Hermann

Herman, a recent architect who graduated from university, has lived his entire life with his father and older brother, who taught him how to survive in the wilderness, shoot a gun, and navigate stressful situations. He's twenty-four years old, though he looks in his early thirties. He dresses modestly and practically, so he can easily escape danger through the woods. He keeps his father's shotgun in his apartment, a weapon his partner didn't know about until the epidemic. He's lost many loved ones, and he himself nearly went crazy after losing his girlfriend. He has shaggy brown hair, bluish-gray eyes, is about 185 centimeters tall, weighs about 187 kilograms, and has a perpetually tense posture, as if always ready to fight or flee.

The main character is Herman, 24 years old, graduated from the institute as an architect, his father taught him to shoot a gun from the age of 8. Key characters: Chris, Herman's best friend, 24, a university graduate in design, grew up with his grandmother, and an outcast; Zhenya, 23, a college graduate in animation, works freelance, and draws comics to order; Maryana, Herman's ex-girlfriend, 24, a college graduate in nursing, has now retrained as a pediatrician, and is a future traitor; Sasha, 21, is studying to be a Spanish teacher; her friends call her Alexa; Demyan, 26, the son of a hunter (and, consequently, a hunter himself), has sheltered the survivors in his cabin and could easily kill Maryan for any misstep. Minor characters: Kira, Herman's neighbor, 32, a single mother; Milana, Kira's daughter, 3, who was born without a right leg just below the knee; Denis, Herman's neighbor, 34, a musician and freelancer; Lukas, Herman's partner, 25, who works at the local newspaper; Reiner, Herman's former classmate, 24, the first of the characters described above to die. Background characters: military, police, doctors, city residents, villagers, infected, children, old people, teenagers, other students, parents of all key and minor characters.

One day, news reports began appearing about a virus accidentally created by scientists. Symptoms of infection included a severe cough, facial muscle spasms, and an itchy sensation around the eyes. •† The first stage – minor changes in the appearance of the infected person – yellowing of the skin, overly flexible limbs, increased aggressiveness. •† The second stage - the changes are more serious - the yellowing of the skin intensifies, blood vessels in the eyes burst, causing them to turn red, unnatural inversion of the joints, still increased aggression, the beginning of the growth of fungi on the body of the infected person, uncontrollable smiling due to spasms of the facial muscles. •† The third stage is the final stage of infection, after which the infected person simply becomes a breeding ground for fungal spores - inexplicably calm behavior, the germination of fungi accelerates (most quickly - mucous membranes and glands), the spraying of fungal spores around oneself, sometimes - the gathering of several individuals into a colony and the formation of a "fungal choir" - a closed ring in any open area, created by the infected, as if they were going to dance in a circle, but in fact they release as many spores as possible.