The Wanderers by Permuted Press

outwards and lazily fluttered in the breeze, and others intact, but with dried blood on their streaked windowpanes. And of course there were zombies, more living dead than he had ever seen together in all of Rincon de la Victoria.
    Aranda stopped the motor for a moment and remained impassive for a few moments. He had expected something else, that perhaps Malaga could be a stronghold, where the survivors would have controlled the madness of the zombie infection. What had happened to them? What had happened to the police, the officers, the Army, the Spanish Legion? All of the strong men and women who lived in Malaga? Did they all succumb? How? Why? Was it so hard to resist ? He had made it.
    He felt sad and angry at the same time. The sound of the water rhythmically hitting the boat’s hull brought him memories of better times, when everything was normal. If only he had paid more attention to life when it used to surround him, he told himself, while the guttural cries of the specters mixed with the lulled sound of the sea, far away yet omnipresent.
    He shook his head to rid himself of those sad and unproductive thoughts. He had to think what he was going to do next. Malaga was a big city, surely there were survivors like him; people who had held out in their homes, or maybe in a civic center, a police station, or a department store. Obviously, disembarking at the port was impossible, so he decided to continue a little more to the west until he found a more hospitable area. Feeling better about the situation, he readied himself to start the motor.
    Tock.
    Something had collided with the hull, a sharp knock on the prow. He turned, looking overboard. It was some sort of a dark gray algae with white streaks, quite unpleasant to look at, and it floated next to the boat. He had only found one paddle in the boat held by rubber bands, so he took it out to push the thing away and avoid it becoming entangled in the propeller.
    He sank the paddle in the water and tried to push the thing away from the boat, but to his surprise, he discovered something hard right beneath the algae. The resistance the object made repulsed him, so he pushed hard.
    Then the alga turned to a side. Underneath it there was something so white it looked almost larval. It continued turning ... and a pair of sunken, glassy eyes appeared. It was hair , not algae. It was a drowned man, a cadaver.
    Aranda muffled a scream, more out of repulsion than surprise or fright. The fish had been nibbling on that monstrously swollen face, and the lips had been eaten away. The immaculate teeth protruded like iron chisels.
    The drowned man reacted instantly to the visual stimulus he had before him. A gaunt hand rose to the surface and grabbed the paddle. Aranda let go of it instinctively, disgusted, and ran towards the motor. When he was activating the switch, he noticed the surface of the sea: there were several bumps, floating bodies, most of them face-down in the water, and others, half submerged, moved by the tide.
    Aranda started the motor and moved away, leaving the drowned man tightly clutching the paddle. While he was exiting the bank of cadavers running adrift, he wondered how many of those things would stay asleep , submerged at the bottom of the sea with salt water filling their lungs, incapable of dying, softly rocked by the tides. And what happened to the fish that bit the cadavers? Would they become infected? What effect would it have on the health of the oceans, in the long run? Would it still be possible to eat sea products?
    Still absorbed in that train of thought, Aranda passed before the Antonio Machado promenade that began at the Malaga port and stretched towards the west. That part of the city, at least the coastal area, was relatively new, and due to the real estate crisis that had affected the whole country, most of the apartments were still empty. This fact was also noticeable in the streets, where the number of wanderers was derisory.
    He stopped the motor