... where the heroes set off in full force to conquer the capital, which greets them with bright lights, make new physical discoveries, and unexpectedly end up at a reunion
Outside the train window, the winter landscape rushed by to the monotonous clatter of the wheels. Resonating with this clatter, a spoon clinked in a glass, and the glass itself clinked in a cup holder with the "Russian Railways" logo embossed on it. Sitting in a third-class carriage on her folded side seat, Valya thought about how everything in the world is interconnected and how often this escapes human consciousness. Even Tolik's snoring from the top bunk seemed to be in tune with the overall rhythm of this swaying railway microcosm rushing somewhere in the cold white space.
The empty train now smelled neither of dust from shaken mattresses, nor of hard-boiled eggs, nor of fresh cucumbers from the supplies of hungry passengers, but seemed to be the most peaceful and safe place where people could be. High-voltage wires reliably protected the train from the dead, and perhaps even from their inhuman senses. Several times, Valya saw dark figures wandering aimlessly on the station platforms as they flew by. She had already learned to recognize these tired and confused creatures from a distance, unable to understand why and who had suddenly resurrected them.
Her smartphone vibrated on the table. The alarm clock was probably the only function it could be useful for now. Not wanting to disturb anyone, Valya hurriedly turned off the alarm, but no one else noticed it except her. Petrov slept soundlessly on his shelf in the neighboring cubicle, while at the table opposite, Fagot and Pyotr Petrovich were still talking in low voices, leaning over a printed map. Valya waited a couple more minutes for the sake of propriety, then shook Tolik's arm, which was hanging over the edge.
"Huh? What?" the guy woke up.
"Nothing. Wake up. Go relieve Lenka. It's your turn."
"You scared me, damn it..." the guy said discontentedly, swinging his legs over and nimbly jumping down. "I'm coming, I'm coming..."
"Yeah, don't fall asleep out there!"
Big deal... The train drives itself. It's not a car that you have to steer. We checked the switches at the depot. We'll get there straight away.
"Oh, go on already..."
Tolyan put on his sneakers and reluctantly trudged toward the locomotive, and five minutes later, Lenia came back.
"Here's our dear Leonid Ilyich," Pyotr Petrovich quipped again when he saw the student. "Come and join us. As the generalissimo, so to speak, assess... We've sketched out a disposition here.
"I'm thinking..." said the young man, sitting down next to the scientist and the Rosgvardia officer, "if your epicenter is really there, then does that mean it's all... man-made?
"It doesn't mean anything. Maybe it's some kind of natural process, like St. Elmo's fire, or something like a local fault in the earth's crust... Anyway, we'll get there and figure it out."
"Look," Fagot got down to business and pointed to the map. "In an hour, we'll be here." It's six hundred meters in a straight line from the station to the point. We could take the straight road, but it's a little further. And here on the right, see, it runs right along the cemetery. That bothers me from a tactical point of view. We could cut straight through the oak grove. See, there's a path diagonally across. And the cemetery stays on the right. But then we'll still have to go around 'building 3' on the left. It'll be almost the same distance. But I think it's safer that way.
"Six hundred meters... Come on, I beg you," Pyotr Petrovich interrupted him. "There's a high-voltage line above us! The impulse will kill everyone within a two-kilometer radius!"
"What about the square law of intensity? You said it yourself... Who knows what's going on there? Maybe our brains will boil and we'll turn into ghouls ourselves?"
The scientist wanted to make another argument, but Leonid stopped the debate.
"Let's go straight ahead. Whether natural or man-made, the dead already know how to drive cars. They can't drive through the forest, and it will be easier for us to get away if something happens.
That ended the discussion.
* * *
A short train consisting of a couple of passenger cars and a freight platform screeched to a halt at the station. In other times, this was a fairly busy junction where slow long-distance trains stopped, and their bored passengers could watch the red and white Moscow suburban trains speeding by. Now everything around was quiet and silent. Only behind a thick veil of yellowish haze, in which the outlines of the TV tower were barely visible, could some invisible movement be sensed. But now Valya could hear her own thoughts very clearly in her head, as if someone else were saying them for her. Someone else, not her.
But as soon as the Tesla transformer lit up on the platform, the strange echo immediately fell silent. The haze around them began to settle and melt away before their eyes.
"Well, that's it... We can go," Pyotr Petrovich said with satisfaction, looking at his sparkling creation, and then, noticing Petrov who had appeared on the platform, asked, "What are you doing here, my friend? I thought you would be guarding our armored train on the spare track..."
"No, I'll go," said the historian quietly but firmly, glancing at Lyonya. Seizing the moment, Valya immediately hung her welding machine, which she had brought just in case, on him. After that, everyone moved towards the tower.
Leaving the railway station grounds and walking along a small asphalt road between buildings surrounded by a lattice fence and some kind of concrete fence, the whole company found themselves at the entrance to a neat oak grove. It was more like a small, cozy park with paths that were quite civilized, albeit hidden under a layer of snow.
"Too simple," Fagot frowned, looking at the straight alley, beyond which the buildings of the television center were already visible. Pyotr Petrovich just grunted and was the first to stride toward the buildings with his sweeping gait. Lyonya and Valya moved confidently alongside him. Following at a short distance behind were a Rosgvardia officer peering suspiciously into the space between the trees, a somewhat confused Petrov, and, in contrast, an overly relaxed Tolik.
Despite being surrounded by such brave companions, the history student felt uneasy. The black trees, their bare branches swaying in the cold wind, trembled and shook against the sky like someone's sinister hands with long claws. Just a day ago, he had seen plastic idols come to life, turning into ruthless soldiers. Who knows what infernal forces set everything in motion? And what else might they be capable of? In general, Petrov never considered himself prone to mysticism and often made sarcastic jokes about the religious community. But even the abstruse explanations of Peter Petrovich and Lenya did not particularly convince him. Therefore, no jokes could now drown out the primitive panic that arose from the depths of his soul.
Suddenly, he felt the finger-like branches reaching out to him, grabbing him, dragging him toward them... Sticking out of the ground, they wrapped around the historian, squeezed him like giant snakes, and began to pull him apart, trying to tear him to pieces.
"God! Do something!" Valya's voice rang out. "Shoot already!"
"Where? I might hit him!" Lenia shouted back, struggling to aim at the writhing tangle of branches, in the middle of which lay the bloodied Petrov, moaning.
Behind him, Tolik jumped up to the terrifying monster and plunged his circular saw into its bark-covered tentacle. The historian couldn't see this, but he heard the sound of the saw and a desperate cry:
"Hold on! Hold on, fuck it!"
The branches gouged out his eyes, and now his face was flooded with burning hot blood. Several branches pierced his stomach, beginning to tear apart his insides. The last thing he managed to think in his agony was that now they would probably drag him underground to grow their roots inside his body, drinking all his juices alive.
"No!" Petrov cried involuntarily, feeling someone pulling on the strap of the welding machine, and the obsession disappeared.
"You're such a wimp!" Tolik laughed. "Fix your strap. You'll drop it."
"Huh? Yes. Good."
"And your pants. Pull them up too."
Meanwhile, the oak grove was left behind. Walking along the icy access roads, the line of people rounded the elongated building of "Building 3" and found themselves right in front of the Ostankino Tower. Here, a truly impressive and frightening sight opened up before them. The entire square was filled with military equipment. There were at least a couple of dozen tanks and armored personnel carriers, armored vehicles of the Russian Guard, herded together in large numbers of trucks, buses, and cars. All of this was neatly arranged and surrounded the building in the center with several circles of defense, as if drawn with a compass.
"Holy shit!" Tolya couldn't help himself and took out his phone to film the grandiose panorama. "This will be cooler than the August coup. I'll just add some music later..."
"Are you damned crazy? You found the time..." Valya looked at him reproachfully.
"Well, why not? Don't be such a bore! When else will you see something like this?" Tolik decisively took the girl by the shoulder, turned her into the frame, and took a joint photo. "There! As a souvenir. This isn't some fucking "sun in your hands" or "pyramid on your palm," he smiled smugly. "And you, Lenka, are you going to take a selfie?"
Leonid didn't answer his friend. Now he was looking anxiously at the armada frozen ahead.
"Take a look. There's your brave police, your army..." said Pyotr Petrovich with undisguised contempt. "I don't think they even had time to realize who they were fighting.
Only now did Valya and Tolik notice that the ground between the menacing machines was littered with corpses.
"Why were they all here?" asked the girl.
"Obviously to protect what's inside," replied the scientist.
"From whom?"
"From us," Pyotr Petrovich paused for a moment and pointed to the upper tier of the tower. "According to your measurements and my calculations, the epicenter is located over there, at an altitude of 385 meters."
"Right in the restaurant?" Petrov asked in surprise.
"No, my dear sir... The restaurant is below. At this height is the lightning discharge laboratory. That's where we're headed now..."
"Is it safe?" the historian asked cautiously.
"I guarantee it."
Squeezing between the sides of the cars and stepping over dead bodies, the people headed for the entrance to the tower. It seemed that someone was indeed preparing for serious defense. Among the dead bodies in the cordon, there were many heavily armed fighters. "It's scary to imagine what would have happened if the electromagnetic emitter hadn't taken out this whole crowd at once. Then no one would have been able to get within a kilometer of the epicenter. Unless they flew in by air. And even that's unlikely, because the airfields must have been captured by the dead long ago."
These were the thoughts of Lyonya, who was walking ahead of the group with a revolver clutched in his hand. But his thoughts were interrupted by a loud crackling bang that suddenly came from somewhere behind them, from behind the trees. Everyone turned around. It seemed that something had happened at the station. A small plume of smoke appeared above the oak grove.
"The warranty is over," commented Pyotr Petrovich. "The transformer is fried. Let's get inside quickly."
"What?! It's a trap!" Petrov shouted.
"We've been trapped for a long time... Inside!" commanded Lyonya, following the scientist.
Before joining his friend, Tolya threw his head back and looked up again. To where they were about to climb. Around them, like needles piercing the sky, the spires instantly began to thicken the thinning clouds. In the atmospheric vortex forming around the tower, the young man again imagined seeing some kind of swirling ghostly figures. But he grimaced, shook his head, and also entered the building. Hesitating, Valya noticed with horror that the fingers of the dead soldier's hand, still lying helplessly right by the glass doors, twitched. Fagot rushed to the soldier and took several grenades from his belt — "They'll definitely come in handy now" — and then pushed both the girl and the stunned Petrov inside.
* * *
The foyer of the Ostankino Tower was plunged into semi-darkness. Neither the ceiling lights nor the beautiful lighting that abundantly illuminated the various exhibits on the development of Russian television were working. However, no one was interested in historical excursions at the moment. A much more important question was whether the elevators were out of order. Fortunately, they were working. After letting all his companions go ahead, Pyotr Petrovich entered the elevator and pressed the button for "337."
"It's more modern after the renovation. Before, everything was controlled by a dispatcher," he explained with a satisfied look, turning into a tour guide for a moment. "So we're in luck."
"Yeah, we're in luck," Petrov muttered quietly.
Meanwhile, the elevator had already started moving and rushed upward, creating a noticeable overload that even made Vali's ears pop.
"This is a passenger elevator," the scientist continued. "Our destination is most likely on the technical levels. It's higher up, and tourists don't have access to it..."
"We'll break through," Tolik nodded with his usual incorrigible optimism.
It was just as dark on the glassed-in observation deck. Petrov cautiously glanced down for a second, where military equipment and hundreds of human bodies were still visible around the tower, and, jerking sharply to the side, immediately followed the others into the restaurant. However, it was not the renovated interior with retro-minimalist tables and chairs that attracted everyone's attention, but a small locked door with a meaningful sign saying "staff room." Without thinking twice, Fagot kicked it with all his might with his military boot. The weak lock creaked and let the uninvited guests inside.
In the dark, narrow space, a ladder with metal steps led upwards, and a few flights higher, another door with a more impressive sign reading "No Entry" blocked the way. After kicking it and, it seemed, significantly bruising his shoulder, the Rosgvardia officer gave up.
"Well, I don't know... Should we blow it up?"
"Wait a minute..." Tolik stepped forward and turned on his angle grinder. Glowing sparks rained down from the massive metal hinges.
"Well, this will take a long time," Fagot assessed the amount of work and went down the stairs to the restaurant. "Call me when you're ready."
Petrov coughed from the smoke of smoldering paint, wrinkled his nose, and followed him. Outside, the fog continued to thicken. Soon, the entire majestic view of the city from the restaurant's panoramic windows was covered with a yellowish haze, resembling a faded photograph from an old newspaper.
Looking sadly at this dreary landscape, Fagot crossed the restaurant several times and was about to sit down in one of the chairs when, through the screeching sound of the grinder, he suddenly heard some other extraneous noise. The Rosgvardia officer became alert, took his automatic rifle from his shoulder, and said quietly.
"Go ahead, East Fac, start your music box..."
Only then did Petrov realize what had caught Fagot's attention. Behind the metal doors of the freight elevator, a mechanism began to work. Someone was coming up. The student darted around the room, frantically trying to find an electrical outlet, but he didn't manage to do so. The elevator doors opened and three armed men in uniform confidently stepped out. At first, Petrov was even glad, deciding that they might be the police. Probably for the first time, he wouldn't have refused to be packed into a police van. The main thing was to be safe, even if it meant going back to the station. But it was immediately clear from Fagot's face that he was not at all happy about the unexpected arrival of his colleagues. Standing in front of him, with a badly disfigured but still recognizable face, was Vityunya.
"Did you recognize me?" he grimaced, trying to smile.
"Are you... alive?" the Rosgvardia officer squeezed out.
"Yeah. In a way."
"But I..."
"Killed you..." Vityunya finished for Fagot. "I don't think so. How many times did you shoot me? A whole magazine, I bet, right in the head?"
"Yes."
"That's how hard you tried," the dead man managed to put on a sardonic smirk. "My whole head is in pieces... But don't worry. It happens to everyone. Besides, you confessed to Zinka: you repented, you were upset... Of course! You shot your comrade-in-arms!" You left a woman without a breadwinner," Vitya stopped grinning insolently. "Well, as you can see, everything's fine... No one's mad at you.
"How's that possible?"
"Just like that. Some kids picked me up on that street. I don't know their names. They gathered my brains and my skull. They put everything together as best they could. They wrapped it in a bag. And they dragged me to the nearest basement under the heating plant. There were lots of people like me piled up near the pipes. And it was like that in almost every basement. They didn't stand on ceremony, of course, but I'm grateful for that. So I ended up in that basement. My blood doesn't flow anymore, even if you cut me with a knife... And I don't feel like eating. I just get cold sometimes. But otherwise, you see, even my mangled face has almost healed. And, you know, I'm very grateful to those guys now... Another time, I would have rotted there like some homeless person. But not now... Now times are different.
"How so?" asked the special forces soldier, keeping his eyes on his suddenly animated colleague and cautiously backing away.
"You know what they are... Ask your friend over there. How do they say it? When the living envy the dead," Vityunya paused meaningfully. "Why are you pointing your gun at me? We're doing the same thing... It's our job. It hasn't gone anywhere. You're one of us..."
"Well, that's hardly likely..." Fagot shook his head. He heard that the angle grinder outside the office door had stopped working, and now he was just stalling for time.
"Come on," Vityunya shook his head. "Take your kids and get out of here. No one will touch you. You're not supposed to be here."
"Or what else?" The National Guard soldier raised his machine gun threateningly.
"Are you going to shoot? You know it's pointless..."
Without waiting for him to continue, Fagot pulled the trigger, but only managed to fire a few shots before he was riddled with return fire.
"We'll talk later, then..." Vityunya sighed sadly and took a few steps toward the service entrance.
Petrov, who had fallen face down under the table at the first shots, opened his eyes and saw Fagot lying dead next to him. The student frantically thought about what to do. In another moment, the trio would reach the others. And then everything would be over. They would shoot them in the back. And what about him? Was he going to chicken out again? Useless piece of shit... No way! A second later, Petrov noticed a grenade rolling on the floor, quickly grabbed it, pulled the pin with trembling hands, and, shouting, "Run! There are dead people here!" threw it on the floor with all his might.
* * *
The explosion shook the entire tower. At least, that's how it seemed on the staircase, where Tolya had finally managed to open the metal door. Hearing Petrov's cry, he wanted to rush down to help, but Leynya, immediately understanding everything, stopped his friend:
"It's over... We have to get out of here."
As if to confirm these words, a slurping sound was heard on the staircase. Clinging to the metal steps and rolling his frenzied eyes, Rosgvardia soldier Vityunya was crawling upward. The entire lower part of his body had been torn off, and instead of legs, his intestines trailed behind him like the tail of some amphibian. Without waiting for the dead man to reach the next flight of stairs, Pyotr Petrovich leaned slightly over the railing, raised the emitter, and pressed the button. The invisible X-ray beam instantly put Vityun's soul to rest.
The survivors began to practically run the last 40 meters vertically. But with each step, the path became more and more difficult. The air in the hollow tower tube seemed to be getting denser. It turned into a viscous slurry. The steel feeders, stretched like wires, vibrated at a low frequency that pierced the head and corroded the brain. Already a third of the way up, everyone began to suffocate and stagger. Before their eyes, like interference on an untuned television screen, flickering white sparks constantly appeared and disappeared. From them, suspended directly in the surrounding space, vague images flashed and then blurred again. Suddenly, on the next landing, a distinct silhouette of a girl in an old-fashioned school uniform appeared before the exhausted people. Slowly stretching out her hand with her palm spread wide, the ghost said loudly:
"Stop! Go away! You can't go there!"
In response, the scientist only frowned and raised his emitter again.
"Wait, Pyotr Petrovich..." Valya was frightened for some reason. "It's a child! A girl..."
"Fuck the girl!" He calmly pressed the button, and the image scattered into sparks, from which it had materialized a minute earlier.
"A hologram?" suggested Leynya.
"An electrostatic illusion..." Pyotr Petrovich instantly came up with a new term, simply because he had to explain the strange phenomenon somehow. "We are approaching the epicenter. The field's intensity is growing. It is distorting our consciousness..."
Another door, which turned out to be locked from the inside, gave way to Tolya's grinder more quickly. After opening it, all four found themselves inside a dark room filled with measuring equipment. Pieces of broken microchips were scattered across the floor. Thick bundles of wires spilled out of the dismantled instrument cabinets like entrails. Several broken, bulging monitors completed the picture of utter devastation. But on the oscilloscope screen, a bright curve trembled like a greenish snake, and the control panels of some radio broadcasting equipment flashed with colored indicator lights.
Pyotr Petrovich turned the wide back of the massive chair on wheels. And then, to their horror, everyone saw that there was a corpse inside. The thin dead body in crumpled gray trousers and a stretched, shapeless sweater with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, which had once belonged to a fairly young man—the same age as Lenya, Valya, and Tolik— now lay sprawled out, looking both frightening and majestic, as if on a throne. A bundle of wires stretched from the floor, diverging into several parts beneath him, wrapping around his legs and passing under the skin of his arms in separate thin strands.
"My God! It's Kostya!" the girl cried out.
"You know him?" Leynya asked in surprise.
"Yes... He went to school with me..." Tolik replied for Valya, examining the body in the light of the flashlight.
"With me at the institute," she clarified.
"No wonder it's such a mess here," the student continued, still staring at the face of his dead classmate. "That's Kostya for you! He was always causing trouble everywhere... Even in his own briefcase.
"I don't want to interrupt your sudden reunion with your classmates," the scientist interjected, "but we have to clean up this mess."
Fighting dizziness and a growing headache, he placed the suitcase with his equipment on the table. He opened it, took out a multimeter with two electrical probes, and began to examine the connections and contacts on the working equipment. Pyotr Petrovich spent quite a long time studying one device after another in this way. Clicking the rotary knob, he switched his meter to different modes. He applied the probes again. Muttering thoughtfully, "Yes, yes," he ran his finger through the air along some connecting wires, looking for connections and moving on to the next shield or panel. Finally, he froze, leaning wearily against the wall with his hands.
"It's clear..."
"And what is it?" asked Leynya impatiently, also feeling that he was about to lose his balance.
"It really is a transmitter. The signal is coming from here."
"So what are we waiting for? Let's turn the damn thing off!" cried Valya.
"That won't bring the desired result, colleagues..." the scientist objected resignedly.
"Then explain..." Leonid demanded.
"The thing is, dear Leonid Ilyich... this transmitter is not the source of the signal. And, therefore, not the source of our research problem. It's not even a repeater. Rather, it is a set of tuning equipment. The entire tower is the repeater. It has already been put into operation and tuned to the required mode of operation. Even completely shutting down the equipment will have no effect. It is like a huge detector receiver that operates without batteries, receiving both energy and signals from the source of radio waves.
"And where is this source then?" asked Tolik.
"Well, dear Anatoly Efremovich... It's everywhere," Pyotr Petrovich smiled sadly and pointed to the trembling curve on the oscilloscope. "Do you know what this thing is, colleagues? It's a frequency of 32.4 hertz. The fifth harmonic of Schumann resonance. Standing waves that have been circulating in the planet's ionosphere for decades without losing intensity. And someone used them as a carrier frequency...
"Who?! For what?!" Valya asked in surprise.
"For the benefit of the working people," came a heavy, loud voice from all sides. The guys turned around and saw a tall male figure in the uniform of an NKVD officer appear in the doorway out of thin air.