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scratched at the air and tried to bite even where there was nothing.
    Thus, their momentum quickly flagged. Each time, it was harder to lift his arm with the desk lamp and deliver his enemies severe blows. The man with the chair was also showing signs of exhaustion, and the slow yet firm conviction that none of it would get them anywhere was parching their spirits. The dead, an arrhythmic wave of fatality, were now filling up the stairs.
    Finally, a deformed claw ripped the clothes near the shoulder of the man holding the chair, and the chair fell to a side. Antonio looked at him; his face wore a painful grimace. They tugged, dragging him towards the crowd, and he disappeared in a maelstrom of arms and teeth. Antonio fled. He took his sanity and left, running down the hall as he had never run before. On the way, he stepped on a fallen body, but he could not even recall later on if it was a live person or if it was a wasted body. He escaped from the group of assailants, and he soon discovered himself to be inside a little office at the end of the floor. He did not close the door that had an enormous glass window on its upper half, and instead decided to hide behind the office desk. He stayed there for many hours while it all went on: blood-curdling screams, wails, and other clucking sounds he could not identify. Someone, a woman, was crying for help in a room close to his, but even that sound was diluted in the end.
     

Chapter 8
    Malaga, as did countless other cities in the world, rapidly succumbed to the catastrophe. It is said that war produces heroes, but in those first days of Infection, the prevention and rescue protocols of the National Police Corps, the Armed Forces, and the different Emergency and Civil Protection services were not of much use, most precisely due to human nature.
    When the first cases emerged, they quickly overcame the police force’s availability. Although there naturally existed protocols for a NBC (Nuclear Bacteriological Chemical) Defense, no one was really prepared to face that kind of menace. The victims turned into attackers with brutal swiftness; the doctors were attacked by their patients inside the ambulances, those who were aided by firefighters ended up turning into a lethal enemy, and even worse, the cop who was bitten proceeded to attack his partner, the brother was murdering his sister, the children their parents.
    In a few days, the rescue units and Security Forces had been effectively reduced to an inoperative presence and the situation had grown even more dire. A new enemy had emerged, germinated in a dehumanized society that had been instructed in selfishness and overcome with materialism: pillage. Without anyone to watch over civic safety, the streets became dangerous. Murders quickly proliferated, and that caused a new and unexpected source of infection. When the blackouts began, the nights were filled with shots, screams and vehicles that drove at high speeds, causing serious accidents. Fires broke out, and they often burned without anyone doing much to contain them.
    More or less organized gangs were starting to form on the streets, often by outcasts who found the opportunity to let their instincts rule, by conducting robberies and looting wherever and whenever the chance arose. Born from an improvised anarchy, it did not take long for them to disappear, victims to their own quarrels and the confrontations with the living dead.
    In the middle of the chaos, a group of brothers of one of the many sacramental brotherhoods took one of their sacred statues out of its temple to carry it through the streets, remembering the Christ of the Epidemic, who was thought to be responsible for the end of the terrible yellow fever plague that had decimated the population in Malaga in 1803. They advanced little more than sixty feet, carrying the Christ upon their shoulders while they abandoned themselves to their prayers. The improvised procession ended in disaster when the specters pounced on