The bloodlust of the brigadier disgusted Homer but also fascinated him at the same time. A third of his murders could be justified by self defense but still there was even more sadism behind them than usual. More importantly a question tormented the old man: Had hunter volunteered to just go to the Tulskaya to satisfy his bloodlust in the end?
The unlucky people who had laid a trap for them hadn’t found a cure for the mysterious fever but that didn’t mean that there was none. Here in the underground there still existed places were more scientific thinking was present, where people researched, developed new medicaments and mixed serums together. For example polis, the heart of the metro where all four arteries ran together, the polis was the last allusion of a city which stretched over the labyrinth of stations from the Arabatskaya, Borovizkaya, Alexandrovski sad and Biblioteca Imeni Linian.
And there before all doctors and scientist had settled down. Or the giant bunker next to the Taganskaya the secret city of science at Hanza.
Also the Tulskaya may not have been the only station where the epidemic had stricken. Probably they had fought it successfully? How could you abandon hope for rescue that easily? Of course now that Homer carried the time bomb inside him he only cared about his own egoistic interests. His mind had already made his peace with the death that was in front of him, but his instincts resisted and ordered him to find a way out. Maybe if he found a way to rescue the Tulskaya he could save his own station from oblivion and maybe even himself …
Hunter on the other hand seemed to apparently believe that there was just one cure for the disease. ..
The few words that he had exchanged with the guards at the Tulskaya had been enough to condemn them to death and make himself the judge, jury and executioner. First he had led the commander of the Sevastopolskaya on a false path then he had fastened the decision and now he readied the uncompromised implementation: The Tulskaya would go down in fire.
But maybe he knew something about the events at the station that turned everything on its head again? Something that nobody knew, whether Homer nor the man that had left his diary at the Nachimovski Prospect …
After he was finished with the bodies the brigadier ripped the flask from its holder and sucked in the rest of the contents. What had been in it? Alcohol? Was this a potion or an ingredient, or did he try to dispel the sour aftertaste in his mouth? Did he enjoy the moment or search for forgetting or hope to kill something with the alcohol?
The old smoking railcar was somewhat like a time machine for Sasha, like in those fairy tales her father had told her.
It didn’t just transport her from the Kolomenskaya to the Avtosavodskaya but transported her from the present into the past. Even though she didn’t know if she could call her life in this prison made of stone, this worm tunnels, the past and where she was now the “present”.
She remembered the whole journey to there: Her father had been bound and was sitting next to her, a sack over his eyes and a gag in his mouth. She had just been a small girl and had cried all the way and one of the soldiers of the execution squad had made animals with his fingers, their shadows had danced over a small yellow stage which was on the ceiling. The shadows had tried to outrun the railcar.
When they had reached the other side they had told her father his sentence: The tribunal of the revolution had pardoned him. The death sentence had been replaced by lifelong exile. They had pushed them onto the rails, with a knife, an assault rifle with a spare clip and an old gasmask and sat Sasha next to him. The soldier who had shown her the horse and the dog had waved his hand after her. Had he been one of those who Hunter had shot?
When she put on the black gasmask of one of the dead, her feelings became stronger that she was breathing the air of a dead man. Every small part of her journey somebody paid with his life. Probably the bold one would have shot them no matter what but now Sasha thought to be his accomplice by just being there.
That her father didn’t want to return back home wasn’t because he had been tired of fighting. He had once said that his humiliation and deprivation did no longer weigh on another strangers life, so he had preferred to suffer himself then to cause anybody else harm again. Sasha hadn’t know that the scale of life had been filled heavy on his side, with all those that her father had on his conscience he had tried to bring it back into balance.
The bold one could have acted sooner, could have scared the people on the railcar just by his presence so that they could have laid down their weapons without firing a shot. None of the dead had been an equal enemy.
Why did he do all this?
The station of her childhood approached sooner then she thought. Not even ten minutes passed until the lights started to flicker. The tunnel to the Avtosavodskaya wasn’t guarded; it seemed that the inhabitants relied on the hermetic gates. Around fifty meters before the train platform the bold one slowed down the motor, commanded the old man to take over the steering wheel and stood next to the machine gun.
The railcar rolled almost silent and very slowly into the station. Or was it time itself that was bending for Sasha because she overlooked everything with a few looks and only remembered her childhood?
It was on that day that her father had ordered the adjutant to hide until everything was over. The man had lead them deep into the work offices in the belly of the station, but even there you could still hear the screams of hundredths of throats shouting at the same time and her companion had immediately rushed back to his commander. Sasha had followed him, out into the main hall of the station …
While they slithered over the train platform Sasha saw the roomy family tents and the two into offices converted train wagons, children played catch, old men put their heads together, cranky women were cleaning guns …. And she saw her father behind a small troop of grim, maybe even scary looking men, how they tried to keep the never ending and angry group of people at bay. She ran to him and pressed herself against his back. Surprised he shook her away, turned around and punched the surprised adjutant angrily into his face. But something had happened. The formation who had already readied their rifles for the fire order got the all-clear.
There was only one shot into the air, her father explained that he was ready to hand over the station to the revolutionaries peacefully and negotiate.
Her father had always firmly believed that mankind got a sign.
You had to recognize them and interpret them correctly.
But time hadn’t just slowed down so that Sasha could relieve the last days of her childhood. Before all she had seen the armed man that had risen to stop the railcar. She saw how the bold one appeared behind the heavy machine gun with in a fluent motion and how he pointed the heavy barrel at the surprised guards.
Like the sound of a whip the order to stop the railcar came to her ear. She kne In just a few seconds so many people would die that the feeling that she was breathing the air of a stranger would last to the end of days.
She could still prevent a bloodbath; she could still rescue these people, herself and another human being from something terrible.
The guardsmen were already un-securing their assault rifles, but they took too long; the bold one was a few seconds ahead of them…
She did the only thing that came to her mind.
She jumped up and hugged the iron hard back, crossed her hands in front his not moving chest which didn’t seem to breathe. The bold one winched as if somebody had hit him, but he hesitated. The soldiers on the other side that were ready to shoot froze as well.
The old man realized immediately.
The railcar spat out bidder black clouds and rushed on and the Avtosavodskaya remained behind them.
In the past.
During thir drive to the Pavelezkaya nobody said a word. Hunter had had freed himself out of the surprising hug of the girl. He had bent her arms away from him like a ring of iron that had been too tight.
They rushed past a single guard post with full speed.
The salves that they sent behind
them went right over their heads into the ceiling. The brigadier was just quick enough to pull out his pistol and fire three silent bullets as an answer. He managed to kill one of the guards as it seemed, the other ducked behind the flat tunnel segments and got away with their lives.
I don’t believe this, thought homer and looked at the girl who was cowering on the ground. He had hoped that the entry of the female protagonist would have created some kind of love story but this was developing way too fast. He didn’t even have time to realize what it meant, far less to note it down.
Only when they had reached the Pavelezkaya they decreased in speed.
The old man already knew the station: It seemed to be from a horror novel. While the tombs of the newer station in Moscow’s outer regions rested on normal pillars, the Pavelezkaya rested on an array of tall and round arches that were bigger than any humans. Like commonly in a horror novel there was a curse on the Pavelezkaya: At exactly eight o clock at night the station were minutes before busy deals had been made emptied. From all the busy, yes even sly inhabitants only a few daredevils remained on the platform.
All other disappeared with children, furniture, bags full of wares, not even benches and stretchers remained.
They crawled into their bunker, the almost one kilometer long tunnel to the ring line, shivered there for the entire night because there where the Pavelezkaya station was, terrible creatures awoke on the surface and ran around. It was said that the entire region was under their unchallenged rule and even when those creature slept other didn’t dare to go near them. The inhabitants of the Pavelezkaya were at their mercy because the hermetic doors that protected other stations and the escalators where missing here entirely so that the entrance to the surface was always open.
In homers opinion there was no worse place to rest and camp overnight but Hunter seemed to think differently: He brought the railcar to a stop at the end of the station, took of his gasmask and pointed at the train platform. “We’ll remain here until morning. Search for a place to sleep”
Then he left. The girl looked after him then rolled together on the hard ground of the railcar. Even homer tried to make himself as comfortable as possible. In vain: Once again his thoughts were with the epidemic and how he would carry it through all the healthy stations. The girl was silent as well, but awake.
“Thanks.” She said suddenly. “At first I thought you were just like him”
“I don’t think there is anybody just like him.” Said Homer.
“Are you friends?”
“Like a shark and its pilot fish.” He smiled sadly because he thought how much that picture was fitting: Of course it was hunter that eliminated all these humans, but a few bloody shreds were of his doings.
She stood up a bit. “What do you mean?”
“Where he goes I go. I think I can’t go alone anywhere without him and he … Well maybe he thinks that I clean him up like one of the pilot fish. But I don’t really know what he’s thinking myself”
The girl sat down closely to the old man: “And what do you want from him?”
“I have a feeling that as long as I am near him … I keep my inspiration”
“What does inspiration mean?”
“Actually it means to breathe in something”
“What do you want to breathe in? What does it get you?”
Homer shrugged his shoulders. “It is nothing that we breathe in. It is what something breathes into us”
The girl drew something into the dirty floor of the railcar. “As long as you breathe in death nobody is going to want to touch your lips. Everybody is going to back away from the smell of corpses”
“When you see death you think about many things.”
Said Homer short.
“That doesn’t give you the right to cause death anytime you want to think about something.” She said.
“I’m not doing that.” Justified the old man. “I am just standing next to him. But for me it is not about death, not just about it. It is so that I’ll be shook awake, clear my head”
“Have you had a bad life?” Asked the girl caring.
“A boring one. When one day is like the other, they fly by so fast that the last seems to approach with great speed”
Homer tried to explain. “You fear you can’t take care of things anymore. And every day is filled with thousands of small things. After you are finished with one you shortly catch a breath and go to the next thing. At the end you don’t have the strength or the time to do something really important. You think to yourself: Ok, I’ll just start tomorrow.
But that tomorrow never comes and it is always today”
“Have you seen many stations?” It seemed that she hadn’t really listened to him.
“I don’t know.” Answered homer surprised. “Probably all”
“I only two.” Sighed the girl. “At first my father and I lived at the Avtosavodskaya and then they chased us away, to the Kolomenskaya. I have always wished to see at least one other. But this one here is so strange”. Her view wandered along the array of round arcs. “Like thousands of entrances without any walls in between them. Now they are all open, but I no longer want to go there. I am afraid”
“The second one … Was that your father?” Homer hesitated. “Has he been killed?”
The girl retreated into her snail house and was silent for a while before she answered: “Yes”.
Homer took a deep breath. “Stay with us. I am going to tell to Hunter that I need you, to …” He spread his arms but he didn’t know how he could explain to the girl that she would be his muse (Greek goddess of inspiration).
“Tell him that he needs me.” She jumped onto the rails and distanced herself from the railcar. While doing so she looked at every single pillar she passed.
She wasn’t a bit flirtiest nor did she play with him. She wasn’t interested in guns and she felt as indifferent about using her female arsenal with all its like gripping looks and lovely gestures. She didn’t know anything about how a single opening of the eyes could create a storm and that some people were ready to sacrifice or kill others for an indicated smile.
Or was she just not able to use them in the right way?
Whatever, she didn’t need this arsenal. With her hard, direct look she had forced Hunter to change his decision, with a single move she had thrown her net over him and stopped him from committing another murder.
Had she broken his armor? Had she found his soft core? Or did he need her for something? Probably the last one: Alone the thought about the brigadier having a weakness that didn’t make him vulnerable put sensitive was too much for Homer.
He just couldn’t sleep. Even though he had changed the heavy and sticky gasmask with a light one he still had trouble breathing and it was like somebody had put his head into a press.
Homer had left all his possessions at the tunnel. He had cleaned his hands with a piece of grey soap, washed away the dirt with the foul water out off a canister and decided to wear a gasmask at all times. What else could he do protect the people in his immediate area?
Nothing. Truly nothing anymore. Not even to go away, fight through the tunnels and become a rotten pile of shreds would have helped. But now that he was so close to death it immediately put him back more then twenty years, into his time, when he had just lost the people that he had loved. And this gave his plans new and true purpose.
If it would have been in Homers power he would have given them a memorial. But they had earned even a common tombstone. They had been born centuries apart and all had died on the same day: His wife, his children and his parents.
And his classmates and friends at school. The actors and musicians that he had worshipped. All who still had been at work, already at home or stuck in traffic.
Those who had died and those who remained for many days in the irradiated, half destroyed capitol who had tried to survive and weakly scrapped at the closed security gates of the metro.
Those who had been instantly pulverized into
their smallest atoms and those that had bloated and fallen into pieces, eaten alive by radiation sickness.
The scouts who had been the first to go to the surface had trouble finding sleep for many days. Homer had met some of them at the campfire near the transfer station. In their eyes there had still had been the inextinguishable impression that the city had left on them, their eyes were like frozen rivers that spilled over with dead fish. Thousands of not moving cars with their lifeless passengers who blocked the prospects and exits of Moscow. Bodies everywhere. Nobody there to get rid of them until finally new creatures took over the reign over the city.
To keep their sanity they avoided schools and kindergartens. But it was enough to lose your mind if you coincidentally saw the staring look through the dusty window from the backseat of the family car.
Milliards of lives had stopped. Milliards of words left unspoken, milliards of dreams left unfulfilled and milliards of arguments unforgiven. Nikolais youngest son had asked him for a big package of colored felt tip pens for some time, his daughter had been afraid of figure skating training and his wife had described to him how they should go on a short vacation, just the two of them at the ocean before going to bed …
When he had realized that their small wishes and passions had been their last they had appeared far more important to him.
He would have liked to engrave a memorial plate for every one of them, but an engraving on a giant mass grave of humanity was also a worthy cause. And now that his time was running out he thought that he now knew how to find the right words.
He didn’t know in which order he should put them together yet, with what he could fix them to a place, with what he would decorate them, but he felt: In the story that played in front of his eyes he would find a place for all the restless souls, all the feelings and all the small grains of knowledge that he had gathered so meticulously. In the end also for himself. This plot was best for it, better than for anything.
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 15
