Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End

Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End Read Online Free PDF
Author: Manel Loureiro
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 tocancel 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
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