The first entries in the notepad were dated to the day when the convoy passed through Nagornaya without any casualties and entered Tula without encountering any resistance . . .
‘The tunnels are quiet and empty almost all the way to Tula. We advance quickly – a good sign. The commander is counting on getting back tomorrow at the latest,’ the dead signal officer reported. ‘The entrance to Tula is not guarded. We sent in a scout. He disappeared,’ he wrote anxiously a few hours later. ‘The commander has decided to advance into the station en masse. We are preparing for an assault.’ And then again, a little while later: ‘We can’t understand what’s wrong . . . We’re talking to the locals. Things are bad here. Some kind of disease.’ And soon after that he explained: ‘Some people at the station are infected with something . . . An unknown illness . . .’ The members of the convoy apparently tried to render assistance to the sick: ‘The paramedic hasn’t been able to find a cure. He says it’s like rabies . . . They suffer monstrous pain, they’re deranged . . . They attack other people’. And straight after that: ‘Weakened by the illness, they can’t cause any serious harm. That’s not the real disaster . . .’ At this point, as luck would have it, the pages had stuck together, and Homer had to sprinkle water on them from his flask: ‘Photophobia, nausea. Blood in the mouth. Coughing. Then they swell up . . . They are transformed into . . .’ – the word had been laboriously crossed out. ‘How it’s transmitted is not clear. The air? Physical contact?’ That entry was made the next day. The detachment had stayed on.
‘Why didn’t they report this?’ the old man thought, and immediately realised that he’d already seen the answer somewhere. He leafed through the pages. ‘We have no lines of communication. The phone is dead. Perhaps it’s sabotage. One of the exiles, in revenge? They discovered it before we got here, and at first they flung the sick out into the tunnels. One of them? Did he cut the cable?’
At that point Homer looked up from the letters and stared blindly into space. Let’s say the cable was cut. But then why didn’t they come back to Sebastopol?
‘What’s worse is that it takes a week to develop. And what if it’s longer? And from then to death is another week or two. We can’t tell who’s sick and who’s well. Nothing helps. There’s no cure. The death rate is a hundred per cent.’ A day later the signal officer made another entry that was already familiar to Homer: ‘Tula is in chaos. There’s no way out to the Metro, Hansa is blocking it. We can’t go back home.’ On the next page he continued: ‘The healthy were shooting at the sick, especially the aggressive ones. They’ve built a pen for infected individuals . . . They resist and beg to be let out . . .’ and after that a brief, terrible phrase: ‘They gnaw on each other . . .’
The signal officer was frightened too, but the steely discipline in the detachment prevented fear from spilling over into panic. Even at the focus of an epidemic of deadly fever, a Sebastopol brigade remained a Sebastopol brigade. ‘We have brought the situation under control, sealed off the station and appointed a commandant,’ Homer read. ‘All our men are all right, but too little time has gone by.’
The search party dispatched from Sebastopol had reached Tula safely and, of course, got stuck there too. ‘We have taken a decision to remain here until the incubation period is over, to avoid endangering . . . Or forever,’ the signal officer wrote. ‘The situation is hopeless. We can’t expect help from anywhere. If we ask Sebastopol, we’ll be condemning our own men. We have to endure it . . . For how long?’
So the mysterious guard by the hermetic door at Tula had been posted by the Sebastopolites. Then it wasn’t surprising that their voices had seemed familiar to Homer: the watch was being kept by men with whom he had defended the Chertanovo line of approach against upyrs only a few days ago! By voluntarily deciding not to return, they hoped to protect their home station from being infected.
‘Most often from person to person, but it’s obviously in the air too. Some men seem to be immune. It started a couple of weeks ago, many have not fallen ill . . . But there are more and more dead. We are living in a morgue,’ the signal officer scribbled. ‘Who’ll be the next to die?’ he asked, suddenly breaking into a hysterical shriek. But he took himself in hand and continued steadily: ‘We have to do something. Warn them. I want to volunteer to go. Not to Sebastopol. To find the point where the cable is damaged. And get through from there. I have to get a call through.’
Then several days passed, filled with invisible conflict with the commander of the convoy, silent arguments with other soldiers and mounting despair. The signal officer gathered his strength and recorded in his diary everything that he tried to make them see.
‘They don’t understand how things look from Sebastopol. We’ve been blockaded in for a week now. They’ll send another three men, who won’t be able to go back either. Then they’ll send a large assault team. Declare general mobilisation. Everyone who comes to Tula will be in the risk zone. Someone will get infected and go running home. And that will be the end. I have to prevent an assault! They don’t understand . . .’ Then another attempt to get the commandant to see sense, as fruitless as all the others before it. ‘They won’t let me go . . . They’ve gone insane. If not me, then who? Make a run for it!’
‘I pretended that I had calmed down, that I was willing to wait,’ he wrote a day later. ‘I went on duty at the hermetic door. I shouted that I was going to find the break in the cable and ran. They fired on me. A bullet lodged in my back.’
Homer turned the page.
‘Not for myself. For Natasha, for little Seryozha. I wasn’t thinking of trying to save myself. Let them live. So Seryozha can . . .’ At this point the pen was jerking about in his weakened hand: perhaps he added this later, because there was no more space, or because he no longer cared where he wrote. Then the disrupted chronology was restored: ‘Thank God, they let me through Nagornaya. I have no strength left. I walk on and on. Then I faint. How long was I asleep? I don’t know. Is there blood in my lung? Is it the bullet or have I got the sickness? I can’t . . .’ The curve of the letters straightened out into a slithering line, like a dying man’s encephalogram. But then he came round again and finished the sentence: ‘I can’t find where the damage is.’
‘Nakhimov. I made it. I know where the phone is. I’ll warn them . . . They mustn’t! Save . . . My wife, I miss . . .’ He splashed his thoughts out on to the paper less and less coherently, punctuated with scarlet blobs. ‘I got through. Did they hear me? I’ll die soon. Strange. I’ll fall asleep. No more bullets. I want to fall asleep before these . . . They’re standing round me, waiting. I’m still alive, go away.’
The ending of the diary seemed to have been prepared in advance, written in triumphantly vertical handwriting – the appeal not to storm Tula and the name of the man who had given his life to prevent it happening. But Homer could tell that the last thing the signal officer had written before his signal faded away forever was: ‘I’m still alive, go away’.
A heavy silence enveloped the two people huddling close to the flames. Homer had stopped trying to lift the girl’s mood. He sat there without speaking, stirring the ashes with a stick while the sodden notepad died the stubborn death of a heretic and he tried to ride out the storm that was raging inside him
Fate was mocking him. How he had longed to solve the mystery of Tula! How proud he had been of finding the diary, how it had flattered his vanity to come so close, all on his own, to unravelling all the knots in this story. And now? Now that he had the answers to all the questions in his hands, he cursed himself for his curiosity.
Yes, he was breathing through his respirator when he picked up the diary at Nakhimov Prospect, and he was wearing a full-protection suit now as well. But no one knew exactly how the disease was transmitted!
What a fool he had been to scare himself with not having much time left! Yes, it had spurred him on, helped him to overcome his laziness and conquer his fear. But death was contrary, it didn’t like people who tried to dictate to it.
And now the diary had set him an absolutely definite deadline: a few weeks from the day of infection to death. Perhaps even an entire month! But there was so much he still had to get done in those pitiful thirty days.
What should he do? Confess to his companions that he was sick and go away to turn up his toes at Kolomenskoe – if not from the sickness, then from hunger and radiation? But if he was already incubating the terrible disease, then Hunter and the girl, with whom he had shared the same air, must be infected too. Especially the brigadier – when he spoke to the sentries on the cordon at Tula, he had come very close to them.
Or should he hope that the sickness would pass him by, just keep his head down and wait? Not simply lie low, of course, but continue this journey with Hunter – so that the swirling tornado of events that had picked the old man up wouldn’t drop him again, and he could carry on drawing inspiration from them.
After all, if Nikolai Ivanovich, that decrepit, useless, mediocre citizen of Sebastopol and former engine driver’s mate, that caterpillar crushed against the ground by the force of gravity, was dying because he had unsealed that cursed diary, then Homer, the chronicler and myth-maker, the short-lived, bright-winged mayfly, had only just appeared in the world. Perhaps he had been sent a tragedy worthy of the pens of the great, and now it was entirely up to him to see if he could manifest it on paper in the thirty days that had been granted to him.
Did he have any right to ignore this chance?
Did he have any right to become a hermit, forget about his legend, voluntarily abandon genuine immortality and deprive all his contemporaries of it too? Which would be more criminal and more stupid – to carry the blazing torch of the plague through half the Metro or to burn his manuscripts and himself with them?
As a vain and cowardly man, Homer had already made his choice, and now he was only searching for arguments to support it. What would be the point of mummifying himself in the vault at Kolomenskoe in the company of two other corpses? He wasn’t cut out for feats of heroism. And if the Sebastopol soldiers at Tula were prepared to enlist in the ranks of the dead, that was their choice and their right. At least they didn’t have to die alone. And what good would it do if Homer sacrificed himself? He couldn’t stop Hunter in any case. The old man had been spreading the disease without knowing what he was doing, but Hunter had known everything perfectly well since that encounter at Tula. That was why he had insisted on the total extermination of all the station’s inhabitants, including the men from the Sebastopolite convoys. That was why he had mentioned flamethrowers.
And if they were both already sick, the epidemic would inevitably affect Sebastopol. In the first instance the people they had been with. Elena. The station commandant. The commander of the perimeter. Their adjutants. Which meant that in three weeks’ time the station would first be decapitated and overwhelmed by chaos, and then the pestilence would scythe down everyone else. But how could Hunter expect to avoid infection? Why go back to Sebastopol, even though he realised that the illness could have been transmitted to him as well? It was becoming clear to Homer that the brigadier was not acting on intuition, but implementing some kind of plan, step by step. Until the old man had spoiled his game.
So Sebastopol was doomed in any case, and the expedition was completely meaningless now? But even in order to return home and die quietly beside Elena, Homer would have to complete his round-the-world voyage. The journey from Kakhovka to Kashira had been enough to put their gas masks out of action, and the protective suits had absorbed tens, if not hundreds, of roentgens – they had to be disposed of as soon as possible. He couldn’t go back the same way he had come. What should he do?
The girl was sleeping, shrunk up tight into a ball. The fire had finally swallowed the plague-infected diary, consumed the final branches and gone out. To save the batteries of his flashlight, the old man decided to sit in darkness for as long as he could manage it.
No, he had to carry on following the brigadier. He would avoid everyone else, in order to reduce the risk of infection, dump his knapsack here with all his bits and pieces, destroy his clothing . . . He would hope for mercy, but still count down the thirty days. He would work on his book every day without taking any time to rest. ‘It will all work out somehow,’ the old man kept telling himself. ‘The important thing is to follow Hunter, not to fall behind. That’s if he shows up again . . .’
It was more than an hour since the brigadier had disappeared into the blurred opening at the end of the tunnel. When he reassured the girl, Homer was by no means certain that the brigadier would definitely come back to them.
The more the old man learned about him, the less he understood him. It was impossible to trust the brigadier, but just as impossible to doubt him. He was impossible to analyse, he didn’t fit the pattern of normal human emotions. Trusting him was tantamount to surrendering yourself to a force of nature. But Homer had already done it: there was no point in regretting it now, it was too late.
In the pitch darkness the silence didn’t seem so dense. Strange mutterings and whispers were hatching through its smooth shell, something howled in the distance, something rustled. In some sounds the old man fancied he heard the shambling, drunken footfalls of the corpse-eaters, in others he heard the slithering of the phantom giants at Nagornaya, and in some the cries of dying men. Before even ten minutes had passed, he surrendered.
He clicked the switch and shuddered.
Hunter was standing two steps away from him with his arms crossed on his chest, staring at the sleeping girl. Blinded by the sudden light, he put his hand over his eyes and said calmly:
‘They’ll open the door now.’
Sasha was dreaming: she was alone at Kolomenskoe again, waiting for her father after one of his ‘strolls’. He was late, but she had to wait for him, help him take off his outer clothes, pull off his gas mask, feed him. The table was already laid for lunch and she didn’t know what to busy herself with. She wanted to leave the door leading to the surface, but what if he came back at the very moment when she wasn’t there? Who would open it for him? And there she was, sitting on the cold floor beside the door, and the hours flew by, the days came and went, and he still didn’t return, but she wouldn’t leave her place until the door . . . She was woken by the hollow clang of a bolt opening – a bolt exactly like the ones on the door at Kolomenskoe. She woke up with a smile – her father had come back. Then she looked round and remembered everything.
The only real part of her rapidly fading vision was the screeching of the gigantic latches on the metal door. A minute later the immense slab started vibrating and moving slowly. A beam of light poured through the widening crack and diesel fumes seeped out. The entrance to the Greater Metro . . .
The door gently moved aside and slipped into its groove, revealing the insides of the tunnel that led to Avtozavod Station, and then on to the Circle. Standing on the rails, with its engine growling, all ready to go, was a large motor trolley with a front floodlight and several riders. In the hairlines of their machine-gun sight the men on the trolley saw two travellers wincing at the light and covering their eyes.
‘Hands!’ a voice shouted.
Sasha followed the old man and obediently raised her hands. This time the motor trolley was the same one that used to come out across the bridge on trading days. The team on it knew all about Sasha’s story. And now the old man with the strange name would regret taking the shackled girl from the empty station without bothering to ask how she came to be there.
‘Take off your gas masks, present your documents,’ the voice ordered from the trolley.
As she revealed her face, she castigated herself for being so stupid. Nobody could set her free. No one had annulled the sentence passed on her father – and on Sasha along with him. Why had she believed that these two could take her into the Metro? Did she think she wouldn’t be noticed at the frontier?’
‘Hey, you! You can’t come in here!’ She had been recognised immediately. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to disapp
ear. And who’s this? Is this your . . .’
‘What’s going on?’ asked the old man, bewildered.
‘Don’t you dare! Leave him alone! It’s not him!’ Sasha shouted.
‘Clear off!’ the man with an automatic told her in an icy voice. ‘Or we’ll shoot . . . To kill.’
‘At a girl?’ a second voice asked uncertainly.
‘I told you . . .’ said the first man, snapping the breech of his automatic in anticipation.
Sasha backed away and squeezed her eyes shut, preparing to meet death for the third time in the space of a few hours. Something gave a quiet chirrup and then fell silent. The final order never came: the girl couldn’t bear to wait any longer and she half-opened one eye.
The engine was still smoking, with its blue-grey fumes drifting through the torrent of white light pouring out of the projector, which was pointing up at the ceiling.
They were all lying on the trolley or beside it, like gutted dolls: limply dangling arms, unnaturally twisted necks, shattered bodies.
Sasha turned away. The man with the shaved head was standing behind her with his pistol lowered, examining the trolley that had been transformed into a meat chopping board. He raised the barrel and squeezed the trigger again.
‘That’s all now,’ he boomed, satisfied. ‘Take off their uniforms and gas masks.’
‘What for?’ the old man asked with a shudder.
‘We’re getting changed. We’ll drive through Avtozavod on their trolley.’
Sasha froze, gazing dumbfounded at the killer: inside her, fright struggled against admiration, revulsion mingled with gratitude. He had just killed three men as if it was nothing, breaking her father’s most important commandment. But he had done it to save her life – and the old man’s, of course. Could it be a coincidence that he had saved her for the second time? Was she confusing sternness with cruelty?
Metro 2034 Page 15
