Ёжик — Who is who

Diggers’ affair is very dangerous, so they should remember some special rules.

• Tell all your close people who will stay at the surface where you are going and when you are planning to return.

• If there is a log-book at the entrance of the cave, write your name and the time of the beginning of your descent in.

• You will always meet mice, rats and other creatures in vaults. Don’t undertake any descents, if you are afraid of them.

• Your clothes should suit for cold, wet and muddy vaults.

• You should always be polite with the people, who will meet you there. It’s better to greet them first

• Don’t do excavations in the cares and grottoes. There are very fragile walls and your work can cause collapse easily.

• Mobile phones and transceivers don’t work in the underground.

• Don’t forget the most important things. Always take a flashlight with spare batteries and a knife.

Except of diggers, who explore vaults just because of curiosity, there are many people, who live in the catacombs. Most of them are poor people, escaped prisoners. Vaults under the railway stations are divided between them strictly and stranger can’t find any place there. Some people, who live in the underground, use these place for their “work”. For example, people, who steal luggage at railway stations often, check their booty in the vault. Because of such criminal situation diggers are to protect themselves from aggressive enemies on their own.

Moscow was famous with her underground labyrinths even from the times of Ivan the Terrible. People say, that had hidden his priceless library exactly in Kremlin catacombs. And real flourishing of underground town building had become in 1980-s, when Comrade Stalin ordered to build real underground town the Moscow in case to protect himself and his people from any disasters. There weren’t only linking bunkers and shelters for war situations, but there had been built real football stadium and extra metropolitan branch-line. According to eyewitnesses’ testimony, some of these technical buildings are at the 800 meters depth. And most of these systems work nowadays too. Information about many of these buildings is secret yet, so we can only guess real size of underground town.

But the main diggers’ enemies are spirits and ghosts, which live in town labyrinths. Underground tourism lovers tell one story to every beginner. “It has happened 7 years ago. The group of diggers explored vault under the hospital. And when they reached hospital words, they were horrified by semi-transparent woman silhouette, which turned up from the ceiling. They all ran away as quickly as they could and one of them hit his head strongly and ripped piece of skin off. He was delivered to the hospital above and was left in one of their words. There was a couch with body covered with a sheet. When hospital workers opened the sheet, digger was shocked again because there was woman that he saw in the underground as a ghost. Hospital workers said that she died half an hour ago, just in time when diggers saw her spirit.

All well as mystical phenomenons there are much more real troubles. Mutants of different creatures like rats, mice, cockroaches, and others inhabit the sewers. Diggers learned to predict places of future disasters, while observing underground rats. Sly and agile creatures — rats leave places, where will be pipe tear, landslide or fire, nearly twenty for hours before the disaster. Diggers meet in vaults not only rats, but huge mutants of different insects and even unknown creatures.