The Living & The Dead (Book 1): Zombiegrad

by Hasanov, Oleg

  Goran said, “You … you gotta have your hand cut off!”

  Erkan shook his head violently. “No!”

  “You may get infected, man,” Goran said.

  “No, brother,” Erkan said. “Not like a thief.”

  Ramses got what Erkan meant. He once saw a documentary about some Arabic country. There was a scene there in which a man was punished for a crime. He had stolen something from somebody in a village and gotten caught, and the thief’s right hand had to be chopped off according to Shariah customs.

  “Man, I’m really sorry,” Ramses said.

  Erkan gave no reply.

  “You don’t want to end up like those deadheads, do you?” Ramses said. “'Cause you’re gonna die in a couple minutes. And then you’ll turn.”

  A little pool of blood had collected on the floor now. Erkan’s lips twisted. He tried not to burst into tears.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Goran said. “It’s a total fuck-up!”

  Ramses took off his belt to use as the tourniquet. He wrapped it around Erkan’s right arm above the elbow. Goran made sure it was tight.

  “We don’t even have the anesthetics,” Ramses said. “We have to hurry up back to the hotel. Maybe Dr. B still can help.”

  “No,” Erkan said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I don’t have much time. We all know what the virus can do.”

  “He’s right,” Goran said. “He won’t make it. If we don’t do it right now, the infection will get into his system.”

  “If it’s already in the bloodstream, he’s a goner,” Ramses said. “But if it’s spread through the lymph system, we can have some time.”

  “Did you watch that movie?” Goran asked. “The guy’s arm got wedged under a boulder and he cut his own arm?”

  “Yeah,” Ramses said. “100 Hours or something. What about it?”

  “Do you remember how he did it?”

  Ramses shook his head.

  “Then we’ll have to improvise,” Goran said.

  “Stop it,” Erkan said. He reached in his coat and took out a wallet. He opened it to show them a photo of a young woman and a little boy. “This is my family. My son, Hikmet. My wife, Feride.”

  Tears were running down his cheeks. “Please, when this is over, call them. Or write them a letter. Say something about me to my son. Something good. You’ll find my home address and phone number in my wallet.”

  “Come on, man,” Ramses said to Erkan. “You’ll say it yourself. We’re not giving up on you.”

  “Quick,” Goran said. “Let’s check out those rooms out there. Maybe we’ll find some bandages.”

  They ran the length of the corridor. There were neither operating theaters nor special procedure rooms in this wing. Only restrooms, a mop room, and a dining hall. No bandages.

  There was a commotion coming from the barricade at the end of the hall. They looked at the entrance hidden in the dark and saw dim figures shambling toward them.

  “The dead’uns,” Ramses whispered.

  “Let’s go inside the cafeteria,” Goran said, urging them to follow him. “We can’t stay here.”

  Goran approached the door of the dining hall, pressed his ear to the reeded glass and listened carefully.

  Then he swung the door open, and they saw a female zombie standing in the middle of the room. With her back to the door. As the men came in, she turned around like a sleepwalker. Her lower jaw was missing. She did not start moving immediately in their direction, and she seemed to not have registered the presence of the human flesh at all. Maybe her missing jaw was the reason for her apathy and loss of appetite.

  Ramses ran up to her. Gave a blow to her forehead with the butt of his shotgun. Knocked her down. Then blasted her brains out.

  Goran closed the door and propped a couch against it. They hoisted Erkan on a chair and urged him to put his belted hand on a table. Ramses rolled up the man’s shirt sleeve. Erkan took his silver ring off his ring finger and pocketed it.

  “Whatever happens, Erkan,” Ramses said, “you’ve always been a good man. And a good friend. There must be a place for you up in the heavens. I’ll never forget you. I promise I’ll take care of your family.”

  “Thanks, brother,” Erkan said and slumped in the chair.

  Goran found transparent plastic bags on the counter and told everyone to put them on to avoid any contact with contaminated blood.

  The trio pulled the plastic bags on their heads and poked holes for their eyes. They looked like members of some weird cult now.

  Ramses found a bottle of dishwashing detergent on the windowsill. He gave it to Goran. “Clean your blade thoroughly. We gotta do it properly. No other source of contamination should be involved.”

  Goran poured some liquid on his knife, cleaned it and wiped the blade on the curtain.

  “Gut up, man,” he said. “It’s going to be messy.”

  Erkan closed his eyes. “Insh’allah.”

  If God wills.

  This much Arabic Ramses understood. He once went out with a girl from Qatar.

  Erkan put his hand on the table. Ramses held Erkan’s arm tight in place. He had wrapped his own hands with plastic bags, too. Goran raised his big knife above his head. The blade glittered ominously in the sunlight. Ramses squinted his eyes in expectation of a hard blow. He hoped Goran would manage to do it from the very first try. After all, he regularly dealt with chopping meat and stuff.

  Erkan opened his eyes. “Wait. I will scream. We have to do something to muffle the scream. If they hear us, everyone will be in danger.”

  Goran said, “Yeah, we don’t need extra attention right now. Things seem to be quiet in the corridor so far.”

  Ramses took a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here. Take it.”

  Erkan looked at it and said something in Arabic. Then reluctantly, he allowed Ramses to put it into his mouth. He gagged.

  Ramses put his hand on Erkan’s shoulder. “Get ready, brother.”

  Sweat broke on Erkan’s forehead. His and Goran’s gazes met, and Erkan nodded. Goran swung the knife and cleaved through the man’s wrist. Erkan gasped. Blood droplets specked on Goran’s face bag. Erkan was not able to scream at first. Then he let out a muffled shriek. He stomped his feet and made a try to get up but Ramses held him hard. The wound was deep, and blood was gushing out of it in rivulets. But the job was far from being done. The table surface was too bouncy for this procedure, and the knife was not big enough. A chopping block and an ax would do better. With this kind of knife, which was only good for cutting chicken meat, it would take two more mighty whacks.

  Wrong. It took five more whacks. Quick. Bone crushing. Blood spattering. Then Goran used the table edge as the leverage to break the hand off.

  Erkan moaned through the dirty cloth again. He pulled away from the table, deep shock frozen on his face. The cut off hand was sitting on the table like a huge white crab.

  “Quick!” Goran said. “Tighten the belt!”

  Ramses tightened the belt, his hands slippery under the ad hoc gloves. Tears were pouring out of Erkan’s foggy eyes. He was on the verge of collapsing into unconsciousness. He rolled his eyes in agony and began falling down, but Ramses and Goran did not let him. Once the bleeding stopped, they covered the stump with a piece of cloth, which immediately absorbed the blood.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Goran said, slapping Erkan’s cheeks. He turned to Ramses. “Now let’s get him out of here.”

  They took off the bags. They pulled the handkerchief out.

  Goran picked up the butcher knife and wiped it. Ramses headed to the door, removed the couch and looked out into the hallway.

  The horizon was clear.

  “Okay,” Ramses said. “We can move on.”

  Goran looked at Erkan. “Can you walk?”

  Erkan nodded weakly. They left the dining hall and went down the stairs. Ramses went first. Goran and Erkan followed them. Twice Erkan stopped because he had to vomit.

  They went all the wa
y down to the lobby and out on the porch. Outside, Erkan fainted, stumbled and fell down.

  They did not hasten to pick him up. They looked at the place where they had left Steve with cartloads of weapons. The carts were gone. Steve was standing with his hands up. A big guy wearing a dirty orange jumpsuit was holding a gun pressed to Steve’s head. A dozen other people in orange jumpsuits stood behind him, armed to their teeth.

  One of the strangers shot once into the air, and Ramses and Goran put their hands up, too.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The assault was like an avalanche. Zombies streamed into the ruined basement and went up to capture the first level. The survivors managed to block the first-floor staircases leading to the second floor. Three staircases had to be blocked. The hallways were wide, and it took a lot of furniture to block the ways. The barricades were only waist high so the undead managed to break through.

  Diana listened to Andy’s latest message and clicked her radio off. Hearing Andy’s voice again was like a ray of hope. Help was on the way.

  Ivan and other guards were blasting their guns in the hallway. Shooting the zombies over the barricade at the right wing doorway. People were watching as their friends and family members were dying.

  Most of all these people were not fighters. They had been living in relative safety all this time. Without weapons, they could rely only on their fists, pool cues or table legs. But almost all of them relied on their legs, being afraid of close combat with the dead. They took refuge in unlocked rooms.

  A crying woman was trying to break the barricade apart. A man, her husband, dragged her away, and she started hammering his chest with her fists. He was crying, too. Over a lost child.

  Diana saw that some of the people were bitten or had scratches on their bodies. A young woman was on the floor. Her boyfriend crouched over her. She was still breathing but her throat was torn with teeth. There were bite marks all over her face. Blood was dripping down her cheek.

  “Please help her!” The man looked at everybody, pleading with his eyes.

  Everyone stepped aside from him.

  “She was bitten, man,” someone said. “Infected.”

  “You have to help her! Please!”

  “There is nothing we can do,” said another voice.

  Everyone turned around. It was Ksenia.

  “I’m sorry but she’s going to die,” Ksenia said. “Ten to fifteen minutes, and she’ll turn.”

  The man said nothing. He caressed his girlfriend’s hair.

  Ksenia drew out her gun. “All you can do is to relieve her suffering.”

  She offered him the gun. “You can do it yourself, or you can let me do it for you.”

  The man covered his face with the palm of his hand. His body shook with convulsions. Then he stood up, took the gun and scooped his woman off the floor. He kicked the door of the nearest room open and closed it behind him. There was a quiet lock sound.

  A few moments of silence. Then a heart-rending scream. A muffled gunshot stopped the screaming. Then another gunshot followed. A few more moments of silence.

  Ivan stormed into the room, his gun held up. Two bodies were on the floor. Dead. Bullets in their heads.

  Diana looked down at her jeans. A dark patch was spreading across the front.

  ***

  Andy, Marcel, and Gleb got to the manhole leading to the basement of their hotel without much trouble. The crowds of zombies around the hotel had been dispersed or annihilated. Gleb stepped on the metal ladder as half a dozen hands grabbed at his ankle and dragged him down into the sewer. Judging by the dirty sleeves, the hands belonged to homeless persons who had turned into zombies.

  Marcel unshouldered his AK-47 and wanted to jump right down the manhole, but Andy stopped him.

  In the shadows below, two long bursts of fire erupted from the muzzle of Gleb’s assault rifle. Then a piercing shriek echoed against the walls and reached his friends’ ears. Marcel looked at the abyss lurking in the manhole with unbelieving eyes.

  ***

  When Diana had stress, her periods arrived earlier. Today was the mother of all the stresses in her life. And she had run out of sanitary pads.

  She went up to the penthouse apartment and found its door unlocked. She looked in her purse: the keys were gone! Carefully, she opened the door. Dirty footprints across the parquet floor. Clinging to the wall, she went in. A clump of fear was in her throat. But she moved on.

  She sprinted to the fireplace and grabbed the poker. Her hands were trembling. She brandished the poker like a sword in front of her, walking from room to room. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Except for the open door and the footprints. She followed the dirty tracks. Which led to a huge wardrobe in the bedroom. She clutched the poker tighter and reached for the sliding wardrobe doors.

  ***

  Standing in the wardrobe, Igor Sorokin felt the presence of someone else in the bedroom. Diana, most probably. That whining bitch. She always liked to find fault with the guards and other personnel and give them a hard time. A wave of anger washed over him, and his nostrils enlarged. The smell of his beer breath mixed with the smell of mothballs placed in the corners of the wardrobe. He wiped his clammy forehead against an expensive jacket hanging in the wardrobe and held his gun in front of him, ready to shoot at anyone who slid the doors open.

  There was the noise of sliding. Sorokin tensed, his index finger on the trigger. He heard a rustle of coat hangers behind the wooden wall to his right. Searching was going on in the other section of the wardrobe.

  He licked his dry lips. He wanted to have another gulp from his beer bottle, which he had put on the floor. But he had to deal with the intruder first. Technically, though, he was an intruder himself.

  The door slid shut. Now she would definitely open his section. And the bitch was going to get it.

  A sudden woman’s scream made him step back. It was Diana, all right. His finger nearly made an extra pressure on the trigger to make a shot. Then there was a sound of a blow, followed by more screaming. A metal object clanged on the floor.

  Now it was his turn to sense danger. And morbid curiosity too.

  “Get away from me!” Diana shouted.

  Sorokin heard a smack across the face. A body fell down. A muffled groan.

  He slid the door open a crack, and his eyes widened. Diana was sprawled on the floor. A man, his face covered by a black nylon stocking, was on top of her.

  Diana saw Sorokin and stretched her hand toward him. “Help!”

  The masked man growled angrily and gave her another smack in the face. The attacker took her by her throat and started squeezing the air out of her lungs. Her body got limp and she stopped resisting. He tore her jeans off, spread her legs and lay down on her. Then he started frantically moving his hips.

  It was that murderer on the loose. Sorokin lacked leads to solve the crime. He suspected that it was Goran, that ladies’ man, but it was definitely not him as Goran had left on a hunting party.

  In a minute, the psychopath banged Diana’s head against the floor as his body convulsed in an orgasm. Her gaze clouded. Her head bumped against the floor again. And again.

  Sorokin shut the door carefully and hid behind the Armani suits. He stood motionless for a long spell. He tried to think of something pleasant. About his lovely daughters, about his wife, about his promise to take them to Karelia to visit his wife’s relatives.

  The noise in the bedroom ceased. Sorokin listened to the quietness outside. He waited a couple minutes and looked out. No one. No one posing a threat. Diana was on the floor. Staring at the ceiling with her frozen gaze. A thin trickle of blood threaded its way out her nose. He avoided looking at her. It seemed she was looking at him. He felt a kind of regret he hadn’t got to kill her himself.

  He headed to the living room. No one there. He went across the room and walked into the study. He found what he had come for right away. The Jaguar keys. They were right there on the desk, the jumping jaguar shining in the sunlight. He snat
ched the keys off the desk and stormed out of the room. No time to waste now. He would get into the garage, start the car and ride off. To get to his family. His family needed him. He did not owe anything to these people here. He was fed up with this place. Getting stuck in a place that would be soon swarming with zombies was not an option. His only chance to survive was to run for it. He knew he had to be a quick thinker in order to get out of here alive. Plus a fast car.

  On his way to the exit door, his glance fell on a liquor cabinet. He did not bother himself with unlocking it. He just smashed the glass with a figurine, a small cast iron lion, which sat on the mantelpiece. He took a handful of little bottles and stuffed them in his pockets.

  Diana groaned weakly on the floor. Still alive. He turned around. For a moment he contemplated finishing her off but then thought against it. Time was precious. Besides, he was pressed for the ammo. Too many targets, not enough ammo.

  He went into the corridor and headed to the fire staircase. The sounds of his steps were muffled by the carpets. He cocked his gun and started a quick descent. Even going down was physically demanding for him, because of his obesity. He stopped a couple times to wipe the beads of sweat pouring down his forehead. Finally, he went down the staircase and entered the underground parking garage.

  In the garage, he looked through the little window in the door. Outside, it seemed that everything was moaning and slouching.

  He fished the keys out of his pocket and turned the security signal system off. Got into the car. It was freezing cold inside. He inserted the ignition key, turned it and felt the strength of the car as the engine whirred to life. He waited while both the salon and the engine were heating up. He stepped out of the Jaguar to unbolt the garage doors. He strolled back, slipped into the car again and put the gun beside him on the passenger seat. He took a deep breath and tried to visualize what he was about to do. He took out the emergency leaflet and glanced at it. The evacuation center was about one hour’s drive from here. He would start from there. Perhaps they would help him to reunite with his family.

  He smacked his dry lips and took out a bottle. He raised it to the rearview mirror and wished himself good luck and success. He hit the bottle, looking around the car. A car was the wrong word for it. It was a yacht.