Why did she want to go up here? Why die?
But who needed her down there? Who needed her really, as a human and not as an acting person in a book?
Why should she try to keep deceiving herself …?
When Sasha had left the body of her father in the lonely Kolomenskaya, she had believed to for fill the escape they had made. Through carrying a small part of him in herself, she thought it would help him to be free.
But since that he had never appeared in her dreams and when she had tried to summon his picture in her fantasies and share with him what she had lived through, he had only appeared obscure and silent.
Her father couldn’t forgive her that she saved him in that way.
Under the books he had brought from time to time, she had always read them if possible before they exchanged them for food and ammunition, an old botanic book was her favorite. The illustration weren’t very colorful, only bleached black and white pictures and pencil drawings, but in the other books that she had gotten her fingers on there weren’t any pictures in them at all. Of all plants she liked the climbing plants the most:
She felt like they were part of her soul. Like those flowers she needed something on that she could lean on. To grow up on. To the light.
No before all she had needed a powerful log, to lean on it and to hug it. Not to rob it from light and warmth, no.
Without it she was just too soft, she had not enough spine to stand up straight. Standing on her own she would have to crawl on the ground.
Her father had said that she shouldn’t rely on anybody else. Except for him there had been nobody in this god forsaken station and he had known that he wouldn’t live forever. He would have rather seen her grow up like a tree and not like ivy. But he had forgotten that wasn’t in her female nature. Sasha had survived without him. Without Hunter. But to be united with another human being had been the only reason for her to think about the future. When she had hugged the brigadier on the rushing railcar her life had gained new hold. She reminded herself that it was dangerous to rely on others and unworthy to be depended on somebody.
The harder it was to overcome and explain it to hunter.
Sasha just had wanted to lean, but he had thought that she wanted to hold on to his boot. Now that there was nobody to lean on and also having been kicked in the dirt, it seemed under her honor to keep searching. He had chased her away, said she should go to the surface, well good, then it should be like that. When something happened to her up there it was his fault, it was only in his power to change that.
Finally her steps were at the end. Sasha stood at the edge of a giant marble room, the holed metal ceiling was being kept standing by a few pillars. Through the holes in the distance you could see bright rays of light. They were of surprising grey white color and some of the even shined to the part were Sasha stood. She switched of her lamp, held her breath and continued silently.
Traces of shots and splinters on the walls at the exit of the escalator pointed to humans having been there. But just a few more steps later other creatures ruled. Out of the dried hills of crap that were everywhere bones and pieces of skin stuck out, Sasha knew that she was inside a cave that was inhabited by wild animals. She covered her eyes from the burning light and approached the exit. The closer she got to the origin of the light the deeper became the darkness in the farthest edges of this giant hall she stepped through. She gradually got used to the light, but also lost her feeling for the darkness.
Fallen down kiosks, hills of unimaginable trash and old, stripped technical machines filled the neighboring halls.
It seemed that the humans who had used this room at the Pavelezkaya had stored things which you could still use here, until one day stronger creatures had chased them away from here.
From time to time Sasha thought she could see an almost unnoticeable movement in the dark corners, but she thought it was of her stronger getting blindness. The darkness that was here was already too thick so she didn’t see the silhouettes of the sleeping monster next to the hills of trash.
The air moved gradually over her head, sounded over the heavy breathing and Sasha realized that just a few meters next there she had passed a slightly moving hill. She stood still, listened and starred at the contours of the fallen down kiosks. There between the rubble she saw a strange hump and froze.
The hill that had dug itself into the little house was breathing. Even almost all of the other hills moved in the same rhythm. To be sure Sasha switched on her lamp and put it onto one of the hills. The weak ray of light exposed the wrinkled white skin that ran over a gigantic chest. It was one of the chimaeras that had almost killed her, just a lot bigger.
The creatures were in some kind of stasis and didn’t seem to notice her. Suddenly the animal’s groaned, breathed out through the oblique slits of its snout and started to move … Hastily Sasha put the lamp away and rushed on. The few steps through the scary camp cost her lot of strength: The further she got from the entrance to the metro the denser the chimaeras lay next to each other and the harder it got to find a way past their bodies.
But it was too late to turn around now. Right now Sasha didn’t care about how she would get back to the metro, it only counted for her to get past these creature without any of them noticing. To remain unseen, to feel … If they just didn’t wake up, if they would let her go …. She didn’t need a way back.
She almost didn’t dare to breathe and didn’t even try to think and slowly enclosed on the exit. A split tile on the ground made a deceiving sound under her boot. Another wrong step or another coincidental noise and they would awake and rip her to pieces immediately.
Sasha couldn’t shake the thought that just short time ago, maybe yesterday or even today she had wandered between sleeping monsters too, so at least the feeling she had right now was somewhat familiar to her. Suddenly she stopped.
Sasha kne Sometimes you can feel strangers look on your neck. And even though these creatures had no eyes with them they were searching the room, she clearly felt an intrusive starring on her.
She didn’t have to turn around to realize that one of the animals behind her had awoken and had put its heavy head into her direction.
But she did and turned around.
The girl was gone and homer didn’t care to search for her right now.
To be honest he didn’t care about anything anymore.
The diary of the radio operator had left one small spark that the disease would spare the old man and Hunter had extinguished that spark with his merciless boot. Homer had started a well prepared conversation, a kind of death sentence. But he hadn’t wanted to pardon him and he wouldn’t have been able to. Homer was the only one responsible for his inevitable fate.
Just a few more weeks, maybe even less. Only ten pages left in his small book with the plastic cover.
He still had so much to say. For homer it wasn’t just a wish but his duty, even thought the unwilling rest was coming to an end very soon.
He straightened the paper so he could continue from his last point, when the doctor cut him off. But again his hand wrote: “What remains of me?”
And what of the unlucky prisoners at of the Tulskaya? Maybe they had already lost hope, maybe they were still waiting for help and in that case they had a cruel end in front of them. Their memories? There weren’t enough people that he still remembered.
Memories weren’t really strong mausoleum. If Homer wouldn’t die in the far future all those who he once knew would die with him. Even his own, his personal Moscow would dissolve into nothing.
Where was he? At the Pavelezkaya? The garden ring was now empty and without any live, for the last few hours they had been relocating heavy military gear so that the paramedics and police escorts could pass freely. Out of the side streets stood destroyed city villas and stared like decayed, half fallen out teeth …. Homer could imagine the landscape above him even though he had never himself.
Before the war he had been up there. Had had an appointment
with his fiancé in a café, a rendezvous next to the metro and then later had gone into the matinee showing of a movie at the cinema. He also remembered how he had gone under a pricy and clumsy medical examination for his driver’s license test. Also that he had used to leave from this station with his colleagues to go have a barbecue in the forest …
On the squared paper of his notebook suddenly the railway station in the autumn fog and the two in dust sinking towers appeared, a new office building at the ring where one of his friends had worked and the winding top of a new hotel with another just as expensive concert hall next to it. He had once asked for the price of a ticket and it had cost more than what he had made in two weeks.
He saw and heard the clinging, edgy white blue streetcars, filled with unsatisfied passengers, the anger of this harmless crowd made him smile, the garden ring, magnificently lit from thousands of search lights and blinking like one giant garland, timid snowflakes that didn’t fit to the scenery, melting when they touched the dark asphalt and the crowds, myriads of particles, loaded, bumping into each other, at the same time chaotic and racing but everyone moving in a well thought-out lane.
He saw the lane between the Stalin monoliths, where slowly the big river of the garden ring flew onto the plaza.
Hundredths of windows shined like small aquariums to both sides of the broad street. The neon fire of the signs and gigantic billboards which were soon many floors tall buildings would stand … But nobody would ever be able to finish them
He saw everything and realized that he couldn’t describe this beautiful picture anyways. So at the end there was nothing left but the graves of the business center and the luxurious hotel?
She didn’t come back, whether after one nor after three hours. Worried Homer searched the entire station asking the merchants and musicians and even asking the guards on the entrance to Hanza. Nothing. It was like the ground had swallowed her whole. The old man didn’t know what to do.
Again he leaned himself against the door of the room where the brigadier was laying. He was the last person with who he wanted to talk about the disappearance of the girl, but what else could he do?
Hunter was laying there breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling. His right arm rested on the blanket, his fist showed fresh wounds. From small scratches blood dropped onto the blanket but the brigadier didn’t seem to notice it.
“When are you ready to go?” He asked Homer without turning around.
“If it was only about me, immediately.” The old man hesitated. “It’s just … I can’t’ find the girl. And how do you want to walk in your condition? You’re still totally …”
“I’m going to survive it.” Answered the brigadier
“Also death isn’t the worst thing. Pack your things.
In not even one and a half hour I’m back on my feet. We are going to the Dobryninskaya”
“One hour is enough for me.” Said Homer hastily.
“But before that I have to find her. I want her to come with us … I really need her, you know …”
“I’ll leave in one hour.” Said hunter. “With you or without you. And also without her”
“I just don’t understand, where could she have gone?” Homer sighed disappointed. “If I just knew …”
“I know where she went.” Said the brigadier indifferent. “But from there you can’t bring her back. Go pack your things”
Homer retreated and blinked with his eyes. He was used to relying on the brigadier’s inhuman abilities but now he refused to believe him. What if Hunter was lying again, this time to get rid of unnecessary ballast?
“She said that you would need her …”
“I need you.” Hunter moved his head in Homers direction. “And you need me”
“For what?” Whispered homer.
“Much depends on you.” The brigadier had heard him.
He slowly closed his eyes and opened them again.
The bed squealed when Hunter rose up with his teeth fletched. “Go now. Pack your things so you’re ready in time”
Before he left the room Homer stopped for a moment and took the red makeup box from the ground. The cover was broken and the hinges were bent and loose.
The mirror was fragmented.
Homer turned around and said to Hunter. “I can’t leave without her”
The chimera was almost twice as big as Sasha. Its head bumped against the ceiling. The claws were almost hanging down to the ground.
Sasha knew how lighting fast these animals moved and with what unbelievable speed they attacked. To reach her it just had to make one big step forward. That would bee enough.
But somehow the animal hesitated. It was no use to shot and Sasha wasn’t even able to raise her rifle. She took one step back, to the exit. The chimera made a groaning sound and walked into the direction of the girl … But nothing else happened. The monster remained there and continued to stare with its blind face.
Sasha dared to make another step, and another.
Without taking her eyes of the animal, without showing fear she approached the exit. The creature kept following her only a few meters in front of her. As if it wanted to keep her company to the door.
Only as Sasha was just ten meters away from the bright opening she couldn’t take it anymore and started to run. The creature screamed and rushed forward.
Sasha almost flew outside and ran with her eyes closed. Until she stumbled and slid on the rough and hard ground. The chimera had to reach her every moment now and rip her to pieces, but her follower hadn’t pursued her. A long minute passed and then another … Around her was nothing but silence.
Sasha kept her eyes closed while she searched in her pockets for the self-made glasses that she had bought from the guard. It was made out of two dark green bottoms from two glass bottles. It was held together by a frame of iron rings and a bit of rubber. You could put the glasses over the round windows of your gasmask.
No she could open her eyes without being blinded by the light. Slowly she opened them. At first hesitantly and with her head lowered but then with more courage she looked around the strange place she had ended up.
Over her head was the sky. Real sky, bright and far reaching. Here was more light than any artificial light source could ever create.
Everything was covered in an even tone of green. At a few places there were low hanging clouds but between them was a true abyss.
The sun! Through the thin layer of clouds she could see it: A circle as big as a match box, white and so bright that it could burn a hole through Sasha’s glasses at any moment now. Fearful she looked away, waited for a moment and took another stealthy look. It was a bit disappointing: It was nothing but a bright hole in the sky, why all that idolatry?
But no, a certain yes even something that moved her.
When Sasha had left the darkness of the cave in which those creatures had been living the exit had almost shined as bright. What if the sun was just such an exit where you could flee to a place where it was never dark? So she could escape the ground out of which she had just climbed out? She felt weak, almost unnoticeable warmth from the sun, like from a living being.
Sasha was standing in a desert of stone; all around her were half destroyed old houses. The black windows openings towered teen stories high. There were so many of them, they covered each other and pressed into field of vision so she could see them better.
Behind them were even higher buildings and behind them even higher buildings which were towering giants.
Unbelievable but Sasha could see all of them! They were covered in the stupid green color but the earth under her feet, the air under this crazy bright and bottomless sky was real. And then they opened up to unimaginable wideness.
Even though her eyes had always been used to the darkness, they had never been made for it. In the evening hours at the abyss of the metro bridge she had only seen the ugly buildings in the area around one hundredth meters up to the hermetic door. Behind that there had been darkness, so th
ick that even Sasha who had been born underground couldn’t see through.
She had never really asked herself how big the world was in which she lived. For her there had always been just this small, dark cocoon, a few hundredth meters into every direction. Behind the buildings there had only been an abyss, it had been the edge of the universe for her, absolute darkness. And even though she knew that in reality the earth was much bigger she had never been able to imagine it. Now she realized that it would have been impossible.
Strangely she wasn’t afraid in midst of this never ending no-man’s-land. When she had climbed back into the metro, she had always felt like she had crawled back into her armor, now it felt like she had left her shell.
At day you could see all dangers from a distance and Sasha had more than enough time to hide and defend herself.
And suddenly she felt the unknown feeling of being at home.
The wind chased round balls of thorny twigs over the plaza, howling monotone through the destroyed lines of houses, blew over her back, brought her new courage and drove her to explore this new world.
She had no choice: To get back into the metro she had set foot into this building were the cruel monsters were and they were no longer sleeping. From time to time their white bodies appeared at the exits and disappeared as fast as they had appeared. It seemed that they didn’t like daylight.
But what would happen if it would become night? If Sasha wanted to see something before her death, all that the old man had described to her, then she had to get as much distance between her and this place as possible.
So she started running.
She had never felt so small. It seemed unbelievable that these giant buildings had been created by humans of her size. For what had they needed them? Had people been prepared by nature for the hard life in the narrowness of the tunnels and the stations?
These buildings on the other hand must have been built by the proud ancestors of the small humans they were now. They must have been powerful, tall and imposing like their buildings in which they had lived.
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 20
