Chapter 3 Escape from death. flaming road ( A )

I took out my mobile phone from the inside pocket of my jacket. My boss gave me a smartphone last New Year as a bonus for fulfilling the sales plan. It is even surprising that with all the upheavals of this morning, the phone survived. The time was displayed on the screen of the mobile phone: ten hours twenty-eight minutes. I did not pinpoint the exact time of the start of the attack. I could only estimate that it all started somewhere between nine o'clock and half past ten in the morning. So it's only been an hour, maybe an hour and a half.

Oddly, in my own sense, much more time has passed since the attack.

The good news was that the cellular connection was picked up. In the Moscow region along the Shchelkovsky and Fryanovsky highways, there were many local sections where the signal became unstable or disappeared altogether. But here, in fact, on the main avenue of the regional center, the mobile phone caught well, despite all the shocks. The only thing that scared me was the low battery level of the phone, less than forty percent. Actually, I regularly put my mobile phone on charge every evening, but today I didn't spend the night in my rented apartment in Shchelkovo, but I didn't "shine" once again with my expensive phone visiting Aslan. The risk of waking up without a phone at all was too great. I saw some guests for the first time, and they absolutely did not inspire confidence in me.

By the way, about a rented apartment. I lived not far from the place where I now had to hide from the hunter. Only two bus stops, less than a kilometer walk. A two-room apartment, I lived in one room, Zhenya Oparev, my colleague, lived in the next room. We paid the apartment equally for two. Zhenya spent the night alone in the apartment today. Interestingly, did my friend manage to get to Moscow normally or did he also come under fire?

I tried to call Zhenya. The call went on, long beeps passed, but no one answered the call. Then I called my work, but that number did not answer either. Who else to call? Sister? Despite the rather strained relationship, Lenka and I occasionally talked on the phone. When was the last time we met in person? It seems like the previous New Year, a year and a half ago. Or even the year before? Yes, it seems so. Then, I remember, I was still a student and came from Moscow with New Year's gifts for my sister, her husband, and my little niece Irishka.

Of course, they let me in and accepted the gifts with words of gratitude, but I quickly realized that my sister had not counted on my arrival. There was no free place at the festive table, the guests were completely unfamiliar colleagues of Lenka's husband or sister's girlfriends with their gentlemen. Those who gathered talked on topics that were understandable only to them, everyone turned out to be noticeably older than me in age and treated the visiting student with condescension. Half an hour later I bowed and went back to the institute's dormitory, barely having time to get to the chiming clock. Then he vowed to go to visit his sister.

This time, Lenka almost instantly answered the call, as if she was already holding the phone in her hand. There was noticeable excitement in her voice.

- Vitya, is that you? Thank God you're alive! Are you all right?

- Yes, I'm alive. Around a lot of burning cars, a lot of corpses. Can you explain what happened?

"Brother, don't you watch TV?! Breaking news is broadcast on all channels. My husband just called from the military unit and said that the Americans attacked our country!

What other Americans? There's an alien ship!

"I'm giving you what my husband told me. All our cities were attacked at the same time, a lot of people died! So don't stick your head out, stay at home, don't go outside. Sorry bro, my husband is calling me. Bye! Take care of yourself!

The conversation was interrupted. I put my phone away and cursed softly through my teeth. Well, what a fool! His brother almost died and now lies on the pavement, escaping under the bottom of a burning car, and his sister turns it off to chat with her husband!

After calming down a bit, I thought. It turns out that not only here in the modest Shchyolkovo near Moscow, God knows what was going on. This happened in every city in the country. I reactivated the blacked-out phone screen and opened the Internet. News sites loaded very slowly. When the pages did load, what they saw frankly frightened: entirely reports of fires, disasters and deaths. I read the disparate panic-soaked news, trying to understand for myself the big picture of what was happening.

Firstly, I was convinced that my sister was wrong. It was clearly not the Americans behind the attack, and not only Russian cities were attacked. Behind the flurry of Russian emergency messages, there were news about fires in Tokyo, about the mass appearance of UFOs over the Philippines and Malaysia, about the fall of civilian aircraft in Germany and Austria. I also found reports of an air attack in Los Angeles, Detroit, New Jersey. About the alarmed American Air Force and fierce battles in the sky over America. I also immediately drew attention to the message about the failure of all satellite television channels and the GPS navigation system that was turned off all over the Earth. It seems that at the very initial stage of the invasion, and I had less and less doubt that an invasion was taking place, unknown aggressors destroyed all earthly communication satellites.

But where is the reaction of the authorities to what is happening? Where is the president's appeal to the people? Where are the speeches of high army officials with brave speeches that the enemy will be defeated? More than two hours have passed since the start of the war, and there has been no official response. Strange...

The phone beeped in alarm, announcing that the battery had less than twenty percent charge left. I turned on the power saving mode and tried to connect to foreign news sites. But the pages didn't load. And then I got an SMS message that the money in the account had run out. Once again, I swore quietly. After all, I regretted the money for unlimited Internet ... It was not possible to use the service of temporary replenishment of the account with a zero balance, so the phone had to be removed, now it could only perform the function of a clock.

***

It was a hot summer afternoon. I wanted to drink more and more - the "dry" after yesterday's booze, and the sunny weather, and the vile bitter taste in my mouth from the caustic smoke affected. The tongue was completely numb, and felt dry and rough to the touch. The minibus, under which I was hiding, definitely did not burn anymore and, on the contrary, gradually cooled down. I looked back at the place where I lay before. There was a large puddle of hardened brown plastic on the pavement. It was terrible to even imagine what would have happened if I had stayed in that place.

The flying ship had not been heard for a long time, and I ventured to look out of my shelter. He crawled to the wheel, looked out of the corner of his eye and ... froze in horror. The flying hunter hasn't gone anywhere. He only rose higher and now hovered motionless near a high-rise hotel on the banks of the Klyazma River. Against the background of a thirty-story building, it was finally possible to examine the alien ship in all its details and estimate its size. A triangular silhouette tapering downwards, five stories high, without any portholes or windows. Metal body with numerous rectangular and square blotches, several well-marked turrets.

Cold with horror, I slowly pulled my phone out of my pocket and carefully took several pictures of the terrible ship with different zooms. I managed to take three pictures, after which the phone beeped angrily about the lack of battery power and turned off. But even this single signal of a mobile phone made me shudder and roll back under the bottom. You need to turn your phone back on! Firmly squeezing the device with both hands and leaning on it with my whole body so that the melody at startup did not sound so loud, I felt like a reconnaissance officer at an enemy facility. Yes, it is deadly, but what if these materials of mine will help earthlings in the war against aliens?

***

Time stopped. The minutes of this endless day dragged on like hours. The thirst was getting stronger, there was no longer any strength to endure it. The head did not want to think about anything but the proximity of the river and the saving moisture. It seemed to me that I could even hear the murmur of water flowing under the bridge. The water was close, but at the same time inaccessible. It drove me crazy.

The flying hunter behaved unpredictably. He could hang at one point for more than an hour, then suddenly take off abruptly and, rapidly picking up speed, walk along the avenue from the railway bridge to the very end of the city to the turn to neighboring Fryazino. The ship almost never turned into secondary streets, trying to control the central avenue of the city.

Only in the evening, after nineteen hours, the flying death suddenly changed its behavior. The alien ship began to visit other areas of the city of Shchelkovo for a long time, only for five to ten minutes, from there the sounds of distant shots and explosions could be heard. I tried to understand the new logic of the hunter's behavior, but I couldn't. The flying ship then went away from the prospect for ten whole minutes, then only for a couple of minutes. And invariably returned to the main street, hovering motionless near the high-rise hotel. Something attracted the flying hunter to this hotel. Maybe because it's the tallest building in the entire area? Or the fact that people were hiding inside? Several times I noticed how a hunter fired at the windows of a high-rise hotel.

Already at dusk, the triangular hunter again flew over the railroad and completely disappeared from view. I waited for his return for more than forty minutes, but the alien ship did not show up. And then I decided to risk running to the river. It was twenty-two hours eleven minutes when I crawled out from under the burned-out minibus, straightened up and looked around at the former minibus. It was completely burned out, the front part was actually missing. In the darkened shapeless heaps in the cabin, the remains of burnt people were guessed. The aunt who grabbed me also couldn't get out of the burning car and died along with the others. I hurriedly turned away to calm myself and drive away the ensuing nausea.

Every second looking around and looking at the sky, I cautiously moved towards the river. I had to climb over the blockage from the cars, where a jeep and a passenger car that was burnt beyond recognition fell on top of an ambulance that had been knocked down on its side. The ambulance and the jeep did not burn down, but inside I saw only corpses and puddles of clotted blood.

The automobile bridge across the Klyazma River was completely destroyed, as were the pedestrian bridges on the right and left. The apotheosis of the destruction was a large intercity bus that had fallen off the bridge and was now sticking upright in a shallow river. The front of the long bus was in the water, while the back was caught on the reinforcement pins on the collapsed bridge. A little further on the bank of the river lay a traffic police car torn to pieces and a couple of mangled cars. Inside all the cars I saw only corpses.

I was very thirsty, but it was scary to go down to the river. From here, from the height of the bridge, at least I could control the sky and hide in case of danger. If you go down to the water, then a silent hunter could suddenly appear unexpectedly. But there was nothing to do, thirst forced to take risks. Cautiously descending to the bank of the river along an inclined reinforced concrete slab, I found myself near the water. He listened for the sound of shots and explosions, but everything was calm. But I thought I heard some sounds coming from a broken bus. However, turning in that direction and frozen in anticipation, I heard nothing.