“Whoever is able to understand women is able to govern the state”

Honore de Balzac

I was lying on the hot asphalt, pressing my cheek against the wheel of a flaming minibus. There was a strong stench of burnt rubber, the right hand was swollen, the palm was raw due to numerous cuts. But the vile smell, the heat coming from above, the broken fists in the blood and the shard of glass stuck in the right palm could be tolerated. Much worse was that the molten plastic from somewhere above occasionally dripped directly onto my back, each time making me wince in pain. I thought with annoyance that the brand new jacket seemed to be completely burned out on the back. A little more, and the thin white shirt will also burn out, and hot plastic will drip right onto my living skin. It became more and more difficult to endure every minute, but it was impossible to move - death hung right above the road.

Is my back on fire? I asked an elderly man lying on the pavement nearby.

The pensioner, without turning his head, squinted his eyes and answered with his lips:

- The flame is not visible. But your clothes smoke a little.

So, it does not burn, only slowly smolders. This is good. I immediately felt a surge of strength and, clenching my teeth, was going to endure further. He looked at his neighbor, who also had a hard time - the pensioner's left arm looked unnaturally twisted at the elbow, like a dislocation or even a fracture. The wound obviously caused the old man suffering, but he endured and did not lose his head from the pain.

We need to crawl away from the burning car. I'm afraid that her gas tank would explode, - whispered my neighbor in misfortune.

“You’ll crawl away, how ...” I grumbled, looking at the charred corpses lying everywhere on the pavement. - Just move and become the same as all of them.

“We’ll have to take a chance, otherwise death is all the same,” the old man whispered, barely perceptibly, by a millimeter, turning his head to the side. “Looks like their ship is moving. Yes exactly! Goes off to the right. In a minute or two it will be closed from us by the high building of the hotel. This is our chance, boy.

From my place, the wheel and skeleton of the burning minibus blocked the damned alien aircraft, but I believed my brother in misfortune. Yes, and there was no longer any strength to endure the plastic hardening on clothes. Another burning drop just fell on my back, forcing me to clench my teeth to a crunch. It is urgent to change the place, otherwise I simply can not stand such torture.

I turned my head and scanned the road. The minibus was blown up in the city of Shchelkovo near Moscow at the very beginning of the bridge across the Klyazma River. Where is there to run? Nearby were only mangled skeletons of cars and corpses lying on the pavement. There is absolutely no way out to change one unreliable shelter for another exactly the same. The fences of the bridge are thin, there is no way to hide behind them from a ruthless and such a well-aimed shooter. Actually, this section of the road could not yet be called a bridge. There was no high slope here, no empty space under the road deck, much less water from below. Just a fenced off stretch of highway that has become a death trap for so many people today.

- Ready? Let's run! shouted the pensioner and, jumping up, rushed straight down the road towards the river.

Still not deciding where I would move from this burning minibus, I also got up. I quickly looked around and decided that I would run behind that gray Volkswagen lying on its side. And he had already taken the first step, when suddenly the body of an old man who had run away about ten meters was torn to pieces. Burning fragments of the body and splashes of blood flew in all directions, next to me a torn off foot flopped onto the road. I fell sharply on the pavement and rolled under the bottom of the minibus.

My heart was pounding in fear. I almost died! Just half a second, and he would have jumped out from behind a burning minibus right under alien bullets. But why bullets? Maybe the enemy fired some kind of beam or energy pulse. I saw only that the unknown shooter does not miss, and each of his shots means someone's death.

It's a pity for the pensioner, he was a good man. He was the first to orient himself in that morning nightmare and knocked me down, completely mad with fear, thereby saving my life. With annoyance and shame, I belatedly realized that for all the time that we had lain side by side on the hot asphalt, I had not bothered to ask the old man's name.

From above there was a strong heat, the body of the machine hissed and crackled. How can you not be roasted alive! I involuntarily imagined myself as a goose roasted in the oven. It became difficult to breathe, I had to unbutton the buttons of my burnt jacket and loosen the collar of my shirt. The tie, which in calmer times felt like a nasty noose, flew to hell. I breathed heavily and often. It was difficult to endure the heat, but still possible, but I was terribly thirsty.

While I was lying near the minibus, I didn’t feel thirsty at all, because there were much more serious reasons for concern: hot asphalt, flames around, burning bodies and plastic dripping on my back. Now, when it was possible to hide from the threat of instant death, both the rough dryness of the tongue and the disgusting metallic-bitter taste in the mouth, which could not be got rid of, began to irritate. In addition, his head ached badly, his temples seemed to be squeezed by a metal hoop. All this together strongly looked like symptoms of poisoning by combustion products.

Perhaps it is poor health that has now become the number one problem. There was, of course, still the threat of an explosion of the gas tank. But I rightly judged that everything that could explode had already exploded in the past hours. Under the bottom of the car, I calmed down a little, pulled out a fragment stuck in my palm, and in a calmer atmosphere began to think about what kind of nightmare was going on around?

I frankly overslept the beginning of the attack. The habit of dozing in a minibus, barely crawling through morning traffic jams, appeared back in the student years. At first, I rested like this on the way to the institute, and in the last two years already on the way to work. And today, as soon as I took a seat by the window and handed the driver the due fare, I immediately leaned back in my chair and dozed off. I just wanted to sleep terribly - the sleepless night at Aslan's birthday had an effect, where there was a lot of drunk alcohol and smoked cigarettes, splashed out emotions and spent energy. I fell asleep already in the morning, when the last girls left. And already at the beginning of the ninth Aslan woke me up, who needed to go to work. Barely tearing my eyes from fatigue, I splashed water on my swollen face and trudged to the bus station, where I got on a minibus going to Moscow and was going to sleep for an hour and a half,

I was awakened by the alarmed cry of a neighbor on the minibus, which was immediately joined by several other frightened voices. Waking up, I did not immediately understand the cause of the excitement, but then I looked ahead and through the windshield I saw everything with my own eyes. Slowly crawling across the bridge in a traffic jam, cars exploded one after another! They flew up, engulfed in flames, somersaulted and fell on other cars. Here, a dark gray jeep exploded, flying high into the air and falling off the bridge into the river. Here, a car was torn to pieces. The explosions were getting closer and closer every second. Panic broke out in the minibus, the women squealed in horror. Here with a roar exploded, flying off somewhere to the side from the road, a cargo "Gazelle" right in front of our car. I looked ahead at the approaching death, unable to move from horror. For a moment it seemed to me that the bridge ahead collapsed right under the big bus. But then it was the turn of our minibus. A brutal blow fell on the front of the Ford, a hot flame swept through the cabin in a wave, the dying passengers squealed heart-rendingly.

I was sitting at the very back of the cabin, and that was the only thing that saved me. With difficulty tearing my eyes away from the aunt burning alive, trying to open the jammed door, I noticed that the side glass next to me cracked. It was a chance to save! With all my might, I slammed my fist against the glass, breaking my knuckles into blood. Another hit! More! More! Add an elbow! It became difficult to breathe in the burning cabin, there was a catastrophic lack of oxygen. I greedily caught the remnants of air in my mouth and thought that another half a minute, and I would die - either burn or suffocate. A few more times, with all his might, he slammed his fists and elbow on the cursed glass, but it only became covered with a network of cracks, but did not crumble. In desperation, I jumped up on the seat and hit the network of cracks with my boot several times. Happened! Glass shattered, shards rained out. Here is the way to salvation!

But before I had time to rejoice at my luck, a guy pushed me sharply aside and jumped out into the hole that had opened up first. I fell on a screaming bloody aunt in the next seat. For some reason, she tightly grabbed my hands, not allowing me to break away and escape.

- Get off you! I shouted, but my aunt seemed to have lost her mind and clung to me like a tick.

It was very stuffy and impossibly hot, the flame quickly spread throughout the cabin. With horror, I realized that because of this crazy woman, I would now burn alive on the bus. Despair gave me strength, I managed to wrest my left hand from the grasping fingers of the madwoman and hit the woman hard several times. The unfortunate groaned in pain and let me go. Her gaze became more meaningful.

- Stupid! Get out the window! I shouted to the woman and set an example myself by jumping through the broken bus window.

It didn't work out properly. I caught my foot on something, or maybe that crazy aunt tried to grab me again. Because of this hold, I unsuccessfully fell head down onto the asphalt, barely having time to put my hands out and slightly softening the fall. From hitting the ground for a few moments, I "floated", but when I tried to get up, someone's strong hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to the ground. It was the same pensioner.

Don't get up, you'll die! he hissed at me, and for some reason I immediately believed him.

There was a real hell all around. Dozens of cars were burning, people were screaming, new explosions continued. Right in front of my eyes, a bloodied young girl crawled out of an overturned passenger car, straightened up and ... turned into a flaming torch!

“Don’t move, boy, if you want to live,” the pensioner whispered.

I was too shocked to argue. Just at first he tried to believe his savior, and then he himself saw the source of the threat. Directly above the road at a height of about thirty meters above the ground floated a strange large dark object like an elongated isosceles triangle with an acute angle turned downwards. It was not possible to determine the dimensions of this aircraft, but it was large and clearly made of metal. And he sowed death - located on the sides of this flying contraption, several small turrets rotated and periodically lit up with flashes of shots. With each shot, an unusual sound was heard, similar to the whistle of water evaporating from the surface of a hot frying pan: “pssssshshsh”. On the advice of the wise old man, I pressed myself to the ground and froze, pretending to be dead.

***

New shots were heard less and less often, but the strange flying ship still circled over the road in search of new victims. Several times I even saw his shadow on the ground. Somewhat belatedly came the fear that this terrible hunter of people could notice the disappearance of my body and guess that the prey had taken refuge somewhere. On the other hand, it's too late to worry about what has already happened. And most importantly, there was no molten plastic dripping onto the back. And the car was no longer on fire, the heat emanating from it gradually faded away. Lots of questions were running through my head. How to explain what is happening? What to do next? How long will this ship hang over the road? And what if the fearsome hunter never flies away?