- So it's working," - said Eduard. Now he looked like a contented cat that had just eaten a bowl of fresh, natural sour cream. - Let's go back, we need to collect arrows and return golems. Archers, turn your heads in all directions. Where there are three shadows, there might be a fourth.
- They don't seem to fly in flocks," - the namesake said. - Three of them is a fair number.
- And if there aren't? That's right.
We drove another five minutes, gathering a huge crowd of zombies, then turned around and drove back to the bridge. There we quickly disposed of the unpleasant and scary entourage, reported that the experiment had been a success and that we now had a weapon against shadows, and then returned to town as a squad, where we gutted three small stores, scooping out all the food we could find that wasn't spoiled. It was mostly cereals and pasta, cooking oil, condiments, and salt and sugar. Semi-finished foods went bad a long time ago, and there were very few canned foods in these stores.
- Eduard? - I called out to the wizard as the process of gutting the third store was nearing its end.
- What?
- I want to go around, see the mutants.
- For blood for golems?
I nodded.
- Are you asking me to go with you?
- Nah," - I shook my head negatively, - "I don't need you, but the leader's crawling around inside somewhere, too lazy to go looking, not wanting to waste any time, and you're the only one of the ringleaders; you tell him where I'm going.
- I've been so brave since I found out shadows were vulnerable," - he grinned. - Don't let your swords go at the proper moment. We found arrows through the shadows that were all rusted and no longer tinted red. I wondered if the same thing would happen to the swords.
- Thanks for the warning.
I took Samurai, Arachnid and Chappy. The latter have two darts each, each with tips treated in my and Eduard's blood. These weapons would be my last trump card if the swords really stopped working, losing their abilities after frequent hits on the zombies.
I didn't see the living, flesh-and-blood creatures until half an hour later. In frustration and anger that I was failing and risked leaving empty-handed, I forgot all about time and wheeled around the area where my comrades were robbing the stores.
That a nibble had happened, I realized when I saw Chappy covered in a thin, translucent whitish cloth. The golem instantly ripped it open, but a second later a new shroud was thrown over him from another point. And then a third. It was only after that that I got a good look at whoever was doing this.
The creature looked like the love child between a shark and an octopus grown in the cooling pond of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, weighing at least half a ton. Several tentacles, which the mutant used instead of hands, quickly, quickly wove a piece of cloth from the frothy saliva that flowed generously from each monster's enormous mouth. Creating a piece of weightless-looking and transparent as the finest silk, a flap of shroud as big as half a sheet, the creature shook off sharply with its tentacles, casting its net fifteen meters away. From the way the thing stuck tightly to the golem's body, it was obviously sticky.