TO BE CONTINUED.... FOURTH

In little more than an hour will be closed at night, for then we should have found a place to hide and go unnoticed for patrols uncontrolled swarming after curfew.
Soldier or not predators who kill anyone who caught him stealing and left him lying in the middle of the street bleeding.

What indoors nobody knows. It is certain that hundreds of thousands of people have died suffocated, starved or any other ailment.
Infinity will have ended their lives at the total lack of hope and lack of notilcias.

They are thoughts that go through my head out of desperation and extreme tiredness.
Luis is charging me, takes me almost in a twinkling in the total absence of forces that allow me to hold me by myself.
I was commissioned to monitor the windows or balconies of all the houses we are passing. At the slightest sign suitable to occupy one have to notify to examine our chances of getting into the housing.

The working middle class neighborhood is not as cautious when it comes to shielding hits. Sturdy doors, bars on the lower floors, alarms that do not work and little else.
Breaking down a door would be difficult if we have the assurance that no occupant inside. Had he could defend us, rightly thinking that we were outlaws. We do not want the situation worse than it is already. 

Time passes and our relentless search for shelter is sterile. There is almost alive circulating in front or behind us. Nobody gets out of homes and those who left are almost all dead from suffocation or killed by others to steal their belongings.
The presence and strength of Luis has prevented anyone has tried to attack us, have looked at us with resentment or hatred when I has assisted with the mask but no one has dared more. 
Not even the evil forces are attacking them, a betrayal or weaker if not for the strong and determined as my friend. Less still when they see the uniform he wears, looking confused not understand how a soldier can walk among them helping an old man.

Wait, I say, I think I see something on that balcony far away.

He stops and poses me gently on a baco in street, look at there, he should.
There is little light and but recent dull rays of sun we see two kids who beckons us, we heard their voices as there are far away, but certainly is making gestures with his arms and hands.

What will happen, I said, it is extremely rare to see two kids making those gestures we approach them.
Stay here a minute, I'll get a little closer to them, to see if I hear what they say.

I dread being alone, it is and has been my life, I can not stand to leave me at the mercy of the waves of my own uncertainty. I know I'm alive thanks to him, I also know that if I leave not live more than a moment. The horror I feel seeing everything around me would give me enough to finally finish me shock.

I do not wish to live, I want to return with my wife, hug her, reassure her with my presence, you are very scared for my absence and desire above all say, sky'm back, still together.

I miss my dear Gatufo too, it is certain that the poor will be unbearable, without relating to anyone, just what you do when I have been absent for a few hours.
Not to mention what it does when you miss a few days, takes refuge on his favorite chair under the table and no longer appears to anything but drink water, go to your sandbox, and eat hardly anything.
After five or six days, it appears sullen and without relating almost anyone, only with Cuca and not too much.

I am alone, motionless, petrified looking everywhere. Louis see which is across the square and goes with difficulty dodging branches and bodies to the vicinity of the house.
He looks up and yells at the kids, who want to question them, and faintly hear their voices already broken from screaming that They say, up, up, you open the front door.

Nothing more, wonder is covering my face, gain ?. We raise, rather, what will happen ?. The strange thing is that once the short conversation cover their faces with individual masks and wait and see what happens.

I winced when I feel a hand touching my back and a hoarse voice, waterfall, telling me, help me. 
Give me something, I'm dying of thirst and hunger. And again repeated, help me.

I feel a shiver run down my spine, I dare not turn his head paralyzed by fear.
The smell has gotten worse, if that were possible, and flushes rot flooded my nostrils.

Again death It is close to me, like in the tunnel when surrounded by bodies waiting to be discovered and massacred on the spot.

With effort and slowly'm turning my body to face the voice that needs my help.
The stench of decay and death hits my nose produciéndome deep
arcades uselessly shaking my body. No food or drink that can throw and spasms occur that I feel a sharp pain in the diaphragm.
At once a terrible headache awakens from its slumber and starts pounding my temples as if blood were to flow from them.
The time, I think, I was longing for dear headache that life has accompanied me.
I try to restrain myself and faced face being emitted groans requesting my help. 
A kind of claw grasps my arm causing me almost hurt, I see that is hand quite dirty skeletal young woman to unimaginable limits. Its stench is awful, pulls back, and barely able to stand holding on to my arm.
Next to it is a small cryo, about four or five years, as it stinks. In a paroxysm of almost madness I imagine they are not living beings are zombies, have risen after spending several dead days and now demand my blood.
Help me, repeating "zombie" with and just a whisper and separating the hand of my arm He says the boy.
He is my son, he says, and I want you take him, you do take charge of the then I die. 
I do not want my child to stay next to the corpse of his mother and watch rots, expecting the same comoer die or nothing to drink. 

I refuse to accept what I am seeing or hearing. It's too horrible to assimilate and my mind is closed to the last tragedy of the human being.
I keep silent, unable to speak, she still speaks and explains that have survived hiding among the corpses piled in the streets. Two or three days ago that they ran out of food, and she has been giving his son the last edible pieces he had left.
I am dying, goes on, and you are the only person who can take my son away from me. Take it and try to survive this horror, please, you are my last hope. I'm already dead and I want to rest on the bench where you sit.


A woman largely gone, I think, I'm also in the past. Did not you see ?, I repeat softly to myself.
Callo, do not say anything, why ?, it is mired in fever and in no time will collapse like the thousands that right now what they're doing. 
It's the end, I think there is no hope for humans or for your world. Probably not deserved it after all.

Achievement sit up, I grabbed the kid by the hand and let his dreadful mother take my place on the wooden bench. 
She lies down immediately, close your eyes and breathe anxiously seeking a particle of oxygen. 
Just like me, I can not go in an hour or two I'll caput like this poor young man that perhaps before was attractive and now is a real specter of death.

With relief I hear the footsteps of my friend who comes to us. He is intrigued by the scene and is sure to be accelerated their pace to see what was happening.

What happens, who is this child and the woman lying there on the bench ocupabas you, tell me, do you know her ?. I have been talking about just now.

He spoke it, I'm scared with his vision, no words to say anything.
It has put to rest there and die. Me, he has entrusted to his son and asked me to stay away from this place. Not want your child to see as die and leave only to follow the same fate.

Now we are four, says Luis, great if you are adding smaller or parents can form a large family.

Sure, you do not think that I'll leave lying there this woman ?.

he would tell you to pick the small and me you let me near her, to rest or die, I can not go. 
I know you can not get to my house and so still, if not me stay beside her and we hariamos company waiting for the end.

Shut up, old man, you're not going to die. Take care of the little, can you give your hand and walk two about eighty meters ?. We have to go to the house where you saw the children, I have been asked to come up, we opened the door.

I do not understand anything he says and I have already forces motivation to understand.

Luis opened his knapsack, he takes out two oxygen masks I spend one I put on my face, the other puts the woman lying lifeless in the bank, then pulls another standing in the child's mouth. Finally he asked me mine and placed it on his face. Luckily, I think, is human and it seems the effort to help is making a dent.

Save the masks, the woman raises bank like a pen and places it on her shoulder. On the other carries the knapsack and starts the march to no where, ah, if the house. 
He grabbed the boy by the hand and dragging will not weigh nearly as almost anything either. He looks downright malnourished and walks like a robot of small size.
A broken doll and blackened dirt and stinking of death. As I guess, sometimes self no smell, but my odor is safe as frightening as this being.

I'm in Hell I think, it can not be worse than this that we are all going, my lungs burned. It seems that as pepper breath and cough nonstop insurance already was raw like that of everyone.

The poor child I'm pulling refuses to walk and I can not charge you up because I  lack the strength. Not even cries, gasps, gasps, coughs and then gasp.

Come on, come on, friends who already have very little says Luis.  ¿Friends ?, I know I'm just as the cryo not aware of anything and the woman is faint on it.

We reached a think building is near the portal and crushes button intercom logically not sound, custom, however, we see that a girl of about ten or perhaps eleven years is huddled near the door. He wears 
an oxygen mask and incorporated around ourselves.
Open the door with difficulty and with a gentle push from my friend we crossed the entrance.
It has to raise the little that refuses to keep going and almost took dragging.
We follow the girl and begins the ordeal of climbing stairs throwing out livers.

She walks lightly, takes his mask, but we can not follow their path and after long breaks finally reached the ground where the house is. There are few stories we have raised, nor do I care, round the floor after passing the doorway I fall.
I crawl and shut the door. Immediately an oxygen mask covering my mouth and revives, crawling up beyond the door, I'm inside the house.

Someone put me on a couch, I surrendered and I sleep, I was already in this world because I'm breathing without my lungs burned, but no, that is short and open my eyes focusing the room and the people occupying the chairs.

No woman is poor ragged woman nor child, I dreamed what ?. It seems that I have not dreamed since my friend informs me that they are lying in another room with a good dose of oxygen in your lungs and some food in their stomachs.

Opposite I have the girl of ten years and another child who looks like her brother, You have five or six years and see them healthy. Pale but not too shabby.

As I hear they have lost their parents and grandfather, they are alone and want to leave the house.

Wait, wait, man. I do not hear anything, please start again I reply to Luis.

Let the child tell you about it, Emiliano, I replica Louis. Laura Better yet, give him a hand and take you know where to become aware of the situation.

Said and done, I sit up, take my hand and leads me to a room where three adults are lying in bed. Dead and well dead by their color and the smell that fills the room.
The girl does not flinch, has seen and suffered too, has been alone with her ​​little brother with this scenario at home.
We left immediately, I can not resist view of those bodies begin to decompose and she's telling me that they are their parents, and grandfather.

His parents decided to leave oxygen reserves for their children, his grandfather came expecting to bring more food also. Wanted to leave the house and the city soon.
The grandfather was a colonel who knew where to find supplies, masks, oxygen, weapons, and a plane that could guide them through Madrid and the rest of Spain, stopping in places where there is some kind of order, remains of a government, and soldiers who abide by the orders of their superiors.

My grandfather was delayed too, says the girl, and my parents decided to give us the masks they had previously received from the, my grandfather lay on the bed and they are there, still not moving.

The grandfather came very sick and not know what was wrong, told us to wait here protected, with more masks, we went out to the terrace and atrajeramos the attention of someone who could help us out of here. We wrote a paper to give the person to come up and will surely help us get out of here with supplies and masks that brought them.
He lay in bed coughing, spitting blood, and then fell asleep shortly . 

My brother and I have left us alone, do not wake our parents are dead, we are very sad and we hope you could help
as my grandfather said.

Callo and listen to the girl, looks ready and confident strangers you just know, I wonder his cool to have facts that any other child had plunged him into silence and despair.
She did not, want to survive, is clear who has to save his brother, he feels responsible for the and that feeling gives maturity.

What old are you? I ask, and she says that eleven to twelve six months.

It is a small, skinny lass, but it may be their year for calm seems.

My brother has six, he tells me, before I asked .

Wonderful, I think, we are already large family and am immediately to rest as I see a chair conducive to hold my weight.

Again I have a family to look after, the idea is gaining ground in my tired brain and revive feelings and past.
I see my three daughters small around me waiting to play 'feet to "and I are filled with the happiness and last.
Three daughters of now there is nothing, no way to communicate with them as each went to a place different and distant.
You are adult women with a life full of personal satisfaction. They chose their place of residence in accordance with their work and now fortunately for them not residing in Madrid.
All this time I confident that they are alive, safe, away from these huge megalopolis in which survival had become a hard labor.

The younger living in a capital city in Northern Europe, close to the forests that still stand providing the necessary oxygen that comes in dribs and drabs.
He was there because he did not like the work I was doing in Madrid and now works at a university Danish biologist.
You may have contracted to study the genetic phenomenon that destroys all flora and is safe with staff of biologists and other scientists engaged in unraveling the enigma that plagues our world.

Most left Madrid after marrying for similar reason. Or your child, or to herself, liked life in the big city and nearly twenty years ago changed its public life for a more quiet on a sparsely populated island with scenery and stunning natural life.

Nothing is known of him occurred there, it is possible that this stinking pollution has not reached them and survive the general cataclysm of a disrespectful technological civilization with their environment.

Our other daughter, median, lost us some time, he chose to be away from everything what he remembered his past life with parents and sisters, but we know he is happy with work and life away from this huge city that never liked.


Buffeted me awake and I hear they call me awake from my sleep sail and I realize that I'm not home.
I begin to remember the nightmare that has become my life and peered at the people around me.

Two small and almost adolescent, a tall, strong, determined, and an unknown woman watching me intently.
Who is this woman looking me boldly and some appreciation in his eyes ?.

It can not be the ragged woman dirty that touched me when I was sitting on the wooden bench waiting for my new friend. Or if it is ?.

do not know how they have done but the dirt has disappeared from his face and changed his clothes by other impeccable. The foul smell around him is not and she looks like a very thin, almost emaciated but attractive girl.

I pay attention to what they say.

Hi how are you ?. I am Lucia and I appreciate what you've done for my son.

What have I done?

Nothing really drag with great effort by the hand and lead him here, where we are now, and where are we ?.

I'm waking up to reality, the place where I have been asleep, of bodies there in the bedroom, the great pain of my lungs, my need for breathing, eating, drinking, and especially my absolute desire to see my wife, hug, kiss , tell her I love more than anything in the world, and never part with him.

The desire to see her as soon as possible passage over all the shortcomings that plague my body and my spirit is opened.

When are we going ?, wonder and try to sit up unnecessarily, I fall on the couch again and despair floods me to feel an old body and worn that it no longer serves to almost nothing.

Quiet, relax, you're going to eat and drink to regain your strength, we have oxygen left over to purify our lungs.

How do you think you've been able to sleep for several hours?
If it were not for the oxygen grandfather of these children brought to them, we'd all be dead already.

He was very sick when she saw her dead son his daughter-board chose to leave, I leave a letter you can then read, is very descriptive of chaos and gives clues to escape the city.
I'm reading a letter from a stranger lies dead lying on a bed in a strange apartment.
This led to person or persons of goodwill and calls on them to take charge of their grandchildren and try to save a dying world.

"Who can read this letter I beg you take care of my two grandchildren and try to save with them.
Here there is no hope, the government by the cabinet crisis there. They have left their posts and flee with their families trying to reach the North.
From Brussels have suggested they do and form a central government in northern Europe try to coordinate the exodus of tens of thousands of Europeans who leave their countries and try to reach as wooded areas.
No no food or oxygen masks for all, not even for one in a thousand people.
Deaths have hundreds of millions of refugees in their homes or in the middle of the streets.
Nothing can be done to remedy or alleviate the suffering of these people .
The world we knew is over. Hopefully a new resurgence of the human being more conscious of respecting the environment in which it lives.
Perhaps the planet's population is reduced to a few million or even less than human beings.
My hope is that TU read this letter you can survive and lead to my two grandchildren with you so that both you are part of the survivors.

Left ten masks and tens of containers of oxygen, with enough food to survive at least a month.
I have also made ​​a plan of the places where you can go for shelter or help. 
I hope they keep working.

I'm military and biologist, was part of the Cabinet Crisis of this country, to be waste I come home from my son too late, and I am meeting dead.
They had made ​​reservations to their children in the hope that I acudiera to rescue them.

I can not stand this hell I'm also sentenced to a cancer that will end my life in a very small amount of time.

I can not save you.
To those who read this letter I beg you to save my grandchildren, they like another small may be the hope of a new world. "

I'm excited and terrified by what he describes this man who has left his last hope in the hands of strangers.

We knew the universe is doomed. No government, no order, no hope for those who remain in this country.
I suspected, but not to this degree, I'm dreaming a nightmare that never ends.

Save the Children asks, how ?. He has made plans with indications of places to go on a theoretical exodus northward, and I wonder if someone stay there or is just a hope that has already vanished.

Come on, come on, I have to leave my partner says. All are ready to leave the house as soon as possible.
We will go first to you, and will collect all northbound trying to save our lives.

Yours, I think, but shut up and sit up straight away.
I have fed, have rested, have breathed fresh air, keep doing it and it seems to have regained some of my strength.
In short time I'll be watching and embracing my dear wife, it is all I want right now.

My senses are saturated, no longer distinguish the stench of death from other equally disgusting odors.
With three bodies inside the house is to spend unimaginable asleep at night, as has happened, as have my other colleagues. Fatigue is devastating and sleep is inevitable and very well come.

We have tried to take turns, worse than good, to monitor anyone or anything unpleasant surprise us.
There has been the silence is sepulchral, ​​just a tremendous shriek breaks death when some of those who escape are covered at night viciously hunted and exterminated at the time.
What is the purpose and murder who is sentenced ?.
Stealing ?. ¿
why ?, I wonder if almost nothing has value in a hellish world that destroys itself and every being that breathes.

It is dawning and we are ready to leave the house.
We masks, weapons, costumes and provisions charged in three carts.
They weigh like lead and have dropped danto drifter the risk of broken stairs and scatter all its contents down the steps.

Despite the din nobody has gone out doors closed and silent. There seems to be nobody within the story or its occupants lay dead and hopeless.

The air is unbreathable I think, I do not dare to check covered my nose and mouth for a comfortable mask that gives me life.
We all carry with their respective deposits of vital oxygen.
Accelerating the pace hoping to get home in a couple of hours at most.
The environment is unrecognizable and can barely get my bearings. Giving away fallen trees and decaying like the piles of corpses and scattered everywhere. 

Walk not detain you, do not look, try not to slip on that infamous dirt covering the ground, saying our friend will drag the car more heavy and takes two brothers hooked his other arm.
The young woman unbelievably recovered drags another car aided by her son.
I dragged the lightest but for me I is loaded with lead.

We are already coming, my heart jumps overjoyed thinking to embrace my wife. I do not want to think that they may not have survived.
A voice tells me that it is impossible to find them alive, but do not listen, the hope still lives and allows me to keep moving my legs.

Finally my neighborhood.
What I see and I'm stepping, does not prevent me think I'm close to home, my home and ET ​​would say, my heart races as the distance is shortened.

I look forward with all my might hug and kiss my wife, but fear grips me when I think that there is little chance of finding her alive.

What ?, girl must have gone with her son without waiting ?. I weigh when I see that your chances are nil. Impossible to cross the city without dying in the attempt.

Never the neighborhood was nice and clean, but I can not tell the difference with those who have gone through.
All are filthy and uninhabitable.

Dust and dirt covers it all, the bodies are piling up everywhere, hampering the passage crushed cars like rotten trunks and branches of trees.
Countless rats proliferate among the corpses, the majority killed by their fellow chewed it move between them.
It is disgusting and fascinating to see such a spectacle, not a horror movie, this is your neighborhood, this is your world, it is the reality of a dying environment.

Man has no place, other species struggle to survive and the food is not going to miss.
Nor will lack of oxygen because once exterminated large mammals, including humans, the remaining air will be enough for insects and vermin thousands scamper before my eyes.

Step on cockroaches for hundreds, others up the leg and reach our face. 
Busy hands we can not shake them off.
At this point no longer matter to me, I always were disgusting and frightening, but now everything is more horrifying than any live insects that crawls down my face or legs.
They did not even have the strength to scare them if I could do it.

I commented, we can only reach the end of this street you are on the right, another left turn and we face the blocks where my house is.

Great, in few minutes we will be there, I respond Luis walking freely dragging heavy truck full of food and weapons.
As manages the walking that way to me is a mystery. Sort obstacles with astonishing agility, raising almost on edge creatures leading hand in his other hand.

We heard voices and noises of footsteps muffled by the shapeless mass covering the ground.
They are renegades whispers, we have to hide, but where ?. There's no hiding from view, just stick to the front and hopefully not turn the street continuing straight.

If tuck the street where we are, almost at the corner, we see no remedy.

I stretched a gun to which I look amazement. It is the first time I have a gun in his hand.
Aim and shoot firm, he says, it is easy, I removed the safety. Just pull the trigger as enfiles the weapon at the subject you want to demolish.

They approach, not many, three or four noise and carry the conversation. They laugh and brag about their exploits. They have paid a couple who wore masks and supplies. They have rope for several days due to fat booty in his possession. It seems satisfied enjoying the pain of others.

Where it came this bunch of thugs who still sow terror among the survivors more poor.
Not even be renegade soldiers, wearing their uniforms torn dead after their owners and even some laughs about it, how smart they are confusing the staff thinking come to his aid.
They come and kill without firing a shot appropriating the belongings that interest them. Masks, oxygen cans, weapons and supplies. Money no longer serves you, just like jewelry or ornaments have value to them.

They are around the corner. The sound of a shot me off the stupor that overwhelms me. One of them jumps back impelled by the force of the bullet passing through it in the chest. Blood jumps into an uncontrollable jet dyeing the dirty green shirt and is lying on his back on the floor. Immediately another shot rings and the second man stumbles and falls flat on his face on the wall. Drain and knees stands still without uttering any exclamation.
Shoot Emiliano, I cry, and without hesitation pointed to closer and pull the trigger. A red rose blooms on the shoulder and turns on itself like a top until it collapses.

The other guy tries to pull a gun uselessly rings fourth shot that shatters the front and driven is stamped against a crumbling tree on the sidewalk.
In an instant four bodies more swell the pile of dead.
I'm speechless and horrified. I killed a human being without hesitation. First and last time, I think, but I am wrong and I will soon have the chance to check.

to be continued....