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UNDERGROUND 142
He began to descend to the nearest hemisphere. It has monstrously increased, but has not approached. A terrible monkey emerged from its depths, but it was immediately swallowed up by lava and the monkey only had time to wave its hairy paws, surprisingly similar to human hands. Those hairy palms, clenched into fists at the last moment of life, were clearly imprinted in his head. Even when the blue Boston Terrier replaced the monkey. It revolved, as in childhood on a swing in the sun, and every second this blue dog wrapped in a blanket flew before my eyes. Unlike the monkey, she looked businesslike. She ruled here. In the wide-set eyes, one could read the stern condescension of an army commander looking at a negligent, far from the best soldier. He wanted to talk to the blue dog, close that distance, but he suddenly fell into some kind of viscous substance, and the dog and hemispheres disappeared. Everything is gone. Only a well-placed, lulling voice remained.When did catapults appear?
UNDERGROUND 143
“Go ahead,” the old man said, closing the door, but noticing that Yakov was not moving actively enough on the floor, he turned to him. Yakov got up and disappeared, and Boris again fell into a dream, but not for long.The old man woke him up and, looking at him with unblinking watery eyes, said, as they usually say about something bad:“We can’t wait any longer,” he handed Boris something smoking, “you start the main thing, I’ll do the rest myself.”- What? - Only Boris managed to say, feeling a pungent smell. In the next instant, his throat ignited with hellish pain, and before losing consciousness, he managed to understand that it was not hot lava that was tearing his throat, but dry, sizzling ice.Eighteen hours later he woke up. It was he who woke up and immediately jumped up, feeling an unprecedented surge of health and vigor. Yes, he obviously lost weight, but how much strength. I wanted to jump up to the ceiling in this wooden hut. And then he noticed Yakov at the table, lookin
UNDERGROUND 144
She considered this room in the attic a toy room, primarily because of the small round window through which she could look out like an adult without climbing onto the windowsill. Despite the thick layer of dust and mountains of rubbish, it was very comfortable here. True, she did not quite understand why her mother, who looked here for a minute, called the treasures stored here rubbish. Take this china rabbit and the German compass in the little wooden case she found under a stack of dusty newspapers in a box. A rabbit with a broken ear was clearly a Christmas toy at one time. There were many oddities in the world, but at the age of six you take these oddities for granted. For example, a tear-off calendar on the door showed the exact date - the thirtieth of July, one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six, Monday. She knew it well because, unlike most of her peers, she already knew how to read, and every day she herself tore off a sheet of the calendar from her bed. So someone came in he
UNDERGROUND 145
“She'll put us on the windowsill,” he whispered.She became frightened, but the real horror was driven by the monstrous creak that followed, which became drawn out, like a cow’s lowing, reminiscent of a metallic gnash and thousands of heart-rending screams, such terrible as she had never heard in her life.She wanted to call her mother, completely forgetting that she was at work, but she felt a hand on her shoulder, the smell of milk and cookies, and warm breath. A hoarse childish voice whispered in my ear:- Save us. This time. Save...She looked at him, expecting to see something terrible, but all she saw was a frightened child. She took a deep breath and...***Exhaling, Dasha opened her eyes - she was met by the usual dull pain in her neck from a metal collar with a heavy lock. The eyes had a hard time adjusting to the gloom. She could see only the thick bars, like those in the cage of a traveling menagerie of large animals. The metal screech was getting closer. He already stunned
UNDERGROUND 146
– On hold?- Yes, yes, I have recorded that you were found in the subway only on the third or fourth day after everything happened. Where have you been hiding all this time?Dasha shrugged.We were just looking for a way out.– And you never even encountered volunteers?- Volunteers?“Okay, okay,” the doctor smiled, “don’t talk about it. Let's talk about something nice.Why am I here?- You need help.“And can you help me?”- I am sure about that. Moreover, you are young and your body is already helping itself, I see it.- What is your help?– As always: small psychological exercises. If you're ready, we can start right now.- Well I do not know. Will it help?- One hundred percent.- OK then…- Lean back in your chair.Dasha obeyed and felt how the chair began to slowly fall back, and a comfortable shelf appeared under her feet. Now she seemed to be reclining. After tea, it was just wonderful. In addition, her gaze rested on the swaying treetops and a strip of gloomy sky above them.
UNDERGROUND 147
Desperation seized her, without realizing herself, she crawled forward to hide under the table.“Please…” she heard her pitiful voice.She understood that she had become her former self - cowardly and pathetic, like all people, under the power of fear. Her crawling under the high sewing table is nothing more than an instinct, an attempt to hide away from danger that has nothing to do with real salvation.Dirty stains from years of unwashed floor blackened before my eyes. She was afraid to look back.- Are you crying already? It's from an overabundance of imagination. Tears usually start later.She really cried and sobbed like a little girl, unable to cope with fear and stupor.- Don't touch me, please...She was ashamed of herself, and disgusted that she could not keep herself in front of the one she was afraid of. The power of the hated man was disgusting to her, but now she was weak. The shadow behind him vanished for a moment, and something familiar flickered in the dirt on the flo
UNDERGROUND 148
To the right of the corridor there was a closed grate, on the sides there were several doors, as far as Dasha could judge from the layout - hardly leading to the exit. So, there was only the way to the hall.Dasha crept up to the door and looked out through the glass window. She could clearly see the passage to the architect's office, as well as a passage symmetrical to it on the other side and another slightly to the right - there were the same double doors. But she did not like the fact that most of the hall was covered with darkness. Besides, it was only now that she noticed the railings and what looked like an open mezzanine upstairs, which was also covered in darkness. On the one hand, you can hide there, but on the other, when she comes out, she will be in the very epicenter of the light.In any case, you can't stay here any longer. Dasha walked out into the hall, feeling intoxicated with excitement, as if she had done something important and bad, like in childhood when she ran
UNDERGROUND 149
- We all have blue, who has red?- Violet, - the guard behind Dasha took out a card and showed it to everyone, - only the Tiger has the red of ours.- Tiger. The black man chuckled. - Our brother seems to have been promoted, but he doesn’t even know? Oh, Dan, such a serious position, but our Dan is still the same.There were chuckles.“Listen, we don’t have enough people. Two per shift and every other day. Is it my fault that you don't want to work at the fifteenth?“Normal people won’t go there, Dan, you know…”“The butcher has everything under control,” Dan got angry, not noticing how he himself called the Tiger a butcher, “are you coming in?”The black-moustachio looked once more intently at Dasha and slowly shook his head.- See you soon then.Dan pressed the minus fifteen button and exhaled softly: jerks.The doors closed, and Dasha kept thinking about this strange conversation. The Asian she dealt with with the help of a crochet hook and a floor hanger was called either Tiger or
Latest Chapter
- 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
- UNDERGROUND
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
