… who lies there and doesn't bother anyone, but simply benefits science, unlike hungry people who are constantly thirsty for knowledge and blood
The fluorescent lights periodically flickered and clicked. This quiet sound, like a cautious knock, carried far down the echoing, empty corridors of the institute. Tolya grimaced. It reminded him very much of a plasticine man banging against a jar. The guy mentally counted the required number of turns, secured the wire with two turns of electrical tape, and, placing the finished coil in a row with a dozen other homemade coils, got up from the table. Tolya's empty stomach was already growling loudly, so he headed straight through the office to the food supplies, which he had prudently stocked up on at the nearest hypermarket in four sturdy plastic bags.
"Are you hungry, Anatoly Efremovich?" asked Pyotr Petrovich, hearing the student press the button on the electric kettle and rustle the cellophane. The scientist glanced at his wristwatch and, turning off the soldering iron, carefully pushed away the electronic board, over which he had been hovering for at least two hours. "That's true. It's time for at least a cup of tea..."
Meanwhile, the student had already taken bread out of his bags and began cutting thick slices of cheese and boiled sausage onto it. After making a sandwich and spreading some kind of poisonous orange-colored mayonnaise-mustard sauce on it, Tolik finished off by brewing some tea and offering some to Pyotr Petrovich.
"I must commend your foresight, colleague," the scientist praised the student, happily devouring this simple dish.
Meanwhile, Tolik, still chewing on his sausage and cheese, sat down on the windowsill and looked thoughtfully at the street, where the yellow twilight was growing denser. Surprisingly, neither what he had seen before, nor the corpses that now lay in front of him in the snow between the trees, spoiled his appetite in the least.
"It's getting dark again," he said with his mouth full, glancing at the cloud-covered sky. "Soon these little devils will start jumping around..."
"Without fail, my friend," nodded Pyotr Petrovich, loudly sipping hot tea. "Are you done with the coils?"
"Yes. Damn... I scraped my fingers raw while winding everything up."
"Science requires sacrifices," the scientist smiled. "But in our situation... Those who don't want to kick the bucket have to work with their hands," he thought for a moment and looked at his watch again. "By the way, our colleagues seem to be working late... Where are they?"
Following Tolik, Peter Petrovich approached the window and looked anxiously into the distance.
"Are they dead?" the young man timidly suggested.
"That would be very... inconvenient. We'll lose two days," the scientist replied calmly and, finishing his sandwich, continued. "In any case, we should get back to work."
A fragment of some kind of weapon stock with a handle and a duralumin guide roughly bolted to it appeared on the scientist's table. A couple of dozen mobile phone batteries were neatly taped to it on both sides, albeit without any particular aesthetic appeal. With deft movements of a thin screwdriver, Pyotr Petrovich secured a soldered board under this makeshift frame and attached rectangular brackets on top, which would serve as the cores of future transformers. Then he placed the finished coils on them and connected the leads to the terminals with small screws. To complete the assembly, an elongated glass flask with a multitude of electrodes inside, resembling a small cathode ray tube, took its place on the device. The scientist carefully removed it from the desk drawer and neatly connected it with wires to the contacts, then covered it with a metal casing. Tolya didn't know what it was, but now the whole structure reminded him of some kind of futuristic blaster from an old science fiction movie.
"A new weapon?" he asked, looking at the device with interest.
"I hope so," Pyotr Petrovich smiled faintly. "Strictly speaking, it's an electronic gun that emits a short but powerful beam of X-rays. I think it will be more scientific than cutting off zombies' heads or electrocuting them. If it works, of course..."
"That would be cool..."
"Let's check it out right now!" The scientist's eyes lit up with excitement. "Let's visit our headless friend. Let's see how he's doing."
The multi-level basement of the institute no longer seemed mysterious to Tolik, evoking dark urban legends about the terrifying secret experiments of the Soviet era. Petr Petrovich's confident footsteps, with their monotonous clatter, instantly destroyed this beautiful romantic illusion, turning the ominous scenery into an ordinary dump of boxes, yellowed papers, old furniture, broken computers, and other garbage.
The reckless Gosha, as Tolyan had nicknamed him, was still sitting on the chain, although he had somehow managed to get rid of the wires. He curled up in the corner near the radiator, tucking his stump under him and covering his bloodied neck with his hands. He showed no significant interest in the unexpected appearance of people, only rolling from side to side, demonstratively turning his back to those who had entered. It seems as Gosha was in deep anguish over the lost part of his body, which, according to Peter Petrovich, he did not particularly use in life.
"He seems kind of weak," the scientist said regretfully. "Look how he's curled up in a ball... Maybe he's sick? What do you think? Cheer him up, colleague."
Pyotr Petrovich picked up the long piece of rebar he had used last time from the floor and handed it to Tolik. Tolik took the simple tool, cautiously approached the corpse, which was indeed curled up like an offended cat, and gently poked it in the back. Gosha shuddered discontentedly.
"Is he asleep?" muttered the student. "How can he do that without a head?"
"Hell if I know... Come on! Wake him up!"
Tolya poked the sleeping zombie a couple more times with the rusty rod, but the headless man only waved his hand lazily, as if shooing away an annoying fly.
"Don't be so gentle with him!" the irritated scientist began to urge. "He can't feel any pain."
Already beginning to get angry himself, the guy leaned over and forcefully thrust the tip of the rebar into the immobile body. The metal tore through the white fabric of the lab coat and penetrated the dead flesh by about ten centimeters. Disturbed Gosha stirred. He unnaturally threw his arm back so that the shoulder joint cracked, and grabbed the metal spike tightly. Dropping his weapon, Tolyan jumped back. Meanwhile, the dead man pulled the bloody rod out of himself, slowly got to his feet, and began to advance on the people who had awakened him. With a face expressing complete serenity, Pyotr Petrovich turned on the device. Listening to the electric current humming in the windings of the homemade transformers, he aimed his weapon at the approaching zombie and pressed the button.
To Tolik's surprise, there was no shot, no flash, not even an audible click. Except that the coils momentarily changed the note of their mournful song, and a thin needle swung on the dial above. Gosha suddenly went limp, swayed, and, clanking his shackles, collapsed onto the concrete floor.
"Sweet dreams, damn it..." the student sneered, looking with satisfaction at the body that had become dead in the most familiar, normal sense.
Pyotr Petrovich silently turned off the lamp in Gosha's dungeon, closed the door to his office, and once again propped it shut from the outside with a heavy desk. Without saying a word, it was clear that he was pleased with the result. A smile flitted across his face, betraying his poorly concealed inner jubilation.
"What was he like? Your colleague... What did he study? Well, while he was alive?" Tolyan asked Pyotr Petrovich as they climbed the stairs.
"Georgy Vitalievich? Nothing special. A sluggish and unmotivated worker..." the scientist replied dismissively and added, "I hope you're not like that, Anatoly Efremovich. And Gosha... He was listed as an MNS with us for a long time. Just listed. I can't call it work... He mostly slept," Pyotr Petrovich slowed down, lost in thought. "And... When I set traps for my former colleagues in the forest... Funny. I wasn't even surprised that it was Gosha who got caught. He was always such a scatterbrained dimwit. True, I suppose now, if you put the missing parts back on him and give him time, he could regenerate. The molecules would return to their original position, like a broken cup being glued back together from its fragments when rewound. Only his head remained... Well, that's not important...
"You set traps for your colleagues?" Tolik asked again.
"Well, yes. I needed subjects for my experiments."
The guy wanted to continue his misanthropic philosophizing with the thought that some people can only be useful after death, but he was distracted by a noise coming from above.
"Do you hear that?" he grabbed Petr Petrovich by the sleeve.
"An electromagnetic echo... Probably... I don't know. Sometimes I think I even hear voices."
"No, it's not that! Someone's breaking in!"
Both hurried to the first floor, where the barricaded front door was indeed already shaking. From the closed offices, they could hear someone banging on the iron bars on the windows.
Headless Gosha's companions had clearly grown tired of hanging around outside with nothing to do, and now they were all gathering again outside the institute walls.
"Do you understand, Anatoly Efremovich? Do you understand what the difference is?" the scientist asked loudly, jumping over two steps and trying to shout over the growing roar. "In the direction of the thermodynamic arrow of time. That's what it's all about! That's the difference between them and us. We can die, but they can't anymore. We eat to live, and they live to eat... These two systems cannot coexist for long. The chaos of living matter or the orderliness of dead flesh. We or they! And they won't stop unless we stop them. Do you hear me?!
The sound of breaking glass could already be heard from the second floor. It seemed that the zombies were climbing up the outer walls, leaning on each other and clinging to the bricks.
"Yes!" replied Tolik, rushing after him and jumping over two steps at a time.
"We need to recharge the spark gap again... Let's install it on the roof and connect it... Maybe we can rock everything again... There's a concept for chaotic systems...
Pyotr Petrovich didn't have time to finish his sentence because one of the doors leading to the stairwell burst open, pinning him against the wall. A crowd of dead people poured out of the hallway onto the stairs.
Behind the rectangular corrugated iron gate and the easily opened metal bolt lay a large, dark warehouse space. It seemed that this large shed had never been intended for storing anything particularly valuable. Or perhaps the owner relied entirely on the guards and simple alarm systems. However, neither of these could be seen here anymore.
The dim yellowish light coming through the doors from the street was clearly insufficient, so Bassoon turned on his flashlight and began to search around with its beam. Wooden crates and boxes, reminiscent of refrigerator packaging, were tightly packed together, leaving only narrow passages and forming a kind of maze.
"Let's not split up," Lyonya commanded his companions, tensely following the bright spot from the flashlight with his pistol, and then asked loudly, "Is anyone here alive?!"
No one answered the student, no matter how hard he listened. Only the quiet footsteps of the hapless breakers could be heard in the echoing metallic silence of the warehouse. But then, around the next turn, the light from the flashlight caught a scene in the semi-darkness that made everyone gasp, and Valya even let out a quiet cry of surprise. In the middle of the warehouse, where the maze of boxes ended, a wide square space was completely filled with dark figures standing shoulder to shoulder. Petrov, panicking, flinched, but his back bumped into the plump belly of Zakharchuk, who was bringing up the rear.
"Quiet!" muttered the major. "You'll knock it over..." "What is it?"
"False alarm. They've put mannequins here," commented Bassoon, seeing the flashlight glint off the round plastic heads. "I suggest we spread out and search the room for useful tools. But let's not lose sight of each other."
"Agreed," nodded Leonid.
Everyone began to open the sealed boxes and rummage through their contents. One of the first finds — a box of Chinese pocket flashlights and packs of batteries — was considered a stroke of luck. With their help, further looting turned out to be much easier and faster. But, as luck would have it, nothing more valuable was found. Balloons. Colored hydrogel pellets. Pencils and ballpoint pens. Stickers with rainbow ponies. Erasers that smelled like strawberries and bananas. It seemed that the entire warehouse was filled to the brim with various stationery and other cheap garbage.
"It's all Chinese trash here," Valya commented, tossing another box aside. "Will the tape be used?"
"Take a couple," Lyonya nodded.
"These mannequins are Chinese too," said Petrov, strolling leisurely along the rows of mannequins and not particularly eager to participate in the general search.
"Whoever put them here..." muttered the girl, noisily tearing open a bag. "You could shit yourself..." .
The historian shrugged:
"No idea. Maybe the Tajiks were joking? By the way, this is also a Chinese theme. Have you heard of teg'g'acotta ag'my?"
"What?" asked Zakharchuk.
"About teg'g'akotovaya ag'miya," Petrov repeated contemptuously, clearly indignant at his companions' cultural ignorance. "It's several thousand clay warrior statues that were created by order of the first Chinese emperor of the Qin dynasty."
"What the fuck? Just because?"
"They were supposed to accompany and protect the emperor in the realm of the dead..." the historian continued, but Bassoon, who was fiddling with large wooden boxes, interrupted him:
"Listen, cut it out with your history lectures. We're already in the realm of the dead here. Come and help me... There's something heavy here, I think..."
With an expression of weary resignation, Petrov reluctantly took a few steps toward the Rosgvardia soldier who was unpacking the crate, but suddenly froze in place, his eyes wide.
"What's wrong, Maidan guy?" asked Zakharchuk, noticing the horror on the student's face.
"It's strangling me!" Petrov whispered barely audibly.
Only now did everyone notice that a shiny plastic hand was clenched on the historian's shoulder. A moment later, a second identical hand rose and began to strangle the student.
Bassoon was the first to react. Jumping out from behind his boxes and putting all his weight into the blow, he swung the butt of his automatic rifle into the empty plastic face, which, however, did not even crack. With a hollow sound, the statue flew to the side. But the rest of the plastic figures were already in motion.
"Let's get out of here!" Leonid commanded, already grabbing Valya and dragging her toward the exit. But it was impossible make their way quickly through the maze of wooden boxes to the door of salvation. Torn packaging film and overturned cardboard boxes got in the way. Behind them, hundreds of artificial hands flailed chaotically in the air.
Stomping their hollow feet on the floor, the crowd of mannequins, like a swarm of ants, began to push against the boxes. The wooden walls of the warehouse maze began to shift, cutting off the people's escape routes.
"Upstairs!" Bassoon shouted with all his might and deftly climbed onto the nearest box. Petrov followed him. With some incredible effort, Lyonya pushed Valya, who was clutching her metal suitcase, upstairs. Then, with the help of a Rosgvardia soldier, he climbed up himself. The pudgy Zakharchuk, in his haste, dropped his shotgun, decided for some reason to pick it up, and got stuck between the boxes. Lyonya and Bassoon grabbed him by the arms, trying to pull him out, but it wasn't that easy.
"Come on, Major! Use your feet! Push with your feet!" the Rosgvardia soldier yelled, but Zakharchuk only groaned and kicked his legs helplessly in the air. The special forces soldier wanted to use his automatic rifle as a support to prevent the trap from closing, but it was too late. The wooden walls squeezed together, crushing the police major's chest with a crunch. Zakharchuk hung between the boxes like a rag doll.
"You, bastards! Wanna you be drop dead!" Valya screamed hysterically, pressing the button on her heavy device as hard as she could, but to no avail. Suddenly, she slumped, as if discouraged by her own memory:
"Petrovich said it would only work once... Stupid... Why did I drag him here..."
Nevertheless, the position taken by the people now gave them some advantage. The wooden storage pallets they had climbed onto were well above human height, and therefore above the height of the mannequin. The plastic mannequins banged frantically, bending into the most unexpected positions, filling the air with a noise reminiscent of the chirping of giant cicadas, but they couldn't climb up.
"Like some Hoffman..." Petrov muttered, turning the cap of the air freshener can with trembling hands, directing the stream down into the raging plastic crowd and clicking his lighter.
The orange jet of flame momentarily illuminated the warehouse. Ominous glints danced on the mannequins twitching in their surreal bacchanalia. Several shiny empty faces without eyes or mouths were covered with soot, but did not catch fire. Smoke rose from smoldering cardboard boxes and the acrid smell of burning polyethylene packaging filled the air.
"Stop it!" Bassoon grabbed the historian by the arm. "You'll burn us faster that way! You see... They don't burn! And they don't break. Fiberglass. Glass fiber."
"How do you know that?" Lyonya asked in surprise.
"We use it to make transparent shields..." explained the Rosgvardia officer.
"Maybe you should shoot it then?" suggested the student.
"We could..."
Bassoon pulled Petrov away from the edge, slowly, almost thoughtfully, pulled the bolt back, then jerked the automatic rifle up and fired a long burst at the fiberglass heads. The bullets entered the fiberglass bodies, leaving round holes behind, but by the time the magazine was empty, not a single mannequin had fallen to the floor. The mangled, riddled figures continued to try to reach the people sitting above with admirable persistence.
"Well... That's the end of our authority," the Rosgvardia soldier smiled hopelessly, throwing down his now useless machine gun. "Unless shall we try your miracle weapon?"
"Lyonya!" Of course! You have those special cartridges!" Valya reminded him, but Leonid had already taken out his old Nagant revolver and was now squinting as he aimed it at the chattering crowd of statues.
"By the way, how did your friend decipher the name 'NKVD cartridge'? It sounded kind of scientific..."
"Neutralizer of a quantum wave duality," said Lyonya and pulled the trigger.
The bullet pierced someone in the plastic sea of hands and heads, followed by a sharp clap and an electric crackle. A short white-blue flash blinked. The air smelled of ozone, and the immobilized hollow figures fell to the floor.