which made my neck pretty tired, and soon I was already trying to turn my whole body. So, like an idol, I wandered out of the forest.
A field stretched across the front of the house, and immediately behind it was a private sector of fifty houses, separating me from the city. The village, unlike the smoking city, looked serene. I think I even heard the barking of a dog somewhere in its depths, but I could not say for sure. After the stress, everything seemed a little unreal.
Climbing up a low hill, I sat down under a tree. The place was comfortable, elevated, and the view was picturesque. I plucked a straw and clamped it between my teeth and began to observe, but absolutely nothing happened in the village.
My stomach growled insistently. There, in the construction camp, I had no problems with food. I didn’t even really think about how and where to look for it. However, this was now a pressing problem, and, judging that I would certainly be able to find something in the village, I got up and headed towards the serene-looking houses.
The nearest building was an unfinished three-story cottage. It was supposed to offer a gorgeous view of the entire district. I decided that it would not be superfluous to look around once again from a height, and I headed there. The bushes growing here and there on the entire plateau between the forest and the village concealed my approach well.
Having reached the cottage and just about to enter it, I suddenly heard a strange shuffling sound somewhere on the second, or even on the third floor. It was hard to understand exactly. Of course, there were no doors or furniture in the house, solid bare walls created such acoustics that every rustle was heard. Sitting down, I leaned against the wall and listened, trying to calm my rapidly beating heart. The sounds were no longer repeated, and I even began to doubt that I actually heard something – deathly silence. It seemed that there was not even wind and birds. And as soon as I was about to move, there was a quiet female voice, turning into a groan: “Bitch! Cut… Wow bastard…”. It looked like the woman was in great pain, and I couldn't think of anything smarter than just asking out loud:
– Hey! Need help?
The answer was complete silence. I waited, but nothing happened.
“Your friend, whom I nailed, just doesn’t need any more help,” a woman’s voice finally came from somewhere above. – If you want to die next to him, get up. There was an air of confidence in her voice. She even broke her voice a little to sound more serious.
– I don’t know who you are talking about … My name is Artem. Are you okay? – I tried to sound as harmless as possible in intonation. “I can leave if you want, I don’t want trouble.” – I added and started to rise in order to really leave this place, but after a long pause, the woman upstairs answered again:
– My name is Ira … – she said, and then asked an unexpected question. – What were you doing before the epidemic?
– Signalman. Built cell towers.
“Infection, it would be better if you were a doctor,” she muttered quietly.
My anxiety intensified. All this was somehow strange, but I decided to keep the conversation going a little more and asked:
– Are you local?
– From "Oplot"
– What's this?
“And where did this one come from?” This is one of the survivors' camps, not far from here, in the industrial zone…
“If you’re hurt, I can go there and bring…”
– No, stop! she interrupted me, a little frightened. “Stay here…” the voice trailed off as the words progressed.
"So is there anything I can do to help?" I asked for the second time.
“Yes… I don’t know. Go up to the third floor, it's hard for me to speak. And put your hands up so I can see them.
I hesitated, but my conscience did not allow me to leave a person in trouble, so I began to slowly climb up. A couple of times I stopped and looked around, wondering if I was being smart. The times are now when life is worth little, and it needs to be protected more than ever. I got up and stood at the doorway, behind which Irina was supposed to be. I did not go in right away, but at first I quickly looked into the room and immediately removed my head. At a cursory glance, the room seemed empty except for an old stepladder to the left, and a stack of boxes of tiles in the middle of the room, behind which Irina hid, looking at the passage through the front sight of a rifle.
"Put your weapons away, I'm not armed!" – I leaned against the wall at the doorway and tried to take such a position that, in case of emergency, I could quickly escape.
“Come in, don’t piss…” There was pain and irritation in her voice.
– Well, just don't shoot, for God's sake, – I entered the room, raising my hands, and saw Irina lying on the floor, leaning on a pile of tiles. The boxes, tiles and the floor around the girl were stained with blood, and she herself had a deathly-pale face, which wrinkled a little, intensely looking forward through the front sight of the Dragunov rifle with half-closed eyes, in which consciousness was barely kept. Her imposing overall image caught the eye: dark green pants, powerful army boots, easy unloading over a black turtleneck and a brand new black Dragunov rifle. Despite the fact that the whole girl was stained with construction dust and blood, her appearance inspired respect.
“Put the gun away, I won’t do anything to you,” I remained standing a step away from the doorway and held my hands up in front of me. The girl looked at me with dull and almost closed eyes, without uttering a word.
“Hey…” I waved at her, trying to figure out if she could see me at all. Irina again did not react in any way, and the thought slipped through my mind that she had already died.
Coming closer, I took the rifle from her hands and carefully placed it against the far wall. Next to Irina lay a gray backpack, from which an army first-aid kit was sticking out, smeared with blood. It looks like she was trying to reach it with one hand while holding the wounds with the other. I pulled out a first aid kit and looked into my backpack: there were a couple of cans of stew, a bottle of cola, several boxes of cartridges, empty magazines for SVD, a walkie-talkie and … of course, cosmetics. Putting everything back in, I looked around the room one more time. It was only now that I noticed a corpse lying to the left of the doorway through which I had entered. It was a man in torn and soiled clothes, looking like a bum. As soon as I noticed him, I immediately felt how he stank of urine and smoke. He lay face down, blood spreading around his head with dirty red hair, mixing with construction dust,
Turning to Irina, I found that she was alive and breathing evenly, but large wet blood stains on her chest, leg and shoulder suggested that the situation might soon change. The wound on the chest was especially fearful, a bag of scarlet arterial blood had already accumulated from the clothes, which indicated very heavy bleeding.
For a few seconds I hesitated, but soon, gathering my thoughts, I began to act. Taking the girl's limp body in my arms, I laid her on top of the boxes with tiles, as they seemed to me cleaner than the floor, on which a porridge of blood and dust had already formed.
The wound on her chest throbbed, splashing out a fountain of blood and life from the girl's body with each push. I firmly pressed this place with my hand, but I felt how warm and sticky blood continued to spread under my clothes. It became very hot, and sweat broke out on my forehead. I doubted that I was doing everything right, but now I had to think and act quickly and coolly. Pulling myself together, I examined the remaining wounds on the leg and
