– But what happened to him in the Lightning, why he was in such a way in fact, and such a daughter? .. Was he telling you? How he survived? Where people disappeared? Or at least how they’ve gone?
– You know, yes, he told me … But I don’t know if I can tell this to you. You yourself know that he got you from the grave. And now I will return home – and there is some sort of telegram from him. “You are fucking over, barber’s cat”, for example, “die in agony…” In general terms: at the night of the Lighting they were covered in the maternity hospital by one of the “red rings”, that were burning that region of Kapustin. I don’t know details about his wife. But all were dead there, apart from him and his daughter. But was she his daughter actually?…
– So, they all just died? “Missing” is an official version.
Fenimore is keeping silent for quite a while. I already feel that the interview will soon be over. His face even got one-sided by a nervous tic. There was something deep, very deep.He had tried the Father’s story on himself long time ago, some of their wounds coincided, and now, I unintentionally opened the biggest one. What do I really know about Vadim Sverzhin, apart from the fact that he is a super tracker, mega-looter and a centenar?
– You are right. Caught me. They are missing. Now, I'm telling you the story. You already know about the “rings”… The fire on the “hoop” of the “ring” is from phosphorus, and inside, in the “eye”, all is getting burned into the ash, and time is not working properly. As I understood, he stayed with a newborn baby girl in that ash of the “eye” for a year, or more… What they ate, what they drank there? May be for them it counted to hundred years by the time the “ring” burnt out. He made up a cloak there for himself, and a stretcher for a girl. Created for himself some sort of a world, some myths… You know when I first ran into him in the Zone, we talked a little, and then suddenly he opened his cloak in a way a mute person is offering to you porno, and said: “Look, lining is clear asbestos!” And exactly, his cloak was covered by plates of asbestos from inside… He said it so proudly, as if he was glorifying his track to the Moon…
(The ones missing were confirmed as dead less than a year ago. No dead bodies yet were found anywhere in the Zone, town, the steppe, or the river. Fenimore – just like the rest of old trackers – also escaped a direct answer. In principle, they all are eager to talk about the missing ones when questioned about domestic animals, but you have to ask it cleverly: how is that possible that no one, none from the list of survived at the Lightning night didn’t remember about their home pets, animals; neither adults, nor children. And then they were tearing their hair: how could I forget my cat. Or didn’t try to save the cow, which was in the backyard. But I stopped asking this question after a lady, who was ten at the time of the Lightning night, and who hit my eye with a coffee cup remembering that she forgot her favorite hedgehog in her flat. What is more, later she told me that she saw a hedgehog when her mother was grabbing the documents from the sideboard. The hedgehog was sitting in his box near the entrance door, in the hall, and there was no panic yet, her dad was a Colonel, and her mother said: don’t forget your Klyopa, here is a basket. Girl took the basket, but not the hedgehog. And this happened to everyone. A famous aunt Alisa Rybakova, the owner of “Chipka”, is still mourning her goats. She even went into the Zone, into impassable private sector next to her house in order to see how they were. Nothing. Both people and animals went missing without a trace.