There was a roar, and a stack of fishing rods collapsed next to me. A pair of waxen white arms shoved them aside. The rest of the body followed. He was a man about forty, pale and ghostly, with dead eyes, his mouth ajar. One of them.
He closed in on me fast. Before I knew it, he was on top of me. My weapons were too far away to do me any good. His clawlike hands grabbed my arm, and his momentum pushed me backward, off balance. I stumbled and fell back against a display case, dragging the monster with me.
With a loud crash, we landed on a pile of compasses. The monster was on top of me, his entire weight pressed down on me. Somehow I got hold of his arms. With one leg bent between us, I kept his mouth away from my face. His expression was absolutely crazed; his jaw snapped open and closed, biting the air like a rabid dog. One bite nearly ripped off my nose.
As I held him off, my mind was racing. The bastard was so strong. I didn’t know if those things got tired, but of course I did. My arms cramped up. The situation was becoming desperate.
With one last effort, I rolled onto my right hip. The thing’s body crashed into the display case. Its steel corner dug into the base of his spine. A human would have writhed in agony, but he wasn’t fazed.
Now we lay side by side, like lovers entwined in bed, but I was certainly not feeling sexy. One of his arms was trapped under my body. Through my wetsuit, I felt his fingernails raking across my back. Fortunately the neoprene was too thick and the position too awkward for him to get a firm grip.
But now I had one arm free. Amid the confusion, the flashlight had fallen off the shelf, so we were in complete darkness. I ran my free hand over the nearest shelf above my head, groping around for something, anything. I grasped a heavy, cylindrical object and, with all my might, slammed it down on the creature’s head. It didn’t slow him down. I hit him again. Nothing. I knew you couldn’t knock out those sons of bitches with a blow to the head, but knowing that wasn’t going to save my life. Then something happened as I took my last swing.
A slippery, greasy liquid poured down on me. At first I thought the thing was bleeding, but it was too sticky and thick to be blood. Then I thought he’d vomited on me. I was disgusted, and I drew strength from that thought. I lowered my other arm and, with my bent leg, kicked his body and pulled away. I slid away surprisingly fast and crashed into another row of shelves.
The blow made me see stars. A million white, green, red, and blue dots danced before my eyes. Slipping and sliding, I stood up as I heard the thing fall less than three feet from me. Leaning on the display case, I realized it was the same one I’d set my weapons on. I groped around for my gun, praying the flashlight hadn’t fallen on the floor. Behind me, that thing struggled but couldn’t get to his feet.
Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead. Suddenly, my fingers found the butt of the Glock. I turned and fired into the dark.
The shot sounded like a cannon in the confined space of the store. My ears ringing, I tried to grasp what I’d seen in the flash of light from the first shot. Correcting my aim, I fired three more times.
The roar of gunfire and the smell of gunpowder engulfed the room. The thing just stopped moving. Gasping for breath, I swung the Glock in all directions, squinting in an effort to see in the darkness. I bent down and felt around for the flashlight. Finally I found it and shook it, relieved that it wasn’t broken. I turned it on and surveyed the scene.
It looked like a hurricane had hit the place. Display cases were lying on the floor, overturned in the struggle. The creature’s body was leaned against a wall as if he were asleep. Blood was gushing out of a huge black hole in his forehead.
The floor was covered with a thick, oily substance. I bent down to inspect it. I realized I’d hammered on his head with a can of boat motor oil. It had split open and spilled all over us. Thanks to that, I was able to slide free, and the monster had slipped several times, giving me time to find my gun. A simple can had saved my life. The irony isn’t lost on me.
I was covered in motor oil from head to toe. I must’ve looked pretty grim, standing there amid the devastation, the dark, sticky oil running down my body. As the adrenaline roared through my body, it sank in that I was still alive. If it hadn’t been for that can of oil and a lucky shot, that bastard would be snacking on me, and I’d be one of them. I felt sick to my stomach again, but I had nothing left to vomit up.
He must have been the child’s father. Now I understood how the little boy got infected. His wife had locked her husband down here in the store when she saw what he’d become, and run back upstairs with her little boy, not knowing he was doomed too. That sucks.
The metal gate was locked in place, and there didn’t seem to be any more creatures in the store. But the sound of gunfire had drawn a small crowd that was banging on the other side of the gate.
I had to do three things: secure the area, find what I’d come for, and figure out how to escape this madhouse. And I had to hurry.
ENTRY 55
February 22, 6:15 p.m.
Was it Roosevelt who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? But he was never locked in a store in the dark, pumped full of adrenaline, covered in motor oil, with dozens of eager monsters banging on the gate six feet away, determined to kill him. I’m sure he would’ve been afraid. Fucking afraid.
As I looked at the pile of rags lying at my feet, the magnitude of the situation hit me. I collapsed, exhausted and trembling, on to a pile of rain slickers and stared at the gate, which shuddered with every blow.
There were no other noises, not even thunder. The storm had dissipated after venting all its fury. The gurgle of rainwater streaming through the gutters was all that remained of the storm that had raged over Bueu while I was fighting for my life.
I leaned against the shelf and struggled to sit up. I looked around, every sense alert. I quickly checked out the store to make sure there were no more surprises. There was no other exit, just a small bathroom and a storeroom with neatly piled merchandise. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for a rust-colored bloodstain in one corner. That must be where the guy had gone through his transformation, alone in the dark, lying on the floor like a dog. I shuddered at the thought.
I didn’t have much time. In a matter of minutes the place would be surrounded, and I’d be done for.
I rushed around, shoving half the store into my backpack: two complete sets of charts of the Spanish and North African coasts—one drawn by the Spanish Navy and one by the British Admiralty (still the best), a high-quality GPS with a plotter connection, a couple of compasses, dozens of flashlight batteries, signal flares, a telescopic fishing rod, a box of hooks and fishing line, a safety harness, a spare wetsuit, two high-tech spearguns, and two dozen long, ominous, molten steel spears. Three loaded spearguns were definitely better than one.
I stuffed all that into my backpack. As I climbed the stairs to the top floor, I started laughing hysterically and couldn’t stop. With those spearguns, my backpack, my torn wetsuit, my body covered in oil and blood, I must’ve looked like some wacko slasher.
Once upstairs, I went into the kitchen for some provisions. The last thing I wanted to do was run around town, dodging monsters, looking for a store that hadn’t been ransacked. When I left home, I’d toyed with the idea of going to the shopping center for some groceries and supplies. But it dawned on me that, in the last days of the Safe Haven, loads of people must’ve had the same idea. The armed forces had probably plundered every store in the country to feed the multitudes in the Safe Havens.