The Englishman lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth.
“Hi there! We’ve come up with a rescue plan here,” Ramses heard him say. “Courtesy of Ivan and Goran.” He pointed at the guy with a shortcut and an Italian-looking man.
“When I give you a signal,” Andy went on, “get out of the van and run to this window. You’ll hear a series of explosions. Be not afraid. That’ll be the pyrotechnics. For distraction. We’ve put the stepladder down for you. You’ll use the ladder to climb inside through this window. Our guys will distract the crazy bastards over there.”
About thirty yards between the truck and the windows. We gonna make it, Ramses pondered and pocketed the scope.
“Okay,” he said over the radio. “Let’s give it a try.”
“Just let us know when you’re ready,” Andy said.
“Yeah, I will,” Ramses said.
He turned to Ksenia. “Firecrackers, huh? Can you believe it? They’re gonna use firecrackers to save our asses.” He shook his head. “I like this guy.”
Their preparations did not take much time. They zipped up the backpack, and Ksenia slipped her arms through its shoulder straps to put it on. Ramses gave Ksenia both pistols.
“I’ll give you a piggyback,” he said.
Ksenia smiled. “Nice – never done it since school.”
He looked through the windshield and confirmed that the horizon was clear. Ksenia glanced at the hotel and saw people looking at them through the windows on the second and third floors.
“We got an audience,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “I was worried nobody’s gonna see me in action in this town.” He turned to her. “We gonna make it.”
She cocked the guns and nodded. “Then let’s do it.”
He pressed the button on the walkie-talkie. “Okay. Flying in.”
The radio crackled. “Go! Go! Go!”
Ramses put the radio in his pocket, thrust the door open and jumped out of the truck.
Cold wind pierced his body. He leaned down, and Ksenia climbed his back. Once he started running, he heard the crack of the firecrackers coming from the hotel building. With his peripheral vision, he saw a rocket dancing a wild dance on the snow-covered ground, hissing and sending white and blue sparks everywhere. It finally hit the nearest walking dead and set its clothes on fire. Some zombies took the bite and went toward this strange fest. But some of them headed toward Ramses and Ksenia.
Ksenia chose not to wait until they would come close to them and started shooting.
A female undead, a former paramedic, stood in their way. Ksenia pointed both guns at her and knocked her off her feet with two powerful blasts. The gunshots were louder than the pops of the firecrackers, and in a moment more zombies turned the corner of the building staggering on their feet and raising their arms.
Ksenia’s father’s Makarov started giving dry clicks, and Ramses had to make a big arc around a group of six ghouls.
The people in the building understood their distraction strategy had turned out not too successful, and they started using firearms on the undead monsters, too.
Ramses was close to the ladder now. There were half a dozen of the living dead blocking the way to it. Ksenia’s second gun fell silent now.
“I’m out!” she said.
“Don’t scream into my ear,” he said, panting. “I can hear you loud and clear.” He kept carrying her, though her weight was putting him down, and the thirty yards seemed like a hundred now. He remembered his firefighter years again.
A couple of shots from the friendly side sent two zombies falling down on the crispy snow. A dead man approached Ramses and Ksenia with a drunken gait. He lifted his gnarly hands and walked to them. Ramses put Ksenia on the ground and delivered a kick to the creature’s face. The deadhead fell and stayed down, his spinal bones shattered.
Ksenia was reloading her guns with trembling hands.
Two more creatures stood between them and the stepladder. Ramses heard two pops and both the zombies sprawled on the ground.
Ramses looked up and saw Andrew Thomas, standing at the window, a curl of smoke rising from his gun.
Ksenia jumped on one leg toward the ladder. Ramses grabbed the backpack and threw it at the window.
Damn, Ramses thought belatedly. There’s still a hand grenade there.
“Watch out!” he shouted.
Ivan caught the backpack and started to help Ksenia climb in. After she disappeared through the window, Ramses began climbing up the ladder.
He got off the ground just in time before a zombie snapped at his boots. He kicked the creature in the gray face with a delightful smacking sound. The monster let go of the ladder and fell off.
Ramses crawled on the windowsill and pushed the ladder away, which crashed down on and buried the ghoul under its weight.
Ramses’s leg got caught in the jalousie, and he collapsed on the floor head down. Ksenia was fast enough to move away.
He sat up beside Ksenia and looked around. It was an office room. They were safe now. He tried to get up but slipped on the office linoleum and fell down. This made him laugh, and he broke the wind. But he was not embarrassed at all. It was really a moment of relief.
The security guard shut the window.
“Oh, thank God,” Ksenia said through the pain in the ankle to the people who were standing surrounding them. “Thank you, whoever you are.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Andy said. “Privet! And welcome to the Arkaim Hotel – your home away from home.”
And he extended his hand toward her.
Ramses rose to his feet and looked out the window. The crowd of the living dead had become bigger. They were raising their hands toward him and scraping the wall.
“Damn! That was close!”
He shut the window and started shaking everyone’s hand. He was beside himself with joy.
Ivan, the security guard, helped Ksenia to her feet and sat her on the little couch.
Ramses had the strange feeling that he had lost touch with reality. They had escaped death by the skin of their teeth. Now they were surrounded with people. Living people. Who were here to help them. And who did help them by saving their lives. He could not believe they were safe again.
The hotel people brought them steaming coffee in thick clay mugs with cookies and snacks. They gave Ksenia a warm blanket, and she wrapped herself into it.
It got noisy in the hallway, as people were curious about the newcomers and tried to look into the room. Andy asked Ivan to wait outside and not let anyone in.
Drinking the coffee and digging hungrily into the food, Ramses gave a glance around the room. It was spacious. A heavy mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room. Certificates on the wall. Bookcases full of books with gold spines. A woven rug on the floor.
“This is my office,” Andy said. “My former office, to be more precise. We don’t use the rooms and offices on the ground floor anymore.”
The moans of the living dead roaming outside reached their ears. It was getting dark.
“Too dangerous,” Goran added, though there was no need to say the obvious.
Ramses nodded. “The fuckers.”
Ksenia briefly told their rescuers about their adventures.
“I’m very sorry about your father,” Andy said.
After a knock on the door, a desk clerk entered the office and gave Andy two keys.
“Your room is still free, Mr. Campbell,” Andy said handing him one of the keys. “It’s an ordinary key. We’re currently out of power. So no key cards so far.”
“It’s a massive power outage,” Ksenia said. “Around the whole city, I guess.”
Andy nodded. “So I see. We’re accommodating new guests, though.”
Ramses smiled and clutched the key. “Thanks, man. But we won’t be able to pay you for the next week. With the situation around.”
“It’s a civil war out there,” Andy said. “What are you talking about? Like I said before – welcome. We’ll have to think all together how to get out of this mess and survive.”
Ramses shook the key in his hand and said, “I really appreciate that. I guess I have to earn my stay here now. I’m pretty good at lots of things. I can be useful.”
Andy flashed a smile. “We’ll think about it tomorrow. How does that Russian proverb go? The morning is wiser than the evening. Sleep on it. Tidy yourselves up and have a little rest.”
“Yeah,” Ksenia said wearily. “We sure need it.”
Andy turned to Ksenia and gave her the second key. “And this one’s yours, Ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Ksenia said. “I hope there’s a shower there.”
“There is,” Andy said. “One more thing. Mobile connection is down too. So don’t lose your walkie-talkie.”
He gave them other important instructions and told them the nurse was not in the hotel. Her shift had been over before the chaos started, and she had gone home. All staff members were trained in basic first aid procedures, and they could save a choking person in a restaurant but their skills did not include treating ankle injuries. There were two medical doctors among the hotel guests. One of them refused to help, though. The other one was in Steven Clayton’s room. Ramses was happy to hear that his friend was still alive.
Ramses looked impatiently at Ksenia. “Let’s go.”
He helped Ksenia to walk up the stairs to the fifth floor. She was limping very badly. The desk clerk and a floor concierge helped Ksenia go up to her room.
“My room is on the right, next to yours,” Ramses said. “Just knock on the wall if you need something. I’m a pretty good masseur.” He winked.
“You better get me that doctor,” she said.
“Yeah.” His face got serious. “I’ll try.”
Ksenia closed the door and went straight to the bathroom to take a shower.
Ramses left the backpack in his room and went out again. It was dark in the hallway. He came up to Steve Clayton’s room and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a raspy male voice said in English. But it didn’t belong to Steve.
Ramses opened the door and stepped into half-darkness. In the dim light of burning candles, he saw Steve lying in the bed, his eyes closed, his face covered with lacerations and bruises. An old man about seventy years old, with a gray beard and mustache, clad in a gray tweed suit and wearing spectacles, was sitting in a chair beside Steve and reading a book with a golden cross on the cover. The Holy Bible.
“Hi,” Ramses said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Dr. Erich Brodde,” the old man said, without getting up. He spoke with some European accent, which Ramses could not yet place. Dutch, maybe?
“What are you doing here?” Ramses asked.
“I’m a priest,” Dr. Brodde said.
Ramses’s heart sank and skipped a beat.
“Oh my God,” he said. “What has happened? Is he dead?” He came up to the bed.
“No,” Dr. Brodde said. “He’s unconscious right now. He has a head trauma. But he’s breathing. He’s alive. I hope he’s going to be all right. He has a chance.”
“Thank God,” Ramses said.
“Yes, he’s in God’s power now,” Dr. Brodde said and closed the Bible.
“You’re a medical doctor too?”
“Yes. I used to work for the Red Cross.”
Ramses felt relieved to have a physician around his friend.
“Was he bit? Is he infected?”
“No,” Dr. Brodde said. “No cuts or bites.”
“Did you check his eyeballs?”
“What?” Dr. Brodde looked bewildered. “Why?”
“‘Cause if they’re bloodshot, he might be infected.”
The old priest lifted Steve’s eyelids carefully. The man’s eyeballs were milky white.
Ramses breathed out a sigh of relief. “No infection. Thank goodness.”
“So you know something about this disease, don’t you?” There was a curious look in the old man’s face. “You must tell me about it.”
“There isn’t much to know,” Ramses said. “You get bit – you better start taking harp lessons.”
Dr. Brodded nodded. “Ja.”
Ramses sat on a chair. “You have a European accent, right?”
“Right. I come from Germany,” Dr. Brodde said. “What’s your name, please?”
“Ramses Campbell. I am from San Francisco.”
They shook hands.
“Well, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Clayton here needs a rest now. I’ll let you know about his state of health as soon as something changes.”
“Thank you, Doc. He means a lot to me. He’s my friend. Please keep an eye on that mofo, will you?”
“Pardon?”
Ramses jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “My room is right across the hallway. Call me, if he comes to.”
“Oh ja, ja. Sure.” The old German adjusted his spectacles and took the Bible.
Ramses went out of the room and closed the door quietly behind him. He looked at his dirty outfit and went to take a shower too.
When he walked out of the bathroom, he saw flashes of fire through the window. An apartment house across the street was in flames. A moving mass of the squirming creatures, which had flooded the street, was visible in the light of the burning building. There were hundreds of them. He could hear the roaring of helicopters somewhere in the distance.
There was a hollow knock on the wall. Ramses went to the door, drying himself with the towel. Ksenia stood outside.
“You shouldn’t have gone out yourself,” Ramses said to her.
“I need my gun. And the mags.”
He brought her the Makarov pistol and the spare magazines.
“Well, I’m going to turn in now,” she said. “I’m totally exhausted. See you in the morning.”
“Scream if you need me,” Ramses said and closed the door.
He changed his clothes and went out to the floor lounge, where people were sitting in armchairs and chatting.
The power generator had been installed, and the power was restored so the lounge was lit. There was no power in the rooms, though.
Everything seemed to be normal in the hotel as before, when he arrived, except for two things: the barricades near the entrances, because of which the guests were not able to go sightseeing or to visit their business partners, and the constant, ceaseless monotonous moaning of the living dead, searching for prey outside. For some people, though, the moaning had a hypnotic effect, and they fell asleep with no trouble.
One of the guests had brought out a portable radio set with batteries. There was only one federal radio channel functioning. No local stations. Static hissed like a scared cat on other channels. After a merry program for kids, there was a news bulletin. Ramses asked the floor concierge to translate the news for him. The concierge, a man in his early twenties, whose nametag said his name was Denis, retold him the news in broken English.
The first report was about the city of Chelyabinsk being under attack of terrorists. There was an emergency situation in the city. No one was allowed in. No one out. The special forces were looking for the terrorists, who had allegedly blown up the zinc plant, but in general, the situation was “under control.”
This statement aroused a wave of indignation among the hotel guests. A plastic glass flew past Ramses, hit the radio set and ricocheted splashing coffee droplets to the floor. People in the lounge were shouting out curses. Ramses asked Denis to explain what was happening, and Denis explained.
“What a piece of bullshit!” Ramses said in an angry voice.
“This is how Moscow always treat us,” an elderly woman said. “As if we’re shit or something. We’re going to die here, and nobody in the Kremlin would give a piece of shit.”
She went to her room, in floods of tears.
The next report was about the meteorite which had recently crashed in the Lake of Chebarkul. The news flash was followed by a silly talk show hosted by a silly pop star.
***
At midnight, before going to sleep, Ramses came to check on Steve.
He could hear Steve’s roaring laughter behind the door.
When he came in, Steve was sitting in the bed upright with his back propped against the pillow. He was eating soup with noodles. A candle was burning on the table, casting long shadows on the floor and walls.
“… really amazing! Haha!” Steve was laughing. “And what did then the skunk do?”
“It just crept into my sleeping bag and died there,” Dr. Brodde said.
“Yuck,” Steve said and stuck out his tongue. He squinted his eyes, put on his glasses and saw Ramses standing in the middle of the room. He smiled a wide smile. “Ramsey! I’ll be damned! You’re alive!”
He put the dish away and gave Ramses a big hug.
“No,” Ramses said. “I’ll be damned! Look at you. Where have you been? Helping out a janitor?”
“We got trapped, man,” Steve said slowly. “Vassili and me. Vasya is dead.”
Ramses sighed. “Oh shit, man. I’m so sorry.” He was silent for a moment and then said, “Is he dead proper, or is he … like one of them?”
Steve looked at Ramses and then at Dr. Brodde. “He is deadly dead. I took care of that.”
They lapsed into silence again.
“Ramsey,” Steve broke the silence, “please meet Dr. Brodde. He’s been telling me great stories about his years in the Red Cross.”
“Oh, we’ve already met,” Ramses said.
Dr. Brodde looked at his watch. “I have to go now. There’s a young lady who also needs my help.” He turned to Ramses. “Is the girl you’ve come with in her room now?”
“Yeah,” Ramses said. “But she must be sleeping now.”
“Good, then I’ll see her in the morning,” Dr. Brodde said.
He put a bottle of pills on the table.
“Mr. Clayton, if you have a headache, take these. They are mine, but you need them more than me.”
“Thank you, Father,” Steve said.
As Dr. Brodde left, Steve looked at Ramses. “You’re one lucky crazy sumbitch.”
“You know what your problem is?” Ramses said. “You don’t take life seriously. Otherwise, you’d be a great mentor.”
“Never wanted to be a teacher. What do we do now?”
“You know, I’m starting to miss those burritos.”
Steve laughed. Then his face became serious. “Okay. We have to get out of here.”
“But how?”
“One problem at a time,” Steve said. “First off, we have to admit we’re in deep ass.”
“I concur, we’re there,” Ramses said. “What next?”
“Secondly, we gotta be sure this place is secure.”
“This place does look pretty secure to me.”
“This place consists not only of bricks and mortar,” Steve said.
Ramses said wearily, “Okay, Yoda. You’ll clear this up for me in the morning. I’m tired as shit.”
Steve told Ramses about how he and Vassili had been locked up in the parking lot by the scared garage attendant.
Then Steve said, “Thanks for staying alive again.”
“Happy to oblige.”
They talked for half an hour, and Ramses could see Steve was tired and said good night. He was exhausted himself.
“Remember, my friend,” Steve said as Ramses went to the door. “The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred.”
Ramses frowned and thought. “Errr … Let me guess … Steven Harper Clayton?”
Steve smiled. “No, the Dalai Lama.”
Ramses smiled back. He turned the door handle but then halted. “Say, where’s Lena? The girl from the Diorama club?”
“Oh, that one,” Steve said. “You were right about her, Ramsey. She took off in the middle of the night when I refused to pay her. Then she threatened to file a report to the police. Rape and stuff.”
“Fuck, man.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Was a pretty good fuck, though.”
“Okay, buddy, have a good night,” Ramses said. “Cowabunga!”
Steve clenched his fist and shook it in the air. “Turtle power.”
On his way to his room, Ramses knocked on Ksenia’s door. No one responded. He opened the door and came in. “Hey, Ksenia,” he said in a whisper, “you okay?”
In the light coming from the hallway, he could see Ksenia was fast asleep. He closed the door as quietly as he could and left.
In about five minutes there was a knock on his door.
He opened it. Ksenia stood in the dark hallway. She was wearing a waitress’s uniform. She held a pillow and a blanket in her hands.
“Room service,” she said.
“Hey, hey,” Ramses said and whistled. “Cute outfit.”
Ksenia looked at her new clothes and smiled. “Just my size.”
She looked at him. “Please let me stay in your room. Just for one night. I’m scared to be alone.”
“All righty,” Ramses said. “My home is your home.”
“But don’t get any fancy ideas,” she said, holding up her gun.
TEN
Sitting in a military helicopter, General Petrov was looking down on the city below. He was old and gray but his sight was still keen enough to pick out burning cars and smoking buildings. Chelyabinsk was rapidly turning into a graveyard. The deadly virus had broken loose and created havoc and chaos. The Government was fast enough to assess the situation and to realize that it was grave and would not come under control easily. Drastic measures had to be taken quickly. They decided to isolate the threat and contain the virus in the city which had become the epicenter of the outbreak. The general had to take under control the territory, which was over a hundred square miles.
Today was Wednesday, and it was the fifth day of the military campaign called Operation Steel Ring, which was under General Petrov’s command. The primary goal of the operation was to seal off the city. No one was allowed to leave it. As the Russian saying goes, not even a fly should cross the border.
One of the first flies to cross the borderline was the Mayor, who had made an attempt to flee from the infected city by helicopter. One missile hit and the five million dollars budget money had been burned in the air. Together with the pilot, the Mayor, his wife, their two adorable blonde daughters, and the Mayor’s mother-in-law.
The general was leafing through documents with updates on the current situation in the city. The origin of the disease was unknown yet, but there was no doubt that it was a disease. The analysts had found links between the contagion and the meteorite fall. On a Friday morning last week, in the vicinity of the meteorite impact on Lake Chebarkul, they found a man, who was lying unconscious on the ice. There was a dog bite on his leg. They found out that the man was a local forester, Pavel Bandurov, forty years old. Nobody knew exactly what he was doing at the lake. Obviously, he was attracted by the spectacular celestial show and came to see the place where the meteorite had fallen. The police found the dog which had presumably bitten him. It was chained in the yard of the forester’s house. It was very aggressive and foaming at the mouth. These were indicators of rabies. The dog was shot dead when it tried to attack a police officer.
The forester needed urgent medical attention, but the Chebarkul hospital was really poorly equipped for critical patients. People died in the intensive care unit of this hospital like flies. So he was taken to a hospital in Chelyabinsk.
The next day the chaos began. The city residents just became berserk all of a sudden and started killing each other. The traffic in the city and the metro area collapsed and became nonexistent. Thousands of cars were stranded on the streets, curbs, and sidewalks. Even pizza delivery guys on scooters would have found it hard to maneuver around the abandoned vehicles. Hospitals were overcrowded. All police and army units were activated. Tanks were rumbling through the city streets. Battle helicopters hovered overhead.
On the first day of the crisis, the police failed to regain order in the city. The military planners too were unsure how to act. There was no protocol, no military strategy for these new circumstances. The military were unwilling to shoot unarmed civilians. They applied non-lethal weapons against the targets first. That was how General Petrov and his Headquarters Staff related to the infected ones – targets or enemy.
The general put the documents away and closed his eyes. He wanted to catch some sleep before he arrived at headquarters. For the past five days, he had only been able to sleep two hours a day. He tried to sleep but thoughts battered his mind. He recalled the Saturday’s battle at the bridge on Sverdlovsky Avenue. He was personally in the middle of the war zone. It had been carnage.
First, they tried tear gas, which proved to be useless. Then water cannons went into combat. The water supply was in abundance. They pumped the water for the cannons directly from the river Miass, which flows under the bridge. For plain human beings, a hard jet of icy water in the chest on a cold winter night would be lethal. But those were not plain human beings they were dealing with. High-pressure streams of water knocked the targets off their legs. They fell down in a pile, breaking their arms and legs, but still continued to crawl. It was a tangle of shambling and coiling creatures. More targets climbed on top of them. The water was mixed with pink dye, and the attackers were colored pink. The picture was surreal. Pink undead walking and falling but keeping coming at the soldiers, without blinking in the bright light of the searchlights. And hunger was their leader.
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