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.
“Nothing,” she said and wiped her tears off her cheeks. “Just woke up and came to realize that the world is going to hell. And my father’s dead … Get me out of here. Please. My leg hurts.”
“You gonna be all right,” Ramses said. “That I promise you.”
He looked through the window. After a lot of gainless efforts, the undead had lost their interest in the truck. But they stuck around.
“Give a honk again,” she said.
“We’ve done this like a million times. The battery’s gonna be dead soon. It’s useless. Just attracts more creatures to us.”
“Just do something to get us out!” Ksenia shouted. “I don’t want to die here!”
Ramses looked at her face – contorted with fear and anger – and sighed. He honked the honker. It was the best he could do.
“Maybe they’re all dead there?” Ramses said.
The walkie-talkie, which was sitting on the dashboard, crackled and started spitting out static. It gave Ksenia a start. Then a male voice spoke in Russian.
Ramses glanced over at Ksenia, a question in his face.
“They want us to respond,” Ksenia interpreted the Russian speech.
He met her glance, grabbed the radio and handed it to her. “Then what the hell are we waiting for?”
Ksenia clicked the button, introduced herself in Russian and said a greeting. There was a moment of confused silence at the other end. Ramses was listening with impatience, a hopeful smile on his face. If it were not for his lack of knowledge of Russian, he would’ve snatched the radio away and spoken himself.
Ksenia interpreted for him what was being said. The man on the radio said his name was Ivan, and he was a security guard.
“Oh thank God,” Ivan said. “We were afraid there’s nobody there. Are you alone there? Over.”
“No,” Ksenia said. “There’s another survivor here. His name is Ramses Campbell. He’s a citizen of the United States.”
“Good!” Ivan said. “Wait a second … The hotel manager wants to talk to you.”
There was a noise in the background, and then a pleasant baritone voice said in English, “Hello there! My name is Andrew Thomas. I’m the General Manager of the Arkaim Hotel, and you are in its territory at the moment.”
“Hi, Andrew,” Ramses said. “I know who you are. I’m your return customer. Checked in a couple days ago.”
Andy chuckled. “These are bizarre circumstances but I’m glad you’re back, Mr. Campbell.”
“Go for Ramses.”
“What kind of name is that? Egyptian by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” Ramses said. “But I’m
