Читать книгу Rebirth - Dmitry Nazarov - Страница 8

What a buzzing in my head! Poor boxers who had to get hit in the beard a lot! How their heads must be rumbling! It was only some time later that I realized the indistinct hum wasn’t in my skull. It was the sound of many voices. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I realized was that I was lying on my back, with the bars above me, and the vaulted metal ceiling much higher than that. I turned on my side, and there I saw the bars. I’m in a fucking cage! Like some kind of animal. I sat up abruptly and waited for the flickering black spots to disappear. So, what do we have? A huge room, like some sort of hangar or warehouse, with windows under the ceiling, about four meters from the floor. Rows of cages along both walls, just like the one I was locked in, and most of them weren’t empty. About three dozen guys, pretty big and muscular, were pacing from corner to corner, sitting or just lying on the floor. Many were talking softly. Some had brown stains and smudges on their clothes, and some looked overgrown, as if they hadn’t shaved in a long time, but some looked respectable. At the far end of this hangar there was a large door, or rather a gate, into which a car would easily enter, and on one of the walls there were rolled-up hoses, and there was basically nothing else to see.

– Hey! Somebody tell me where we are and what’s going on! – I cleared my throat and shouted and found myself the center of attention of about a dozen guys.

– Don’t shout, they don’t like it, and they’ll punish me,» my voice didn’t sound like a man’s, and when I looked closely, I saw that there was a girl sitting in the cage nearest to me. Only she was very tall and really muscular. She made me look like a fucking pixie fairy.

– Who were «they»? – I asked in a quieter voice.

– Well, I guess they’re werewolves,» she shrugged.

– I beg your pardon? – I snorted in surprise.

– You heard her, blondie. – She snapped back angrily. – Did you think I was crazy? Well, you did.

– Hey, I didn’t say anything like that! – I mumbled in a conciliatory way. – It’s just, you know, hearing it. I’m Aurora, by the way. Rory.

– I know you are. It took me three days to come to terms with the reality of that fact,» the girl sighed, calming down and getting much darker at the same time. – Nadia.

– She’s telling the truth,» said the handsome dark-haired guy two cells away from me. – I’ve seen them and heard the conversations. And I’m Lekha.

– What kind of talk?

– About how some wild thing attacked us, infected us, and now we’re all gonna turn into animals, too. And none of the other werewolves are happy about that, so they got us all caught and locked up.

– And you believe that?

– And, like, you don’t? And you’re just wearing bandages as decoration? – The guy reminded me of the bandage, and it itched like hell underneath it.

I bit my tongue, finally admitting that a lot of what had happened to me was hard to explain, to say the least.

– What’s going to happen to us? – You don’t know anymore!

The blond boy was babbling about some kind of culling and killing the others. But that can’t be true, can it? We’re human beings, we’re supposed to be looked for! You can’t just go around stealing thirty people, selecting the right ones (no idea what the reason is), and putting the rest to sleep, like unwanted stray dogs! But what am I talking about? In such a big city there must be hundreds of people disappearing without a trace, no one ever finds them, without declaring a state of emergency or combing the area.

– It’s not explained to us. But, as I understand it, they’re all waiting for something,» Nadya interrupted. – And every day they bring new ones. Or rather, every morning or night.

– They wait for the full moon! – A boy from the opposite row, nervously pacing in his cell, interrupted the conversation. – They’ll see. If we turn, they’ll shoot us for sure. If not, they might let us go.

– Or the other way around,» someone else joined in.

– No one’s getting out of here, you idiots! – Some guy shouted from the far end of the hangar, and they shushed him. – Fuck you! We’re all gonna die out here!

– Oh, our drama queen has stepped up again,» Lekha rolled his eyes. – Now we’re all going to get it!

Despite all efforts to calm him, he continued to yell, and even began to kick and shake the bars, demanding to let him out immediately. After a couple of minutes the door of the hangar opened and entered a huge man, almost an exact copy of the hospital big man, took off the hose from the wall, and soon the cells hit a powerful stream of icy water. He stoned indifferently along both rows, methodically watering everyone. When the scalding-cold stream hit me, my breathing stopped, and then I screamed, cursing and falling off my feet. The water poured until I was exhausted and silent, curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the cage. Bitch, I’ll remember you! I’ll remember you, and if I get out alive, I’ll find a way to shove this hose where the sun doesn’t look!

– Happy baptism, Aurora! – Lekha spat and wiped his face when our tormentor went away nonchalantly. – Hey, Gestapo! Will they feed us today?

– You’ll do without till tomorrow, – he answered rudely, turning off the hose with a look of a man sure that he has done a good deed. – I’ll have my own vomit after you. The stench was bad enough as it was, you couldn’t breathe near it.

It really didn’t smell good, because there was a hole in the floor instead of a toilet in one corner of the cage. It was incredibly humiliating to imagine having to go to the toilet like that, in front of everyone, and I decided that I would rather burst than do it. But I knew that at some point the need would be stronger than the shame. Though, according to the blond man, I probably wouldn’t have to suffer much longer. I obviously didn’t meet even the lowest of the local selection criteria. I could tell that easily by comparing myself to the other prisoners. All of them were large, at least six feet tall, physically developed, muscular, even Nadia. And I was one hundred and fifty centimeters tall, forty-six kilograms, and the only physical load I was subjected to was running around with papers on the floors and offices. Yeah, from the point of view of those big guys and hulks I’ve seen so far, I must be some kind of embarrassing misunderstanding. What did the man say? «Break your neck and forget it.» I sat in silence for a while, succumbing to the realization of how shitty everything is. But I didn’t agree to just accept the fact that I had to die just because I didn’t fit some stranger’s fucking physical parameters! And it doesn’t even seem human at all! I don’t agree!