Verkhoyansk is located in the northeastern part of Siberia, and the phenomenon of extreme day and night does not occur, but even so, it is a typical example of short days and long nights. It would be dark as early as around 8 o'clock in the evening, even if there is no snowstorm
The influence of darkness in a day is always much rarer than bright snowy days.
The current time is 23:29 in the middle of the night. The minute hand of the thick and sturdy cuckoo wall clock in the wooden house moves forward and points to the half-point amid the "click" sound driven by the chain. The hidden door on the top of the wall clock opens, accompanied by a small sound of reeds.
The bird pops up to tell the time. This is a classic MaJaK cuckoo wall clock, with an embossed watermark of 'Made in USSR' on the dial, originating from Moscow.
The scratches and dust on the dark brown wall clock indicate that this cuckoo wall clock is old. The built-in sheepskin air box may be leaking, so the cuckoo’s chiming sound is too small. But this is not considered
Every time the loud chime sounds, the people in the room who are still awake will feel a sense of awe, like an alarm bell being rung.
The stove is still burning, and the huntress is adding firewood to the stove. If there is no accident, the stove will keep burning for the next twenty-four hours. The snowstorm has caused the temperature to drop to an unimaginable minus seventy degrees, and the boiling water will be raised into the air in an instant.
It turns into a piece of ice crystal. Once the stove is extinguished, the room temperature will reach a level that is unacceptable to ordinary people. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of the night watchman is to ensure that the stove continues to burn.
Vika sat on the edge of the wooden window holding the shotgun, staring intently at the snowstorm outside the window, or rather those golden fireflies in the snowstorm... Yes, they never left, those devils. It's seventy degrees below zero.
In the severe cold, those figures were frozen in the darkness of the coniferous forest like steel concrete, watching them. This seemingly eternal surveillance made him feel cold all the time.
"There's not much firewood left." The huntress whispered after adding firewood to the stove. A trace of worry appeared on her face, and she turned to look at the fire pit deep in the wooden house.
The little girl and her brother, who were wrapped in jackets on the kang, had already eaten some soaked frozen fish earlier and fell asleep. The old hunter’s breathing had become more stable after the operation, but whether he could survive the recovery period was still unclear.
is a problem.
Dusha, the American Adam and the KGB lieutenant colonel were resting on bearskins spread on the ground. Due to the existence of permafrost on the ground, houses in the entire northeastern Siberia would be a few feet above the ground. As long as there was fur to keep warm, sleeping on the ground would not be a big deal.
question.
At twelve o'clock, the Lieutenant Colonel and Dusha will be awakened by the cuckoo's time signal to change shifts. Huntress and Vika can temporarily sleep and rest. The next shift will be changed at four o'clock in the morning. Adam and He took the initiative.
The lieutenant colonel who was on duty for two shifts kept vigil until the next morning.
The list and time period of the vigil were arranged by the lieutenant colonel to ensure that nothing would go wrong during the vigil. For example, if the enemies Huntress and Vika were arranged together, no matter which one wanted to do something outrageous, the other would stop it.
...For example, if the robber brother and sister are arranged to watch together at night, I am afraid that when others are asleep, the shotgun in the wooden house will suddenly explode. No one wants to see this happen.
The vigil between the huntress and Vika ended in half an hour. After ensuring that the stove would not go out within half an hour, the huntress got up and quietly walked to the door of the wooden house with nothing to do. This behavior did not cause any confusion at the window.
Vika paid too much attention, because no one would think that the huntress was crazy and wanted to rush out of the wooden door.
The structure and safety of the wooden house are not reassuring. The only entrance and exit is a wooden door that can only use a wooden board as a temporary door bolt after the door lock is broken. In order to add some comfort, Adam and Vika also worked together to
The heavy cupboards filled with glass jars and miscellaneous items were moved to the door and set up as a roadblock.
The huntress stood in front of the cabinet blocking the wooden door. There were various bottles and jars and dried herbs piled on it. What mainly caught her eye were the glass jars, most of which were the glass of pickled cucumbers or pickle jars.
The jar was filled with all kinds of strange things again.
The huntress bent over with her hands on her knees and looked in front of a wine jar. Inside was a curled up long gray and olive snake with a triangular head, a blunt snout, and a pattern on the back of its head in the shape of "><", lying on the jar.
It's not clear whether it's dead or in hibernation due to the season, but just by looking at the excrement at the bottom of the jar, we can confirm that it was kept inside by an old hunter.
"Arctic Viper." The female hunter tapped the surface of the jar with her finger, and easily determined the species of this venomous snake, because it was the only snake found in the Arctic Circle.
She glanced at the venomous snakes for a few times and then looked at the disturbing golden fireflies outside the wooden window next to Vika, and suddenly said, "Do you think snake venom will be useful on those things outside?"
Vika raised his head and glanced at the huntress. He was probably a little surprised that this woman would actually take the initiative to talk to him. He was silent for a while and said, "'Devils are spiritual beings. They can appear in human form. They are enemies defeated by gods.
', I don't think snake venom will be useful to devils."
"Who knows if you haven't tried it? I have only heard of devils in the Bible before. Maybe devils are just creatures similar to us humans, but they just have extra horns, and they are injured by arrows.
They will also die. Under the iron fist of materialism, what monsters and monsters will not be destroyed by tracks and muskets?"
"Are you giving me confidence?" Vika paused and sneered.
"Yes, I am giving you confidence." The huntress gently scratched the glass jar with her thumb, "People will do many irrational things when they go to extremes."
Vika turned her head silently, the meaning of the huntress's words was self-evident.
"But you heard those devils calling 'their' names before." He lowered his voice to the lowest level and glanced in the direction of the fire pit from time to time.
When the devils gathered in the cabin, those bewitching whispers and the hissing of snakes walking on the snow were indeed discussing the people in the cabin. To be precise, they were discussing the pair walking in the snowstorm.
Mysterious siblings.
They most likely came just for the pair of young children. They gathered outside the wooden house like blood-thirsty bats and like a swarm of hyenas. They were waiting for the people inside the wooden house to obey their greed and bloodthirsty and throw out fresh food.
Only when flesh and blood satisfy them will they leave willingly.
"They have a problem!" Vika's voice was very firm, and the eyes that looked at the little shadow on the fire bed were full of fear and a kind of crazy light.
"Devils are only attracted to devils. Didn't you hear what the American said? The way they appear on the snow is very strange. Only abnormality will attract abnormality!"
"What if you hand them over and those demons still don't let us go?"
"Then we'll talk about it then."
"We'll talk about it then?" The huntress took a deep breath and controlled her voice, "We don't gamble with our lives, especially the lives of children!"
"Children's lives? Doesn't the motherland let the children be at the forefront during the war?" Vika suddenly sneered.
"That's different." The huntress frowned, and suddenly she looked Vika up and down again, "You...shouldn't be from Verkhoyansk?"
"This has been Stalin's place of exile since a long time ago. Those who are harmful to national security and anti-Soviet elements will be exiled here, and this is no exception to this day." Vika pinched the handle of the shotgun and glanced at the huntress again, " I don’t think you are a local either.”
"I came back to my hometown from Moscow, so I can only be considered half a local."
"Haha... Really?" Vicardo glanced at the woman and changed the subject, "There is not much food in the house. The food will be gone by tomorrow at the latest. If the snowstorm hasn't stopped yet, what do you think? What happens down there?”
What else can happen when there is no food? Of course, it is to do everything possible to find something to eat, jars of sauces, weird herbs, even that hibernating Arctic viper.
Until in the end there was nothing left to eat... The female hunter slowly moved her eyes away and looked at old Alian who was still sleeping on the fire bed... But for a moment she closed her eyes again.
She felt that things would not develop to that point.
"I will take my sister out of here alive, even though she is an idiot who doesn't understand anything." Vika looked at the huntress and said word by word, "If you want to live, I hope your head can It spins as fast as your bow and arrow."
"Don't do anything stupid." The huntress stared at Vika, "Although I really want to kill you right now, I still want to advise you, don't do anything stupid before the blizzard stops. Maybe the blizzard will end tomorrow. You will regret it if you do something stupid!"
"The snowstorm will stop tomorrow? Do you believe this when you say it? And do you need me to say it clearly?" Vika stared at her, "You should be aware that there are too many people in this wooden house now. There’s not enough food to spread between your mouths...especially when there are three wastes.”
It goes without saying who the three wastes refer to.
Old hunter, children and siblings.
The former requires a lot of food and firewood to keep the fire warm during the recovery period due to the surgery. The latter, despite being two children, had proved that their food intake was no less than that of adults during dinner. According to physiology, these two The child should be in the... growing stage?
Now the food reserves in the wooden house only have one frozen fish and three slices of bread, and the amount will be completely reduced to zero for breakfast tomorrow.
"But, if the three of them didn't exist, maybe we could have lasted longer." Vika said, "No one knows when the blizzard will stop, and those monsters outside just need to be satisfied... want me
It's better to say..."
"Shut up." Huntress said.
"You are not related to that old man. If I am right, you are also a temporary refugee here." Vika took a deep breath and looked at the huntress who interrupted her, her eyes flickering, "You should be able to tell In this case, it is unlikely that he will survive. The long-term pain is worse than the short-term pain. Throwing him out to give us a chance to live is the most correct thing to do. You know this."
"It's not you who made him unable to survive?!"
"The only thing to blame is that he seems to be living alone in the suburbs with a large sum of rubles, and my sister and I happen to need a sum of money for traveling back to Moscow." Vika said coldly, "And even if I don't shoot him,
, in this current situation of food shortage, who do you think will be the first to be operated on in the event of internal strife? The old, the weak, the sick! He is already old, and this is his fate! The next one after him will be those two children!"
The female hunter's face looked ugly, and she already showed signs of touching her bow.
"Face the reality!" Vika hissed, "Who do you think your sense of justice can save? Can your sense of justice be used as food? That old guy and those two kids are the bastards in this house now!"
The huntress who started the topic wanted to persuade Vika, and now Vika didn't want to persuade the huntress? I'm afraid only the huntress in the whole cabin would object to the matter of dealing with the old hunter. As for the pair of children...
.It’s not too late to solve it later.
"I don't want to discuss this anymore." The huntress gave Vika a cold look and interrupted the conversation.
The wooden bird on the top of the cuckoo clock pops up at exactly the right time to tell the time at twelve o'clock.
Vika stopped talking, watching the female hunter twitching her lips, holding the shotgun and turning her head to look out the wooden window again. The black silhouettes who were watching them silently seemed to be whispering and laughing at the heated discussion in the wooden house at the moment.
At the sound of the time, the KGB commander on the fur on the ground suddenly opened his eyes, and woke up Dusha, who was curled up and sleeping. Under the extremely reluctant expression of the other party, she stood up and walked towards the huntress and Vika to change shifts.
When Vika passed Lieutenant Colonel Andre, he suddenly asked in a low voice, "The Lieutenant Colonel didn't seem to be sleeping much... Did you hear our chat just now?"
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei stopped and glanced at Vika, looking down condescendingly. His gaze was calm without any fluctuation, but it could put great pressure on people, but even so, Vika did not avoid his gaze... because he thought what he said
Nothing is wrong, this is a problem they cannot avoid if they want to survive the blizzard.
Until the end, Lieutenant Colonel Andre turned around without answering and went to the stove to boil water. Vika hugged her sister and whispered a few words with a calm expression, then found a corner to sleep on the fur on the floor.
Got off.
Deep in the wooden house, the little girl wrapped in a leather jacket moved slightly, her face with her eyes closed was peaceful and unmarked.