... in which all the instruments work like clockwork, Leonid becomes stronger, and Petrov finally breaks down
"Go call your mommy..." Lyonya whispered irritably into Valya's ear, who had gasped involuntarily. From under the seats, where the guys had literally crawled, only the tinted bodies of the passing column of cars were visible through a thin strip of the windshield. Nevertheless, Leonid had a sixth sense that dozens of dead eyes were now fixed on their SUV. Wanting to calm himself down rather than calm the girl, he suddenly took her hand tightly. Valya, who had pressed herself into the glove compartment with her whole body, nodded seriously.
Finally, the last truck disappeared around the bend. The young people cautiously climbed out of their unreliable shelter.
"Do you think they were dead?" asked Valentina.
"They certainly weren't alive..." replied Lyonya, trying to start the engine.
"But the professor said we had two hours. They couldn't have gotten up earlier out of the blue.
"They couldn't get up within the radius of destruction. But they could get here. As you can see..."
"They're kind of..."
"Too smart for zombies, right?" Leonid guessed the girl's question. "I think so too. But I saw with my own eyes that there were Red Army skeletons in the first truck."
"Who? Red Army soldiers?" Valya was taken aback.
"Yes. They looked like they were going to a reenactment festival or a movie shoot. The whole truck was full of them. With rifles and Budenovka hats. And they were all dead. Skulls... Holes instead of eyes."
"And along the road, dead people with scythes are standing..." the girl said thoughtfully, suddenly remembering her strange dream.
"Exactly..." Leonid confirmed, finally reviving the rumbling jeep, but for some reason he was in no hurry to leave. Instead, he took the cherished revolver with unusual cartridges out of his inside pocket and stared at it. The words of Pyotr Petrovich came to mind, spoken like an old man's grumbling, but now sounding like a sentence in the student's head. "You are no longer capable of doing anything truly great. On your own!" And now Lyonya, clutching in his hand what was probably the only effective weapon against the reanimated dead, felt insanely ashamed of the other Lyonya, who a minute ago had been hiding under the car's dashboard.
"How fucking annoying..." Leonid said quietly and angrily.
He suddenly turned around sharply, took a massive metal suitcase with a red button on the end from the back seat, and placed it on his companion's lap.
"Here! Hold this. And if anything happens, press it."
Before Valya had a chance to ask the guy anything, he pressed the gas pedal and drove off in the direction where the convoy of trucks had disappeared around the bend.
The uncertainty became agonizing for the student. And now it outweighed it fear of the crowd of zombies. How long could it run? How long could it be afraid? Survive? For what? Something definitely wasn't adding up. All these fabrications by elderly scientists. Either they were hiding something, or, more likely, they themselves didn't fully understand what was going on. They were afraid to admit that they had no control over anything. They pretended they had a plan.
In fact, Leonid didn't have a plan either. What could he find out? What could he do? Except maybe drive at full speed into a crowd of dead people and start shooting until he ran out of bullets... And then what?
While thoughts raced and jumped around in Lyonya's head, a yellow fog began to thicken around her again. From the low clouds hanging over the city like a solid gray veil, snow began to fall again in fine flakes. Faceless concrete buildings leaned over the streets, their black window sockets staring out from powerless apartments. If their residents, if any were still alive, happened to look outside now, they would find what was happening quite unusual.
Several trucks stopped near the district police station. From the vehicles, which had formed a semicircle around the building, figures with weapons poured out, dark against the snow-covered asphalt. On closer inspection, the fighters did not look like a detachment, but rather a motley crowd: traffic police officers in their eye-catching vests, Russian Guard soldiers in full uniform, young, half-naked conscripts who looked as if they had been snatched straight from the barracks, burly men in quilted jackets with grim, smoke-stained faces and PPSh submachine guns straight from the trenches of the Great Patriotic War, and even almost skeletal warriors in long overcoats from the fronts of the civil war. Nevertheless, they all surrounded the building in a fairly organized manner, from which shots could be heard and smoke billowed. Closing in tight rows, the dead froze in anticipation. Tongues of flame were visible through the barred windows of the police station. There were loud bangs, and black smoke billowed.
Finally, the metal door flew open and a Russian Guard soldier armed with an automatic rifle rushed out into the street. His figure, his every movement, the very posture of his body immediately revealed a clear difference from the other Russian Guardsmen, who now formed a veritable wall of bodies in front of him. Obviously because he was still alive.
Two more emerged from the burning building: a lanky student and a plump police major.
Instantly realizing the hopelessness of the situation, Bassoon inserted the last cartridge into his automatic weapon, glanced briefly at his companions, and pulled the trigger. The dead in the front row slowly began to raise their weapons. This silent preparation for the shooting seemed unusually long to Bassoon, as if an invisible puppeteer pulling the zombies' strings was struggling to overcome the weight of the dead bodies. But at the very moment when a couple of dozen black barrels were already staring straight into the eyes of the three frightened people, something happened. The dead hands fell limply. Weapons clattered onto the asphalt. A wave-like movement passed through the crowd of dead people, and in a moment they all fell to the ground.
Unexpectedly happy with this sudden outcome, Bassoon also slowly lowered his weapon. The square front of a jeep poked out from behind the parked trucks.
"Are you alive?" asked Lyonya cheerfully, looking out the window.
"Yes, sir," Bassoon replied enthusiastically. "Who are you guys?"
"Ghost hunters," Valentina replied sarcastically, taking her finger off the red button on the metal suitcase. "Get in, will you..."
Jumping over the dead bodies, the three of them rushed towards the jeep. Even from a distance, Lyonya recognized a familiar face among them and immediately frowned.
"I didn't expect to see you here, Lyonya!" Petrov burst out with sincere joy, squeezing into the back seat between Bassoon and Zakharchuk.
"And I certainly didn't expect to see you..." Leonid grumbled in response.
"Do you know each other?" Valentina asked in surprise.
"Only the one with the lisp."
Petrov wanted to protest against such a blunt assessment, but the car jerked forward sharply, causing the student to let out a ridiculous grunt instead of a sharp retort. The Bassoon brayed loudly, completely depriving Petrov of any hope of restoring his wounded pride.
Meanwhile, the jeep rolled back onto the highway. Around them flashed the lights of closed shops, the silhouettes of high-rise buildings, empty shopping centers, warehouses, garages, and streetlights and trees sticking out of the yellow fog.
"We still have five kilometers to go before the last measurement," Valya reminded him. "Don't stray too far toward the center... What if they're there again... They'll come after us."
Leonid nodded and turned toward the deserted industrial zone. Suddenly, he felt a previously unfamiliar sensation, if not of his own importance, then of some kind of inner wholeness. The people in the back seat, who five minutes ago had been on the brink of death, were now waiting for answers to their questions, ready to listen to him, and he was aware of this.
While the jeep drove to the measuring point, while Valya carefully checked the connections between the receiver and the recorder, while the ingenious device buzzed as it extended its antenna and shot out a check tape with columns of numbers... Leonid Ilyich spoke. To begin with, he authoritatively reported everything they had been able to find out about the nature of the reviving dead, told them about the existence of the talented scientist Pyotr Petrovich, and then, to the best of his understanding, but with particular importance, announced the existence of a plan that would return everything to normal.
"Well said," Bassoon nodded seriously, frowning, when Leonid's torrent of words finally dried up, and then casually nudged Petrov in the side. "See, that's how you need to know your stuff, Istfak. It's not like jumping around at rallies."
"That's it," Valya tore off the printed check with the readings, folded it neatly, and put it in her jacket pocket. "Now we can go back to the institute."
The device fell silent, but the girl felt as if she could still hear a metallic clanging in her ears.
"Do you hear that?" Something's knocking..." She drew her companions' attention and began to look around for the source of the strange sound.
"Or someone..." Lyonya said anxiously, and then, having decided on the direction, confidently pointed to a rectangular storage box covered with corrugated iron. "It's knocking there."
"We should probably check it out..." Zakharchuk muttered uncertainly.
"Yes," Leonid agreed. "Let's go and check it out."
Without saying a word and without consulting each other, they began to quickly gather their things. Bassoon reloaded his Kalashnikov. Valya took a metal box out of the jeep and carried it by the handle like a suitcase. Lyonya tucked his revolver into his belt and stuffed his down jacket pockets with precious ammunition, handing his shotgun to Zakharchuk. The latter slammed the door of the now empty car, and they all started moving toward the warehouse. But at that moment, Petrov, as if suddenly awakening, broke the silence.
"What do you mean, check it? Are you serious?!" he cried. "Have you seen what's going on around us? If there's a safe place, let's just get the hell out of here!"
"There may be people there too," Leonid replied calmly and repeated after Zakharchuk, "We need to check."
"You need to check it! I didn't sign up for this! And anyway... Why are you giving orders here?"
Lyonya gave Petrov a contemptuous look and, without saying a word, strode confidently toward the warehouse. Valya followed him.
"What's wrong with you? Are you scared, Istfak?" Decided to desert?" Bassoon croaked, lowering his voice. "These two guys pulled us all out. They weren't afraid. What if someone else needs help too? Are you only thinking about yourself? You can stay here, but I don't think anyone will save you after that. I certainly won't. If you die alone, fuck you.
"Don't worry, Maidan guy," Zakharchuk said conciliatorily and even good-naturedly, apparently deciding to take on the role of the good cop, and even patted the student on the shoulder. "We'll cover for you if anything happens. Here! Just in case..."
The major handed Petrov a lighter and a couple of remaining air fresheners, after which all three of them also slowly made their way to the warehouses.