He was left alone in the kitchen. He came up to the cake, removed the cherry from the top, threw it into the dustbin and replaced it with a fresher one.

He nodded in approval. “Much better now.”

That very instant, the vent tube above his head broke apart, and a man covered in soot and dirt fell out of its torn womb, flailing his hands in the air as he fell. He landed on top of the cake like a shot bird, splashing the white chocolate around the shiny kitchen. His tattered shirt was speckled with blood.

The man tried to focus his gaze at Goran’s face looking through the dark gray cobweb covering his spectacles, rolled his eyes, and his head smacked against the table surface.

NINE

Ramses was having a dream. He often had dreams about his family since the time he had got divorced. He had had both good and bad dreams. Most of the good dreams were about his little daughter. And most of the bad ones were about his wife. He wasn’t sure if this dream was good or bad.

He found himself sitting on a dirty prison bunk. But he wasn’t in a prison, at least not the conventional one. He was in a strange cage, which had been placed inside a huge bell jar. There were glass walls instead of the bars surrounding him and keeping him from the outside world. All the sounds inside the room were hollow as if the air had been sucked out of it, and all there had been left, was a vacuum. The surroundings were dim and foggy. Only some dark contours of trees were visible. It looked like this glass thing was in the middle of a forest. There was a starless night sky above his head. The moon was the only source of light.

He looked at his hands. There was a syringe in his right hand. The point of the needle was glistening with a transparent liquid. A spoon, a can, a bottle cap, cotton swabs, and other drug user’s paraphernalia were scattered on the floor.

He pressed the needle to the crook of his elbow, under his left bicep, where it punctured the skin and penetrated into the vein. He jacked back the plunger and saw his ruby-colored blood in the barrel. He started pushing the plunger slowly, letting the liquid flow into his body. Soon he felt that his head began swimming, and everything became like in slow motion. Sweet poison. He smiled. He grabbed the edge of the bed not to fall over.

A prison guard slowly came up to the bell jar and said something, which Ramses could not hear through the glass. He could read the guard’s lips perfectly, though.

“Hey, Campbell! Your wife has come to see you,” the guard said.

“Is it Sunday already?” Ramses said, trying to focus his gaze on the man in front of him.

The guard said nothing and left.

It did not surprise Ramses that the guard hadn’t done anything about the drugs or hadn’t even said a word. He wasn’t even confused that he was inside a glass prison built in some swampy forest in the dead of night.

He saw his wife coming up. Her gait was graceful. There was a certain noble elegance in the way she was walking through the clouds of mist. She was wearing a black evening dress. The movements of her lithe body reminded him of a snake. Or a voodoo priestess. He recalled that she had Haitian roots.

She stood in front of him and stared at him coldly.

“Hi, Ayana!” He smiled to her and waved his hand, the syringe dropping out of his hand on the floor. “How you been, baby?”

Her face turned into a distorted grimace of fury. She started shouting, though her words could not get through the glass and reach his ears. He mentally blocked his ability to read her lips and did not understand what she was talking about. She was accusing him as usual. Of wasted love, wasted expectations, wasted life … The standard kit of accusations, with which former lovers generally exchange with one another before and after a separation.

“Just shut the fuck up!” He waved impatiently at her, fatigue in his voice. “You hear me?”

She kept on screaming, pointing at him furiously and gesticulating. She was so enraged that the bulging veins showed in her neck.

But he didn’t care. He lay down on his bunk. Warmth was flowing through his body, and her presence did not bother him.

As she realized that her shouting was useless, she began pounding on the glass with her fists. He was looking dumbly at her. She was like a wildcat now. There was so much hatred in her eyes. But she was unable to unleash her anger on him. He felt safe behind the glass.

“Leave me alone,” Ramses muttered. “I’m fed up with your shit! Can’t I have a life of my own?”

He looked around in search of more drugs, but there was nothing left.

It started snowing. His cell was like a snow globe now. Only the snow was outside his dome. But in his vacuum he was warm.

The snowflakes tangled in Ayana’s curly hair. She was crying now. A small figure appeared behind her back. Cherrylyn. Her face was pale. It was whiter than the falling snow. Her mother did not see her coming. The little girl bit her in the stomach, ripping the beautiful dress with her teeth. Blood splashed on the glass and on the white snow. Ayana lost her balance and fell down. Pain settled in her eyes.

“Cherry Berry, no!!” Ramses held his hand up. “What’re you doing, honey?”

His daughter turned her head slowly and looked him straight in the eye. Pieces of torn flesh and the dress fabric were trapped between her teeth.

Ayana made an attempt to get up, but Cherrylyn dug her teeth into her throat.

Ramses cupped his mouth with his hand. He was feeling drowsy. He rose to his feet as he was watching his daughter killing his wife. In a minute Ayana’s eyes got cloudy, and she pressed her eyelids shut.

Cherrylyn came up to the glass and pressed her face against it. Her hands were leaving blood smudges on the glass. When she bared her blood-stained teeth, Ramses woke up.

He opened his eyes and shuddered. A zombie female had flattened her ugly face against the glass window of the cash-in-transit truck. He jerked away from the driver’s window.

The monster was snarling at him but Ramses could not hear her through the thick bulletproof glass.

He shivered, the dreadful visions from his dream still lingering. He tried to get rid of them but failed.

He wiped the cold sweat off his forehead and looked at the clock on the dashboard. 3:25 p.m. He had been sleeping for more than three hours.

It was daylight, but the sun had hidden behind the clouds. It was snowing heavily. Harsh gusts of wind were blowing. The blizzard was covering the truck with a blanket of snow, hiding the people inside from the ugliness of the outside world.

He tapped the fuel gauge. It read almost empty. They had spent all the gas on heating. Soon they would run out of gas, and they would freeze in the truck.

He glanced at Ksenia. She was deeply asleep. The groaning of the zombies did not disturb her sleep due to the soundproof windows. Her hair was disheveled. Her once white sweater was torn and covered with patches of filth. As if she had gone on a drinking binge last night. Ramses took a look at his own clothes. The pants were totally ruined, and he looked as if he had been dragged through a muddy puddle. He touched his hair. He could go for another four days without washing his dreads, though.

He wanted to take a leak so badly he was in pain. He picked a helmet off the floor and pissed in it, covering himself and trying not to wake Ksenia up. Then he opened the roof escape hatch and threw the helmet contains out. The moaning outside was so loud that Ksenia heard the noise and shifted in her sleep, muttering something. He closed the hatch and sealed off the noise and disturbance coming from the outside.

They had eaten and drunk everything there had been in the truck driver’s lunch box – the mashed potatoes with gravy and meat rissoles in a container, the milk in a half-liter carton, bread and a pack of yogurt. Ramses had also eaten the cheese sandwich and finished the half-eaten apple from the backpack. But the feeling of hunger came back again.

The undead woman walked away from the vehicle to join other restless souls wandering around the hotel yard.

Ramses started thinking of possible ways to get inside the hotel but he was so exhausted that he zonked out again. No dreams this time.

In half an hour, Ksenia’s sobbing woke him up. He opened his eyes and saw her weeping, covering her face with her hands.

“Ksenia? What up?”

She stopped crying.

“Nothing,” she said and wiped her tears off her cheeks. “Just woke up and came to realize that the world is going to hell. And my father’s dead … Get me out of here. Please. My leg hurts.”

“You gonna be all right,” Ramses said. “That I promise you.”

He looked through the window. After a lot of gainless efforts, the undead had lost their interest in the truck. But they stuck around.

“Give a honk again,” she said.

“We’ve done this like a million times. The battery’s gonna be dead soon. It’s useless. Just attracts more creatures to us.”

“Just do something to get us out!” Ksenia shouted. “I don’t want to die here!”

Ramses looked at her face – contorted with fear and anger – and sighed. He honked the honker. It was the best he could do.

“Maybe they’re all dead there?” Ramses said.

The walkie-talkie, which was sitting on the dashboard, crackled and started spitting out static. It gave Ksenia a start. Then a male voice spoke in Russian.

Ramses glanced over at Ksenia, a question in his face.

“They want us to respond,” Ksenia interpreted the Russian speech.

He met her glance, grabbed the radio and handed it to her. “Then what the hell are we waiting for?”

Ksenia clicked the button, introduced herself in Russian and said a greeting. There was a moment of confused silence at the other end. Ramses was listening with impatience, a hopeful smile on his face. If it were not for his lack of knowledge of Russian, he would’ve snatched the radio away and spoken himself.

Ksenia interpreted for him what was being said. The man on the radio said his name was Ivan, and he was a security guard.

“Oh thank God,” Ivan said. “We were afraid there’s nobody there. Are you alone there? Over.”

“No,” Ksenia said. “There’s another survivor here. His name is Ramses Campbell. He’s a citizen of the United States.”

“Good!” Ivan said. “Wait a second … The hotel manager wants to talk to you.”

There was a noise in the background, and then a pleasant baritone voice said in English, “Hello there! My name is Andrew Thomas. I’m the General Manager of the Arkaim Hotel, and you are in its territory at the moment.”

“Hi, Andrew,” Ramses said. “I know who you are. I’m your return customer. Checked in a couple days ago.”

Andy chuckled. “These are bizarre circumstances but I’m glad you’re back, Mr. Campbell.”

“Go for Ramses.”

“What kind of name is that? Egyptian by any chance?”

“As a matter of fact, it is,” Ramses said. “But I’m from Cali.”

“Oh, that explains a lot,” Andy said. “All right, guys. How are you holding up there?”

Ramses looked at the fuel gauge again and replied, “We’ve almost run out of gas. And Ksenia has twisted her ankle.”

“How bad is it?”

Ramses turned to Ksenia. “How’s your leg?”

Ksenia tried to stand and grimaced with pain.

“Her leg hurts real bad,” Ramses said into the mike. “She can’t walk.”

“That’s not good,” Andy said. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Drive your vehicle up to the windows. We’ll lower you a stepladder, you climb up and get inside.”

“Sounds too easy,” Ramses said and frowned. “But okay. We’ll try.”

“It should work,” Andy said.

“Copy that.”

Ramses started the engine. The truck moved a couple of meters and stopped.

Ksenia looked at the fuel indicator, which had sat at the zero.

“Damn!” Ksenia said. “We’re out of gas.”

Ramses picked up the walkie-talkie and told about it to Andrew Thomas.

“Roger that,” Andy said with a sigh.

Now the heater stopped functioning, it was going to be cold in the cab soon. A crazy thought crept into his mind – of them freezing and starving to death in this tomb of a truck. Thank God he would have a concubine to accompany him in his life after death. Like a pharaoh. For a brief moment, he could not think straight.

“Just hold on there, Ramses,” Andy said. “We’ll get you out of there. Stand by. Andrew Thomas out.”

In five minutes, a window opened on the first floor, and a young man wearing a business suit looked out. He waved to Ramses, holding his walkie-talkie in his hand. He and another man put a stepladder through the window and placed it on the ground below. Ramses fished out the scope out of the backpack and took a closer look at the windows.

At the other end of the building, another window opened. Right above the crowd of the flesh-eating things. Two men looked out the window.

The Englishman lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth.

“Hi there! We’ve come up with a rescue plan here,” Ramses heard him say. “Courtesy of Ivan and Goran.” He pointed at the guy with a shortcut and an Italian-looking man.

“When I give you a signal,” Andy went on, “get out of the van and run to this window. You’ll hear a series of explosions. Be not afraid. That’ll be the pyrotechnics. For distraction. We’ve put the stepladder down for you. You’ll use the ladder to climb inside through this window. Our guys will distract the crazy bastards over there.”

About thirty yards between the truck and the windows. We gonna make it, Ramses pondered and pocketed the scope.

“Okay,” he said over the radio. “Let’s give it a try.”

“Just let us know when you’re ready,” Andy said.

“Yeah, I will,” Ramses said.

He turned to Ksenia. “Firecrackers, huh? Can you believe it? They’re gonna use firecrackers to save our asses.” He shook his head. “I like this guy.”

Their preparations did not take much time. They zipped up the backpack, and Ksenia slipped her arms through its shoulder straps to put it on. Ramses gave Ksenia both pistols.

“I’ll give you a piggyback,” he said.

Ksenia smiled. “Nice – never done it since school.”

He looked through the windshield and confirmed that the horizon was clear. Ksenia glanced at the hotel and saw people looking at them through the windows on the second and third floors.

“We got an audience,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “I was worried nobody’s gonna see me in action in this town.” He turned to her. “We gonna make it.”

She cocked the guns and nodded. “Then let’s do it.”

He pressed the button on the walkie-talkie. “Okay. Flying in.”

The radio crackled. “Go! Go! Go!”

Ramses put the radio in his pocket, thrust the door open and jumped out of the truck.

Cold wind pierced his body. He leaned down, and Ksenia climbed his back. Once he started running, he heard the crack of the firecrackers coming from the hotel building. With his peripheral vision, he saw a rocket dancing a wild dance on the snow-covered ground, hissing and sending white and blue sparks everywhere. It finally hit the nearest walking dead and set its clothes on fire. Some zombies took the bite and went toward this strange fest. But some of them headed toward Ramses and Ksenia.

Ksenia chose not to wait until they would come close to them and started shooting.

A female undead, a former paramedic, stood in their way. Ksenia pointed both guns at her and knocked her off her feet with two powerful blasts. The gunshots were louder than the pops of the firecrackers, and in a moment more zombies turned the corner of the building staggering on their feet and raising their arms.

Ksenia’s father’s Makarov started giving dry clicks, and Ramses had to make a big arc around a group of six ghouls.

The people in the building understood their distraction strategy had turned out not too successful, and they started using firearms on the undead monsters, too.

Ramses was close to the ladder now. There were half a dozen of the living dead blocking the way to it. Ksenia’s second gun fell silent now.

“I’m out!” she said.

“Don’t scream into my ear,” he said, panting. “I can hear you loud and clear.” He kept carrying her, though her weight was putting him down, and the thirty yards seemed like a hundred now. He remembered his firefighter years again.

A couple of shots from the friendly side sent two zombies falling down on the crispy snow. A dead man approached Ramses and Ksenia with a drunken gait. He lifted his gnarly hands and walked to them. Ramses put Ksenia on the ground and delivered a kick to the creature’s face. The deadhead fell and stayed down, his spinal bones shattered.

Ksenia was reloading her guns with trembling hands.

Two more creatures stood between them and the stepladder. Ramses heard two pops and both the zombies sprawled on the ground.

Ramses looked up and saw Andrew Thomas, standing at the window, a curl of smoke rising from his gun.

Ksenia jumped on one leg toward the ladder. Ramses grabbed the backpack and threw it at the window.

Damn, Ramses thought belatedly. There’s still a hand grenade there.

“Watch out!” he shouted.

Ivan caught the backpack and started to help Ksenia climb in. After she disappeared through the window, Ramses began climbing up the ladder.

He got off the ground just in time before a zombie snapped at his boots. He kicked the creature in the gray face with a delightful smacking sound. The monster let go of the ladder and fell off.

Ramses crawled on the windowsill and pushed the ladder away, which crashed down on and buried the ghoul under its weight.

Ramses’s leg got caught in the jalousie, and he collapsed on the floor head down. Ksenia was fast enough to move away.

He sat up beside Ksenia and looked around. It was an office room. They were safe now. He tried to get up but slipped on the office linoleum and fell down. This made him laugh, and he broke the wind. But he was not embarrassed at all. It was really a moment of relief.

The security guard shut the window.

“Oh, thank God,” Ksenia said through the pain in the ankle to the people who were standing surrounding them. “Thank you, whoever you are.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Andy said. “Privet! And welcome to the Arkaim Hotel – your home away from home.”

And he extended his hand toward her.

Ramses rose to his feet and looked out the window. The crowd of the living dead had become bigger. They were raising their hands toward him and scraping the wall.

“Damn! That was close!”

He shut the window and started shaking everyone’s hand. He was beside himself with joy.

Ivan, the security guard, helped Ksenia to her feet and sat her on the little couch.

Ramses had the strange feeling that he had lost touch with reality. They had escaped death by the skin of their teeth. Now they were surrounded with people. Living people. Who were here to help them. And who did help them by saving their lives. He could not believe they were safe again.

The hotel people brought them steaming coffee in thick clay mugs with cookies and snacks. They gave Ksenia a warm blanket, and she wrapped herself into it.

It got noisy in the hallway, as people were curious about the newcomers and tried to look into the room. Andy asked Ivan to wait outside and not let anyone in.

Drinking the coffee and digging hungrily into the food, Ramses gave a glance around the room. It was spacious. A heavy mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room. Certificates on the wall. Bookcases full of books with gold spines. A woven rug on the floor.

“This is my office,” Andy said. “My former office, to be more precise. We don’t use the rooms and offices on the ground floor anymore.”

The moans of the living dead roaming outside reached their ears. It was getting dark.

“Too dangerous,” Goran added, though there was no need to say the obvious.

Ramses nodded. “The fuckers.”

Ksenia briefly told their rescuers about their adventures.

“I’m very sorry about your father,” Andy said.

After a knock on the door, a desk clerk entered the office and gave Andy two keys.

“Your room is still free, Mr. Campbell,” Andy said handing him one of the keys. “It’s an ordinary key. We’re currently out of power. So no key cards so far.”

“It’s a massive power outage,” Ksenia said. “Around the whole city, I guess.”

Andy nodded. “So I see. We’re accommodating new guests, though.”

Ramses smiled and clutched the key. “Thanks, man. But we won’t be able to pay you for the next week. With the situation around.”

“It’s a civil war out there,” Andy said. “What are you talking about? Like I said before – welcome. We’ll have to think all together how to get out of this mess and survive.”

Ramses shook the key in his hand and said, “I really appreciate that. I guess I have to earn my stay here now. I’m pretty good at lots of things. I can be useful.”

Andy flashed a smile. “We’ll think about it tomorrow. How does that Russian proverb go? The morning is wiser than the evening. Sleep on it. Tidy yourselves up and have a little rest.”

“Yeah,” Ksenia said wearily. “We sure need it.”

Andy turned to Ksenia and gave her the second key. “And this one’s yours, Ma’am.”

“Thank you,” Ksenia said. “I hope there’s a shower there.”

“There is,” Andy said. “One more thing. Mobile connection is down too. So don’t lose your walkie-talkie.”

He gave them other important instructions and told them the nurse was not in the hotel. Her shift had been over before the chaos started, and she had gone home. All staff members were trained in basic first aid procedures, and they could save a choking person in a restaurant but their skills did not include treating ankle injuries. There were two medical doctors among the hotel guests. One of them refused to help, though. The other one was in Steven Clayton’s room. Ramses was happy to hear that his friend was still alive.

Ramses looked impatiently at Ksenia. “Let’s go.”

He helped Ksenia to walk up the stairs to the fifth floor. She was limping very badly. The desk clerk and a floor concierge helped Ksenia go up to her room.

“My room is on the right, next to yours,” Ramses said. “Just knock on the wall if you need something. I’m a pretty good masseur.” He winked.

“You better get me that doctor,” she said.

“Yeah.” His face got serious. “I’ll try.”

Ksenia closed the door and went straight to the bathroom to take a shower.

Ramses left the backpack in his room and went out again. It was dark in the hallway. He came up to Steve Clayton’s room and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a raspy male voice said in English. But it didn’t belong to Steve.

Ramses opened the door and stepped into half-darkness. In the dim light of burning candles, he saw Steve lying in the bed, his eyes closed, his face covered with lacerations and bruises. An old man about seventy years old, with a gray beard and mustache, clad in a gray tweed suit and wearing spectacles, was sitting in a chair beside Steve and reading a book with a golden cross on the cover. The Holy Bible.

“Hi,” Ramses said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Dr. Erich Brodde,” the old man said, without getting up. He spoke with some European accent, which Ramses could not yet place. Dutch, maybe?

“What are you doing here?” Ramses asked.

“I’m a priest,” Dr. Brodde said.

Ramses’s heart sank and skipped a beat.

“Oh my God,” he said. “What has happened? Is he dead?” He came up to the bed.

“No,” Dr. Brodde said. “He’s unconscious right now. He has a head trauma. But he’s breathing. He’s alive. I hope he’s going to be all right. He has a chance.”

“Thank God,” Ramses said.

“Yes, he’s in God’s power now,” Dr. Brodde said and closed the Bible.

“You’re a medical doctor too?”

“Yes. I used to work for the Red Cross.”

Ramses felt relieved to have a physician around his friend.

“Was he bit? Is he infected?”

“No,” Dr. Brodde said. “No cuts or bites.”

“Did you check his eyeballs?”

“What?” Dr. Brodde looked bewildered. “Why?”

“‘Cause if they’re bloodshot, he might be infected.”

The old priest lifted Steve’s eyelids carefully. The man’s eyeballs were milky white.

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