Готовый перевод Хроники Аскета: Вторжение / The Ascet Chronicles: Invasion: Глава 1

Part 1 Chapter 1

My parents died, my friends married and had children, and I was alone for whatever reason. In a way, you could call me an "invisible man": if I disappeared now, after a brief disturbance at work, only a few friends would remember me. Gradually they would forget too, get caught up in their lives. The thought first came to me on my thirtieth birthday, and it has been on my mind ever since.

I usually spend my vacation in the city or go somewhere alone. I want to get away from the familiar surroundings, no matter how good the relations with those around me are. This time, however, I could not turn down an invitation to rest in the Midlands, on a recently discovered and therefore cheap tourist route. Old friends Roman and Andrew loved all kinds of hiking, bard songs by the fire, were experts in this field, unlike me. Despite getting married and having children, they left town at the first opportunity, dragging me along with them. In general, they were right: we should get out more often. Unfortunately, there was another emergency at work, so I had to leave a week later, and when I arrived the group had already left on the route. I would have to intercept them halfway there.

However, upon arrival in the small town of Nizhneivanovsk I found not the familiar company of vacationers, but the businesslike bustle of the EMERCOM rescue team: the entire group of ten was missing, and it was not clear where exactly. The route was planned in such a clever way that it passed through sparsely populated areas and included a cave stage. Now, after the recent rains, some of the caves had collapsed and it was difficult to search in them, and the rescuers swore and told me to mind my own business.

"Why do you think the guys are in the caves?" I sat with a representative of the tour operator, Katya, and thought about my next steps.

A frowning, frustrated Katya explained that from the last checkpoint, Tryakhino, one could get either to the caves or to the marshes to the northeast, bypass them, and approach Nizhneivanovsk from the other side. When the group went out, they were going exactly to the caves.

"Then let me go to Tryakhino, take someone there, and walk to the marshes and back. You don't know when the rescuers will clear away the rubble, but I might find something. And I'll be busy, and I won't make you nervous."

Katya called the director, and the three of us agreed that the firm would arrange my transportation, and it would be easy to find a guide and transportation on the spot. That same day I left for Tryakhino, where I arrived the next evening. I could have arrived earlier, but the road had not been repaired for a long time.

I spent the night in the village house, and in the morning Sashka, a village man, who agreed to lead a visiting Peter dweller along the route, dragged me along. As I said, I'm not a fan of hiking, I prefer a car, so at first, I was unaccustomed to going hard. Then I kind of got used to it, but by the evening my legs were just falling off, my head was buzzing with fatigue. I was able to get down on the camp lounge as my body shut down and fell into a sound sleep.
T.N.

The morning turned out to be creepy. Sasha was looking at me with a broad smile on his face: he was clearly amused by the torment of the town squishy. He looked about forty-five years old, but his easy temper and habit of drinking for any reason did not earn him much respect, though he had a reputation as a nice guy and a man who knew the area. Sashka, short, with a beard up to his eyebrows, looked something like my neighbor's pug. That too on occasion, trying to steal a piece of something tasty from the table, but for his good-natured nature, he was forgiven any mischief.

I grinned:

"I should get out from the table more often. If we find our own, I'll come to you every year."

In response to this remark, I received a torrent of assurances that everything would be fine, we would find who we needed, and we would avoid who we did not need - Sashka was hunting without a license. And in general, the places are wonderful, good places, there are no such places anywhere. In general, I had only to nod from time to time. Words flowed like a river, and soon I knew absolutely everything about Sashka's life and the life of his village. Who got married, who got divorced, who was going out with whom, why Valka Kosokhin was going to town and how it could end for him, and a lot of other details that I absolutely did not need. So, chatting, we reached the edge of the swamps, set up our tent, and decided to walk through the woods in the morning: a hunter might notice human footprints.

Toward evening the rain began to fall. The drizzle got on my nerves, and despite my fatigue, I could not sleep for a long time. After today's march my body was humming, but not like yesterday. Somehow the usual noise of cars disappeared, fresh smells and new sounds intoxicated me and brought me into a kind of trance. I lay asleep and awake at the same time, not thinking about anything, letting myself just be. A little more and I would have fallen asleep, but there was a strange tingling sensation - as if something inside was forcing me to stay awake. An ancient instinct left over from the caveman ancestors who'd gathered around the fire and stared fearfully into the night.

Sashka hissed, and the obsession vanished. He suddenly muttered something, twisted his head, wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something unpleasant, and then climbed out of the tent. I saw that he had brought his rifle with him, so I pulled a small camping ax closer, just in case. The hunter stood with his back to me, his rifle at the ready and listening intently to the surrounding woods: his posture seemed wary. The fire was out, the moonlight was hard to see, the night shadows deceived my vision, and I had to rely on my hearing. In such an environment it was not unreasonable to be deceived.

Sashka was about to lie back down and turned toward the tent when a blurred shadow silently rose from the bushes behind him and landed on the man's shoulders. The hunter collapsed to the ground from the impact, his gun tearing from his hands and flying to the entrance of the tent, right into my hands. I grabbed it and shot slightly above the beast, aiming not so much to hit it as to frighten it, to drive it off Sasha. The distance was no more than three meters, but I must have missed because there was no reaction to the shot and the beast threw itself at me. I managed to roll under its belly, turned sharply, and raised my rifle - there was an unspent cartridge in the second barrel. I was lucky: the rabid animal - at that moment it seemed like a big wolf - was entangled in a fallen tent, and I could aim safely.

The conditions for the shot were ideal - the distance was two meters, the target was relatively still. I held my breath, pulled the trigger, and... What I saw made my hair stand on end. The buckshot from the gun flew so slowly that I could clearly see the trajectory of all little peas: they slowed as they approached the body of the rampaging beast, until they hung in the air a few centimeters from its body, to crumble to the ground without causing the creature any harm. For a moment, I thought I'd lost my mind. But the angry growl brought me to my senses quickly, the paralysis wore off, and with a wild scream, I began beating the beast, bound by the fabric of the tent, with my rifle like a club.

Out of fear, I was beating with such force that I soon shattered the buttstock and started kicking the animal, then I noticed the ax and actually cut the beast in half before it stopped moving. Only then, breathing heavily from the shock and pouring stinking sweat, did I collapse beside Sasha's body. The torn throat and unnaturally curved neck told me that the poor hunter no longer needed help.

The whole fight took about twenty seconds, but I felt as if I'd run at least ten kilometers. My heart was pounding nervously, not so much from fatigue as from the horror I'd experienced, a normal reaction for someone who hadn't even served in the army. What was more frightening was the hell that was happening with the second shot. I tried to convince myself that I thought it was just a slip-up, but the buckshot found in the ground convinced me that it was real.

It must have taken me an hour before I came to the point where I could drag the creature out of the tent and examine it more closely in the light of the fire. Up close, I could see that it could not be called a wolf: nature could not have produced such a thing. It had short forelegs, an elongated snout with protruding fangs and small horns between huge, black-filmed eyes, and silky gray fur. There were no ears and no tail. No other animal on earth should have such a structure - all large carnivores have been given by nature either sharp eyesight or sensitive hearing. There are also varans and other amphibians, but the monster gave the impression of a mammal, though I didn't feel any confidence: the creature looked too strange.

If I could, I would have called the police, the rescuers, but there was no service in this part of the country. The only thing I could think of was to bury both bodies deeper into the ground, so the animals wouldn't get to them, and then follow my tracks back in the morning: I remembered the way. Another surprise awaited me, however. Its body was decaying rapidly: first, the hide was covered with brown slime, then rotting affected the rest of the body. I faintly hoped that at least a skeleton might have remained intact, but the bones were crumbling in the dark dust. Now I had no proof of the monster's existence.

I had to return to the village with nothing. It took me three days to get to some small hamlet, where the owner dropped me off at the nearest police station. I lied to the policeman - I said Sashka had been mauled by a wolf. The truth sounded too crazy to believe; the policeman already suspected me of murder and kept an eye on me. He might well have thought I was a drug addict who had killed his partner under the influence and was now blaming it on the beast. After spending the night, the next morning, accompanied by the local district officer and two forest rangers, we set off for the campsite. The road was familiar, and I had often left a roadblock, so we easily found the place of Sashka's death. The animals had no time to dig up the body.

Barely a glance at the dead hunter, the elder forester began to swear:

"Fucking man-eater again. We just killed one, and the next one comes along." He explained specifically to me. "There are a lot of wolves, three months ago one killed a child. We just killed him, and now this one. It's good, there are no villages nearby... I have all my people dispersed on vacation - until they come back, there is no one to hunt down the beast."

"To me, it didn't look like a wolf."

"Who else? A lynx wouldn't tear his throat like that, a bear would tear his body apart with its claws. If the weather had been fine, we would have followed the trail, but now it's too late."

The policeman called the ranger aside, talked quietly to him about something, and then looked at me in a much friendlier way when he returned. After gathering the rest of the things left in the parking lot and packing the body on a stretcher, the little procession set off on its way back. I tried to ask the woodsmen if there were any rumors of strange monsters, but I stopped shortly afterward because they started to skewer at me, like 'Fear has big eyes'.

I returned to Tryakhino, gave Sasha's things to some relatives or drinking buddies, and sat for the wake. My friends, as it turned out after I called the travel agency, were still among the missing. A new guide was not found: no one agreed to go to the place where the man-eater had appeared. The choice was simple - either return to Nizhneivanovsk and wait for the results of the rescue team work, or go alone. I couldn't sit and do nothing, going into the woods without a guide was just stupid. Besides, I was afraid.

There was something alien about the creature I'd killed. In all the thirty years of my life, I'd never encountered anything supernatural, anything that couldn't be explained logically. Now I was thinking all kinds of nonsense about mutants, werewolves, and the like. There were no creatures on earth that could spit the shot of a gun, stop it on the fly! That is, there weren't. At the thought of returning to the marshes, sticky fear enveloped my thoughts, I wanted to drop everything and run to where there were many people, where no one would attack from behind. I noticed that I began to look around too often, trying to stay in well-lit areas. If I did not solve this mystery now, I would suffer for the rest of my life, thinking I was a coward. It became disgusting.

The next day I went to the local blacksmith and bought a long broad cleaver from him.

I didn't take the tent: I would build a hut. Some knowledge about life in the woods was still put into me. My backpack was stuffed with canned food, an ax on my back, and a cleaver bolted to a long pole with a strut. If I could kill the beast with a simple ax, the resulting slingshot could stop it, too. The second night passed not far from the same place as the last time. I could not sleep - all the time I put wood in the fire and listened to the sounds of the forest. I met the morning completely broken but walked another twenty kilometers before I began to set up the camp. It didn't take much time to build a tent out of spruce boughs, and I even managed to sleep for an hour during the day.

I wasn't very good at navigating in the woods, so I constantly left a trail that pointed in the direction of the camp. I had little experience of camping, but I had heard from a few ears that the search should be carried out in a spiral pattern, so I walked in concentric circles around the camp. Any villager would have found the necessary signs, traces, but it was only in the evening that I accidentally noticed fresh scratches on the wood bark, obviously left by claws. A bobcat? Maybe. I was about to reschedule my search for the next day when I heard the buzzing of a large swarm of flies ahead. As I became interested and got closer, I realized that the search was successful. The putrid smell made me sick - there was the torn carcass of some animal on the ground. The skin was half peeled off, the meat scattered all over the clearing, and it smelled awful. I don't think the animal had been dead for too long - otherwise insects and small animals would have scattered everything edible.

I sat near the fire in the late afternoon, trying not to remember my reason for coming here, pondering the fate of my missing friends, and listening to the forest. We, humans, are just highly-organized animals, the city is an unnatural environment for us, and once we're in the woods, we can quickly adapt to a new way of life. You just have to let your body tune in to the rhythms of nature: they are in the human blood - sometimes it is enough to walk barefoot, to lie in a grassy clearing, and understand the sounds of the forest will come by itself. The instincts know better than we do what the host needs, they are older and truer than the rational mind.

It got cold. I wanted to add some twigs, but the fire was already burning brightly. I had a strange itch to run somewhere. My nerves must have been acting up. I lay down on the cot, but my restlessness was getting stronger, the tension was rising from within and would not let me calm down. Suddenly the cries of the nocturnal animals began to fall silent, and I felt the tension in the air, and I listened intently to the forest myself. In a bright flash of insight, I realized that the encounter with the beast was sooner than expected. My back was clammy: the idea of going into the woods alone seemed foolish now.

I waited tensely, turning my back to the fire and clutching my slingshot. I don't know why, but the presence of the beast was clear and distinct - it was like a stain of foreign flesh in the fabric of the world. Words couldn't explain it. I knew exactly where the beast was coming from, and that it had spotted me. The closer it got, the more I wanted to run, but if I turned my back, there was no chance of survival.

This time there was no surprise attack. The beast emerged from the bushes without hiding and paused at a distance to get a better look at its prey. It was as if it was showing itself off, enjoying the fear of its prey. The hiccup didn't last long - a jump followed almost immediately. The beast tried to grab at my throat, ignoring the exposed spear, and thrust its chest against the blade with a swing. Only the spacer kept the creature from pushing the shaft through its body. I could hardly keep the weapon in my hands: the force of the blow was too great. If it hadn't been for the spear's heel in the ground, the weapon would have slipped from my fingers. The claws flashed in front of my face, and I had to shove the spear away from me with all my might, but the creature kept reaching for me.

I don't know how long it went on like that, but the creature's movements gradually weakened, it wasn't pushing me so hard anymore, and I managed to put it on the ground. I held it there until it went quiet, and then I dropped down next to it. During the struggle, the beast did not make a sound. It did not seem to have a voice. I couldn't get enough air, my scratched arms were shaking from exhaustion, and my strength ended the moment I realized I'd been saved.

Except for the deep scratches on my arms, there were no injuries in the fight. I was lucky: if the shaft had been a little shorter, the beast could have clawed its way to my throat or eyes. After washing the wounds with water and iodine, I moved closer to the corpse. It was not much different, except that it had more horns on its nose and a short rat tail. Frankly, I was lucky to get the spearhead between the ribs: if it had hit bone, it would probably have bounced off. What was to be done now? I took a picture of the body with the camera in my cell phone - the only use of it, there was no communication anyway - then dragged the corpse into the bushes and went to bed. Hopefully, tomorrow something would be left of the corpse. Looking ahead, I would say that this hope was false.

I couldn't sleep, and the images of the fight - the beast's grinning mouth, its paws reaching forward with its claws out. Now, with the events of the last few hours replaying in my head, I didn't know how I could feel the monster approaching. It was as if it stood out from the world around me, which I perceived on some deep level, was part of me. I had never noticed this before. Maybe I should be more attentive to my senses - meditate, perhaps?

In the morning, while making breakfast, I couldn't decide what to do next. There were no human footprints nearby, though the hiking group must have left them. Most likely the rescuers were right and the guys weren't here. So, I must return to Nizhneivanovsk and wait for the results. On the other hand, some unknown monster is roaming the woods and killing living creatures, including humans. I imagined the reaction of officials to my message, so I was not going anywhere without hard evidence of my words. The centuries-old experience of the Russian people made me stay away from the authorities. The idea was to return to Nizhneivanovsk, wait for the results of the search, then come to the swamp with a camera and try to find the lair of these creatures, or even capture one. The complexity of the task made my hair stand on end - it was even strange how such an idea came to mind. So I decided to wander through the woods for one more day to see if I could find something interesting, and then I would head back tomorrow morning.

After walking a little bit along my route from yesterday, I headed north, planning to reach a small creek, a peculiar landmark in the area. The soil became wetter, and the trees began to alternate with patches of moss. It was not yet a swamp, but the heavy moisture and other signs were irrefutably suggestive of its approach. The weather was warm, the day was clear, and a light breeze was blowing, which brought to me the smell of smoke. Sniffing like a dog, I followed the wind.

I saw a grass-covered meadow, on which stood a hunting hut - a four-sided log cabin with a straight roof. There was a fire burning by the log cabin, and a pot of something bubbling on the fire, exuding the appetizing aroma of cooked meat. An ax was stuck in a thick stump and a pile of chopped wood nearby. The owners were probably not far away at the moment. I stepped closer and shouted:

"Is anyone there?"

There was a rustling sound from the hut, and I waited for a while, but no one came out when I shouted. I guess I would have to go up there myself. When I walked around the hut and found no one, I went inside the cabin. A couple of beds, an open hearth, some supplies and utensils piled in the corner, and a pile of textbooks and notebooks. I wondered what they were for.

The strange behavior of the hosts made me take a softer step, involuntarily listening to the sounds coming from behind the wall. My knees buckled, my breathing became quiet and even. I found myself clutching the spear tightly, keeping it pointed forward, and monitoring my movements. A strange feeling prevented me from opening the door and walking out of the hut. Although there was absolutely no sign of anyone behind the door, I knew for a fact that three feet ahead was a man, young, anxious, frightened, clutching a gun in his hands. Most likely a shotgun. I don't know how I became certain, but at that moment I did not have even a shadow of doubt about the correctness of the knowledge that had arisen - it was as if I had a presentiment, foreseen the actions of the stranger, and knew exactly how to keep myself safe. Again, I didn't think the situation through: I just knew.

If the door opens, a shot will go off: the boy will pull the trigger in fear. I have to go to the door, step to the side, hiding behind the jamb, simultaneously with the step opening the door, then jump out of the door and roll under his feet, knocking him down, wrenching the gun. It's time to get started.

Step one... The door opens, a load of buckshot rushes past. Step two: the ground approaches, left shoulder forward, chin to chest, roll over, grab the gun with my right hand, hit it with the other. Step three: the gun is thrown away, I'm sitting on a frightened boy of about eighteen, a fresh black bruise under his eye.

"What are you doing, dumbass?"

The boy's lips trembled, and he squirmed:

"I am sorry..."

"What do you mean you're sorry? You almost killed me!"

"I thought it was a wolf..."

"Didn't you hear me scream? Do wolves speak Russian?"
T.N.

"Sorry..."

In the end, given his good behavior and deep remorse for what he had done, the kid was set free. His name was Daniel, and in the woods, he was preparing to enter medical university. To my perplexed question, why had he chosen such a strange place, far from libraries and other sources of information, I heard a somewhat incomprehensible, but logical answer: 'But far from the military commissar'. The guy was hiding in the woods from the military draft. Yes, he was seriously screwed.

What I found more interesting was the reason he was so scared that he was shooting at a peaceful passerby. Two nights in a row some creature had tried to break into his house, and Daniel showed me the long, deep scratches on the door and the log roof of the hut. Without big surprise, I recognized the footprints left by my yesterday's acquaintance and began to ask for details. As it turned out, Daniel had spent a box of bullets on the beast, shooting through the narrow windows, but had no effect. The creature disappeared at dawn. He did not get a good look at the beast, but when I began to describe the creature I had killed yesterday, he said it looked like one. Judging by the expression on his face, the news pleased him.

"Great, maybe he was the only one there."

"What do you mean "there"? Do you know where his lair is?"

"Well, not that I know - I walked the tracks the day before yesterday, I think I can find it. Why?"

It was a chance I couldn't pass up. It may sound silly, but after the night's fight I felt much more confident than before, and I was ready to go to the devil's maw. The temptation to find out where the mysterious creatures had come from was irresistible. I must persuade the lad to show me the way - although, having learned that I had already killed two of the mysterious predators, he treated me with unusual deference.

"So you're going to stay here?"

"Yeah, well, you killed him, so why not?"

"So where there's one, there's another." The boy swallowed nervously. "You see, there might be more than one pair hunting here, a whole pack. Until we find out how many there really are, we can't relax."

"So what to do?"

"We should go and look. If these beasts were a pair, we could look for the lair. You say they didn't show themselves during the day?"

"Yes, they left before dawn."

"It's weird: they're blind, but they're afraid of sunlight."

It took Daniel a long time to agree to go with me, but in the end, he admitted that it was necessary to go. We decided to leave early tomorrow morning: it was better to have a whole day to spare. In the evening we sat around the fire for a long time, talking about life, speculating about where the dangerous guests had come from. Daniel agreed that they fell out of the usual classification of the animals of our world - he also caught the aura of strangeness around the creature that came to the hut.

Just before he went to sleep, Daniel stared into the fire for a long time, and then he said:

"It seems that there is no one, we can sleep peacefully."

"How do you know?" I wondered.

"When that beast approached, I could feel it. And it felt me, too. You sit, you look at the fire, your thoughts wander far away, you see all the animals in the area. And that thing looked back at me as if it had a rough paw on the back of my head. Why was I scared this afternoon? You were looking at me the same way - so I thought: that's it, the beast came in the daytime. I didn't look into the fire during the day.

I just shrugged. I had all sorts of strange things going on with me, too, and Daniel's words seemed worthy of attention, but nothing more. When I have time, I'll try that, too, but right now I need to sleep.

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