"Here you are." Eric handed Curtis the flask and looked anxiously at Damian.

"We will," Curtis sighed. "We went out on patrol two hours ago; we should have been back by twenty minutes. Now they will wait for decency and go looking for it. All we have to do is wait."

The men nodded in unison, though everyone was probably thinking,

"They'll find us, how could they? Without communication. In the bunker we found all sorts of stuff, and then, after the disaster, we got all sorts of stuff from the orphaned houses."

Their teacher, Faron Corbin, was not just a regular scientist, he also remembered a lot of things that no longer counted in peacetime. How to make a simple walkie-talkie, for example.

"All you need is a transistor this and a transistor that," he said.

"A few resistors, eleven of them and another six, a lot of capacitors. As well as the antenna, microphone, loudspeaker, on/off switch, DC power supply, two boards of textolite, connecting wires and wires of half and one-tenth of a millimeter diameter."

Then he took a pencil and drew a simple diagram from memory. At this point there were thirty-one operational radios in the village and a dozen more waiting for minor repairs. They worked up to a mile and a half, but that was all that was needed.

Each group that went out on patrol was equipped with communications, but only their radio was carried by Damian, who used it to keep tabs on the Wolfhound.

"All right." Curtis gave the flask back to Eric.

"I'm going to rummage around in the basement. If I'm right and we are in a school from the fifties or sixties, the building is probably equipped with a shelter. Even if everything that is not bolted to the floor has long since been taken out of it, and then the bolted ones have been unscrewed and carried away, the walls have not gone anywhere."

"And the shelter could be connected to the catacombs, of which there aren't too few in the Belford district," Eric said.

"Come on, just don't get caught up in the story."

In spite of his seemingly approving words, there was no enthusiasm in his voice.

"What if it's a polyclinic? Andre asked. "Are we just going to sit here?"

"So we're out of luck," Curtis replied. "We'll wait for our people or come up with something else."

"I'll go with you," Andre said and got up slowly, as if through sheer force.

"Stay here," Curtis stopped him. There was no objection.

***

The sound of footsteps echoed off the walls. At first Curtis was still lurking, but for five minutes now he had given up on caution. A dark corridor, illuminated only by the beam of a lantern - very clean, not even the ubiquitous dust underfoot - flanked him from left and right at a distance of a meter or more.

There were no branches and no niches were envisaged. The tiling on the walls hinted that this was no ordinary basement room with old, unrepaired pipes, but he did not yet dare to guess who might be here and what kind of work was being done.

Maybe they did not get into a school or a clinic at all, but into one of the army buildings, located not on the territory of a military unit, but among residential buildings. Or was this even the local morgue?

No one in the village had ever mentioned this building or the structure at all. The ruins that remained on the surface were considered unpromising. All useful things must have been taken out of them in the early years after the disaster.

The ceiling could easily be touched simply by reaching out. Covered in white enamel, it reflected the light well. Every eight paces, round shades dangled from it. Almost all of them still have light bulbs, another indication that none of the settlers came here.

There was no turn around which a potential enemy could lurk, but a heavy metal door grayed in the distorted light of the lantern. Before opening it, Curtis stood still and listened carefully.

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The old building had a life of its own, the floor creaked somewhere, the wind blew through the long-deprived window openings and howled through the corridors. Water was dripping somewhere. The door separating the ground floor hallway from the stairwell was still being scratched insistently at by the creatures.

He stood for at least ten minutes before reaching for the massive handle. It turned out to be unlocked.

Curtis entered a small room about four by four feet, equipped with the latest pre-war technology. There were tables around the perimeter, with blind monitors staring into the strange face on computers that had long since been turned off. The place was also surprisingly clean, as if the cleaner had just come in yesterday.

In addition, the room seemed habitable, even though it had been standing like that for decades. There was no sign of the desiccated mummies of those who had once worked here, no skeletons - either people had left the workplace and never returned, or they had been carried away by those who were still enjoying the benefits of a bygone civilization.

In the center was another desk with a control panel on which several sensors were still flashing. Allen is indeed right: they used to make very high quality things, since they lasted so long.

His feet carried Curtis forward on their own. If there had been a wolfhound or something worse lurking in the corner, it would have been a headache, but then the place would have been ruined and certainly not preserved in such excellent condition.

He reached for the tuning knob, his fingertips pricking with impatience.

If he succeeds in contacting his own people, help will come very soon, and not only the three of them, but also the hapless Damian, will survive.

Curtis had never seen such a device and did not know how to operate it.

But thanks to some settler knowledge and the 'village high school' - the name given by the survivors to a few spontaneously formed classes. He had some idea of what to do. After all, all electrical appliances are alike, made for people, so all you have to do is think hard and you'll figure it out.

After switching on a few toggle switches, more sensors and green lights came on. Curtis rolled the dial, put on his headphones and immediately turned the sound down, the hissing was too much for his ears.

The moment he started to set the frequency on which the township radios were operating, there was a vibration across the floor.

It only took a moment to rip his headphones off and turn around, but Curtis was still almost too late.

A clawed paw swept a millimeter from his throat. If Curtis had not deviated automatically, he would have choked on his own blood by now.

It took another moment to draw his gun.

Two shots went off into the dark corridor behind the creature's back, He think someone howled there. The wolfhound recoiled, startled by the loud noises, and Curtis snatched a long knife from behind his shin.

He wasn't very good with his left hand, but he didn't dare move it to his right, letting go of the gun, so he threw it as best he could and stabbed the creature in the eye in surprise.

The wolfhound howled and tried to reach the killer with his claws, but collapsed forward instead, snagging the remote control and the setting knobs.

Curtis's chest felt cold and his stomach twisted. He was not at all frightened when the wolfhound attacked, fighting with an excitement and even an impatient enthusiasm for the fight. He was now covered in cold sweat at the thought that the creature could have damaged the valuable equipment.

There was a gurgling sound in the headphones, and through the hiss came a series of hisses, and Curtis clung to them immediately, like a drowning man in a bog - a log that miraculously fell into his lap.

"Where the hell have you been? Martin, have you lost your mind?"

It was a deep, muffled voice, quite different from the soft bass of Allen or the tenor of Greg or Juan usually heard on the radio. And who Martin was, Tim had not the slightest idea, unless he was thinking of the children's fairy tale.

"Shh..." came the reply, and a melodious baritone with clearly mocking intonations muttered.

"Roche Alarie, have some conscience and don't pollute the airwaves. You are not even shouting like a victim, but so that we can be heard from law officer. If you want to deal with the security people there, go ahead. But there is no need to abuse my name."

Curtis stood still, completely unaware of who he was hearing or where they were. A single thought pounded in my head with hammers of blood pounding in my temples.

'Not alone'

After the cataclysm, the survivors did not seek out their fellow compatriots, absolutely certain that other cities would be destroyed and The Capital would be turned into a radiological burial ground.

However cynical that may sound, they had no time for others. They had to get on with their lives, not to slip back into the primitive communal system, at least to preserve the applied sciences and not to forget the history of their own civilization.

Allen pinned special hopes on the latter, believing that people who remember the horrors of fascism would never divide their kind by blood purity, and those who studied the deeds of the Inquisition would be wary of diving headlong into religious fanaticism.

However, from what they had heard, the villagers were mistaken: there were survivors just like them, with far more advanced technology, somewhere very close by, since the connection reached as far as the forest village near Belford. Maybe if they were looking for.

"Where are you?" A slightly embarrassed, husky bass sounded.

There was silence in the headphones, but not around them.

Curtis was startled by the sound of gunshots and the stomping of boots in the corridor.