Once inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’m not alone. There’s another person nearby. Then I remembered: he and I aren’t alone either. Somewhere out there are those things that aren’t human anymore. And they’re getting closer.
ENTRY 32
January 25, 2:36 a.m.
They’re here.
Shit. I’m watching them out the window. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of them. They’re everywhere. God help me. For Christ’s sake, how can this be possible? I think I’m going to throw up.
ENTRY 33
January 25, 6:38 p.m.
I’m calmer now. Last night was a real nightmare. In the light of day, the situation seems less terrifying. But I could clearly see the agonizing reality. In a few hours it’ll be completely dark again, and I won’t be able to see those things. (It goes without saying that the streetlights are out.) But I know they’re out there. And somehow they know there are humans around somewhere.
It all started around one in the morning. I’d been talking over the wall to Miguel. We could have talked by phone and spared ourselves the bitter cold, but the need to see a human face was huge. I came back inside and then moved my headquarters upstairs to the front bedroom. I haven’t slept in that room for two years. Now I have no choice. It’s the only room with a window facing the front, and it’s higher than the wall. From there I can see the entire length of my street and a small section of the main road. I brought up the radio, a laptop, a small TV, and my scuba-diving spear. I set everything next to the chair I’d pushed against the window, and sat down to wait.
At first I couldn’t make out what was happening. The sound was the first thing I noticed. In the silence of the night, I heard a strange noise, like something dragging on the pavement, with an occasional groan mixed in. The hair on my arms stood on end. A moment later, I saw the first one: a man about thirty-five, wearing a blue plaid shirt and white jeans. He was missing a shoe. He had a terrible wound on his face, and his clothes were soaked with blood that was starting to get stiff. More followed behind him—men, women. Even children, for the love of God! They all had some kind of injury. Some even had gruesome amputations. Their skin was a waxy color. Their dark brown veins stood out against their pale skin like delicate tattoos. The corneas of their eyes were yellow. Their movements were slow, but not too slow. They seemed to have a problem with coordination. It reminded me of the way a drunk walks after a night of partying. Not bad, considering they’re dead. Totally fucking dead. There’s no doubt about that. Even though their wounds had been fatal, they walked around under my window as if those wounds were nothing. That’s frightening!
Dozens, then hundreds, maybe thousands, I don’t know. On the surface that multitude could have been a demonstration or a crowd at a concert, except it was plunged into a stony silence, broken only by shuffling feet and occasional moans. The fucking mob was headed for the Safe Haven. Tireless. Immutable. Unstoppable.
It’s clear why they were headed there. I don’t know how many people were crammed downtown, but any human crowd makes a lot of noise. In the silence, I could hear the crowd’s noise more than a mile away. Loudspeakers, electric generators providing light and heat, vehicles. A magnet drawing this violent mob, eager for human bodies with a heartbeat. They would fall on the humans, and there was nothing their victims could do about it.
A few hours later, the shooting started, near downtown. First some isolated shots. Then the gunfire increased; for a while it was a loud roar. I swear for a moment I even heard mortar rounds. Although the BRILAT troops had withdrawn from several parts of Spain recently, there should still have been a sizable enough contingent to drive them away, no problem. The police band was jammed for hours with frantic messages from one unit to another. Distress calls, urgent requests for ammunition, surrounded platoons requesting backup, reports of casualties… Fall back. They’ve broken through. They’re overrunning us. Then, little by little, silence. The sound of firearms gradually ceased. At dawn I didn’t hear anything anymore. Radio frequencies were silent. Dead. A few of columns of 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.
ENTRY 34
January 26, 5:57 p.m.
This has been a really long day. I’m writing this in the upstairs bedroom. I don’t come out except to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. I have half a bottle of gin sitting next to my chair. It was full this morning. That doesn’t make me an alcoholic. A couple of drinks helped me cope. Shit, my nerves are shot.
Today, when the sun came up, I was dozing in front of the TV. To save the batteries, I only turn it on once in a while. They’re still displaying the royal coat of arms, but it’s been hours since there was a news report. I woke up suddenly. Shooting. I heard gunfire close by. It went on for a while, then suddenly stopped. I don’t know much about guns, but it sounded like a couple of pistols and some kind of high-caliber gun, maybe a shotgun. This tells me something important: there are other living people around! Or at least there were…
Miguel, my neighbor, is getting all worked up. He thinks staying here is suicide. The best thing to do is drive to the marina and get on his boat. I spent half the morning trying to talk him out of it. We don’t know if his boat is still docked there. Most likely it’s gone. Besides, the road will probably be closed in a dozen places, so we’d have to get out of the car and walk with thousands of those things everywhere. We wouldn’t last a minute. I think I talked him out of it, but who knows for how long.
In a way, he’s right. Either we improve our situation here or move on. Soon.
Those monsters are a constant presence on my street. When they heard the shots, hundreds of them headed down the main street toward the source of noise, including some that had been wandering around here for hours. The rest hung around here. Throughout the day, new ones showed up. From my window I see eleven of them wandering up and down. Four women, two children, and five men. One of them I named Thumper. He’s been banging his palm against a metal gate for hours. They all have the same dazed, distracted look on their faces. Their clothes are torn and stiff with blood. Some are horrifically mutilated. One woman’s rib cage is crushed, as if she’d been run over by a car. Her broken hip makes it really hard for her to walk.
However, the one that interests me the most is a soldier in the BRILAT special forces. He has a horrible wound on his neck, and he’s missing a chunk of his cheek. I can see his teeth every time he goes slumping along under my window. The clotted blood has formed strange lumps on his jacket.
But the important thing is the backpack he’s still carrying. And his belt, which has about a dozen pockets. And a gun. A gun! In a daze brought on by all the alcohol, stress, and sleep deprivation, I’ve feverishly plotted a dozen ways to get that gun and backpack. I need them. But all I’ve got is a scuba-diving spear.