Apocalypse «Beginning of the End» - стр. 19

– Do you have a passport?

With some disbelief, I took out my passport and placed it on the table in front of him.

– So, Artyom! – said the gypsy, looking at my ID and writing something in his journal. – Our procedure is as follows: now I am writing you down as a guest, then you go to Trofimych, he is in charge here. You will talk with him, decide where you will be sent, there are generally few civilians here, they are in Lesnoy for the most part. Call me Pasha, if anything. What questions do you have, ask. I decided to ask him what he knows about the virus.

Well, what do I know about the virus? Yes, that's all – foci of infection around the world, as if they happened at once. People began to go crazy and attack other people. And whoever gets bitten, he, consider, is doomed – and half a day will not pass before he becomes the same. Even here recently, so to speak, empirically found out such crap, from which the hair stands on end. Estimate, if a person dies by his own death, then after some time he comes to life and also becomes a ghoul. The walking dead, damn it, like in a movie in the best traditions of the genre …

Yes, I have read about it online. – I confirmed, – You yourself, how did you get here?

“My wife and son and I sat at home, waiting for the epidemic to end, but the food ran out earlier, and several dozen infected crawled into the entrance, and we lived on the eighth floor. I already thought the end of us, but there was a military unit near the city, and my friend was serving on it, so when they entered the city and organized a refugee camp in Lesnoy, he came looking for me first thing. They cleared the entrance and took us to the shelter. My family was assigned there, and I was to be on duty here. Lucky it happened at the right time. And then for the second night a mutant was spinning around our house.

– Mutant? – I was surprised – are you talking about the infected or what?

“Do you know about mutants?” – I shook my head in response – Brother, you are lucky. Here at night this happens sometimes – mother do not worry! He smiled bitterly and continued. “We don't know how yet, but some of these. – he pointed somewhere through the wall, in the direction where I came from. “They mutate into some kind of half gorillas and half wolves… Fuck understand, maybe you’ll see it yourself somehow… although, God forbid. So they only come out at night. Fast and strong. They, consider that only with a machine gun can be killed. So after all, they, bastards, are also smart, they hunt more than cats. In general, if you want to live, try not to get out anywhere at night, otherwise if such a creature notices you, you will not have time to blink an eye when you find yourself in her belly.

– Piz ** ts … – I summed up his story, and asked him about the Outpost.

“Uuu, brother, don’t go to the Outpost unnecessarily, they don’t favor strangers. They can put a bullet in the forehead. – Pavel collapsed on a chair more comfortably, throwing his legs over his legs. – Yes, only if you need gasoline. True, the horse's price tag is bent, most likely.

– And who are they anyway? – The opportunity to purchase gasoline interested me.

– Yes, there used to be a coal mine there, the largest of the local ones. Guest workers and former convicts worked there like hell. The contingent there has always been bad, the work is a real nightmare, they pay a penny, and you go underground in a dubious environment of people whose souls are black and embittered, like coal itself – Pavel took out a cigarette and, striking a match on a shabby box, set fire to it, releasing it into ceiling thick plume of smoke. – When the troops entered the city, one of the units was based just on the territory of the mine. They brought equipment, weapons, and even twenty tanks of gasoline rolled in from somewhere. And then, as it got hot, everyone deserted almost to the last. Yes, this is understandable, damn it, who wants to serve when your relatives, not even an hour, are devoured by some ghoul? They seized state property, which means and they went to their native lands, who was on what, and the local gangsters and the criminals who worked there before, judging by the rumors, united and took the territory by storm. They killed the remnants of the warriors … Oh, and the massacre, they say, was …