The Living & The Dead (Book 1): Zombiegrad

by Hasanov, Oleg

  Stas was lying on the advertisement board placed on the bottom of the hole. His face was pale as death. His body was past shaking. The shock was gone. Now he was in agony, large beads of sweat building on his forehead. Fear emanated from him. They had covered him with their coats to keep him warm and were shaking with cold themselves. If it were not for the warm sun, they would have frozen to death. Marcel had taken off his shirt to use it as the wound dressing. It was soaked through with blood. His bloodstained hands looked like red mittens.

  “That’s too bad,” Marcel said in a detached voice, the voice which tired surgeons had. “He’s losing too much blood too quickly.”

  Nobody replied.

  Andy checked the boy’s pulse. Dangerously weak.

  A zombie male wearing a black woolen cap appeared at the lip of the hole, lost his balance and tumbled into the hole, waving his hands. Gleb gave three hasty bursts of fire from his snub-nosed AK-47 and the creature stopped moving, its head and chest punctured like a colander. Gleb reloaded his weapon in four quick movements and raised it high up in case another roaming dead thing happened to pass by and drop in.

  In a minute, the firestorm around them faded as the bomber planes roared away to the north. The combat helicopters went elsewhere too, seeking new targets.

  They could hear each other now. Andy peered out of the hole and saw the hotel in the distance. He could see it because the apartment buildings, which used to block the view on the hotel, were now leveled with the ground. A sheet of black smoke was rising from it up into the sky. By some weird magic, the building was practically intact. Or so it seemed. But the billowing smoke bothered him.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  They could not afford to wait it out anymore. Stas was going to die any minute now.

  With his freezing hands, he pulled out his walkie-talkie, turned it on and raised it to his chapped face. “Diana, this is Andy. Over.”

  There was no answer.

  The sun was shining brightly. Good day to be alive. Except a young life was dying on their hands.

  He paused and tried again. “We can see the hotel is on fire. What’s happening? Report immediately. Over.”

  No response.

  “Diana?”

  A few horrifying moments passed.

  Andy clenched his teeth in despair and shook the radio, slapping the bottom against the palm of his hand. He was going to count to twenty and switch the radio off to conserve the battery power. As he counted up to eighteen, he heard the radio spitting out static noises.

  He pressed the talk button. “Come again. I can’t hear you clearly. Over.”

  The radio chattered on but the words were incomprehensible. He adjusted the frequency, but the voice had already fallen silent. The only words he could get were “Andy” and “fire”.

  He leaned back and looked at himself. Dirt on his pants. Dirt on his boots. He put on his right glove. His left one had been lost somewhere. He tried to warm his hands with his breath. Not useful. He was barely feeling them.

  Stats gave a soft groan, and his head lolled to one side, chin on his chest. His face was a frozen mask of death.

  “No, mate!” Andy said. “Don’t. Please.”

  Marcel stopped compressing the wound. “I think we lost him,” he said softly.

  “You sure?” Andy asked.

  Stas was staring with unseeing eyes at a lone bird flying across the sunlit sky.

  Marcel felt the pulse on Stas’s neck and wrist. Then nodded and closed the boy’s eyelids. Nobody said anything for a while. Andy was feeling relief. He felt guilty about it. And he hated himself for it.

  It had been a stupid idea to split the group. But they needed the medication too. Without it, Stas would have died anyway. Maybe thanks to the meds, which Goran’s group was going to fetch, they would save many lives.

  Marcel pressed the muzzle of his handgun to the young man’s forehead.

  “No,” Andy said.

  “What if he comes back?” Gleb asked.

  “He won’t,” Andy said. “He wasn’t bitten.”

  Marcel holstered his gun and got to his feet. Gleb followed suit.

  Andy took his walkie-talkie and turned it on. “Diana, come in! Over.”

  Radio silence in response.

  Then the radio came abruptly alive. “Andy, this is Diana. We’ve been hit by a missile. Real hard. We lost a lot of people. The basement’s on fire.”

  “Can you extinguish the fire?”

  “At the moment, we can’t,” Diana replied. “The basement and the ground level are overrun. Over.”

  Andy sighed. “Damn!”

  He tried to concentrate. But it was hard as his body temperature was falling down, and his lips were numb with cold.

  “Diana,” he said into the walkie-talkie. “We’re coming to you, okay? Hold on, honey. Andy out.”

  He clicked the radio off. He picked up his bloodstained coat, put it on and climbed out of the hole. He felt filthy and scared. But with his coat on, he felt warmer.

  The sun was shining brightly in the sky. Icicles were melting under roofs. The upcoming spring was in the air. Only birds were not chirping. The bomb explosions had frightened them all away.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ramses and the others did not take the risk of crossing the stream of the dead and went searching for another drugstore instead. When the bombing started, they waited it out in a nearby notary office. The hurricane of bombs had stormed through the city leaving behind burning houses, destroyed roads, vehicles and uprooted trees. The churned earth was also covered with contagious biomass—torn body parts of zombies.

  They kept away from the avenue and found a small drugstore. By some miracle, it had been spared by the bombs. The entrance had not been barricaded. They rolled their carts up the wheelchair ramp and entered through the nonfunctioning automatic doors.

  Steve picked up a pack of Halls off the floor. “Oh, cough drops. Fast relief.”

  They stepped inside, their boots and cartwheels crunching on the broken glass. They looked around carefully. No movement. Which meant no immediate danger.

  Ramses pushed his shopping cart in front of him but then stopped. The place was empty. Ravaged. Various small items were scattered around. There was a bandage package with a muddy boot print on it. Broken bottles everywhere. The deeper they went in, the stronger was the smell of medicine. And urine. The olfactory range was diverse—from sweet syrup for kids to the strong smell of rubbing alcohol. They had come here late. The place had been ransacked. All the shelves were empty. What was left had either been smashed to pieces or spilled or torn or burnt. Blood and rubbish covered the floor. And tons of expended cartridge cases. Drugstores seemed to be among the first places people robbed when the things started rapidly getting out of hand.

  Ramses stepped over a pile of brownish powder and looked over a counter. He saw the body of a young woman in a white lab coat. Face down on the floor. Her nylon stockings were ripped. There was a bloody abattoir between her legs. Her curly head soaked in a pool of blood. He turned away.

  He walked around the shelves for kids’ supplies and stumbled on mangled bodies with chewed throats and torsos.

  “God Almighty,” he said under his breath.

  “There’s nothing here,” Steve said. “Let’s bounce.”

  “Yep,” Goran said. “I guess this was a hot place from the first day.”

  “I hate it,” Erkan said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Five minutes and we’re moving on,” Goran said. “Salvage everything you can.”

  Which was not much. All they could find was cotton buds, vitamins, dummies of medical devices and stuff like that. All that they took fitted in a small bag.

  “A pregnancy test set—check,” Goran said, making a mark in his tick list of medical supplies.

  Steve saw a rack with reading glasses. He tried them all on and chose the best pair. He could see much better now. He wanted to discard his old broken ones but then tho
ught again and put them in his breast pocket. He looked in the mirror hanging on the wall and turned to Ramses.

  Ramses gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Now look at this,” Goran said.

  Everyone looked. Goran was pointing at a poster, which showed a logo of some medical organization and contained lots of information written in Russian.

  “A convention of surgeons in a nearby hospital,” Goran explained. “Ought to take place tomorrow. I hope we’re going to find all that med stuff there.”

  ***

  The hospital complex was not far from the drugstore. They made their way across a school soccer field, which looked more like a battlefield. There were multiple bodies with gunshot wounds in their heads and chests. Adults and kids.

  More bodies were piled up at the hospital gates. There had been a real massacre here.

  They went to the nearest building, which had five stories, and spotted a male figure sitting on the porch with his back to the newcomers. They approached him and saw it was a physician wearing a white coat and a green cap. Used to be a physician, to be exact. His mouth was covered in blood, and he was munching on a juicy piece of meat.

  “Archers to the battlements,” Goran said and hefted his butcher knife in his hand. He came up stealthily to the cannibal creature, took a swing with the knife and buried the blade into the skull of the undead. The green cap crumpled into the wound. The corpse released a quiet moan and slumped down on the steps.

  “Sorry, doc,” Goran said. He wiped the blade against the dead man’s scrubs.

  They stepped on the porch and saw a plaque above the door.

  “Maternity home,” Goran read.

  “Oh, man,” Steve said. “Please count me out. Pregnant zombies are the last thing I want to see.”

  Ramses smirked. “Who’s prima donna pussy now?”

  “We can find anesthesia here,” Goran said. “And other critical medical stuff.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  They left Steve outside keep an eye on the carts with the firearms and walked in through a big squeaky door.

  The lobby was deserted. But Ramses sensed the concentration of death was high here.

  He stepped into the long hallway. His alert meter reached its maximum point. The hallway was lined with medical rooms on both sides. Ten rooms all in all. Five odd numbers on the left. Five even numbers on the right. Some of them were closed and others were open. The open ones got on the nerves most of all. They expected a shambling living corpse appearing any second.

  Ramses was the first to go along the hallway. Erkan and Goran followed him. Baby posters hung on the walls. Happy little faces. Happy smiles of parents.

  A woman’s corpse was blocking the way. She lay on the floor, face up and arms outstretched. She was clad in a gray business suit. Ramses motioned everybody to stop. He touched the neck of the dead body with his shotgun. No reaction. Ramses turned to the men and signaled to proceed. He held the shotgun before him and continued walking. There were two closed doors ahead—Room 101 and Room 102. One on the left, one on the right. Both open. Ramses took a quick look inside each of the room. Nothing. And nobody. Ramses went quietly farther.

  They heard moaning somewhere from above and froze in their place. Erkan’s fingers went pale as he gripped his assault rifle. Goran tensed and licked his lips. He was holding his butcher knife firmly with both hands, ready to bring it into action any second.

  The moaning stopped, and all was quiet again. Goran heaved a sigh of relief and moved on.

  Two more doors, 103 and 104. The one on the right was closed; the one on the left was open. The open room was empty. Blood on the far wall. No one inside. Dead or alive. Ramses turned to the closed door and nudged it slightly with his boot. Two corpses were on the floor. Pregnant women. Dead. But not moving. The stench was intolerable. But the room was safe.

  They were going to go on when Ramses heard muffled noises ahead of them. 105 and 106. Both of them closed.

  Ramses stepped back and mouthed, “There’s someone in there.”

  Goran tried the door handle of Room 105. Locked. He let it go.

  A sudden bump in the opposite room made them start.

  Room 106 was a bookkeeper’s office. They chose to leave it unopened. Fax machines and stacks of paper were nothing of importance to them. Goran made sure it was securely locked, and they pulled up a couch to block the way. Nothing dangerous was found in 107 and 108. They were wide open and empty.

  They approached the end of the little hallway. Two last rooms ahead. One open. One closed. Ramses plucked up courage and stepped forward, as a zombie nurse crawled out of Room 109. Her legs seemed to be broken. The undead helped herself along with the elbows, moving forward with astonishing dexterity. Ramses pointed his weapon at the new threat, but Goran gave him a stopping sign and stuck his knife into the cranium of the moving corpse. The knife went all the way through the nurse’s cap and the skull bone and stopped. The corpse fell flat on the floor. The head hit the floor with a smacking sound. Then it was quiet again. But now they did not like the quiet. Goran wiped his knife on the dead nurse’s shoulder. He was getting a knack of it.

  They opened the last door. It was a storage room for clean linen. It was clean and dry. Sunlight was flooding the room. A sudden oasis of serenity and order in this desert of death and decay.

  “Let’s go back now,” Goran said. “Let’s see what’s upstairs.”

  “Wait, guys,” Erkan said. He looked at his watch. “I know this may seem stupid but it’s my prayer time.”

  Ramses and Goran looked at him. Ramses raised an eyebrow.

  Goran said, “Go on, man. It’s not stupid at all. But be quick about it.”

  They locked themselves in the storage room. While Erkan stood on his knees in the patch of sunlight, praying, they looked around the room. It was tiny. Ramses opened his backpack and had a sandwich. Goran sat in a corner and half-closed his eyes. Ramses found a duffel bag in a closet. He shook out its contents on the floor. He assumed it would suit perfectly to put the medical supplies in.

  In a couple minutes, Erkan stopped praying. He stood up, his knee joints popping and cracking. He looked at Ramses and Goran.

  “Thank you, brothers,” he said. “I’ve asked my Lord for guidance. Now I’m not afraid.”

  No one said a word about it.

  ***

  They went up the stairs to the second floor. Ramses pushed the double doors open, his shotgun in front of him.

  The level was swarming with zombies. Pregnant ones. Walking decaying meat. Despite their burden, the zombiefied would-be mothers were moving fast. Goran blinked and opened his mouth in utter disgust.

  “Here’s the real deal,” Ramses muttered.

  A female ghoul came their way, her hands flailing along her huge body, and Ramses opened fire. The zombie’s head exploded like a rotten turnip, a fountain of dark liquid bursting through the back of the skull.

  Erkan gave a series of shots at the advancing crowd.

  Dozens and dozens of undead streamed toward them now, attracted by the gunshot noises.

  “Fall back,” Goran said.

  Ramses lobbed a grenade into the hallway and closed the double doors. A loud explosion shook the building.

  They used the stairs to climb to the next level. Two corridors. The one on the left was drowned in the darkness. The one on the right bathed in the sunshine, and it was partly barricaded.

  Goran looked at the men. “What do you think? And you’d better think quicker.”

  “Neither way is one hundred percent safe,” Ramses said. “But I’d rather go through that corridor.” He pointed to the right.

  “All right. Come on, everyone!” Goran waved his butcher knife.

  They removed the couch and beds and squeezed through into the hallway. It was small and empty but for a gurney on wheels. There was a shape on the gurney, covered by a white sheet. There were lines of doors left and right. All the doors were closed.

  Go
ran clutched his knife in his left hand and drew his gun out.

  A woman in a nightgown was shuffling at the end of the hallway, her back turned to them.

  Goran waited till the zombie reached the far wall, bumped into it and made a slow turn around. The zombie saw the men and gave a hungry moan.

  Goran squinted, curved his mouth and squeezed a load at the creature. The bullet made its way into the woman’s head, leaving a neat hole in the forehead. Bull’s eye. The corpse slumped on the floor like a pile of dirty clothes.

  Erkan walked near the gurney, and the figure under the sheet came alive and grabbed his right hand. Erkan’s assault rifle dropped to the floor. The sheet raised and revealed a male zombie strapped to the gurney with belts. But one of the zombie’s hands was free. It was an old man in a black uniform of a guard. He snapped Erkan’s right hand with his not so many teeth and bit into it. Blood sprayed across the ex-guard’s face. Erkan screamed and punched the living cadaver in the face. The zombie would not let go of his hand. Goran gave the ghoul a series of stabs with his knife. The zombie’s jaw loosened and Erkan snatched his hand out of the monster’s mouth. The beast started licking the blood greedily from his lips. Ramses pressed the muzzle of his shotgun to the zombie’s eye socket and filled it with deadly lead.

  Erkan’s wound was not deep, but the hand was bleeding. He raised his bitten hand to his eyes and looked at it in horror.

  Silence hung in the hallway. Erkan stood, pressing his bitten hand to his chest. He was disoriented. A drop of blood splattered on the floor. Ramses stared at it for a few moments, not realizing what to do.

  “Fucking shit!” Goran said.

  Erkan said nothing. He looked at his hand. Dumbstruck. That was a really nasty bite.