Metro 2034
Author Dmitry Glukhovsky
2009
Translated from the German version by:
Metro2033Artjom
Annotations:
This is the translation of the German version of Metro 2034 into English. English is not my first language. This translation is as closest to the German Version is it gets. Some sentences had to be changed so that the grammar would make sense. They still incorporate the message of the sentence.
I didn’t get paid translating this book and neither did I want to earn money with this translation.
Dmitry Glukhovsky is the author of Metro 2034 and all rights are reserved to him. No copyright abuse / infringement was intended.
Have fun reading.
(Please report any mistakes to me, by chapter-page-line, to my YouTube channel Metro2033Artjom)
Oh and before I forget, if something is written in brackets and is underlined than it is one of my notes)
Prologue
It is the year 2034. The world lies in ruins. Humanity is almost destroyed. Radiation has made the destroyed cities uninhabitable. Outside their borders, some say, endless burnt wastelands and impenetrable mutated forests extend forever.
But nobody knows exactly what there is. Civilization fades away. And the memories of mankinds former greatness slowly retreat fairy tales and legends.
It has been over twenty years since the last airplane had started. Rusted train tracks lead into emptiness. And when the radio operator listens for the millionth time to the frequencies where once New York, Paris, Tokyo and Buenos Aires broadcasted, he hears nothing but lonely howling.
It has been twenty years since then. But mankind has already left up its reign over the earth to other species.
Creatures of radiation which are far better adapted to the life in this new world.
The era of man is over.
But the survivors don’t want to admit that. Some ten thousand humans are left and they don’t know, if except for them any are still alive – or if they are the last in this world.
They inhabit the Moscow metro, the biggest atomic bunker that had ever been built by human hands.
The last sanctuary for humanity.
Almost all of the survivors were in the metro on that day. And that saved their lives. The hermetic security gates of the stations protected them against the radiation and the terrible creatures on the surface. Old filters purify air and water. By resourceful tinkerers constructed dynamo machines generate electricity. In underground farms humans farm champignons and breed pigs. The poor don’t fear away from rat meat.
A central administration doesn’t exist anymore. The stations have transformed themselves into small states, where humans gather around ideology, religion and water filters. Or just unite against enemy attacks.
It is a world without tomorrow. Dreams, plans, hopes – for all that there is no more place. Feelings made place for instincts and the most important of all – to survive. At all costs.
The story before the events of this book is told in the book “Metro 2033”.
The defense of the Sevastopolskaya (Chapter one)
They didn’t return, neither Tuesday, nor Wednesday or Thursday – the last appointed date. The outer guard post was manned around the clock and if the guards would have just heard the faint echo of a cry for help or seen the weak reflection of a lamp on the wet and dark tunnel walls there where it went to the Nachimovski prospect, they would have sent a strike team immediately.
Tensions grew with every hour. The guards – excellently armed soldiers and especially trained for missions like that – didn’t close their eyes for a second. The stack of playing cards, with which they usually killed time through the missions, was collecting dust for about two days in the drawer of the guardhouse now. Their casual conversations gave away to short, nervous talks and now fatal silence reigned.
Everyone hoped to be the first to hear the echoing steps of the returning caravan. Too much depended on it.
All inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, whether five year old boy or old man knew how to handle weapons. They had transformed their station into an impenetrable fortress.
Even though they barricaded themselves behind machinegun-nests, barbed wire, yes even tank-stoppers made out of tracks, this impenetrable fortress was threatening to fall in a blink of an eye. Their Achilles heel was the shortage of ammunition.
Had the inhabitants of other stations experienced what the Sevastopolskaja had to endure on a daily basis, they wouldn’t have wasted a thought about defending themselves but fled like rats out of a flooded tunnel. Even powerful Hanza, the federation of the stations at the ring line, wouldn’t have ordered additional forces in case of an emergency – due to costs. Sure, the strategic importance of the Sevastopolskaya was enormous. But the price was too high.
So was the price for electricity. So high that the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, who had created one of the biggest hydroelectric power stations in the metro, let themselves be supplied by Hanza with ammunition and were even able to turn a profit. But many of them didn’t just pay with bullets, but with a crippled, short live.
The groundwater was a blessing and a curse for the Sevastopolskaya. Like the waters of the river Styx it flew around the rotten boat of Charon. The whole station was surrounded by water. The groundwater gave a third of the ring line light and warmth, because it set the shovels of dozens of water mills in motion. These had been created by skillful engineers of the station using their own plans, in tunnels, caves, underwater creeks, to put it blandly: Where all requirements were fulfilled.
At the same time the water gnawed incessantly on the pillars, gradually loosened the cement out of the cracks passing by very close behind the walls of the station like if it was trying to lull the inhabitants to sleep. The groundwater prevented them to blow up unnecessary parts of the tunnels.
And exactly through these tunnels hordes of nightmarish creatures move towards the Sevastopolskaya, like an endless poisonous centipede crawling into a grinder.
The residents of the station felt like the crew of a ghost ship on its way through hell. They were damned to fill the holes constantly because the frigate had been leaking for a long time. And a harbor where they could find protection and silence wasn’t in sight.
At the same time they had to fend off one attack after another, because from the Tschertanovskaya in the south and from the Nachimovski prospect to the north of the station, monsters crawled through the vents, appeared from the murky sewers or stormed out of the tunnels. The whole world seemed to be against the Sevastopolskaya and trying to erase their home station from the metro’s map. But they defended their station with tooth and nail, like it was the last fortress in the entire universe.
But no matter how skillful the engineers were, how tough and relentless the training of their fighters was – without bullets, without light bulbs for the spotlights, without antibiotics and bandages they wouldn’t be able to hold the station. Of course they delivered electricity and Hanza was willing to pay a good price. But while the ring line had other and own suppliers; the Sevastopolskaya wouldn’t survive a month without supplies from outside. And their supply of bullets reached a dangerously low count.
Every week armed caravans were sent to the Serpuchovskaya to use their earned credit to pay the merchants of Hanza for everything that was needed and return immediately. As long as the earth would turn, as long as the underground rivers flowed and as long as the metro would hold, nothing would change that.
This time the return of the c
aravan had been delayed.
And so much so that there was only one explanation:
Something unexpected must have happened, something terrible, something that even the heavy armed caravan guards or not even the long and good relations with the leadership of Hanza could have prevented.
The whole situation would have been a lot less unsettling when at least they could communicate with the ring line.
But something was wrong with the telephone line to the ring line; they had lost the connection on Monday and the squad that had been sent to find the faulty part of the line returned without any results.
The lamp with the green lampshade was hanging low over the round table. It illuminated some yellowed papers on which graphics and diagrams were drawn on with pencil. It was a weak bulb, maybe 40 watts, but not because you had to save electricity – that was certainly no problem at the Sevastopolskaya - but because the owner of the office didn’t like glaring light. The ashtray was full of cigarette butts – all self-made and of bad quality. Biting, blue-grey smoke collected itself under the low ceiling.
The head of the station, Vladimir Ivanovitsch Istomin wiped his forehead, raised his hand and looked with his one eye at his watch – for the fifth time in the last half hour. He crackled his fingers and stood up burdensome. “A decision must be found. We can no longer delay it”.
On the other side of the table sat an older but strong built man with a lined camouflaged jacket and a worn blue beret. He opened his mouth to say something, but he had to cough badly. Grumpily he narrowed his eyes and cleared away the smoke with his hand. Then he said: “Well, Vladimir Ivanovitsch, I repeat it again: We can’t withdraw anymore forces from the southern tunnel. The pressure on the guards is enormous – even now they almost can’t hold it. Last week alone they had three wounded, one of them heavy and that even with the fortifications. I won’t sit here and watch how you continue to weaken the south. Especially when we need to have six scouts patrolling in the vents and the connecting tunnels at all times. And in the north we have to secure the arriving caravans, we can’t spare a single fighter there. I am sorry, but you will have to search by yourself”.
“You are the commander of the outer guard post, so you search!” growled Vladimir. “I deal with my own business. In one hour a group must leave. We both think in different ways. This isn’t just about our problems here and now! What if something worse happened?”
“And I think, Vladimir Ivanovitsch that you are over reacting. We have two unopened crates of 5.45 caliber in the armory which would last us over one and a half weeks. And then I still have something at home under my pillow.” The colonel smiled, so that his big, yellow teeth could be seen. “I can surely get another crate together. Bullets aren’t our problem, but people”
“And now I tell you again what our problem is. If we don’t get any shipments anymore, we will have to close the gates to the south because without ammunition we can’t hold the tunnels anyway. That means that we can’t maintain two thirds of our mills anymore. Just after a week the first will break down and Hanza doesn’t like a loss in current delivery at all. If they are lucky they will find a new supplier immediately, if not … But what do I care about the electricity! For almost five days now the tunnels are stone-dead and not a single pig is in sight. What if something collapsed? Or broke through? What if we’re now cut off?”
“Hold your breath. The power lines are alright. The counters are running, so Hanza seems to be getting their electricity. We would have noticed a collapse immediately. And if it was sabotage, than the power line would have been cut and not the telephone line. As for the tunnel – what are you afraid of? Even in good times nobody strayed away from the other tunnels, got lost and ended up here. Alone at the Nachimovski prospect: Without an escort you can’t get through. Foreign merchants haven’t risked coming to us for a long time. And the bandits already know – after all we left one of them go alive every time. So don’t panic”.
“Easy for you to say.” Growled Vladimir Ivanovitsch, lifted the eye patch from his empty eye socket and wiped the sweet from his forehead.
“I’ll give you three men.” Said the colonel, now a little milder. “More isn’t possible, all things considered. And you should stop smoking. You know it’s not good for me and furthermore you are poisoning yourself! I would prefer a tea to be honest …”
“But please, it is my pleasure.” Vladimir rubbed his hands together, took the telephone receiver and barked: ”Istomin here, Tea for me and the colonel.”
“Let the officer on duty come as well.” Said the commander of the outer guard posts as he took off his beret.
“Then we will clear the matter with the search party.”
At Istomin’s you would always get a special tea, a fine selection from the VDNCh. Hanza taxed the favorite tea of Vladimir’s three times on its way from the other end of the metro. That made it so expensive that Istomin wouldn’t have allowed his weakness for the tea, if he didn’t have such good connections to the Dobryninskaya. There he had served in the war with someone and so when the caravan leader returned back from Hanza, they always had a neat package for him.
Istomin always picked it up personally. One year ago for the first time, a delivery didn’t come and alarming rumors that threatened the entire orange line was being threatened by apparently unknown mutants from the surface. They were almost invisible, practically invulnerable and could read your mind. It was said that the station had fallen and Hanza fearing an invasion had blown the tunnels past Prospect Mira. The price of tea went through the roof and then for some time you couldn’t get any, which got Istomin seriously worried. But a few weeks later the waves calmed down and the caravans continued to bring the famous tea along with bullets and light bulbs to the Sevastopolskaya. Wasn’t that the main thing?
While Istomin poured the colonel’s tea into the porcelain cup with the cracked golden edge, he enjoyed with closed eyes, the aromatic steam for a moment. Then he poured himself a cup, sank heavy into his chair and started to stir a Saccharin pill into the tea with a silver spoon.
The men were silent, and for a moment the melancholic sound of the spoon hitting the cup was the only sound in the dark, tobacco smoke clouded office.
But it was suddenly drowned by a shrill ringing bell, coming out of the loud speakers and the tunnel: “Alert!”
The commander of the outer guard posts jumped surprisingly agile from his place and stormed out of the room.
At first a lonely rifle shot sounded off in the distance, than a Kalashnikov joined in – one, two and then three.
Military boots hammered on the train platform and you could hear the bass voice of the colonel and how it – even from some distance away – was shouting the first orders.
Istomin reached his hand after the shiny Militia-machine-pistol hanging on his cupboard, but then he held his back, sighed, sat back at the table and took another sip from the tea cup. On the opposite side of the table the colonel’s tea steamed lonely and right next to was his beret – he had forgotten it in his haste. The head of the station made a grimace and began again, this time half loud, to argue with the absent colonel. It was still about the same topic – but this time he found new arguments, which he hadn’t thought about in the heat of the moment.
At Sevastopolskaya many dark jokes circulated over just why the neighboring station was called Tschertanovskaya; you could read the word “Tschort” (devil) too clearly out of its name. The mills of the hydroelectric plants extended rather far into its direction and although it was supposed to be abandoned nobody in their right mind thought about occupying or acquiring it. The teams of technicians that had built the outer generators and regularly maintained them under supervision were always careful to not get closer than a few hundred meters to Tschertanovskaya.
Almost everyone who had an expedition like that before him and who wasn’t a fanatic atheist secretly made a cross with his hands and some even told their families goodbye.
The Tschertanovskaya
was an evil station; everyone felt that who just approached her even half a kilometer. At first, in their naivety, the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya sent heavy armed scouting parties to extend their reach.
They came back, if at all, heavy injured and at least decimated by half. Then they sat stuttering, slobbering at the fire, so close that they clothes almost caught fire but they never stopped trembling. They struggled to remember their experience – and one report was never like any other.
It was said, that beyond the main tunnel of the Tschertanovskaya, side tunnels plunged down into an enormous labyrinth of natural caves and allegedly were swarming with monsters. The people of the Sevastopolskaya called the place “the gate” – an arbitrary term, because nobody in the metro who was still alive, had entered this part of the metro.
Although there was a story from when the line hadn’t even been built yet – supposedly a big recon unit passed through the Tschertanovskaya and discovered “the gate”.
Over a transmitter – a kind of cable telephone – the radio transmitter communicated that it fell down, almost vertical at the end of a small corridor. They didn’t get any further. In the coming minutes the leaders of the Sevastopolskaya heard shrill screams full of horror and pain.
It was strange that the recon team didn’t shoot – maybe they knew that conventional weapons wouldn’t protect them. The last man of the group to be silenced was a mercenary without a conscience from the Kitai-Gorod station, who cut of the small finger of defeated enemies as a souvenir.
He seemed to be some distance away from the microphone which had slipped out of the hand of the radio operator, because you couldn’t hear his words very clearly.
But after listening closely the head of the station understood what the man was sobbing while he was fighting for his life:
A simple prayer. One of those simple, naive prayers that religious parents taught their small children. Then the connection broke off. After this incident all further tries to reach the Tschertanovskaya were stopped. Yes, there had even been plans to abandon the Sevastopolskaya and return to Hanza. This cursed station seemed to be one of those borders that marked the end of human rule in the metro. The creatures that pushed against these borders brought the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya many problems but they weren’t invulnerable and a good organized defense could fend off the attacks with slim to no casualties – as long as they had enough ammunition. Some of these monsters could only be stopped with high-explosives and high voltage traps. But in most cases, the guards had deal with less terrible – but still dangerous – creatures.
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 1