gun’s real. It belonged to my dad. You just have to aim at the head.”
Ramses cast an inquiring look at her. “Are we in a fucking weird lesson?”
Ksenia put the torch carefully on the floor. She gripped the gun with both hands, pointed it at the driver and squeezed the trigger again.
The bullet made its way through the man’s forehead, chunks of flesh and bones flying out from behind his skull. The echo of the gun report was deafening. The man collapsed on the floor. His ex-coworkers stumbled over the lying corpse. They got up and started shaking the door more violently.
Ksenia squinted and killed the fat man with one single shot in the head. Then she directed the gun at the female and fired. The contents of her skull were scattered around.
It was quiet for a second.
Then a crowd of psychos came shambling. A dozen hands clawed at them through the bars. The rusty door began to creak ominously under their weight.
She sent another bullet into the mob without taking aim. It hit the bars and twanged away in a ricochet. She tried to send another round, but the gun was giving only dry clicks. The magazine was empty.
Tears smeared Ksenia’s mascara.
“Don’t call me missy,” she said. Her cheekbones flushed red.
FOUR
Ksenia thumbed the release and ejected the empty clip into her hand. She put it in her pocket, took out a fresh clip and sent it home into the handle. She wedged her gun under her belt and stamped her feet upstairs.
Ramses looked through the bars and saw more monsters coming up to the closed door. He picked up the torch and ran after Ksenia. She stopped on the second floor and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her sweater.
“We have to leave this place,” she said. “The sooner, the better. The door won’t hold forever.”
“What are you up to?”
“We’ll break into the armory and arm ourselves.”
Ramses looked at Ksenia quizzically. “Sounds like a plan but please remind me next time to ask you who taught you to shoot and where you learned your good English.”
“Okay. Follow me.” She stepped into the dark corridor. The faint growling of the crazies was reaching them from the first floor. Ramses lit their way.
“Say,” he said. “Why didn’t those cops shoot back? They didn’t shoot back. Can you believe this? They all have a gun holster on their hips but none of ‘em were shooting at us.”
“They are robots,” Ksenia said, “not humans. Now you know what to do to survive.”
She halted in front of a heavy metallic door. She turned the handle, but the door was locked. She hit the door with her palm. “We have to find a way to get inside! We need those weapons!”
Ramses shook his head. “You’re looking really on edge.”
He searched in his pocket and fished out the keys he had found on the dead policeman. He put them into the torchlight. There was the Opel logo on the key fob. Car keys. No use for them at the moment. They had to escape from this place first before searching for that Opel in the parking lot. He put the keys away.
“Are you trained to pick locks by any chance?” he asked. “‘Cause I’m no expert here.”
“Unfortunately, no. The keys to the armory were on the first floor with the duty officer. Before this chaos began, that is.”
“We’re gonna have to use physical force, then.” He took a closer look at the three door hinges. “I’m thinking to try breaching it at the hinges.”
He touched the hinges, which were luckily not hidden from the outside. Easier to break. The latch side was strong, but he decided to break it too.
They went to the third floor, which was packed with various construction tools because of all renovations going on. They did not turn the lights in the corridor on and used the flashlight. Ramses picked a sledgehammer and a crowbar off the floor.
“Look around for some power-driven tools,” he said. “Like a drill or something.”
They rummaged through the tools, dispersing the darkness with the torchlight. Trickles of moonlight flowed through the windows and helped them see better in the dark. They found smaller hammers, cement spatulas and paint cans. Ksenia spotted a bulky plastic case under a stepladder and brought it to Ramses.
“That’s nice,” he said, opening the case and looking approvingly at the perforator. “Better than a drill.” He scanned around. “But we need the drill bit.”
“What’s that?”
“The drill bit?” He scratched the back of his head. “The thing, that’s attached to the business end of the perforator.” He looked at her tired face. “You know, to perform the drilling?”
“Ah.” She nodded weakly. “I got it – sverlo.”
Ramses felt a relief. “Yeah, whatever. Get a drill bit. Look around the place where you found this case.”
All the tools left by the construction workers were in disarray. There was an extension cord on a windowsill which Ramses added to his pile of items. Ksenia was lucky to locate the drill bits. She took an ax, too. They grabbed all the stuff and went back to the armory. There was a power source in the corridor, but the extension cord was not long enough to reach the armory door, and Ksenia had to go on a search for an extra cord. She came back with the cord and Ramses connected the two cords together. Then he plugged one of them into the power socket.
“Okee-dokee.” He revved the perforator, and it started buzzing loudly. “All systems are go, Houston.”
Ksenia gave him a tired smile.
“You drill near the latch,” he said handing her the tool. “Once you start, the plaster will crumble like a cookie. I’ll go at the hinges.”
He took the sledgehammer and hit it against the upper hinge. A loud buzz instantly filled the building. It was numbing and it was continuous.
He put the sledgehammer down and looked at Ksenia.
“We’ve triggered the security alarm system,” she said. “But no one is coming to arrest us.”
“It’s gonna attract more deadheads from outside,” Ramses said. “Let’s hurry up.” He raised the sledgehammer and launched another hit against the hinge.
Ksenia pressed the drill bit to the wall surface near the door frame and began working, too. Pieces of paint and plaster crumbled to the floor. Dust and cement particles, barely visible in the faint light, were floating in the air. In a quarter of an hour, the instrument got very hot, and they switched it off to give it a rest. Ksenia sat on the floor.
It took Ramses nineteen hits to break the upper hinge. He took a break, wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat down beside Ksenia. He
