Ramses pulled the trigger pad, but the AK-47 mag was empty. He took out his Grach but the dead boy was already at his feet, ready to bite him with his bleeding mouth. Ramses kicked him in the head while he was fumbling with the machine gun.
There was a sudden gunshot and the living dead boy’s face exploded.
In the doorway, two-handing her Makarov’s pistol stood Ksenia. The smoke was rising from the muzzle. Ramses took a deep sigh and gave a nod of appreciation to her.
The place was reeking of rotten flesh. The cold wind blew through the broken window and carried away the stench. Outside, the sky was getting pink. The morning was coming. Ramses cringed. He was getting used to the protection of the dark.
“Quick!” Ksenia shouted. “Upstairs!”
They ran to the exit at the end of the corridor. A female creature was standing on the floor landing, blocking their way. Ramses slammed her on the head with the butt of the assault rifle. The creature fell down the stairs on top of other ghouls.
Ramses slapped a fresh magazine into his Kalashnikov and they ran all the way up to the fifth floor.
“The ladder,” Ksenia said, pointing at the fire ladder outside the double windows. Without thinking twice, Ramses opened the first window. The second one was barred, and they had to use their last hand grenade to break the bars.
When the way outside was free, they stepped out of the window onto the narrow ledge, coming along the building wall.
A horde of moaning psychos appeared at the beginning of the corridor just at the moment when they started descending down the ladder. Ksenia was the first to go. Ramses followed her. Ksenia’s long hair was blowing about in the icy wind. She lost her footing on one of the rungs, slipped and nearly fell off the ladder.
They got down into the police station parking lot and had a look around. The parking lot was surrounded with a high brick fence, razor wire running along its perimeter. They crouched behind a black Lada.
Ramses fished out the car keys. “Let’s locate that Opel.”
It was not so hard. They spotted an old and well-used blue Opel Corsa in a distant corner of the parking lot. Two dead ones were shambling about as if drunkards shopping for cars in a dealership. Dispatching them would attract undesirable attention, and Ramses and Ksenia walked around them in a wide arc, hiding behind the cars and vans.
They opened the driver’s door and switched off the alarm system.
Ramses turned the key to warm up the engine. “Stay inside,” he said to Ksenia. “I’ll check the gates.” He left the backpack on the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
The first sun rays shone shyly on the city. It was a clear morning, and it was not snowing. He went the length of the fence to the gates. He was shaking with cold and his body temperature was dramatically falling. He could feel the frost was compressing his heart muscle. His T-shirt was a bad protection against the severe winter cold. He started running to get warm.
As he reached the gates, he saw they were closed. Though the power was out, he could open them manually with ease.
He entered the checkpoint. It was empty. Plastic cups and newspapers littered the floor. Puffs of his warm breath filled the small gatehouse. He took a little break from the harsh wind and then went out into the cold again.
He crawled under the gates on his stomach and elbows and hid behind a lamppost. He peeked cautiously around it. The street was swarming with the dead. Lots of abandoned cars. An emergency vehicle was sitting in the middle of the street. Two cars had crashed into it. The lights of the emergency vehicle were still blazing, but there was no sound of the siren. It must have broken during the collision.
A white Subaru was parked near the gates. He made out corpses inside the car. Mutilated. A kid seat had been dragged out of the car and thrown on the snow-covered ground. Blood splatters all over the seat. No sign of the kid anywhere. He cupped his mouth with his hand. A scanty tear froze instantly on his manly cheek.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he said slowly.
***
Just when Ramses and Ksenia pulled out of the parking lot into the infested street, the piercing shriek of an air-raid siren choked off the monotonous wailing of the triggered car alarm systems and made a flock of sparrows take wing off trees and inactive trolleybus wires.
The traffic in the city was paralyzed. There were stranded cars sitting even on the sidewalks. Ramses maneuvered the Opel around the cars and the debris, looking frantically for gaps between the vehicles. They nearly hit a couple of survivors, a man and a woman, who whisked past them, riding a motorbike. The undead stretched out their hands toward the riders, but they were too slow to capture their prey. In only one day, the city streets were filled with fear and death. Hundreds of hungry eyes were pointed at the old blue Opel Corsa, which was making its way through the ravaged city.
“Where are we going now?” Ksenia asked. They had not had the time for discussing this issue before. Now it was the most vital one.
“I really don’t know,” Ramses said. He looked at Ksenia. She was huddled on the passenger seat and hid her hands under the sweater sleeves. It was still freezing in the car. “How about your place? To rescue your family?”
Ksenia lapsed into silence. She was sad and shivering with cold.
“Dad was … everything I had … in my life. He was my family.”
“I’m sorry,” Ramses said. In a minute he asked her, “You have any other relatives?”
“No.” She paused. “An aunt. In Moscow.”
Ramses said, “We’ll head to my hotel then. Let’s hole up there if the place is safe. My friend Steve must be still there.” He turned the steering wheel to avoid a bump against an attacking living dead. He was driving on the separating strip now. “I hope he is. We gotta stick together.”
They drove into an area where the power was obviously on. Some traffic lights kept on functioning, blinking only yellow lights for the indifferent immobile vehicles and the uncaring pedestrians from hell.
Ksenia gave Ramses the directions to the hotel.
“The Arkaim Hotel is half an hour ride from here.”
A pair of red fuzzy dice was dangling from the rearview mirror. There were distracting Ramses from driving and he took them off and tossed them on the back seat. He looked through the windshield at a burning car.
“I wish it were a dream,” he said. “And I wish I snapped out of this dreadful nightmare.”
“Can murderers be afraid?” Ksenia said with sudden anger.
Ramses breathed out a sigh. “It was an accident. I haven’t murdered anyone. I mean … This is all about self-defense. That kid pounced on me himself. Now, this,” he waved at the chaos outside, “is worse than what I’ve done.”
“Sorry,” Ksenia said. “I just don’t know where to go, who to trust.”
“I see. Sure thing, I’m afraid. I’m scared shitless. You don’t see dead people every day, you know. Especially the sort that walk around the streets and devour other people using no kitchen utensils.”
Ksenia opened the glove compartment covered with hot babe stickers and fished out an apple, two stale cheese sandwiches, a gas lighter, a pack of cigarettes and a penknife. She put everything into the backpack.
Ramses could feel the welcome warmth gradually returning to his body and numb extremities thanks to the heater.
“Brr! What a cold! Why did you choose to live here?” he said without taking his eyes off the road.
“I didn’t.