Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (17 page)

The old man nodded his head. The flame had whirled up radioactive particles that had deposited in the web. In the black vacuum of these tunnels there had to be milliards of death bringing molecules. Uncountable small underwater mines hang in this empty room and blocked their way. They couldn’t move out of the way, there was only one way, directly through them.

“If your father could see you now.” The fat man mocked her.

Sasha was sitting directly in front of her father’s corpse that was laying in facedown his blood.

The kidnapper had opened his overall; he was wearing a bleached t-shirt with some kind of happily laughing animal on it.

Every time she raised her eyes her kidnapper blinded her with his flashlight so that she wouldn’t be able to see his face. He had pulled the cloth out of her mouth but Sahsa didn’t even think about pleading for something.

“You don’t look like your mother. Too bad, I was hoping …” The elephant legs in the high, stained rubber boots wandered for the second time around the pillars. Sasah was leaning on them with her back so she didn’t know what was going on. Now his voice came from behind. “Your father must have thought that in time they would forgive him. But there are crimes that don’t lapse … Like slandering and treason.” His obscure silhouette emerged out of the dark from the other side. He stopped in front of her father’s corpse,
kicked at it with his boot and spit out thick slime. “Too bad that the old man already died without my help”

The fat man moved the ray of light through the murky, faceless station where mountains of useless scrap were laying around.

At the bicycle the light stopped. “You got a nice place here. I think if not for you, your father would have already hung himself”

While he lit the station Sasha tried to crawl away but one second later the ray of light caught her.

“I can relate.” With one jump her kidnapper stood next to her. “He made a nice lady. But like I said, to bad that she doesn’t look like her mother. It probably bothered him too.

Well whatever.” He kicked her side with his boot so that she fell over. “After all I have crossed the entire metro to get here”

Sasha winced and shook her head.

“You see Petya how easy it was to predict what would going to happen?” Once again he had turned to her father.

“Back then you always brought your rivals in front of the tribunal. And many thanks for the lifelong exile instead of the execution! Well, life is really long and your situation
changes. And not always in your favor. I am back even thought it took me ten years longer than planned”

“You never accidently returned to the same place” she whispered her father’s words.

“Too true.” Answered the fat man sarcastic. “Hey who’s there?”

At the other end of the platform you could hear a scraping sound, then something heavy fell to the ground.

Some kind of hissing sound was to hear and another that sounded like steps of a big animal. The silence that followed was deceptive but Sasha and her kidnapper both felt that something approached them.

The fat man unsecured his weapon loudly and went to his knee next to her, he had pressed the stock against his shoulder and sent the flickering spot of light over the pillars.

That something had moved in the for centuries abandoned southern tunnels was scarier than if all the marble statues in the central station would have suddenly come to life.

In the wandering ray of light a blurred shadow appeared for a second, not human, because whether its silhouette nor its speed was of a human. When the ray of light had returned to the same place, strangely there was no trace
left of the strange creature. A few seconds the panicky searching light caught it again, now only twenty feet away from them.

“A bear?” Whispered the fat man doubting what he had just seen and pulled the trigger.

The bullets rushed to the pillars, hit the walls but the animal had vanished into thin air at the same time, not one of the shots had reached its goal. Then the fat man switched to pointless auto fire, dropped the Kalashnikov and pressed his hands onto his stomach. The flashlight rolled to the side so the light fell on the heavy, cramped figure from the ground upwards.

Without any haste a human emerged out of the twilight, with astonishing, soft and almost inaudible steps even though he was wearing heavy boots. The radiation suit was even too big for his colossal stature, so that you could actually think that he was a bear.

He didn’t wear a gasmask. The cleanly shaven head that was full of scares reminded of a dried desert. One part of his face had a brave look; if not a bit rough you could have said that it looked handsome if it hadn’t been unmoving like he was dead. It ran down cold Sasha’s back when she had saw him. The other half was just outrageously wounded, a
complex network of scars made a mask of pure ugliness out of his face. Still, his appearance would have had something repulsive and not scary if it weren’t for his eyes. An always wandering, half insane stare was the only thing that kept the unmoving face alive. A life without a soul.

The fat man tried to get onto his feet but slipped on the ground and immediately screamed in pain. The colossal man crouched; slowly pointed the long barrel of the suppressed pistol against the back of the fat man’s head and pulled the trigger. The screaming stopped instantly, but the echo wandered around in the tomb of the station for a bit longer, like a lost creature that had been deprived of a body.

The shot had ripped his lower jaw from his head, the kidnapper showed his face to her, which was now a slimy red funnel. Sasha lowered her head and started to cry.

The terrible man pointed the barrel of the gun at her, slowly and sunken in his thoughts. Then he turned around and decided differently. The pistol returned to his shoulder holster and he himself stepped back as if he wanted to distance himself from his doing. He opened a flat flask and put it to his lips.

Now another character stepped onto the small stage that was lit by the fading flashlight of the fat man: An old
man. He was breathing heavily and pressed his hand against his rips. He wore the same suit as the killer but moved a lot more clumsily as him. As soon as he had caught up to his follower he fell to the ground. He didn’t even realize that everything was covered in blood. Only after he had rested and opened his eyes again he saw the two distorted corpses and the completely scared girl.

He had just calmed down his heart and now it started to beat faster again. Before Homer had found words for it he kne He had found her. After all his inconclusive tries he had found the heroine for his novel which had started to take shape in front of his inner eye at night, her lips, hands, her clothing, her smell, her movement and thoughts of the person he had tried to create were now suddenly standing exactly in front of him. In flesh and blood. Directly out of his imagination.

But no, honestly he had imagines her differently, more elegant, with smother edges … And definitely older. She here had too many hard edges and her eyes weren’t filled with
warmth but they were splinters of hard ice. But he knew that it had been him who had been mistaken, he hadn’t been able to foresee how she would be. Her chased look, the scared face, and the cuffed hands – it all fascinated him. Of course he knew how to tell many extraordinary stories but to write a tragedy of the likes of which had happened to this young woman was not in his power. Her helplessness, being exposed to the cruel world, her wonderful rescue and the way fate had woven her, his and hunters story together, all that could only mean that he was on the right path.

He believed her before she had said a single word.

Because next to everything this girl possessed a kind of beauty in her confuse, blond, sloppy cut hair, pointy ears, dirt covered cheeks, fragile, exposed, astonishing white shoulders and her childish lips. So that a spontaneous attachment joined his curiosity and pity.

Homer approached her and crouched down. She lowered her head and closed her eyes. She probably didn’t have a lot of contact with other people he thought. Because he didn’t know what to say so he just softly held on to her shoulder.

“We need to go.” Growled Hunter.

“And what’s with …” Homer pointed at the girl with an asking look

“Nothing, she’s none of our business”

“We can’t leave her here alone!”

“Then we give her a bullet” Answered the brigadier harsh.

“I don’t want to go with you.” Said the girl surprisingly clear. “Just get these handcuffs off of me. He probably has the keys.” She pointed at the faceless body on the ground.

With a few moves of his hand Hunter fished the iron keys out of the fat mans pocket and threw them to the girl: “Satisfied?”

The old man played for time. “What did that pig do to you?” He asked the little one.

“Nothing.” She replied while she fumbled whith the lock.

“He didn’t get far. He is no monster. Just a normal human being. Horrible, stupid and unforgiving. Like all.”

“Not all.” Answered the old man but it didn’t sound very convincing.

“All.” Repeated the girl. She made a grimace but she accomplished to stand up onto her swollen feet. “Well it isn’t always easy to remain human”

How fast she had laid down her fear! Now her eyes were no longer looking at the ground but she was looking at the two men as if she was up for a challenge. She fell to her knees next to one of the bodies, carefully turned it on his back, straightened his arms and kissed the forehead of the dead man. Then she turned to Hunter, closed her eyes and said: “Thank you”

She took neither weapons nor any other things with her. She climbed down to the rails and walked slightly limping towards the tunnel.

The brigadier followed her with a dark look. His hand wandered undecided from his flask to his knife. Finally he had made a decision, stood up and yelled: “Wait!”

Chapter 8 (masks)

The cage was still where the fat man hat beaten down Sasha. The door was open and the rat was gone … Well, thought the girl, even a rat has a right for freedom.

It didn’t matter; Sasha had to wear the gasmask of her kidnapper. She believed to smell the rest of his foul breath, but she could be happy that the fat man hadn’t worn the mask when he had been shot.

At the middle of the bridge the radiation suddenly got higher again.

It was like a miracle that she could even move in the giant radiation suit. She bounced around in it like the larva of a roach in its cocoon. The gasmask had been widened by the broad visage of the fat man, but it still stuck to her face. Sasha tried to breathe in as powerful as possible to suck the air through the tubes and filters, but while she looked outside the round glass of the gasmask she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had slipped into a stranger’s body. Just one hour ago this grey demon that had haunted her had been in this suit and now to get over this bridge she had to enter his world, see the world with his eyes.

With his and with the eyes of the humans that had banished her father to the
Kolomenskaya
, who had let them live for all these years because their greed was stronger than their hate. Would Sasha if she wanted to disappear in the human mass continue to wear this black rubber mask? Would she have to act like she was somebody else, somebody without a face and feelings? If at least it would help her to change her inners: All that what she had suffered through, to forget and to strongly believe that she could start over again!

Sasha had wished that these two hadn’t just found her out of chance but had been sent just for her, but she knew that that wasn’t true. She didn’t get why they took her with them:

Be it for pleasure, out of pity or to prove something to each other. The few words that the old man had thrown before her, certain sympathy had swung with it, but whatever he did now, he was looking after his companion, didn’t speak many words and seemed too concerned to not appear too humane.

The other one hadn’t turned to the girl a single time since he had allowed her to come with them to the next inhabited station. Sasha had stayed behind intentionally, so that she could at least observe them from behind, but it seemed that he had felt her look, because immediately he
cramped and twitched with his head but didn’t turn it, maybe in favor of her girly curiosity or maybe so she would think that he didn’t notice her.

The powerful built physique of the bold man, with his animal like behavior, which the fat man had mistaken for a bear marked him as a warrior. But this picture wasn’t just off his physical power. He emitted a certain strength that you could’ve felt if he had been thin and built small. A man of the likes of him could get anybody to follow his orders and if anybody would dare to refuse his order he would eliminate them without hesitation.