(Luka)
I couldn't sleep and I kept shivering, or trembling more simply.
The others managed to sleep nonetheless. I don't know how they managed to.
We were a group of friends from Cordov, going camping at the edge of the world, over the wall...
We all were a little excited to explore these long abandoned cities over the course of a few weeks in the wild together.
We kind of hoped that something would happen. Something weird. Something giving us a thrill or a chill. We were stepping on abandoned grounds with some awareness of what it had meant.
I had finally found enough friends with enough know-how, to go in there. I had my plans, they had theirs. We wanted to see what lied beyond the veil.
And then, everything turned to horrific turmoil before we knew it. Worse than in games and movies, because we truly were in the middle of it, and it did not end.
Beyond the wall of the lazaretto, an entire county with two cities left to rot. They were sealed along with their lake and some of their surrounding mountains, north and south-west.
All had been isolated a few decades ago.
We all knew to some extent it had been an outbreak of something horrific, forcing the authorities to rapidly erect this wall and relocate everyone able to escape.
My mother told me so many times how her dad had been killed inside. And how she never had been allowed to go back.
And since that time, people regularly disappear around here. They go, they take a look in the ruins, and they don't come back.
So many of us thought there could still be some weird pathogen or monsters behind the wall.
How simple things could be.
It took us a few passionate years of investigation for this part of our town's past, and as much preparation, to finally get our expedition there ready.
Finally we could see.
Yura is a biologist friend, always checking the air for pathogenic threats like he would radiation in a meltdown evacuation zone. As we got in, he didn't notice anything especially hazardous.
We all brought our camping supplies for months of stay, with that little forklift truck Orel got for us. We got everything organised like a speleological or high altitude expedition. We got crates of supplies beyond the wall that follows the cross county road.
No one had been patrolling the wall for years now. It was harder and longer to plan enough logistics for this plan and prepare it, than to execute it.
All went swiftly, and we unloaded everything across the wall swiftly, as if we were a trained company on normal business almost.
We didn't want to do something as auspicious as blowing up a part of it to get the truck in directly, but we had organised ourselves very well to get everything we would need across in a matter of hours. Then Orel just had to park his truck a little further away into the free woods.
We established our base camp with the supplies there, just behind that bleached wall. The exterior side looked like any concrete wall, but the inside was flaking white all over and the ground was dusty and white over a good metre as well at least.
It had leaked lead carbonate and other toxic compounds all around, spoiling the ground on the inner side so that nothing would grow around.
But everything was fine as far as we could see.
We hiked to the outskirts of the gorgeous looking abandoned city that nature had slowly been taking over. It looked like a little paradise seen from the top hill side from which we arrived. It looked luxurious in a way. The city growing green all over. The lake behind it looking pristine. Nature going wild and free.
An entire city to play in for just the ten of us, for over months of joyful camping.
If the wind wasn't this chilly, it would really feel like paradise.
The days were unusually warm though, and our hometown slumbering in this season, so we had taken our opportunity of travelling as far as anyone else believed.
Our parents, for those of us who had some who cared, thought we went camping far away elsewhere, toward the neighbouring continental lands.
And for a while as we settled and began partying, it really had been fun holidays, playing around and exploring these urban ruins of this city.
~
Krikfalgorod was fun to explore, although we didn't get inside some of the bigger buildings.
The museum especially, by the lakeside, with a huge dome greenhouse above the water, albeit all dirty now, was catching some of our eyes. Some of us wanted to see. But the doors were still locked and holding strong, and we had enough fun to find right beside in the abandoned zoo next to it. So no one bothered to break their neck trying to get inside some other way when we could find all the fun we longed for more easily besides.
The city is now isolated by two rivers, one just at its north end, and another one much further in the south. Both had broken bridges, that were apparently cut clean by some people knowing what they were doing.
So much for my investigation plan... I couldn't admit to all my friends and their friends right away, why I had really wanted to come here. And that I was now frustrated, because I was stuck in the wrong city... I wanted to investigate Forodlystiev...
That was really annoying. Often I went looking around for a boat, along the city peers and houses near the lake. I had no luck.
The southern road would be the shorter way around, but the river below the broken bridge is down under a real cliff. Climbing down, swimming, and climbing back up, I couldn't do that. Going upstream until we would see the lake, we reached an old broken dam and plant. There was the reservoir, and then the bigger lake above. It would be suicide to swim on the shortest distances near the broken dam, and afterward, I'd just need a boat to cross these cold waters.
And it was already quite a hike away from the city where we camped. So I gave up on it, for now.
The northern river of Krikfalgorod is a fast stream. Not one you'd want to try swimming across either.
There is however a towering building near the broken bridge, that is tall enough that you'd think from its height you might be able to launch a rope or something to reach the other side.
That could be a way to start, but again too much an ordeal for my friends, who mostly came for the fun of the empty city. Why would we break our necks trying to get further into more woods and more of the same?
We never saw any fabled monsters at night like some of the old stories used to say. And Yura didn't notice anything bad in the water as we also heard about. We had brought a few weapons to be ready for anything, and maybe hunt possibly, anyway. For now they were still locked away.
Over the lake I gazed at some times, there's an even older town I wanted to visit someday...
Long abandoned, even before the building of the wall. It had been the birthplace of some awful contagion, covered up as quickly as it went out of control.
My mom educated me on that resentment, against the lying government and others. She aged bitterly in her desire to learn how her father really died out there...
Just beyond the lake...
I'm stuck on the wrong side of the lazaretto.
And comes closer the time to leave. New year passed a while back already.
I was sadly making up my mind over my lost opportunity, when things really went to hell.
~
There was an earthquake. And then, we all got seriously sick. Sick to a point most of us couldn't stand up anymore.
Ironically, we had set our city camp in the creepiest building we had found for fun, which had been a hospital in a previous century.
At least we had rusty beds, but we were like dying there for a while, unable to eat, our guts churning and vomiting.
Our phones lost network connection, and for a moment we really felt like we had been abandoned. But that was not the worst thing to make us feel that way.
Yura's studies friends still standing didn't detect anything special at first. But then their machines did start to notice awful thing rising in concentration in the air.
Most of us had been puking for days when they admitted things were taking a seriously bad turn. The ones not too affected were still sweating nervously.
And then, as we looked at them, helpless, we saw them running away.
Some of them, our friends leaving us there, promised to get help directly and return. Our phones still not connecting, we realised they were really abandoning us to our unknown disease.
A few guys among them I believes a little might want to help, while others I fully knew were just looking to save their skin. I hated them, but there was nothing I could do about it, as I was writhing on the floor.
They left, leaving the five of us behind, the closest group of friends.
Night fell on our moaning and painful despair. No one was left to help us drink or clean ourselves.
We were feverish, trembling, maybe slowly withering or getting slightly better. Hard to say...
My friends were doing a little better than me, doing their best, and so would I.
But that next night... We really began to hear ominous noises coming from outside.
Shura was able to sit on his bed. He looked at me with fear.
S - Did you... hear that?
I nodded, looking pale and now worried. I did... It didn't sound normal...
Maybe it's happening again I thought... Maybe the plague that nearly wiped out Forodlystiev is back. Maybe these tales from our parents about monsters appearing at night to grab and eat the naughty children come true once more...
We were all worried about what may have left the ground with the previous tremors we felt.
And now that Yura's tools were assessing threat levels going through the roof... We felt like we were in a hotpot we needed to escape as soon as we could move.
We hadn't realised yet, that we were actually safer inside the lazaretto.
~