– Hell will come here, – said Petrovich. – I sincerely advise you, I'm not joking. You have a wife, a child.. And you came here…
– Comrade Senior Ensign… – Vadim said again.
– Call me “Nikolaich” Do not argue! Do not argue! – Petrovich spat. – He's creasing the muzzle, you look at this. I'm talking to you seriously and you are pulling a face… In Afganistan all I did was bury guys like you, and here in the Zone all I do is bury guys like you, and soon I'll start to kill guys like you myself…
– Nikolaich, comrade Senior Ensign. Thank you. I understood. I need to be here. Do you understand? Let's go on, comrade … Nikolaich.
– Did you think I'm checking you out through dibs now, puppy? – Petrovich asked angrily.
Vadim was so amazed that he was almost offended. For some reason, he did not suspect the Soviet Ensign was joking – and just got for it being unfairly scolded. Petrovich read this on his face and slouched. Apparently, it was “I'm sorry”.
Bashkalo intruded a non-statutory awkwardness; he had finally got burst. Or got sick.
– Hey, so what are you doing?
– E-e-eh, kids! – said Petrovich, sounding very non-military. – So then fuck you. Forward, left step, to the “risks”, go around them, me on the left, you on the right. Do not step on them. And then – silence. Got it, boy? Bashkalo, from here we silently keep moving. Do you understand?
– As for me, I understand… – Bashkalo responded.
– Another one hundred meters according to the map, half a kilometer objectively. You will see how it is and what's here. He needs… – Petrovich muttered, not to Vadim, but under the breath. And to Vadim he said: – Think about it! And go ahead, come on, next to me.
They reached the destination in twenty minutes, using a dozen of “risks” and finding just as many old ones. Vadim remarked to himself that Petrovich had not ordered any pole to be driven into the ground. On the right the railway embankment also stretched on, and everything was so much the same, was so usual, the steppe, the cloudy summer sky, the embankment, but it lasted and lasted and dragged on, so you, dying of boredom, could imagine yourself inside a “combined shooting”, walking on the spot against the backdrop of a barrel with a landscape painted on it.
The destination was marked with a corpse. Or crowned, as Vadim would say, if he was a well-read guy. The corpse looked eerie. Vadim tried to comprehend in which position the person had died. A heap of broken bones in a hazmat suit. In one lump. Vadim changed his position, took a step sideways, Petrovich muttered mechanically: “Move carefully.” Vadim understood. The victim was sitting with his back to them, stretching out his legs, and these legs were smeared on the ground, like plasticine with a huge finger, for five meters, with fragments of cloth from his pants, intact woolen socks, flattened shoes. And a head in a hat made of dog's skin was torn into the torso. A bent AK-47 trunk stuck out above the hat with a rubber on the flame arrester, as rich Americans do. Hands, like a broken puppet, lay on the sides of an oblate torso, palms up, as if the dying man threw his arms up, and they broke away from the shoulders.