The Living & The Dead (Book 1): Zombiegrad

by Hasanov, Oleg

  The thoughts about her father made her feel sad again, and she began weeping.

  “Why are you crying?” she heard a soft voice.

  She looked up. Zhang Wei’s daughter. The blind girl. She looked about twelve years old. Ksenia didn’t know her name yet. The girl leaned on her elbow in the bed, looking right at her through her sunglasses. Her long black hair was matted. The poor girl hadn’t taken a shower for a week, or more, as most of them here.

  The question was asked in good English, and Ksenia replied in English too, “I’m not crying, sweetie.”

  She brushed her tears away with the flat of her hand, made a bleak attempt to smile but failed. Even a blind girl could notice a sad note in her voice.

  “Yes, you are,” the girl said. “I can feel it.”

  Ksenia said nothing.

  “This is a very bad place,” the girl said. “There will be more deaths.”

  A young doomsayer, Ksenia thought. Just what I want here.

  “My name’s Jinli, by the way,” the girl went on. “But my dad calls me Mimi. You can call me Mimi too.”

  “Glad to meet you, Mimi. I’m Ksenia.”

  The girl smiled and sat in the bed. “Good. Now we’re friends.” She coughed.

  “How are you feeling?” Ksenia asked.

  “Ah, never mind,” Mimi said. “Just a bad cold. I’d sing to you but I got a sore throat. I mustn’t even listen to music right now. Bad for the vocal cords, you know.”

  “So you’re a singer?”

  “I’m a pianist. But I like singing too.”

  “That’s nice. I used to go to music school, but I dropped out.”

  The girl’s face looked concerned. “Why? Your parents didn’t have enough money?”

  Ksenia sat by the fireplace and raised her hands to the fire. “No. My friends said I had no talent.”

  “Then they were not your friends.”

  Ksenia looked at the dancing flames and shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe.”

  “How old are you, Ksenia?”

  “Twenty-five. An old babushka.” Ksenia smiled.

  “I wish I were twenty-five now. Or at least twenty. Or sixteen. I could have a boyfriend then. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Ksenia gave a sad smile. She was deep in her thoughts and didn’t reply for a long time. She hadn’t expected such a question from a teenage girl.

  The silence was so long that the girl had to ask the question again.

  “I used to,” Ksenia answered. “I don’t know where he is now. Sometimes I hope bad things had happened to him.”

  There was a concern in Mimi’s face. “Did he hurt you?”

  Ksenia nodded. Then she realized the blind can’t hear nods and said, “Yes. In a way.”

  The girl put her head on the pillow and covered herself with the blanket. “Are they really scary? The moaners?”

  Jinli said it so loud that Ksenia pressed her finger to her lips, though the girl would not see her gesture anyway. “Shhh. Don’t wake up the others.”

  Outside, they could hear the zombies howling in the hotel yard.

  “The moaners?” Ksenia whispered. “You mean the walking dead people? The first time you see them, they look scary. But then you realize they used to be just like you and me. There’s so much pain and sadness in their faces. But you don’t want to be around them. Anyway, we’re on the fourteenth floor. There are nice people around. Nothing bad can reach us here.”

  “Fourteen is an unlucky number,” Mimi said. “Four sounds like “death” in Chinese. So any combination of numbers, which contain the number four, is considered unlucky.”

  “I promise you that everything will be okay.”

  Mimi yawned, took her glasses off and put them on the nightstand beside her bed. “I’m not worried at all. My dad will protect me.”

  “Sure he will.”

  Mimi closed her eyes. “Good night, Ksenia. Good night, my new friend.”

  “Sweet dreams, Mimi.”

  Ksenia went back to her rocking chair and wrapped herself in the plaid. Just before she fell into sleep she heard Mimi’s voice again. “Please don’t let them get me.”

  “Sleep well,” Ksenia said. “The hallway is well guarded, and your dad is right in the hallway. He’s strong, and he loves you.”

  Ksenia slept without dreams.

  ***

  At the first blush of the morning sun, the serenity was punctured by a deep humming noise off in the distance. The sound was growing. It was stretching in the air like rubber rising from a deep overtone to a high-pitched banshee shrill. It became clear that it was the whine of an air-raid siren.

  The kids in the infirmary were wide awake and looked scared.

  “What’s that?” Mimi asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ksenia said. “But I hope it’s nothing to worry about.”

  Zhang Wei entered the room, speaking Chinese rapidly.

  “What’s going on?” Ksenia asked him.

  He took his daughter’s coat and started dressing Mimi. Then he led her to the door and hurried out without saying a word.

  Ksenia went out of the room. It was noisy in the corridor. People were leaving their rooms, carrying bottles of water, cooking utensils, and extra warm clothes.

  Igor Sorokin was coming her way. He had no hat on, and his hair was disheveled. Ksenia tried to speak to the ex-security manager, but he rudely shoved her away.

  “The rumor is there may be a bombardment,” Ludmila said. She came for her sleepy coughing son.

  “Wait! What? Who’s going to bomb us?”

  “The military, of course!” Ludmila said. “Get down into the basement as soon as possible.”

  The woman hurried down the hallway, her terrified boy trailing after her. Soon the corridor and the staircases were swarming with dozens of people.

  Ivan stood at the intersection of hallways. He made a megaphone with his hands and yelled, “Please, people! Stay calm! Nothing to worry about. I’m sure we’re going to be saved soon. Take your warm clothes, food, and water enough to sustain you for twenty-four hours. Go down into the basement as we did before.”

  The people seemed to pay no attention to him.

  He hit himself on the forehead. “The fucking toilets, Matvei!” he said to a tall guard. “Get the buckets from the mop closet and bring them down in the basement!”

  Matvei started running along the hallway, dodging around the crowd.

  Ksenia went inside the infirmary to get her stuff. All the kids had been taken away by their parents. Only Ingvar was left, lying on the mattress. Dr. Brodde came in.

  “We can’t leave him here,” he said, looking down at Ingvar.

  He stepped out into the corridor to ask for help but nobody stopped. Everyone was rushing downstairs. The siren kept on rupturing the cold winter air with its wail.

  Ksenia and the doctor rolled Ingvar on a blanket and tried to pick him up. Too heavy. They dragged him out of the room to the end of the corridor, grunting with effort and had to put their patient down. The corridor was already empty.

  “No, it’s useless,” Dr. Brodde said, pressing his hand to his chest. “He’s too heavy for both of us.”

  The siren was screaming like a flock of howling banshees now. The door of the nearby room opened, and a bearded man looked out.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Ksenia and Dr. Brodde looked over the man’s shoulder into the room. A heavily-clad woman was sitting in a chair. Her look was absent as if nothing urgent was happening.

  “Why are you still here?” Ksenia asked the man. “You have to go!”

  “I can’t leave without my—,” the man stumbled and turned back to look at the woman, “without my wife.”

  He helped them drag Ingvar inside and put him on the floor. The room was in disorder. Empty bottles and cartons scattered around. The solid stench of body odor had soaked into the room. The woman had three layers of clothes on. It was hard to distinguish a slim figure of a ballet dancer under th
is mountain of overcoats.

  A self-made moveable stove, called burzhuika, was placed under the window. The room was frozen through, and the stove gave its dwellers scant heating. The cast-iron pipe had been put through the window slits to let the smoke out. Valery, the sanitary engineer, was making these stoves and installing them for everyone who wished.

  “I’m Max. Max Oren,” the man said. He extended his hand.

  The German shook it. “Dr. Erich Brodde.”

  Oren looked at Ksenia. She told him her name.

  Oren switched to English when he heard the old man’s name. “Olga! Please meet our guests.”

  The woman glanced at the newcomers blankly. Her face was emotionless, like a china doll’s.

  “Well, she’s a little unwell,” Oren said. “Post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Are you a psychologist?” Dr. Brodde asked.

  “No. I majored in sports medicine. Psychology is my hobby, sort of.”

  Dr. Brodde frowned and gave the man a scornful look. “I’m helpless over there with all my patients, and you’re sitting around here doing nothing? Have you forgotten the Hippocratic Oath, young man? How selfish of you!”

  Oren listened to the old man’s diatribe and nodded in agreement. “I realize I’m a selfish bastard. But Olga is my patient. She got depressed by the whole business. Her little daughter Masha is still somewhere out there.”

  The woman’s ears pricked as she heard her daughter’s name. She shifted her gaze from Ksenia to Dr. Brodde, from Max to the lying man on the floor. Her eyes were like a raccoon’s. There were dark circles under them. Something seemed to pop into her head. As if someone flicked a switch inside her skull. Her face expression changed from imbecile tranquility to scorching rage. There was madness in those eyes. The craziness of an animal cornered by hunting dogs.

  “Just what the fuck are these people doing here?!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. In her delusion, she remembered how to speak English. “I don’t want them here! Take them away!”

  Dr. Brodde made a cautious step back.

  “Calm down, honey,” Oren said. “We have to help people.”

  The woman was getting hysterical. “I don’t want to do anything with them, Max! Make them leave at once!”

  She stood up and tramped her feet on the floor in fury.

  “Wait, dear,” Oren said.

  “Make! Them! Go!” Olga screamed.

  Ksenia looked desperately at Dr. Brodde. “I guess we’ll have to move on.”

  “Make! Them! Go! AWAY!!”

  Olga burst into tears and embraced herself. Convulsions were shaking her body. Then she fell down and started thrashing her feet. The heel of her boot struck Ingvar’s head.

  Ingvar gave a painful moan and opened his eyes. He looked up from the floor. What he saw was a mad woman rolling madly in hysterics.

  “Fuck me in the mouth,” he muttered hoarsely.

  His first thought was that he was in the middle of some exorcism session. He blinked, hoping he was seeing a nightmare in a dream. It was a nightmare. But it was not a dream.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Ramses woke up to the distant scream of the air-raid siren which tore the silence of the dawn. His eyes rested on the first pink rays of the sun for a while, and then he looked around. He was sitting in an armchair by the dying fire, which they had built right on the floor in the main showroom. Stas, his night watchman partner, was awake, sitting in another, not matching armchair but he didn’t hear the noise at first. He had found somewhere a media player which still functioned, and was busy listening to some hard rock through earbuds. Which was a big no-no for a man on duty. The volume was so high that Ramses could clearly hear the words in the song. It was “Big Gun” by AC/DC. But Ramses didn’t make a scene about this. He was guilty himself, having fallen asleep like that. Another huge no-no on duty. A deadly no-no. Stas saw a question in Ramses’s face and pressed the pause button on his player.

  The piercing sound outside was increasing.

  Stas removed the earbuds. “The hell is that?”

  “Dunno,” Ramses said. “Looks like a siren.”

  He heard three successive gunshots outside. Very close. Then another one.

  “I don’t like it at all,” he said. “I’m gonna call the others.”

  ***

  In the basement, Steve had just crawled out of his sleeping bag. He had a bad cough.

  “Listen up, guys,” Ramses said. “We got to move on.”

  “Yeah, time to hit that drugstore,” Steve said. His voice was croaky. “I need a couple of cough drops myself.”

  “Count me in, too. I’ve run out of condoms,” Goran’s chuckle came from a corner of the basement where he was pissing into a bucket.

  “Wait, everybody,” Ramses said and raised his index finger to his lips. “Listen.”

  The faint but disturbing sound of the siren penetrated the thick concrete walls of the basement.

  “What’s that, brother?” Erkan asked.

  “An air-raid siren,” Ramses said. “Or so it seems.”

  “Yes, we heard it. A week ago,” Andy said. “We hid in the hotel basement that day.”

  A series of dull machine gun sounds could be heard somewhere in the distance.

  “What’s going on?” Andy said. He looked calm but concerned.

  “I’m not sure I want to find that out,” Steve said. He put on his shattered glasses and started collecting his things: a backpack, two handguns, and an assault rifle.

  Ramses heard footsteps on the staircase. Stas ran down into the basement. “Quick! I guess we have to get out of here!”

  “We know that ourselves, now,” Steve said.

  “What is it?” Gleb asked through his sleep.

  “The dead ones are coming,” Stas said in an undertone.

  “Fine,” Gleb muttered and got up in two quick movements.

  Marcel followed suit.

  ***

  Eight shopping carts were in the middle of the showroom. Loaded to the brim with weapons. Ready to be delivered to the hotel.

  “Okay. Let’s go!” Andy said. “It’s gonna be hot here soon.”

  He approached the cart he had prepared yesterday and pushed it, heading for the exit. They each grabbed the handles of their carts and drove them outside. The weather was promising to be fine. Ramses thought back to his last winter vacation in Aspen. He used to go there once in a while to go skiing. It would be perfect weather now for a good ride down the slope.

  A herd of walking dead in front of them brought him back to reality. Cherry-colored mouths on chapped faces. Hungry eyes. Pale crooked fingers. The people turned left and ran through a basketball playground to avoid them. Stas was in the tail, panting. His breath was coming out in clouds of vapor.

  He caught up with Goran. “Why the siren?”

  “Don’t ask me, man,” Goran said. “But the fucking horn is attracting the damn creatures, and they’re moving our way.”

  Stas slowed down, puffing for breath.

  Goran looked back at him. “Someone should’ve kept from playing video games too much and spent more time in the gym.”

  Stas said nothing but showed him his middle finger instead.

  In a quarter of an hour, they were standing in front of the drugstore. Its one shop window was boarded up from the inside.

  Goran went up the low steps to the double door. There were wide windows on both sides of it. He touched the door handle as the glass exploded to the right of his head, and the broken pieces poured all over him. He ducked. Another shot put out a fragment of the window frame and ricocheted. Goran crawled downstairs and hid behind the corner of the drugstore. There was another shot and Stas bent in half. Then he fell down, his hand grabbing at his stomach in pain. A dark red patch spread out on his gray overcoat, and blood drenched the snow under his feet. Ramses ran up to Stas and took him by the shoulders. He caught a glimpse of a shadow in the drugstore’s door frame. A middle-aged man in a brown sweater was
standing there, holding a rifle. He saw Ramses, pointed the weapon at him and fired again. The bullet hit a cart.

  “Don’t shoot!” Goran shouted in Russian. His back was pressed to the wall. His handgun was drawn, his finger on the trigger.

  “Get away from here!” the man yelled. There was a reloading sound coming from the depth of the drugstore.

  Steve and Ramses dragged Stas away from the line of fire and put him on the snow-covered pavement. Blood was gushing from the young man’s wound.

  Steve yelled, “He’s shot him! Bastard!”

  Marcel knelt down beside Stas, pulled up his sweater and shirt. He pressed his hand to the bleeding wound. “Somebody give me something to use as a tampon!”

  Andy slipped his white scarf off his neck and handed it over to Marcel.

  “Stas, can you wriggle your feet?” Steve asked.

  Stas made an effort to move his feet. The feet twitched a little.

  “Thank God,” Steve said. “The bullet must have not reached the spinal cord. Which is good. But he’s losing his blood way too fast.”

  Marcel applied the scarf to the wound. It immediately changed its color to a bright crimson.

  Stas rolled his eyes. “Ma-ma …”

  “No,” Marcel said, slapping the boy on the cheeks. “Stay with us! Don’t you dare fall asleep now!”

  “We gotta get him to the hotel as soon as possible,” Goran said. “The German doc can patch him up.”

  “If the man doesn’t bleed out,” Ramses said gloomily.

  Goran turned to the drugstore. “What’s wrong with you, people?! We needed only medicine! We meant no harm to you.”

  The man in the drugstore answered with another bullet, which hit the ground and sent fountains of snow flying. “I don’t fucking care! Get out before I kill every one of you!”

  Ramses scooped a hand grenade off his cart. “This will make him more cooperative.” He removed the pin and squeezed the grenade in his hand.

  Andy shook his head. “Don’t. We’re not murderers.”

  Ramses gave Andy an angry look. Then he turned around and tossed the grenade at a parked van. The explosion that followed destroyed the vehicle and triggered the alarm system of a nearby car. There was a howl, and they saw dark shapes staggering at the end of the street.