Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (25 page)

We stretched out a bit. Viktor fit perfectly; he’s only five foot two. I was a little cramped, but comfortable. A small hole in the door allowed us to breathe and gave us a partial view of the storeroom. All we could do was wait.

From the front room came the clatter of AK-47s and the howling of the undead. The gunfire grew more intense. Three guns firing simultaneously in a confined space made a lot of noise. We smelled the gunpowder. I don’t know what the firepower of those weapons is, but in such an enclosed space it had to be devastating.

But the enemy outnumbered them. After a couple of minutes we heard piercing howls, and one of the guns stopped firing. The fighting moved closer to the door. A crazed, bloodied Kritzinev appeared, walking backward. He threw down his AK-47 and
drew the pistol at his waist. Pursued by at least a dozen of those creatures, the Ukrainian emptied the clip, but for every one that fell, two more appeared.

Kritzinev realized the battle was lost and pointed the gun at his temple. Before he could shoot, an obese young guy in a striped shirt, covered in dried blood from head to toe, bit his neck and tore off a piece of flesh the size of a fist. Kritzinev dropped the pistol, uttering a cry of pain and surprise with anger in his eyes as he disappeared under a mass of those creatures. I don’t want to replay the sounds we heard.

Twelve hours have passed. The shop is quiet and dark. Oil lamps lying on the floor have burned out. There’re no words to describe the smell. We can’t leave the crawl space because a few of those creatures are still here, walking in the shadows, relentless. We have no idea what to do.

The human mind is amazing. After more than twenty-four hours locked in a tiny storage space the size of a closet, with no lights and hardly any sound, I started to hallucinate. I was sure I heard a TV. I could even make out the ads. It was agonizing. I knew perfectly well they were just in my mind, but they sounded so real. Oh, God. I covered my ears, but I could still hear everything clearly.

That closet was my undoing. I was sliding down the slippery slope of madness. I couldn’t take any more fatigue, terror, and pent-up stress after seventy-two hours of light and food deprivation. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was suffocating in there. The walls were closing in on me; the space seemed even smaller, crushing, squeezing me. The darkness was thick as oil; even the
air was dark. I couldn’t breathe; my lungs pumped air like crazy but got no oxygen. I was choking. I had to get out of there!

I scratched at the door, desperately groping for the handle. Then two hands, hard as steel, grabbed my arms. Pritchenko whispered something in Russian, trying to reassure me. He had immobilized me with the strength of a karate black belt. He didn’t let go until my breathing calmed down and I regained control. That fucking Ukrainian’s looks are deceiving. He’s so small, and his huge blond mustache covers half his mouth, but he has an iron spirit and amazing resilience. He hadn’t collapsed under pressure; I’d been about to send us both to hell in an attack of claustrophobia.

I started to cry in silence, like a real idiot. I’d had enough. We’d been shut up in that closet-size hole for an entire day. I was hungry, thirsty, and sleepy. I had excruciating cramps and was completely disoriented. It was fucking hell, but there was no neon sign pointing to the exit.

With all that movement, I’m sure we made some noise. Fortunately those monsters were making far more commotion as they moved around the wreckage in the storeroom, stumbling over fallen shelves and the remains of our team. For the moment, they hadn’t noticed us. I peered through the little hole in the door. All I could see was half of the storeroom and the hallway that led to the front of the store. A little light was coming through the front door.

I could see the shadows of at least eight of those things still in the room. I knew there were plenty more in front of the store and out in the street. Those bastards hadn’t left when they finished off Kritzinev and the Pakistanis. They just stayed out there, searching for something...or someone.

For the first few hours, that room was crowded with the monsters drawn by the gunfire. Now, something (instinct?) told them
there was still fresh prey in the vicinity. As time passed, most lost interest and moved outside.

Somehow they knew there were humans nearby but they didn’t know exactly where. Was it the heat we gave off? Electromagnetic fields? Some other sense that eludes me? They restlessly prowled around, frustrated that they couldn’t find what they were sure was there.

For four terrifying hours, a tall, gangly monster with a big gash on his back stood in front of the crawl space, slamming his fists at the bottom of the sliding door and roaring. We froze. We thought that bastard had discovered us, and that was the end of the line. But finally the guy lost interest and went back to wandering around the room, then retreated to God knows where.

Those things are strong and have a kind of sixth sense, but they aren’t very smart or persevering. Their coordination and ability to concentrate are limited; their motor skills are worse. After a while, they seem to get bored or distracted, except when a strong stimulus, usually a human, gets their attention. Then they’re relentless.

All this is just a guess. To my knowledge, nobody has any idea of how those creatures think. The epidemic spread too fast for anyone to do any scientific studies. If anyone is doing research in a bunker somewhere, he must be miles underground. A lot of good that’ll do us, surrounded by them.

And it wouldn’t fix my hallucinations: I thought I heard a siren.

Pritchenko squeezed my arms so hard I nearly howled in pain. He’d heard it too! It wasn’t a hallucination!

There were three long blasts, a pause, and three more long blasts. It was the hoarse, deep sound made by a powerful steam turbine coming from far off. A ship’s horn! The
Zaren Kibish
. Ushakov was trying to contact us. He must be getting worried,
wondering what was taking us so long. We needed to answer, let him know we were alive. But that would have to wait.

The siren riveted the monsters packed inside the store. The room emptied out as they stumbled out the door, one by one, headed for that new sound only a human being—prey!—could make.

All but one. For some reason, an undead woman in her fifties wearing sparkly earrings, her face streaked with makeup and dirt, kept walking around in the storeroom. Maybe she detected human prey more intensely than the others. Or maybe she was dull-witted. Who can say? She just stood there watching, waiting. This was the chance we were waiting for. Pritchenko and I didn’t have to say a word. I shoved the sliding door aside and jumped onto the counter, Prit following.

The woman looked up, surprised. With a mad roar, she walked toward us, dodging the mangled remains of furniture and rotting corpses on the ground.

I tried to stand up, but my legs didn’t respond after a whole day tucked into that tiny crawl space. I just couldn’t get up. There was an unpleasant tingling in my legs as circulation was restored, but for all intents and purposes, I was helpless as a puppy.

Again Pritchenko rose to the occasion, drawing strength from somewhere. He crawled forward and grabbed the empty AK-47 Kritzinev had thrown down before he died. Using the rifle as a cane to help him stand up, he leaned against the wall, then grabbed the rifle by the barrel like a club and squared off against that harpy, whose breathing whistled softly between her teeth. That guy sure had some balls.

Prit didn’t have to wait for that creature’s response. She wobbled toward him. When she was within reach, he raised the AK-47 over his head and brought it down with all his might against the woman’s skull.

There was a loud
crack
as her skull split open, exposing her dark, infected brains. She rocked back and forth and staggered. Pritchenko leveled a second blow. Her head burst like a ripe melon and she fell to the ground. He bent over her, hitting her skull again and again until it was a mass of red pulp.

I struggled to my feet and grabbed Viktor’s shoulders as he gave the corpse the umpteenth blow. He had a maniacal look in his eyes and that woman’s brains all over his arms and chest. When he felt my hands, he spun around like a cobra. For a moment I thought he was going to whack me too.

His expression slowly returned to normal. Finally his weak legs couldn’t hold him any longer and he collapsed to the floor, dragging me down with him. Now he was the one sobbing convulsively, venting the tension that had built up over the last twenty-four hours, as adrenaline roared through his veins.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and helped him sit up. We didn’t have much time. We had to get out of that hellhole right away. Regaining his composure, Prit sniffed loudly and picked up Kritzinev’s gun. He said wearily, “We’re finally out of the closet.”

I burst out laughing as the Ukrainian gazed at me, wondering what had gotten into me. Every time I tried to stop laughing, the puzzled look on Pritchenko’s face made me laugh even harder. With tears in my eyes, I explained the slang meaning of what he’d said. Then the Ukrainian laughed too. That was liberating. For the first time in weeks, we laughed uncontrollably, as stress flowed out of us. Any silly comment would set us off again. It was fantastic. We were still human. We were still alive. We could still put up a fight.

We didn’t glean much from the gruesome scene. Kritzinev’s pistol was our only weapon. We found the AK-47s, but couldn’t locate the ammunition. Usman and Shafiq had had the ammunition belts, but there was no sign of them. They were probably
wandering around, mutants now, packing dozens of rounds of ammunition. Fuck.

Before we left, I bent over Kritzinev’s corpse. The undead’s fury had been over the top; they’d ripped the poor bastard’s body to shreds. There was no way he was coming back to life. Part of his brain was missing; an arm and both legs and his stomach were torn apart as if a wild animal had attacked him. What a gruesome death. I reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the bloodstained receipt. I hadn’t forgotten about that fucking package. It was the only way I’d get Lucullus back.

We left the store, stepping around a huge mound of putrid bodies piled up at the door. The sun was blinding. As Pritchenko and I walked out of the store, I glanced around. I saw a couple of those things about four hundred yards away. They’d spotted us and were heading our way. Time to get a move on.

We ran up the street, limping, drained from lack of food and water. We wouldn’t get far in that shape. As we walked along the deserted street, more and more of those things came out of unexpected places to join the chase. Thousands of them! They were closing in on us.

Suddenly Pritchenko and I stopped dead in our tracks. Spread out before us was a gruesome scene. We were at the edge of a swath of Vigo charred by fires that had raged out of control. I’d seen those fires from the
Corinth
. The street we were on dead-ended in an area where scorched, collapsed buildings had fallen every which way. The city looked like it’d been bombed.

This was our chance. Prit and I climbed onto the ruins, crawling over piles of rubble and twisted, blackened beams. The undead couldn’t follow us into this shattered land. They weren’t coordinated enough to climb that rubble. That landscape looked as dead as the moon, riddled with holes, covered with beams, piles of rubble and mangled remains. It wasn’t much easier for us,
given the shape we were in, but the important thing was, we could climb and they couldn’t.

After twenty minutes of wandering around in that hell, Pritchenko and I collapsed, panting, into a deep hole in the middle of the devastation. At the bottom of that hole was a large pool of rainwater. We drank like camels, then lay down to catch our breath, with the sun on our faces and a breeze in our hair. Spring had arrived in all its glory. We were glad to be alive.

I’m sitting next to a small campfire. A tasty chicken vegetable soup is bubbling away. Across the flames, I can see Pritchenko’s familiar silhouette wrapped in a blanket, snoring so loud he could wake the dead. For the first time in weeks, I’m in such a good mood I can even joke about this.

Yesterday we left that burned zone after languishing there for three days. Prit and I were completely exhausted. Fortunately, the Ukrainian had quickly spotted a place to take shelter and recuperate, which undoubtedly saved our lives.

It was hot at the bottom of that hollow. The sun in a cloudless sky beat down mercilessly as we lay like lizards next to a pool of rainwater that was evaporating before our eyes in that stifling heat. It was so hot the air vibrated. Debris seemed to tremble. The silence was complete, broken only by occasional snaps and pops from the ruins and crumbling buildings and the drone of flies. Once we heard dogs barking in the distance, but the barking stopped after a few minutes.

Prit and I tried to build a tent out of a torn sheet, but we had nothing to prop it up with. We were too weak to perform any feats of engineering.

Bottom line, our situation was pitiful. We were alone, essentially unarmed, lost in an abandoned, half-destroyed city, exhausted, hungry, with just dirty water to drink, surrounded by thousands of undead. Not exactly a tropical vacation.

We were sweating like pigs in that torrid heat. I walked to the edge of the puddle of water, made a bowl with my hands, and drank some water. I smiled ruefully at my reflection. Pritchenko and I looked strikingly alike. After all we’d been through, we both had beards; our hair was matted and dirty; our clothes (in my case, a swimsuit and a ragged shirt, since I’d stripped off my wetsuit in the storeroom) were in tatters; our skin was greasy and smeared with soot; our hands were dirty; our nails were broken; we had that sharp, bony, hungry look and, I suppose, a foul smell. A beggar from before the apocalypse would look like a movie star next to us.

I told Prit that if a client could see me like this, he wouldn’t recognize me. Laughing, he said that Siunten probably wouldn’t hire him looking like that.