Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (16 page)

Actually Homer didn’t shake the feeling that Hunter was delaying a really important conversation. From time to time the brigadier looked at him as if he wanted to ask
something but he remained silent. But maybe the old man had confused a wish with reality again and he was an unwanted witness that Hunter would choke somewhere in the tunnel.

More frequently the brigadiers gaze fell on the old man’s backpack where the mysterious diary was. He seemed to feel that Homers thoughts circled around a certain object and he closed in on it, approaching slowly but steadily

Cramped Homer tried not to think about the diary, in vain.

He hadn’t had much time to pack and had only spent a few minutes with the diary. Of course it hadn’t been enough to wet all with blood glued together pages and separate them from each other but he had been able to read a part of the pages. They were all over the place, the writing fragmented and events weren’t in order, as if the author had to stop for words and only written them down with much peril at some places. So that they would make sense Homer had to bring them in the right order.

“No contact. The telephone is silent. Probably sabotage. Someone
who
had been
exiled? Out of revenge?

Still in front of us”

“The s
ituation
is
without a way out. No help can be expected from anywhere. To ask the Sevastopolskaya would
be the end for
our men
. We can only wait … But for how long?”

“We
cannot
ge
t
out … They went crazy. If not
them then
who? Flee!”

And then there was something else. Immediately after the last words that warned about storming the
Tulskaya
there was a signature, almost unreadable, stamped with the brown weal of a bloody finger. Homer had heard the name before, he had even said it.

This diary belonged to the radio operator that had left with the caravan for the
Tul
skay
a
a week ago.

They passed the tunnel to another metro depot that hadn’t been emptied out. Without a doubt it would have if it hadn’t been hit by so much radiation. The black tunnels which lead there had been barricaded with welded together metal of all kinds. On a metal sign that was hanging down from a piece of wire whis was attached to one of the bars, a dull smiling skull stared at them and under it were remains of a warning in red paint. It had now fallen off or been removed intentionally.

This barred of tunnel held homers look magically and when he was finally able to take his gaze from it he was thinking that this line wasn’t as lifeless as many thought at the
Sevastopolskaya
.

Then they passed the
War
s
chavskaya
, a horrible rusted and with fungus covered station that looked like a body that had laid to long in water. The with tiles covered walls sweated some kind of murky fluid and through the half opened hermetic door a cold wind blew from the surface as if a giant creature tried to breathe air into this rotten station. The hysterical ticking sound of the Geiger counter exhorted them to leave this place as fast as possible.

They were already approaching the
K
aschirskaya
when the system stopped working and the indicator stopped at the end of the scale. Homer felt a bitter smell on his tongue.

“Where did it go down?’ Asked Hunter.

The voice of the brigadier was hard to hear as if Homer had put his head into a full bathtub. He stopped, finally he had an excuse for a just short but welcome pause and pointed with his glove to the southeast. “At the
Kantemirov
skaya
. We think that the ceiling and the airshaft went down with it. Nobody knows for certain”

“That means the
Kantemiro
wvsk
aya
is abandoned?”

“Always has been. Past the
Kolomenskay
a
you won’t find a single human soul”

“Somebody once told me …” Started Hunter but then he went silent, made gesture for Homer to be silent as well.

He seemed to feel some kind of invisible wave. Finally he asked: ”Does anybody know what happened at the
Kaschirskaya
?”

“How?” Homer didn’t know if his sarcastic tone sounded though the filters.

“Then I am going to tell you. The radiation is so high there that we’ll be cooked in a matter of minutes. With radiation suit or without them. We’re going back”

“Back? To the
Sevastopolskaya
?”

“Yes, there I’ll go to the surface. Maybe I get further from there.” Said Hunter sunken in thoughts. It was as if he was already planning his route.

Homer couldn’t find the right words: “You want to go alone?”

“I can’t always look after you. I have to watch out that I won’t die too. We won’t get through together anyway. It isn’t even sure that I am going to make it alone”

“Don’t you understand? I have to go with you, I want …”

Homer desperately searched for a reason, an excuse.

“… To do something useful before you die?” ended the brigadier the sentence. His tone was indifferent, even though Homer knew that the filter of the gasmasks filtered any fumes out so that only tasteless sterile air came in and mechanical soulless voices as well.

The old man closed his eyes and tried desperately to remember what he knew about the short stub of the
Kachoc
h
skaya
line, about the irradiated
Samoskv
orezkaya
line, about the way from the
Sevastopolskaya
and to the
Serpuchovskaya
… Everything but not to turn back, to not return to this lacking life that had nothing to offer to him anymore but false hopes of great stories and legends.

“Follow me!” He croaked and suddenly walked to the east with such speed that even he was surprised. They walked east, to the
Kaschirskaya
, into the middle of hell.

She dreamt that she was working with a saw on the iron ring to which she was chained to the wall, the tool shrieked and slipped again and again but every time she had
gotten one millimeter into the steel the thin scratch grew together again in front of her eyes.

But Sasha didn’t give up. Again she took the saw with her bloody hands and continued to work the unyielding metal.

The most important thing was to continue, to show no weakness, to not stop working and to not rest.

Her chained feet were swollen and numb. Sasha knew that even if she succeeded to beat the iron she wouldn’t be able to flee because she could no longer control her legs …

She awoke and opened her eyelids.

The chains hadn’t been a dream. Sasha’s hands were handcuffed. She was lying on the dirty loading area of the mining railcar that shrieked monotone while it tortured itself forward. In her mouth was a dirty piece of cloth and her forehead hurt and bleed.

He didn’t kill me, she thought. Why?

From the loading area she could only see a part of the tunnels ceiling. In the randomly moving light the welds of the tunnel rips flickered out of the darkness. Suddenly the tunnel segments disappeared and cracked white paint was to be seen.

What kind of station was this?

This was a bad place: Not just silent but deathly silent, not just empty of people but empty of live and also dark. She
had always thought that the station on the other side of the bridge would be full of people and noise. Should she have been mistaken?

The blanket over Sasha didn’t move anymore. The kidnapper climbed on the platform cursing, his with iron spikes fitted soles made a strange sound. He seemed to scan his surroundings. He had already taken of his gasmask because suddenly you could hear him mumble: “There you are. It has been a while.” Relieved he breathed out and beat after something – no kicked against something lifeless, heavy:

A full sack?”

Sasha realized. She bit the stinking rag and started to moan dull, her body cramped. Now she knew where the fat man in the radiation suit had brought her and to whom his words were pointed at.

Even the thought to leave Hunter behind was absurd.

With a few predator like jumps he had caught up to him, held on to his shoulder and shook him painfully.

“What’s going with you?”

“A little further …” Croaked the old man. “I remember, there is still a tunnel that leads directly to the

Samoskvorezkaya
line, even before the
Kaschirskaya
. If we pass through there we get directly into the tunnel and don’t have to run through the station. We circle it and end up directly at the
Kolomenskaya
. It can’t be far. Please …”

Homer used Hunters hesitation to rip himself free but one of his legs got caught up in the suit and didn’t move and he fell onto the rails. But stood up immediately after that and continued to set one foot in front of the other. Hunter grabbed the old man with ease as if he was a rat, turn him to his face so that the windows of their gasmasks where at the same height. A few seconds he locked at Homer but then he eased his grip. “Ok.” He growled

From now on Homer dragged the brigadier behind him without stopping for a second. The sound of his blood in his ears sounded over the clicking sound of the Geiger counter, his stiff legs were almost no longer under his control and his lungs seemed to explode, struggling to get air.

He had almost overlooked the deep dark stain of the hole. They squeezed through and ran for another few minutes until they left through another new tunnel. The brigadier looked around hastily, went back into the tunnel and asked
the old man angry: “Where did you lead me? Have you even been here before?”

Around another thirty meters to left, into the direction that they had to go, the tunnel had been filled from the floor to the ceiling by something that vaguely reminded him of the web of a spider. Homer didn’t have enough air to breathe so the just shook his head. It was the whole truth, he had never been here. Everything else he had heard about this place he wouldn’t tell hunter.

The brigadier held the assault rifle in his left hand, pulled a long straight knife out of his backpack; it was some kind of self-made machete and started to slice the sticky white mass. The dried shells of flying roaches which hung in the web started to shiver and made sounds like rusted bells.

The edges of the wound started to grow back together immediately. The brigadier raised the half transparent piece of spider web, put his search light through and lit the side tunnel. They would need hours to cut their way through. The sticky web had grown in the tunnel in many layers.

Hunter looked at the Geiger counter, made a strange but disappointed noise and started to rip through the web that was between the walls. The web only gave in reluctantly.

It cost them more time then they had. In around ten minutes they had only gotten around thirty feet and the net became denser and denser, it seemed to block the entry like a big piece of cotton. When they finally passed an overgrown vent where an ugly two headed skeleton laid on the ground the brigadier threw his knife to the ground.

They hung in this web like the roaches and even if the creature that had made this giant web was already dead the radiation would do its job.

While Hunter was looking for an exit Homer suddenly remembered what he had heard about this place. He dropped to his knees, shook a few bullets out of his reserve clip, turned them around, opened them with his knife and shook the gunpowder in to his hand.

Hunter realized immediately. A few moments later they stood at the entrance of the side tunnel again, covered a piece of cotton with the coarse grey powder and held a lighter to it.

The powder hissed and started to smoke and suddenly the unimaginable happened, the small flame began to shoot into all direction at the same time, reached the ceiling, wandered along the walls and filled the entire tunnel.

Greedily it ate the web and rushed into the depths.

Like a roaring ball of fire it moved forwards, lit the dark tunnel segments and left burned pieces on the ceiling.

On its way to the
Kolomenskaya
the fire got narrower and dragged all the air with it. Then the tunnel turned around and the flame which dragged a purple cape behind it was no longer to be seen.

In the distance Homer believed to hear an inhuman, desperate shrieking over of the deafening sound of the fire.

But the old man was still hypnotized by what he had seen so he didn’t entirely trust his senses.

Hunter but his knife back into his backpack and pulled out two new and sealed filter-boxes for their gasmasks. “They were meant for the way back.” He changed his filter and gave the other box to homer. “Because of the fire the radiation is now as high as back then”