... in which L?nya, Tolya, and Valya finally come to their senses, while Pyotr Petrovich explains that everything is actually not as it seems
The smell of ozone. Fresh and pungent. Mixed with the bitter stench of burnt plastic. This was the first thing Valentina noticed when she opened her eyes. Pain in her elbow, where she had fallen, appeared a little later but caused her to involuntarily groan.
Right next to her face on the floor stopped a familiar greenish-brown boot, and a firm voice clearly said from somewhere above:
"You're still alive..."— he paused thoughtfully and added—"That's wonderful."
A hand with long fingers and a white shirt rolled up under the elbow grasped the girl's palm and, firmly squeezing her wrist, helped her stand up. Valentina's head was buzzing. Overcoming pain and dizziness, she stared at the stranger with blurry eyes.
From beneath his high round forehead, a thin man in his forties looked down at her, with small mustaches and a pointed beard.
"What the hell?!— exclaimed Tolyan, getting to his feet and rubbing his bruised head.
"A very effective one!— the man replied instantly, smiling slightly.— A high-voltage electrostatic discharger. Effective, but energy-intensive. I had to cut off power to an entire high-voltage line for the experiments."
The man spoke somewhat hurriedly, as if he himself were charged with electricity. It seemed that he was completely unconcerned that three people had almost died just because of his experiments.
"You could have killed us," Leonid remarked, struggling to get up with the help of his friend.
"That was not impossible...— the stranger calmly replied and continued.— But I didn't expect you to be alive, actually. For several days now, only the dead have been moving around here, and only the power lines were holding them back. After they were disconnected, as planned, they began breaking through the only open door and came under the impact of my ingenious device. To be fair, I saved you..."
Only now did the guys realize that no one else was chasing them anymore. Silence and calm reigned all around. The yellowish haze that had covered everything around for several days had dissipated. Clear weather settled outside. In the sky above the institute building, as far as could be seen through its square windows, a large gap had formed in the dense gray clouds, through which sunlight poured onto the ground and revealed a clear blue sky. Only motionless dead bodies littered the white space around the gray brick building. Lying rigidly at attention, they had fallen into the snow, forming some kind of pattern of concentric curved lines. From the height of the fourth floor, this was especially clear and resembled a familiar school experiment with sawdust on a sheet of paper under which there was a magnet.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"— the man agreed, watching as the guys stared out the window at the strange installation of bodies—"But they'll stay like that only until tomorrow morning."
"Will they come back to life?"— Valya asked hesitantly.
"Of course," the stranger nodded.— "I can explain the approximate principle to you. Perhaps it will be useful for you to survive... Just take off these useless gas masks. There's no infection. Because of them, I can barely hear you. Come on! Let's get acquainted."
He put his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat and walked into the office with an easygoing air. The guys, having removed their gas masks, followed him.
The elongated room, with four windows along its long wall, was filled with metal shelves holding laboratory equipment, stacks of thick, worn folders, and cardboard boxes containing some electrical parts. In the corner by the door, on a metal coat rack threatening guests with its antler-like horns, hung a white lab coat and a woolen overcoat with a scarf. Two old desks with cracked lacquered surfaces at the opposite wall had been pushed together to form a "T" shape and were covered with wires and radio components.
The man casually gathered up their nearest box and, taking a seat in the center, settled comfortably into a wheeled chair.
"Well then..."—he surveyed the young people with a sharp glance.—"And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"
"We're just students, really," Leonid replied, looking at his friends. "Trying to survive."
"That's understandable. But do you have names, just students?"
"I'm Leonid. This is Valya. And this is Tolya," the boy introduced his silent friends.
"Pleased to meet you, Leonid, Valya, and Tolya," the stranger smiled. "And you can call me Pyotr Petrovich."
"Petrovich," Tolya repeated quietly and smirked, but the man heard him and immediately frowned, correcting:
"It's Pyotr Petrovich. As you know, I've been running this scientific institution alone for some time now."
"So you're a scientist, huh?" Valya clarified, remembering the valuable cargo hidden in her backpack.
"In a sense."
"And you don't know Boris Sergeyevich?"
"Yes..."—a slight disdain appeared on the scientist's face—"I know that gentleman."
"The thing is... He told us there might be someone here from his colleagues. And that they might help us."
"Well, that was surprisingly sensible advice."
"And he also asked us to pass on his notes," the girl handed Pyotr Petrovich a thick notebook.
He took it and reluctantly began flipping through the pages. While the scientist turned page after page, his expression alternately grew gloomy, showed mild surprise, or twisted into an ironic smirk at the corners of his lips. Finally, Pyotr Petrovich set aside the notes and thoughtfully muttered:
"Well, there are a couple of interesting ideas here... Perhaps they'll help me..."
"What are you planning to do?" Leonid asked.
"To continue my research, naturally," replied Pyotr Petrovich.
"Here? At a time like this?" Valya asked in surprise.
"And what exactly surprises you, young lady?" Pyotr Petrovich asked back. "When there's a suitable task for my intellect, I devote myself to solving it."
"Alright, clear enough! Another crazy scientist... Let's get out of here before the zombies recover..."—Tolyan waved his hand in disappointment and took several decisive steps toward the door, but stopped when he saw that his friends didn't support him.
"Don't you think there are too many crazy scientists for one apocalypse?" the man laughed. "Don't you find that strange?"
"Yes," the guy answered confidently. "But where should we go? To the suburbs? To another region? To another city? Why bother? Considering how quickly they multiply, nowhere will be safe in just a couple of weeks."
"But you said there's no infection," Leonid clarified.
"This isn't an infection. It's an expansion," the scientist replied. "And so far, nobody has even been able to slow it down."
"But surely the situation must normalize. They'll start fighting this..." Valentina said hesitantly.
"Who, may I ask? The government? The special services? The military?" Petr Petrovich's face showed weary skepticism. "Do you see any effective and organized work from them? Personally, I don't. Perhaps they've either fled, or they're panicking, or they themselves have already turned into these creatures..."
The man stood up, carelessly threw the thick notebook onto the desk with a loud thud, and walked over to the window. Silently putting his hands in his pockets, he stood in a bright patch of sunlight, looking out at the street where motionless bodies blackened against the snow.
"You know what the problem with your generation is?" the scientist suddenly spoke. "You have no goals. You think your personal stories are very important, but for the greater history, they mean absolutely nothing. You're used to everything being done as if by itself. Even your small problems are solved for you. And you're no longer capable of doing something truly great and significant because you can't see the bigger picture."
Pyotr Petrovich squinted, as if trying to make out something in the distance beyond the forest, where yellowish fog swirled.
"But I see it... The world has changed. Light becomes polarized, oscillations become coherent, unusual molecular aggregates appear in the air, everything cools down and becomes more ordered. As if someone is turning back the thermodynamic arrow of time..."
"Someone?" Leonid asked.
"I expressed myself figuratively," Pyotr Petrovich turned around and looked sternly at the students. "Of course, we're not dealing with the manifestation of someone's supernatural will, but rather with some natural phenomenon. Something like a field of probability, influencing the behavior of particles at the fundamental level."
"But you can't explain everything with just your particles!" Valentina exclaimed. "Too much strange stuff is happening around... A dead cat attacked me! Corpses are walking in crowds! They're moving, damn it! They're killing people! It's some kind of nightmare!"
Leonid gently took the girl by the shoulder, and she stopped, breathing heavily. It seemed that Valentina had wanted to talk for a long time.
"And there's also someone's severed leg lying in the woods," she added more calmly.
"That's the leg... Of the one who needs to be," Pyotr Petrovich smiled. "Do you want to know how they work? I'll show you."