The Living & The Dead (Book 1): Zombiegrad Page 13

  Andy got up and went to the fireplace. The embers had burned out. He removed the protective screen and raked the coals. Then he added wood and started the fire. The fireplace reminded him of his parents’ old house in Sheffield.

  He took a flashlight and went into the toilet to relieve his bladder into a plastic bucket. It was almost filled now. He carried it to the kitchen, trying to walk noiselessly not to wake Diana up. As it had been predicted, the water supply was cut off too. He opened the window and emptied the contents of the stinking receptacle out the window. He looked down at the moving sea of the walking undead beneath. The whole hotel yard was covered with the gray mass of writhing and moaning creatures streaming into the yard from the street through the broken gates. He hastened to close the window and leave the cold kitchen.

  He did his usual morning exercises, without opening the window to let the cool air in as he usually did. Then he stepped into the bathroom, scooped the icy water from the half-full bathtub and splashed it on his face. He missed his old daily routine, and he had not got into a new one yet.

  He fetched a kettle from the kitchen and filled it with water from the bathtub. He hung it on a hook above the fire. Thank heavens, he could still enjoy coffee.

  While waiting for the water to boil, he sat at his desk. The dead computer monitor was staring at him, silently accusing him of idle time. Sipping the coffee, he started scribbling a rough plan of the day in his daily planner. He looked at the note at the bottom of the page reminding him to go the concert of Tito and Tarantula this Friday and stopped writing. He tore the page out and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  He came to the big white grand piano sitting in the middle of the room. It was an excellent Steinway. He was fond of music but he did not play any musical instrument. He had bought the grand piano for his girlfriend of six months to play for him before they drifted apart a month ago. He had never been lucky with Russian women.

  He ran his finger over the polished surface of the lid. His fingertip became gray with the dust which the piano was slowly accumulating. Just like everything in this building now.

  The first sun rays penetrated the large window. Diana coughed in her sleep and rolled over to his side of the bed.

  “Honey?” she said sleepily.

  Andy turned his head to look at her. Her wounded cheeks were healing. And she was becoming as pretty as before.

  “It was a hot night yesterday,” she said. “But now I’m cold again.” She extended her hands to him. “Come back to me.”

  “Morning, honey,” he said, smiling. He felt awkward about calling his deputy manager a honey. When it came to love matters, Andrew Thomas was a shy man.

  He came up to her and kissed her on the lips. “You’re just in time for coffee.”

  “That sounds great,” Diana said.

  The kettle whistled, and Andy brought coffee for Diana on a tray.

  “I’m about to leave,” he said. “Have to check if the things are in order down there.”

  She frowned and pouted her lips. The warmth from the fireplace reached them, and he himself was reluctant to leave. But he was still General Manager of this hotel, and a lot of things were demanding his attention.

  He took off the two pairs of pajamas he was wearing. He donned his suit, picked up his gun from the desk and put it in the shoulder holster.

  “You know what?” he said. “I’m thinking to give you a day off today. Fully paid. Call up your friends. Have a hen party.”

  She smiled a gentle smile. “Come back sooner. I’ll be waiting for you, and I’ll try not to freeze over here.”

  He smiled. “If it comes to that, you’ve got my permission to chop that grand piano to pieces for wood.”

  “With pleasure,” she said. “I still remember hating solfeggio at music school.”

  He nodded. “Hold the fort, honey, and keep that fire burning.”

  He put on a warm coat and gloves and went out. He walked to the elevator and pushed the button without thinking. He froze and took his hand away from the elevator panel. This gesture had got embedded in his muscle memory for years. He sighed and exhaled a cloud of breath. He had been creating his own little world for years and now it was falling apart piece by piece. The recent events had turned it upside down. He was more than frustrated. He was disoriented. But as a leader, he had to find the strength to go on to find the way out.

  He took his iPod out of his pocket. It still had 85 percent of power and was full of music. Good. Music was still his friend. He could listen to a couple of songs while walking down the fourteen floors. He put on his earphones and started descending.

  On his way between the twelfth and the eleventh floors, he saw a puddle of puke on the floor.

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered, stepping over it.

  They had closed the bar and withdrawn all the liquor from the mini-bars in the rooms, but people still managed to find booze and get drunk early in the morning.

  Halfway through the song by Mark Lanegan, he heard some noise outside in the distance and stopped to look through the window at what was going on. It had already got light, but he couldn’t see anything. Meanwhile, the noise was coming nearer. He took off the earphones and listened to the sound more attentively. It was the roaring of helicopter rotors. In a moment, the helicopter appeared. It was heading toward the hotel, low and slow. With every second it was getting closer.

  Andy bunched the earphones in his fist and quickly ran up the stairs. He ran past his apartment to the roof exit. There was a heavy lock hanging on the door. He wanted to howl with desperation. The sound of the helicopter was getting louder. He shook the lock. Hurriedly, he thrust his hand into his pocket, took out a bundle of keys and started a frantic search for the right key to the rooftop door. His hands were shaking. He dropped the bundle on the floor and cursed. Finally, he found the right key and opened the lock. He stormed through the door and rushed to the rooftop. He looked at the sky. A shower of paper leaflets was falling down. The helicopter was not to be seen. He could only hear the distant swish of the blades. A couple of leaflets fell at his feet. Andy picked up one. It told about evacuation centers. He picked up a handful of leaflets and stuffed them into his coat pocket. His face was red from running. The rescue was so near!

  He turned around and got inside. He went down the stairs again, thinking about the evacuation centers and how they could get there. He had always been a leader, but he had never been in such a dreadful emergency situation.

  He spotted a pile of shit on the stairs just in time to avoid it. There were also broken bottles lying around.

  “Oh, bloody bastards!” he groaned.

  He descended further. On the stairs landing on the second floor he saw a man clad in a brown coat, sitting with his back against the wall. His eyes were closed. He clutched a bottle of vodka between his hands. He held it like a baby. He had no hat on, and his hair was disheveled. And obviously, he had not washed for many days. Like many of the people here. But other drunkards living in the hotel did not look like hobos.

  Cautiously, Andy came up to the man. He held his breath to suppress the terrible smell reeking from the man.

  “Hey, pal?” Andy asked.

  There was no answer. The man did not show any signs of life. Andy’s first thought was that the man was infected. He instantly imagined him lunging at him, moaning and tearing at his throat.

  Andy touched the man’s leg with the tip of his shoe. The man’s head fell on his breast, and the bottle went rolling across the floor. Andy screwed up his face and pulled off his glove. He got down on his squat and touched the man’s neck. He was unable to find his pulse.

  “Bloody hell,” he said wearily, standing up.

  He went into the corridor leading to the kitchen. With no heat and gas supply, it was extremely cold in the hotel. There were not many people seen walking in the corridors. And those few were looking sulky. They did not talk much these days. The head accountant did not look at Andy when he passed him. The general atmo
sphere in the hotel was morbid. The hotel people were separated into small groups. There were nine little groups by the number of fireplaces. They were like cavemen tribes living around the fireplaces.

  Andy entered the kitchen. It was damp there because of the vapors. The cooks looked exhausted and overworked. Some of them coughed.

  A little outbreak of flu is what we all are missing here, Andy thought.

  All the perishables had been eaten. Now they were down to the cans and preserves.

  “Has anyone seen Goran?” Andy asked.

  Nobody responded at once.

  Then an elderly woman who used to work as a cloakroom attendant but now using her talents as a cook said, “Somewhere screwing another slut is where your Goran is.” And she spat on the floor.

  Andy wanted to reprimand the woman but he heard the radio crackling on his belt. “Hey, boss.” It was Sorokin, the security manager.

  “Hi, Igor,” Andy said into the walkie-talkie. “How is it going?”

  “Eh, we have a little problem here. In the library.”

  “What kind of a problem? And what are you doing there, if I may ask? Embarking on self-education?”

  There was a slight pause. Then Sorokin squeezed out an answer. “You have to see it for yourself, Mr. Thomas.”

  “Can it wait a bit?” Andy asked.

  “It’s urgent, boss,” Sorokin said.

  The library. The tenth floor. Damn. Andy exhaled a sigh.

  “All right,” Andy said. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Andrew Thomas out.”

  Andy walked along the corridor to use another staircase to go up to the tenth floor. He did not want to see the dead guy again. They would have to put him into the walk-in freezer beside Pyotr, the desk clerk who had taken his life.

  When Andy came into the library, his heart sank. He saw a dozen people standing in the way. There was terror in their faces. They were talking in whispers and shaking their heads.

  He squeezed through the crowd into the reading room and gasped. The first thing he noticed was the strong smell of feces and urine. Then he looked up and saw Darya Petrakova. Hanging from the ceiling fan by a white scarf, her legs dangling slowly in the air. The white scarf was wrapped around her neck. Her eyes were bulging out. Her face was livid. The poor girl had voided her bladder and bowels after her painful death.

  Andy covered his mouth and nose with his hand. “Oh my God. What the hell has happened here?”

  Ivan turned around. “We found her here a quarter of an hour ago.”

  “Who found her?” Andy asked.

  “Igor did,” Ivan said.

  Andy turned to Sorokin. “What the hell were you doing in the library?”

  The security manager looked at the tips of his shoes. “I, er—,” he began.

  “You come here to drink, don’t you?” Andy’s eyes narrowed.

  Sorokin sighed. “I, eh, I was, eh …” Then he nodded. “Ah, fuck it! Yes, I used to drink here. I’m sorry.”

  He was on the verge of tears and tried to avoid eye contact with anyone in the room. “I got a family, see? They’re somewhere out there where I can’t help them. Because I’m not with them right now. Because I’m here instead. Stuck in this fucking place!”

  There was bleakness in the man’s face. He had lost some weight. It was the first time he had broken down. Andy knew him as a reserved and well-balanced man. He was no stranger to the bottle and liked to talk, but Andy had to admit the man did his job, and he could rely on him any time. Sorokin started sobbing.

  “All right, man,” Andy said. “Take it easy. It’s all right.”

  The man was crying like a baby now. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his coat and walked out without saying a word.

  “Damn,” Ivan said. “The man’s really losing it.”

  Andy looked at the hanging body of the girl.

  Goran, he thought. Darya was Goran’s girl. One of them.

  He turned to the witnesses. “Somebody get the body down, for H’s sake!”

  Ivan stood on the table, took a knife out and started cutting the scarf.

  Andy went down to the kitchen and finally found Goran there. He was chatting with a young woman, not the staff, one of the volunteers.

  Andy took Goran by the collar and pushed him against a table. The girl squealed as a pile of dishes came crashing down.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” Andy shouted. “Huh?”

  “Fixing dinner,” Goran said. “What do you think it looks like?”

  “Don’t give me a fucking bollocking,” Andy said. “I’m not a manky fool.” Andy had immediately forgotten everything from the course of crisis management he studied at University.

  A smile spread across Goran’s face. “So you can swear too.”

  Andy tightened his grip on Goran’s collar and shook him. “Answer me!”

  Goran took Andy’s hands away from his collar. “Hey, cool down, man. Take it easy, Okay? What’s going on?”

  “You’re dealing with people here, for God’s sake,” Andy shoved him in the chest. “Living people.”

  Goran rolled his hand into a fist and was going to hit Andy. “Fuck off! You fucking want some?”

  “Darya is dead,” Andy said. He let go of Goran.

  Goran blinked his eyes. “Dasha? Is dead? How come?”

  Andy sat in a chair. “She has hung herself.”

  Goran crossed himself. “Jesus.”

  Andy told Goran about what he had seen in the library.

  “What was she doing there, Goran?” The girl said.

  “How should I know?” Goran said. He was jaw-fallen. “She likes reading. She liked reading … Maybe she went there to fetch a book. How do I know?”

  “You better stop fucking around and try to help us to survive,” Andy said.

  “Are you kidding?” Goran said. “I’m busting butt here to feed all these people. Excuse me, lady.”

  The cook picked up two buckets and went out.

  “I’m really sorry,” Goran said. “I like playing around with gals once in a while, but I wouldn’t kill anyone. Especially a woman. I’m not a fucking murderer.”

  There was a prolonged silence.

  “Has Sorokin started an investigation?” Goran asked. He picked a chair and sat down.

  Andy shook his head.

  “Where’s he?” Goran said.

  “That bugger’s tipsy. And he’s crushed by the incident. He’s got a family, you know.”

  They fell into silence again, staring in front of them.

  “She was an honest girl, y’know, not a scrubber,” Goran said. “I feel really sorry about her.”

  “You want to see her?” Andy said.

  Goran thought for a moment. “Not now …”

  Andy nodded. He was frustrated that things were out of hand. He was stuck in a foreign country where the government did not know what to do in the situation he was in.

  Absentmindedly, he put his hand into his coat pocket and took out the leaflets. He looked at Goran. “This is what we’re going to do.”

  Goran looked at him.

  “We’ll have a farewell party using what’s left of our supplies and then we leave,” Andy said.

  THIRTEEN

  The barricade, which blocked the doorway in the lobby, was more than six feet high. It was made of chairs, coffee tables, wardrobe trunks, bar stools, couches and whatever the hotel personnel and guests had grabbed in haste to stop the flesh-eating bastards from getting in. The glass door was broken, and through the jagged space behind the piled up furniture, at the hip level, Ramses could see the face of an undead little girl who was peering at him with her demon red eyes. There was an accusation in them. And hatred. And insatiable hunger.

  Ramses sat in a fireside armchair. The guy named Ingvar sitting near him had asked him a question but Ramses paid no attention to him because the little zombie’s gaze was mesmerizing.

  The lobby was submerged in semidarkness and the burning logs
in the fireplace gave the room the atmosphere of a cave. A snowstorm raged outside, and it was deadly cold but the fireplace and the warm clothes helped the small group of people to fight the severe weather.

  “Hey, California,” Ingvar said. “Have you fallen asleep?”

  “Huh?” Ramses snapped out of it. He peeled his gaze away from the girl’s eyes and looked at the Swede. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  There were seven people on the night watch in the lobby: Ramses, Steve, Ingvar, Ksenia, Marcel, Gleb and the 22-year-old web developer named Stas. Stas was not part of the hotel staff. He was a freelancer who had been invited to update the hotel website and got stuck here.

  They kept watch here in case there was a breach on the first floor. This was a crucial outpost because if they failed to prevent the attack of the zombies here, all the people in the hotel would be goners.

  Steve and Ksenia were washing dishes near the fountain after the supper. Ksenia’s leg was better, though she walked slowly and with a limp. Gleb was smoking near the fireplace, looking thoughtfully into the fire. Marcel had zonked out the minute he had finished his meal and was dozing in the armchair set in the middle of the hallway, his black sports cap pulled down to his ears. His snub-nosed AK-47 was resting on his lap.

  Stas was playing “Angry Birds” on his iPhone.

  Ingvar Gunnemark was not very tall like most Scandinavians, but he had the obligatory blonde hair. He was in his 30s. A big orange scarf was wrapped around his neck several times. He had borrowed a black ushanka hat from the janitor. Having not shaven for a week, he started looking just like a janitor himself.

  “How do you like my new hat?” Ingvar repeated his question.

  Ramses looked at the Swede’s hat and showed him an okay sign.“Lookin’ swell, bro.”