Chapter 2

I didn't go back to the city. First of all, it would take a very long time, and I wouldn't have enough gasoline.

My return to the village greeted me warily, but, as yesterday, no one attempted to detain or slow down for the sake of conversation. But then, when I stopped outside an old abandoned building, a young, not older than thirty-five years, a man of athletic build and expensive clothes came to me.

- Where did you come from? - he asked, not even deigning to say hello.

- From Vladivostok.

- Where is that?

- You don't know it? If you don't, how can I explain a place you've never heard of?

- All right," he grimaced. "Never mind. What do you want to do here?

- Live.

- What do you mean? You got any relatives you know? - He asked me a lot of questions. - And what exactly are you doing here?

- I told you I was going to live. I'm going to fix up the building and move in.

He paused for a few seconds.

- Look, boy, this building belongs to the municipality, you can't move in here without papers. Or do you have papers?

- Are you from the municipality, uncle?

- No, but...

- Then don't ask strange questions," I said. - I see that the building is empty, abandoned for many years, and there's not even a hint of an attempt to bring at least a little bit of order to the surrounding area. As soon as I see a representative of the authorities, of those who can and have the right to tell me and evict me, then I will begin to talk seriously, but in the meantime I will mind my own business.

I could see in his eyes that he wanted to tell me something, but he changed his mind. Instead of words my interlocutor turned his back to me and left for the village.

- Well, my gut feeling is that we should expect visitors soon, - I shook my head, looking after him.

My gut was right, but my timing was wrong. The recent opponent and three other comrades, similar to him in grip and desire to keep the body in tone, rolled on the "hundred" only three hours later. At that moment I was on the second floor, where I was making an approximate plan of future work. It was worth leaving the old house, which I spent a year putting in order, in order to start building again in a new place.

The buns got a little tense when I saw one of them holding a double-barrelled gun. All the others had big hunting knives hanging from their belts.

- Pst! - Pst!" whistled the same man who had come in asking questions a few hours before. - Come this way!

And there was so much superiority, contempt, and sneer in those sounds and words that it would have been enough for a hundred people. In one second I had the strongest wave of anger that I could barely keep from killing these freaks. I wanted to smear that smug expression on someone else's face, to make him answer for whistling, for the disdain and smugness in the tone with which he addressed me.

As I leaned out the window, I returned the whistle to draw attention to myself.

- Hey, you!" Oh, what a balm their bewilderment and anger spilled over my heart after these words and whistles. - I warn you, if you do not have papers to prove you are from the police or the administration, get the hell out of here.

- I'll show you the documents," the man with the gun promised in a hoarse voice, "you'll have to beg forgiveness on my knees...

I listened no further, and instead of arguing I let Lumberjack and Licker off the leash.

When a figure with a sledgehammer and a shield came out of the house, all four stunned. Livid muttered something, pointed his gun, promised to shoot, and fired, the bastard, when the Tin Man came within ten yards of him. Only MY bullets were wasted, not hurting the golem. He dropped his weapon and protection in response, sprang quickly toward the stunned men, knocking two of them to the ground with light palm strikes to the chest and grabbing the other two by the chest.

- Don't move, or he'll gut you," I shouted. "And lie still, so you don't get a second smile.

Above the fallen racketeers stood Lizard with his impressive arsenal of kitchen knives.

- Police? The authorities? - I asked my guests when I got downstairs and reached their company. - Hmm... Lizard, stick a knife in his thigh there.

- Aah!" yelled Loosey, as the narrow ceramic table knife went all the way into his thigh, jerked upward, but ran his chin over the second blade, which cut deep into his skin. A few centimeters lower and it would have gone for his throat. - Bitch! I'll kill you!

- One more insult, and you'll be the weakest link in our company," I promised him. - You have to answer for your words, you should know that.

My last words hinted at his blue tattooed hands.

- Shall I repeat the question? Or are you going to keep quiet while he bleeds to death?

- We're from the "Themis" chop, and it belongs to the town deputy Barney" grumbled the very man who had first appeared outside my new house. - You shouldn't be so bullheaded, kid.

- You mean the deputy? - I grinned. - In vain, your Barney is over. If he's still alive, nothing depends on his mandate.

- Besides the mandate, he has plenty of other opportunities.

- You mean such louts as yourself and your comrades? You should," I shook my head, then took a handkerchief out of my pocket and threw it to Silva. - Shut up the wound, or you'll have to bury your colleagues.

He accepted the handkerchief, though I thought he would refuse, his pride flaring up, but I guess life had long ago taught him to show his pride when it and death went hand in hand.

- You remember where I'm from, don't you? No? I don't care, there's nothing left of it anyway. I think that last night, if you looked at the sky, showed that the world has changed, and if you were with me yesterday morning, you would realize that it has changed a lot. Zombies, mutants, and beautiful people like this," I slammed my palm on the Lumberjack's head. - If you don't make it out in the morning, you're dead. You are very lucky here, I even envy you. You don't believe me? - I grinned. - And your eyes? Or do you think these two are wearing only carnival costumes? Well, that's your problem if you don't want to listen and believe, but now let's do something useful...

Ten minutes later I sent the four losers away, stripping them to the bone. Knives, a PM pistol hidden under the shirt of one of them, a double-barrelled shotgun with five bullets, four knives, and a Cruiser. They were especially angry about the car, but after Licker poked the most talkative one in the calf with a knife, the threats and attempts to wiggle their way out were cut off.

The fact that a man with two unearthly beings had settled in their village went viral within an hour. At least, it was an hour later that people showed up around the abandoned two-story building. Most of them were children, who were sometimes fetched by their mothers and dragged home by the ear. But after twenty minutes, those would reappear.

I paid no attention to anyone, especially since the outsiders were being followed by an earth golem who disguised himself as a pile of garbage fifteen meters from the building. His partner, the Tin Man, was dragging crap out of the building, real and figurative. It felt like the residents had decided to set up a garbage dump and a public toilet here.

Several times I had the desire to leave everything and try to build a house from scratch, despite the fact that the forest is only three kilometers away, and the golems will help me saw and move the logs. But then prudence prevailed over squeamishness.

In addition, only the bottom was dirty, but on the second floor, except beaten plaster and fragments of bricks, there was nothing. Not even an empty beer bottle, all of which was lying on the first floor. The plaster partitions had been torn down or removed by the industrious owners, so the room was a single room, spoiled only by the supporting columns of reinforced concrete, and the same was true on the lower floor. The building itself was built of red brick in the shape of a square fifteen by fifteen meters, with one entrance, a ceiling of reinforced concrete slabs, and a flat roof, on which a small birch grove a couple of meters high had already grown. Oh, yes, and a bunch of big windows, of which at the moment there were only openings and a couple of rotten window sills.

Before dark, the Lumberjack was able to clear a quarter of the first floor. He dumped everything fifty meters from the building into a shallow hole in the field, which he had dug on my order. Everything flew there, except the metal, which was piled in a separate pile not far from the entrance. Even tin cans and beer cans flew into it. The metal would be the most valuable item in the world to me now. Well, and fresh blood. Especially blood, similar in composition to the blood I had drained from the flying creatures and spiny boars.

- You're turning into a bloodsucker, you know," I chided myself with a chuckle. - Though, no, I collect it, not drink it.

I spent the night in the comfortable Cruiser on a fold-out seat, which was the size of a couch, and it was no comparison to sleeping in an ambulance on a tarpaulin stretcher. The next day I was cleaning again, having almost completely recovered from the bloodletting three days before. I had recovered so much that I began to think about a helper for the Tin Man. Iron junk in the form of tins, old dishes, knives and forks, incomprehensible plates, corners, door handles with bolts and other stuff accumulated twenty kilograms. Two more times that much, and you can mold a Tin Man or two. But where do I get it all? Jeep to dismantle or start begging in the yard?

While working on clearing out the building, I noticed one unpleasant thing about golems: fatigue. Yes, yes, the Lumberjack was getting tired, just like a normal living creature. Not so fast, about ten times more durable than me, but he was tired. But it took him much less time to recover.

A strange and unpleasant peculiarity. On the other hand, I had been worried sick about their energy, but I found out that I could draw energy from the outside world on my own. I'm sure the stone golem would have been able to recover if the creatures hadn't killed it, but it had to do hara-kiri, and so loudly, too. Because of that incident, I don't even dare build a golem of this type right now. Nah, nah, nah. I don't want to be shot by my own creation. I hope the Lumberjack doesn't have that feature, or I'll get hit in the face with his cast-iron, and hell, your bloody magic.

At three o'clock I gathered in the woods for firewood and reconnaissance. I left Lizard to guard things (hmm, maybe it's time he changed his name, because he crawls but doesn't fly or lick, leaving green snot). Took Lumberjack with him as a guard.

"The UAZ," making my brains bang against the lid of my skull, bounced under my control across a field covered with bumps and drove into a clearing. I was not about to get out of the car first and sat behind the wheel of the running UAZ until the golem searched all the surrounding bushes and found no danger.

Only after that I got out and with the Chinese chainsaw, which had served me faithfully since last fall, when I began to change the patio, knocked down two not very thick lindens, trimmed their tops and began to cut thick branches, handing the golem an axe and giving orders to cut those that are thinner, on the second tree.

At one point, as I bent down to cut the boughs, I was attacked by a huge brute. The bend was the only thing that saved me from a clawed paw that went right through my hair.

- Shit!" My pants almost got dirty in an instant. - Lumberjack!!! Fass!!!

Don't give a damn about the dog's command, the golem would have understood me from even a simple thought. But I could not think at such a moment, my emotions made me tear up my throat like some brat who had not yet come off his mother's tit. I managed to swing away from the second blow with the working chainsaw, seriously grazing the tips of my fingers with crooked black claws. Unfortunately, I also lost the saw in the process.

The beast roared in pain and resentment, crouched a little, and... at that moment an axe, thrown by a golem, flew into its side, then the Lumberjack himself struck with his whole body.

While the two enemies fought, creaking metal joints and howling with rage and pain, I armed myself with a rifle, which while I was sawing a neighboring tree. In the barrels were cartridges of slug and coarse buckshot eight and five millimeters. Almost like a peam bullet, only in the number of eight pieces.

In spite of all its "glandularity," the Lumberjack was clearly losing. The creature managed to tear off his cast-iron head, damage his left arm, and tear several plates off his body. And though it was bleeding from several wounds, had lost an eye, had a broken hind paw, and one rib was sticking out through its skin, it would have had the strength to finish the golem off.

But then I intervened.

I shot it in the neck with a buckshot, remembering quite casually a couple of stories from the leading channel for hunters, where it was recommended to shoot where there were most large vessels. The bullet went into the head just below the furry round ear.

With two fatal wounds, the creature resisted for another five minutes, then thrashed in agony for ten minutes.

- I shook my head, catching my breath when the predator stopped moving. - It would be one of the most extreme jobs of mushroom and berry picker in the world.

The animal was as large as a brown bear, but most of all it resembled a hyena, even its coloring was very close to the spotted skin of the African predator.

Then I saw streams of blood running down the skin of the prey and mentally cursed myself. It was good that there was a five-liter plastic bottle with water in the car, and after emptying it, I immediately put it under the wound. I managed to fill almost a full bottle, but the toad started to choke me with terrible strength at the sight of bloody trees, bushes and soil. The mood was finally spoiled when I saw the ruined chainsaw, the creature when attacking snatched it from my hands with its surviving claws and tossed it aside. It damaged the chain and shattered the plastic, leaking gasoline.

- What a creature you are, eh? - I sighed and kicked the dead carcass in the soft side. - Lumberjack, pack yourself up and get to the car, we'll cut the logging for now.

But at home the spoiled mood rose sharply, when I took up the blood in the bottle. My sixth sense was happily shouting that the red liquid was hardly made up of the necessary magical energy for my experiments, and that my own blood to create a magical solution would require nothing at all. But it was not enough for another golem, where to find a bucket of simple, at least from a dog.

And found.

Changed the PM in one of the yards in the village on a live pig, which then ordered to stun the Tin Man inside an abandoned building, where he cut his throat. I collected the blood in a large basin and a bucket, mixed it with the blood of a forest hyena, and then I gave myself a bloodletting by pouring a glass.

And again I began to swear, calling myself an idiot: the magical solution was ready, but the material for the golem was not there. It was good that I saw the body of an ancient Zhiguli near a house in the village. I replaced it with a pig's carcass, having gutted it and scorched it with a gas can.

Next, using a sledgehammer, a crowbar, and two axes, which he had completely ruined at the end of the job (I did not spend the magic liquid on strengthening the metal, because I was too greedy to do so), the woodsman chopped the body into pieces, which he dragged into my building.

I had plenty of blood to try not just to make the parts come to life and stick together, but to give them a shape that was close to the standard of those same robots. Otherwise, I still cringe when I see the Lumberjack's head.

And I did it. Not perfect, not robocop, more like something close to Chappy, only without movable ears-sensors and not so glossy. But next to Crawler (yes, I decided to cross him after all) and Tin Man, he was like a Playboy model compared to a station gypsy.