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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
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- 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
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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