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UNDERGROUND 129
Victor lowered the curtain and left the room at once into the cramped hallway. The front door was closed with a chain. He touched the dusty leatherette, looked through the peephole. Through the twilight, the doors and a piece of the wall covered with a marker were barely visible. Victor took off the chain, turned the latch of the lock and left the apartment. Going down the stairs, which were lit by dim bulbs, across the floor, he smelled urine and sweet decay - quite expected for such an entourage, but he had a feeling of unnaturalness of what was happening. This place was clearly not what it seemed to be.Nevertheless, when he stepped out into the yard, he felt a completely natural cold, with tingling in his nose and icy jets of air, but still something prevented him from fully feeling the street. Perhaps this dense, hopeless darkness overhead.A well-visible figure on the second floor flashed before my eyes.- Hey little one! Viktor screamed. – Do you hear?!Victor ran, drowning in
UNDERGROUND 130
- Very far. Someday your question will be there. But neither he nor you will be gone. Where did you get this form?- He gave me ... he. - Victor pointed to half of Palych drifting overhead.Are you from the tech department?- Yes.“I haven't seen you before.- I was recently hired.- Recently. - The man thought. So you're from the subway?- Yes.The man chuckled vaguely.- Where are you from?- I'm the eighth line, - said the man, - Shrike.– Ah. I haven't seen you before either.- I like to work alone and do not like bosses, although Palych is a normal guy. I work in remote areas. You... you better be careful here.– Where is it?“Here,” the man sniffed, nodding somewhere to the side, “it’s easy to get lost here.”Victor touched his temple.“It seems to me that… that… I'm already lost.The shrike frowned.- Did you take the tests?- Not. It is important?“Perhaps you are not ready to work here.- What am I supposed to do?Shrike shrugged.Try to adapt otherwise...– What else?“If yo
UNDERGROUND 131
The next morning Pustovalov was cheerful. He had slept well and was now lying on top of the made bed with his hands folded across his stomach. Gennady looked at him with senile interest, rubbing his skinny torso with a waffle towel.- You should not have ignored my advice.- What about water?The old man smiled sourly.- You weren't a circus acrobat by any chance in a past life?Pustovalov chuckled.- Why do you think so?- I had to deal with it. Excellent form combined with the same chilly recklessness. Then I realized that this is professional. The old man's dreamy eyes narrowed slyly. Or am I still missing something?“It’s called fear has big eyes,” Pustovalov answered, continuing to watch the bodies scurrying around from under half-closed eyelids.“Working downstairs is harder than it looks, even for people like you… Although, to be honest, I can’t imagine you at work.- Why?- I do not know. People like you don't work. But although I have despised lazy people all my life, in my o
UNDERGROUND 132
In a deliberately strict tone, which was part of the same game, Pustovalov was explained that he would be carrying cargo from a large warehouse to a smaller warehouse.The warehouse was interesting. Pustovalov, by the nature of his former occupations, had seen various warehouses. He saw the storage facilities of the port of Rotterdam and all sorts of logistics centers, but the food warehouse of Vault U-4 undoubtedly surpassed them all. Perhaps there was something wrong here too: the racks went to an immense height, and the square spread out in all directions, without showing any hint of borders. Probably, what was stored here could feed a country the size of Canada or Italy, but it’s not clear why they were fed such crap?Pustovalov lowered boxes of fish fillets from racks onto a trolley, raw smoked sausages with EU labels - Speck, Stajonata, Breazolla, cheeses, frozen vegetables from freezers, boxes of French ice cream, New Zealand butter, huge bulk apples, pineapples , pears, peache
UNDERGROUND 133
Sooner or later something had to change. Once gratings appeared on the floor, and stepping over the threshold of the door, Pustovalov saw six-tiered beds, as well as corpses and half-corpses of those who had fallen below. One of the fallen was Gennady. He stretched out his broken arm to Pustovalov, his parched lips on his gray face whispered, demanding that he do a good deed - to squeeze his skinny colonel's neck and extinguish the still resisting flame of life. The chocolate in his pocket turned into a mass. Pustovalov threw it on the floor and climbed up like a monkey, remembering his friend's advice - don't resist. He survived this storm, and in the morning, when the "giant puffer fish stomach" returned to normal, he was called by his dad.“Tough night,” he smiled in a friendly way, wiping his sweaty neck with a towel, and for some reason added, “today I will have to send two to the capsule.Pustovalov saw weakness and fatigue in the cop's eyes.“Here’s a note,” the cop drawled, “t
UNDERGROUND 134
Going to bed in a new place, Pustovalov tried to think over Victor's story and the events of the last hour, but the nauseating sweetish smell creeping from the toilet did not allow him to concentrate. The fact is that he was familiar to Pustovalov, but entangled in a web of hectic thoughts, he still could not remember him.The only source of light - a wide doorway covering the silhouette of the new dad - to remind everyone who now controls their lives and nightmares. Pustovalov once again noted that this ancient instinct worked perfectly for Kharitonov - he was born not only to crap in small ways, his real vocation is world wars, famines and Egyptian executions. His unconscious hatred for humanity, which has developed protective mechanisms in the form of pushing such individuals into marginals and evil clowns, is also understandable. But it seems that in times of crisis, protection failed. And only now, looking out of the darkness at the new pope, Pustovalov finally remembered this sm
UNDERGROUND 135
Only now it became noticeable what kind of silence all around. The guards watched in silence, and even his former group from the gallery - both the joker and the "lamb" and Gennady at the gate at number four.- Prove to me, to the rest, but most importantly to yourself, that you are not a lost person, Sanya. Prove that you can not only harm. The choice is simple.– What do you need?- Be like everyone else.Pustovalov looked around, took off his soaking wet tunic and everyone saw the perfect relief torso, the beauty of which was disfigured by a monstrous vertical scar from the heart, going under the trousers to the groin.Kharitonov fixed his eyes on the scar for a few moments, then looked into Pustovalov's eyes and nodded.Pustovalov took up his trousers, but at that moment there was a beep, which usually sounded at the end of the working day.- What. Kharitonov turned around.A swamp man stood in front of the entrance to the room.“There is a meeting today,” the man announced and sh
UNDERGROUND 136
But then Pustovalov thought for the first time, who are they still praising, if all the leadership is here, and there are no more people left on the planet? Is it really this first technocrat who looks like a top manager? Doubtful. Considering how this type was spread out in a kimono, it seemed more like a cruel, touchy and mentally unbalanced tyrant.Thinking about this, Pustovalov raised his eyes higher and for the first time noticed that the walls of the room narrowed slightly, so that the huge glass at the bottom of which they were, rather, had the shape of a flask. Waves of darkness still swayed above. No, there was nothing new in it, except for a slightly breathtaking sense of depth. As if above him, in the immediate vicinity was the ocean with billions of tons of water, capable of crushing in an instant.But he was no less interested in a round gallery, located about five meters from the floor, and if you strain your eyes, then above the second row of dim lamps, you could see t
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- UNDERGROUND
Epilogue
From the panoramic window, Victor can see the San Francisco Bay, but the waters no longer impress him. He still can't get used to the Golden Gate, but the views are much duller in his research center. Somewhere out there, beyond the countryside, he discovered Sunnyvale Pond. This place reminded him of the Moscow region at all. However, this is rather a minus, Victor is too young to be nostalgic for his homeland.Out of habit, everything comes surprisingly easily to him. A psychologist friend said that there was nothing extraordinary in his phenomenon, he just pulled out a lucky lottery ticket called "beautiful parents." Victor won an international competition, and while still a student, he got a job at the Ames Research Center, and on Sunday he met the daughter of emigrants from Lithuania who work in Los Angeles. Dimon without exaggeration would put "ten". Victor never gave grades to girls. Dimon knows that Victor was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and tries to reach for him. Vi
- UNDERGROUND
209
An old photograph, hitting the slimy walls, slowly spinning like an autumn leaf, slowly falls into a deep well. The well is so deep and bottomless that the round hole at the top has long turned into a bright dot, and is about to completely disappear. And the photo keeps falling and falling. It depicts three boys, three of them are twenty-nine years old. One of them, dark-haired, with curly hair, stands in the middle, hugging his friends. It is slightly lower and seems to hang slightly on their shoulders. All three are smiling. The photo is old, you can see it not only in the crumpled corners, scratches and faded palette, but also in stretched sweaters and old-fashioned shirts with rolled up sleeves.The photo keeps spinning and spinning, and in one of the turns, the image on it changes. Now there are only two boys. They also hug each other and look into the camera with smiles, but the black-haired man standing between them is no longer there. It's like it never happened. Maybe it's a
- UNDERGROUND
208
The old man, Makarov, rushed after him, and only after them did the special forces pour out.Still running up, Boris saw a square hole in the center of the site - not at all like what he saw on the day of his last visit to the plant. Perfectly smooth, carved into cubes that were stacked near the tractor. Next to them lay a completely black device, which he saw in the photographs sent by the Special Metals Research Institute.Boris was the first to run up to the edge of the hole.Below, he saw what he had seen before - the shaft of the mine, only at the bottom of the bowl there was now a well. There was absolute bedlam going on: corpses, blood, weapons, overturned chairs, pieces of collapsed stairs and galleries. He did not immediately notice living people, but when he saw a figure crawling away from the wall, he immediately recognized it, although he had never seen it alive.- Daria! he shouted. - Daria Afanasyeva!The girl raised her head.Makarov, running up, heard Vindman's scream,
- UNDERGROUND
207
Before saying goodbye to life, Dasha managed to become a witness to strange events that replaced each other with kaleidoscopic speed. First, something flew from above right in the center and with a disgusting thud plopped behind the makeshift spectator box. Dasha could not see anything in such a short time, but for some reason she was sure that this was a human body. More terrible than the blow itself were the frightened cries.And here is how a deaf-mute worker jumped from the upper gallery, and with inhuman speed slipped somewhere into the darkness, she saw very well.Just then, a strange movement began. On the right, something overturned with a crash, and someone very frightened shouted something in an incomprehensible language. Apparently it was a command, because right there from the depths of the hall there was a coordinated stomp of feet.Dasha saw four of the six burner paws, above her, the other two were located on either side of her head. From above, the bright light of hang
- UNDERGROUND
206
Only one person directly looked at her - a stern, gloomy old man from the gallery on the second floor. She had seen him before, I think in the ninth block - an ordinary mute worker with the right of free movement. He seemed to her out of his mind, but in his current “hawkish” look there was some kind of repulsive meaningfulness, without a hint not only of compassion, but even of curbed hatred. He looked at her just like a log, dissatisfied with the fact that the log was too thin and would not give the required warmth. There was no life in that look, only cold. This is how a dead man who managed to challenge life itself would look.However, all this, even the dumb old man, she saw fragmentarily, as in a painful dream, and then completely disappeared, only the darkness above her head remained - real or in her imagination. She stopped hearing conversations, footsteps, and the creak of the wheels of the gurney; only dull pops were heard in her head, reminiscent of explosions of a gas-air
- UNDERGROUND
205
- Stole?Boris nodded, pointing to the picture.- On the day of the visit to Novikov, Colonel Basurov, a well-connected former member of the procurement commission of the Ministry of Defense, was with Pustovalov. Most likely, he played the role of an intermediary. He went missing that day. Since Pustovalov himself is a ghost and it is impossible to track his movements, we tracked Basurov's movements before he disappeared in the warehouse. And through him they came across a certain Dementiev. We interrogated him. Dementiev is a professional safecracker, it was he who helped Pustovalov steal the installation. He also said that there were two installations. That is, one working sample, and a spare case without filling - in fact, a dummy. But it looks like the real one. He confirmed that Pustovalov was going to sell the unit to Yasin after learning that he was behind her order on the black market. In addition to Basurov, another person went missing that day, previously in contact with Pus
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204
The car ran into a minibus lying on its side, Boris opened the door, leaned half out of the passenger compartment, exposing his haggard face to the frosty wind. There was a false peace here. Distant screams and shots were drowned out by unobtrusive music, but this tiny lane adjoining Frunzenskaya Embankment bore little resemblance to the island of former life. Rather, the coldness of the future blew from him - the very one that none of them would ever find. Desolation oozed from the planed poplars gathering darkness, from the mangled cars sprinkled with snow, forever left after yesterday's accident, from under the architraves of the shifted "stalinok", from the black windows of the buildings deprived of power supply.Boris looked at the piece of paper with the address and saw how it was distorted by a five-centimeter wall, carved from a dark space ice floe. With a crackling, cascading arc, the wall passed through Windman and, outlining the front facade of a two-story Chinese restauran
- UNDERGROUND
203
He appeared on the bridge in a couple of minutes. Maurice, who was sitting under the window of a high tower, calmly rose and aimed his rifle at him:- One, two, three, and well, freeze! - He said cheerfully.Pustovalov obeyed and, without raising his head, said:“Using your man as bait?” Clever.“You used yours to get out too, didn’t you?”Pustovalov raised his head. Maurice saw through the eyepieces of the night vision device that Pustovalov was without night vision devices and knew that he only saw the outline of a dark silhouette in the window.- Komsomolskaya, - Maurice nodded with a smile, - now I understand why Daniker began to be so lucky before his death.- You're confusing me with someone else. I happened to be there.“Just a subway passenger?”- Exactly.Maurice burst out laughing and at that moment Pustovalov disappeared. He quickly figured out that he just jumped through a hole in the bridge.Still laughing, Maurice jumped lightly onto the bridge and called out:"You're br
- UNDERGROUND
202
Coming up to him, Maurice found a crumpled fireman's heat-reflecting suit and smiled. We must pay tribute, although Maurice was not upset at all. He could have guessed right away that the trick with heat guns only made sense if you were already inside. It didn't matter now. Maurice knew that infrared sensors would not be a problem for him, like everything else that they had already prepared. He knew that the one they were waiting for would go very far, perhaps even manage to reach the very end. Of course, to the end, to which he is allowed to reach. That's why Maurice was here. And Maurice was rather upset if the one they were waiting for deceived his expectations.After walking a few more meters, Maurice saw a shining helmet with a visor-mirror in the bushes, and his smile grew wider. No, as long as he did not deceive his expectations.***Having reached the northern section of the bypass route, Kruchina quieted down and took a step. Moving along the trodden path, he soon came to two
