Sasha finished what he was eating “Did you find any more weapons?”
“Just knives.” He regarded Sasha for a moment. “If those zombies bite you, do you want me just to end it for you? I mean, I can stab you in the head.”
Sasha looked shocked. “I … I don’t want to end up like one of them. Shit, those things are horrible. Alright … if I get bitten … let’s just talk about it then, okay? I don’t want to be one of those things, but I want to be sure first that the bite is actually what’s causing all this. So don’t just go killing me, okay?”
“I understand. But if they overwhelm you and are tearing you to pieces, I’ll kill you then.”
“Wow. You’re not just cold-blooded, you have liquid nitrogen for blood.”
Kirill smiled. “In that situation, I would be doing you a favour.”
“Sure, sure. You’re all heart. I hope I don’t have to extend the same kindness to you.”
19.
2 years ago …
“Vivisection has long been a hobby of mine.” Karl pulled his long sleeved gloves on. He was amused at his apprentice’s discomfort, although Karl’s eyes showed no emotion.
The apprentice couldn’t hold Karl’s gaze for long. Instead, he looked at some of the jars on the shelves around the stone room. They seemed to contain various body parts preserved in fluid. There was the occasional severed head or outstretched hand, but mostly the specimens seemed to be internal organs. There were also some old textbooks on anatomy and surgery. They appeared to be well worn. On a stainless steel table, saws and blades were laid out, all within easy reach of Karl. The cutting implements were well used but cared for.
The apprentice was extremely uncomfortable now, staring at the body on the table between him and Karl, and then looking away and swallowing thickly. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Hey, it’s amazing what you can get used to.” Karl held up a knife that looked like it would be appropriate for gutting a fish, appraising it in the glare of the chamber’s solitary bare globe. “Say, for example, it was your job to cut people’s heads off every day. Why, pretty soon the sight of blood wouldn’t bother you. Pretty soon, you could cut parts off a body and not feel much of anything, really.”
Karl gently patted the shoulder of the body on the table.
The apprentice looked again to the steel table of instruments, curious despite himself. The tools were not quite professional; they were more something that an enthusiastic layman would acquire rather than a trained surgeon. Still, everything must have had its purpose.
“Oh, don’t feel worried.” Karl read the concern in his apprentice and grinned broadly, shark-like. “This woman was charged with sedition. She was planning to overthrow Mother Russia. She had traitorous intentions towards us. Ungrateful. Uncaring. When we cut her, we might find the source of her evil nature. I’m guessing it will be her black heart!”
The apprentice could barely face Karl now, but he turned back when Karl asked him, “Do you have any questions before we begin?”
“Yeah,” said the apprentice, “why does she still have to be alive while we do this?”
On the table, the woman lay with her eyes wide open, tears flooding out, breathing rapidly at two hundred breaths a minute, sweat sliding down her naked skin. She had been paralysed with medications, the type of drugs that would normally be used to temporarily paralyse a patient for surgery, and that would under ordinary circumstances be combined with drugs that would block the pain of being operated upon. The medication that was normally used to block pain had been left out. She was awake, fully aware of Karl’s intentions towards her. She saw everything.
Karl grabbed a shiny mirror on a moveable, jointed steel arm. He carefully pointed it so the woman would be able to see everything.
“Not so funny now, is it, Arita?”
The KGB agent laughed.
20.
He stumbled down the tunnel, almost no light to find his way. Clutching his jacket, he stepped over the railway tracks, almost falling, catching himself before he could. The gravel crunched loudly, no other sound. The tunnel was empty, just him trying to get away from the open hatch. It led into darkness. From the darkness came a howl. It sounded almost human. The man straightened, alarmed at the proximity of this sound. For a moment, he seemed to weigh up the choice of running away or going back and trying to seal the hatch that lay open. His breathing was quick and desperate. Lurching forward, he managed to catch himself on the open hatch before he could fall over. There, he rested for a moment before summoning himself, putting forth an almost heroic effort to get the hatch closed, leaning his entire effort into swinging it shut.
The man looked up at the caged globe above the heavy steel door, illuminating his face. He looked similar to Kirill. This man was known as Biter.
Struggling with the lock, he realised it wouldn’t roll closed – there was no way to lock the door. He smashed the valve several times as he might somehow get it closed, but nothing worked.
Slowly, he began to back away, clutching his side, watching the door which could spring open at any moment. Then he staggered up the tunnel.
21.
Standing on the parade ground with the other soldiers, Kirill was wearing his basic trooper uniform. The wind snapped at his clothes, the cold fresh. They all stood in a line, these men who had passed the Special Forces training and joined the elite ranks of Spetsnaz, the most formidable fighting force in the world.
The Sergeant moved down the ranks, shaking each man’s hand in turn, and pinning a Spetsnaz badge to his chest. No words were necessary.
Kirill stood in the cold sun. He felt alive, a quiet sense of victory in the air. This was just step one, the beginning of his career, but everything else would spring from this day.
22.
Kirill and Sasha stood on the balcony, watching the streets below. The street was packed with zombies, some of them vicious, snapping at the air and growling. Most of the ghouls, however, were slow and awkward, turning to face each new sound, driven by primitive instinct. Individually, these zombies were nowhere near as dangerous as the faster more powerful zombies, but in such large numbers, that barely mattered.
“It’s as if they know we are here,” said Sasha. “There’s no way we can run through them. Not with them packed together like that.”
“No, we can’t go down there. Not now. But maybe there’ll be an opportunity later.”
Kirill had tucked a large knife into his belt, one of the few weapons he had been able to find.
“The way they move …” Sasha studied them, “It’s like they follow sound. Maybe there’s something in that. Maybe if we can create a distraction somehow, we can divert them away from us.”
“The problem is more will come. I haven’t seen any survivors yet, so it is best we assume the whole city has been taken over; everyone is a zombie, or else an enemy. Anyone who has survived this has to be dangerous. If we make noise in this area, it may very well draw zombies away from us. But it will also alert the other zombies in the city and make them come here.”
“Well, you’re the badass special forces soldier. What do we do?”
Kirill looked away from the window. “Right now, we wait. We study our enemy and see how they behave. Maybe they will forget about us and wander off. For all we know, they may lay down and go to sleep at nightfall. There are some bottles of alcohol here. We can make some Molotov cocktails out of them and –”
“Alcohol, you say? That gives us something to do while we are waiting!”
“You can drink if you wish, I need to be at a hundred percent in case our situation changes.”
“Oh, come on! Have a drink with me.”
“I don’t drink.”
“You’re like the poster boy for Spetsnaz, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Like, all the propaganda says that Spetsnaz guys don’t have any hobbies or anything else they do, except serve Mother Russia. That’s wha
t you’re like.”
Kirill didn’t respond, so Sasha asked him, “What do you do in your spare time?”
“I like to train. I like being on the shooting range.”
“I mean for fun. Leisure activities, man. What do you do for enjoyment?”
“Training is enjoyment for me.”
“Alright, look, I don’t want to sit here drinking alone.” Sasha poured two glasses of vodka. “So will you have a drink with me?”
“I’ll leave it, thanks.”
“But you just got out of prison. Surely that’s reason enough to celebrate?”
The Nightmare Man considered for a moment. “Give me a glass.”
Half a bottle later, Sasha and Kirill were sitting down on the couches. Sasha was smoking a cigarette, something which Kirill refused to do.
“You know, we didn’t always get it right,” said Kirill.
“Huh? What didn’t you get right?”
“The missions … sometimes we had bad information. Or we didn’t use the information we had correctly. That cost us a lot. It really did.”
“Oh, I’m sorry …”
“Like, there was one time we had to kick this terrorist’s door down and kill everyone inside. We were waiting just outside his door; our hearts were jumping out of our bodies, each one of us was full of adrenalin. Then intelligence got the word that it was the wrong house, they’d made a mistake, and we were standing outside the house of an innocent family. They screamed at us on the radio, ‘No! No! No!’ but we were so hyped up that what we heard was ‘Go! Go! Go!’ so we kicked the doors in and killed everyone inside. We didn’t even realise until the end.”
Sasha sat still with the cigarette burning in his hand, unnoticed.
“There was also another time, another mission. We had intelligence that a terrorist group was hiding in a building. There was no one else in the building, just the bad guys. Nearby was a house with a family in it. We had the authorisation to drop a bomb on the terrorist’s house. The problem is that the person in charge was reading the map wrong. See, the way he was looking at it, he thought the family’s house was the terrorist’s house.”
After long moments, Sasha asked, “So what happened?
“I argued with him. I showed him how to look at the map correctly. He wouldn’t back down. My men spoke to me and asked me what we were going to do. I said, ‘We have to follow orders. We’re Spetsnaz, that’s what we do.’ So I made the call, I gave the pilots the go-ahead and the bomb was dropped, killing everyone in the house. Afterwards, we watched it all on the satellite image; we saw a group of terrorists run out from the other building. We’d made a mistake, and killed another innocent family.”
Kirill didn’t look quite so tough right then. The alcohol had made him say far more than he would have said under normal circumstances, but that didn’t seem to register with him yet.
Sasha said nothing, just went to the window to see if there had been any change to the crowd of zombies downstairs.
23.
Andre was the new Tsar of Chelyabinsk. He was a former Russian Mafia man, quite adept at solving problems, whether they are to intimidate a local businessman into giving a percentage of their income to Andre’s boss or on occasion even doing work on behalf of the Russian government. In the aftermath of the zombie outbreak in Chelyabinsk, Andre had an opportunity to rise to power, as he saw this time not as many saw it; an apocalypse, the end times, but instead as something of a dream come true for a man of his qualities. If not for his association with the Russian Mafia, he would have spent his life in jail, or worse. But with the dead walking and attacking the living, Andre shone in this new world.
He set up his base in the military academy in Chel, once known as “Tank School,” sharing this building with gangsters who were resourceful enough to survive in a city besieged by zombies. This building had been an academy for soldiers who were fighting in tanks, until it was eventually closed down and turned into a laser tag facility. It was occasionally used as the set for horror movies. In the foyer, Andre had set up a gathering place for his people, a base of operations where he could speak to his people in real time. The other rooms were full of supplies such as food taken from nearby supermarkets and stolen guns.
In the centre of the reception were six zombies chained together. They were imprisoned in a rough enclosure of steel girders imbedded in the floor. The zombies strained against each other, trying to move in opposite directions, helpless where they were, but serving as an excellent reminder that Andre could feed a disobedient person to them at any time. He liked that idea a lot.
Besides, the six zombies were Andre’s former bosses.
“We got a problem, boss,” Masha said. She was one of the finest gangsters Andre had, beautiful and tall, with the half-Asian eyes that were typical of people from this region, clear blue. The kit she carried was light and practical, well thought out. She had a rifle supported on one hip. She was the best shot out of all of Andre’s people.
“Yeah? What’s up?” Andre sat up straight. He never slouched when talking to Masha. On the floor beside Andre was a silver AK 47.
“Company. I don’t know who these two men are, but one of them is a hard case. He seems like a professional to me.”
“Okay, okay, what did you see?”
“I was watching them through the scope; they ran from the zombi and got into an apartment building. I don’t think they will be going anywhere. They are totally surrounded.”
“They ran from the zombi, so what? We do that every day.”
“I forgot to mention, I was following these guys as soon as they got into the city.”
Andre paused, understanding. “They got past the Spetsnaz outside. That couldn’t have been easy. Okay, you’re right, these two could be a problem.”
Masha smiled. “What should I do?”
“Kill them – don’t wait. No fucking around, just kill them from a distance. I won’t take any chances with these two.”
Masha nodded. “It’s as good as done.”
By the main entrance, the Mafia guards suddenly drew their weapons, some of them holding up poles with blades at the end. Outside, there was a swarm of zombi, crowding around the entrance, howling and trying to reach the humans inside. The Mafia troops were cold and professional, unalarmed by the presence of the horde as they drew back the sliding locks on the main door. At the far corners of the building, the lookouts there started making noise and causing a distraction, shouting insults at the zombies and banging against the windows. It had the desired effect; the crowd began to disperse, many of the ghouls drifting away from the front door and to the windows. When enough of them were gone, the armoured car rolled up to the front door, being allowed through. The Mafia guys at the door were well armed and covered head to toe in protective gear. They seemed to see the straggling zombies who tried to follow the car in as more of an annoyance than anything else, skewering them with their improvised spears and keeping them pinned while another troop ran forward to club the zombie down with a crowbar or similar item.
The entire exercise was well rehearsed and effective. Within moments, the few zombies who had made it inside were all expertly dispatched and dragged away from the entrance. The crowd outside who had by now realised they had been deceived now tried to converge on the open doors. The guards stabbed several of them down before retreating inside, once again blocking the heavy steel door. It was a simple enough routine which the Mafia used every time they needed to send people out on supply runs.
The doors to the armoured car opened and Mafia looters from inside emerged, each one dressed in fine clothes and the Russian sharpka hats, also decorated with medals. They were laughing as they brought out bottles of vodkas and jars of ikra, handing the prizes out to the other fifty or so Mafia people who were cheering in response. All in all, another successful trip.
24.
There was movement in the apartment below. Brandishing a knife, Kirill went out into the corridor. There was a lift, but h
e chose the cold cement steps, chipped and broken. He watched from the stairwell, listening, ready to run back to the apartment if he had to. A zombie emerged from the corridor, staggering at first, then moving faster and growling when it saw Kirill. Its arms were outstretched.
Kirill deflected its arms aside and expertly buried the knife in its head. The zombie stopped moving instantly and fell. Kirill tried pulling the knife out but it was stuck, driven into the hilt. He looked up as the door to an apartment swung open, six zombies inside. The first one was on him while he was still registering the scene and attempting to retrieve the knife. Kirill recovered quickly, driving the zombie back with his forearm and punching it in the jaw with his other hand. The punches would have been devastatingly effective on any normal man, shattering their jaw and leaving them unconscious; however, it had little effect on the ghoul. It was still reaching for him.
He shoved it back into the apartment; it fell as it collided with the other ghouls. They fixed him with their sickening eyes, moving forward. Kirill seized the heavy iron door and swung it closed. It was not locked, but it would buy him some time to get to safety.
Behind him on the stairwell, Sasha whispered, “Are you okay?”
“We move now.”
Sasha moved quickly behind Kirill, taking the stairs to the lower levels. They heard the apartment door open and the zombie’s claw out onto the stairwell.
“Keep moving. We can’t afford to get caught.”
The ground floor was dark, but there was enough light coming through the dirty windows for Kirill to see. The walls had letterboxes on them for the apartments. There were seven slumped bodies on the floor. Kirill paused for a moment, a small knife in his hands, waiting to see if the bodies would move. They didn’t. He set foot on the ground floor.
Glancing nervously up the stairwell, Sasha followed. A powerful steel door led out from the apartments. Kirill pressed the release button beside it, gripping the door firmly and opening it the tiniest amount. The sun that came through blazed like a blowtorch.
The Nightmare Man: A Russian Zombie Novel Page 7