“Come on,” Goran said. “What’s taking them so long? Can’t they make up their mind already? They’ve only been dating only for a day and are behaving as if they’ve been married for a decade.”
Finally, Ksenia left Ivan standing near the snowmobiles and got into their Toyota. “Guys, would there be enough space for me in the balloon basket? I can’t go with them. I’m scared of closed spaces. I’d just hate it underground.”
“Hop in, honey,” Ramses said. “For you, beaut, I’m ready to hang outside the basket with my ass swishing through the air. I guess you’ve finally made up your mind to go to that fancy restaurant in San Francisco?”
Ivan kicked a snowdrift and walked slowly away.
“You broke the man’s heart,” Goran said. “He hoped to start a dynasty of survivalists with you.”
Ksenia flung her backpack on the back seat and shut the door. “I model myself on you, Goran. You’ve always been a mean heartless bastard.”
“I mean, come on!” Goran said. “Even if we survive down there in the Metro, what kind of life would it be? They won’t be able to rescue us for months, maybe even for years until all that radioactive shit settles down.”
“We’re cowards,” Ksenia said.
Andy said, “I don’t know what’s braver in this situation—to flee from the city and get burned in a nuclear explosion or to hide in an underground shelter in a new Chernobyl and get trapped for months. In the dark with scarce food.”
“I’m afraid of heights, too,” Ksenia said. “Because I’ve never flown in a hot-air balloon. But it’s something I want to try before I die.”
Goran saw Marina in the crowd and opened the door. “Now it’s my time for a little drama.”
***
“I can see you hate me,” Goran said to Marina. “But if you come with us, we’ll protect you.”
“I don’t hate you,” Marina said. “I just don’t want to see you anymore.”
“You must come with me!” Goran said. “I can’t stand the thought of my baby being born somewhere underground in the dark, cold and filth.”
“Don’t worry,” Marina said. “It’s my baby. We’ll get by without you. Anyway, I wouldn’t like the idea of you roaming around somewhere near. Maybe screwing some chick. In the dark, cold and filth. Like an animal you are.”
The wind picked up. Goran pressed his cracked lips and slapped her across her face. Marina touched her cheek in pain. He turned away from her and walked toward the car. He climbed into the shotgun seat and slammed the door shut.
Everyone was silent.
Andy looked at him, reproachfully. But said nothing.
Goran snapped at him in fury. “What? Have you forgotten how to drive?”
“Christ, mate,” Andy said and turned the ignition key.
***
They didn’t have to stray far from the river, and the trip was smooth. It was getting dark when they got to the balloon station, which was on the outskirts of the city.
They walked past a huge hangar, which was closed and seemed to be lifeless, and came to a small one-storied wooden house, about a hundred yards away from the hangar.
“Let’s find the host first,” Andy said.
The house was surrounded with a couple of sheds. Ramses went up to the window, flashed his flashlight and looked inside. It was a kitchen. There was no one there. He went to another window and detected no people either. The house had been abandoned. Andy stepped on the creaky porch and knocked on the door.
“Yuri! Hello? Anyone home?” he said.
No response. He pulled the door handle and opened the door. He went in, cutting the darkness with his flashlight. Ramses followed him, his baseball bat at the ready. Once they entered, a terrible putrid smell struck their noses. Andy gagged and took out his dirty handkerchief and pressed it to his nose. Ramses put his bat under his armpit and cupped his nose with his left hand.
“We better haul ass outta here,” Ramses whispered. “Might be walking ones around.”
“We won’t be long,” Andy said. “Let’s just check the house out.”
Ksenia refused to go inside, and Goran stayed with her on the porch.
Andy and Ramses stepped into the kitchen. Everything was clean and neat. Even the dishes were clean.
The stench was unbearable. Ramses took off his woolen cap and hid his face in it. His eyes were watering. They walked into the living room, where the smell was the most intense. In the middle of the room, on a long table, they saw the dead body of a woman in her mid-fifties.
“Oh, my God, Anisya,” Andy said. “Oh, no.”
“Who’s that?” Ramses asked.
“Anisya, Yuri’s wife.”
Andy stepped closer to the table. A black deep gun wound was in her forehead. Her arms were folded on her chest. There were Orthodox icons around the body. The large mirror on the wall had been draped with a white sheet.
They glanced around and walked into the adjacent room, the bedroom. It was very small. There was a spacious bed. A chest of drawers. Two chairs. The mirror was covered with a long piece of cloth.
“Now we leave,” Andy said quietly.
When they were walking out, Andy noticed there was a note on the fridge door under a magnet in the shape of a camel, the symbol of Chelyabinsk. Andy removed the magnet and took the note. They went out.
Ramses exhaled noisily when they were outside.
“Man! That was too much,” Ramses said. He sniffed his cap and cringed. “Damn!” Andy was calm. He was submerged in his thoughts. He unfolded the note. It was written in Russian. Yuri’s handwriting was awful, and Andy could understand only printed Russian words. He gave the note to Ksenia and asked her to read aloud.
Ksenia cleared her throat and began reading.
Dear Tolya,
I hope you’re doing all right in Moscow. I’m so proud that my son got his education in the capital and became “a big man”. And I hope you’re alive and the deadly virus did not reach you. I’m sorry you had to find this letter. It means that we are no longer in this world. Your mother kept talking constantly about you when all this began. She was so worried about you.
Give my regards to Valya.
Please bury your mom decently.
Love you,
Dad
***
Yuri’s house was empty, but the station was surprisingly intact. Everything was in its place. The marauders seemed to be avoiding this place. Maybe because it was distant. One balloon was missing though.
“He flew away,” Andy said, folding the note with a sad smile. “I hope he is well. He managed to fly away.”
“If he did, so can we,” Ksenia said.
FORTY-FIVE
Ramses and Ksenia were sitting in a small gazebo in the garden of Yuri’s house. Right in the middle of the floor, they had built a fire made of old catalogs, financial reports, and advertising brochures. The countryside around them was a quiet place. They had encountered no living dead or dangerous human species here.
It was a splendid night. The sky was cloudless, and the bright stars were clearly visible. There was a wooden Russian bathhouse in the garden. A straight column of smoke was coming out of its chimney. Andy had given them the task to warm up the bathhouse while Andy and Goran were preparing the balloon for the flight.
Ksenia looked at the stars. “I wish I had a telescope here,” she said. “I miss my flat so badly. My telescope, the books, the stuff. What is your home like?”
Ramses said, “Well, I got a pretty decent house in the suburbs of San Francisco. The garage, the lawn, the works. I miss my house, too.”
“Do you think the virus has reached the US as well?”
Ramses sighed and said, “I don’t know. I hope it hasn’t. But looking at the way it can spread, you get kinda doubtful. But I wanna trust that KGB man who told us that the city is sealed up tight like a virgin’s asshole.”
Ksenia snorted. There was an awkward pause.
“You miss your wife?” Ksenia said
finally.
“My ex-wife,” Ramses corrected her.
“Well, do you miss her?”
Ramses shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It’s my daughter I think of most. Cherrylyn’s her name. Her I miss very much. I hope that they made it and are sitting somewhere in a safe place, eating pizzas for dinner and not seeing such shit all around them. Yeah, I miss my little girl.”
“How old is Cherrylyn now?”
Ramses smiled and said, “She’s six going on seven. I promised to take her to Australia some day. It’s not that she never got to see a kangaroo or a koala. She wants to see them in the wild. She likes nature so much. She’s a nice little girl. You would find her sweet, too.”
“No doubt. I hope she’s fine.”
Ramses nodded and said, “Yeah, me too. We’ll get out of here sooner or later. I believe in it.”
***
It was after midnight when they brought the basket and the equipment outside of the hangar. The red balloon envelope looked gray in the dark.
Andy ran his hand thoughtfully along the sturdy wicker basket. “It can hold two more persons. We could have saved two more people …”
Goran put his hand on Andy’s shoulder. “Don’t think about it, mate. We did our best.”
Andy asked, “So what’s the plan? Can you operate the balloon at night?”
“I could operate this babe with my eyes closed,” Goran said. “I just suck a bit at soft landing.”
Andy thought for a moment and shook his head. “No, we’d better wait until dawn. It’s zero visibility now.”
Goran looked at him. “That’s why you failed the test, scaredy-cat. You can’t take immediate steps.”
“That’s why I’m still alive,” Andy said. “I take immediate steps with caution.”
Goran asked, “You know what’s worrying me? What if the military shoot us down?”
“If they’re really going to hit the city with nuclear missiles, they’re going to withdraw all the troops from the surrounding area.”
“Yeah, but what happens when we cross the city border?”
“We’ll try to find a safe place to land. The main thing now is that we must escape from this damned deathtrap of a city.”
Goran tossed a coil of rope into the basket. “Sounds like a nice plan. Let’s get to work now.”
They set flashlights around the launch area. Andy inspected every inch of the balloon envelope fabric for holes with his bare hands. The night was windless but his fingers got numb because of the cold.
Goran climbed into the basket to check the burners. He stopped suddenly and turned toward Andy. “You know what, man? I’m scared shitless. I’ve never been in the basket since I passed that flight test.”
“Just keep in mind what Yuri used to teach us: Follow the rules. They’re usually right.”
“Yeah.”
“And remember that you’re the most experienced balloonist here. Our lives depend on you, mate.”
“Yeah, let’s do it by the book,” Goran said. “It’s the only way to keep our ass in one piece.”
They were on their own now. There was neither extra training they could get nor a guided flight. They had no ground instructor to clear their questions, no crew chief, no ground crew to support them, no weather briefers. All radio channels were dead. In normal circumstances, it would be a no-go decision to go without weather briefing.
Andy said, “Let’s rely on what Litvakov has said. And the man said that it would be calm, clear, windless and cloudless weather tomorrow morning.”
They found some faults with the igniter. But the only operator’s manual they could manage to find was written in Italian. Goran knew Italian a little, being a chef, but he was helpless with technical terms.
“We have to ask Ksenia to decipher that piece about the igniter,” Goran said, leafing through the manual with frustration.
“Leave it,” Andy said and put the manual into the basket. “The troubleshooting section would advise either to replace it or ditch it. I’ve rummaged through the hangar and haven’t found a spare unit. The igniter is faulty, all right, but it’s functioning. One flight tomorrow is all we need. We’re not expecting a tech inspection.”
“You are starting to sound like a Russian, huh,” Goran said. “The rubber gaskets are no good, too. It’s an old balloon, and it’s nearing its useful life. It’ll probably serve only for a couple of flights.”
“One flight is all we need,” Andy said again.
In two hours they finished their work. Goran mounted a spare stainless steel tank with propane inside the basket. “Now I guess we’re good to go.”
“Let’s run through the dummy list once again,” Andy said.
Goran took out a piece of paper with the checklist.
“Compass?” Andy said.
“Check,” Goran said.
“Fire extinguisher?”
“Check.”
“First aid kit? Dropline? Helmets?”
“Check. Check. Check.”
“The memory card with Ingvar’s video?” Andy said suddenly.
“I got it,” Goran said and patted his breast pocket. “What next?”
“In normal circumstances—” Andy began.
“Stop using that phrase,” Goran interrupted him. “We’re not in normal circumstances anymore.”
“In normal circumstances,” Andy said stubbornly, “A 100-hour inspection is required.”
“Time’s against us, Mr. Perfect,” Goran said, looking at his watch. “We have about four hours before the flight. We can’t fly in the dead of the night.” He took his hat off and scratched his greasy head. “I wonder if our bathhouse is ready.”
Andy looked at the bathhouse in the distance. There was smoke coming out of the chimney. He scratched under his armpits viciously. “Good Lord. I haven’t taken a bath for weeks!”
***
“What if the others come here?” Ksenia asked Ramses.
It was hot in the bathhouse. It smelled of birch. He had untangled his dreadlocks and was having a blissful time washing it with shampoo.
He touched her lips with his finger. “Shh! We don’t need words tonight.”
He kissed her on the neck. She shivered and moved her head to the side. He took a sponge, saturated it with warm water in the washbasin and ran it along her naked breasts. It was semidark in the bathhouse, the only source of light being the glowing log pieces in the stone stove. But they didn’t need much light. They were relying on touch. Once he bumped his head on an overhead bulk. There was no enough headroom, so he sat on the wooden bench. Ksenia put her hands on his shoulders and then sat carefully, cat-like, on his lap. He was pulsating and throbbing.
“Please be with me, tonight,” she said. “I’m so scared.”
Instead of words, he thrust himself between her legs. Inside her, it was hotter than in the hot air of the bathhouse. She moaned and clutched to him tight. He started moving. The hot air, the smell of her freshly washed hair and the birch-tree fragrance were making him dizzy. He moved his hands along her slippery body.
Learn to value every moment, came Steve’s words to him. Celebrate life.
Ramses smiled in the dark, sad in the face. Get out of my head, you old silly bastard.
But he followed his instructor’s teachings. He valued every moment. And he was celebrating life at the moment. He didn’t feel he loved this Russian woman. She was gorgeous, no doubt. She had turned him on ever since she pulled her gun on him back in the jail. But he felt a little shame making love to her. But then he just hugged her tightly, closed his eyes and cast away all of his thoughts. When he came, hundreds of colorful flashes began dancing behind his closed eyelids. He stopped and opened his eyes. Ksenia stopped moving, too. She was gasping. Smiling. Looking behind her back, he really saw red glimmers outside the window. Flashes of fire.
“Holy shit!” Ramses said, snapping out of the beautiful dream. “The house is burning!”
Ksenia hop
ped quickly off his lap. He grabbed his pants and put them on. He slipped into his clothes in a matter of seconds. In this respect, his years as a firefighter had always been a useful experience.
“You stay here,” he said and yanked the door open and disappeared in the dark.
Steam was coming from his wet and sticky clothes, as he ran through the garden. Outside, the house was raging with fire. He ran onto the porch and pulled the door open. A wall of fire met him. He stepped back, thinking desperately of a solution but his train of thoughts crashed abruptly as he was hit from behind with something heavy in the back of his head. A narrow rivulet of blood ran out of his nostril, and then he fell unconscious on the porch.
***
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” Ksenia said looking through the small window at the blazing house. She could see everything clearly in the shimmering light of the fire. The bathhouse was too far from the house to catch fire, so there was no immediate fire hazard but she was getting used now that in this world one trouble followed another.
In haste, she took the plastic basin with water, raised it over her head, turned it upside down, squeezed her eyes shut and sloshed herself with water to wash away the soapsuds. She took a towel and started rubbing her hair and body dry.
At this moment a dark figure shadowed the window as if someone pressed their face to the glass to peek in.
Ksenia screamed and instinctively covered herself with the towel. The shape disappeared. There was a noise coming from the dressing room behind the door.
“Oh, heavens, Ramses!” Ksenia said. “You’ve scared me! What’s going on out there?”
There was no response.
She opened the door to look outside, and there was a heavy blow to her face. She sprawled backward, falling to the floor. The back of her head hit the wooden planks. A head stuck through the doorway, and a dark figure followed it, filling the tiny space of the bathhouse. Ksenia’s heart leaped. She braced herself against a bite. But the figure didn’t start biting her.
It’s a human being, a rapid thought crossed her mind. The dead are not in the habit of beating people like boxers.
“Help!” she screamed. “Ramses, help!”
The Living & The Dead (Book 1): Zombiegrad Page 41