He tossed the empty bottle out the window. Locked all the windows. Put his gloves on. Hands on the steering wheel. Foot to the floor.
The tires growled and the car raced out of the garage and cut into the crowd of creatures like a knife into a big piece of butter. Ugly dents appeared on the bumper and silvery cracks covered the windshield. He switched on the wipers to wash the blood away. The Jaguar ground its way through the walking meat like a meat grinder and drove out of the parking bay and up the slope to the ground level. He kept his foot on the accelerator pedal. He turned the steering wheel in time to avoid the collision with the Coca-Cola truck and ran over a zombie as if it was a speed bump.
He squinted as the car rode out into broad daylight. The car crashed through the crossing gates, swerved and jumped up.
He added more speed. The tires screeched when he turned the corner and drove to the exit gates. Few zombies were in the inner yard, but there were a lot of them outside the fence on top of each other. He held the driving wheel tighter as the car rammed into the gates and scattered the bodies of the undead around. The left side of the windshield cracked and tiny cracks spread on the glass like a spider web. He felt cold air rushing in through the broken glass.
Finally, I’m through, he thought.
Now he was driving freely along the road. He glanced at the side-view mirror. He got company—one of the undead had grabbed the handle of the right rear door with one hand and was trying to get hold of the handle with the other one. One eye of the zombie was missing, and there was a ghastly black hole in its place. It was clad in a black overcoat and a dirty red scarf. The creature grinned at him, or so it seemed and pulled its body up to grab the handle with another hand. Sorokin zigzagged around an overturned burning bus. Up ahead, a man tried to halt him, waving frantically. But Sorokin just kept on racing.
His rear door passenger slipped and fell off the car right at the feet of the man who needed help. In a split second, the zombie assaulted the man. The man beat it with a piece of metal. No use. The zombie in the red scarf went for the man’s throat. The man fell down.
Sorokin pressed his lips and kept on driving.
Survival of the fittest, he said to himself.
He turned on the radio. Dead static noises. He rummaged in the glove compartment. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd CDs. No blatnyak, or Russian criminals’ songs. Damn.
He drove for about a quarter of an hour without much trouble. A couple times, he had to drive off the highway and make a detour along small lanes to avoid bomb craters and large herds of the dead. He assumed the ride would take longer than an hour.
He saw a huge fuel truck blocking the road. He had no time to react and turn away. At a breakneck speed, he jammed the car underneath the truck. The Jaguar roof crumpled like a sheet of paper, and the deployed airbag pinned Sorokin to the seat. No pain, which meant he hadn’t been injured. Good. He smiled. He was a fucking survivor. Survival of the fittest.
He felt the smell of gasoline. It dripped on his neck from above. He looked up and saw through the sunroof that he was right under the fuel cistern. Bad. The side of the tank had got punctured, and the fuel found its way through the broken sunroof into the car. The cold fuel was leaking down his spine now.
He removed the airbag and tugged at the door handle. The door was jammed. He tried the passenger door. He could open it but not enough to get out. Meanwhile, the fuel was making a big pool under his feet. He climbed over the driver’s seat to escape through one of the back doors as he caught a tiny flash of light through the rear window. He blinked and strained his keen eyesight. He ran his eyes over the area. There were police roadblocks a hundred yards from here. But no police officers or any other living people in the vicinity. Sparkling icicles melted under building roofs. Birds sang. He scanned the windows and his gaze stopped on a dark figure standing on a balcony. A camouflaged military man.
The soldier did not make an attempt to hide. There was another flash. By the time Sorokin realized the soldier was a sniper, and the flashes were caused by the sniper rifle scope, his body, soaked with fuel, had been engulfed in scorching flame.
TWENTY-SIX
There were four of them. And all four of them were wearing orange uniforms. Ramses wondered if they were escaped prisoners. They had unshaven faces and looked like zeks. They were armed like commandos. But the shopping carts were full. Which meant they hadn’t touched them yet. And this meant they had obtained their weapons by robbing a military platoon or a police squad. Anyway, it all spelled that bad luck had crossed his and his friends’ path.
Erkan moaned on the porch, and Ramses turned to pick him up but an angry shout in a language he didn’t understand implied he’d better not do it.
“What’s wrong with Erkan?” Steve said.
“Got bit,” Ramses said. “We had to chop his hand off.”
Steve squirmed in horror. “Bad fucking luck.”
A thin lizard-like man with rotten teeth pressed the muzzle of his gun to Steve’s head. Steve stopped talking.
A huge guy stepped in front of them. He was the biggest one in this gang. He had multiple fresh scars across his face. His uniform was the dirtiest. Torn in many places. He took out a lighter and a cigarette pack out of his breast pocket. He knocked a cigarette out of the pack with a click of his thumb and put it in the corner of his mouth. Then he flipped the wheel of the lighter and shielded the flame with his palm. He did it slowly, his snake-like gaze never leaving Ramses and Erkan and Goran. He stepped closer.
Meanwhile, a fat man searched Ramses and Goran and took their weapons away. He searched Erkan’s pockets and found nothing of interest. Then he took the duffel bag.
The big guy exhaled into the cold air and glanced at Ramses and Goran through the little cloud of blue-gray smoke.
“Who are you?” he said. “What you doing here?” He spoke English with a heavy accent. He was choosing his words carefully as if he had recently started learning the language or had not used it for a long time. He used no contractions. What surprised Ramses was not that the man could speak English, because it looked like everyone in this Shitsburg knew a word or two in English. What surprised him was that he spoke English from the start, without asking them whether they could speak English or not. Then he figured this was because he was an African American.
“I’m Goran,” Goran said. “And this here is Ramses. Steve you know already.”
“You Russian?” the man asked Goran.
Goran shook his head. “No, Serbian.”
The man pointed at Ramses. “American?”
Ramses nodded. “Yeah. San Francisco, California.”
The man snorted. “So what two Americans do in this city?”
“First off, we have to know who’s asking,” Ramses said. “As a token of respect, so to say.”
The huge guy squinted his eyes and took another drag on his cigarette. Then he gave a smile. “My name is no secret. I am Major Konstantin Gavrilov. And this is my squad.”
He turned to his people, who were alert, their fingers on the triggers.
“You all look the military type, all right,” Steve said. “Do they issue orange pajamas for all the militaries in Russia?’
Gavrilov did not reply to that, but his gaze darkened and narrowed.
Erkan groaned on the porch again.
“For God’s sake please help the man,” Steve said and lowered his hands.
Gavrilov looked at the lying man. “Was he bitten?”
“Yes,” Ramses said. “But he’s had his hand cut off. We stopped the infection from spreading. He’s bleeding now. And if we don’t help him, he’ll die pretty soon of exposure to the cold and shock.”
Gavrilov turned to the fat man and motioned at Erkan with his chin. The fat man went to Erkan, his oiled handgun gleaming in the sunlight.
“No!” Ramses said. “Don’t kill him! He’s alive.”
Gavrilov said, “If he is bitten, he is already dead.”
“No,” Goran said. “We
can save him!”
The guy’s gun cracked and drilled a hole in Erkan’s head. The moaning stopped. The fat guy laughed like a maniac and came down the porch steps.
“You’re a fucking murderer!” Steve shouted. He clenched his hands into fists and put them down. He made a step toward Gavrilov.
Another crack of the gun. A warning shot. A lazy curl of smoke rose from Gavrilov’s gun.
“Hands up!” he said. “And shut your mouth.”
Gavrilov’s men pointed their guns at Steve. Ramses had to comply and put his hands up.
Gavrilov said, “I shall ask again and for the last time. What are you doing here?”
Ramses said, “We’ve come here to get some medical supplies for our people.”
“What is in the bag?” Gavrilov said in a rusty voice.
“Medicine,” Goran said. “Our people are sick.”
Gavrilov said a punchy sentence in Russian and the Silent Man detached from the group. He brought the bag, opened it and looked inside.
“Da,” he said holding up a bottle of pills. “Medikamenty.”
Gavrilov nodded. His minion took the bag away.
“Hey,” Steve said. “Don’t take it from us. We need that stuff.”
“Shut up, old man,” Gavrilov said without looking at him. “I talk here. You listen.”
“Please give us back our bag,” Ramses said. “And let us go. Our people need medical help.”
Gavrilov said, “Open your mouth again, nigger, and you will be sorry.”
Voice of metal. No contractions. Dead serious.
He came closer to Ramses, dragged on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke in his face.
“Where the weapons from?” he said.
“It’s all we got,” Ramses said. “There was nothing else—”
Ramses did not finish his sentence as Gavrilov gave a quick punch to his stomach. Pain flashed inside, and Ramses doubled in half. But as his coat had taken most of the hit it didn’t take too much time for him to recover and straighten up.
Steve said, “The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.”
“Whose quote is that?” Ramses said. “Steven Harper Clayton?”
“Nope,” Steve said. “The Dalai Lama.”
Ramses smiled. He restored his breath, and now his stomach muscles were ready to take any blows.
“You all right?” Steve asked.
Ramses gave him an okay sign. “Cowabunga, dude.”
The fat guy struck Steve’s head with the butt of his gun. Steve fell down to the ground. The fat man kicked him, and Steve rose slowly to his feet.
“Hey! You better not screw with us, man!” Goran said. “Or else I’m going to make meat rolls out of you.”
“Oooh,” Gavrilov said. “Scary.”
He tossed his cigarette away and lit another one.
“Once again,” he said. “Where guns come from?” Gavrilov said. The calmness in his voice was terrifying. “Answer my question.”
Goran and Ramses looked at each other and said nothing.
“We have come in peace,” Gavrilov said. “Just give us some of your weapons. You have a lot of them. Why not share it with brothers?”
“You ain’t my brother,” Ramses said, and spat.
“We are all God’s sons. So technically, we are brothers.”
Silence.
Gavrilov looked at Ramses and then at Goran with his cold gray eyes. “Where the rest?”
Goran sighed. “In a gun store nearby. Four blocks from here. An easy walk.”
Gavrilov blew a cloud of cigarette smoke into the cold air and flicked the cigarette butt with his middle finger. The cigarette hissed in the snow. “Good. Show me.”
“For God’s sake, man,” Steve said to Gavrilov. “Take all the guns and leave us alone. Just let us have our meds.”
Without saying a word, Gavrilov pointed his gun at Steve and made a shot. A little red flower flourished on Steve’s forehead and he fell down. His new glasses fell off his nose to the snow. A thin whiff of smoke trailed from Gavrilov’s gun muzzle, and a quick blast of wind carried it away.
“I am tired of this old fart,” Gavrilov said.
Ramses roared in rage, “You bastard!”
He rushed forward but Gavrilov made a fast leap aside and delivered a sidekick to his chest. Ramses softened the hit with a left-hand block, but Gavrilov gave Ramses a powerful blow in the right eyebrow with his elbow. Blood flowed down his right eye, and he had trouble seeing with it. Four of the gang men ran up to Ramses and started kicking him with their heavy boots. Ramses caught one of the boots between his hands and gave it a vicious twist. The owner of the boot hollered and collapsed. Ramses made an attempt to break the man’s ankle but got a kick in his mouth. Bright stars exploded in front of his eyes. A series of kicks and blows followed. Ramses sprawled on the ground. His lips became a messy pulp.
Ramses spat blood on the snow. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
Gavrilov raised the gun at him. “That may be a problem.”
Goran made a step forward. The Lizard Man gave a warning shot. Goran stopped. The Lizard Man kicked the back of Goran’s knees, and Goran collapsed on the ground.
“Motherfuckers,” he said.
The Lizard Man was ready to hit him again as a sudden explosion shook the earth around them. One of the shopping carts flew up in the air and crashed down, spilling the mangled weaponry.
Ramses covered his ears and looked up. A series of gunshots punched the air. The gang men were shooting at something above the roof.
It was a military drone. It was hovering in the air like a white eagle. One missile hung at its right side. The one on the left had just been launched creating a little chaos on the ground.
The missile on the right side separated from the drone and headed toward the group. The people ran in all directions. There was a black and orange explosion. The Silent Man Man fell on his back. But he was not hurt.
The bad guys started firing at the drone again. The drone tipped on its wing and flew away.
The Lizard Man jumped on Ramses’s back and clamped his neck with both hands.
Goran jumped and made a crazy dash toward the corner of the building. Bullets whistled and chipped pieces of bricks off the wall. Goran slipped around the corner.
“Coward!” Ramses shouted.
The Lizard Man stopped strangling him and restrained his hands with handcuffs behind his back.
They put Ramses in the upright position. All the men had him at gunpoint. Rage and pain kept on choking him.
In the distance, Ramses heard the roar of helicopters.
Gavrilov turned to the sound and then looked at Ramses. “We go now. Get up, nigger. You show us the way.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Andy and Marcel were walking through the sewer tunnel. Andy had wrapped his mouth with a scarf and held his breath to combat the terrible stench. He stopped once to throw up. Hunger increased nausea. Marcel was holding up as if he had built-in filters in his nose.
Their flashlights were cutting the darkness in front of them. The image of the zombified Gleb was still before Andy’s eyes. It had taken him about ten minutes to turn. It had taken about ten seconds to dispatch him to hell. They had wasted half of their ammo to fight their way to the underground system. Approaching the hotel on the surface was not an option. The place was teeming with the infected ones.
As they finally made it to the underground garage and crawled out of the manhole, Andy saw that his Jaguar car was gone. The freed space felt unusual. They used the other half of the bullets on the zombies in the garage, closed the gate and bolted it.
“Now we check our inventory,” Marcel said.
Andy had a knife and three bullets in his handgun. No spare mags. Marcel had five bullets in his AK-47 and one bullet in his handgun. No spare mags. And no knife. Only fists and heavy boots when he would run out of ammo. Marcel shouldered his assault rifle and picked up a crowba
r from the ground. Now his chances had increased, a crowbar being an indispensable tool when it comes to breaking doors or crushing skulls in close combat in narrow spaces.
Andy got on the radio and said, “Diana, it’s Andrew. Come in. Over.”
Silence.
Andy held the radio to his mouth again. “Diana, come on. Answer me. Over.”
Dead silence. He glanced at Marcel whose face was showing no trace of emotion.
“I’m coming to you, baby. Andrew out,” Andy said, and clicked off.
Marcel opened the entrance door and went first. There was enough of daylight coming through the windows, and they turned the flashlights off. There was some activity in the hallway. Three deadheads shuffling in the corridor. Two females who used to be hotel guests. One male who used to be part of the personnel, a security guard. Andy aimed. Only three bullets to spend, he reminded himself. He fired. The first shot was successful. So was the second one. The bodies collapsed, the skulls fractured. The third time he missed and Marcel had to use his crowbar to finish the job.
Andy knelt by the body, went into his hip holster and came out with the gun. Empty. He put it in his coat pocket and straightened up.
They climbed up the stairs. Not much was happening between Levels 2 and 8. Just random clusters of zombies. Which were manageable. All the action was in the corridors. And they avoided the corridors.
The ninth floor showed signs of life. Or rather death. Four zombies were devouring a person. Sticky munching sounds echoed in the stairwell.
Very carefully, Marcel and Andy walked to the entrance door, opened it and stepped into the corridor. They heard moaning somewhere but nothing was happening in the close vicinity.
A huge barricade was at the intersection of corridors. Piles and piles of furniture on top of each other. Andy saw Ivan and a bearded young man hiding behind the barricade. Oren was the man’s name if memory didn’t fail Andy. Max Oren. Ivan was armed with a handgun. Oren had a table leg clutched in his hands like a club. His clothes were torn in many places.
The Living & The Dead (Book 1): Zombiegrad Page 25