Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (20 page)

Homer thought it sounded like the staggering walk of one of the corpse eaters then again it was like the giant ghost at the
Nagornaya
and finally like the screams of the dying.

After not even ten minutes he gave up.

He switched his lamp back on and winched.

Two steps away from him Hunter was standing, his arms crossed in front of his chest and looking at the sleeping girl. He protected his eyes from the blinding ray of light and said calmly:”They are going to open the door very soon”

Sasha dreamt … She was alone at the
Kolomenskaya
and waited for the return of her father’s expedition. He was late and she definitely had to wait and help him out of the radiation suit, pull of the gasmask and help him eat. The table was already laid and she didn’t know what else she could do to keep herself occupied. She already wanted to go away from the door that lead the surface but what when he came back when she wasn’t around? Who would open him? So she sat on the cold ground at the exit, hours passed, days went by and he didn’t come. But she wouldn’t leave her place until the door …

The dump beating of opening bars awoke her; it was the same sound like at the
Kol
o
menskaya
. She awoke smiling, her father had returned. The she looked around and remembered everything.

The only thing that had been real about her dream was the groaning of the heavy bars on the iron gate. Only a few moments later the giant door started to vibrate and opened slowly. A ray of light fell through the widening space and it smelled of burnt diesel. The entrance to the big metro …

The doors itself had opened without a sound and gave allowed them to look into the inside of the tunnel that lead to the
Avtosavodskaya N
ad
and later to the ring. On the rails was a big railcar with a smoking motor, a searchlight at the front and a lot of men as its crew. Through the sights of their machine guns the men looked at the blinking wanderers that held their hands in front to their eyes.

“I want to see your hands!” Sounded the order.

She followed the example of the old man and both complied and raised their arms. It was the same railcar that had come to them over the bridge on market day. These people knew about Sasha – probably now the old man with his strange name had to regret taking the cuffed girl with them without asking how she had ended up at this godforsaken station.

“Gasmask down, Id’s.” Commanded one of the men on the railcar. While Sasha exposed her face she cursed her stupidity. Nobody could free them. The sentence over her father and over her had still all of its power. How could she have been so naive that those two men could have brought her into the metro? That nobody would recognize them at the border?

The men recognized her instantly. “Hey, you can’t go in here! You have ten seconds to leave. And who is that? Is that your …”

“What’s going on?” Said the old man confused.

“Let him in peace! It’s not him!” screamed Sasha.

“Leave!” The voice from the men with the assault rifle was cold as ice. “Or we …”

“At the girl?” Asked a second voice unsure.

“Hey, didn’t you hear us?’

She definitely had heard how they unsecured their rifles.

Sasha stepped back and closed her eyes. For the third time in a few hours she stood before the face of death.

Then she heard a small whistling noise. In the now reigning silence she waited for the last order. It never came.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and opened one eye. The motor was still smoking. Blue-grey clouds swam around the white ray of the search light that had fallen over for some reason. Now that the light didn’t blind her anymore Sasha could recognize the people on the railcar.

Those were lying around like folded puppets on the railcar and on the tracks. Mindlessly hanging arms, unnatural twisted necks and bent in torsos.

Sasha turned around. Behind her was the bold one. He had lowered his pistol and watched the railcar carefully, which now looked like a butcher’s counter. Then he raised the barrel and pulled the trigger again.

“That was it.” He said dump but satisfied. “Take their uniforms and gasmasks from them.”

“Why?” The face of the old man was distorted by his fear.

“We have to change clothes. We are taking their railcar to get to the
Avtosvodskaya
!”

Sasha starred at the killer. Inside of her fear and admiring fought with each other. Disgust mixed with thankfulness. He had just eliminated three with one blow and violated her father’s most important rule. But he had done it to safe her – well and the old man’s life of course. Was it a coincidence that he had done it for the second time? Could it have been that she had mistaken his cruelty with strictness?

One thing was clear: The fearlessness of this man let her forget his ugliness …

The bold one was the first to walk over to the railcar and start to rip off the enemies’ rubber scalps from their heads. Suddenly he tumbled back and made a dump scream as
if he had seen the devil himself, put both of his hands in front of him and repeated several times: “A dark one!”

Chapter 9 (Air)

Fear and terror aren’t in the slightest way the same, fear pushes, forces you to act, makes you intervene, terror paralyzes body and mind and steals humans their humanity.

Homer had seen enough in his life to know the difference between the two.

The brigadier didn’t know fear, but terror could apparently overthrow him. But that wasn’t what Homer was wondering right now but even more what had trigged the reaction.

The body in the gasmask had an extraordinary look.

Under the black rubber a dark shimmering skin had been exposed, full lips and a broad, slightly compressed nose.

Homer had never seen any people with dark skin in the ten years without music channels. But he realized immediately that the dead man was of African decent. A rarity in the metro for sure. But was so terrifying about him?

The brigadier had already calmed down; the strange seizure hadn’t even lasted for a minute. He lit the flat face, groaned something incomprehensible and started to undress
the resisting body. Homer could have sworn that some finger bones broke.

“They want to mock me … With friendly greetings, what? … And this here is supposed to be humane? … Such a punishment…” Mumbled hunter silently.

Had he mistaken the body for somebody else? Did he maim the dead man out of revenge for the humiliation that he had just suffered, or was there an older and more serious score to settle? While Homer suppressed his disgust removing the clothes of the generic looking body he looked covertly again and again to the brigadier.

The girl didn’t participate in the scavenging and hunter let her in peace. She sat a distance on the rail, her face in her hands Homer believed that she was crying.

Finally Hunter threw the body outside the door on a pile. In not even 24 hours there would be nothing left. By day the city was ruled by such terrible creatures that even the most dangerous ones retreated into their caves without complaint and wait for their hour.

The strange, but still fresh blood on the dark uniform was couldn’t be seen, but it stuck to belly and chest cold as if it wanted to return to a living organism again. It created a disgusting impulse on the skin and on the mind.

And homer asked himself if this masquerade was even necessary. He reassured himself that at least they would be able to prevent more victims at the
Avtosavodskaya
. When hunters plan would work they would pass through it freely, thinking they were with them …. But what if not? Did he even have the intention to leave unnecessary witnesses behind?

The bloodlust of the brigadier disgusted Homer but also fascinated him at the same time. A third of his murders could be justified by self defense but still there was even more sadism behind them than usual. More importantly a question tormented the old man: Had hunter volunteered to just go to the
Tulskaya
to satisfy his bloodlust in the end?

The unlucky people who had laid a trap for them hadn’t found a cure for the mysterious fever but that didn’t mean that there was none. Here in the underground there still existed places were more scientific thinking was present, where people researched, developed new medicaments and mixed serums together. For example polis, the heart of the metro where all four arteries ran together, the polis was the last allusion of a city which stretched over the labyrinth of stations from the
Arabatskaya
,
Borov
izkaya
,
Alexandrovski
sad and
Biblioteca Imeni L
inian
.

And there before all doctors and scientist had settled down. Or the giant bunker next to the
Taganskaya
the secret city of science at Hanza.

Also the
Tulskaya
may not have been the only station where the epidemic had stricken. Probably they had fought it successfully? How could you abandon hope for rescue that easily? Of course now that Homer carried the time bomb inside him he only cared about his own egoistic interests. His mind had already made his peace with the death that was in front of him, but his instincts resisted and ordered him to find a way out. Maybe if he found a way to rescue the
Tulskaya
he could save his own station from oblivion and maybe even himself …

Hunter on the other hand seemed to apparently believe that there was just one cure for the disease. ..

The few words that he had exchanged with the guards at the
Tulskaya
had been enough to condemn them to death and make himself the judge, jury and executioner. First he had led the commander of the
Sevastopolskaya
on a false path then he had fastened the decision and now he readied the uncompromised implementation: The
Tulskaya
would go down in fire.

But maybe he knew something about the events at the station that turned everything on its head again? Something that nobody knew, whether Homer nor the man that had left his diary at the
Nachimovski P
rospect
…

After he was finished with the bodies the brigadier ripped the flask from its holder and sucked in the rest of the contents. What had been in it? Alcohol? Was this a potion or an ingredient, or did he try to dispel the sour aftertaste in his mouth? Did he enjoy the moment or search for forgetting or hope to kill something with the alcohol?

The old smoking railcar was somewhat like a time machine for Sasha, like in those fairy tales her father had told her.

It didn’t just transport her from the
Kolomenskaya
to the
Avtosavodskaya
but transported her from the present into the past. Even though she didn’t know if she could call her life in this prison made of stone, this worm tunnels, the past and where she was now the “present”.

She remembered the whole journey to there: Her father had been bound and was sitting next to her, a sack over his eyes and a gag in his mouth. She had just been a small girl and had cried all the way and one of the soldiers of the execution squad had made animals with his fingers, their shadows had danced over a small yellow stage which was on the ceiling. The shadows had tried to outrun the railcar.

When they had reached the other side they had told her father his sentence: The tribunal of the revolution had pardoned him. The death sentence had been replaced by lifelong exile. They had pushed them onto the rails, with a knife, an assault rifle with a spare clip and an old gasmask and sat Sasha next to him. The soldier who had shown her the horse and the dog had waved his hand after her. Had he been one of those who Hunter had shot?

When she put on the black gasmask of one of the dead, her feelings became stronger that she was breathing the air of a dead man. Every small part of her journey somebody paid with his life. Probably the bold one would have shot them no matter what but now Sasha thought to be his accomplice by just being there.

That her father didn’t want to return back home wasn’t because he had been tired of fighting. He had once said that
his humiliation and deprivation did no longer weigh on another strangers life, so he had preferred to suffer himself then to cause anybody else harm again. Sasha hadn’t know that the scale of life had been filled heavy on his side, with all those that her father had on his conscience he had tried to bring it back into balance.

The bold one could have acted sooner, could have scared the people on the railcar just by his presence so that they could have laid down their weapons without firing a shot. None of the dead had been an equal enemy.