– Was the Father wearing his cloak?
– O-oh, was he in his cloak? This cloak was the one and only in the whole world… And toy guns on it, like on a Christmas tree. And the girl in a cradle on his back. Call “Kashchenko” mental hospital231. So I was hooked. Grabbed the duty guide and ran into the Zone, not listening to what he was trying to yell. A hero, heroic among other heroes. Also dragged my own guard with me, an idiot.
(He crosses his heart twice, as all locals do: from the left to the right and from the right to the left)
– “Give a horse to the Colonel!” It is funny to remember. Pour some more water.
CHAPTER 1
About twenty minutes later the fisherman241-Colonel finally exclaimed that his eye is, kind of, healed, damn your mother this and, accordingly, that way. Then he said that this is, as such, an outrage, comrade guide, because Devil knows where the man in the black cloak down to the heels could go with the child along a terrible street of the dead city; and that it is necessary, damn you, to warn your boss about the special effects of the “neutral” that violate the rescue operation in its very beginning.
Comrade guide, a young man named Matveev, and nicknamed Nabis, was silently listening to the high-ranking fisherman. Because it is no reason to console him, a scumbag, and it is definitely no reason to argue him, a scumbag, when it's too late for former and latter alike, when they are already here, already on the “neutral”. Let him yell. Yell that the transformer is buzzing behind the back wall of the tent, that the Colonel is now puffing and loudly expressing his horror with bold words. Mad, though. Ran to the Trouble, to a psychotic bayonet, as soon as the drunk jolly fellows have showed him the movie with the Father from the tower. As if a year and a half did not pass after the Lightning, as if people did not die. So let him, a scumbag, yell,. Let him yell. Moreover, the general tone of the claims is concrete – “he yells with relief”, and thankfully he is not jumping at least, still sitting in his armchair, does not run from the body… Well, Nabis keeps silent. Diplomatically. He was waiting for the end. Patience. In this sense alive (that means – good) tracker is no worse than any Assol. Or a sniper.
The other trackers, that is the guard and the retinue of the Colonel consisting of: the Ensigns Shultsev and Glyzin, and Korostylyov, the Major, – also kept silent, albeit for a non-diplomatic reason, but for a physiological one. The Ensigns were being “kissed” passionately, that means Shultsev was vomiting, and Glyzin has been struck from behind. As for the Major Kororslylyov, he did not get anything shoddy as a “kiss”, like the Trouble just shook his hand. that means either he is the first-time tracker of a rare potential, or he is an experienced tracker, but is hiding it. And keeps silent. Pale, but silent. “This one is an interesting fisherman”, Nabis decided, “dangerous one. But the Trouble will redeem anyway. Let's write it down…” And Andreich Nikiforov, the driver of the “sixty-sixth”, nicknamed Kharon, the master of transferring die-hards from the Earth to the Trouble, was not considered as tracker. He sat in his bus cab and could not been seen or heard. He was not taken by the “neutral” into account. Here he was a familiar figure. You pay to the “neutral” just once, and Kharon was not asking for more. Seventy-five for leaving the checkpoint, ten per hour for all the time of the trip. And not a single step into the Zone. Three children, a wife, no one was lost, all are well.
