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considerate. Knackers!’
    ‘How was I supposed to know it was a dog?’ Artyom had taken offence. ‘It gave out such sounds . . . And then, a week ago they were talking about seeing a rat the size of a pig.’
    ‘You believe in fairy tales! Wait a second and I’ll bring you your rat!’ Andrey said, throwing his machine gun over his shoulder and walking off into the darkness.
    A minute later, they heard a fine whistle from the darkness. And then a voice called out, affectionately, coaxingly:
    ‘Come here, come here little one, don’t be afraid!’
    He spent a long time convincing it, about ten minutes, calling it and whistling to it and then finally his figure appeared again in the twilight.
    He returned to the fire and smiled triumphantly as he opened his jacket. A puppy fell out onto the ground, shivering, piteous, wet and intolerably dirty, with matted fur of an indistinct colour, and black eyes full of horror, and flattened ears.
    Once on the ground, he immediately tried to get away but Andrey’s firm hand grabbed it and held it in place. Petting it on its head, he removed his jacket and covered the little dog.
    ‘The puppy needs to be warmed up,’ he explained.
    ‘Come on, Andrey, it’s a fleabag!’ Pyotr Andreevich tried to bring Andrey to his senses. ‘And he might even have worms. And generally you might pick up an infection and spread it through the station . . .’
    ‘OK, Pyotr, that’s enough, stop whining. Just look at it!’ And he pulled back the flaps of his jacket showing Pyotr the muzzle of the puppy that was still shivering either out of fear or cold. ‘Look at its eyes - those eyes could never lie!’
    Pyotr Andreevich looked at the puppy sceptically. They were frightened eyes but they were undoubtedly honest. Pyotr Andreevich thawed a bit.
    ‘All right . . . You nature-lover . . . Wait, I’ll find something for him to chew on,’ he muttered and started to look in his rucksack.
    ‘Have a look, have a look. You never know, maybe something useful will grow from it - a German Shepherd for example,’ Andrey said and moved the jacket containing the puppy closer to the fire.
    ‘But where could a puppy come from to get here? There aren’t any people in that direction. Only dark ones. Do the dark ones keep dogs?’ one of Andrey’s men, a thin man with tousled hair who hadn’t said anything until now asked as he looked suspiciously at the puppy who had dozed off in the heat.
    ‘You’re right, of course, Kirill,’ Andrey answered seriously. ‘The dark ones don’t keep pets as far as I know.’
    ‘Well how do they live then? What do they eat, anyway?’ asked another man, scratching his unshaven jaw with a light, electric crackling sound.
    He was tall and obviously battle-hardened, broad-shouldered and thickset, with a completely shaven head. He was dressed in a long and well-sewn leather cloak, which, in this day and age, was a rarity.
    ‘What do they eat? They say they eat all kinds of junk. They eat carrion. They eat rats. They eat humans. They’re not picky, you know,’ answered Andrey, contorting his face in disgust.
    ‘Cannibals?’ asked the man with the shaved head, without a shadow of surprise - and it sounded as though he’d come across cannibals before.
    ‘Cannibals . . . They’re not even human. They’re undead. Who knows what the hell they are! It’s good they don’t have weapons, so we’re able to fend them off. For the time being. Pyotr! Remember, six months ago we managed to take one of them captive?’
    ‘I remember,’ spoke up Pyotr Andreevich. ‘He sat in our lock-up for two weeks, wouldn’t drink our water, didn’t touch our food, and then croaked.’
    ‘You didn’t interrogate him?’ asked the man.
    ‘He didn’t understand a word we said, in our language. They’d speak plain Russian to him, and he’d keep quiet. He kept quiet the entire time. Like his mouth was full of water. They’d beat him too, and he said nothing. And they’d give him