He swallowed the strong alcohol in one sitting and only grimaced when it rolled down his esophagus in a scalding wave and into his stomach.
- Ugh! - I grimaced and went to the fridge, where I chewed off a piece of cheese from a big cube.
Well, my gut was telling me that this was the end, the climax that had been counting down the hours since I received my Gift, and that madness and anger had taken root in the city.
Who hasn't read about the apocalypse, seen a movie, and watched similar predictions on Myth-TV (as people have dubbed one of the TV channels)? And so, at the sight of unfamiliar flying dogs and unseen boars, I didn't even rack my brain and ask the question, "What is this?"
When I was back on the street, my neighbor was still standing there in his T-shirt and shorts and with his gun, muttering something to himself. He only squinted at me with the rumbling cart as I passed by. But when he saw me tossing dead quasi-cabans into it, he was interested.
- What the fuck do you need them for? - he wondered.
- To freshen them up and make corned beef. Can't you see there's a big fox in the world? - I grumbled, putting the third almost whole carcass into the cart. - There'll be a food shortage anyway, and I'll already have something in the basement.
- There's this?! - he marveled. - THIS?! I don't even know what kind of animals.
- And I do not know, but the blood is normal, red, so the meat is normal. Maybe the salt will burn out all the bad stuff in there. And I will not begin to gnaw and chew at once, I will put it aside for a rainy day in jars in the cellar, - I answered with a nonchalant look and loaded the fourth carcass. That was the last of them, I couldn't carry any more with my injuries. And the others were too badly beaten by stones, all the blood had dripped from their wounds a long time ago.
- You're crazy, Alex," shook his head.
- Soon only the crazies will survive, Kim. Think about going crazy yourself," I answered him almost philosophically.
On my property I piled the corpses of animals behind the house, away from the eyes of the neighbors, went home for buckets and a knife and began to siphon blood from the creatures. After collecting a big bucket and a half, I returned home, where I started my own bloodletting.
I tightened the rubber tourniquet on my shoulder, worked my fist until the veins on my left forearm bulged, then, writhing and swearing through my teeth, stuck a needle with a thin rubber tube in one of them. When he loosened the tourniquet, blood pounded from it to the bottom of the jar, as if it had come from a bicycle pump.
- Stop, or I'll die," I said to myself as I squeezed out about a liter of blood. The donors take about half as much, but my situation is more serious, one, and the blood in my body is replenished faster, two. That's okay, I'll survive.
Next, I started collecting all the metal things in and around the house. Scraps of sheet iron, shovels and hoes with rakes, nails, bolts, self-tapping screws, hammers and axes, staples, brackets, pipes, and so on and so forth. Even motorcycle and tractor parts went into action.
While I was collecting the necessary amount of scrap metal, I managed to smack myself morally for my slow-wittedness: what should I have done first, and only after that should I have started bleeding? Now I was wobbling and lurching to the ground, even from a five-kilogram sledgehammer.
I poured the mountain of iron with a bloody magical solution, not missing a centimeter on every piece. By the way, maybe it seemed so because of weakness and exhaustion, but the resulting mixture felt twice as strong as the one I used to create the stone golem. Perhaps this is due to the nature of the unknown animals.
Well, that's it, the only thing left is to wait for the result to manifest, and it should... That's it, the iron moved.
Before my eyes another golem was assembled from metal. This time it was one that could not be broken with simple fangs and claws, and not even a bullet could take it.