Chapter 12.

Supply Center.

03.oct.2119.

KANAR. The Capital.

 A street with a rail overpass above the roadway appeared ahead. Cars drove along the pavement every now and then - finally, normal, lively city quarters began. A month and a half of stay in KANAR had passed, and Dragovich still had not visited the capital itself, or, to be more precise, the semi-capital - there were also the SFS people with their right-bank part.

 Over the previous couple of hours, Dragovich and his new friend, Flaxen-H, had already managed to walk about ten kilometers from the place where they were dropped off by a flat-bottomed vehicle, the driver of which did not want to make a big detour and at the same time get into the radar range.

 Flaxen-H was called... Sturmbuster. That was the call sign he chose for himself. According to him, if in Russia they would allow you to write any name and surname you want in your documents, in the USA such ideas were discussed in the past, before the war, he would have written Sturmbammer for himself.

 At first there was a road across a field near the airport, closed since 2115, then there was a path here, to the city blocks, made along rusty rails. According to Flaxen-H, there used to be a ground-level city metro to the airport, the part of which that still functions today ran along that very overpass above the street.

Having made their way along the path that went through the bushes, Dragovich and Flaxen-Haired found themselves in front of a broken asphalt platform with a staircase that went up and led to the platform. Dragovich, not without curiosity, began to look around the picturesquely overgrown with vegetation platform and the overpass, which ran at the level of the second and third floors of the city block. In the opposite direction, to the West, the city high-rise buildings gave way to rural houses, and the overpass, having run a few hundred meters more, descended to the ground.

 The platform they climbed onto was small - at first glance, a little more than a couple of buses or carriages in length, which indicated that full-size trains had never traveled here. And so it turned out - a regular tram, which had appeared from around the corner, was already rattling up the rise to the overpass.

 - And you said that the metro runs here, - Dragovich turned to Flaxen-H, - It's a tram.

 - Our metro doesn't suit him! - Flaxen-Haired answered. - We call it "the metro" because it's on an overpass above the street, can't you see? Like the Chicago one.

 - Where we were, there was an overpass? And that's where it ends, too, - Dragovich objected mockingly, pointing towards the one-story block.

 - We call it whatever we want! - Flaxen-Haired answered, - This tram is not ours, we'll have to wait, - he nodded towards the one approaching the platform.

 - You yourself said that it was a tram.

 - Well, damn, I don't know where and how, but trams can also travel in our metro. I agree that this "drake" is not a train, but a tram. But, in theory, a train can also run here. It just won't fit into this station. In the center, there used to be five carriages. Five carriages - is that a tram in your opinion? It's a train! And trains used to go to the right bank too.

 The tram made a stop, then rumbled on.

 Dragovich began to examine the wall of the glass pavilion covered with posters. Flaxen-Haired also turned towards the posters, wanting to look not at the posters themselves, but at Dragovich's reaction.

 Above, closer to the left corner, hung two rows of military posters with drawings that could be seen in any of the bloc countries, including at home. The only difference was in the inscriptions, in the languages. There was, for example, a comic strip of three pictures, where civilians of various types are at first very nervous, watching a snake-dragon rising above the blood-red horizon, then they go to the recruiting station, where they immediately equip themselves, and now they are standing in a tight formation and pouring fire from various small arms at the reptile, now lying on the ground.

 Seeing such frontal agitation, Dragovich wondered over and over again whether any of the, so to speak, consumers still retained such a primitive vision. The seventh year of the War had begun after all.

 In order not to end up in the formation depicted by the agitation, Dragovich sent his ass to freeze in Siberia. Although "freezing" was still ahead.

 There were also several pictures from the series "being in the rear, we also fight." These at least reflected the modern economic system, from which some quite conscientious citizens like Dragovich himself had flown out. The hospitable front awaited those who had flown out - the rest of the hamsters or squirrels, running in their wheel not as they wanted, but as they should, were in a more protected position, or something. They were more needed in the rear than at the front.

 Of course, everything looked cool and charismatic on the posters, but for himself Dragovich formulated the state of affairs exactly like this - with hamsters and rats that should run in a wheel as they should - he mockingly shared his thoughts with his friends several times back home. Here, among the locals, this was not so relevant. And it was not worth wagging your tongue ahead of time. Only a month and a half here.