Journey to another world in the subway

Chapter 152 Infection
"Not for myself, but for Natasha, for Seryozha. I don't think about whether I can live, but they must continue to live. Seryozha, for..."——Loosen here hand let go of the pen.

Perhaps this was what he added later, because there is no place to write it below, or because it doesn't matter where it is written.

Then the chronological order, which was disrupted, was restored: "Allowed to pass Nagorno station, thank you. No more strength.

Go forward, fall down.Stand up and keep walking.Unconscious.How long did you pass out? Don't know.Is there blood in the lungs?Coughing up blood.sick?No……"

The skewed letters and twisted lines of words resemble the brain waves of a dying person.

But then he woke up and wrote: "...I can't find the damage."

"Nasimov Street, here we go. I know where the telephone is. I'm going to inform the people at the station... tell them no! Just me... I miss my wife."—his words more and more like disconnected fragments , was dyed maroon.

"Getting through. Do you hear me? I'm going to die soon. Strange. Asleep. No bullets. I want to fall asleep early... Rats surround me, waiting. I'm alive. Get lost!"

The end of the note, apparently written in advance, was written in a very solemn font: "Never attack Tula station, for those who gave their lives to stop it."

But Homer felt that the last words written by the correspondent, before the heart stopped beating forever, were—"I'm alive. Get lost!"
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A heavy silence enveloped the three of them huddled around the campfire.

Homer didn't want to disturb others any more, and silently turned over the ashes in the campfire with his stick.

There, soaked, Ben was dying like a pagan—and waiting for a raging storm inside.

Fate is mocking him.

How he wants to solve the mystery of Tula station!
Because he found this book, how proud he was, and even wanted to show off, because he could solve all the mysteries in this incident alone...

But so what?
Now that the answers to all his questions were in his hands, he cursed his own curiosity.

Yes, when he picked up the book on Nasimov Street, he was breathing through a respirator, and he is still wearing a protective suit.

The correspondent writes that the dreadful disease is airborne, and has no other means of contagion...

Germs had invaded his body, it was possible, and the risk was great.

What a fool he was to be terrified knowing that his life was short!

Yes, it was an urging to him, helping him overcome laziness and conquer fear.

But death never approves of the actions of those who use death for their own ends.

The time period recorded in this notebook has a clear start and end point!
It took one month from the day of infection to death.

What did he have time to do in the limited 30 days...

How to do?
He needs to confess to his companions that he has been infected, and leave them for Kolomna to die—if not from infection, but from starvation and radiation?

And, if the dreadful disease had eaten him, hunters and boys and girls were infected by now too, for they had been breathing the common air.

Especially the hunter, who had spoken to the guards who came out of the blockade when he was at Tula station.

Is there still a glimmer of hope that this terrible infectious disease has spared him and that he can survive and linger on?
If the disease lets him go, he can continue his journey with the hunter, so that the hunter can continue to provide him with wonderful creative inspiration and materials.

Nikolai Ivanovich, a very old, useless and untalented resident of Sebastopol, who used to be the assistant of the subway train driver, after opening the damned diary, Clinging to the ground like a caterpillar, there is no more life, he is walking towards death.

And Homer, a chronicler and a myth-maker, was a splendid butterfly, though he had only one day to live in this world.

Perhaps, this tragedy was a gift from heaven, which also gave him the strokes of a great man, and now everything is ready, and the rest is up to him alone.

Can he reproduce the story on paper in his remaining 30 days?
Did he have the right to ignore this opportunity?

Do you have the right to indulge yourself as a hermit, forget your own experience, voluntarily give up real immortality, and at the same time deprive your contemporaries of the right to know these legends?

Is it the greatest crime, the greatest stupidity, to pass a contagious torch across most of the subway system to someone else or burn one's own manuscripts and then set oneself on fire?
Like all vain and cowardly people, Homer has made his choice, and now he gathers only the arguments in his favour.

Would he have been mummified with the other two bodies standing in the tomb in Kolomna?

What he did was not to publicize the merits of the commanders of Sebastobol. It was they who made the residents of Sebastobol live in isolation. It was their decision to make their own It also made their soldiers lose hope of finding their loved ones.

They voluntarily took up the guard post of this hospice hospital.

There, each of them changed from a guard to a criminal who was sentenced to death and had to die.

At least they don't have to die alone...

What's the point if he sacrificed himself?
Whatever happened wasn't going to stop Hunter.

Homer is carrying the germs, he doesn't know what to do with himself, the hunter should know that, knowing that he talked with the people there at the Tula station.

No wonder he insisted on exterminating all the local residents, even the caravan at Sebastobol Station, and the mention of flamethrowers was not out of thin air...

If both of them had been infected, the infection would have inevitably reached the Sebastobol station.

Bear the brunt, those who have been in contact with them should have been infected, Yelena, the station master, the peripheral garrison commander, and their guards.

This means that in three weeks Sebastopol will first lose its leader, then fall into turmoil, and then the plague will break out, and large numbers of ordinary people will die one after another.

But how did Hunter avoid infection himself?
Why did he return to Sebastopol station even though he knew he might infect others?

Homer gradually understood that Hunter's behavior was not subconscious, and that every step he took was according to a certain plan.

So far, Homer hasn't shuffled his cards.

(End of this chapter)