Chapter 4: Explorer

Summer in Siberia does see temperatures above thirty degrees Celsius, but that's in the more southern regions. Within the Arctic Circle, it's still cold enough that you need winter gear to move about outdoors.

Still, those accustomed to this weather can head out in just a long-sleeved shirt and long pants. A few young people returning from the city to their hometown walked through the Siberian research base that had been abandoned not long ago.

The research base wasn't large in scope; the group spent just over an hour to roughly cover it.

Teapots, teacups, gas stoves, seat lamps, desk lamps, searchlights — the evacuees had taken only the important things, leaving all the rest of the daily-use items behind.

Don't look down on these household goods just because they were nothing special to the Red Empire, that great manufacturing power; for their resource-scarce little village inside the Siberian Arctic Circle, every one of them was a hot commodity.

There were also those filing cabinets, wardrobes, and cupboards — most made of wood, a few of iron.

The sturdier wooden cabinets could replace the worn-out ones at home. The ones already wobbling could be chopped up as firewood for winter. The iron ones could be dealt with separately.

They even found a few long guns and short guns, plus a jeep that wouldn't start.

An even bigger surprise: they found a grain warehouse. Though it wasn't packed full, flour, canned goods, and the like filled up nearly half the warehouse!

In particular, the internal power supply, heating, and other facilities were still intact. Even setting aside the abandoned supplies, the research base itself was extremely valuable.

Unfortunately, they couldn't find any documents — it looked as if everything of that sort had been taken away.

If it weren't for the mess everywhere inside the base and the signs of people having ransacked the place, one would suspect the base personnel had only stepped out temporarily and would return later.

All these signs gave the young people some ideas about the base, rather than just staring wide-eyed at the abandoned supplies.

As the search moved deeper into the base, a very peculiar door presented itself before their eyes.

Since there were no warning words or conspicuous red lettering, the area behind this door should hold no lethal danger.

The young people exchanged a glance and decided to open this door. Naturally, they looked at the rotary wheel valve on the door — it looked like the device for opening it.

Sure enough, the wheel valve controlled several door bolts above and below the door. And since the base had only been abandoned for a relatively short time, the wheel valve hadn't rusted and turned without any effort at all.

Once all the bolts had retracted, the big iron door swung open amid a screeching, ear-piercing groan.

What met their eyes was a bright, large room in pure white tones, with no dead corners anywhere in it. The iron-grey, glossy-faced steel washbasin and toilet were the most conspicuous parts.

Apart from that, there was also, spread out in the center of the room… a person?

"How can there be a person here?" "Is this person dead or alive?"…

Countless questions spilled out from the young people's mouths all at once. Obviously, no one had an answer.

The reason everyone behaved this way was, unsurprisingly, simply that they were nervous.

After all, in a base assumed to be completely empty, suddenly finding a person — who wouldn't panic?

So they could only keep firing off questions, hoping someone could answer, to ease their tension.

But who would have the answers?

When the cycle of constant questions with no answers finally petered out, everyone looked at each other.

At last, one of the bolder ones stepped forward and carefully examined the person sprawled on the floor in a strange posture.

This person was quite tall, but looked emaciated, clearly malnourished. The skin was a bloodless, deathly white; the hair, nearly shaved, looked black. The eyeballs couldn't be made out, because they had rolled back so far that only the whites could be seen.

The chest showed no obvious rise and fall, but there was also no pungent stench around.

He felt for breath at the person's nose, then reached for his neck; in the end, the result only made him shake his head.

Seeing that gesture, everyone knew this person hadn't made it.

"What do we do? Leave him here?" someone asked.

Everyone pulled a face of disgust at that suggestion. One of them said, "I was planning to use this place as a secret base. Leave a dead body inside?"

In the end, it was the leader — also the boldest — of the young people who said, "Come give me a hand, let's carry him out and bury him. Consider it putting this matter to rest."

In the world of the Russians and the West, of course, there's no notion of "resting in peace only when buried in the earth." But to dispose of a body, the cheapest and cleanest method is, naturally, to dig a hole and bury it.

Cremation requires gathering fuel; a proper burial needs a sturdy enough coffin, or a specially prepared grave plot for the dead. Both are more trouble than just digging a hole and burying someone.

If you just dump the body, modern notions of hygiene naturally bring to mind foul smells, plague, and other nasty consequences. So digging a hole and burying it is still the least hassle.

In this world, so fantastical it's absurd — where rumors of mutants, vampires, werewolves, and zombies are everywhere — a dead person is actually the least scary thing of all. So long as he doesn't get back up.

So once the decision to bury the body was made, none of the young people objected. Two on the hands, two on the feet, two supporting the waist on either side — they were just going to carry the person out, find a spot, and bury him.

As for digging tools, there were some ready to hand. Though not enough for everyone, burying one body wasn't a big deal — the only question was how deep. Too shallow, and wild beasts might dig it up and eat it; too deep, and it wastes effort.

Only, this dead man was heavier than expected; even six big men hauling him left everyone panting and exhausted. So much so that when they walked out of the underground research base, they didn't notice that the corpse, exposed to sunlight, had undergone a slight change.

In summer Siberia, sunlight is a precious commodity, because it brings warmth. So the group's route didn't deliberately avoid the sun — they just took the straightest line possible, heading toward the grove of trees outside the research base.

The surface of the research base was a place disguised as an ordinary settlement. This ensured that satellites or any high-altitude reconnaissance means would absolutely fail to spot anything fishy about the location.

Back when the base was operational, even the vehicles coming and going wouldn't use military trucks or any fancy cars that had no business appearing in a place like this.

So, following such a layout, there naturally was a small church and a graveyard, as any village must have. The young people intended to bury the person there.

Even if government people came back, they wouldn't bother counting whether this graveyard — whether it was for show or actually in use — had one extra hole, would they?

What they didn't know, however, was that under the blazing yellow sun, the supposedly dead body in their hands was regaining signs of life.

(End of this chapter)