(Luka)
A - Maybe some people managed to flee to Lone Down, and to get welcomed instead of shot, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Lone Down is like another forbidden area, but of a different kind.
Not because it had an awful outbreak like in the lazaretto; but because it has automated defence systems and closed all its roads even longer ago.
It's another small county or city state, isolationist, where no one foreign is allowed to go.
So it's like... Despair.
O - Some people fled there?
A - I saw some cars heading that way to try yeah...
L - Why... Are you two here then? If Cordov has burnt, that means you didn't come to help us. Why are you here?
They look at each other, nodding in agreement answering me.
A - because we recognised some aspects of the monsters that ravaged Cordov. And we had some unfinished business in the area. Now that we have nowhere to return to, we decided to come back here to seek the end of it. Then we saw the fire in Bookfield street, and followed.
The others are still trying to get what they really mean. I heard it clear.
Shan moves her head oddly. She's wary. Artom notices it.
A - We should start moving.
~
I feel like I know them. Because my mother heard of them. Others, trying to expose what awful things have been hidden. Others who knew more about what is going still to this day, on this forsaken corner of the world.
All the terrible things that have been going on, over the last fifty years or more.
Shan took some medicine out of her bag and gave them to Shura. He took it without asking and it seemed to ease his pain. I was helping him walk as we headed north, following our two heavily armed adult friends.
Y - What was that pill?
A - A medicine we developed a while back. It won't cure him, but it will halt the progress of the... symptoms.
O - Where did you come in? We need to get out.
A - I told you...
Orel becomes aggressive again. Of course we can't believe that Cordov has fallen just from their words. Pictures and videos don't cut it. Facing monsters here neither.
He just needs to see it for himself. We all do, a little. But my personal priority is elsewhere.
So I turn toward Artom and Shan to insist.
L - I'm coming with you. I want to know. I need to know.
M - Luka...
We debate. We argue.
Artom and Shan are letting us decide, but they move forward and I follow with as much determination.
As afraid as I am for what happened to my home, I won't be able to do much about it either way.
Here, I want to know... And it's my chance right now.
And then came the unexpected decision.
Shan said something we couldn't hear.
A - I know... If we go back, we risk running out of time to investigate... But...
Not much time for what? None of us asked at the time and they didn't elaborate. They seemed to have some empathy for us they didn't expect. They didn't expect to find anyone coming here though.
Artom turns around, changing his mind.
A - Let's go back to Cordov...
He warns us again though. The city is dead. It won't be pretty. We won't like what we find.
Probably true, but we need to face that the world has met its end.
~
We followed another street out of Krikfalgorod. Then we headed into a tunnel that was not dissimilar to the sewer-like shelters. Heavy stalactites hanged everywhere.
Through the tunnel length, we passed below the wall of the lazaretto and ended out inside a kind of quarry, a good hike away from sight.
Fences, doors, and broken walls lied there unceremoniously.
They unsealed this remote way through, that is away from the once patrolled wall. They know the area better than I...
From there outside, we hoped inside their small truck that they left there before, and we headed back to our hometown.
Shura's bleeding wounds are okay, if not better, but his infection tires him.
We have until the end of the day rolling to reach the city.
What a day...
Shan drives. Artom speaks for the both of them.
Like my mother, they grew in the ghost city of Forodlystiev. But they were more involved in what happened then.
There was a secret laboratory we learn, headed by a mad scientist from all they describe.
Henry Gains. He made inhuman experiments on people. All studying this weird form of life he either found or developed, with highly mutagenic power. He caused the death of dozens if not hundreds of people, using them as guinea pigs...
They killed him back then Artom said, when they were about our age.
He speaks with a monotone voice, but it's heartfelt.
What they experienced was stuff of horror stories. A background not unlike ours, but with more evil people, and the first real outbreak that condemned the city.
They thought it would be over as they escaped. But after the evacuation, they had to hide what had been done as some other forces looked to recover everything from these works.
Some people still hidden held some power over the politics and they chose to remain discreet to save their lives.
And now, so many years later after they thought it would all be over, well, it happened again.
A - No. This time is so much worse. Every other county has gone silent. The networks are down. It's like the entire world has been affected just the same.
The radio gets nothing. The computers and phones neither. It's all gone.
No other cars follow the roads. And in the distance, Cordov is covered in smokes that look ominous.
A - I'm sorry to say, but it seems the world is done guys. Not just Cordov.
We stop on the upper hills and outskirts of our ravaged hometown. The landscape is entirely orange and pink. Weird colours float all over the burnt and stained ruins. No one is seen walking through the rubbles and streets.
It's a landscape from hell that shocks all of us.
We're gawking, feeling stupid, feeling lost and sad.
~
Shan plundered the nearby house.
Artom shot and burnt some kind of big monstrous dog that came around aggressively.
Night has fallen and weirder things have begun pouring out like mutant cockroaches. It's hellish.
We drive away before we get swamped by the melting beasts and their pink fumes we attracted from all around. I vomit by the window of the moving car, sick from their stenches.
Orel is pale. We're all downtrodden.
Someone is just muttering the f word over and over.
Shan drives us somewhere isolated to spend the night hopefully without fighting for our lives over and over.
~
We reached a coastal peak on morning, to watch the more distant landscape and the sea.
The ships have sunk or crashed by the shores in the distance. The usual come and go of automated ships is completely wrecked.
It's not just Cordov.
A - It's been a while already. Ironically, in the lazaretto, you were kinda lucky.
L - And you went back there to find answers... To what happened outside this time. Or everywhere.
A - Exactly. Because for us two now, there is nowhere else to go. Not much time to spare also. It's our final ride.
Shan shrugs, still her face hidden. I think she has scars she's shameful of. She always looks away when eating or swallowing her medicines.
Y - You can't make more of these pills... You're running out of stock.
A - I told you, it's our last ride... So we want to burn it like hell and see it to the end.
~