Zombiegrad. A horror novel

Andy understood that the people were close to panic, and it was necessary to go on acting as if everything was normal to keep their spirits up.

***

Ivan, the guard whose presence was not necessary anymore in the CCTV room because of the power outage, was standing near the window, as Andy walked along the corridor. There was a shade of worry on the man’s face.

“What’s wrong, Ivan?” Andy asked him.

“I don’t know, sir,” the young man said. “I just remember clearly that the cash-in-transit truck was at the north of the building. Now it has moved here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Keep watching,” Andy said. “If you see something unusual,” he held up his walkie-talkie, “let me know.”

“Sure.” Ivan nodded. “Right away.”

***

Goran ran his kitchen like a general in a battlefield. He was barking out orders to his cook assistants, those of them who hadn’t yet lapsed into depression and had come down into the kitchen to make meals. Some of them had come wearing jeans or other casual clothes, but Goran had made them put on their uniforms. He himself had his immaculately white chef hat on. It gave him extra power in the kitchen.

“Why do we need this outfit?” one of his assistants asked him. “Who cares? We could be dead in an hour.”

“Remember the Second World War history?” Goran asked him. “What was the first sign, which showed that concentration camp prisoners weren’t going to make it and die soon?”

The cook shook his head and looked quizzically at him.

“They stopped cleaning their teeth,” he said.

Nobody said a word.

“And besides,” Goran said. “We’re the Arkaim Hotel. We gotta be goddamn classy at all times.”

Not all of the cooks agreed, but they donned their uniforms anyway.

They hadn’t been so busy since the preparation for St. Valentine’s Day and were bustling in and out, washing dishes, bringing and taking away the trays. There had been no cooking since Saturday when all the employees and guests had had to fight against the unexpected visitors who were thirsty for their blood.

Goran treated his job as an art. This was one of the conditions, on which Andrew Thomas chose his staff: a person should see what he or she does as an art performance. Three days ago he had had twenty cooks under his command. Some of them had been carefully picked by Goran himself. He was a great team builder. But this Sunday he had a skeleton crew – only eight cooks. But he hoped to get some help from volunteers soon. After all, they were going to get the food, too.

A male cook came up to him with a plate in his hands. “It’s a pity, Goran. The fromage blanc is off.”

Goran took the plate, smelled at the cheese and handed it back with a wince. “You know what to do with it. Dispose of everything that is rotten. But don’t get rid of the expired food yet. We don’t know for how long we’ll be trapped here.”

The power had been out for three hours now, and Goran turned a suite on the second floor into an ad hoc fridge storage by bringing all the food there and keeping all the windows open to let the cold February wind preserve the perishable products longer.

Goran came up to the table where a huge cake sat.

Darya Petrakova, a slim woman in her thirties, who worked as a dessert cook, was covering the cake with white chocolate ganache.

“Hey, Dasha,” Goran said, smiling. “That’s a nice job! Yummy!”

He looked at her but she lowered her eyes – blue ice.

She said nothing. She finished the icing and went to the sink to wash her hands.

Goran and Darya had been dating for a week until this new redheaded chambermaid Marina appeared on Goran’s horizon. Naturally, he lost his interest in Darya, who was modest and a bit shy and whose kiss he had managed to steal only twice during this week, and focused his attention on Marina’s head-spinning boobs.

That Friday morning, when the meteorite arrived, he was standing in the middle of the little windowless locker room and kissing Marina on her naked breasts, which burst out her blouse like two ripe honey pomelos.

They heard a key being inserted into the keyhole. It was turned twice, and the door opened.

The couple stopped doing what they had been so passionately doing and looked at Darya, who entered the room. It was her day off, and she dropped by to get some stuff she had left in her locker.

Darya clutched her purse she was carrying and gave a gasp of surprise. Marina let out a trickle of laughter and began hiding her delights. Goran looked angrily at Darya. Darya’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints, and she threw the purse at them. Goran ducked, and the purse caught Marina’s earring. A red droplet of blood fell from the bleeding ear on Marina’s white blouse.

“Are you fucking mental, you fucking cow?” Marina said. She was beside herself with anger. There was a vehement exchange of altercations in rude Russian.

Finally, Darya said, “Look. I don’t want to fight either of you. I’m tired. My mother is ill and needs medicine. Just let me grab my stuff and I’ll leave this place for good. I have to go to the drugstore.” She looked at Marina. “I don’t care about you, poor bitch. The same will happen to you after this womanizer finds a replacement for you.”

She clenched her fists and her nails left pale crescents on her palms.

Marina kicked the purse lying on the floor and sent it flying. Then she went to the door, setting her blouse straight. The door slammed behind her.

“Dasha,” Goran said.

“Please don’t say anything,” Darya said, interrupting him. “Just leave. Have it your way in your life. As you always do.”

She burst out crying. He came up close to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She pulled away from him.

She opened her locker and took out a plastic bag and a watch. As she was trying to lock the locker, her fingers disobeyed her, and she dropped the key. He bent down to pick it up.

“Just leave me alone!” she shouted and slapped him across his face.

As she did it, Goran’s face exploded. For a split second, he thought some explosive hidden inside his head detonated. But his face did not disintegrate. The room shook two or three times. Then it was normal again.

“Sranje!” he exclaimed. He always swore in his mother tongue. He looked at her. “What the hell was that?” He looked astonished, and his face was funny to look at.

Darya stopped crying suddenly. “How do I know?”

The dramatic situation was turning into a comic one.

Goran could not see what was happening outside as there were no windows in the locker room. Darya looked a little frightened. She picked up her purse, and they hurried out of the room.

After Darya had bought the medicine for her mother, she came back to help around in the hotel. And she helped to build the barricades around the main entrance and sealing back entrances and emergency exits the next day, too.

This Sunday morning Darya returned to her duty as a dessert cook. She was glad to be useful again.

There were half a dozen kids in the hotel, and they were to be fed in the first place. Andy wanted to keep everyone’s spirits up, and Goran decided to make a huge cherry cake for them. Cherries were expensive in winter, and with the power outage, they were getting bad pretty soon. That would be a waste of good ingredients.