Read Online The Wanderers by Permuted Press - Free Book Online

packed with enraged specters, and they were fast . Very fast.
    While he lost himself in his thought, the pilot light of one of the vehicles exploded, sending a small cloud of plastic splinters flying. Juan did not know if that marked a path for the others, but all of a sudden, the vehicle was being attacked by a horde of arms that were grabbing, ripping and beating. The car started shaking and rocking dangerously, the sheet metal roof bent and the front windshield exploded.
    The men on the roof were screaming and shooting into the horde of living dead, but Aranda could not tell if their shots were having any effect: there were too many to discern if any of them were falling to the ground. The clamor caused by the crowd’s hoarse, dead rattles deafened the besieged men’s voices.
    There were more shots, more broken glass, and when it seemed that the horror could not go any further, one of the specters rose above the others, triumphant, and climbed up on the dented four-by-four’s roof. It immediately received three shots, all of them in the chest, but they only ripped shreds of cloth off its back when the bullets went through its dead, dried flesh. Juan, terrified by the unrestrained violence of the scene, tightly clutched the shelf that held the bags of chips until his knuckles were white.
    Successive shots reached their objective: the specter fell backwards, arms extended, and disappeared among the group of assailants. However, that one specter had opened the way for the rest, and immediately three zombies jumped on the vehicle to climb up the building’s cornice.
    The men faced the assault the best they could. At some point, Aranda noticed that there were no more shots, probably because they had already exhausted all of their ammunition. They repelled them with kicks and chains, although they were not very effective since this particular enemy felt no pain.
    Aranda observed with certain fascination the terrified grimaces the men’s faces showed. Livid and pale faces at dusk on any given day, in a small town with several thousand inhabitants, all of them living dead. It was only now that they became conscious of the fact that the situation had totally gotten out of hand, and that the zombies would never cease their attack. They did not need to rest, and would not stop to talk, or agree to a truce or surrender. They would go on with superhuman tenacity day and night, showing the same unrestrained fury in their efforts to rip the life out of the bodies of the living men.
    Then an arm that had turned an unhealthy purple color caused by death managed to clutch the ankle of one of the defenders. The man lost his balance and fell backwards to the ground. He screamed like a pig in a slaughterhouse, yet did not receive help until it was too late. The living dead pulled at the man, and before anyone could react, he had already fallen on the vehicle’s roof. There, four stooping figures immediately pounced on him, and there were screams —screams so high-pitched and horrifying that Aranda had to cover his ears tightly to avoid losing control. He had a lump in his chest so hard, that for a minute, he thought that it was breaking in two.
    The rest was just a matter of time, and Aranda made a concerted effort not to look. Suddenly it was tremendously hot and he was sweating profusely; his hands were trembling as if they had life of their own. The specters finally managed to climb up forming a human column, and Aranda could almost see their expressions of rage and the tendons in their necks, as tense as steel cables. The men were not able to defend themselves at all and were taken down and subdued with amazing and voracious speed. Their viscera flew off into the air, and even a leg severed at the thigh, the white bone dyed with blood was as blunt as a sinister scepter. The extremity was reason for dispute among the crowd that waited below, but there was no biting, no zombie was interested in eating the flesh, just in ripping it to