lines,” they said. They estimated six months to fix it. They’re not going to jerk me around anymore. Tomorrow I’m buying some solar panels and storage cells for the roof. And then screw the electric company.
January 4, 10:59 a.m.
I watched a news report about Russia on CNN this morning. Finally there are images of what the hell is going on in Dagestan. Putin’s government continues to seal off the country. First they closed the borders; then they banned updates. Reporters based in Dagestan have been moved to Moscow to “ensure their safety,” the report said.
Today they broadcasted a home video. You could see special units of the Russian army advancing down a deserted street in a town near the base that was attacked. At the beginning of the recording, they panned across the faces of the soldiers in a tank. They were young boys who looked pretty scared. When they jumped out of the tank, I was shocked to see that they were wearing gas masks, as if they were afraid of breathing something harmful. They started shooting like crazy at something or someone and then ran like hell back to the tank. That’s where the tape ended. I don’t know what to think about all this.
On Channel 3, they said it’s possible that those rebel forces were from Chechnya and wanted to seize control of chemical weapons or nuclear material stored in the laboratories. The world is full of crazy people…
This afternoon I did some shopping. Three Kings Night is coming up. The mall near my house was packed with people buying gifts. I ran up my credit card buying tons of food, several five-liter jugs of water, a couple of powerful flashlights, and lots and lots of batteries on account of the damn power outages, and some electrical equipment, especially cable. If I’m going to install solar panels on the roof, I’d better be ready for some glitches. I also bought a ton of food for Lucullus, my Persian cat, who’s been ignoring me lately.
Some girl kitty in the neighborhood must be in heat. Lucullus thinks it’s his duty to shower her with his attention. He’s constantly jumping the wall in search of adventure. That wall’s ten feet high! What a guy won’t do for a girl!
I went to the store that installs solar panels and bought a couple of BP Solar SX170 panels. They were pretty expensive. All totaled, including installation (they’ll be here tomorrow to install them), it came to two thousand euros (storage batteries not included), but it’s the best on the market. Each panel weighs about fifteen pounds, so they can be installed on the roof without caving it in. They’re multicrystalline silicone cells guaranteed to last twenty-five years. With the two panels on the roof, I can charge two series of 24-volt storage batteries even in a place like Galicia where there’s so little sun. That’s crucial if I don’t want food in the two freezers in the basement to spoil.
I don’t have a lot of time to shop, so I stock up. That way I only have to go to the store every couple of weeks. These freezers are a great invention.
On the way home, I stopped at the liquor store and bought a couple of cartons of Fortuna cigarettes and a pad of paper, for when inspiration hits me. As I was waiting to pay, I saw a couple of guys in the gun shop across the street buying shotgun shells. It’s hunting season, and there’s a festival to kick it off. It’ll be a long weekend for them.
When I got home, I put away my purchases and mowed the lawn as I listened to the radio. My backyard is only about five hundred square feet. I have a lot of privacy, with the wall around it. The house is brick and is in a development of forty identical brick villas, in rows of ten, on two parallel streets. Mine is in the middle of Street 1. It doesn’t have a real name, since the development is less than three years old. These things take time. There’s a house on each side of me and one in the back, facing Street 2. A small backyard and a wall, about ten feet high, separate me from the villa behind me.
I don’t know my neighbors very well, since I’m hardly ever at home. A very nice retired couple with a Pathfinder lives across the street. Next door is a doctor and his wife and two young daughters. A cool guy named Alfredo lives on the other side. He works construction and lives with his girlfriend. I live with my cat Lucullus, the horniest devil on the street. One of these days a hysterical neighbor will show up at my door with a box of kittens the spitting image of Lucullus, demanding an explanation. I have to do something with that cat.
On the radio they are still reporting news of Dagestan. It looks like the situation is spinning out of control. The Putin government continues the news blackout and sends in more and more troops and medical personnel. What the hell’s going on?
January 5, 1:54 p.m.
This morning a crew of guys installed my new solar panels. They’re rated at 220W in optimal conditions of luminosity. The two rows of 24-volt batteries in the basement will give me about eight hours of electricity a day, more than enough to weather any power outage.
I called my sister in Barcelona to talk for a while. This weekend she’s going to visit a friend in Girona. She said she’s fine, and after some small talk, we hung up.
On TV they keep showing images from Dagestan. According to the latest news (what little there is, given the media blackout), Russian authorities have begun to evacuate the population. In the assault on the Russian base, Chechen rebels must have accidentally released some kind of chemical weapon stored there. On Channel 1, Lorenzo Mila, the highly respected newscaster from Barcelona, speculated it might have been sarin gas, what terrorists used in the attack in Tokyo. Channel 5 reported it might’ve been the hydrogen peroxide the Soviets used in their intercontinental missiles.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure what’s going on.
January 9, 10:23 a.m.
Something’s really wrong in Russia. This weekend there has been a steady stream of news updates, statements, denials of those statements, blackouts, and violence. For the last forty-eight hours, nonstop on every channel, all they’ve talked about is the events in Dagestan.
On Friday morning they closed Russia’s borders. That afternoon, Reuters reported that the raided base was really a biological research laboratory and that the substance accidentally released was some kind of pathogenic agent. Hours later, the Putin government categorically refuted that and talked only about a cloud of toxic chemical fertilizers. By breakfast time on Saturday, we learned that Russia had requested a team from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to come to Dagestan.
Now they’re saying they released the highly contagious West Nile virus that was endemic in Egypt. A few years ago a mosquito transmitting the disease found its way on to a plane. Since 1995 there’ve been isolated cases in Europe and South America. That sounds logical, if it weren’t for one small detail—there aren’t many mosquitoes in the Caucasus Mountains in the middle of January.
On Sunday, things seemed to spin out of control. Just five hours after the CDC team arrived, just as they started to care for the poisoned—or should I say infected—people, two of its members had to be evacuated to the United States after some kind of incident with the patients.
Late that night, something similar happened to a team from the World Health Organization (WHO). They were rushed to the base at Ramstein, Germany. Some Internet sites are saying that members of the team were killed.
We don’t have much information on the Russian medical teams, if they even have any, or the civilian population in the area. Home videos smuggled out of the country, mostly online, showed long convoys of people fleeing or being evacuated, some with pretty bad wounds, and lots and lots of ambulances. Army troops and Russian Border Guards in combat gear are headed in the opposite direction, toward what is now called the hot zone.
And this morning, the nail in the coffin. The Russian government declared martial law. All foreign journalists had to leave the country. No more freedom of assembly or the press. What’s even weirder, they declared an Internet blackout across the country. Nothing can get in or out—in theory, anyway.
This morning our minister of health came on Channel 1 and said that the Spanish government will ensure that there are no outbreaks of West Nile in Spain. There’s no cause for alarm. On Channel SER, the minister of defense said that a team of army medical personnel and construction engineers are headed to Dagestan to help control the situation. He emphasized that they won’t be in danger. Blah, blah, blah.
Half of Europe, Japan, the United States, and Australia are sending similar teams. Something is happening in Russia. Something huge.
January 9, 7:58 p.m.
I spent all afternoon trying out the solar panels. The power they generate is amazing. However, if I connected a lot of appliances at one time, energy consumption would soar and drain the batteries in a couple of hours. Using them with only a couple of freezers and the computer, for example, increases battery life to around fifteen hours. After that there’s a lapse of about eight hours when the batteries can’t be used because the voltage is very low and appliances could be damaged due to the difference in voltage. According to the manufacturer, in sunny climates you could use them for twenty-four hours, but it’s winter in Galicia, so I can’t complain. I won’t have to put up with an outage of more than a couple of hours, not even during the worst winter storms. Overall it’s a very smart investment.
Lucullus is kind of surprised by the strange hat his house is wearing. (I’m sure he thinks this is his home and I’m his pet.)
I listened to the radio all day—in the morning, on the way home from the office, and as I fixed dinner. The Spanish contingent took off from the Torrejón Air Base near Madrid, headed for a Dagestani town named Buynaksk, where they’ll set up a field hospital. The Russians are dividing the international health groups among several locations. The region is very backward, and Russian health care seems to be on the verge of collapse.
In some refugee camps in neighboring republics, they’re reporting new cases of what they insist is an especially virulent strain of the West Nile virus. But media sources are calling it Ebola. If that’s true, the Russians are really screwed. Nobody seems to have organized camps for the refugees who were scattered to the four winds when the army expelled the healthy from their homes, along with the sick.
To make matters worse, many refugees have fled the country in little boats across the Caspian Sea to Iran, fueling fears that the disease will reach the Middle East.
I did more shopping, picked up some flu remedies, and went by my mother’s house. I got her to write me a prescription for antibiotics. I’m a fanatic when it comes to colds.
January 9, 8:40 p.m.
Reuters reports that three of the WHO doctors evacuated to Ramstein have died. According to the medical report, this is a highly virulent hemorrhagic fever that causes disorientation, delusions, and acute aggression. The Ebola theory carries some weight.
January 10, 11:01 a.m.
I write this during a break between meetings. I’m sitting on a park bench under my office window. With the new ban on smoking in the workplace, if I want to have a smoke, I have to go into exile, out in the cold. I can’t even smoke in my own office! One good thing, I can pick up Wi-Fi out here so I can surf the net.
The news on several sites is very confusing. Almost all of it is disturbing. The situation in Russia appears to be completely out of control, just a couple of weeks after the Chechen assault. Martial law hasn’t done any good. Chaos is spreading throughout the country. As you’d expect, the Internet blackout Putin ordered has been useless. Many Russian servers are located in countries outside the EU, so information is still getting out over the Internet. That’s the only information besides official reports. Many bloggers report Russian military patrolling the streets, curfews, and indiscriminate shootings. Even cannibalism. With all the chaos this situation has triggered, many areas are totally cut off. In statement after statement, the Russian government has denied everything. The Russian minister of defense insisted that the riots were the work of Muslim extremists trying to destabilize the government. The truth is, the Russian government’s credibility has plummeted, and the international press is highly skeptical of anything it says.
All we know for sure is that security around nuclear power plants and Russian missile bases has been strengthened, according to the US secretary of defense citing the CIA and images from its satellites. The US government has ordered the repatriation of all its citizens living in Russia. Apparently there are several dead and wounded among the US citizens working for NGOs in Dagestan, who arrived back in the United States this morning. CNN showed some of them being lowered out of the aircraft on a stretcher. They looked really bad.
North American troops are being withdrawn from Afghanistan back to the United States. There’s a rumor they’ll raise the terror alert to red. Most of those troops will have a layover at the base in Ramstein.
News flash: Cases of Russian West Nile, as they’re calling it, have been reported in northern Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. Internet forums are in full swing. Doomsday prophets are making a killing on blogs. This can’t go on much longer. I’m sure it’ll all turn out to be like the bird flu…
January 10, 11:43 a.m.
About the bird flu. The United Kingdom just announced that it’s suspending the Treaty of Schengen, which allows free movement around the EU. It’s also going to set up health checkpoints at its borders. Countries on Russia’s border—Denmark, Sweden, and Finland—plan to do the same. Our prime minister announced a press conference at noon to discuss measures Spain plans to take.
Radio stations are on fire. I’m surprised the pundits know so much about medicine. My sister called from Barcelona to tell me that the Catalan government is considering a mass vaccination. Vaccinate against what? Nobody has a clue, and everyone’s trying to profit from someone else’s misfortune. So what’s new?
January 10, 10:03 p.m.
The base at Ramstein has been quarantined, according to Google News. WHO members evacuated there out of Russia must have spread the disease to medical personnel. All US military flights are being diverted through non-EU countries.
Our minister of defense said on TV that the Spanish government has authorized North American aircraft to fly over our country. That may include using Rota as a support base.
Someone posted an image of Ramstein online. You can hardly see anything. Just two people dressed in what appear to be contamination suits talking at the door of a hut. There’s something really disturbing about all this…
January 11, 11:48 a.m.
Back on the park bench, having a quick smoke. Even a blind man could see that the mood on the street has changed. It’s subtle, but there’s no denying it.
Yesterday, at noon, the president gave a press conference, along with the ministers of health, interior, and defense. The message was basically “No cause for alarm.” But people are more alarmed with each passing hour.
What adds to the alarm is that the opposition party’s leader is demanding the immediate closure of ports and airports. COPE radio station in Madrid is calling for the army to occupy the borders. Just forty-eight hours after deploying soldiers to Dagestan, they’ve decided to bring them back.
I don’t usually agree with talk show host Federico Losantos and his ultra-right-wing ranting on the radio, but maybe he’s right this time. The situation seems to be completely out of control. In Russia, chaos has broken out for sure. Entire regions are incommunicado. No one’s in control. News of looting, pillaging, and mass murder is spreading like wildfire across the Internet. Channel 5 broadcast French satellite images last night. You could see huge fires burning in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, only three hundred miles from its border with Dagestan. There’s no word from the city, and no one seems to be fighting the fires. What the fuck’s going on? Are they trying to burn the place down?
The WHO finally ruled that it’s definitely West Nile virus and a strain of a disease similar to Ebola. Ebola. In every newspaper, on every radio and television station, they never tire of repeating that it’s a hemorrhagic fever that affects humans and primates. Since it was discovered in 1976, they’ve identified five strains: Ebola Bundibugyo, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Reston, and Ebola Taï Forest or Ivory Coast. Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids, primarily blood or saliva, and has a fatality rate up to 90 percent. But some sources have said this can’t be Ebola, or at least none of the known strains. Rumors all over the place and not one goddamn bit of concrete information!
Deep down, I don’t think anybody has any fucking idea what’s going on. They’re flying blind. The Swiss government has ordered the mass vaccination of its entire population with Tamiflu, to prevent bird flu. The United Kingdom has temporarily closed the Channel Tunnel and its ports, but they think there’re already cases there, brought in by infected aid workers who rushed to evacuate out of Dagestan. Many came back wounded; some had been attacked by rabid animals. In Germany the situation is even worse. The Ramstein quarantine hasn’t worked, and they’ve declared martial law. How long till Spain adopts similar measures?
I’m not sure what’s going on in the rest of the world, but in Atlanta they’re talking about a global pandemic. In the United States, apocalyptic sects are getting ready for an invasion of Martians or some crazy thing like that. Meanwhile, the US president has announced he’s raising the terrorism alert and creating an emergency cabinet.
According to the Ministry of Health, we’ve reached the “breaking point” in an epidemic, and a pandemic is now inevitable. It should hit Spain in a matter of days, if it’s not here already. It happened so fast—just two weeks since it started. Judging from what the authorities have made public, it’s still not clear how the disease is transmitted or what the incubation period is, or even what the symptoms are.
People are scared shitless. Today I saw two people walking down the street wearing masks. I was in a bar last night with Pablo and Hector when a guy started coughing loudly and was politely asked to leave. Some public activities have been temporarily suspended. The local government here in Galicia is considering closing public schools for few weeks. The government has not put restrictive measures in place, but people are starting to restrict themselves out of fear of the unknown infection. We’re like animals, shrinking back in fear of a threat that a week ago was just a short piece in the newspaper.
My sister called me this morning. So far, life in Barcelona is going on as usual, but you can also sense fear on the streets. After rumors that hot air might be the ideal medium for spreading the disease, people quit using the subway. They eye everyone who looks Middle Eastern.
I took Lucullus to the vet. I got all his shots up to date, just in case. I also went by the dive shop to pick up a new regulator and a speargun and half a dozen spears, in case I decide to go fishing this weekend.
I need to get the car’s oil checked. My Astra’s not even a year old. I don’t want it to suffer the same fate as my previous car. But that’s really a long story…
January 12, 1:19 p.m.
People are definitely starting to get nervous. This morning, the rain was falling in sheets. I left Lucullus licking his whiskers, nice and cozy next to a radiator. Fortunately I’d parked my car right in front of the house, or I would’ve gotten soaked. As I drove across town to work, I noticed a lot more people wearing masks. Maybe I should get one. Do they have masks for cats?
The news on the radio couldn’t be more confusing. For eighteen hours, there’s been no news of Dagestan. None. Not one word. What’s more disturbing: bad news or the complete lack of it?
Fires like the ones in Georgia are burning in several cities in southern Russia, and no one’s fighting them. The official story out of Russia is that the fires are mass cremations of bodies infected by the epidemic, but no one believes that. They’re too large. Visible from space! They’ve destroyed entire city blocks, fuel depots, and ports. There aren’t many, about a dozen, but they all started at about the same time.
The images of Germany are shocking. Highways are jammed with thousands of cars trying to leave the cities for the countryside, away from concentrations of people. However, only a small percentage has anywhere to go. Most people have stayed behind in the cities. They don’t seem to be panicking, but you can tell they’re worried. Martial law is in effect. Anyone out on the streets after 8:00 p.m. or outside rest areas on the highways will be shot dead, according to the German prime minister. They’re not joking around.
I’ve saved the biggest news for last. Official information is flowing out in dribs and drabs. In Brussels at nine this morning, the presidents of all the EU countries held an emergency meeting, together with the ministers of defense, health, and interior. They met until noon. When the meeting was over, they gave a joint press conference. That’s when they dropped the bomb. From now on, all official information will be channeled through a single crisis management team throughout the entire EU. This team will issue an official report hourly to all EU countries. Individual governments will make clarifications they deem necessary only on domestic policy, health, and safety. The armed forces of all EU countries have been put on alert. They emphasized that that was to avoid widespread panic. Contradictory and confusing reports have created unwarranted alarm, the consequence of which is a mass exodus. They’re referring to Germany, I guess.
That news gives me chills. Sounds dangerously close to censorship, right? The worst part was the faces of the prime ministers and presidents. They looked like they’d just come from a funeral. On TV, a political analyst said things must be pretty serious because as soon as the meeting was over, all the big shots headed straight for the airport and back to their countries. There’s a constant buzz that Spain’ll declare a state of emergency, like other European countries. For now, we’ve suspended all sports events this weekend “as a health precaution.”
The United States has called up the National Guard. What you see on the satellite channel is amazing—armed troops patrolling New York, Chicago, Boston, and so on. Those Americans are crazy. What’ll that accomplish? Scare the viruses? Are they going to shoot someone? They’re overreacting, as usual. Speaking of the United States, there seem to be sick people in Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles, but no one’s giving out any details or images. There are blackouts in the United States, too. All we know is that, over the last few hours, “vectors of contagion” have arrived on flights from Germany or the Middle East. The closure of all American airports is imminent. The news from around the world is more or less the same.
The troops we sent to Dagestan are back in Zaragoza. There are reports of a lot of minor injuries. Some may have been killed, but information is extremely limited. We do know they’ve cordoned off a floor at a civilian hospital to care for them.
I called my parents. They’re leaving Friday to spend the weekend in the little town where my grandparents grew up. That seems like a very wise move. I called my sister to see how she’s doing. She says Barcelona has temporarily suspended subway travel. You can only ride the bus if you’re wearing a mask. I bought a plane ticket to visit her this weekend. I hope I can convince her to come home for a little vacation.
Something will happen soon, but I don’t know what. Fear travels faster than a dust cloud… and it’s already in the wind.
January 12, 7:28 p.m.
The lights went out. It’s the first time this week. I phoned the damn electric company. They told me the power will be back on in a couple of hours, tops.
It’s pouring down rain. The streets are totally dark, lit up only by lightning. The patio walls are dripping with water, but Lucullus and I are sitting comfortably on the couch watching TV, thanks to the batteries. If I turn on a lot of lights, the batteries will run down really fast. I don’t feel like going down to the basement to hook up the second line of batteries.
The crisis team began issuing its official statements at three this afternoon, Spanish time. Apparently what’s responsible for the epidemic is a mutated filovirus, or several filoviruses at once, that’s still not clear. On Channel 3 they’re now calling it the Marburg virus, whatever that is. Since seven this evening cases have been confirmed in Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Holland, Poland, Greece, Turkey… and Spain. At a press conference, the minister of health, with dark circles under his eyes that drooped all the way to his ankles, announced that three members of the troops sent to Dagestan were in the ICU at Zaragoza with symptoms of this disease. They showed pictures of the hospital. It’s surrounded by fucking rioters and military police.
Worst of all is that the patients go through an acute traumatic phase and have paranoid, aggressive tendencies. There’ve been several attacks on medical personnel. More than one patient has run out of the hospital. I’m glad my mother’s retired.
The disease seems to be highly contagious. They don’t know exactly how it’s transmitted. A hospital in Sussex, England, was quarantined after two patients ran around the facility for nearly an hour, attacking anyone in the halls. This was online a couple of hours ago. So far, no one has refuted it.
There’s been absolutely no news out of Dagestan for twenty-four hours. There doesn’t seem to be anyone there. The last report from Russia stated that Putin and his government have taken refuge in a Cold War nuclear bunker and the army is occupying the streets of major cities. Ukraine has declared a state of siege, but towns and cities on its borders haven’t been heard from for hours.
A Russian blogger from a small town in North Ossetia–Alania, living in Moscow, reported on russiskaya.ru that he called his parents’ number for hours but got no answer. Then he started calling all the neighbors listed in the phone book. Nobody answered. It’s as if no one in a town of five thousand is still alive. A little while ago someone closed down that website. Russian censorship is relentless.
What the hell’s going on? Why aren’t they telling us anything?
January 13, 11:10 a.m.
This morning as I got out of the shower, I sneezed really hard a couple of times. Normally I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but with the psychosis spreading all over Spain, my hypochondriac side trembled in fear. Will the epidemic reach Galicia? Have I caught it, and this is the first symptom? Or is it just a cold?
During breakfast, I turned on the news. For the last few days, I’ve been glued day and night to the TV, the radio, or the Internet, along with three-quarters of Europe. We’re all hoping the news will report that the epidemic is subsiding. It’s just been one huge scare. But reality is ghoulishly stubborn.
Nothing from Dagestan for forty-eight hours. As impossible as it seems, there’s been no news, official or unofficial, for two days. The republic’s millions of inhabitants either left…or died. The southern Caucasus region (Georgia, Chechnya, Ossetia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and so on) is as silent as the grave. Their TV and radio stations haven’t broadcast for hours, and their websites haven’t been updated for two days. Refugees from those countries en route to Russia, Iran, and Turkey are being held in huge “Safe Zones” guarded by the army, more prisoners than refugees. Censorship is ironclad.
In Europe, things are getting more complicated by the minute. In Italy, the army and special units of the carabinieri cordoned off the city of Cremona. No one can enter or leave, except doctors with escorts. They’ve quarantined the city; anyone who manages to get there is forced to turn back. France has declared a state of emergency. They set up roadblocks at major transportation hubs, and you need a special permit to travel from one province to another. In England the situation is more dramatic. Parliament decreed the Isolation Act, closing borders indefinitely. No one can enter or leave Britain, not legally, anyway. I have friends living in London. There must be tons of Spanish kids, students, living there. What’ll happen to them? The epidemic is out of control in South Wales and parts of Essex. The Herald Tribune’s website reports riots and looting.
In Germany, the situation in some provinces is sketchy. In the north and along the border with Poland, they’ve militarized health and communication facilities, transportation, and nuclear power plants. In Japan there’ve been several mass suicides. Murders and disappearances have reached record numbers. It’s as if their society has just crumbled.
In the United States, the situation is different, if you listen to speeches by the nation’s secretary of state or watch satellite broadcasts from CNN or Fox News via satellite. It’s a huge country. In some areas life goes on as usual; in others madness has been unleashed. The government claims to have everything under control. But Fifth Avenue in New York cordoned off by military trucks doesn’t look as if they’ve “got it all under control.” CNN has reported riots, murders, and a wave of kidnappings and disappearances all over the country. A revolution is brewing. Because of that, this morning they started withdrawing US troops from abroad. Not just hundreds of soldiers or a few units—all of them. Every last soldier.
A few weeks ago, that would have generated rivers of ink in the press. Now all it rates is a brief summary on the inside pages of newspapers. Things have changed a lot in the last two weeks.
Here in Spain, not counting the quarantine in Zaragoza, the changes are small, subtle, but clearly perceptible. Churches are packed. Supermarkets are running out of some items, especially anything imported and food that spoils quickly. Automobile factories have shut down their assembly lines due to a shortage of parts from abroad. This morning, as I was leaving for work, I saw my neighbors across the street, the retirees, loading up their Pathfinder. They told me they’re going to a small town in Orense “until things calm down a little.” I shut Lucullus up in the house so he doesn’t knock up half the cats in the neighborhood. Then I drove to the office. The streets are strangely deserted. People hurry along with a furtive air, not stopping to talk. The vast majority are wearing surgical masks. At the office, our secretary handed me a mask. Boss’s orders, she said. So here I sit in my office, in a paper mask, like a surgeon, helping my clients. I feel like a dickhead wearing it. Damn, what’s next?
January 13, 7:34 p.m.
I write this in the smoking lounge at the Santiago de Compostela airport. My flight leaves for Barcelona in half an hour. I hope to bring my sister back with me. The situation is deteriorating by the hour. New cases of the epidemic have been reported in Toledo and Madrid. It so happens that the army unit just back from Dagestan is based in Toledo. Their most seriously wounded were sent to Doce de Octubre Hospital in Madrid. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where the “vectors of contagion” of the epidemic are.
The government’s declared a curfew in Zaragoza, from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. At noon today on Channel 4, I saw trucks and tanks carrying cleaning crews and firefighters, who were spraying Zaragoza’s streets with medical-strength disinfectants. They say the whole town smells like a hospital.
Miguel Servet Hospital, in downtown Zaragoza, is completely sealed off. According to Europa Press, heavily armed SWAT teams entered the facility two hours ago. Shots were clearly audible throughout most of the city. No one knows if there are dead or wounded. The crisis team hasn’t breathed a word, except to urge everyone to wear surgical masks. A blog, run by a nurse working in Servet Hospital, described crazed patients wandering the halls. It even claimed that security guards and doctors had been attacked in the morgue. There was so much traffic on that site that it crashed for a few hours. Now a message reads, “This blog no longer exists.” Conspiracy buffs claim censorship. I don’t think the blog was real—I’m sure it was a trick to scare the staff. That’s what I want to believe, anyway. But people want to know what’s really going on, so rumors are flying constantly. Some say it’s nuclear fallout, others say it’s the Black Plague, others say it’s a gigantic toxic cloud from a Russian refinery. There’s no shortage of people who claim it’s a ploy by OPEC to raise oil prices.
Whatever it is, fear is about to give way to panic. It’s scary to see the airport full of Civil Guard patrols armed with machine guns, wearing gloves and masks. One guy started to cough especially hard. Four friendly but firm agents hustled him off to an ambulance. His protests didn’t get him anywhere. I can’t stop thinking how I’ve been sneezing half the day on account of my cold. So I’m doing all I can not to cough.
I just got off the phone with my sister. She’s picking me up at the airport, since they’ve closed the subway and moved all the buses downtown as backup. She says getting a cab these days is a heroic feat.
I left Lucullus with Alfredo, the construction worker next door. Lucullus glared at me, outraged at being left in someone else’s home. I hope he won’t hold it against me. It’s just for the weekend.
It’s last call for my flight. I hope everything goes well.
January 15, 6:03 p.m.
The last forty-eight hours have been an ordeal. I don’t understand how things have gotten so out of hand. I’m no coward, but I’m scared. Really scared. It feels like the entire planet is about to jump the tracks, and no one can find the brake. I’m in a daze, confused, tired, and wondering what the hell we’re going to do. But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The flight to Barcelona on Friday was quiet, smooth. A routine flight, except that the flight attendants wore surgical gloves and handed out masks to all the passengers. The plane was half-empty, almost unthinkable at the start of a weekend. What I didn’t know was that during the forty-five-minute flight, real social upheaval was taking place in Spain. When we landed, we were held on the plane for almost an hour and a half. Someone turned off the air-conditioning, and the temperature inside the plane was stifling. Passengers started to get nervous and murmur. Wearing paper masks didn’t exactly help calm us.
They finally let us deplane, not down a jetway, but on foot across the runway. A minibus picked us up and took us to a room in the airport. We were told that, while we were in the air, the government had declared a state of emergency. All domestic and international flights would be canceled in twenty-four hours. Only those of us with a ticket could travel to our usual place of residence. My weekend in Barcelona was reduced to twenty-four hours. What’s worse, I didn’t think I could get my sister a ticket.
The Barcelona airport was a sea of people, but at the moment it was calm. The security presence was more pronounced. For the first time in my life, I saw troops patrolling a civilian facility in full combat gear. Impressive.
My sister and Roger, her boyfriend, were waiting at the gate. I was glad to see her. She’s twenty-five, five years younger than me. She has lived in Barcelona for two years and is now completely at home in the city. When my wife was killed in a car accident two years ago, she was my shoulder to cry on. A while back, she gave me a little orange ball of fur named Lucullus who helped me climb out of the hole I’d fallen into. Ancient history.
As we drove to Barcelona, they brought me up to speed. The king read a statement on TV, dressed in his military uniform, just like he did when he faced down an attempted coup in 1981. Military troops in Spain are on high alert. Within twenty-four hours all borders, ports, and airports will be closed. The fences at Ceuta and Melilla have been electrified. There’ve been outbreaks of the epidemic in Cartagena, Cadiz—and Ferol, which is less than a hundred miles from my house. How did the outbreaks get all the way up there?
The strangest part is the official secrecy surrounding the disease. No symptoms have been made public; neither has its incubation period, or how many people have died. Nothing. All we know is that it’s highly contagious, it’s very lethal, and it’s spreading.
The outbreaks in Zaragoza, Toledo, and Madrid are still not under control. Zaragoza has started to evacuate all residents living within a half mile of Miguel Servet Hospital.
We finally reached my sister’s house in Gracia, a quiet suburb near Barcelona. I took a shower with the radio news on. (These days no one ventures very far from a radio or a TV or computer screen.) The WHO will hold a press conference on Monday. In Barcelona, the regional police have detained suspicious foreigners. The government ordered widespread blood tests, but had to cancel the order after a few hours; the labs couldn’t cope with their workload.
Roger told me that he was at a bus stop when a fight broke out between a very upset immigrant and a bunch of skinheads. When the police got there, they threw everyone into vans and took them God knows where. Fortunately, he gave them the slip.
We were going to have dinner with a friend who lives on the first floor, but given the state of affairs, we decided to stay home and eat dinner in front of the TV. Roger and my sister made it very clear that they’re not coming to Galicia with me. Roger’s parents have a farm in the province of Tarragona. They plan to go there next week “until this whole thing blows over.” They’ve asked for time off work. Soon that might not matter.
They invited me to go with them. My sister casually mentioned that a friend of hers who lives there would be happy to see me. I’m tempted, but I’ve left Lucullus alone, and I have to work on Monday. Plus if I stay, I might not get back to Galicia for a while.
As we were talking, the venerable newscaster Matías Prats interrupted the program. With a long face, he reported that fifteen minutes before, there had been a thermonuclear explosion in Shanghai. It wasn’t an accident or an attack. The Chinese government itself had wiped the city off the map. Our jaws dropped. The entire city? Is that the way to deal with a disease? My God, there must’ve been millions of people!
Germany has completely shut down all its nuclear power plants. They couldn’t keep the plants running because workers weren’t showing up for work. The United States, France, Italy, England, and Spain, too, it seems, are taking similar measures.
No one’s heard anything out of Russia for hours. The army closed down their TV stations, and they finally managed to turn off the Internet tap. Many bloggers, very active until today, now show no sign of life. According to Reuters, large areas of the country are in darkness, with no electricity. I hope they took the precaution of disconnecting their power plants. That’s all we need, another Chernobyl…
News of the plague has been reported from every corner of the planet. The epidemic is now global.
In the United States there are reports of looting, assaults, kidnappings, and widespread murder. In Europe we know almost nothing, because the crisis team isn’t saying a word. There’re plenty of rumors on the Internet, each one crazier than the last. Many witnesses agree on one thing: those infected sink into a state of deep confusion and become aggressive. From all over the world, there are reports of attacks by sick people. It looks like rabies. I don’t know what to believe.
That night in Barcelona was very long. The sound of ambulances, army tanks, and police vans patrolling the streets kept me awake all night. I surveyed a section of the city out my window. The streets were deserted. No pedestrians. No traffic. The solitude was broken only by an occasional patrol car passing by, its spotlight lighting up doorways. Surely the situation will look different in the daytime when the curfew ends. For now, it’s shocking.
January 15, 7:11 p.m.
I’m back home. I’m completely exhausted. The trip home was awful, unbelievable. Lucullus is back. I’m going to sleep for a long time. Today I saw them kill a man at the airport. I don’t feel like writing.
January 16, 7:19 p.m.
Yesterday was really hard. Today’s no better. When I got home late last night, I was completely broken emotionally. It all started at the El Prat Airport on Sunday afternoon. The tense calm on Saturday had turned into hysteria. By the time my taxi pulled up to the airport, all hell had broken loose—long lines of people shouting and pushing, exhausted children sleeping on piles of luggage while their parents tried to get a ticket to anywhere.
My flight was scheduled to leave an hour after I arrived at the airport. It was one of the last flights out of Barcelona. That same night, El Prat would be closed due to the state of emergency. Everyone who wanted to fly out of Barcelona was there. The problem was that the authorities wouldn’t issue a ticket to anyone who didn’t have proof he was headed for home. There weren’t enough tickets for everyone. That was clear. Panic had seized the crowd. There was constant pushing, screaming, and racing around.
I made my way to the counter as best I could through a mob of hysterical people crowded together at the ticket windows. When I got to the counter, losing my coat along the way, I realized that the friendly counter clerks had been replaced by soldiers. Believe me, they weren’t smiling.
I presented my ID card and the ticket I’d bought four days earlier. They told me I’d better head directly to the gate “for my own safety.” That’s when I noticed that a couple of the soldiers who’d impressed me so much when I first arrived in Barcelona were now standing at my side. For a second I thought they were going to detain me.
Then I realized that people were closing in on me, eyeing me, watching me like wolves. I had something they didn’t: a plane ticket. After hours and hours of tension and struggle, any one of them was desperate enough to try to get the ticket from me. Those armed soldiers at my side parted the crowd as we headed for the gate. I felt dozens of eyes on me. I looked down. I couldn’t meet their eyes.
Where the metal detector would normally be was a line of national riot police, in Kevlar helmets and body armor. Behind them was another line of civil guardsmen, armed with machine guns and wearing balaclavas. It was a horrible sight. A crowd was huddled in front of the row, pressing to get to the gate. The crush was incredible. When I reached the gate, two officers stepped aside to let me pass. They took me to a small room where searches are normally performed. An army medical officer asked for my ID and examined me while his assistants rifled through my carry-on. Although I’m a lawyer, I didn’t protest. Where would that get me? It didn’t seem like a very smart idea.
The doctor asked a lot of questions. Did I have a fever? Dizziness? Had I been out of Spain in the last month? Had I visited Zaragoza, Madrid, Toledo? Had I been bitten by an animal lately? Had anyone attacked me? I was about to say he was attacking me, but one glance at his face convinced me to keep my mouth shut.
As I left that room, that horrific event happened. In the front row, trying to get to the departure gate, was a guy in his forties, curly gray hair, unshaven, in a rumpled suit. He looked like an executive. He was very agitated, nervous, and red in the face. He looked like he was out of his mind, like he’d done more than one line of cocaine.
The crowd suddenly pressed forward, and panic broke out. The front row fell to the ground and was trampled by the people behind them. The line of riot police broke. Just then, the guy slipped through and ran to the gate. The civil guardsmen on the second line tried to stop him, but they couldn’t reach him. Someone shouted, “Halt!” The guy ran down the corridor toward the plane and salvation. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. Red flowers bloomed across the back of the man’s suit, and he collapsed. Hysteria erupted—screams, cries, shouts, shots in the air. The situation was out of control. One of the soldiers grabbed me by the collar and dragged me on to the plane while the rest of his unit formed a line behind us, retreating under the pressure from the crowd.
As I passed the body, I stared at his face. He was dead. Dead. I’m 100 percent sure. The soldier beside me stopped short. Unfazed, he pulled out a pistol and shot the body in the head. I was absolutely terrified. Why did he do that?
They shoved me toward the door of the plane, at the far end of the jetway. Very jittery flight attendants urged me to hurry in. The plane was packed. There were even people standing in the galley. Everyone was really on edge. They only relaxed when they shut the door and started to roll down the runway. As we started down the runway, the guy next to me whispered that there were only three more flights after ours. After that, El Prat would be closed for God knows how long.
I didn’t say a word the entire flight. When I thought about what I’d just seen, I had to run to the bathroom. I couldn’t stop throwing up. Hell, the soldier had blown the guy’s head off right in front me!
Nobody handed out masks during the flight. I guess they didn’t think it was necessary anymore. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
When I got to Santiago de Compostela, the scene was the same as in Barcelona, but on a smaller scale. In the parking lot, a guy offered me his car in exchange for a flight to Zurich that was taking off in an hour. Our values have certainly changed.
I listened to the radio as I drove home. The situation is chaotic. More nuclear explosions in China. Are they trying to stop the epidemic with bombs? Or the carriers of the disease? Who knows. America is at DEFCON 1, whatever that means. Riots in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao. The world’s out of control. All the TV networks report that Spain could declare martial law within hours. No news from Russia. In Germany, in a statement broadcast three hours ago, Angela Merkel said, “Dresden is lost.” Evacuation orders in Paris, Reims, and Marseille. In Italy, the carabinieri are ruthlessly taking a suburb of Naples. The world is shattered, and I still don’t know why.
I picked Lucullus up and went home. This morning I called in sick. They said not to worry; the courts are temporarily closed. Only the military courts are open, and then only to try looters and anyone violating the curfew. I slept most of Monday. When I got up, I made some coffee and sat down in front of the TV. I’m writing this with Lucullus purring in my lap. I don’t have a clue what’s going on.
January 17, 6:42 p.m.
It’s official: we’re fucked. At three this afternoon, the king came back on TV and announced that martial law had been declared all across Spain. The curfew is still in place from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. Anyone caught on the street between those hours risks being shot, clear and simple. Travel between regions is prohibited, and the army is setting up checkpoints on all major roads.
Fifteen cities have been declared areas of risk. No one is allowed in or out of them. All the cities where there’ve been outbreaks of the epidemic are on the list, along with nine more. Madrid and Barcelona are among them. I hope my sister moved up their plans and has already left the city. Fuck.
For now, Pontevedra has escaped the carnage, but who knows for how long. Ferrol and La Coruña, about a hundred miles away, are “areas of risk.” They’re cut off—in theory. But a friend who lives in La Coruña just called me on the way to his parents’ home in Vigo. He made it out of town on two-lane highways and back roads. It’s physically impossible to isolate a medium-size town, let alone a big city. The way things are going, the plague will get here soon. I should do something. But what?
I got in the car and headed downtown. The streets are half-empty, and the town looks like it’s under siege. It’s been raining nonstop for hours. On the sidewalks you can feel how uneasy people are. It’s really cold. I passed several police cars and a couple of Light Brigade Airborne (BRILAT) troop carriers. Their barracks are located two miles from Pontevedra. They’ve been there for years, but I’d never seen troops stationed downtown until today.
I stopped at a service station to get some gas. As the Astra was filling up, I went inside to buy some smokes, the newspaper, and some magazines and a can of oil. (I should have gotten the oil changed a week ago. Damn!) The clerk told me that some gas stations were having problems getting gas, especially in remote areas. Now that the ports are closed, refineries have stopped production, and the government has militarized the existing supplies. That’s just great.
Then I went to the mall. Something told me I’d better stock up. I was surprised to see the supermarket so crowded. A lot of people had the same idea. In the appliances and home repair department, I bought an ultrashortwave radio with a sweep dial. I’ve had my eye on it for a long time. I’d planned to listen to the Coast Guard channel when I went out on the Zodiac to dive around the wreck of the Florita. Its hull has been in the river for years, and it’s in bad condition, so no one’s allowed to dive down there. If they catch you, you’ll get a heavy fine and lose your license, but it’s worth the risk. Now I plan to use the radio for something entirely different.
When I got home, I brushed Lucullus and fixed him his favorite food. Then I tried the radio. After a while, I found the frequencies of the national and municipal police. Perfect. Now I can get information first. I also picked up a few amateur ham radio operators, but I didn’t pay much attention to them.
Now I’m glued to the TV, watching images from the United States, taken from a helicopter, of a traffic jam on a freeway. Suddenly about two dozen people have appeared, shambling along the side of the road, and started to attack the drivers trapped in their vehicles. The scene is horrible. It lasts less than a minute, but I’m still trembling. I swear they bit the drivers. That’s impossible. What the hell is wrong with these people?
Someone has opened the gates of hell, and you can feel the heat.
January 19, 11:08 a.m.
I’m not a practicing Catholic, but the events of the last twenty-four hours seem like divine punishment for some gigantic, collective sin of mankind. Or a huge monument to our stupidity. Depending on how you look at it.
Yesterday was long. In the morning as I ate breakfast, the news reported that riots have spread globally. A pattern is emerging. First, the government says there’s no reason to worry. Second, a quarantine is imposed. Next, panic ensues, and rioting and looting break out. Then they declare martial law. After that, there are more riots, but they seem different—stranger, more localized, heavily censored, with very little information and no looting. And finally, silence.
That’s the pattern, but there are exceptions. In Chile yesterday morning, a general named Cheyre took advantage of martial law to mount a coup. A few hours later, a busload of Bolivian refugees was gunned down at the border, trying to get past a checkpoint. In retaliation, the Bolivian government shelled the Chilean border until Chile’s air force reduced the Bolivian artillery to scrap metal. That’s crazy. We’re on the brink of the abyss, and all they can think about is starting a war.
The news of the day: a briefing by the WHO’s Committee for Monitoring Compliance was broadcast worldwide yesterday afternoon. Every channel all over the world broadcast the same image. Not since man landed on the moon has there been anything like this. And there may never be again. Mind-blowing.
A committee of virologists appeared before the cameras. In a serious, guarded tone, they stated that the problem is a mutation of a filovirus transmitted by blood and bodily fluids (semen, saliva, and so on). They still don’t know if it’s transmitted through the air. The main symptoms are fever, disorientation, pallor, and, later, delirium and extreme aggression. If you see anyone with these symptoms, alert security forces. Under no circumstances should you try to make contact with the afflicted person, even if it’s a relative or a friend.
That’s it? What the hell are they getting at? What do they mean, “alert security forces”? Wouldn’t it be better to call an ambulance? At the end of the day, these are sick people. Right? Are they going to cure them with bullets? Why do I have the feeling they’re hiding something? I think there’s a lot they haven’t told us.
The Internet is a hotbed of rumors, each one more absurd than the last. An alien invasion, fluke parasites, mutants, the undead, mass brainwashing—take your pick. Let’s be rational, damn it. It’s a disease. Either you catch it or you don’t. If you catch it—bam! You’re done for. I’m still convinced there’s something more, something really horrible. If not, then why this unprecedented censorship? This is crazy.
I’m really worried about my sister. I haven’t been able to reach her since Saturday. Cell phone networks are overloaded. In some places they’ve shut down. After several repair crews disappeared, technicians refuse to travel without an escort. Private security companies are overwhelmed. The police, the army, and the Civil Guard are stretched thin on patrols, at quarantines, and at checkpoints. News of killings and disappearances are multiplying. In fact, they’re no longer news.
The US president was on TV. He’s at a presidential retreat. That’s a bad sign. He delivered a speech to the entire country, asking them to obey the army’s orders. He urged people to go to what he called Safe Zones. Safe Zones. Safe from what?
In Jerusalem, the pope, the chief rabbi, and the head Muslim muftis have come together to form one religious body. Any other time, that would’ve been moving, but they aren’t granting any audiences to the faithful for “safety reasons.” It isn’t exactly reassuring to see religious leaders on the Temple Mount surrounded by Israeli assault troops.
Our president is back on TV, along with the king. They announced the creation of fifty-two security forces, one in each province. They will team up with the national police, Civil Guard, and local and regional police. Army generals will lead the teams and will have full military authority over their assigned areas. The army will supply the weapons.
I tried to go see my parents this morning. I took Lucullus with me because I didn’t know how long it might take to get back. I put him in the passenger seat. His seat. Anyone who sits there invariably gets covered in cat hair. He can’t stand riding in his carrier. I hadn’t gone much more than a mile when I encountered an army checkpoint and had to turn back. I drove down a narrow country road that runs behind a housing complex and joins the main highway a couple miles later. Just when I thought I’d passed them, I came face-to-face with the local police at another checkpoint. Fuck! They know those back roads better than anyone. I tried to convince them to let me pass but got nowhere. They’re really nervous and scared. Who can blame them? Their job is usually to catch petty thieves, regulate traffic, and tow away illegally parked cars. Now they’re manning checkpoints, carrying army assault rifles with orders to shoot anyone who disobeys.
I’m back home now. I poured myself some whiskey, even though it’s still morning. I watched some more TV with the volume off and listened to police broadcasts on the shortwave. I don’t know what to think.
January 19, 6:58 p.m.
A helicopter’s circling the area. They’ve been at it all afternoon. From my upstairs window, I saw a couple of police cars drive down the main road. They seem to be looking for something. Or someone. They’re heavily armed. One police car even drove down the two short streets in our development to take a look. They shone their spotlight over all the walls, scaring the hell out of the woman in the corner house, who was outside at that time.
I went to the house of my neighbor, the doctor, to see if they were okay. His wife opened the door, her face haggard. She says her husband’s been at the hospital for seventy-two hours straight. She hasn’t heard anything from him since.
I went back in my house and double-locked the door, turned the shortwave back on, and listened to the police band. Usually it’s full of routine messages, like “Patrol Twenty-Seven, zone fifteen negative, proceed to zone sixteen.” There used to be some kind of funny ones, like the Civil Guard at a checkpoint ordering pizza. But now they were searching desperately for someone. All hell broke loose when a patrol reported a “hot spot,” whatever that means. Ten minutes later I swear I heard shots. They didn’t sound far off.
Twenty days have passed since this thing started. Today I heard shots in my city. Whatever this is, it’s getting closer.
January 20, 1:40 a.m.
I was dozing in front of the TV when I heard brakes outside. I ran to the upstairs bedroom that looks out on the main road. A patrol car stopped the Civil Guard at the entrance to our street. Two guards with assault rifles got out and ran past my house to the embankment at the end of my street. Beyond that embankment are some houses, and behind them, a highway. I couldn’t see where they were going.
Pretty soon they came back. A platoon of soldiers coming from the opposite direction was with them. They were nervous, and one soldier’s sleeve was stained with blood or some other dark substance. They continued on in silence and disappeared down the other end of the street.
I heard it again. I can’t swear to it, but I think I heard shots. And they sounded closer than before.
January 20, 11:22 a.m.
I went downtown to buy the newspaper or some magazines. There aren’t any newspapers. The delivery van couldn’t get through. On the way home, I noticed that most shops were closed. I found a small bakery open, so I bought some fresh bread. The worried-looking salesgirl whispered to me that last night she heard shots right next to her house, and something that sounded like “moans.” When she looked out the window, she saw an army truck pulling up at top speed.
I saw skid marks at the entrance to my street yesterday. Now I know I wasn’t dreaming.
January 20, 11:33 a.m.
I’m sitting in the garden, soaking up the winter sun, while I watch Lucullus, who’s staring ecstatically at a lizard scurrying along the wall. The helicopter’s flying tirelessly overhead again. The radio news reported that the government has created “Safe Havens” in the major cities, where they plan to concentrate people. They say around 80 percent of city dwellers can’t (or won’t) leave. Safe Havens. That’s a fucking joke.
At all hours of the day, they repeat that under no circumstances should you try to make contact with any person exhibiting erratic, odd, or disoriented behavior, or who shows signs of violence. Even if it’s an acquaintance or relative. Yeah, right…everyone knows how dangerous sick people are to healthy people.
On top of all this, Channel 3 stopped broadcasting their regular programming. They’re running movies and prerecorded shows nonstop. Every forty-five minutes they broadcast a news update. News anchor Matías Prats looks like he’s been living on the set for days.
January 21, 12:20 p.m.
On Friday afternoon I dodged the checkpoints in town to visit Robert. We’ve been good friends since we were kids. Robert is quiet, low-key, and methodical. He works as an accountant for an import company. He got married two years ago and has a cute baby girl only a few months old. When I got to his house, his wife was packing their bags, and Robert was gloomily watching the television. He said they were going to the Safe Haven downtown. They don’t know where they’ll be staying or what they’ll do there, or anything, but they’re still going.
I get it. I’m a single guy who lives with a cat, but he has a family to look after. Good luck, Robert. I think we’re all going to need it.
After I got home, I stopped to talk to my neighbor for a minute. His house backs up to mine. Before all this started, he was building on a deck. The smell of glue was pretty strong. Bits of sawdust wafted over the wall separating our yards. Lucullus sat mesmerized for hours, watching the dust twist and turn in a light beam. A few days ago the carpenters didn’t show up. I’ve never had much contact with the guy, but I got up the nerve to ask him for a couple of those heavy wooden posts to brace the gate in my front wall. If looters show up, they’ll have to jump over a ten-foot-high wall or break down a wrought iron gate, reinforced with two wooden posts driven into the ground.
More than anything I need a project to keep my mind busy so I don’t think about what’s happening. Fuck.
On the official channels, there’s almost no foreign news. People don’t seem to care, either. It’s as if each country has turned inward to survive. There hasn’t been news of any kind out of Russia for days. Not even on the Internet. Zero. In northern Europe there are a few active blogs. Unfortunately I don’t know Swedish or German or Polish, so I can’t tell what the hell they’re saying. I notice their blogs are full of capitalization and exclamation points, so I gather they are nervous. Or surprised. Or scared. Who knows.
CNN is the only US channel I can still get via satellite. CBS and ABC display blue screens with the channel’s logo, and Fox News is broadcasting static. According to CNN, the population is being concentrated in the Safe Zones in each city’s downtown. Authorities warn that they can’t protect anyone outside those zones from “marauders.” There’s an unbelievable rumor going around on the Internet that the people in the San Diego Safe Zone—and maybe in those of many other US cities—have been massacred by marauding groups. From what I see, life is cheap worldwide these days. If you search for “dead” on Google, millions of links come up.
In Spain, the situation isn’t any better. Safe Havens are being organized in cities with more than fifty thousand residents. Day or night, on every radio or TV station, they urge people to congregate there for their own safety. I’m not going. They don’t allow pets, since space is limited. There’s no way in hell I’ll leave Lucullus. I’m not a nut case about animals, but after my wife died, having Lucullus around was all that kept me from doing something stupid. I owe him that. He’s my pal, and I won’t abandon him to get into some crowded ghetto and share a room with fifteen strangers. Fuck the government and its Safe Havens.
The king is back on TV, in his uniform again, with an update. But this time he’s surrounded by generals. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any politicians on TV for days. The military has taken over. That sucks.
Now Channel 5, just like Channel 3, is only broadcasting reruns and a news bulletin every forty-five minutes. They’re saying it’s to ensure their employees’ safety. Apparently their studio is located in an unsafe area. There are gangs of bandits, they explain.
Cell phones are dead. The three main providers have suspended service and “relinquished” their network to the Provincial Security Corps. Now it’s going to be impossible to contact my sister. She’s a smart girl; I’m sure she’s okay.
I’ve got the shortwave radio on again, listening to the military evacuate people to the Safe Haven. Sporadic gunfire has kept up all day. Civilization is crumbling.
January 22, 4:30 p.m.
I listened all night to the security forces’ frequencies on the shortwave radio. It’s mostly trivial chatter—progress reports from checkpoints, situation reports from patrols, and little else. Occasionally a “hot spot” flares up, and then the situation gets out of control. Although the media is constantly warning us about “disturbances,” those are only a fraction of the incidents I hear about on the police band. Maybe it’s because I live in a small town, but the number of looters seems very small.
However, I’m hearing more and more about the “others.” A couple of days ago, you hardly heard anything about them. Their numbers seem to be growing by the hour. On the police band there are increasingly more reports of “incidents” involving what the soldiers call “those things.”
Forty-eight hours ago, there were no cases in Pontevedra. What began as a trickle—a run-in with “those things” every twelve hours or so—is fast becoming a gusher of emergency calls, hysterical warnings from one unit to another, and a whole lot of movement by police and soldiers who seem unable to quell the situation.
What do they mean, “those things”? People infected with the virus? We all know that people who get infected are extremely aggressive, but why call them “those things,” not the “infected people”? What does that mean, exactly?
A few hours ago, I heard on the military band that security forces in Pontevedra have been ordered to retreat to the heart of the city. The outlying areas must be evacuated. A few minutes later, on the city television station, a captain in the Civil Guard dressed in combat fatigues read a statement from the commanding general of the province, ordering the evacuation. I think we’re under siege.
Just an hour ago, I heard a call to a patrol. Dispatchers reported an incident on some street and told them to investigate. The patrol (Civil Guard, I think) responded that they were already there. I haven’t heard a word from that patrol since. Fifteen minutes later, I heard another call, this time to BRILAT troops. Dispatchers told them to go immediately to the same location. The fucked-up thing is that the address given is just half a mile from my house. I swear I heard two shots. Then nothing.
Whatever happened, there were only two shots.
In general, things look piss-poor. From what I can glean from all the crap on TV, radio, the Internet, and military frequencies, the situation is deteriorating by the minute. The security forces seem to be overwhelmed by events that have skyrocketed exponentially over the last twenty-four hours. There are police and military casualties. Some units, especially those made up of city police, are starting to desert. Something has gone fucking wrong.
A troubling rumor is preying on my mind. Of all the crazy theories repeated endlessly on the net, one is gaining momentum. People say that the sick are in a kind of suspended animation, or that they come back from the dead. They swear that these people are dead but still walking around. Yeah, right. That’s hard to believe, but in the last few hours, so many strange things have happened, I don’t know what to think.
January 22, 7:59 p.m.
Just a few minutes ago, a troop carrier and a transport truck stopped at the end of the two streets where I live. Soldiers got out and went house to house, banging on doors. I was in the kitchen, listening to the shortwave radio with all the lights off.
When they knocked on my door, I froze. I held the cat in my lap and waited in silence until they went away. I had to see what was going on, so I tiptoed up the stairs and looked out my window. I saw my neighbor’s wife, whose husband, the doctor, had disappeared several days ago, leave with her two daughters and a few suitcases. The soldiers helped them into the truck. Several of my neighbors did the same. They headed for the Safe Haven downtown, where they’ve cordoned off some streets. In theory, it’s well protected.
The trucks roared off toward downtown. Before jumping into the vehicle, a soldier painted a huge red cross on the pavement at the intersection. The trucks then turned the corner and disappeared. The night was so quiet I could hear the convoy for blocks. I guess they had many more stops to make tonight.
Now the street is silent and dark. All the homes must be empty. If anyone’s still in their home, like me, they’re lying low. I went back to the kitchen and sat down with just the light over the stove on. I started to think. Clearly they’re evacuating the area. Correction—they have evacuated the area. So from now on, anything goes.
January 23, 10:05 a.m.
The sun is up now. It was a very, very long night. Just a few hours after the convoy left, I was struck by the enormity of my decision. I’m alone. Nobody knows I’m here. I’m in an evacuated area. A no-man’s-land.
After I blocked out that thought, I plunged into a project. I finished shoring up the front gate with the wooden posts. It’s stupid, of course—sooner or later I’ll have to go out that way. But it kept my mind busy, and I feel safer. Then I took stock of the situation. I have enough food for about three weeks, if I don’t mind a steady diet of frozen food. I have about twenty liters of bottled water. I still have running water. Having solar panels means electricity isn’t a problem. If I economize, I can be almost completely self-sufficient. That won’t be hard. I don’t plan on throwing a party any time soon.
Cooking gas is a problem. My kitchen has two ceramic burners and two small gas burners. The ceramic burners consume an alarming amount of electricity. For now, I have gas. Who knows how long that will last? Sooner or later they’ll cut the supply to the evacuated areas to prevent the risk of explosions.
Overall, my arsenal is bleak. I went through the house from top to bottom and gathered all my “weapons” on the kitchen table: a scuba-diving speargun and six steel spears, a butcher knife, and a dull hatchet I chop firewood with. Great. I picked up my speargun, by far my most dangerous weapon. Besides the fact that I’ve never shot anything bigger than an eel, it presents a number of problems. It takes around twenty to thirty seconds to load. Its range is short, only about thirty feet. At a longer distance, its aim isn’t very true. When all is said and done, it’s not a precision weapon; it’s only designed to spear an octopus at close range. If gangs of bandits show up, I’m screwed. My best option is to keep my head down.
The phone rang, and my heart nearly flew out of my mouth. It hasn’t rung for days—I’d forgotten all about it. I almost didn’t pick it up, but the need to hear a human voice is stronger than prudence, so I answered. It was my parents. I was so relieved I nearly passed out.
Tears ran down my face as I listened to my mother’s voice. She’d been trying to reach me for three days. They’re okay, there in my father’s hometown with some neighbors. They begged me to meet them there. I convinced my parents that that option hadn’t been feasible for days. I’m safer here than I would be traveling forty miles on roads clogged with checkpoints, with who knows how many maniacal gangs on the loose. Plus, Lucullus doesn’t like the country, I tell my mother, trying to take the sting out the situation. She’s really worried. My sister made it out of Barcelona before they sealed off the city and declared martial law, but my mother doesn’t know where she is now. The last she heard, they were headed for Roger’s place in the country.
There wasn’t much news about the rest of my family. Most of them are probably at a Safe Haven, like 80 percent of the population. Human beings are social animals and tend to cluster in dangerous situations; only an insignificant few don’t follow this pattern. I fall squarely in that latter group. With a kiss, I said good-bye to my parents, promising to call at least once a week, if I can get a line out.
That calmed me down a little and let off the emotional steam that’s been building. My head is clearer. I’ve started thinking of practical things I can do.
First, the news. TV’s disappearing. Of the eighty channels I used to get, almost every one has gone off the air. I can only pick up Channels 5 and 3 and one that now broadcasts where Channel 2 used to air. Scheduled programming has been reduced to the bare minimum; basically it consists of uninterrupted movies, prerecorded series, and a mini report every forty-five minutes that consists of telling where the Safe Havens are and the best ways to reach them. They insistently repeat that in no way should you try to make contact with the infected. If they attack you, avoid being bitten or scratched.
A tired-looking soldier has come on to say they can’t guarantee the safety of anyone outside the Safe Havens. In case of attack, try to crush your attacker’s head. “Use a stick, a machete, a bullet, anything—just smash their head. Nothing else works.”
I was taken aback by that message, but things’ve been out of control for so long that nothing surprises me too much. Anyway, the news blackout seems to be relaxing. I guess there’s nothing to hide. Or almost nothing. Gangs of thieves are now a minor concern compared to the main problem of those who are infected and extremely violent.
There’s no agreement on those things’ real physical state. Some say they’re healthy, just deranged. Others say they’re at death’s door. More and more people claim they’re dead, incredible as that may seem. I haven’t seen any, but I guess that’ll change in the coming hours. For now, I’ll stay right where I am and take things as they come. I’ve gotten calmer since I realized that’s the closest thing I have to a game plan.
The Internet is also coming apart at the seams. Hours ago Google and Yahoo stopped working. The servers must be down. The same goes for a lot of other websites. Of the over a hundred contacts I have, only two dozen are still active, almost all in Spain, where there’s still electricity. Given what happened in northern Europe, the Internet won’t last long here either.
Military radio frequencies crackle constantly, reporting more clashes with “those bastards.” It sounds like there are lots of casualties. The fifty-two original forces have been consolidated into forty. The attacks are concentrated around the Safe Havens. Two Safe Havens, one in Toledo and one in Alicante, were attacked by hordes of infected people and have fallen. Tens of thousands of people died. Will thousands more die in the coming hours? You can bet your sweet ass I won’t be one of them.
January 24, 3:03 a.m.
Sweat trickles down my back as I sit here, writing this. My hands are still shaking from the adrenaline rush. I’m scared out of my mind.
By midday, I realized I had to do something or I’d have a heart attack. I’d been cooped up for almost twenty-four hours, pacing like a caged animal. I had to do something. I had to get out of here. I had to take a look around. I had to know what was going on. Lucullus has been staring at me, wide-eyed, all day. He knows something’s up. I don’t know if his cat brain can grasp the enormity of the situation. The world’s going to hell by the minute—if it isn’t there already. Eventually it’s going to grab up everyone in its path. It’s not joking around.
I went up to my bedroom and put on heavy, thick-soled hiking boots. Winter nights in Galicia are wet and cold, so I bundled up. It was late; the curfew had been in force for hours. I didn’t give a damn. I was going out. It wasn’t like I was going to run into a cop around the corner. Forty minutes before, I’d heard several vehicles on the main road. From the upstairs window I saw a collection of police cars, army trucks, and armored vehicles pass by, filled with exhausted, frightened soldiers headed to the Safe Haven downtown.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those soldiers were the last line of defense against the infected people. They’d held their position until all civilians were evacuated. Now they were retreating. That means there’s nothing between the Safe Haven and those things. They must be hot on their heels. I had to hurry.
I moved aside the posts bracing the door and cautiously stuck my head out. The street was deserted, the way it’s been for the last several hours. Newspapers, plastic bags, and trash went flying down the pavement. In the middle of the street lay a beige sweater. One of my neighbors must have lost it in her hasty evacuation. Seeing that sweater brought it all home. They’re gone for good. All of them.
I climbed into my car, which I’d parked right outside the door. As I sat behind the wheel, I remembered I hadn’t changed the oil. The can of oil had been sitting in the trunk ever since I bought it. Shit. This was not the time to be a DIY mechanic, so I turned the key, hoping my car wouldn’t leave me high and dry.
In the dead silence the motor sounded like a cannon. You could probably hear it for miles. I didn’t care. No way was I going to walk. I drove to the main road and headed for the gas station about half a mile from home and just over a mile from the Safe Haven. The gas station was in the middle of the evacuated zone, but I hoped someone was still there. I realized I didn’t have a decent road map. If I ever took to the road, I’d definitely need a map. Every gas station sells them. That’s what I was after.
The absolute silence on the road was shocking. Not a living thing in sight. I could be the last person on earth.
When I got to the gas station, I let out a sigh of relief. The lights were on. It looked open.
I pulled up to the pump and went in cautiously. I’m not ashamed to say I was scared shitless. There was no one was in sight—no customers, no employees. Where was the fucking manager? The cash register was open. I could’ve reached in and made off with all the cash. I grabbed a couple of road maps and all the candy bars I could stuff in my pockets. I also grabbed some two-week-old magazines. Their covers reported things that now seem completely surreal. Everything seems so absurd in this chaos! As I left the money on the counter, I thought I heard a noise. My blood froze in my veins. Someone—or something—was out there. Fuck.
Trembling, I grabbed some snow chains hanging on a display. They weren’t much of a weapon, but at least I had something sturdy in my hands. I spotted a man about a hundred feet from the station. He was too far away, and it was too dark to see him clearly, but he seemed to be staggering. I wasn’t going to hang around to find out. I jumped in the car and headed for home. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the guy stumbling along, trying to follow my car. Fuck that. I didn’t want to know anything more about him.
A few minutes later, I was back home with the door secured again. My legs are still shaking. I was gone for less than twenty minutes and only went about half a mile, but I feel like I’m back from a tour in Vietnam. This is really fucked up. I thought I’d feel like the hero of an action movie. Truth is, I feel like prey who doesn’t know where the hunters are.
I turned on the TV. There are only two channels left, Channel 3 and the public station, Televisión Española, which is displaying the royal coat of arms and playing military marches. Very reassuring. There’s static on all the other channels. CNN is all that’s left on the satellite; it’s broadcasting images recorded a few days ago. News scrolls across the bottom of the screen: Atlanta has fallen. Denver. Utah. Baltimore. Cedar Creek, Texas. And on and on…damn, the list is endless. “Do not go to the Safe Zones. Seek safety elsewhere,” the message says. Is that what will happen here, too? Millions of “infected people” attacking millions of refugees in Safe Havens?
The Internet is almost nonexistent. Most servers are down. The only search engine still operating is the Spanish affiliate of Alexa. How the hell are they keeping it up and running? Backup batteries, I guess. They can’t last much longer, just a few days or hours. People have left messages on my blog. I don’t know how they found it, but their stories terrify me. They say it’s one of the few sites still operating. My Internet provider is a cable company based in La Coruña. How long before it goes to hell? How long before everything goes to hell? They’re coming—it’s just a matter of hours.
January 24, 8:56 p.m.
Today the power went out. A few minutes before six, the lights flickered and then went out. At first I just sat dumbfounded in the kitchen, in the dark. I’ve been spending most of my time there, listening to military broadcasts and watching the last two TV channels. After a while my eyes adjusted to the dark, and I sprang into action. I grabbed a flashlight and went down to the basement to connect the storage batteries. Those black 16-kilowatt beasts lay on the basement floor in two lines of twelve. I was just about to throw the switch on the control panel when I froze. Before I connected anything, I made sure all the lights in the front of the house were switched off. The last thing I wanted was to call attention to myself with the only lighted house on the street. When I did connect the batteries, the bulbs’ soft glow made me feel so safe. It was fantastic—I can’t describe it. I never dreamed I’d be so afraid of the dark. I never dreamed any of this could happen.
I have a serious problem. They’ve cut off the gas, or maybe the pipes broke. Either way, I have no gas. That means the furnace isn’t working. And that’s nothing to joke about with the temperature outside down to 37 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve bundled up, but the cold is still biting into my bones, and my breath turns into puffs of steam. Lucullus is indifferent to this cold. After all, he’s a Persian cat, with long fur and a generous layer of body fat from years of living the good life.
I went outside to smoke a cigarette and think. I sat on the steps, staring at the walls around my yard, turning over and over in my mind the events of the last few hours. This disaster is picking up speed. It’s like an avalanche—first they’re just a few pebbles, then some boulders, and before you know it, the whole fucking mountain is sliding toward you at top speed. Shit!
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.
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.
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 smoke 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.
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.
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, with 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.
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.
With a sigh I decided it was time to face the inevitable. I grabbed a roll of duct tape and pulled out my secret weapon: a little teddy bear with copper cymbals in its paws. When you press the button on the bear’s back, it frantically bangs the cymbals and sort of hiccups. The noise is earsplitting. One of my young cousins, Laura, brought it to my house months ago. After chasing around an indignant Lucullus, getting chocolate all over my curtains, and breaking a picture frame, she finally fell asleep on the couch and left her teddy bear underneath it. I found it the next day and put it in a drawer until its owner could come to claim it. Now she may never be back.
For the love of God, she was only five years old! I hope she’s okay, or if not, I pray she was shot in the head. Just not turned into one of those things…
I taped the bear to a spear, loaded it in the speargun, and aimed at the house at the end of the street, the one closest to the intersection. My idea was to nail the bear to the wood paneling that completely covered that house’s upper floor. It would make a lot of noise and get those things’ attention, giving me time to deal with the soldier as he passed by my door. A simple plan. A really shitty plan—a thousand things could go wrong. But it was all I had.
I took a deep breath, turned the toy on, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The spear took off like a flash, but the bear weighed too much and pulled the spear down. Instead of sticking into the wood, it hit the edge of the wall with a thud and fell into the trough on the ground that channels the rain away from the house. For a moment there was no sound. Just when I thought the plan I’d worked so hard on was a bust, I heard the cymbals clanging in the gutter. Laurita’s bear hadn’t let me down.
That sound electrified those creatures. They turned toward the sound and started moving in its direction. I had to hurry. I flew down the stairs and opened the front door, headed for the steel gate, and quietly pulled it open. It turned silently on its hinges (thank God I’d greased them three weeks ago). For the first time in days, I stepped out on to the street.
The mutants had all moved past my front door. Glancing to my left, I could see the backs of those creatures as they plodded slowly toward the trough and the sound. The soldier was the last in line, just a few yards away, with his back to me. My eyes darting in every direction, I loaded a spear in fifteen seconds. A record for me! I raised the gun and aimed. Less than three yards away. At that distance, I couldn’t miss. If God still cares about this doomed human race, I hope he has forgiven me for what I did. But my life was at stake.
I squeezed the trigger. The spear took off with a faint hum and pierced the back of the soldier’s skull. He stopped in his tracks and collapsed with a dull thud. I rushed over to the body. He seemed to be dead dead now, but I couldn’t be too careful. I laid the speargun and the umbrella on the ground and started to wrestle with the loops of his backpack. Blood clots on the clasps prevented me from loosening the straps. Sweat was pouring down my back. I looked over and saw that one of those things had stuck its arm into the trough and was feeling around for the source of the sound. In moments, they’d grab it and tear it apart. Then I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Something must have caught the attention of the woman with the crushed hip, because she turned in my direction. Had she heard me, smelled me? I don’t know, but she saw me.
With that strange gait, she walked toward me, slowly because she was dragging one leg. Her balance was pretty shot. I only had a few seconds. I struggled clumsily to load another spear in the gun. Sweat rolled into my eyes as I pulled back the rubber sling. Four yards. I finally got everything set. Three yards. I raised the gun and aimed at the woman’s head. Two yards. I fired.
The spear hit the woman hard. She stopped and fell forward like a sack. But the situation was deteriorating by the minute. One of the monsters had grabbed the bear and was shaking it. He’d managed to empty out its batteries, and its cymbals were silent now. The sound of the woman falling made everyone look in my direction. I had to hurry. Time was running out.
I grasped the soldier’s body by the leg and started dragging it toward my open front gate, toward salvation. There was no time to loosen the clasps. I had to drag the body and the backpack with me. As I neared the gate, another one of those things suddenly came around a parked car. Shit. I hadn’t seen that guy before. The speargun was hanging from my shoulder, but I didn’t have time to load another spear. I let go of the soldier for a moment and steadied the umbrella shaft with both hands. With all my might, I struck the creature’s temple with the ivory handle. I don’t know if I killed it, but I do know the bone in its left temple cracked and it collapsed on the ground. I dropped the umbrella, grabbed the soldier’s body, and made it through my front gate, slamming it behind me, just in time. They were just a few yards away.
I left the soldier’s body in front of the front door and threw up. I’ve been drinking for nearly twenty-four hours. I’m drunk. Now these things know I’m here. But I’m alive. And if you’re alive, you can fight to live another day.
January 29, 5:14 p.m.
If things keep on like this, I’ll go crazy. They’ve been pounding nonstop on my front gate for hours. I can hear them no matter where I am in the house. It’s horrible. And all that moaning! Jesus Christ! They’re destroying my nerves. I’ve been drinking too much, I know, but I don’t know what else to do.
Miguel, my neighbor, isn’t any help. Instead he’s a pain in the ass. He’s hung up on the idea that we should head to the marina, get his boat, and sail somewhere else. But he doesn’t have the nerve to do it alone. He’s driving me crazy with his constant complaining. He’s insufferable.
I tried to get him to see things clearly, but he won’t listen. The roads are either cut off or blocked by abandoned cars, accidents, collapsed bridges. It’s insane to think about the trip as if everything were normal. Anything can happen. And the consequences could be fatal. You have to plan things out if you’re going to survive.
Tonight I got up the courage to climb up to my attic. It’s a small space under the roof, barely more than a closet. I haven’t been up there for two years because it’s full of my wife’s stuff. The day after her funeral, my sister and her boyfriend put all her things up there. Until three weeks ago, when the technician installed the solar panels, no one had been up there. There’s dust on everything. Over the musty smell, I can still detect a familiar scent—her perfume, which still permeates her clothes. My heart shrank, and I collapsed on an old couch with tears streaming down my face. I’ve been crying like a baby for hours, holding her old sweater. I miss her so much. Thank God she doesn’t have to witness all this.
After a while I calmed down. Something’s still broken inside me; I mourned for a while and vented. The stress I’ve been under is brutal. Taking refuge up here for a few hours was a good idea.
The technician’s footprints in the dust went from the trapdoor to below the skylight. There were some bits of wire and a plastic bag of leftover screws. The remains of the installation. Silent witness that someone did his job what seems like a million years ago. I wonder what became of that guy. Maybe he’s one of those things wandering around.
I opened the skylight and let in some cold air. I tied myself to some buttresses and climbed very carefully onto the roof. The last thing I needed was to break my leg! Next to the skylight is a flat surface you can sit on. The roof slopes down from there and is covered by the iridescent solar panels. It’s about a twenty-foot drop to the ground, where these things have tirelessly massed in front of my gate. Falling is definitely not a good option.
A few new creatures have arrived, drawn by the noise made by the things congregated at my door. Broken Hip’s body is lying in a heap in the middle of the road. There’s no trace of the other guy. The thump on the head I gave him mustn’t have been enough to send him back to hell. Too bad.
Normally I had a spectacular view of the city at night. Now I was amazed at how completely dark it was. Most nights I could see thousands of lights, but tonight there was utter blackness. The electricity was definitely off. And they sure weren’t planning to send a team in to fix it. I lit a cigarette and thought things over.
When all this started, people quit showing up for work. Power plant operators, too. So for two weeks now, those plants have been operating on automatic pilot. I tried to remember the way a friend’s boyfriend, an engineer, explained it to me. A thermal power plant that runs on coal or fuel can only be set on automatic for twenty-four hours before its boilers run out of fuel. In theory, a hydroelectric or wind-powered plant could stay on indefinitely, but it requires skilled technicians to repair any damage done by around-the-clock use. It could last about two weeks before its systems started to fail. Parts would be tough to get now. It’s horrifying to think of a nuclear plant operating with no one to make repairs. Chernobyl, the guy said with a sad smile, is an example of a nuclear power plant that wasn’t maintained properly. I hope the report was true, that the nuclear power plants have been disconnected.
So I guess the whole country is dark, or soon will be. The electric company had a contingency plan if a plant or two failed, but all of them failing at once must have caused the entire system to collapse. In one fell swoop, they’ve sent us back to the nineteenth century. Except that we’re struggling to stay alive, surrounded by walking corpses. That’s a helluva picture.
I stubbed out my cigarette and went back inside. It’s cold. I haven’t looked through the soldier’s backpack yet. I hope it was worth it. Let’s see what I find.