Steve saw a shadow on the lit patch of the neighboring stall. A male stopped near the bus and dropped on his knees to lick the little pool of blood left on the cold asphalt. He dried out one puddle of blood and spotted another one among patches of leaked oil under the bus. He licked his gray lips and started creeping under the vehicle. If this ghoul crawled a little farther, he could see them. Steve hardened the grip on the tire iron, getting ready to stick it into the man’s eye socket if he had to.
There was an electric whirr in the distance. The automatic gates were being closed. The psycho’s attention refocused and he turned his neck in the direction of the noise. He was going to leave, as Vassili moved his leg and the heel of the boot scraped noisily against the concrete. The man slowly turned his head to them and his eyes narrowed, trying to pierce the semidarkness of the bus’s underbelly. He gave a soft growl.
Vassili’s eyes widened, and he held his breath.
An alarm system got activated nearby.
The weirdo crawled back and got on his feet. In a moment he shuffled away. Vassili sighed. His face was covered with perspiration, and he started shivering with cold. Steve tore off a piece of his shirt and stopped the bleeding on his friend’s hand. He had lost a lot of blood.
They lay under the bus motionlessly for more than five minutes. The blaring of the alarm system was irritating, but they were safe there.
Vassili was not looking well. His forehead was hot, and he was feeling shivery.
“Okay,” Steve whispered. “This is what we’re gonna do. We’ll climb on top of this bus, all right? These nutcases, whoever they are, are pretty dumb and slow. You can’t stay here, or you’ll catch your death. Do you think you can manage?”
Vassili nodded silently.
Steve crawled out and looked around. He could hear low growling and snarling sounds in the depth of the garage, but no berserks could be seen in the vicinity. He hauled Vassili out from under the bus, and they trudged around it.
Vassili stood on Steve’s back and used the wall as a springboard to climb on top of the bus. He slipped once, as his legs refused to obey him. Steve threw the tire iron, and Vassili caught it with his left hand.
Steve stepped on the running board of the bus and held out his hand for Vassili to pull him up. Just as Steve’s foot pushed away from the side mirror, a hand from below grabbed the air where it had just been. A maniac, his mouth gushing blood, was standing on the ground, looking at his prey he had just missed. Steve looked around the parking lot and saw in despair more weirdos coming up to the bus from everywhere.
“Crazy bastards!” he shouted at them, standing on the bus roof.
Vassili sat down on the trapdoor and let out a cloud of breath in the chilly air. He undid the bandage and looked at his hand, which had turned gray. The wound was deep and its edges were yellow and slimy.
“Not good, Vasya,” Steve said. “Hold on.” He tore another piece of his shirt, wadded it and made a fresh bandage.
“I’m feeling dizzy,” Vassili said and lay on his back. There were specks of foam around his mouth, and he had trouble breathing.
Steve tried to open the trapdoor, but it was locked from the inside. There was no way in.
Vassili moaned, and his eyes rolled in his sockets. His breath was shallow. He shut his eyes, and Steve slapped him on the cheeks.
“No, man,” he whispered. “Stay with me! Don’t close your eyes. You hear me? Vasya! Don’t fall asleep.”
Very slowly Vassili half opened his eyes and said something gibberish. Steve could not tell whether he was speaking Russian or was being delirious. After that, he closed his eyes again and stopped breathing.
“No!” Steve said in a loud whisper. “Oh, God. Please, no!” He rummaged in his pockets for the cell phone. His hand found nothing. Must have lost it in the confusion. Black fear was gnawing him.
He stood up in full height, waved his hands in front of an overhead camera and shouted. No one was coming to rescue. He looked desperately around. The crowd of psychos below started shaking the bus. He got on his knees, trying not to fall off the cold slippery roof. He wiped the foam off his friend’s mouth with his sleeve and was ready to perform CPR on him, as Vassili snapped his eyes open. They were bloodshot.
Steve let out a sigh of relief. “Shit, man! Don’t you fucking scare me again.” He smiled and said, “And don’t you dare die on me, you lazy Russian ass.”
A threatening growl formed in Vassili’s throat and he reached out to touch Steve’s face with his hand. Steve pulled away in shocked surprise. His fingers gripped the edge of the trapdoor to prevent him from falling off the roof.
He lost a second to adjust his spectacles on his nose, as Vassili lunged at him and tried to bite him. Steve gave him a hard hit with his elbow in the head. He clamped Vassili’s neck with both hands and threw him to the roof.
Vassili struggled, his fingers plucking at Steve’s torn shirt but Steve was holding him firmly.
There was half a second when Vassili’s neck muscles were relaxed, and Steve used that moment to make a fatal swift twist. The spinal cord snapped under Steve’s strong hands. Vassili’s body got limp, and he ceased fighting.
Steve held him for a while in his deadlock embrace and then pushed him off the bus top. Vassili fell to the ground like a sack of wet meat. On the ground, dozens of raving lunatics were scratching and hitting the bus.
Steve was on his knees, covering his face with his hands.
The lights went out abruptly, and the CCTV camera was unable to record Steve’s sobbing in the darkness, which enveloped the garage.
SEVEN
Ramses and Ksenia had grabbed their gear and jumped out of the car just in time before the tank rammed into it and crushed it like an empty beer can. The sound of metal scraping against metal was deafening. They ran down the stairs under the bridge. The tank rumbled above their heads without stopping. Then two more battle tanks followed.
“This city is a damn war zone,” Ramses said.
Ksenia’s face was pale. She did not believe they had just narrowly escaped from death. She just stood there, the freezing cold nibbling on her uncovered body parts.
Ramses shouldered the backpack. “We gotta haul ass to the hotel.”
Ksenia said nothing. Her body was trembling with cold. She nodded silently, and they started walking. They reached the river. The sun rays glinted on its snow-covered surface.
“The ice is still hard enough this time of the year,” Ksenia said. “We’ll get across safely.”
They started running across the river. Their legs got tangled in the snow, and Ksenia fell down twice. Ramses grunted heavily. The load on his shoulders was not too heavy, but he hated running. He was a fighter, not a runner. He remembered his days when he worked in a fire department. He used to carry heavy loads of hose during fire drills under the hot Californian sun. But running across a river on a winter morning with not many clothes on was extreme for him.
When they crossed the frozen river and came to a small supermarket, their feet were soaking wet. Ramses’s hair and eyebrows were covered with white frost.
“How much longer?” he asked Ksenia.
“The hotel is behind this supermarket,” Ksenia said. She started coughing.
“Let’s roll,” Ramses said, “or we’ll catch our death here.”
Or death will catch us, he thought gloomily.
He craned his neck around the corner of the building. A trash container was burning, and the black smoke blocked his vision. The stench of the burning trash reached