Zombiegrad. A horror novel

“All right, guys.” Goran clapped his hands like a teacher in the classroom. “Let’s bring all the sweets up.”

His cooks took the ice-cream cones, bottles of Irn-Bru and boxes of chocolate and went out.

Darya drove a trolley with empty cups and saucers to the door.

“Dasha—”

The trolley squeaked on its casters and pushed through the door.

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.