A headless corpse lay right in the water. I even flinched as the headless body seemed to be moving and trying to get up. But it immediately became clear that it was the flowing water that was swaying the hand of the deceased. I moved against the current from the dead man and finally crouched on the water. I drank for a long time. It seemed like I would never quench my thirst. But at last, I pulled away and straightened up with satisfaction. One less problem.

Now it was necessary to cross the river and get to the apartment. The bridges were destroyed, but the Klyazma River is rather shallow, and below the bridges, it is generally knee-deep. I went towards the ford. As I passed the vertically frozen bus, I again heard the sound coming from inside. I took off my shoes, went into the shallow water, crept closer, and put my ear against the tinted glass. Exactly! Sounds inside the bus! I even managed to distinguish some vague voices! I tapped my foot on the glass and shouted:

- Is there anyone alive?

I peered into the dark opaque glass, but saw nothing. Damn tinted windows! I leaned against the glass and put my hands over my eyes, trying to see anything. And he recoiled sharply - from the other side, pressing her face against the glass, some girl was looking at me! She said something, but the sound did not pass, the girl's mouth only silently opened. Then she tapped her palm on the glass, and I heard the sounds of blows.

- Wait, I'll break the glass! I called out to her.

The girl nodded, confirming that she understood everything. I ran along the river bank and found a heavy cobblestone. For the second time in a day, I had to break the glass on a bus. This time it was faster. After the first blow, the dark glass began to crack, after the fifth it was sprinkled with small glass chips, exposing a round hole.

- Hey, where are you? Come out! - I threw back the stone and looked inside the hole. “Ugh, it stinks in here!”

The bus stank terribly of rotten meat, spoiled with blood, urine and feces. I almost felt sick. How is it even possible to survive in such air? A girl of about fourteen or fifteen crawled out of a round hole in the glass. She had a scratched face and a broken, swollen nose, but that was not what struck me at all. The rescued woman was wearing very strange old-fashioned clothes: a long black skirt to the ground, as well as a white women's shirt with long sleeves and a lace collar, now spattered with dried blood.

- Finally! Fresh air! We almost suffocated there!

After the first girl, others in the same unusual clothes began to get off the bus. Second, third, fourth... But how many of them are there inside the cabin?! Some of the released girls began to eagerly drink water from the river, others hurriedly ran away behind the cars for natural needs.

- Where are you all from?

“From the women’s boarding school at the Khotkovsky Intercession Convent,” answered a fair-haired girl of about fifteen, hastily tying a scarf over her disheveled long hair.

“We are from Sergiev Posad,” added her friend, whose white shirt was torn from the collar to the waist and also stained with dried blood. - We went to Moscow for an Orthodox exhibition.

- From Sergiev Posad? And why not along the Yaroslavl highway? - I more or less imagined a map of the Moscow region and therefore was surprised.

The girl followed my gaze, became embarrassed, and hastily turned away, trying to close her torn shirt. The girl who got out of the bus was the first to answer for her friend.

- We were driving along Yaroslavsky, but there was a big traffic jam. Valentina Pavlovna consulted with the driver and decided to avoid the traffic jam.

I looked at the front flattened accordion part of the bus. It is unlikely that the driver and the passengers sitting in the front seats had a chance to survive this terrible disaster.

- All? Or is there anyone else alive? I asked a group of girls.

They looked at each other and began to quickly remember who was missing.

- Everyone got out of the living. True, there is still Lisa Svyatova inside. But she was unconscious for a long time and, probably, also died. When the bus crashed, Liza was injured, covered in blood, and broken. We tried to help her, but she got stuck upside down. Lisa asked us to hold her head up so as not to die from a brain hemorrhage. But in the evening she still lost consciousness, although we continued to help her.

All the girls stood in a crowd and silently waited for something. None of the survivors had any desire to climb back into the dark, death-filled bus and check whether their classmate was alive or not. Everyone looked at me expectantly and for some reason believed that it was I who should check the condition of their wounded girlfriend.

- Okay, I'll check it out! I made up my mind and climbed inside.

It was dark inside and smelled very foul. After the crash, the ventilation failed, and three dozen girls spent the whole day in the heat of a closed bus. Almost immediately I saw the bodies, bloodied and heaped in a jumble of broken chairs. But one body was separate from the rest, it hung high above the ground, almost at the very tail of the bus, catching an unnaturally twisted leg on a chair torn from its mounts. The trapped girl's face and upper torso could not be seen because of the darkness and the drooping hem of her long skirt.

I sighed heavily and climbed upstairs, clinging to the unstable, rickety seats. Once I almost fell off when the mount came off under my weight, and the heavy two-seat chair flew down with a roar right onto a hodgepodge of mangled bodies. But finally, if not immediately, I managed to get to the back rows. It turned out to be unbearably stuffy here, from the heat and heavy air it began to stir up. Leaning my foot on the inactive lighting cover, I crawled closer to the girl hanging upside down and tried to free my stuck leg. How did she get so lucky... I tried to straighten the girl's leg and turn it sideways. Suddenly, the wounded girl groaned. She is alive! Okay, now you need to lift the body and carefully stick out the foot that has fallen into the trap. Happened! Throwing the body of the girl freed from the deadly trap onto my shoulder, I began to go down. Finally ...

“The right leg is broken below the knee, but your classmate is alive,” I told the audience, carefully laying the wounded on the grass.

- Drink! the wounded woman suddenly moaned distinctly, opening her eyes.

Her friends immediately began to fuss, as if embarrassed that they had abandoned an injured classmate. Several girls entered the river and brought water with folded hands. From somewhere appeared a handkerchief moistened with water, with which they wiped the bloodied face of Lisa Svyatova. While some of the girls were fussing over the wounded, I asked their friends standing nearby idle:

– What are you planning to do next?

They only looked at each other and were silent, lowering their eyes under my gaze. It seems that their plans have not yet been made beyond the exit of the bus. Leaving the girls here meant dooming them to certain death because as soon as the flying hunter returns, three dozen corpses are provided on the shore. Speaking of the hunter...

“Let one of you go up to the bridge and watch the sky!” I suggested.

But all the girls just turned away or hid behind their friends. What the hell, do you have to check yourself? I quickly ran upstairs and looked around. The sky was starry and clear, there was no flying ship.

While I was away, the girls had already managed to agree on something among themselves. Lying with a broken leg, Liza turned out to be the leader of the entire company of schoolgirls. She was the only one who spoke, the other girls just nodded silently. First of all, Lisa asked me to identify myself, after which she thanked me for saving me. And then she said unequivocally:

- Victor, we need to return to the boarding school as soon as possible. Help us get to Sergiev Posad.

I was simply speechless at such an unexpected request. Sergiev Posad is very far from here, about a hundred kilometers, and you can only get there by car. And now, when deadly alien ships can appear at any moment, it is simply unrealistic to make such a journey!

And anyway, why on earth should I drag myself into such a distance ?! Do I have other worries? It's one thing to get the girls out of the bus, then any normal man would come to the rescue of schoolgirls in trouble. But what they now asked of me crossed all conceivable boundaries of politeness. I tried to express my thoughts without obscene words. Looks like it even worked. But Lisa in response asked a logical question:

- Well, what do you offer us? Many of the girls standing next to me spent their whole lives in a boarding school for orphans. In addition to this boarding school, they simply have nowhere to go, and for the most part, they do not know anything about life outside the walls of the usual boarding school.

- Aren't you like that? I couldn't resist asking.

- I ended up in a boarding school only a couple of years ago, almost at an adult age. Therefore, I know more classmates about the cruelty of real life. And I fully understand your doubts - the road is long and dangerous, and you won’t take risks for a simple “thank you”. I understand all this and I don't blame you at all. Just name your price or take us to someone who can help you.

After these words, I felt extremely embarrassed. An injured girl with a broken leg asks me for help. I'm not exactly an insensitive chump, am I? With all my heart I wanted to help Lisa Svyatova, but the fact is that she asked for something difficult, almost unrealistic - to deliver her and other schoolgirls to Sergiev Posad in conditions where flying death hovers over roads and cities. The truck or bus immediately disappears, we simply won’t get there alive. You'll have to go on foot.

Even in peacetime, walking a hundred kilometers is not so easy to do, especially with such an unprepared group. And now, during the invasion of incomprehensible aliens, I didn’t know at all whether it was possible in principle to fulfill the girl’s request. This will most likely have to bypass all more or less large settlements and highways over which space hunters will circle. Maybe send them all to hell and move on with their destiny? But in the eyes of the schoolgirls surrounding me, there was so much plea and hope for me that I could not just turn around and leave.

- Okay, I'll try to help you. Either I will take it myself or I will find someone who will take care of you and deliver you to Sergiev Posad. But we need to prepare for such a journey and collect at least some information about what is happening around us. Have you seen all this? I waved my hand, pointing to the destruction.

Lisa looked around and nodded, accepting such conditions. I hastened to continue.

- And another important point. Without your help, it is almost impossible to fulfill your request, and you do not want to help. Just recently, I just asked any of the girls to go upstairs and see if danger is flying. But in the end, I had to do everything myself. That's not how things will work! If I say to do something, you need to do it. If I say run, then I have to run. Either you obey me, or you go yourself!

I paused, waiting for an answer to my words. Lisa looked at her friends and suddenly asked me to move away and allow them to confer. I went upstairs and looked around. A clear starry sky, the chirping of grasshoppers in the grass, the croaking of frogs under the bridge. Idyll. Maybe the danger has passed? I would like to believe, but my intuition told me that the flying hunters had not gone away, and the situation would only get worse. Then one of the girls waved to me, suggesting to come closer.