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Chapter 13 - Sleepless

 ... in which Lyonya and Tolya are sleeping, Valya is tormented by nightmares, and Boris Sergeyevich gives everyone a small but responsible task

Outside, in the approaching night, a yellowish fog still swirled around the window. Snow was falling from the gray, low clouds that seemed to have completely covered the sky with an impenetrable gray shroud, slowly covering everything around.

Valentina couldn't sleep, despite the fact that the guys had gentlemanly given her one of the pillows. Settling on the floor near the slightly warm radiator, she tossed and turned for a long time, trying to get comfortable on her jacket, but only managed to fall into uneasy sleep for a few minutes at a time. Moments of oblivion quickly turned into surreal nightmares, in which dead children chased Valentina, staggering, surrounded her, reaching out their little bloody hands toward her, and the girl had absolutely nothing to defend herself with.

Valya woke up in horror, seeing through the yellowish haze the white ceiling of the small kitchen, but unable either to fully wake up or to fall back into a deep sleep, she again sank into a nightmare. This time she was walking down a corridor without windows or doors, dimly lit by fluorescent lamps, and somehow knew for sure that it was a basement and she needed to find cartridges, but there were no cartridges anywhere, and the corridor just wouldn't end. Finally, seeing boxes stacked ahead and a familiar figure hunched over them, she happily hurried forward, said something to him, and as she approached closer, grabbed him by the shoulder. But the guy fell backward onto his back and stared at her with his bloodied empty eye sockets. From the box he was sitting on, little plasticine figures popped out. They clung to the girl's legs, preventing her from moving, and climbed higher and higher, trying to jump onto her face to strangle her and gouge out her eyes. Somewhere from above came muffled sounds of the old "Internationale." To the words "arise, branded by a curse," Valentina screamed loudly and woke up again.

It was still quiet and gloomy in the kitchen. A perfectly alive Tolyan, bent into a "G" shape, was sleeping on the kitchen sofa, with his legs hanging off and things folded underneath his head. Leonid was lying on the floor nearby, having wedged his pillow against the refrigerator and stretched out fully. From the room came Boris Sergeyevich's drawn-out snoring.

No longer hoping to sleep properly, the girl sat up and put on her jacket. It seemed colder in the apartment. At least the kettle on the stove had completely cooled down. Valentina struck a match under it and sat down on a stool by the window, resting her hands on the windowsill. Outside, behind the glass, snow was still falling. The girl tried unsuccessfully to make out the place where they had fought with the revived dead yesterday, or rather the small body in a pink jacket that should have been lying there on the road, but apart from snow and yellowish haze, she saw nothing.

On the windowsill stood an empty jar, and there lay a lump of plasticine, left there from the evening. For some reason, Valentina picked it up, feeling the cold hardened surface on her skin, began to knead it in her hands aimlessly, rolled the softened mass into a ball, and then shaped it into a little man. He turned out not as proportional as Boris Sergeyevich's grandson's creation, and more resembled a gnome or a toy doll. Valya carefully examined the motionless figure from all sides and threw it back into the jar.

"Now everything's in order. The main thing is that there is order..."— thought the girl, looking again at the street. For a moment, it seemed to her that a dilapidated truck with a half-ton capacity rushed along the road through the blizzard, with soldiers in greatcoats and rifles seated in tight rows in its bed. But most likely, it was just another continuation of the nightmare.

She was pulled out of her half-sleep by a soft, wrinkled hand that descended onto her shoulder.

"Already awake, Valentina?"— asked Boris Sergeyevich gently.— "And you've put the kettle on, well done."

"I? Oh... Yes,"— replied the girl absentmindedly.

"I have a request for you; I hope you won't refuse an old man,"— the professor handed Valya a thick notebook.— "I don't know your friends, but I'm sure you won't let me down and won't let my work go to waste."

"Certainly, Boris Sergeyevich, don't worry,"— the girl took the notebook seriously and put it in her backpack, lying nearby by the radiator.

The old man looked gratefully at his student and, grunting, began pouring tea.

Soon Leonid and Tolyan woke up too. Silent preparations began. The guys solemnly checked their weapons, put on their outerwear, and started putting on their shoes. Having glanced several times out the window beforehand, the professor now simply watched his sudden guests sadly. When everyone was ready, he quietly unlocked the front door and cautiously peeked into the stairwell. Everything was quiet there. Boris Sergeyevich looked at the boys once more and made the sign of the cross over them.

"Well, God be with you, my angels, extraordinary ones."

"You're religious?"— Leonid asked, somewhat surprised.

"It's just... for precautionary measures,"— waved his hand the old man.

L?nya nodded understandingly in response and went out, stepping into the semi-darkness of the doorway. Behind him, without looking back, Tolyan followed.

"Thank you for everything,"— said Valentina, quietly hugged the professor, and also disappeared into the darkness.

Boris Sergeyevich closed the door. The apartment was again empty and plunged into deafening silence. Only a faint, monotonous tapping on the glass could be heard from the kitchen.

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