What immense darkness.

 

Amid the initial confusion… we thought it was some violent madman. We found ourselves in the midst of all the people going crazy, wanting to escape the gunshots we heard. Our house was no longer safe, we were forced to leave in the chaos. To think those were our people resisting…

That's when that “crazy guy” grabbed a person and threw him more than five meters in the air. It was horrible, he looked like some dummy, something unreal, moving arms and legs everywhere in the air, spinning. The victim touched the ground, falling on his neck, an awful sound. Then I realized that the poor devil was not even alive when he flew away, and that gravity and momentum were taking care of moving his limbs: he was missing a piece of his face, which had been bitten off.

I know it was bitten off, because…

The madman came for me, my mother pushed me to the side, and he managed to take a piece out of her arm with the momentum of his crazed run. My mother didn't even flinch, she put two revolver bullets in his head with her wounded arm when the monster tried to turn around. The thing stopped moving.

And the people around stopped too to watch, silence in that street, only the screaming and gunshots from afar were heard. I didn't see the body of that thing, I was only worried about my mother. Soda was trying to help her despite his tears.

Her arm was not responding anymore. She felt cold, she told us, as if she had been given an intramuscular injection. Something coursing through her veins. She mumbled something about infection, the dirtiness of the human mouth.

“The bite. It was a second, but I felt…”

Then her arm did respond. Now she felt neither pain nor cold, only heat, an unbearable heat, and tingling in the wound. She sounded so…

The missing flesh on her arm grew back again.

And the dead man without a face woke up too.

“I love you both, more than anything in this world. I'm never going to stop loving you, ever. Run.”

 

“Ceibo, are you okay?”

 

She took the bite for me.

 

“Ceibo...”

 

Run she said...

What’s the point?

 

 

I hear a little sobbing. He tries to hide it to not put us in danger!

“No! Don't cry, forgive me. I'm fine. We're fine.” Even in surprise, I speak softly too, at least that has been burned into my brain.

That's right, we're fine and that's all that matters.

I don't know if it's the lack of sleep, the darkness that excites the imagination, the mind that wants to fill the absence of something. I'd like to sleep under this table. But if I do I'll never wake up. I cannot betray my brother like that.

We have this place to ourselves, if only for a little while. We come out of the darkness beneath the sweet bread stand.

Our destination is the south. Away from the metropolis. There Soda can survive. At least in the south, with fewer people, there are fewer of these things. From there he should head east, to warmer areas. If it is snowing in almost summer, winter will be unforgivable. We are in a mountain range area. We freeze our asses off here.

But first and foremost, we are in a big Chinese supermarket. I have to get him out of this city, or the fire will consume him, that is the priority.

We feel our way to the hunting section near the entrance. I know what I want to get, that little gizmo that lets you see in the dark, the monocular thing to help you in your hunt. I get it. It’s easy to spot since the moonlight hits these parts a little bit, but that also means it’s easier to see us from outside. We go hide in the dark once more, now aided by that monocular thingy.

Looking through the gizmo everything becomes more familiar, if a bit uncanny. A place made to be full of people, now in darkness and empty, devoid of what makes it so special, like that old aesthetic from when my mom was but a child that was getting popular again, the one about odd “familiar” places you’ve actually never been in. But since it was more a Yanqui thing than anything, it was censored too and we could not reference it anymore.

I thought the chaos was going to be more colorful, with items of all kinds lying all over the floor. But no, the market is totally tidy, except for the broken glass doors. I should have known, it was not even looted. No one had the time. Only the shelves are a little empty, but that is explained by the crisis, inflation, and blockades, not by scavenging. Only the hunting section’s a bit fuller, but that’s because no one could afford shit from there. No bullets, though I found something interesting.

I guide Soda with the thing, never splitting up. We make it to the bathrooms, which we need. There is even toilet paper, more here than in the stalls. Shit, I'm going to miss the bidets with all my heart. He who does not know God prays to any saint. But well, it's better than walking around with everything dirty. And it's not just for the feel of it, infections back there and bam, death. Everything kills you in this life.

We have food to restock. Better yet, we have even more little mushrooms, we take them out of the gondola, Soda puts them in his backpack, looking a little happier now. What we don't have are medical supplies. Too bad they made it illegal to sell drugs in supermarkets, but you can't have everything in this life, and I wouldn't even know what to take. I wish I listened more to mom when she talked about her work.

What we don't have either is heat, we're freezing in here.

 

It's going to get colder and colder. Maybe with this, the poles will recover their ice.

 

“Soda, we're going to have to move,” I say to my brother. I wake myself up with my low voice like this. I can’t keep drifting.

My little brother nods. He looks up curiously at the gondola with the sweet cookies in front of us.

“Why don't you grab one? We have room.”

“Tooth decay. We can't afford to have any cavities. There are no dentists anywhere. An infection like that, so close to the head, to the brain, can kill you.”

It hadn't even crossed my mind. God willing our wisdom teeth won't fuck us up when they start growing in. He is thinking about the future… I should too. I make space in my backpack, accommodating that clothing change I hastily took from home. I grab some sanitary napkins. Something so commonplace becomes a matter of survival. One careless mistake, one urinary tract infection, death.

What’s th… Fuck off.

We need to take the opportunity to look around a little more.

In what would come to be the western part of the market, behind the hunting section, there's a large counter. Whoever worked there must have felt trapped, with that thing coming out of the wall, with just a little space in one side that you have to lift to get there. It's the technology section. I’m surprised I’ve never noticed its details before. Not that we could afford shit anyway, so no point in ogling. Soda's cell phone is at fifteen percent. Mine went out, I turned it back on and it's now at five percent. As these are old cell phones, they are Yanqui cell phones. Mom bought them with a lot of effort before the big commercial blockades between powers and their lapdogs began. The few ones in this place are all Chinese, no battery is the same as the one we need.

To the south, at the back of the market is a half-open door that reveals a room. The only light is from the moonlight coming through a small window where we can make out shiny crystals in its frame, like the teeth of a shark. The dim light illuminates barely the desk and a computer on it, where someone must have cursed their luck filling out countless spreadsheets once upon a time… I see, that's where the monster from earlier came from.

I tell Soda to wait at the door, I scan it with the monocular and step in. Avoiding the broken glass on the floor, I step on the desk and peek outside. We can make it out of there to our little house, our last emergency stop if we need it before the highway. It’s only a couple of blocks away in a straight line. Or we could. Where a monster comes, there can be many more. Beasts are lurking, standing there looking at the sky.

Can we make a run for it? No, impossible, unless we have a head-start, is like trying to outrun a bear. “Sure, I can make it! How fast can that thing be?” Then you’re mauled.

Carajo. The clock is still ticking, what about the front? Our target is now the opposite side, we approach once again to the entrance of the market, I order Soda to stay a few steps behind me so he stays in the dark, I give him my rifle so he can hold it. I crawl across the cold floor. I lift my head peeking from behind the cash registers as cautiously as I can with my little device. They are just standing there, staring at the moon too, just as I saw many staring at the sun behind the window of our earlier ephemeral shelter once. They wait to hear a noise to move forward with those giant strides of theirs.

Many of the monsters have stayed around, they have us surrounded. Damn it! Why not go to the noise?  Did they come late to the party and lost interest? That could give me a margin to shoot without having the entire city on top of us… only half of it. They don't all seem to act the same. Or maybe they are not attracted to the same types of sounds? I don’t really want to test these things.

Puta madre… What do we do? Being in a safe place has made me relax too much. We don't have much time. At this rate...

I see the vehicles parked there too. We can't risk getting into one and trying to get it started. First and foremost, I have no idea how to do it without the keys. Second, just the sound of an engine would be enough to have the world on top of us. But we need a car, how much time do we have left? It's not as if we are Speedy Gonzalez to race on the highway. If only one of them had the keys in the ignition...

 

I know how to drive, mom taught me, although I'm two years away from getting a driver's license. Always one step ahead, that woman. We had to sell that car to make ends meet some time ago. Gasoline isn’t cheap and it’s scarce, with the Yanquis pressuring their allies to withhold commerce with us.

She taught me how to drive as she taught me how to shoot. Funny how bullets were more affordable than food back then, props of being an arms factory for the allies. Not that they let us commerce with their stuff, it’s just that the black market thrives with a few things that get “lost” here and there. Now everything is hard to buy, though.

 

Fuck! Focus.

I almost fall asleep again, I’m still looking through my thingy that lets me see in the dark. A small body catches my attention, it's a dog walking around the streets. It's not a purebred dog, it's a very third-world dog, as dogs should be. One of those that are half wolf-half chupacabra. None of those dogs that have trouble breathing because they are all deformed or sneeze and break a rib. These don't die, even if they eat a whole chocolate cake after being hit by a truck twice.

He is not attacked by these things. He just walks back and forth, looks, smells, even licks the legs of some monsters. They don't bat an eye, they don't care about a dog. I thought they were going to attack anything that moved. They just stare and stare at the moon.

I turn to my brother, we go a little deeper into the market.

“We have less than half an hour,” he says.

Less than an hour before the sun comes up. Before it's all over.

Shit… I…

“Relax, we've got a chance, more with this thing,” I say.

I let him feel the night monocular. I always saw it when I came to the market, it's been there for years. No one could buy it, it's worth about eight basic food baskets, way more than what mom makes... made as an emergency room doctor working for a year without holidays. It's possibly the most expensive object I've ever held in my hands. Without this thing, we couldn't see shit.

He feels its details, puts in on his eye, looks around. At least he seems a little bit livelier… I need to get him out of this mess, I can’t let him die here.

Fuck… fuck… less than half an hour…

I touch the big machete sticking out of my backpack that we found in the hunting section too, helps me ease a bit. Though, it’s more of a tool type of thing. I don't plan on hitting any monsters with this, it's impossible to kill any of those things stealthily. Going through a skull with a blade is an impossible task without getting decapitated with a slap first. Not one of those "rip your head off" types of decapitations. It would be more of a “destroy your medulla oblongata” type of decapitation.

Yes, we have a chance still. We have a chance. We need to get to a car… I’ll make it work somehow. But first, we need to make a distraction, it’s our only hope to escape. That settles it, we need to move now, taking advantage of the—

A barking sound echoes in the place.

Stealth is no longer an option.