The Wanderers by Permuted Press Read Free Book Online

them. The splendid carving split into two enormous halves when it crashed to the ground; Christ’s head, which remained turned to the side, was a silent witness to the abominable scene that took place before his eternal expression of pain.
    The story of the Fall of Malaga, as that of countless other cities in the world, would not be complete without mentioning those who gave their lives for others. A mother voluntarily gave herself up to her pursuers to buy her son, who had turned ten years old the week before, a little time. Elsewhere, a man named Roberto held back the zombies’ onslaught with a thick door that had been torn off its hinges so that his neighbors could have enough time to escape through the window. All of them unequivocally knew that their actions condemned them, yet they still carried them out.
    Man, finally, had been driven off the streets; he had to go back to living in the caves that were his tall buildings.
    In Ronda, the legion’s barracks “General Gabeiras” counted on one of the largest companies in Spain, with more than two thousand employees. The Legion had always promoted the cult of combat, minimizing the relevance of death, the natural fear of dying. In Madrid, where they began to realize the psychological terror that this unexpected and formidable enemy was inducing, many thought that such indoctrination, the “legionary mysticism” symbolized in the legionary beliefs and the teaching of Japanese Bushido , would be ideal to control the situation. However, the legionaries had their own problems.
    Nearly fifteen minutes after starting his shift, a traffic supervisor for the suburban train was observing his screen. Strangely, none of his co-workers had shown up for work that day. In addition, there was a red indicator on the enormous digital bulletin board where the trains’ statuses and their location were shown on the general topographic map. The red square indicated that there were serious difficulties in the optical fiber network, and when that happened, the system was prepared to transfer the whole control system to the local command posts.
    He quickly pressed the call button to summon his supervisor. He did not like the idea of taking control without his co-workers, and even less without his direct supervisor. He had only been working in that office for a few months and still did not feel comfortable with the command post’s software. If something went wrong, and a train that should have gone to Cordoba turned off into the line towards the Malaga station it would be entirely his responsibility. And he knew very well how such mistakes were paid for. He observed the route panel with a worried frown.
    The train lines under his supervision were in their normal state, and most of the indicators were green. That calmed him a little. The only orange situation was marked by a train that was arriving at the station in Ronda. It was supposed to drop the passengers off there and leave through the service line for a weekly routine check-up. A second train waited at the platform to take that same line to Bobadilla. The operator saw that the junction track was occupied, which indicated that the engineer had already accepted the signal to proceed and the train was in the transit area. The computer had automatically calculated that the time it would take the train to turn off to the service track was enough for the other train to reach that same point. While he sipped his coffee, preoccupied, an acoustic signal and several luminous indicators above the control panel notified him that, finally, the transfer had been made. His screen lit up with a myriad of different icons, informing him that he was in control.
    The operator experienced the transference as one would feel a drop on a rollercoaster. His stress point, as he called it, which happened to be an undetermined spot somewhere between the center of his chest and the pit of his stomach, began pulsating with a burning sensation. Again, he pressed