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  "Until now, things were different" - Pasha said, doing his best to stay calm, though everyone could hear the strain in his voice. "Until now, we've had the police to take care of such things."

  "As if they were good for anything," - the woman grunted.

  "As if you'd know anything about that!" - Pasha loudly argued. "The police have been doing a good job, so don't talk about things you don't understand!"

  The woman must've struck a chord with the former policeman. The woman, taking another step back, got defensive, and didn't answer. Pasha's outburst intimidated her. I've decided that I should interfere: perhaps my less than intimidating build was just what could be used for negotiation.

  "Have you seen or heard anything after the night of the murder?" - I asked the woman. Throwing a careful glance at Pasha, she turned to me and started speaking: "I didn't hear anything. And I didn't hear anything before that, either. If you want my opinion, Galina was just too trusting. She must've let in some hooligans who wanted to rob an old woman..." - she sighed. I noticed that she gave me a mean, suspicious look and sighed, too. Even if I wanted to help these people, they would still see me as an outsider and a danger.

  "By the way, since you're here, can you help me move her? The people yesterday helped me move her to her bathroom - I couldn't leave her lying on the floor in those same clothes, you see, and I thought it'd be a decent thing to wash her body," - she explained. I had to struggle to avoid imagining that picture. "But now everyone's gone, and I can't move her to the guestroom."

  "Why the guestroom?" - I asked. The woman rolled her eyes at me: "What, do you think I should just leave her lying in a bathtub? Have some decency. Besides, it is common for the recently deceased to spend some time in their house while their relatives pray for their soul," - she told me with such a look as if I was supposed to know that. As if I was burying friends every other day.

  But I remembered when I was little I had attended a funeral of one of my distant relatives who lived in some village. I had expected it to be like in the movies I'd seen - a nice, well-lit church, a pastor giving a speech about how the deceased will be missed. Instead, I found out that the coffin with the dead man was put right in the middle of his living room so that all who attended could come closer to say their final words. Some people were grieving, others were just casually chatting with the relatives they hadn't seen in years - and in the middle of all of that stood an open casket. With a dead man inside. To the six year old me it seemed as if in that short time span between your death and your burial you had to play the role of some ritualistic furniture.

  "Who's going to pray for her if we're on a lockdown?" - I wondered.

  "I will," - the woman declared, raising her nose and puffing out her chest. "I know how to pray. If no one else will - I'll do it. She was my neighbor, after all."

  "Yura, you go help Maxim and ask someone to help me out here. I want someone strong to help me carry her" - Pasha said. He didn't mean it as an insult, so I didn't say anything, yet being dismissed like that still hurt a bit. I nodded and headed to the basement where the rest of the men were.

  The basement consisted of a long, cold, and dusty corridor stretching underneath the entire building that was connected to numerous empty rooms – "concrete sweat-boxes" as I liked to call them. Its bare concrete walls were covered in pipes and cables. Yellow pieces of paper, empty packs of cartons, and wet, old cigarette butts were unevenly scattered across the floor - how'd they gotten there, considering that the basement had been locked up for a long time, was a mystery.

  The wall next to me had small windows almost at the ceiling – wide, low rectangles that were the only source of light in there. Even if there was a switch somewhere, I doubted that the lightbulbs above still worked. Most likely, they hadn't been replaced since the moment the building had been built and now were no more than dusty globes with dead flies inside.

  I followed the voices of men, navigating the cold, dark rooms and corridors, and soon I found them, squatting next to the manhole leading to the sewers.

  I barely managed to contain myself when I noticed that the manhole wasn't welded shut. The welder must have forgotten about it.

  The men had already pried it open prior to my arrival and were now staring into the dark depths below them. Even though it smelled horrible, I couldn’t help but associate that smell with freedom, with the outdoors.

  I looked at Maxim - the look on the man's face was not a happy one. If anything, the man was distraught, concerned.

  "So. we can escape now if we want?" - I wondered aloud. "Escape without any risk?"

  "I wouldn't be so sure," - Maxim said. "We don't know where these sewers lead and whether there's enough room for people to walk."

  "We better find out, then," - Mikhail said. "This smells horrible, but if we are not evacuated soon, we might have to start looking for a way out."

  "I don't know if we're going to be rescued any time soon," - I told him. Maxim gave a confused glance: "What makes you say that?"

  I realized that I'd said too much. I didn't know if I could trust Maxim enough to disclose that I'd had access to the information from the outside. In a situation where the welder's motivation was still unknown, it was too dangerous to disclose what I'd learned about our situation.

  "Just a hunch," - I said. "This morning the helicopters ignored us. I don't think that rescuing us is a priority."

  Maxim silently nodded.

  "I think it's a good idea to investigate where it leads, then," - the nameless man said. "I have some hunting equipment and a flashlight - I could go down there and map out the place, see what I could find."

  "Good idea," - Maxim nodded in agreement. "And I think we should keep this manhole a secret for a while."

  "Why?" - I wondered.

  "If people find out about it, they may start going down there before we know if it's safe to do so or whether it leads anywhere. I don't want to crawl around down there looking for the lost elderly, and I think everyone present thinks the same," - he said.

  His words made sense, and yet I couldn't shake off the feeling that he had some ulterior motives. That he wanted to keep this manhole a secret since it was a miscalculation in his plan. A literal loophole people could use to escape the building.

  But I didn't show it. I just nodded in agreement.

  "We better keep a lookout on this place, then" - I said. "If the welder learns about this place, he might want to seal it, too" - I said, looking at Maxim. Was his armor going to crack? Was he going to give himself away when he heard me mention the welder?

  Nothing. Either Maxim operated well under pressure, or it wasn't him.

  "Well, it's settled then," - the nameless man said, getting up to his feet. "We keep our mouths shut about it until we have some concrete info about what's on the other side. I'll go down there in a couple of hours."

  I couldn't help but feel admiration for that man, and at the same time, I felt ashamed that I didn't volunteer instead of him.

  "If this turns out to be a dead-end, we might take our chances by leaving the town together over the surface, as a group," - the man added. "The salvation of the drowning men is their own business, as they say."

  "Do you think it's a good idea?" - I asked him. "We know nothing about that thing outside."

  "Well, if we keep sitting here we'll be out of other options," - the man said.

  I nodded in agreement. While I was not looking forward to venturing outside, it was nice that we had a plan to fall back to. Everything was slowly starting to come together.

  "What now?" - I asked Maxim.

  "Now… I've had an idea when I saw you talking to that old woman. We should visit all the apartments and ask the tenants if they'd seen or heard anything suspicious. That way we'll gather some information and inform everyone that we're here to protect them," - Maxim said.

  "We might get more people to join us if they see us in action" - the nameless man chimed in.

  "Will we cover all the staircas
es or just ours?" - I wondered.

  "I think we should do all of them," - Maxim said, thinking it over. "And we should pay extra attention to the first floors. If the tenants there had seen anything, we could learn a thing or two about this… welder."

  "Makes sense" - I nodded. It wouldn't make sense for Maxim to make such a suggestion if he was the one who'd locked us in there - if there had been witnesses, they could recognize him. Then again, maybe he was confident that he remained unseen.

  As we were leaving the manhole, I couldn't help but feel a bubble of hope rise in my chest. It was a good start, no matter how I looked at it.

  CHAPTER 9 - Rumors

  We headed upstairs - while we could just break the locks on the doors which led to the other staircases we'd decided against it. It wouldn't be wise to break the doors without any means to fix them, and besides, we wouldn't make a good first impression on the tenants if we started by breaking their property.

  Pasha was already standing outside the apartment of the deceased woman. He bent over and was heavily panting, but when he saw us approach he straightened out to hide that he was tired.

  "Where the hell have you been? I could use another pair of hands," - he grunted. "Didn't I ask you to go bring someone?" - he turned to me.

  "Sorry" - I apologized, feeling my cheeks blush. While I didn't like the guy, I felt bad that I let him down. The discovery of the unsealed manhole had made me forget about his request altogether.

  "Forget it" - he dismissively waved his hand at me. "What are we doing next?"

  Maxim told him. Pasha nodded. We headed upstairs.

  ***

  On our way above, Anton left us and headed for his apartment. "I want to prepare for my trip to the sewers" - he told us with a scorn on his face. It was clear that he wasn't looking forward to it, even if he volunteered for it.

  "What's that?" - Pasha asked him, but Maxim hissed at him: "Not here. We'll explain later."

  Pasha grunted with disapproval but didn't say another word. He understood that whatever we wanted to share with him could only be told in privacy, away from unwanted listeners.

  We'd started going from one apartment to another to introduce ourselves. The idea was to let people know that we were going to look after them, that we were getting things back under control. But wherever we went, people were looking at us with mistrust. Very few appreciated our initiative: most of them were looking at us with eyes full of suspicion.

  It was hard doing that - it felt like we were trying to sell them on the idea, and I was never much of a salesman. Though I tried to act with dignity, with confidence, people were noticing my doubts and it was making them wary. After all, why would they be sold on the idea I, myself, was not very confident in?

  Somehow, even though I was the least intimidating one - save for Mikhail, who was way too old to be intimidating - people weren't trusting me in the least. Some of them refused to even open doors to talk to me and told me to get lost while glancing at me through their peephole. I was called a hooligan, a bandit, a misfit, a liar, a fascist, and even a liberal, for some reason.

  "It's alright," - Maxim assured me. "People of their age just don't trust the youngsters. Don't take it personally."

  "It's hard not to take it personally, especially when you're only trying to help them," - I complained.

  Maxim smiled: "These people weren't always like that. The gloomy world of walled-off people you grew up in didn't exist in their youth. People weren't afraid to look each other in the eye or talk to strangers. It's just that after the nineties when people of your age were gathering into gangs, robbing and tricking old people, they have a mistrust for… well, people of your age," - he finished awkwardly.

  "I understand, but I wasn't even around during the nineties!" - I told him. "The only people who were around were their generation and the generation of their children, so I'm tired of hearing that excuse."

  "True," - Maxim nodded. "They don't trust the youngsters that grew up in the world they've created. I imagine it's a bit tragic - if anyone stopped to think about it, that is," - he nodded toward the next door. "Don't hang your head too low. They'll come around. Come on, we have a lot more ground to cover."

  His optimism was contagious, so I decided not to let my gloomy thoughts cloud my judgment.

  A few apartments later, people finally started opening up to me. A man in his sixties welcomed me and invited me in for a cup of tea. Even though I was flattered and wanted to accept his invitation and relax a bit, soak in his hospitality, I politely declined and asked him if he'd seen anything.

  "Oh, I've seen things alright" - he told me, getting serious. "Heed my words, young man - the old age is a terrible thing. I've been spending these past few days doing nothing but looking out the window. And the things I see there nowadays are not the same as what I'd seen there last week."

  He leaned in closer and whispered to me: "You saw that thing last night, didn't you? That horrible one-eyed monster. Well, I've seen it many times since this whole thing had started. It is very secretive and keeps out of sight, but it is always there. I've been telling people about it before, but nobody believed me. But it is out there, and it's not alone. Sometimes, when it howls - something answers."

  "You mean there are more of them?" - I asked him with disbelief, and he furiously nodded, excited that he'd finally found somebody willing to listen. "Precisely right, young man. They are everywhere there, hiding in shadows. I saw it enter other buildings, and if our doors hadn't been welded shut, it would no doubt enter our building as well. They’ve been planning this from the beginning. Why do you think the doors have been welded shut on such a day?"

  "Who are they?" – I asked him, noticing that I also switched to a whisper. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but the conversation was taking a rather interesting turn. The old man, whether he knew it or not, was playing on my vulnerability to conspiracy theories. Talking to him was like finding something interesting on the radio, on frequencies where you don’t expect anyone to broadcast anything at an odd hour.

  He looked around and then leaned even closer, cupping his mouth with a hand. I involuntarily turned my ear to him and whispered straight into it with all the pomposity he could muster. As if he was sharing the meaning of life itself with me.

  "The Freemasons."

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and lean back in frustration: the old fool got me worked up for nothing. "Freemasons" was one of those answers some people could insert into any conversation – and they did so with religious fervor. They had been blamed for so many things all over the world I couldn’t take such claims seriously anymore.

  Here I was hoping to learn something about our situation, find out about more sightings through the word of mouth, but I ended up with nothing more than an old man’s flight of fancy.

  The old man noticed my reaction and had gotten a bit flustered – that was not what he expected based on how our conversation had been going up to that moment. "Heh, just you wait, young man" – he said, brushing his hair back. He tried to smile to show me that he wasn’t hurt by my disbelief, but the smile didn’t convince me. "You’ll see. They’ve locked us in here, they’re brainwashing us with their 5G towers and they’ve poisoned our water supply – it’s already gone really bad," - he complained.

  "What nonsense! It's just a bit stale, is all. No need to imagine new problems when we have plenty on our hands" - another old man, the man's neighbor, interrupted him. He was just talking to Maxim and when he heard our conversation he couldn't resist chiming in. "The pipes are good, I laid them myself back in the day! Just drink it and don't complain. You want to have a taste?" – he suddenly asked me and Maxim. He looked me in the eye and licked his lips: "the water’s good, I tell you. Never better."

  "You're the same as always! Don't listen to that old fool, young man," - the man I was talking to assured me. "He's always been so stubborn. Just another sheep for the slaughter. I'm telling you - the water's bad! They must've mixed something
in to poison all of us."

  "Who are 'them'?" - Maxim wondered, raising an eyebrow. I was too late to signal to him not to raise that topic.

  "Them!" - he exclaimed, making round eyes. "The freemasons, the ones who have started all of this. Our government has been in their pocket since the fall of the USSR, and they..."

  I didn't get to hear the rest: the other man chimed in again, only this time he was practically screaming. The conspiracy theorist I had been talking to answered with the same, and they started loudly arguing in that strange manner only old people had mastered: where they were screaming insults to each other, yet at the same time you couldn't make out a thing. It was like watching the dogs having a barking contest, so seeing that they weren't interested in talking to me anymore I quickly slipped away.

  ***

  Once we'd reached the fifth floor, men started climbing to the roof. I hesitated for a moment, eyeing a familiar door.

  "Are you coming, Yura?" - Maxim asked me. I nodded: "In a moment. Give me a minute, I want to talk to a friend of mine."

  Maxim nodded in understanding and started climbing. I pushed the familiar buzzer and, in a few moments, heard soft footsteps on the other side of the door. I smiled: Natasha seemed to be up early.

  "Hey, Yura" - Natasha greeted me. She didn't seem sleepy. "What are you doing here?"

  "I've joined the local militia" - I told her, smiling. I wanted to share with her the news about the manhole in the basement, but Maxim and the rest of the militia were still within the earshot, climbing to the roof, and I knew they wouldn't appreciate it if I started sharing that news with other tenants. "We're walking around warning people about us, so" - I tipped the imaginary hat on my head: "I'm at your service."

  "That's so weird," - she smiled. "But good for you - I know you've been anxious to do something while we're stuck here."

  "Yes, apparently I'm this building's first and last line of defense," - I joked. "I mean, I'm not sure if they know who they've accepted into their ranks but they were really short of hands."