Episode 30: About 30 Drachma an Hour

U.S. Grant and Pyotr Petrograd stood outside the hotel, atop the glass scattered about the ground by them. They watched in horror as the streets, though devoid of life, were filled with moving figures. They looked at each other in a moment of relative understanding. Their words when they left the hotel-“Illuminati Scum!” Had not been directed at each other. They had been a statement of knowledge of the situation, not of knowledge of the opponent. Despite their completely conflicting political and ideological views, even in costume the two of them were friends and companions. In their costumes they were, in fact, partners in their fight against crime. Whether either of them ever fought any real crime is a question to which the answer is indeterminate.
“To the Plaka,” Pyotr suggested. Grant nodded and, the two of them began running to the west.
They came upon a group of male prostitutes forced into a corner by slowly approaching zombies. They were screaming for help in Greek. Neither Grant nor Pyotr could understand the words, but they certainly understood the sentiment. After a brief look and a nod at each other, they dashed over to the five zombies assaulting the prostitutes. Deciding to save his bullets, Grant smashed in the back of one’s skull with his fist. Also opting to save ammunition, Pyotr pulled a sickle from somewhere and hooked it into the back of a different zombie’s head. As he pulled it out, Grant pushed the falling body of his target into the three remaining, who were slowly turning to see the attackers. Pyotr flung the sickle into the eye of one of the three, which started screaming and began to stumble away. Grant leapt into the air, flinging himself against the two remaining as he had done with his first kill. He smashed their heads together before they could manage to get their claws or teeth in. They fell to the ground. Pyotr had pursued the zombie with his sickle and had pulled it out-through its skull.
The two of them looked gravely at the five corpses. Then they looked back at the corner. The male prostitutes had escaped. Neither Grant nor Pyotr cared much who they had been. They felt satisfied that if the Illuminati’s beasts were after someone, that someone was their ally. They knew nothing of zombies, and so they didn’t recognize the zombies as such. They had gone for the heads because they had determined in their investigations that Illumination had something to do with the head, and so the key to stop those who had been illuminated was to prevent the head from operation. It worked incidentally against most things just as well. They hadn’t done it in the halls because they hadn’t felt that they had much time at all to take aim with bullets. They also considered that perhaps the things were immune to bullets in general.
They were about to move on when Pyotr noticed something scrawled on the wall where the prostitutes had been cowering. He motioned for Grant to look at it, and the two of them examined it. It was stenciled words. Surprisingly apt: Consuming Zombies. The paint was long dried, and had dripped slightly creating a bleeding look; it had been placed there before the crisis occurred. Neither of them connected it particularly with the roving corpses. It was just strange words stenciled on the wall.
They began running towards Plaka again.

The hotel was fifteen floors high, including the lobby. There was also a basement and a roof level. We have only met characters staying on the second floor. As a change of pace, we will now learn of the Canadians, who stayed on the top floor. Not the roof level, of course, as that would just be crazy. The sixteen of them had a total of four rooms: One had the three adult supervisors, and the other three each had four students. One of the poor Canadian girls had to sleep in the same room as three of the Alabama girls on the eighth floor. The more fortunate girls were in rooms 1403, 1406, 1408, and the teachers were in 1409. One of the girls had exceptionally good hearing; she was the only one awakened by the screams. She was one of the two fluent in Esperanto. She was also perhaps the bravest and smartest of the girls. Their leader. Her name was Anna Cluthon.
Her best friend, the other girl fluent in Esperanto, slept next to her. Her name was Stefani Suc. Anna reached out and shook Stefani’s shoulder. Stefani’s eyes fluttered open, and she smiled tiredly at Anna. “Time to go out on the town already?” she asked in Esperanto, yawning and stretching.
“I heard screams downstairs,” Anna’s eyes darted around nervously.
“What kind of screams?” Stefani believed her, and knew there was a reason to be worried. Anna didn’t joke like this, and she was rarely wrong.
“Terrible screams.”
More screams erupted from the street.
“Screams like that?” Stefani asked, sitting up quickly and running to the door to the balcony.
“Screams like that,” Anna confirmed, following. Stefani opened the glass door, and the two of them stepped out onto the balcony. They looked down at the street in the early morning light. Off to the east, there were some slow moving figures and some fast moving figures, as well as one figure that looked like it was eating a screaming figure. They stepped back through the door, looked at each other with terror in their eyes, and shut the glass door. They quickly woke their roommates in French, who stepped onto the balcony and looked at the horrors in the streets as well. They saw the glass burst out when U.S. Grant and Pyotr Petrograd made their way out of the hotel. They also heard the scream of “Illuminati Scum!” which they didn’t understand, not speaking English. They watched as Grant and Pyotr disappeared down the street heading west.
“We should go East,” one of them said matter-of-factly in French when they got back in.
“First we need to get everyone awake.” Anna said. Stefani concurred.
“Do we have to wake up the Americans? Some of them were saying things to me that Jordan told me were absolutely disgusting things about my ass.”
“It’s the polite thing to do,” Stefani said.
They left their room, 1403, and went to 1406 to wake up Jordan, one of the three English speakers, and Jaqueline, the one who knew a few words of Greek.
The door was open, so they pushed it open. Stefani quickly pulled it closed again. She shut her eyes tightly in frustration. Anna stood with her mouth agape, and the other two just stared at the door in astonishment.
“That’s disgusting!” one of them said after a minute.
“I didn’t even know that Jackie and Jordan were dating.”
“I didn’t even know that they were lesbians,” Stefani said.
“I don’t think they’re dating,” Anna sighed. “The other two were moaning.”
“That’s disgusting!” The first one said again. Stefani knocked on the door.
“Are you done in there?” she yelled. A moment passed.
“Not really,” Jordan said slowly. The four outside made retching noises.
“You have to stop that now!” Anna yelled. “There’s something bad happening, and we’re getting out of here.”
“What’s happening?” one of the girls inside said after a particularly loud moan.
“I don’t know!” Anna yelled after another round of retching noises. “We’re going to wake everyone up and get out of here!”
“Do we have to wake up the Americans? Jordan said that they were saying absolutely disgusting things about my ass.” Jaqueline yelled back after another pause.
“Jordan is DOING absolutely disgusting things TO your ass!” Stefani yelled. Suddenly screams erupted from room 1409. Stefani and Anna looked at each other briefly, and then the four of them rushed over to their teachers’ room. They tried to open the doors. Another teacher screamed. Anna and Stefani together smashed open the door and ran in.
“Oh, God!” Stefani yelled, before turning around and running back out. Anna was directly behind her.
“What is it? What happened to the teachers?” one of the other girls asked.
“They’re fucking teachers from America,” Anna said queasily. Stefani puked in front of a supply closet.
“That’s disgusting!” one of the other girls announced again.
“Let’s just try 1408... I’ll bet they’re not having sex. Beth is too straight-laced.”
1408 was unlocked, just as 1406 had been. And surely enough, they were not having sex. It was not, though, solely because Beth was too straight laced. It was mostly because they were dead. There had been a gas leak in their room during the night. It had slowly suffocated them, and they had been dead by 5 AM.
Of course, the four girls from room 1403 didn’t know that the four dead girls were dead. They were up and walking towards the freshly opened door.
“Thank god you’re not having sex,” the one who kept saying “That’s disgusting” said. She rushed in the room to greet Beth and thank her for her intense morality. She was hugging Beth and rambling on about the wonders of straight-lacedness, when Beth suddenly dug her teeth into her shoulder. The girl wailed out in pain, and Beth began chewing. The other three girls in the room began to eat the girl too. Stefani shut the door quickly.
“Eva!” The other girl from room 1403 screamed, and began to try to open the door. Stefani pushed her back.
“We are NOT going in there,” She said with a terrified calm.
“What the fuck is going on?” Anna yelled. Stefani became even more scared. When Anna didn’t know what was happening, few people could know what was happening. Anna knew most things.
“Let’s go downstairs?” Stefani suggested nervously.
“I like that idea.”
“I’m not leaving without Eva.”
“It’s been nice knowing you,” Stefani yelled; she and Anna were already running down the stairs. The girl pushed open the door to 1408 again. Beth and her three had blood and flesh dripping and hanging from their mouths. Eva lay on the floor, completely dead and largely stripped of flesh and drained of blood. The four zombies turned to look at the girl left behind. They slowly stood and hobbled towards her. She backed away slowly, beginning to scream. They advanced on her. As they began to eat her, Eva got up and joined them.
Jordan stopped moving her tongue. “I think something bad’s happening out there,” she said when she moved it again.
“You owe me five more minutes,” Jaqueline said when she caught her breath. One of the other girls got up off of the floor, and making sure that Jaqueline got a good view of her body, locked the door and returned to her partner.
“Now we don’t have to worry about it,” she said slyly.
Fifteen minutes later, the sixteen zombies now upstairs burst through the locked door.

U.S. Grant and Pyotr Petrograd reached Plaka, and it was swarmed with zombies.
“They seem to be attracted to money,” Pyotr observed. “I saw them crowded around ATMs as we came this way.”
“They’re attracted to community, you fool,” Grant retorted. “Haven’t you noticed they’re always in groups?”
“Whatever is gathering them, we cannot stop them like this. We have to begin rescuing people, so as to build an army to combat them.”
“We’ll have to find survivors, then. How do we do that?”
“We go to the Acropolis. We’ll be able to see the whole city from there. Any survivors, too.”
“You have good ideas for a commie.”
“You listen well for a capitalist pig.”
They smiled at each other and began running towards the Acropolis.

“What room is Charlotte in?” Stefani asked.
“I think it was 706?” Anna suggested.
“Alright. You don’t think she’s having sex or eating people, do you?”
“Really, I hope she’s not. Speaking English would really help us get out of here.”
“Here it is. Do you want to open it?”
“I’d really rather. Every time you’ve opened a door, there’s been sex or violence behind it.”
“Ha ha.”
Anna reached out and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. So far, that hadn’t worked out well, when doors weren’t locked. They pushed it open and looked.
Inside, there were three sleeping girls. The two sighed in relief, and walked in. They walked over to the beds, and looked at the girls before finding Charlotte. They woke her up.
“What’s happening?” she asked in English. Then she saw that it was her real friends, and she asked again in French.
“We don’t know,” Anna said. This scared Charlotte for the same reason that it had worried Stefani. She sat up. “What do you know?”
“Everyone’s either having sex or eating each other or screaming. We haven’t gotten downstairs to the screaming yet, but I’ll bet it’s sex or eating each other.” Stefani’s eyes darted around the room.
“Hey, Charlotte... Aren’t there supposed to be four people in the room?”
“Oh, dammit...” Stefani muttered. They suddenly heard a vague slurping sound coming from the bathroom. The three of them leaned over to try to see; the door was closed, but the lights were on. They Anna and Stefani slowly walked over to the door; Charlotte slowly stood up and followed them. Anna reached out and touched the doorknob. After a slow intake of breath, she turned and pulled. They looked in and shut the door again.
“Oh, God...”
“He’s a teacher! She’s a student and he’s a teacher!”
“At a different school.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes it much better.”
“Get me a chair.”
“What?”
“We’re going to put a chair in front of the door so that they can’t get out.” They got a chair and put it in front of the door. A few seconds later, the people inside began pounding on the door.
“At least she’s not naked,” Stefani suggested.
“Yes, but she’s wearing that tight shirt and plaid skirt.” Anna groaned.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Charlotte, wake up your friends and let’s get out of here...”
“Okay.” Charlotte said quickly.

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