“What’s the deal?” Luka replies.
“I’m gonna do rock, paper, scissors with my friend. And if one wins, we will run you back to Arkhangelsk. If the other one wins, we will kill you and take your dog tags back. It’s 50-50. It’s absolutely random, but you still end up in the city regardless. What do you think?” Rigo feels like this is an obviously fabulous offer. He believes the German man will feel the same way.
“Uh, that sounds cool and if I lose, what should I do?”
“Prepare yourself. Clench your butthole, because it’s gonna get hot for you.”
“Okay, but how can I trust you if the luck decides I’m going with you? You know, I have nothing to lose, I just wanted to have some fun and hunt zombies.”
“Well, I’m an honest guy,” Rigo scratches the end of his nose through his scarf as he says this. “If I win the game and we decide to let you live, I’m not a guy who would fucking backstab you, cause that’s just disgusting.”
Rigo knows that the guides never trust corpse hunters, or each other. He would never trust them either. Many of the guides and tourists who livestream their adventures don’t place much value on life and backstab their groups regularly. All in the pursuit of interesting content for the viewers. Corpse hunters don’t run livestreams, they don’t want people to know their activities or locations. Corpse hunters aren’t known for being trustworthy regardless of there being a livestream or not. Rigo thinks the tourist will trust them, however, just out of desperation. The man doesn’t have much choice.
“Okay” Luka sighs. His panic has eroded into blank acceptance of his fate being decided by a children’s game.
“So, who do you vote for? Like, if I win, you live, or if my friend wins, you live?”
Luka did not hesitate. “I live if you win.”
“Alright, good luck, give me one sec.”
Rigo goes to the police shack. He finds Sceps inside, leaning against a rare unbroken table. The man is contemplating his assault rifle thoughtfully, almost longingly, as he runs his hand across the stock.
“Let’s do it, fuck it.” Sceps shrugs his shoulders. He shoulders his gun, locking the breakaway clasp that holds it against his body, and pushing the barrel behind his elbow.
Rigo closes door behind him, there is a big hole in the door where the window is broken, but he feels better with at least some kind of barrier between him and the outside world. He prefers the ruined buildings to the dark branches of the trees. The police shack is dim, but not completely dark. The sun is still high in the sky and the windows, the rest of which are not broken in this small building, let in enough light for them to move around easily.
“I wish you good luck to win. But how do you want to play it?” Rigo can still hear the German man shouting through the broken window in the door. The man does not seem to have much of a sense of survival, despite his protesting against being killed. The zombies are still trying to get to him from the barricades. They will need to clear all the zombies if they take Luka with them. He doesn’t have an enzyme and will have a trail of zombies chasing him.
“Well, I’m gonna play it now with my friend.”
“So, you are together in one room?”
“That’s too much information,” Rigo yells up to the man. Rigo does not want to give away their position, not when they are so close together, in the small shack. He and Sceps try to not be close to each other when on the ground in case they get ambushed. It was always expensive and annoying when they died at the same time.
“Ready?” Sceps asks Rigo.
“Yeah, bro. Play it straight.”
Sceps and Rigo both hold out a closed fist in front of themselves. Their hands are still wrapped in their thick, cold-weather gloves. The gloves are very flexible, and they easily make fists, with fingers clenched.
Rigo counts, “One, two, three.” The two men wave their fists up and down at each number. The third time they both put out scissors. It’s a tie.
Sceps scowls. “Fuck.”
Rigo yells to Luka, “Oh, we both got scissors, one moment.”
Rigo counts again. The two men throw out their fists. They both do rock again and tie again.
Both men laugh at the absurdity. They are freezing their balls off in the shack, trying to decide the fate of a man they don’t know with a child’s game. At least they were almost certain no one else was close enough to attack them, even as the zombies moaned around them.
“Oh, I think you lost,” came the scared man’s voice.
“No, no, we both got scissors, then rocks.”
“Three, two, one.”
Rocks again. There is the roar of a zombie outside the shack. They are running out of time. More of them have made it through the barricade. Large, fluffy snowflakes are also beginning to fall. Through the hole in the door of the police shake the snowflakes tumble to the ground like in a picturesque snow globe, landing on the heads and shoulders of the decrepit zombies. The thickening snowstorm will slow the zombies somewhat.
“Bro, what the fuck? This game, I don’t know, it’s telling us something.” Rigo looks meaningfully at Sceps, who just scowls.
“Three, two, one.”
Rigo throws out scissors. Sceps does paper.
“Fuck,” Sceps mutters.
“Okay, bro, I fucking won,” Rigo calls up to Luka.
“You won?”
“Yeah, I actually did.”
“Okay, I will tell you something, if you shoot me now, it would be not nice, I will not understand why you did that.”
“Don’t shoot him, okay?” Rigo says to Sceps.
Sceps looks at Rigo with a hangdog expression on his face behind the visor. “Yeah, but if he kill me or you, I blame you.”
“Come out, Luka.”
“I kind of like you, I’m coming out now, without my gun.”
“Don’t leave your gun up there, bro, put it on your shoulder.” Rigo says. He wants to see the Winchester.
“Oh. Yeah. I’ll do that.”
They can hear the man loudly going down the stairs inside the building, his footfalls echoing through the snow-made quiet. They hear him stumble over some rubble and curse as he makes his way towards them. Finally, Luka steps out of the building cautiously. His hands are up, he wears the gas mask Rigo and Sceps had left in the building, and his gun is slung behind his shoulder. A zombie that has been shuffling around the restaurant notices him immediately and starts to charge him with a stumbling gait.
Rigo raises his gun quickly and shoots the zombie in the head, exploding its rotten skull with a suppressed shot. The zombie collapses in a heap in front of Luka, who jumps backwards. Yellowish chunks of rotten brain slide out from the bits of broken bone and onto the icy ground. Snowflakes fall onto the goop like iced sugar. It will take a while before this one manages to pull itself back together.
The shot, although supressed, attracts the attention of more zombies that have staggered their way through the barricades. Sceps and Rigo take out all the zombies in surgical fashion. None of the zombies take more than one shot to down. The two men barely appear to aim before firing, bringing their guns up quickly and firing without thought. All the zombies collapse in heaps around the plaza, with skulls broken like rotten melons. Luka stands there, eyes wide with fright and fascination.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he stammers as the last of the zombies that have made it through the barricades fall to the ground. The snow begins to cover the bodies, blocking the worst of the rot of the corpses from view. Luka turns away from the zombies to stare at the two corpse hunters with wonder. “I’ve watched guides shooting zombies, I thought they were good…”
Rigo doesn’t respond. He doesn’t think highly of the guides, and he doesn’t feel like pointing a gun at a stationary head takes much skill. He holsters his pistol.
“Take the gas mask off, there’s no gas here, bro.”
Luka takes off the gas mask and drops it to the ground. He is a pale blond man, in his mid forties, with dark blue eyes. His beard has begun growing in. The hair on his cheeks is nearly translucent, but his face has gotten so grubby and dirty it is visible. He looks tired and cold, but not injured. Snow starts to cover his hair.
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“Put your hat and scarf on, bro.” Rigo says to him. Luka pulls his hat over his head and wraps the heavy woolen scarf around his face.
Sceps, in his heavy armour, swaggers up to the lost tourist, who visibly trembles at the sight of the armoured man.
“Tags,” Sceps growls at the man with his hand out, palm up.
Luka, shaking and wide-eyed at the close-up sight of the big corpse hunter. He digs in his pockets and produces a small collection of metal dog tags, which he hands to the corpse hunter. Sceps checks them for authenticity; there are four. The green lights on each one are flashing, showing the tags are good to be reconstituted. The two corpse hunters now have eighteen dog tags, plus Marten’s. This is a hefty payday. Sceps unceremoniously takes them and stuffs them in a pouch on the outside of his thigh. It zips closed automatically as soon as he pulls his hand away.
He stalks away, shooting a couple more zombies that are still caught on the barricades with his suppressed pistol as he crosses the wide plaza. The snow is very heavy now. Sceps almost disappears into the thickening flurries. It is blanketing the city like a curtain. The soldier is soon a grey shape in the snow.
“We need to move.” Rigo says to Luka.
“There are people close?” Luka asks.
“No, probably not, but it will be night soon. The snowstorm is getting bad.”
“You can get me back to Arkhangelsk?”
“Perhaps. Follow Sceps. Do not put your gun in your hands. Hold your knife.”
“My knife?”
“I’m not going to leave you completely defenseless against the zombies, bro, and stay close.” Rigo explains. Rigo does not want to let Luka get too far out of reach; in case the man decides to betray them after all.
The blizzard wipes out the surroundings as the men walk through the city with Sceps at a short distance in front of Luka and Rigo. As they close in on the leading corpse hunter, they can see the snow covering the head and shoulders of Sceps like a white, fluffy cape. He doesn’t seem to notice in his clamshell armour. The snow is also covering them, causing Luka to shiver with the cold. His clothes are good, but Rigo knows the man cannot stand up to the elements forever like he and Sceps can. They are used to the cold.
The zombies stumbling through the barricades in the streets rouse because Luka hasn’t taken an enzyme, but the storm helps dull their senses against finding the live human. Most of the streets in this part of the abandoned city have been partially blocked with barricades set up between the buildings. The citizens of this city had been somewhat successful at holding off the zombie hoards, which, according to historical records, had begun further south where most of the planet’s cities had been built. Rigo knows that at least a small portion of the citizens in this city made it to Arkhangelsk and escaped the planet, long before the tourists came to hunt down the citizens who did not.
Sceps has put away his pistol and pulls out a stellium knife. His assault rifle swings loosely in front of him, attached to his armour with a breakaway clasp. He easily vaults a barricade that has trapped a couple of zombies. The ghostly cape of snow is dislodged and falls behind Sceps with his quick movement. He lands lightly behind the zombies, and, with a slash, he slices the necks of the zombies. They fall lifeless to the pavement with a crackle of frost. The snowflakes begin to cover these bodies as well. Sceps moves silently and swiftly, barely making a sound as he dispatches several more zombies. He ignores Rigo and Luka. He always knows where Rigo is, and he doesn’t care about the location of Luka.
Luka goes to follow Sceps, but Rigo puts out his hand.
“No, bro, you’re too loud. Just follow me around.”
The German tourist nods, moving to follow Rigo. He seems too frightened to do anything but obey every command. Leading the way, Rigo follows Sceps’s footprints in the snow. He goes around the barricades, not following Sceps’s route, which takes him over the tops of the barricades in a straight line down the street. They are barely thirty meters behind him, but the snow has thickened to the point he cannot easily see the big soldier anymore.
Fear still glosses Luka’s eyes as he picks his way through the snow. Rigo wonders how the guide managed to keep this man alive this far south. He is a quivering mess. He knows that the German will be useless in a proper fight against living people. Rigo will have to put him in a bush like a baby deer. He also notes that Luka is now shivering quite a lot. He is getting colder and colder in the storm. They will need to stop to warm him up soon. He sighs inwardly, wondering again why he did this to himself and Sceps.
There are only a few zombies in this part of the city. The zombies turn to look towards them as they pass through the street. They are drawn by the fresh scent of Luka, despite the heavy snowfall. They move with an uncoordinated but determined shuffle through the barricades that block the side streets, their decaying hands reaching out and mouths opening in silent, grotesque anticipation. The sight is familiar to Rigo and Sceps, who have long since grown accustomed to the undead. Luka shrinks away from the zombies as Sceps quickly dispatches them.
Rigo positions Luka between himself and Sceps, ensuring that the tourist is never out of their sight. The zombies are not much of a threat, they only need to watch for living people that might be lurking in the buildings. Fortunately, the snow is helping hide them from view. They have done this many times before, and in a past long ago, they had both worked as guides. They know how to get Luka through the city alive.
"Don’t shoot your gun," Rigo warns again, his voice low but firm. "We can’t afford to attract more attention." He is mostly worried that if Luka starts shooting the zombies, Sceps will turn around and put a bullet in his head. Sceps doesn’t like to take chances.
Luka nods, swallowing hard. "I’m out of pistol ammo anyway," he admits, showing the empty chamber of his gun for emphasis.
"Then use your knife." Rigo replies. “Aim for the neck or the base of the skull, behind them. Quiet and efficient."
"I’ve never done this before," he confesses, eyes darting along the street at the sight of the zombies. There seems to be so many more than there were earlier.
“You did it on the container.” Rigo states blandly.
Luka startles, as if suddenly recalling how he had punched through the rotten skulls of the zombies around the container. “Okay,” he mumbles.
Rigo nods, understanding the man’s hesitation but without sympathy. "Watch how Sceps does it. Stay close, stay quiet, and stay alive."
With knife drawn, Sceps advances along the street. Rigo keeps his gun in his hands as Sceps coolly slices the neck of a zombie lumbering towards them, the blade slicing cleanly through rotting flesh and bone. The zombie’s head rolls to the side and its body collapses in a heap. Sceps plunges his knife into the base of another zombie’s skull, the creature dropping instantly as its spinal cord is severed.
Luka watches in terror, with fear in his eyes, but he also appears very impressed with the corpse hunter’s skill in destroying zombies. Luka’s grip on the knife is tense, his knuckles white as he struggles to keep his hands steady, even though there are no zombies to destroy near him. Rigo thinks the man believes he must keep up if he wants to survive. Rigo can tell he understands that the man has thoroughly grasped that Sceps will kill him if he drags them down.
As they press forward, Rigo decides to demonstrate the technique of silently taking out the undead. He tells Sceps to take his gun in hand so he can show Luka how to sneak up behind the zombies that are stuck on the spikes and barbed wires around the barricades, the ones that Sceps had ignored as he cleared the path because they posed no threat. Rigo sneaks up behind a zombie quietly, so it doesn’t turn and grasp at him, or worse, scream and alert other zombies or living people. He knifes it through the neck to take it out quickly and it slumps into the snow. Luka copies his movements on the next zombie. After slicing the necks of two nearly immobile, defenseless zombies, he gains some confidence, even if his hands are shaking still.
The lines of concrete barricades stop at the end of the street, marking the nebulous border between the commercial district and the residential areas of the city. Several elongated spirals of barbed wire continue a bit further, stretching across the roadways in haphazard rows. Along this last, pitiful defence, some of the coils are enveloped by the rotting bodies of a few zombies caught in the wire, like trees that have grown around a chain-link fence. The frozen flesh buckles like bark over the barbs, submerged forever beneath the brittle skin. These zombies barely move, their re-animated limbs sluggishly pulling against their chains.
Rigo has lost count of the number of times he has seen zombies caught on debris like this. It is a disturbing sight, but it no longer shocks him. He has even, in moments of morbidness, given names to some of the ones he regularly comes across. As Luka nears the trapped zombies they perk up and try to reach for him, pulling at the barbed wire, making the barbs squeal as they drag along the iced-over pavement. The undead, drawn by his enzyme-less scent, move towards them with a relentless drive to kill, their groans filling the air with a chilling resonance. The three men ignore these zombies, like the others that had been caught on the barricades in the streets.
As they walk out of the end of the barriers, the storm continues to get heavier and colder, and the buildings get further apart. The visibility drops to bare meters in front of them, but, in this area, the zombies are no longer caught up on barricades or debris. They wander aimlessly through the snow, sometimes encountering the three live men. The two corpse hunters coordinate their attacks in the thick snow. They don’t need to let each other know where they are going, each is aware of how the other will move through the city. Luka follows awkwardly behind, knifing the odd zombie left behind by Rigo and Sceps. The two men rely on their knives to avoid attracting more attention with loud shots. The zombies stop trying to reach for Luka, unless they are extremely close. They are unable to sense him through the snow. Rigo is worried he will lose sight of Luka in the snow, so he walks closer to the German tourist. Sceps remains unconcerned with losing the man.
“We can just take his dog tags, bro.” Sceps whispers gruffly in their communication link.
“You’ve said,” Rigo sighs. “No, bro, we told him we’d get back to the city.”
“This is fucked up,” Sceps growls.
Rigo doesn’t respond. He watches Sceps remove the entire head of a zombie ahead of him with a single swipe.
Luka seems amazed at how efficiently they have cleared a path through the streets. He tells the two corpse hunters that he has always thought that getting close to zombies was a death sentence, but these two moved with a precision that made it seem almost easy.
Luka is surprised that they dare to go so close to the zombies. "Aren’t you scared of getting bitten?" he whispers.
Rigo shakes his head, "Not with the enzyme. The real danger here is from other people, not the zombies."
Luka’s eyes widen, "More dangerous than zombies?"
Sceps grunts, "Much more dangerous. Zombies are predictable. People aren’t.” He casts a meaningful look at Rigo, heavy with frustration and disbelief, silently asking, “Why you do this to us, bro?” Despite the silent questioning, Rigo manages to remain unshaken.
Rigo takes a moment to stop and let Luka catch his breath. He has managed to keep up, even in the snow. The heavy silence of the snowstorm envelops them completely, broken only by the occasional groan of a zombie they stumble upon in the snow.
"We need to keep moving," Rigo says, scanning the area for any signs of movement. "We don’t want to be caught out here when it gets dark."
Luka nods.
"No gun," Rigo reminds Luka. "If you see anything that isn’t a zombie, you hide and let us handle it."
Luka nods again, his face set in determination despite the fear still lurking in his eyes. He knows that his survival depends on following their lead and not doing anything foolish.
As they move into the residential buildings, the sounds of distant groans and shuffles become fainter, replaced by the eerie silence of the snowstorm and nightfall. There are not many zombies in this area. Every now and then, a gust of wind would blow across the roofs of the buildings, sending snow rolling down the slopes. Luka startles at every unusual sound. Rigo and Sceps are less jumpy, simply glancing around the surroundings for anything unusual that might indicate other people.
Rigo realises that Luka is shivering with chattering teeth. He won’t last much longer in the open. They need to stop for the night.
“We will stop soon,” Rigo says to Luka. “Follow me.”