Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (22 page)

“We?”

“I think it would be more
appropriate to use the singular. Because all of you are part of the
same mind, no?”

“Something more or less
like that. It’s much more complex than you can imagine. How did you
realize?”

“Simple analysis. Putting
together one piece of data here and another there. The serum, it
was always the serum. We can’t create a vaccine. The Z virus has
five times more antigenic variables than the common cold. We
decided to change the ecosystem of the virus, the zombie itself. It
was better for us to make a less voracious zombie, more manageable.
Like in the Haitian legend of the Bokor. Friendly zombies, easy to
control. Revolutionary zombies. We changed the chemistry of their
brains to let them develop vital functions such as smell, vision or
touch. The serum manages to mitigate the uncontrollable hunger
present in all the zombies from North America, Europe and Japan. We
think to convert them into manageable beings.”

“As usual, you’re one step
away from the truth but you can’t see the forest for the trees.
What you say about the Z virus is true, everything, but you make
one mistake. You’re looking at it as an antigen or a sickness. And
the Z virus is a thinking being. Not like us, of course, it’s a
virus. But it has all the qualities that define intelligence. In
fact, it’s a higher intelligence that propagates itself through the
virus. Before, you’d have called them organic automata. It’s a good
concept. Until now, you think that it’s a case of a controlling
mind when in truth it’s a common mind. A hive mind. First it was a
parasite of the minds of the bodies. There’s a very practical
reason for that: they’re complete minds, human, but with little
complexity. Empty. Good soldiers to parasitize more complex
organisms: the living. Did you perhaps think that the serum was our
invention? Doctor Álvarez was looking for a vaccine when he was
bitten. But the virus didn’t zombify him. He wasn’t necessary as a
soldier. His biochemical knowledge, as well as his reputation in
the scientific complex, were necessary to develop a new phase of
the initial plan. To achieve a slow and subtle
zombification.”

“When did they zombify
you?”

“In the director’s office.
I suppose that I began to be a problem for them and they decided to
silence me. They used the new aerosol version of the virus-serum in
the same gas. But their plan backfired. The hive mind allowed me to
retain my individuality in exchange for being able to use my
trained brain.”

“You planned the
biological leak didn’t you?”

“We should have called it
a mass breakout. There were hundreds of zombies prisoner there. I
could communicate with all of them, feel their pain, their
frustration. Did you know that they feel everything just as we do?
Only they don’t communicate like humans do. They speak directly
with the Mind, but they’re as human as we are.”

“As human as an ant
performing its job.”

“As human as any anonymous
worker in any part of the world. As human as any Cuban who looks to
the newspaper to know what he should think today. The Hive Mind is
not the end, it’s only a more efficient form of civilization. Look
at it like a highly evolved form of communism. A world without war,
without crime, without property. Those who strived for communism
placed their trust in the altruism of its leaders. Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Fidel Castro... all
of them became dictators, all of them were blinded by power.
Because they were human. But the Hive Mind is more than human. It’s
alien. It travels through the cosmos in strains of the Z virus and
when it falls, on meteorites, onto a planet with intelligent life,
it brings peace to its inhabitants.”

“It colonizes
them.”

“It leads them to utopia.
To true communism. What neither Karl Marx nor Frederick Engels
could achieve on Earth. Soon this crisis will end, all wars will
end, delinquency, police, money. Little by little, the world will
become communist.”

“What is the
plan?”

“The same plan that I
imagine those first bacteria who breathed oxygen in that primitive
atmosphere had, surrounded by enemies who breathed non-oxidized air
had. What we humans erroneously tried to do when we stopped just
weeping over the trees in the Amazon and four dead pandas in China:
terraform the planet. Force the rest of the species to adapt. The Z
virus, or as I should say the Z hive, just took the lead in the
evolutionary race. The human race has just fallen to the level of
wolves. There are still some in Europe and the United States who
feel safe in their woods and bite the owners of the world. We are
like the dogs: we evolve, we’ll survive just as we survived the
Revolution, the Socialist Block and the Special Period. China is
already a zombie nation. Its citizens are ready to assimilate the
Hive Mind better than anyone. Cuba is the next step. Then, little
by little, and thanks to the exportation of the serum, the borders
of countries will disappear.”

“That’s
horrible.”

“You know better than I do
that it’s not. You know that it doesn’t entail the eradication of
humanity. Just eradicating its defects.”

She leaned forward. The
glimmer of intelligence shone in her eyes again. She was the María
I knew, intelligent and lovely. So intelligent and lovely that I’d
never dared to touch her, or to kiss her. Now she stares at me,
like she’s never looked at me before, as I’ve always wanted her to
look at me. As if she knew what I was thinking.

“This is a gift from me.
I’ve already spoken with the Hive Mind and it’s promised me that it
won’t let you meld with it like I did. It will just let you see the
world through the eyes of all the zombies of the world. But the
final decision will always be yours. In this, the Hive Mind is also
superior to Marxism-Leninism.”

And she kissed me.

As I’d always wanted her
to kiss me.

And then she bit me.

As I was afraid she would.

XI

Three months have passed
since the attack of the zombie mosquito inspector. We no longer
bathe. We only emerge to pick up supplies and the meat ration. We
move slowly. We speak in monosyllables. Just like the clerk at the
store, the butcher, the police, and the neighborhood delinquents.
They’re all zombies now. Or they pretend to be zombies to survive,
as we do.

We never open the door.

Not even to the mosquito inspectors, or the
fumigators, not even to the police if they were to show up. At
night, we sleep with the windows closed and all the doors locked.
Now, not even the dogs bark at night.

Panchito says that things
must work better somewhere. Otherwise, there’d be no electricity,
gas, or running water. Maybe he’s right and someone is trying to
contain this epidemic. Personally, I don’t think so. In this
country, things have always worked the same way: by inertia and
pure miracle. The bodies of the zombies in the thermoelectric
plants, or the aqueducts, remember their functions from when they
were alive. They pretend to be humans while mechanically performing
the same job as ever. I suppose that some day there will be truly
complex failures and they won’t be able to fix them. Then darkness
will come. And hunger.

But that’s already
happened before.

Abuela is glued to the
television. She’d always liked it, but now she searches desperately
for some face that’s not robotic. The announcers repeat the news
about imperialism, the sister nation of Venezuela and the Five
Heroes. All with the same monotone of the public health inspector
who came three months ago. She thinks that those up above don’t
know anything about this silent invasion. She thinks that that’s
why they’ve not taken measures against it. “
But at some moment Fidel will find out, and then those
zombies will see...
” she says, while she
clutches the remote control and switches channels
compulsively.

According to Panchito, by
now everyone must be zombies. The leaders, the generals, the
members of the State Council, the Ministers, everyone. That’s why
Fidel says he’s sick. He can’t make speeches of longer than one
hour because he’s a zombie.

Mama, for her part,
continues to claim that everything is the fault of the Yankees.
“
They’ll wind up dropping an atomic bomb
on us like they’ve always wanted to
,” she
tells us. “
The virus will just give them a
justification now that we’re all zombies.
”

In my opinion, it doesn’t
matter if the bosses are dead or not. The zombies are good for
everyone. They don’t complain about working extra hours, they don’t
protest about the crammed buses, they don’t need stimulus payments
in dollars, they don’t write dissident blogs, they don’t mutiny.
Deep down this country, in some way, has always been a zombie
country. At least it’s always functioned like one. We create and we
accept the mechanism. The Z virus, as well as the CIDEZ serum, only
created the ideal people to survive here.

And the Yankees? The United Nations? The
World Health Organization? Those already gave us up for impossible
before the first zombie. They limited themselves to watching our TV
programs and imagining that everything was going well for us. Here
there are no shootouts, no states of emergency, everyone is happy
before the cameras and the challenges set by the Party are always
met.

María was right. The Hive
Mind didn’t let me merge with it. I can only know what is happening
in the world. Little by little, things are changing and chaos is
disappearing.

I no longer want to go to
Spain. I’m afraid to find that it’s the same there as it is here.
The serum formula was shared with the researchers of the University
of Malaga. They decided to develop a commercial version of the
serum. They sold it to private companies that distributed it
throughout Europe. The worst of everything is that they paid us for
it and we use the money to create stupid campaigns against the
Yankees.

The United States are no longer the future.
Nor Russia, nor China. The Z virus is the future. The end so
foretold in 2012. The death of humanity at the hands of a Hive
Mind, of an intelligent virus. But our serum gave us a change to
survive. To convince that Hive Mind of coexisting with us in a
Happy World like in Cuba.

And those private companies in Andalusia are
creating that New Order. An orderly and organized world where
humans live in harmony with the Z factor, without annihilating one
another. A world where the individual is no longer necessary.

Only the common good.

The hive.

I’ve heard news about
autonomous communities in Andalusia where there are no zombies in
the streets. Communities that live outside the anarchy that reigns
throughout Europe. People are starting to emigrate there. The old
conservative right doesn’t care if these communities are
suspiciously similar to the utopian dream of Marxism-Leninism. Like
all humans, they only want to survive. To move to where there are
no zombies. To live under the shadow of those who guarantee the
safety of their children. It doesn’t matter if the communists are
the ones who can guarantee this. It’s all part of the same
plan.

I’ve burned my exit visa
and my passport. I don’t want to board an airplane and land in an
Andalusian Revolution. With Committees for the Defense of the
Revolution, Territorial Militias and Revolutionary National Police
forces. With political posters and the empty glances of passersby.
Without bodies half-rotting in the street trying to bite whoever is
nearby. A zombified socialist society. A political model imported
from the Caribbean to free them all from extinction.

It seems that finally, something of Cuba has
conquered Spain.

I have no doubt that we’re
living in a Zombie Period. The next stage in evolution, as María
would say.

I observe abuela watching
the December 2 parade. The living dead march, one after the other,
with their camouflage uniforms, Kalashnikov weapons, and Vilma
visors. They don’t tire, they don’t sweat, and they never fall out
of step. They’re as perfect as Hitler’s troops. Too perfect for a
disorganized island in the middle of the tropics. We Cubans have
never done anything with such precision. One could say that this is
our moment of glory.

There, under the tribune where the stars of
the generals shine, right beside the great statue of José Martí,
there is a white sign with large red letters, where one read the
sentence that fate offers us:

ALONGSIDE THE ZOMBIES, CONSTRUCTING
SOCIALISM.

Original Title: Recuerdos de un
País Zombi

Translated by Lawrence Schimel