The Wanderers (28 page)

“
See you later,” Isabel said, winking at him.

“
It’s been a pleasure, Jaime,” said the Moroccan.

Jaime nodded almost imperceptibly, and he slid into the soft inner world of unconsciousness. Now that he was calm about the helicopter issue, he fell asleep thinking that it was going to be a very refreshing sleep.

Moses, Isabel and Aranda exited to the hall, and walked the way back to the main building.

“
He looks pretty good,” commented Moses.

“
He’s recovering, thank God,” said Aranda. “He’s still young. I was worried that he would have some internal injury that would complicate things. As you know, we don’t have much equipment, although Dr. Rodriguez does what he can.”

“
He’s doing a good job. Where is he today? I haven’t seen him all day.”

“
He’s working on something I asked of him,” he said, and Moses felt that it was an evasive answer to a question that he did not want to give many details about. “But now we had better get to sleep, it has been a very long day, and tomorrow we have things to resolve.”

They said goodbye, wishing each other a good night and Moses and Isabel went to the bedrooms that they had been assigned. Although they were small and lacked windows, they both fell deeply asleep by the time their heads hit the pillows.

Around ten the next morning, Aranda called a meeting with most of the members of the Community. He opened by informing them all that both Jaime and Dozer were out of danger and clearly recovering, which started a round of applause among all of those present. Afterwards, Moses was invited to stand up on the rudimentary podium, from which he related his story. He spoke to them of his house on Beatas Street, of how they had survived the infection, and he spoke of Cripple, making an effort to contain his emotions. When it was time to speak of the mysterious priest, Isabel took his place and told them of how he had expulsed them from their refuge in the Plaza de la Merced, and how he had ambushed them close to el Corte Ingles. Her story kept the audience in a shocked silence; some listened with both hands covering their mouths. When she had finished, there were many who got up to give them both a hug, while the room was filled with the murmur of their whispers.

Aranda joined them at the podium, and he spoke to the audience with a serious expression on his face.

“
I think it’s clear to all of us,” he said, “that that priest constitutes a serious danger to the survival of this Community. We’re talking about a man who walks among the dead, and that seems to be dedicated to the repugnant task of finishing off the survivors of this catastrophe. From what we have heard, his motives are a fallacy: he seems to believe that we are living the Final Judgment, and desires more than anything else to drag any survivors out of their hiding places to deliver them to his army of resuscitated people. This brings us to the only possible conclusion: we are dealing with a lunatic, a madman, which turns him into an even more dangerous enemy.”

The group reacted with a murmur that ran over the rows of seats like a wave. Aranda pleaded silence, solemnly lifting a hand.

“
We should have a great respect for this enemy. He can search for us, and he will, and he can find us, of course. It’s just a matter of time. He can move wherever he wants, without restrictions. He can access everywhere; obtain the equipment he needs. I want you to realize that, while we speak, our priest could be underneath us, in the sewers, placing some of his explosives.”

That comment awakened a new wave of comments among those present, but Aranda kept speaking.

“
It is imperative that we double the number of men dedicated to the guard posts. A couple of shifts keeping an eye on the living dead at the gates are not enough anymore. This is something new.”

There were several exclamations of approval, including a few cheers.

“
Also, I would like to propose a committee to be in charge of thinking of a plan to search for and capture this man. This committee will be freed from any other task or responsibility in the organization of the Community.” Again, there was a generalized and immediate affirmative reaction.

“
I would like to emphasize and for you to understand the word ‘capture’,” he continued saying. “Until now I have referred to this man as ‘the enemy’, but I would like to make clear that maybe we are dealing with a sick, disturbed man who has been alienated by the events that have transformed the world in the past months.” There were low murmurs again. “This being said, I also consider that it is essential to have this man be brought here alive so that Dr. Rodriguez can examine him, for another motive. If there is any reason... of a chemical nature, or a reproducible physical explanation through which we can find out how he does his little trick of going unnoticed among those zombies, I think we would all like to know about it.”

This time, the room erupted in applause, which went on for quite some time.

The meeting went on for almost two more hours, including a question and answer session. Most of the questions were directed at Moses and Isabel, and practically all of them were about the disturbing priest. A thick man named Alan asked if they thought the man in the cassock could be, in fact, a zombie with particular abilities, to which Moses answered that, he frankly did not believe so. Another girl wanted to know if they had been able to notice if the priest carried some device, or used some appliance, and she argued her theory about sound and ultrasound frequencies, but no one could answer that. There was also no lack of theological questions about the priest’s motives, which Aranda was able to discreetly nip in the bud.

For the committee in charge of development of the search and capture plan, the ‘death squad’ was first elected, which included Moses and a couple of Community members who had stood out because of their ideas when the encampment was founded. Aranda personally offered to supervise the committee’s advances and to keep the Community informed about any significant advance that might be carried out, which was considered an excellent idea by them all. Isabel, on the other hand, preferred to stay out of it all.

For the extra guard posts, now including a significant portion of the sewer system, they decided to establish rotating shifts that would involve them all, which was unanimously approved.

When the meeting ended, Isabel timidly approached the person in charge of farming the vegetable garden that they had reconditioned in the east part of the encampment, and asked if she could be allowed to work the land. She was told that they would be more than happy to give her an occupation in that area.

Isabel, without intending to do so, found herself giving him a grateful hug.

Chapter 30

It was not even eight in the morning, and Juan Aranda had already been a occupied by his daily routine for some time. It was always the same activities: a quick breakfast, a couple of laps on the athletics track and a swim in the pool; more for hygiene than pure physical exercise. He also looked over the activity bulletin board, where there were daily tasks mixed with additional activities, like the meeting he had with Dr. Rodriguez.

With considerable effort, they had managed to take twelve wanderers to the infirmary room where Rodriguez had set up an improvised laboratory. All of them had questions, and they expected that a medical examination of why the dead had come back to life would help them to understand and deal with the problem. Why such unmeasured violence? Why did they only attack the living?

Juan reached the infirmary punctually. The unequivocal smell of a morgue
—the mixture of chemicals, cleaning products, and the sickly-sweet and concentrated smell of the bodies exposed for examination – immediately assaulted him. Rodriguez handed him an anesthesia mask, which he put on right away.

They approached the operation table, where one of the cadavers lay; an older man with a horrible expression on his immobile face, partially covered by a filthy sheet. Underneath his side, dense ichors oozed out, of a faded red color, with yellow corpuscles.

“
This is nasty, Antonio,” commented Aranda, taking two steps back to move away from the cadaver.

“
Yes. I’d love to have my operating room, my instruments, my refrigeration room, but I do the best I can. Let’s hurry, this cadaver has to go this very morning; it’s beginning to emit harmful vapors.”

“
So, what do we have?”

“
Let’s see,” said Rodriguez, “a few things, actually. I’ve been able to do some tests, and I’ve practiced forensic examinations on all of the bodies we’ve obtained. They all have things in common. The brain, for example. In each case, the cerebral mass suffered severe atrophy, similar to what could be found in a brain days after natural death by lack of irrigation. What was really curious was that I was able to localize traces of Pick cells in every case.”

“
Pick cells?” Aranda said.

“
Yes. Pick’s disease is very well known, but very rare. People who have the disease have anomalous substances, called Pick bodies or Pick cells, inside the neurons of the damaged areas of their brains. These bodies contain an abnormal form of a protein called tau, which is found in every neuron. Tau proteins are also very involved in the apparition of the most extended and well known diseases like Alzheimer’s.”

“
What happens to people who contract the disease?” Aranda wanted to know.

“
The disease is degenerative. As time passes, the tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes begin to shrink. Symptoms like changes in behavior, speech problems and deterioration of intellectual capacity gradually occur, but they continue to worsen. What I want to stress with all of this is that Pick’s disease affects at most, only seven percent of the world’s population, so the probability of finding this protein in each and every one of the cadavers I’ve examined is absolutely significant.”

“
How many cadavers have you been able to examine, in total?” Aranda interrupted.

“
Twelve, counting the dismembered atrocity we obtained last week.”

“
I understand.”

“
But wait, I’ve found many more things. A common denominator I have been able to find is a pathogenic agent in their blood. It is... it’s an incredible medical discovery, Juan,” he said, visibly excited. “This agent uses the central lobe’s cells to reproduce itself, although I don’t have enough material at my disposal to find out
how
it does it. What is clear to me, though, is that when they reproduce, they destroy those cells. During the process, this causes all of the bodily functions to cease. Completely.”

“
The coma,” said Aranda, more to himself than as an answer.

“
Exactly. But it’s more than that. Someone in that state could be clinically ruled as dead. I would sign a certificate like that without a doubt: there’s no consciousness, no pulse, no breathing or brain activity. But the brain remains alive, lethargic, while the agent rapidly mutates the cells, very similar to the explosion of life that is the moment in which a human ovum is fertilized and begins the cell duplication. There is nothing similar in the whole evolutionary process of an organism, nor does there exist any virus that produces similar alterations at that speed. At least none of the big ones do: Ebola, Tularemia, Brucellosis...”

“
Wait a second, what do you mean by alterations, what mutates the cells?”

Rodriguez smiled at him broadly. “That’s the incredible part. Naturally I haven’t been able to see how the process unfolds... it would be interesting to view the
zombification
phase, or whatever you’d like to call it. But I do know that the cells that you can extract from those cadavers and examine with a conventional microscope are essentially different from human cells in one aspect.”

Aranda remained silent, expectant.

“
They don’t need oxygen. They completely dispense with that essential component of life.”

Aranda looked him in the eyes, as if he were waiting for the doctor to burst into laughter, announcing the end of a joke.

“
But Antonio, in school we were taught that, when they didn’t receive the adequate amount of oxygen, that cells begin to deteriorate significantly, and also that when they don’t receive oxygen for a prolonged time, they essentially died.”

“
Correct,” Rodriguez said, attentively. It was obvious that he was enjoying the conversation. “They die, without the possibility of regeneration. But these cells don’t. They have a nucleus that’s completely different from anything I’ve ever seen before, so complex and specialized that it’s horrifying. When I observed them through the rudimentary microscope we have, they made me think of extremophiles—have you ever heard of them?”

“
No, not really.”

“
About thirty years ago,” continued the doctor, “it was believed that the necessary conditions for life, such as temperature and humidity, were very strict, too much, in fact, to think that the possibility of life on other planets could be admitted. Until they discovered the extremophiles. That discovery helped NASA to guarantee themselves a budgetary starting point that was enough for them to send probes to Mars. But let’s not get off topic, extremophiles are no more than organisms that prosper in extreme conditions. There are several cases on Earth. Some of these organisms live inside black ice, at temperatures that would immediately collapse any living being on the Earth just by the simple process of instant freezing, and others live in the boiling water that surrounds the geysers on the bottom of the ocean. There are those that live in communities far away from the sunlight and obtain energy from chemical sources. They’ve even found bacteria at a mile from the outer crust that turn hydrogen into water. Extremophiles back the idea that life can occur in a great number of conditions. Well then,” he took in air, thought to himself for a few seconds without taking his eyes off the cadaver and continued. “my particular theory is that we’re talking about an extremophilic pathogenic agent. You should see its nucleus, not even in the case of eukaryotic cells-”