Creature of unknown kind - стр. 3

Vadim moved, meanwhile adjusting the backpack's belts and his rifle's strap, falling from his shoulder. It is strange that wearing a rifle on the neck is forbidden by order. But what isn't strange here… here, ahead, is the old track from the heavy machine, apparently the launcher, and probably it is five or maybe forty years old…

The steppe was disfigured. It was said that when Korolev came here with a platoon of soldiers, here were a lots of tulips, and now only red clay is seen out through the wormwood like a bald bookkeeper's head… “You have to negotiate the tracks carefully. Especially this one!” Vadim suddenly realized (sensed), sharply reducing speed.

– Well, – said Ensign Petrovich from the rear.

The track was “taken out”. For the second time that day and the second time in his life, Vadim has seen this. He expected that, as in the morning, Bashkalo would kick-start his sensible whining that here it is, taken out, that means for sure that a loot72 is firing nearby, it would be nice to look around, to comb the area, because this is a thousand, even divided into three, is falling into the pocket… But now, for some reason, Bashkalo was not whining.

Vadim could feel the look of the Senior with his backpack and did everything by the book: he stopped, lifted an open palm, stopping the group, pulled from under his belt a strip of gauze, threw it on the track and waited with bated breath, and only after stepped over, “having marked the beginning of the movement by the same gesture of an open palm, visible by the wingman”, came to the paired trail and repeated the actions exactly. More to it, it is necessary not to cross it right above the gauze. Hell knows what. The Zone knows what Mumbler said somewhere between Vadim's eyes.

There was nothing to object.

– Look, the track is discharged, without a loot, – said Petrovich from behind. – I picked it up a long time ago. “Gnatyuk” was here, such a cutie. You see, although the trail is taken out, it's littered. And the working, evil track is always very clean, as if someone just passed by. Like on wet sand. But you did everything right, I have to praise you. Keep moving.

They went on down the track. Protective Mumbler in Vadim's head at the point behind the nose bridge, after awakening never shut up, spoke measuredly, mumbling, something like “You never left here, right? Did not demobilize and still live at the famous Range, right? As if you got into the “I am going to army again” dream, right? As if there weren't three years at home, Maika didn't exist, Katty wasn't born…”

– Stop! – Petrovich said sharply.

Vadim stood with a raised leg, then warily lowered it. He didn't turn back. Mumbler became silent. Both ears open, palms open. Ears and hands are required to be open up to the wrists in all weathers, under any circumstances. In winter the hat's ears must not be down! And no gloves or mittens.

– Vasya, fuck! Gnaw your butt! – said Petrovitch in a strange voice.

Here Vadim turned around cautiously – with his whole body.

Bashkalo, the rear-guard and the driver of the group, was looming ten meters behind as required. And Senior Ensign Petrovich, left his pole stuck in the wet steppe, in violation of all charters and unofficial spells, went to him, that means back. He went back, slowly raising his hands on the both sides of the cap. Going right up to the frozen Ensign, Petrovich dropped his hands so vigorously and spread them down there so vexatiously, and in an accent point-blank cursed the Ensign's mother, that Vadim realized: exactly It