“Step back!” he mouthed.
A male living dead staggered around the corner. Ramses hit the creature in the nose and knocked him off his feet. He didn’t have time to finish him, and they sprinted across the supermarket parking lot.
The monsters moaned loudly behind their backs. Other demonic creatures, which had been lurking in various places, crawled out and joined the sickening choir.
A female ghoul appeared from behind a stranded car. She tilted her head at a weird angle, staring at them and made a fast step forward, reaching her hands toward them. Ramses placed a bullet between her eyes. She fell on the ground with a heavy thump. Ramses jumped over her body without stopping. Ksenia was running behind him, panting. Her sweater was not much protection against the cold, which was burning her lungs.
They ran up to the street with paralyzed traffic. In the middle of the street, two deadheads got in their way. Ksenia shot a bullet and missed. Ramses fired and one ghoul collapsed like a bag of flour. Ramses relocated his gun to the other hand and pointed it at the next target. The shot knocked the creature down.
“Aim more accurately,” Ramses said to Ksenia. “You don’t want to become their breakfast.”
At this moment a corpse hiding under a car raised himself on his elbow and tried to bite Ramses’s ankle. Ksenia put the gun to the head of the dead man and squeezed the trigger. The head exploded like a rotten pumpkin.
“Lesson learned,” she said.
Ramses nodded and shifted the load on his shoulders.
When they finally got to the hotel, they saw that the front gates had been crushed. Crowds of moaning maniacs were roaming in the hotel yard. They were pounding on the closed doors.
“Damn!” Ramses said.
They were sitting behind an overturned car, their guns ready to spit fire. The morning sun was shining in the sky.
They saw a man wearing a brown overcoat moving toward them across the street. He was running, which meant he was alive. But he was shouting loudly and waving his hands, which was putting them all in danger. Which meant the killing creatures could get them sooner than later.
The man didn’t make it to them.
He slipped on the sidewalk and tumbled down. It took the swarm of the dead ten seconds to reach their prey and engulf him.
Ksenia looked away. Ramses looked at how the beasts feasted on the lying man, shredding his clothes with their claws.
The ghouls separated the man’s head from the body and started devouring his legs and arms, raging while having their breakfast and jerking their heads like hungry dogs over some chunks of beef.
“It’s hell on Earth here,” Ramses said, tightening his grip on his gun.
Ksenia hugged her elbows. She was shaking with fear and cold.
“Let’s run along the fence to the backyard,” she suggested.
At the back of the hotel, there was a small parking lot for employees. It was nearly empty, only four cars. Ramses took the backpack off his shoulders and threw it over the fence. It landed with a thump on the soft snow on the other side. He bent down, and Ksenia stepped on his back. She held the metal bars of the fence. Ramses stood up, and Ksenia shifted her position on his shoulders, pulling her body up and grabbing the edge of the fence. She thrust her body upwards and sat on the small column between the fence parts like on a horseback. She jumped down and looked around.
Ramses grabbed the bars and climbed over the fence.
There was a green armored cash-in-transit vehicle parked at the corner. They ran toward it.
An undead male appeared around the corner. He saw the humans and opened his slobbering mouth. A horde of the walking dead was catching up.
Ramses took out his gun and pointed at the coming crowd. “We ain’t gonna make it,” he said. “They’re too close, too soon.”
Ramses started firing. He was spending the rounds wisely, shooting only at the closest attackers.
A group of six creatures came staggering to the cash-in-transit vehicle. Eight shots, seven bodies down.
Ksenia heard dry clicks of her gun.
“I’m out,” she said.
Ramses gave her a magazine. “This is the last one. Let’s get to that van.”
Ksenia replaced the mag in her gun. She ran, slipped and fell to the ground. She winced in pain as she attempted to stand on her feet and fell again. A reanimated corpse was walking slowly toward the place where she was lying.
Ramses used his leg to sweep the monster and pressed him to the ground with his knee. He took the wriggling dead thing’s head in his hands and snapped its neck. The wild red eyes of the monster stopped moving in their sockets. Ramses bashed the corpse’s head against the ground to be sure and let go of it in disgust.
“You okay?” Ramses asked Ksenia, helping her to get on her feet.
Ksenia cringed with pain. “No. I think I’ve injured my ankle.” She rubbed her leg.
The moaning was getting louder. A score of things was walking up in uneven formation.
“Can you walk?” Ramses said, looking anxiously at the approaching threat. Ksenia tried to make a step and her legs buckled.
The living dead were getting nearer. And nearer.
“Come, quickly!” Ramses shouted. “Get into the van!”
He stood Ksenia up and got her hand around his neck.
Ramses pulled the door handle on the driver’s side. It was locked. They limped to the passenger’s seat side. Some luck was theirs. They had opened the door and crept inside just before a woman with a rotting face reached Ramses. He slammed the door in the undead thing’s muzzle.
“Not today, sister!” Ramses said. He locked the door and released a sigh of relief.
The dead driver of the cash-in-transit van occupied the driver’s seat. He was wearing a dark khaki uniform and a black woolen cap. A bullet hole yawned in the middle of his forehead. His stomach had been ripped open, and the spilled guts were all over the seat.
“Jesus and Mary!” Ramses said, looking at the corpse.
More automatons came up to the van and started pounding on the vehicle with their fists. The sounds of their hits were barely audible in the soundproof cab of the van.
“They won’t get in,” Ramses said as he looked at the inside of the van. “This baby was made zombieproof.”
He turned to Ksenia. “How are you?”
“Could be worse,” she said pointing to the sitting dead man.
The van key was in the ignition. Ramses turned it and set the engine in motion. This attracted more dead people with hungry eyes.
Ramses turned on the heater. The blessed warmth enveloped them.
Ksenia could not hear the ghastly moaning of the creatures, and she closed her eyes not to see them as well. In a couple minutes, her eyelids drooped, and she fell asleep exhausted.
Ramses drove the van, hitting the dead things with the bumper and rolling over them. When he turned the corner of the hotel building, he saw that he would not be able to drive around the abandoned cars and the fir trees lining the driveway. They were trapped in the backyard. He brought the vehicle into a halt.
Ksenia was sleeping, her chin on her chest and her matted hair covering her face.
At least we are inside a fortress on wheels, Ramses thought.
He searched the dead driver and found a plastic credit card, a wad of chewing gum wrapped into