– Into the storm drain, – replied Nabis and managed to point with his finger, and Blinchuk managed to notice the storm drain grill, which was greedily swallowing clear flows. The street asphalt was the purest. Even the mud was the purest, washed through hundred waters, sparkling as new. “Shishiga” crossed over the curb, slid on left starboard, getting out to the wasteland, and started passionately, snuggling, buzzing to overcome the mounds and ditches of the wasteland on the site of an old hospital. Clinging by wheels over broken bricks in wet ground, over leftovers of former asphalt roads and pavements. Everyone went quiet, clinging to armrests.
– And where to from the storm drain? – Blinchuk asked, when it stopped throwing them around.
– And this question is for scientists.
– Huh! – Blinchuk said and went silent.
– No question. It evaporates on the dry side, – Ensign Glyzin said suddenly.
The car shook on rails. The group grabbed their wet slick armrests again. Kharon was forcing it through Astrakhan piece of Privolzhskiy railroad, lost for the world. Ahead, a carelessly sketched out by a skillful hand in three moves with a wide brush and a white ink on a wet dark-grey paper, was a gigantic four-story building belonging to town boiler management. Above it two pipes flaunted in rainy mist. At the empty parking in front of the facade of the management Kharon turned around, aimed carefully and neatly passed in between piles of concrete slabs, which were not on purpose but surely blocking the entrance to the courtyard of the management “bypassing the checkpoint”. The accompanied ones even stood up on the carcass watching how many centimeters are left from the board till the plate, armchairs banged by short burst. And straight away they’ve met the first illegal. It was a woman. A simple Russian woman.
Woman was returning from the a farther mission. To Nabis it was clear as a classic vodka. Nabis knew this woman. In the “Bezhensk” camp everyone knew everyone, but in the Zone everyone knew everyone for certain. The woman’s name was aunt Alise, her nickname was Fisherwoman, and her surname was Rybakova. On earth she was a Senior Cashier in a village council, her daughters and husband died in the Lightning, and only a young son-in-law survived, who had cancer from before the Trouble times. Americans told her, that there is a hope to cure him in Germany free of charge. There they say, such patients survive, and live long lives. So aunt Alise was collecting and treasuring cash for an abribe. But not for German doctors, it was for those who could allow to her son-in-law away from the quarantine. Yesterday its cost was fifteen thousand dollars from poachers above the river Stoypka. For two large “rainbows”, which aunt Alise was carrying now on the beam in two bags Petrovich pays one hundred fifty each, and at the external border of the Pre-Zone, at Tsarevsky checkpoint, for example, – it could be paid up until two hundred on a good day. Profit! Aunt Alise was wearing a hazmat suit, her head was tied in a pirate way with a nylon kerchief, rented AK47 was heavily bending aunt Alise down towards the earth surface, hanging on her chest in a wrong way. Noticing the car, she calmly and indifferently gave the way, waited till the mechanism passes, and moved again, continuing her journey, which began no less than yesterday morning. She will return to the camp by the evening, will pass the machine gun to a skinner (most probably to the extra-term Sergeant-Major Palkin), will take back the deposit from him, which he always wants to keep, will reach the tent, feed her son-in-law, clean up after him, and then, without undressing, will fall on the bed, into the dream that is stronger than death. And the day after tomorrow, she will walk for thirty kilometers to sell the loots… Everyone on the carcass, turning their heads, watched her go. Kharon slid to the warehouses, aunt Alise disappeared from view behind the corner of the town hall, and then suddenly major Korostylyov sat straight and began cursing through his teeth, hissing and spitting, and no one stopped him, until Kharon parked near the warehouse hangar overpass and switched off the engine. And even then, no one stopped Korostylyov, he calmed down himself.