Metro 2034

by Dmitry Glukhovsky

  ‘You explain it very well,’ Sasha said thoughtfully. ‘That’s what I felt myself.’

  ‘I have to try to plant this in them,’ Leonid added. ‘In some of them it will die, in some it will sprout. I don’t save anyone. I don’t have the authority for that.’

  ‘But why don’t the other people who live in the City want to help us? Why are even you afraid to admit that you’re doing this?’

  He didn’t answer, and he remained silent until the tunnel ran into Sport Station, which was just as faded and withered, affectedly triumphant and mournful at the same time, but it was also low and cramped, so that it weighed down heavily, like tight bandages round the head. This place smelled of smoke and sweat, poverty and pride. Sasha and Leonid were immediately assigned a nark, who loitered exactly ten steps away from them, wherever they went. The girl wanted to move on straight away, but the musician threw cold water on the idea.

  ‘We can’t go right now. We’ll have to wait a bit’ He settled himself comfortably on a stone bench and clicked the locks on his flute case.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The gates can only be opened at specified times,’ said Leonid, looking away.

  ‘When?’ Sasha looked round and found a clock. If it was correct, less than half of the time allotted to her was left.

  ‘I’ll tell you.’

  ‘You’re dragging things out again!’ She frowned and pulled back from him. ‘First you promise to help, then you try to delay me!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, gathering his courage and catching her eye. ‘I want to delay you.’

  ‘Why? What for?’

  ‘I’m not playing games with you. Believe me, I could have found someone to play with, and not many would have refused. I think I’ve fallen in love. My, my, how clunky that sounds . . .’

  ‘You think . . . You don’t even think it! You’re just saying it, that’s all.’

  ‘There is a way to tell love from a game,’ he said seriously.

  ‘When you deceive someone in order to get them, is that love?’

  ‘Real love shatters your entire life, it doesn’t give a damn for circumstances, including games with all the rest . . .’

  ‘I take a simpler view,’ said Sasha, glowering at him. ‘I’ve never had any life. Take me to the door.’

  Leonid stared gravely at the girl, leaned against a column and crossed his arms, fencing himself off from her. He filled his lungs with air several times, as if he was going to rebuke her, but let it back out again without saying anything. Then he wilted, his face darkened and he made a confession:

  ‘I can’t go with you. They won’t let me back in.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Sasha asked mistrustfully.

  ‘I can’t go back into the Ark. I was banished.’

  ‘Banished? What for?’

  ‘For good reason.’ He turned away and started speaking very quietly – even standing just one step away from him, Sasha couldn’t make it all out. ‘I . . . was insulted by someone. An attendant at a library. He humiliated me in front of witnesses. That night I got drunk and set fire to the library. The attendant and all his family were suffocated by the fumes. It’s a pity we don’t have capital punishment . . . I deserved it. I was just banished. For life. There’s no way back.’

  ‘Then what did you bring me here for?’ Sasha clenched her fists. ‘Why did you burn up my time too?’

  ‘You can try to attract their attention,’ Leonid muttered. ‘The door’s in a side tunnel, and there’s a mark in white paint twenty metres from it. Directly underneath the mark, at ground level, there’s a rubber cover and the button of the bell is underneath that. You have to give three short rings, three long ones and three short ones, that’s the code for returning observers.’

  He really did stay at the station – after helping Sasha to make her way past all three guard posts he strolled back. As they parted, he tried to make her take an old sub-machine-gun that he’d got hold of from somewhere, but Sasha wouldn’t have it. Three short rings, three long rings and three short rings – that was all that could be any use to her now. And a lantern.

  The tunnels after Sport Station were gloomy and empty. The station was regarded as the last one on the line, and every guard post that the musician showed her through looked more like a small fortress than the one before. But Sasha wasn’t afraid, not at all. The only thing she was thinking about was that in an hour, or an hour and a half, she would be on the threshold of the Emerald City.

  And if the City didn’t exist, there was absolutely no point in being afraid.

  The side tunnel was exactly where Leonid had promised it would be, blocked by a badly damaged grille, in which Sasha easily found a gap wide enough to get through. And several hundred steps further on it really did end in the steel wall of a hermetic door – ancient and impregnable. Sasha diligently measured out forty of her own steps from it and spotted a white mark on the wall, which was damp, as if it was sweating. She found the cover immediately. Bending back the rubber, she felt for the bell button and checked the watch that the musician had given her. She was in time! She was in time! She waited for a few more agonisingly long minutes and closed her eyes . . .

  Three short rings.

  Three long rings.

  Three short rings.

  CHAPTER 17

  Who’s Speaking?

  Artyom lowered his sizzling-hot gun-barrel and tried to wipe away the sweat and tears with the back of his hand, but the hand couldn’t reach his face: the gas mask got in the way. Maybe he should just take the damn thing off? What difference did it really make, anyway?

  The sick people must be roaring loud enough to drown out the bursts of sub-machine-gun fire. Otherwise, why would more and more of them keep pouring out of the carriage to face the hail of lead? Couldn’t they hear the thunderous rumbling, didn’t they understand they were being shot at pointblank range? What were they hoping for? Or maybe they couldn’t give a damn any more either?

  The platform was piled high with swollen bodies for several metres around the exit that had been broken open. Some of the bodies were still twitching, and a groan came from somewhere under the burial mound. The purulent flow from the open abscess of the doorway finally stopped: the people left in the carriage huddled up tightly together in terror, hiding from the bullets.

  Artyom glanced round at the other gunners. Was he the only one with shaking hands and trembling knees? None of them said a word. At first even the commander was silent. The only sounds were the wheezing of the overcrowded train trying to suppress a bloody cough and the curse spat out by the last man still dying under the heap of dead.

  ‘Monsters . . . Bastards . . . I’m still alive . . . It’s so heavy . . .’

  The commander finally spotted the man, squatted down beside him and emptied the remains of his cartridge clip into the poor wretch, squeezing the trigger until his empty gun started clicking. He got up, looked at his pistol and for some reason wiped it on his trousers.

  ‘Keep calm!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘Any further attempts to leave the infirmary without permission will be punished in the same way.’

  ‘What shall we do with the bodies?’ the men asked him.

  ‘Put them back in the train. Ivanenko, Aksyonov, see to it!’

  Order had been restored. Artyom could go back to his post and try to get some sleep. There were still a couple of hours left until reveille: if he could just get at least an hour of shuteye, so that he wouldn’t collapse on duty tomorrow.

  It didn’t work out like that.

  Ivanenko stepped back and started shaking his head, refusing to take hold of the putrescent, disintegrating bodies. Forgetting that he had no cartridges left, the commander hissed in fury and held out the hand with the pistol towards him. The firing pin clattered uselessly. Ivanenko squealed and ran for it.

  And then one of the soldiers who was coughing flung up his automatic and stabbed the commander in the back with a crooked, awkward thrust of his bayonet. But the commander
didn’t fall, he stayed on his feet and slowly looked round over his shoulder at the man who had struck him.

  ‘What are you doing, you bastard?’ he asked in quiet amazement.

  ‘You’ll do for all of us the same way soon . . . There’s not a healthy man left in the whole station. We shoot them today, and tomorrow you’ll drive the rest of us into these carriages,’ the man yelled at the commander, trying to tug his bayonet out of him, but not firing for some reason.

  No one interfered. Not even Artyom, who took a step towards the two of them, but then froze, waiting. At last the bayonet came out. The commander reached for his wound, as if he was trying to scratch himself, then went down on his knees, braced his hands against the slippery floor and started shaking his head about. Was he trying to come to his senses? Or did he want to fall asleep?

  No one could bring himself to finish the commander off. Even the mutineer who had stabbed him with the bayonet recoiled in fright, then tore off his gas mask and shouted loud enough for the whole station to hear.

  ‘Brothers! No more torturing them! Let them out! They’re going to die anyway! And so are we! Are we human beings or not?’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ the commander wheezed inaudibly, still on his knees.

  The gunners started murmuring, conferring with each other. The bars were torn off carriage doors, first in one place and then in another. Then someone shot the instigator in the face and he tumbled over backwards to join the other dead. But it was already too late: with a triumphant roar the crowd of infected people gushed out of the train into the hall, running clumsily on their thick legs. They tore the automatics out of the daunted sentries’ hands and wandered off in various directions. The guards faltered too; some were still firing at the sick people, but others mingled with them and wandered out of the station into all the tunnels: some went north, towards Serpukhov and others went south, towards Nagatino.

  Artyom stood there, gazing stupidly at the commander, who refused to die. First he crept forward on all fours, then he stood up, slipping repeatedly, and set off to go somewhere.

  ‘And now for your surprise . . . You didn’t think I’d be prepared for this,’ he muttered.

  The commander’s wandering gaze settled on Artyom. He froze for a moment and suddenly spoke in his ordinary voice that brooked no insubordination.

  ‘Popov! Take me to the radio room! I have to order the northern guard post to close the door . . .’

  Artyom lent the commander his shoulder, and they wandered slowly past the empty train, past the fighting men, past the jumbled heaps of lumber, to the radio room, where the phone was. The commander’s wound was apparently not fatal, but he had lost a lot of blood and his strength deserted him before they got there: he went limp and slumped into oblivion.

  Artyom shoved the desk against the door, grabbed the microphone of the internal switchboard and called the northern guard post. The phone clicked a few times and wheezed as if it was breathing laboriously and then it was silent, with a terrible silence.

  If it was too late to close off that direction, Artyom had to warn Dobrynin at least. He dashed over to the phone, pressed one of the two buttons on the panel and waited a few seconds . . . The phone was still working. At first the only sound in the receiver was a whispered echo, then he heard a rapid clicking, and finally the ringing tone.

  One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Four . . . Five . . . Six . . .

  Oh God, let them answer. If they’re all still alive, if they haven’t been infected yet, let them answer, let them give him a chance. Let them answer before the sick people can reach the borders of the station . . . Artyom would have pawned his very soul now, just for someone to answer at the other end of the line!

  And then the impossible happened. The sound broke off midway through the seventh beep, he heard grunting and squabbling in the distance and a cracked, agitated voice gasped through the rustling.

  ‘Dobrynin Station here!’

  The cage was shrouded in gloom. But even in that meagre light Homer could see that the prisoner’s silhouette was too puny and too lifeless to belong to the brigadier. As if it was a stuffed dummy sitting behind the bars – limp and drooping. It looked like the guard . . . Dead. But where was Hunter?

  ‘Thanks, I didn’t think you’d reach me in time,’ said a dull, hollow voice. ‘I felt . . . cramped in there.’

  Miller spun his chair faster than Homer could look round. The brigadier was standing in the passage, blocking their way out to the station. His hands were firmly clenched together, as if one didn’t trust the other and was afraid to let go of it. He turned his mutilated side towards them.

  ‘Is that you?’ asked Miller, and his cheek twitched.

  ‘Yes, for now,’ said Hunter, giving a strange little cough. If Homer hadn’t known him, he might even have taken the sound for a laugh.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? What happened to your face?’

  Miller clearly wanted to ask Hunter about something completely different: he gestured with his hand, ordering the guards to go out. They left Homer there.

  ‘You’re not exactly in the best shape either.’ The brigadier gave that cough again.

  ‘A mere trifle,’ said Miller, screwing up his face. ‘It’s just a shame that I can’t give you a hug. Damn you! Where have you . . . ? We searched for you for so long!’

  ‘I know. I needed . . . to be alone,’ Hunter said jerkily. ‘I didn’t want to come back to people. I wanted to go away forever. But I got scared . . .’

  ‘But what happened with the Black Ones? Did they do that to you?’ asked Miller, nodding at the purple weals.

  ‘Nothing. I wasn’t able to destroy them.’ The brigadier touched his scar. ‘I couldn’t do it. They . . . broke me.’

  ‘You were right,’ Miller said with sudden passion. ‘Forgive me for taking no notice at first, for not believing. At that time we . . . Well, you remember . . . But we found them, we burned out the whole place. We thought you were already dead. That they’d . . . I wiped them out for you . . . For you. To the very last one!’

  ‘I know,’ Hunter said in a hoarse, distraught voice. ‘And they knew that would happen – because of me. They knew everything. They could really see people, and every person’s destiny. You have no idea who we dared to raise our hand against . . . He smiled at us for one last time . . . He sent them . . . Gave us one more chance. And we . . . I condemned them, and you carried out the sentence. Because that’s what we’re like. Because we’re monsters . . .’

  ‘What . . .’

  ‘When I came to them . . . they showed me myself. It was as if I looked at myself in a mirror and saw everything the way it really is. I understood everything about myself. I understood about people. Why it all happened to us . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Miller stared at his comrade anxiously and cast a quick glance at the door – perhaps he regretted having sent the guards away?

  ‘I told you. I saw myself through their eyes, in a mirror. Not the outside, but the inside . . . behind the screen . . . They lured me out in front of the mirror in order to show me. A cannibal. A monster. But I didn’t see a man. I was terrified at the sight of myself. Something woke up. I’d been lying to myself before. Telling myself I was protecting people, saving . . . It was lies. I was just a bloody, ravenous beast who tore out throats. Worse than a beast. The mirror disappeared, but it . . . this thing . . . stayed. It woke up and refused to sleep anymore. They thought I would kill myself after that. What did I have to live for? But I didn’t. I had to fight. At first on my own . . . So that no one could see. As far away from people as possible. I thought I could punish myself, so that they wouldn’t punish me. I thought I could drive it out with pain . . .’ He touched his scars. ‘Then I realised that without people it would defeat me. I was forgetting myself. So I came back.’

  ‘They brainwashed you!’ Miller exclaimed in an agonised voice.

  ‘Never mind. It’s over and done with now,’ said the brigadier. He took his hand a
way from the weals on his face and his voice became dead and empty again. ‘Almost all. That story was finished long ago and what’s done is done. We’re alone here now. We have to pull through on our own. That’s not what I came about. There’s an epidemic at Tula. It could break out to Sebastopol and into the Circle. Airborne fever. The same old deadly plague.’

  ‘It hasn’t been reported to me,’ said Miller, eyeing him suspiciously.

  ‘They haven’t reported it to anyone. They’re being cowardly. Lying. They don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ asked Miller, sitting up higher in his wheelchair.

  ‘You know that. The danger has to be eliminated. Give me a token. Give me men. Flamethrowers. We have to shut down Tula and purge it. Serpukhov and Sebastopol too, if necessary. I hope it hasn’t got any further.’

  ‘Wipe out three stations just in case?’ Miller asked.

  ‘To save the rest of them.’

  ‘After a bloodbath like that everyone will hate the Order . . .’

  ‘No one will find out. We won’t leave anyone who could have been infected . . . or could have seen anything.’

  ‘It’s a huge price to pay!’

  ‘Don’t you understand? If we delay just a little bit longer, there’ll be no one left to save. We found out about the epidemic too late. There won’t be another chance to stop it. In two weeks the entire Metro will be a plague barracks, in a month it will be a graveyard.’

  ‘I have to make sure for myself . . .’

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’ve gone crazy? You didn’t believe me then and you still doubt me now. Screw it. I’ll go on my own. As usual. At least I’ll keep my own conscience clear.’

  He swung round, pushing aside Homer, who was absolutely stunned, and headed for the exit. But those final words he flung out had sunk deep into Miller’s chest, like a harpoon, and they dragged him after the brigadier.

  ‘Wait! Take a token!’ He fumbled hastily under his tunic and held out a perfectly ordinary looking flat metal badge to Hunter, who had stopped dead in his tracks. ‘I authorise you . . .’ The brigadier raked the token out of the bony fingers, stuck it in his pocket and nodded without speaking, aiming a long, unblinking stare at Miller.