The Wanderers

The Wanderers

Carlos Sisi

Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

Copyright 2009, 2011 Carlos Sisi.

www.PermutedPress.com

Cover art by Alejandro Colucci.

Originally published in Spanish as
Los Caminantes
by Dolman Editorial.

For my family. All of you.

Chapter 1

By the time Susana finally decided to return to the apartment, it had been a while since night had fallen. It was a cool, clear night and the air didn’t bring the unpleasant smells of the outskirts. This sole detail filled the young woman’s heart with joy as she briskly walked through the inner hallways of the building.

Her watch had been uneventful. The
wanderers
rarely approached the iron fences, although many could still been seen in the distance, silent, dragging their feet while slowly yet continuously drifting along. Not all of them walked. Susana could have sworn that one of them, located next to the decrepit newsstand, had been still for weeks, with spread legs and extended arms, observing the moon with frowning concern, or the sun with apparent indifference.

Actually, Aranda
’s ideas had produced good results. It was he who had suggested creating a second encampment, much more illuminated than the first. Following his instructions, multiple sound systems were installed, attracting the wanderers’ attention like insects to light. They came in hordes, and they would surround it, never withdrawing, attempting to intrude, ripping their flesh on the fences, decaying in the acid mire, to be finally blocked by the walls and trucks that served as barricades. Since then, the real encampment had enjoyed much more peace. Having the dead pursue the wrong place was psychologically positive for all of the survivors. Most of all, freeing themselves of the noises of the dead had worked wonders on the hearts of these men and women preoccupied solely with survival. Noises of death and ruin; the slow, muffled, rhythmless taps on the walls, or the muted sound of bodies brushing against each other in the dark; occasionally, the abominable gurgle of a throat filled with a swampy paste of dry blood and dirt. All of that had finally ceased. The dead were stalking the fake encampment.

Susana walked the distance to her bedroom, entered and secured the door with multiple locks and bolts. She then turned to face the darkness of her little apartment. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, preparing to enjoy the remaining hours of the day alone; time for herself that no dark thoughts could violate. Then she would undress, freshen up and lie on the bed. She liked to stay quiet, concentrating on not thinking, at least until sleep overcame her. It wasn’t often that she could empty her mind; images and memories would quickly interpose. Most of the time her subconscious had other plans for her, and would insist on going back, time and again, to the past; to the beginning. Even before that... to when life was normal and people died, and stayed dead.

Chapter 2

Julio was twenty-one when he first saw a corpse. It wasn’t a horrible corpse; it was neither decayed, nor had any wounds. It was just white, as white as snow. It looked that way because it had just been taken out of the bottom of the beach. He had drowned.

The police naturally didn
’t let anyone get close, but Julio and the others had a good view from the top of the breakwater. It was said that a German woman had found him while taking a walk at dawn; the tide had dragged him, naked and stiff as an old log, to the shore. The police had taken pictures, talked with the German lady and written many notes. They had examined the corpse and finally covered it with a sort of dark canvas that had the shine and texture of plastic. Julio had seen all of it from his privileged position.

Just ten minutes later, while the judge and the police exchanged documentation, the cadaver shook so hard that the canvas slid off to the side. Everyone turned to look. Julio watched with fascination. The sun bathed the corpse
’s moist white skin, giving it a soap-like appearance. Clumsily, the drowned man began to sit up while making grunts and harsh gurgling sounds. His arms trembled, and it looked like he was going fall head first into the sand at any moment. Two of the policemen, finally coming out of their state of shock, ran towards the man and held him by the arms to help him stand up.

But then
... then the drowned man attacked one of the police officers with unmeasured violence. He tackled him on the sand while his partner still tried to determine what was happening. His head was a like a hammer; going up and down in a crazed dance while biting into the policeman’s face, who was trying to protect himself with his arms. Unsuccessfully; because soon his arms were also full of blood. Finally, a few men threw themselves on the drowned man to hold him down. The scene was splattered with blood and screams.

Julio and his companions were petrified. Blood gushed from one the officers on the ground, while the other held his arm in pain. The drowned man fought on, possessed by some kind of primary and brutal dementia. Finally, one of the policemen pointed at him with his gun and shot him in the leg. The false drowned man fell to the ground, but the wound did not bleed. The sunken flesh was a black and ominous cave. The drowned man got back up without showing any pain at all, and his look was full of ruthless tenacity.

Julio unconsciously stopped breathing. His stomach had contracted until it hurt. A second shot made him shiver from head to toe. It was the same leg. Tiny, horrifying blood clots flew out of the back of the corpse
’s leg, but he didn’t stop. The policeman hesitated and then shot a third time, this time somewhere near the collarbone, but not even then did he stop.

Prey to panic, the policeman fired a fourth shot. This time the impact reached his jaw and made bits of flesh and teeth fly off in every direction
—and not even that stopped him. There were screams of terror. Someone had picked up a rickety stick and was hitting the drowned man from behind. The missing jaw now oozed a dense black mass that dropped in clumps on his bloated chest, but his white hands still desperately reached for the policeman.

A fifth shot hit the drowned man over his right eye. The impact entered cleanly and made him retreat two steps. There, he squinted in confusion and finally fell flat on the ground, without flexing his knees or stretching his arms.

Julio found himself on his feet. All of them had stood up and withdrawn several steps. The hazy four o
’clock sun dyed the scene with golden tones, and the drowned man’s skin reminded Julio of fried chicken. The fallen policeman was finally being attended: he had lost consciousness and his face was a repulsive sight of blood, flesh and exposed muscles. His nose was an unrecognizable stump. Several men dazedly stared at the drowned man’s corpse, their mouths covered by trembling hands. Their eyes went over the open wounds, but hardly anyone said anything.

“
What the hell happened?” bellowed one of the men while he erratically moved from once place to another. “What the fuck happened?”

And then, as if they had been triggered into action, the others started reacting and hastily interacting.

“
Fuck... fuck... fuck...” repeated another man.

“
... yes my partner’s hurt... No, no, it’s over... at La Cala Beach entrance, an ambulance...” babbled the policeman on his radio.

“
... fuck... fuck...”

“
He’s dead.”

“
... my God, someone call...”

“
Fuck, he’s dead!”

“
... shit!”

In the middle of the racket, Julio knew that the police officer on the ground had died. His blood had darkened an enormous amount of sand beneath his immobile body.

“
My God...” Alberto, one of his companions, suddenly said. “That was intense.”

“
Ho... ly... shit...” mumbled another, making sure he accentuated each syllable.

“
That son of a bitch...” said Alberto “Damn!”

“
... the mouth, the teeth...” murmured Flavio while he rubbed his growing goatee with disconcerting persistence.

Julio on the other hand, didn
’t yet dare to join his peers, who were gesturing more and more with their comments. Something was worrying him greatly. Something, about the whole scene was completely
wrong
. It screamed, denouncing that
something
wasn’t working the way it should have been, and the feeling was so strong that Julio heard a high pitched noise droning in his ears.

“
But he’d drowned...” Flavio said all of a sudden.

“
How the hell was he drowned, man? You saw that son of a bitch... bet he was a dealer and when he got caught he went ballistic,” said Alberto.

“
Yeah, right smartass. He was dead as a doornail, I swear.”

“
Sure, asshole, we saw how dead he was. You’re nuts—didn’t you see what he did to that cop?” Alberto retorted, visibly angry.

“
Well he was dead, white as a sheet...” Flavio looked at the ground, trying to find some coherence in his own words.

Finally Julio spoke, in a clear voice:
“He
was
dead, but then he wasn’t.”

There were a few moments of silence. In their heads, they weighed Julio
’s words, as you would taste a red chili pepper; afraid to bite, to assimilate the news in all of its meaning, because of what it would imply. Their gazes now turned, concentrating on the scene that was happening on the beach. Most of the men there were talking hurriedly amongst each other. Some of them were bent over the corpse of the falsely drowned man, and a woman with long red hair pointed at the head wound with rapid gestures. The policeman was still talking on the radio, apparently agitated.

“
This is fucking amazing,” Flavio said.

At that moment another patrol car arrived. The two police officers got out of the car and easily descended the rocks that separated them from the beach. There were many gesturing hands, trying to explain what had happened, and as the news spread, more and more inquisitive people came from La Cala and La Araña, two small towns nearby. A few moments later, the patrol car that had just arrived left with its siren on.

“
Look at him,” said Alberto, pointing at the policeman, “he won’t stop talking on the radio.”

Julio looked. The truth is he hadn’t put the device down yet. He listened for some time while moving from place to place, turning quickly.

“
What about the ambulance?” some voices asked him. The policeman pleaded with them to stay calm with his hands.

However, the ambulance never arrived.

Thirty-two minutes later, the amount of people crowding around the scene was overwhelming. Julio, Alberto and Flavio had managed to stay in front, following the developing events with morbid fascination. Around them, the onlookers shared every possible type of story. A lean, gray haired guy, once a truck driver, who lived in one of the old little houses that used to belon
g to the fishermen of La Cala--before tourism reached its peak and permanently changed the town—assured that his brother-in-law, who had been a fisherman his whole life, had once seen several humanoid shapes diving at full speed underneath his boat, on a good night in June, one day after full moon. It was clear to him that there was a population of pale, and bloodless beings without pulses capable of violence beyond comparison, living in the in the abyssal trenches of La Cala. Two chubby ladies who were chattering next to him were positively scandalized that someone, in the middle of that situation, would let himself get carried away by such nonsense.

But the unequivocal and fascinating reality of a drowned man, already pale and bloated by the salty water, who had been officially declared as dead and left underneath a plastic canvas, who had risen to partially devour a police officer, was on the tip of everyone
’s tongue.

Approximately one hour after the police officer died, a wave of screams sprouted from an undetermined spot on the beach, and it relentlessly extended like a foul and furtive fart to all of the people present. The reason was the old plastic canvas that was now covering both bodies, that of the defaced policeman and the false drowned man, was moving. Yet again.

Chapter 3

At Carlos Haya Hospital’s morgue, in Malaga, the main person in charge of the mortuary, Antonio Rodriguez, could appreciate the costs of undocumented immigration differently than other government employees did. At the moment, he was facing a severe work overload due to a shipwreck that had been discovered as the final resting place of six dozen immigrants.