Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End az-1 Read online

  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?

  ENTRY 16

  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.

  ENTRY 17: BOILING POINT

  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 frien
d 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.

  ENTRY 18

  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.

  ENTRY 19

  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, An
gela 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.

  ENTRY 20: AT THE GATES OF HELL

  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?