Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (13 page)

“Where is everyone?” Why is nobody here?” Hunter put his foot on the stinking bundle of torn rags that the homeless person was wearing.

“They are all gone … Left me alone. Left me all by myself” It croaked. At the same time its hands scrapped over the granite without moving forwards.

“Where did they go?”

“To the
Tulskaya
…”

Homer had reached both of them and joined the conversation immediately: “What is going on there?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

The homeless person made a grimace. “Everybody that went there, died there. Go and ask them. I had no more strength to move around in those tunnels. I’d rather die here”

The brigadier didn’t give up: “Why did they leave?”

“They were afraid, boss. The station got more and emptier over time. So they decided to break through. Nobody returned”

“Not a single one?” Hunter raised his pistol.

“Nobody. Only one.” The man corrected himself.

When he realized that the barrel of the gun was still pointed at him he floundered around like an ant under a magnifying glass.

“He went to the
Nagornaya
. I was asleep. I could have imagined it”

“When?”

The homeless man shook his head. “I don’t have a watch. Maybe yesterday, maybe last week”

No more questions came but the barrel of the pistol was still pointed at the forehead of the interrogated man.

Hunter was silent. Strange, but he was breathing heavily; you could have thought that the conversation with the bum had cost him a lot of strength.

“Can I …” Asked the homeless man.

“There, eat!” Growled the brigadier and before Homer knew what was going he had pulled the trigger twice. The dark blood coming from the hole in the unlucky man’s forehead shoot over his wide open eyes. He fell to the ground – once again nothing but rags and cardboard. Without looking up Hunter loaded four more bullets into the clip of the Stetschkin (
a
suppressed
pistol with almost no recoil
) and jumped on the tracks. “We will find out for ourselves soon enough” He yelled at the old man.

Homer lowered himself unwillingly over the body, took a piece cloth and put it over the destroyed head of the homeless man. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking.

“Why did you kill him?” He asked weakly.

“Ask yourself” Answered Hunter in a dull voice.

Even when he gathered all his strength the only thing he could still do was open and close his eyes. Strange that he had awoken at all … He had been laying there unconscious for about an hour and his body had felt as numb as if it was covered with a layer of ice. His tongue had dried at his palate and a ton heavy weight was lying on his chest. No he couldn’t even say goodbye to his daughter, it would have been the only thing worth delaying the end of his eternal fight for survival.

Sasha didn’t smile anymore. It seemed she was now dreaming uneasy, laid rolled up on her camp bet, both arms crossed in front of her chest. Even when she was a child he had always woken her when she had been tormented by nightmares, but now he had only enough strength to slowly movie his eyelids.

And then even that became harder and harder. When he wanted hold on till Sasha awoke he would have to continue the fight. It lasted for over twenty years now, every day, every minute and he was damned tired of it. Tired of fighting, hiding, hunting, proving, hoping and lying.

While his mind darkened he only had two wishes: To see Sasha’s eyes one more time and then … To finally find peace. But he couldn’t do it. Once again the pictures of the past rose up in front of his inner eye and mixed with reality.

He had to make a decision. To break others or be broken himself. To punish or to penance …

The guardsmen closed the rows. Every single one of them was loyal to him alone. Ready to die here and now, to let themselves be torn apart by the masses or to shot at the innocent. He was the commander of the last unbreakable station of the metro, president of a no longer existing confederation. Under his soldiers his authority was unquestioned, unmistaken, every single of his orders was to be executed immediately, without question. He would take full responsibility for it like he had always done.

When he retreated now this station would sink into anarchy at first and then it would be swallowed by the boiling red empire that had swelled over its usual borders and had
annexed more and more territories. When he would open fire on the demonstrators, power would remain in his hands – at least for some time. And if he wouldn’t shy away from mass executions and torture maybe even forever.

He aimed his rifle. One moment after him the entire unit did so too.

There they raged, not just a few hundredth demonstrators but a giant, faceless human mass: Bared fangs, wide open eyes, raised fists.

He unsecured his rifle. His unit answered with the same clicking sound.

It was time take fate into his own hands.

He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. Chalk fell from the ceiling. For a moment the masses turned silent. He signaled his fighters to lower their weapons and made on step towards the demonstrators. He had made his decision.

And finally the memory let him in peace.

Sasha was still sleeping. He took his last breath, tried to look at her one last time but he could no longer raise his eyelids … But instead of eternal, impenetrable darkness he saw an unimaginable blue sky – clear and bright, like the eyes of his daughter.

“Stop!”

Homer would have almost jumped and raised his hands, he was that surprised. But he kept it together. The voice – probably from a megaphone – out of the depths of the tunnel had surprised him. The brigadier wasn’t surprised at all. Tense as a cobra before it strikes; he took the heavy automatic rifle from his back almost unnoticeable.

Hunter hadn’t just refused to answer a single one of the old man’s questions but hadn’t said a word. The one and a half kilometer from the
Nagatinskaya
to the
Tulskaya
had felt as endless as the journey to
Golgatha
. He feared that death waited at the end of the tunnel and it was getting harder for him to retain Hunter’s speed.

At least he had time to prepare himself and to think about old times. He thought about Yelena, cursed himself for his egoism and asked her to forgive him. He once saw the
magical, soft, sad light on that slightly rainy summer day on the
Tverskaya
. He regretted that he hadn’t said what should happen to his newspapers before he left.

He had been ready to die – to be ripped apart by monsters, eaten by giant rats, poisoned by some kind of gas … What other explanation was there why the
Tulskaya
had transformed itself into a black hole which had swallowed everything outside and didn’t let it go?

But when he heard the mysterious but familiar human voice he didn’t know what to think anymore. Had the
Tulskaya
just been captured? But who was able to destroy all the recon teams of the
Sevastopolskaya
, vagabonds that traveled through the tunnels systematically, not even sparing women and old people?

“Thirty steps forward!” Said the voice out of the distance.

It sounded vaguely familiar and if he would have had time to think about it he would’ve been able to determine whose it was.

Wasn’t that someone from
Sevastopolskaya
?

Hunter put his Kalashnikov in one hand and carefully counted his steps: For the thirty Homer needed fifty. In front of them was a fuzzy barricade that had been constructed out
of random objects. Strangely the defenders didn’t use any light …

“Lamps out!” Commanded somebody from behind the pile. “One of you, come twenty steps closer”

Hunter unsecured his rifle and moved forwards.

Homer remained behind alone again; he didn’t dare to refuse the orders. In the deep darkness that reigned here now, he carefully sat down on the ground, reached for the wall and leaned at it.

The steps of the brigadier stopped silent at the wanted distance. Somebody asked him something inaudible and he gave a growling answer. Then the situation got tense: Instead of the first neutral mood now you could hear curses and insults. It seemed that Hunter demanded something that the invisible guardians denied him.

Now they almost screamed at each other and Homer could almost make out single words … But he could make out one word: “Punishment!”

In this moment the sound of a Kalashnikov ended the conversation and a heavy salve from a Petscheng (
a heavy machine gun
) answered. Homer threw himself to the ground, unsecured his rifle but didn’t fire, he didn’t knew if he should shot or not, or at whom.

But it was over before it started; Homer hadn’t even time to aim his rifle.

In the small brakes between the machine gun salves that almost sounded like Morse signals, the stomach of the tunnel made a long shrieking sound that Homer wouldn’t have mistaken for anything else.

The hermetic doors where closing! Tons of steel slammed against each other muzzling the screams and the machine gun salves.

The only entrance to the metro was closed.

Now there was no more hope for the
Sevastopolskaya
.

From the other side (chapter 6)

One moment after that Homer almost believed that he had imagined everything: The vague outline of the barricades at the end of the tunnel, the somehow familiar distorted voice … When the light went out all other sounds faded as well. He felt like a convict that had been put a sack over his face just before the execution. In the absolute darkness and sudden silence the whole world seemed to have disappeared. Homer touched his face to reassure himself that he hadn’t vanished into this cosmic blackness as well. Then he calmed down again, tried to find his lamp and held the trembling beam of light in front of him where a few seconds ago the invisible battle had taken place. About thirty meters from where he had taken cover during the fight the tunnel ended. A steel door cut through the tunnel like the blade of a guillotine. So he had heard right: Somebody had really activated the hermetic door. Homer knew of its existence but he hadn’t thought that it was still functional. But it turned out that you could still use it. His from paperwork weakened eyes didn’t immediately see the human figure that leaned on the iron wall. Homer pointed his rifle forward and took a step
back. At first he thought that one of the men from the other side had remained outside in the confusion, but then he recognized Hunter.

The brigadier didn’t move. Homer started to sweat.

Hesitantly he approached Hunter. Probably he would see blood on the wall … But no. Even though they had fired at Hunter in an empty tunnel with a machine gun he was completely unharmed. He pressed his mutilated ear against the metal and listened for sounds that only he could hear.

“What happened?” Homer asked carefully and got closer.

The brigadier didn’t pay attention to him. He whispered something to himself, repeating the words that were spoken on the other side of the closed door. Several minutes passed till he moved away from the door and turned to Homer: “We go back”

“What happened?”

“There are bandits. We need reinforcements”

“Bandits?” Asked the old man confused. “That voice back there seemed …”

“The entire
Tulskaya
is in the hand of the enemy. We will have to storm it. For that we need backup with flamethrowers”

“Why flamethrowers?” Homer was beside himself.

“To be sure. We go back.” Hunter turned around and moved away from Homer.

Before Homer followed Hunter he looked at the door observantly, yes he even pressed his own ear against the cold metal in the hope to hear a part of the conversation as well. But he heard only silence.

And suddenly Homer realized that he didn’t believe Hunter. Whoever this enemy was that had captured the station behaved completely incomprehensible. Why did they activate the hermetic door? To protect themselves from two people? Which bandits negotiated with some armed men instead of mowing them down before they even got to them?

And then: What meant the word “punishment” that the mysterious guardian had mentioned?

Nothing was more valuable than a human life, Sasha’s father had once said.