Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (9 page)

In breaks between expeditions, in these rare minutes when the two sat on the sparse lit fire, her father loved to talk about earlier times. Years ago he had realized that he didn’t
have to fool himself, but when he no longer had a future than at least nobody could take away his past.

Back than my eyes had the same color as yours, he had said to her. The color of the sky … And Sasha believed to remember these days, these days when the tumor hadn’t bloated his head and when his eyes hadn’t faded, but when they shined like hers now.

When her father said “the color of the sky” of course he meant azure-blue and not the glowing red clouds of dust that reached over his head when he climbed to the surface.

He hadn’t seen real daylight in over 20 years and Sasha didn’t know it at all. He only saw it in his dreams, but he wasn’t sure if what he saw was real. What experience people that are blind from birth: Dreaming from a world that is similar to ours? Do they even
see
anything in a dream?

When small children close their eyes, they believe that the entire world has sunken into darkness; they believe that everybody around them is as blind as they are. In the tunnels
humans are as naive as these children, Homer thought. He imagined that light ruled over darkness every time when he turned on his flashlight and then turned it off again. Even the most impenetrable darkness could be full of seeing eyes.

Since the encounter with the corpse eaters he couldn’t think about anything else. A distraction. He needed a distraction.

Strange that Hunter hadn’t known what waited for them at the
Nachimovski prospect
. When the brigadier turned up at the
Sevastopolskaya
two months ago, none of the guards could explain how a man with such extraordinary stature was able to pass every single of the northern guard posts unnoticed. It was their luck that the commander didn’t want an explanation how Hunter got through without them noticing.

But when he didn’t get to the
Sevastopolskaya
over the
Nachimovski prospect
, how did he get there? All other ways to the big metro had already been severed. The abandoned
Kachovskaya
line, in its tunnels they hadn’t seen a single living being in the last years. Impossible. The
Tschertanovskaya
? Ridiculous. Not even a skilled and relentless fighter as Hunter would be able to fight himself
through this cursed station. Also it was impossible to get there without showing up at the
Sevastopolskaya
first.

So the north, south and east were out of the question.

Now Homer had only one hypothesis left: The mysterious guest came from the surface. Of course all known entrances and exits of the station had been carefully barricaded and were guarded at all times, but … He could have opened one of the vents. The inhabitants of the
Sevastopolskaya
didn’t suspect that there was still somebody that had the intelligence to trick their warning system located in the burned concrete ruins. An endless chess board made out of several stories high apartment complexes that had been torn down by the shrapnel of the war heads was already deserted and empty. The last players had already given up playing decades ago and left the distorted and scary figures crawling around on the surface. They now played their own game with their own rules. Looking at it from of the view of humanity, a rematch wasn’t possible.

Short expeditions searching for everything useful that hadn’t decayed over the last twenty years, hastily; shameful raids through their own houses were the only things they were still capable off. In rubbers suits that protected the stalkers from radiation they climbed up to search the skeletons of the
former buildings for the hundredth time,but nobody dared to fight the current inhabitants determent enough to wipe them out.

You might shot a machine-pistol salve at them, retreat into a nearby dirty apartment and run straight back to the rescuing entrance of the metro when the danger had passed.

The old maps of the capitol city had lost every reference to reality. Where back then cars had been stuck in traffic for miles, now there were canyons covered in impenetrable black brushwood. Where once housing areas were, there were now swamps or just empty burned land.

Only the boldest stalkers dared to venture further than a mile from their entrances to the metro, most were satisfied with less.

The stations past the
Nachimovski prospect
– the
Nagornaya
,
Nagatinskaya
and
Tulskaya
– had no open entrances and the humans on those two stations didn’t even think about going to the surface.

So from where in this wasteland hunter was supposed to have emerged from, was an absolute mystery for Homer.

But there was a last possibility where the brigadier could have come from. This possibility made the old atheist unable to breathe and he follow the dark silhouette of Hunter
that moved through the darkness as if it didn’t even touch the ground.

He came from underground. (
Referring to the “gate”
)

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Said Achmed hesitantly and so quiet that Homer almost wasn’t able hear him.

“It isn’t the right time to be here. Believe me; I have traveled with many caravans. There is something brewing at the
Nagornaya
…”

The small groups of bandits that always retreated back as far as possible from the ring line right away after each raid.

They took their breaks in dark stations but never dared to attack the caravans of the
Sevastopolskay
a
.

The instant they heard the constant thunder of the studded boots, which announced the arrival of the heavy infantry of the
Sevastopolskaya
, they got out of their way immediately.

Not because of the bandits or the corpse eaters at the
Nachimovski prospect
these caravans were protected so well.

Their bone hard training, absolute fearlessness, their ability to close themselves to a iron fist in seconds and to destroy every possible threat in a hail of bullets, all that could have made the convoys of the
Sevastopolskaya
the undisputed
rulers of the tunnels up to the
Serpuchovskaya
– if there wasn’t the
Nagornaya
.

The horrors of the
Nachimovski prospect
were behind them, but nor Homer or Achmed felt the slightest relief. The seemingly inconspicuous, yes even ugly
Nagornaya
had become the end station of many that hadn’t treated her with caution. Those poor schmucks that ended up at the neighboring
Nagatinskaya
coincidentally tried to stay as far away from the greedy mouth of the tunnels of the
Nagornaya
.

As if that would save them. As if what crawled out of the tunnel, searching for prey, was to sluggish to crawl a little bit further and still chose a victim of its taste …

As soon as you entered the
Nagornaya
you could rely on nothing but your luck, because this station didn’t play by the rules. Sometimes it let you pass silently and the travelers looked horrified at the bloody marks on the walls and pillars where someone had tried to climb up in their hopelessness.

And just a few moments after that the station could give a group a welcome, that loosing half of the men was considered as a victory.

The station was always hungry. It didn’t favor anybody. It didn’t let anybody explore it. For the inhabitants of the neighboring stations the
Nagornaya
embodied pure
arbitrariness of fate. She was the most difficult challenge for all that embarked on their way from
Sevastopolskaya
to the ring line and the other way around.

“So many missing people … It couldn’t just have been the
Nagornaya
alone.” Said Achmed with superstition, like many residents of the
Sevastopolskaya
he spoke of the
Nagornaya
like if it was a creature and not station.

Homer knew what Achmed meant. He had thought about it a lot of times if it couldn’t have been the Nagornaya that was responsible for the missing recon team. He nodded his head and added: ”If so I hope it suffocated on them …”

“What did you just say?” Hissed Achmed angry. His hand twitched in Homers direction, as if he wanted to strike the old man, but he didn’t.

“She is not going to suffocate on you to be sure!”

Homer took the insult silently. He didn’t believe that the
Nagornaya
was able to hear them or that she was now angry at them. At least not at this distance …

Superstition! Nothing but superstition! It was impossible to count all the idols of the underground – you always stepped one of them on the foot. Homer didn’t think about them anymore. Achmed on the other hand thought differently.

Achmed took a rosary made out of empty makarov cartridges out of his jackets pocket and started to slide the lead idols through his dirty fingers. At the same time his lips moved silently in his own language, he probably asked
Nagornaya
for forgiveness for Homers sins.

Hunter had felt something with his supernatural senses. He gave them a signal with his hands, slowed down and got to his knees.

“There is fog.” Mumbled Hunter and breathed in the cold air through his nose. “What is there?”

Homer and Achmed looked at each other. Both knew what that meant: It was open season. Now they needed a lot of luck get to the northern border of the
Nagornaya
alive.

“How am I supposed to explain that to you?”Answered Achmed unwillingly.

“It is the breath …”“Whose breath?” Asked Hunter unimpressed and put his bag on the ground so that he could choose the right weapon for this job.

Achmed whispered:”The breath of the
Nagornaya
”

“We’ll see” Said Homer contemptuously and made a grimace. It seemed like Hunters distorted face came back to
life; in reality it was motionless as always – only the light fell differently on his face.

They could see it now too, a few hundred meters further than Hunter: A thick, pale white fog crawled at them on the ground, danced around their feet, crawled up their legs and then filled the tunnel up to their waist … It seemed like they were climbing into an ice-cold and hostile ocean. They stepped deeper and deeper over an oblique ground, until the murky water would finally go over their heads.

You couldn’t see anything anymore. The beams of their flashlights got stuck in the fog like flies in a net of a spider. After they had finally fought themselves through the emptiness they felt exhausted and defeated. Noise, dimmed like by a pillow came through the fog. Every move cost them a lot of strength as if they didn’t walk on concrete but on thick mud.

Breathing became harder, not because of the humidity but because of the bidder stench of the air. They had to overcome themselves to breathe in the air and they couldn’t shake the feeling that in reality they were breathing in the breath of a giant, strange creature that withdrew oxygen from the air and replaced with its toxic fumes.

Homer put on his gasmask, just in case. Hunter gave him a quick look, reached into his bag and put on his generic rubber mask as well. Only Achmed was once again without a gasmask.

The brigadier stopped and listened with his shredded ear to the
Nagornaya
, but the thick white soup hindered him to decipher the noises from the station and create a picture of the situation. It sounded like something heavy had fallen to the ground far away, followed by a long sigh, in a pitch that was too low for a human, yes even for every other creature.

Then they heard something scrapping hysterically and shrieking like if a giant hand bent the thick iron pipes on the ceiling to a knot.

Hunter twitched with his head, as if he was trying to shake of dirt from his head and instead of a short machine pistol he was now using an army-Kalashnikov with a double magazine and a mounted grenade-launcher. “Finally.” He said.

At first they didn’t realize that they had already entered the station; the fog in the
Nagornaya
was as thick as milk. While Homer looked through the glass of his gasmask he felt like a diver that was on board of a sunken ocean cruiser.

You could only see the mosaic through the fog for a few seconds at a time and then it swallowed them again: It were seagulls that had been pressed with coarse soviet metal templates. Fossils, thought Homer, the fate of humanity and their creations … But will somebody dig us up one day?

The fog around them was alive, floated in different directions, twitching. Sometimes dark images emerged from the fog, a dented wagon of a train and a rusty cabin, a scaly body or head of mythological creature. Homer shuddered while thinking who had filled the seats all these decades.

He had heard much about what was going on at the
Nagornaya
but he had never seen anything face to face …

“There it is, to the right!” Screamed Achmed and ripped on the old man’s sleeve. Out of his self-made suppressor sounded a silent shot.