Rose Blumen ~

(Luka)

L - I know that's a shitty plan but... Unless we find a ladder or what to build one?

We look around. What can we scrap and craft together to make a ladder, or even a good rope and hook?

We'll keep our eyes and notice something potentially good hopefully.

We should be able to salvage some cables at least somewhere. We cannot be so unlucky that my plan is the best option...

M - What are these things anyway!

L - The answer to that... Might also be in Forodlystiev...

I show them on my phone the images of old pictures taken ages ago, of monsters that looked fake, but similar as well to what we've met.

Morgan and Orel already saw them, and that's the kind of stories that made them want to come as well.

It's different when facing them for real in an unlit street at night.

Y - I can say they carry more germs than a putrefied body in a septic tank. Don't touch them... And don't get scratched or bitten either.

We look at each other. We're okay for now.

Some friends are dead, but us five stragglers are okay.

We get that if we're bitten we won't turn into one of them like zombies, but rather die from the collection of rabies and plague they carry.

Morgan keeps trying to call her parents for help. She's been crying anxious, but without luck. The network from Cordov keeps rebooting, never allowing her to callanyone.

O - I know you want to investigate Luka... But really if we find an earlier way out...

L - We take it yeah. I don't want to die here either...

I'm just as scared, if not more. I'm mortified it's all seemingly true.

~

We spent another bad night, making plans and fending off the monsters trying to get in.

Morgan found something and called me to check with me.

In the basement, as decrepit looking as one could imagine, since it's a real swamp with feet of water and oily stains or even mushrooms floating.

We kept away from this stinking place until now.

Morgan showed me behind ruptured doors access tunnels, like sewer tunnels stretching into the distance, behind locked fences.

M - Think this goes somewhere?

L - Sewers I guess. Station treatment for waters... They probably follow the main streets from below and then pipes to the old dam.

M - So we might use them to stay away from these things?

L - I don't think so... I'd say on the contrary, it's more where they might be during the day. I...

I don't want to do speleology in this awful place...

Yura checks the waters. It smells foul alright. But it's not as bad as them.

Y - At least we know there are some tunnels. To use or fend from incursions against.

We want to wait for the next morning, but things grow even worse. We hear the main door getting really broken down.

This building is as old as you'd expect sadly. The barricades couldn't do so much against something somewhat driven and persistent.

We're rushing back at things we can barely identify. They scream loud sometimes. They scare us so much we always get frozen hearing them.

Since we realize the front is lost, we climb to the higher levels through the rear staircase.

Shura throws something flammable inconsiderately.

The fire of his impromptu device doesn't start right away.

We continue to flee, to the rooftop.

Meanwhile fire takes below. Dust actually can burn. Things like dry wallpaper or wall paint as well. So do dead plants, even through the cold air. So the fire spreads fast before dawn. We find ourselves trapped on top of a now burning building.

Yura and Shura are losing it and arguing violently.

I shoot in the air to calm them. It works for now, but it won't last.

At dawn break, and before the rooftop finally gives in to the flames and smokes, we jump to the next building and one floor below.

The landing hurts. It's harder in reality than in the movies. I can't feel my knees nor walk steadily for a good minute or so.

But thankfully we all make it.

One of these monstrous monkeys or apes fell down in flames into the alley between the two buildings. It exploded on impact, it looks awful...

O - Okay... How do we cross the lake? Or can we find refuge on the islands until help gets to us?

L - The museum... There used to be a leisure park and docks along with it. I think it had small boats on old pictures.

It's that or the far more distant broken dam, or the unsteady and turbulent river on the north side.

M - Given the size of the museum, we might also find something like a ladder somewhere inside... But the doors...

S - The tunnels then?

L - Yeah... We might find another way down to the tunnels from the zoo, and the botanical museum will be just behind.

Y - Okay then...

We feel a little reunited, with the semblance of a plan. And morning comes again, warming us up a little.

The sight of the burning hospital behind is not nice. The smokes stink and stain. It's hard to believe there was so much left to burn in that old building of bricks and concrete.

We ventured with what little we had saved through the foggy streets. We didn't look back.

We went across the city to reach the locked museum, that looked like a vault to me now... Its huge doors to the lake side are shut from within. But they do look like this greenhouse of a kind might have been made to let small boats go in and out from behind.

The pier outside has sunk with its boats. We can see them at the bottom of the lake there. Now, maybe inside the building... We're not sure, but we'll try. Hopefully one was in dry docks.

Inside the zoo, we head downstairs to their own local access to the tunnel swamps. We find the fenced shelter tunnels here as well.

It's hard work, but Shura and Orel are breaking this lock. Me and Morgan have a last look around the abandoned visitors centre to see if we didn't forget some food last time.

We forgot a bunch of empty alcohol bottles.

They roll into the dust and gather in a corner where older ones accumulated already before we came around.

We weren't the first teenagers to venture around here. And we knew many of them never returned to Cordov...

Morgan picks up a phone that's been lost here many years ago.

I notice rust stains where bullets casings have gradually dissolved and merged with the ground, on some places along the park.

Did they put down the animals?

M - Who was your grandfather again?

I feel a little uneasy, as I share some of her trouble to get over our situation.

L - He was a biology teacher...

A geneticist from a famous institute, who turned into a paranoid whistle-blower one day.

Cordov's county might never have been able to break free from its bigger neighbours...

Without some weapon or power able to make it stand like an equal partner.

The world's politics that eluded me all these years, despite how much mom tried to force her interest unto me. Do they really matter?

We notice weird plants growing in some damp spots. Giant flower buds are almost crawling at visible pace as they grow bigger. They're drinking this water.

We step back from these weird things.

I want to believe my grandfather was only trying to prevent the worse from these people and things...

That he had no part or guilt in the ensuing succession of tragedies.

~