Finally it stopped ten feet in front of Sasha. A fat giant in a primitive radiation suit jumped off the railcar and landed on the gravel. The diabolically dancing fire of her candle was being reflected by the glass of his gasmask so that Sasha couldn’t see his eyes. With one hand he held an army Kalashnikov with a wooden stock.
“I want to get away from here.” Explained Sasha and raised her head.
“A-way.” Echoed the scarecrow and stretched the sound surprised and sarcastic at the same time. “And what do you offer in return?”
“I have nothing anymore”. She withstood his look and looked directly into the glasses of the gasmask.
“There is always something to take. Especially with women”
The ferryman groaned, than he went silent. “You would leave your father alone here?”
“I have nothing anymore.” She repeated and looked to the ground.
“So he did die.” It sounded parts relieved parts disappointed out of the mask.
“Better this way. He wouldn’t have liked this right here”
The barrel of the gun slowly unzipped her overall.
“Stop it!” She screamed and took a step back.
The glass with the candle fell onto the rail, shards flew around and darkness took over.
“Don’t you get it? Nobody returns from here.” The scarecrow looked at her indifferent out of the dark dead glasses. “Your body isn’t even enough to pay for the trip, but it may just pay for your father’s debt.”
The assault rifle swirled in his hands so that the stock of the gun pointed forward. Sasha felt a heavy blow to her forehead. Her consciousness showed pity and left her.
Since the Nachimovski prospect Hunter hadn’t left Homer out of his sight so that he hadn’t been able to take a closer look into the notebook. Suddenly the brigadier cared, even tried to not just not let him fall behind any further but had matched Homer speed. For that he had to slow down a lot. Several times he had stopped and turned around checking if somebody was following them. But the blinding light of his lamp was always pointed at Homer’s face so that the old man felt like he was being interrogated.
He cursed, blinked and tried to remain calm. The penetrating look of the brigadier moved over his entire body, searching for the item he had found at the Nachimovski prospect. Nonsense! Of course Hunter couldn’t have seen anything, in that moment he had been too far away. He had probably felt the change in Homers behavior. But suspecting something. But every time their looks met he started to sweat.
The few things that he had been able to read had made him question the brigadier’s intentions.
It was diary. Parts of the pages were glued together by dried blood. Homer left those alone, his tired and numb fingers would have just ripped them apart. The entries on the first pages were confusing, as if the author no longer knew which letters meant what and his thoughts ran all over the place so that you almost couldn’t follow them.
“Passed the Nagornaya without casualties.” Revealed the notebook and jumped on immediately: “Chaos at the Tulskaya. No way to the metro. Hanza isn’t letting anybody through. We can’t go back as well”
Homer continued to read. Out of his field of vision he saw the brigadier stepping down from the kurgan and approaching him. He couldn’t let the diary fall into the brigadiers hands. Before he let the notebook disappear in his backpack he read: “Have the situation under control. The station is sealed and we have a new commander.” And then “Who dies next?”
And then over the question was the date. The yellowed pages of the notebook made him believe that what had happened in it had happened in the last century, but the entry was only a couple of days old.
Homers old brain put together the single pieces of this mosaic with almost forgotten speed: The mysterious wanderer, the pitiful homeless man at the Nagatinskaya, the seemingly familiar voice of the guard at the door and the sentence: “We can’t go back as well”. In front of his inner eye he had put it together to one picture. Maybe the pages that were stuck together had all the answers to the mysterious events?
At least one thing was sure; there had been no attack on the Tulskaya. What had happened there was far more complex and mysterious. And Hunter that had questioned the guards fifteen minutes ago knew that as well as Homer.
That was why he couldn’t show the notebook to Hunter.
And that was why he had risked disagreeing with him in Istomins office.
“No we can’t storm the station.” He repeated. Hunter slowly turned his head, like a battleship that readied its main cannon.
Istomin pushed back his chair and came out from behind the table after all.
The colonel made a tired grimace.
“We can’t blow up the door.” Homer continued,
“Because there is the groundwater, we would flood the entire line. The Tulskaya is just barely holding it back, every day they hope that the ground water doesn’t break through.
And you know that for ten years now the parallel tunnel has been …”
“Are we supposed to knock and wait till they open up?” The colonel interrupted.
“We can still go around.” Said Istomin.
The colonel was so surprised that he started to cough. Then he argued with Istomin, accused him of wanting to make his best man into cripples, yes to even bring them into their graves. But then the brigadier interrupted them.
“The Tulskaya has to be cleaned. This situation demands the total destruction of all that are there. Not one of your people is still there. They are all dead. If you want to prevent any more casualties this is the only way. I have all the necessary information”
His last words were definitely aimed at Homer.
The old man felt like a small dog that had been shook so it would stop barking.
Istomin straightened his jacket: “If the way is blocked from the other side there is only one way to get to the Tulskaya. From the other side. From Hanza. But that also means that we can’t send armed men. That is out of the question”
Hunter made a reassuring gesture with his hand: “I’ll find some”
The colonel winced.
“But if you want to get to Hanza by going around you have to cross two stations over the Kaschovkaya line to the Kaschirskaya.” Said Istomin and went silent.
The brigadier crossed his arms in front of his chest: “And?”
“There’s very high radiation in the area near the Kaschirskaya. A fragment of a warhead went down not far from there. There was no detonation but the radiation is still dangerously high. One out of two that gets a dose of radiation like that dies in about a month. Even now”
The group went silent. Homer used the break to make an unnoticed, tactical retreat out of Istomins office.
Then Vladimir Ivanovitsch came to word again. It seemed that he feared that the uncontrollable brigadier would still try to blow up the hermetic door at the Tulskaya and said:
“We have radiation suits. Two of them. You can take one of our best fighters with you. We’ll wait.” He looked at the colonel. “What can we do otherwise?”
Dennis Michailovitsch sighed. “Let’s go to the boys.
We’ll talk about it and you can choose a companion”“Not necessary” Hunter shook his head.
“I need Homer”
Chapter 7 (limits)
The railcar drove over the wide bright yellow stripe that ran over the ground and the ceiling. The man that controlled it could no longer act like he didn’t hear the faster and faster getting clicking sound of the Geiger counter. He reached for the brake and mumbled excusing: “Colonel sir,
… Without any protection we can’t proceed …”
“Just another hundredth meters.” Asked Denis Michailovitsch. “Because of the high exposure you’ll get a week off. For us it is just a two minute drive but the two in the suits would take half an hour for it”
“This here is the limit.” Grumbled the helmsman but he didn’t dare to slow down.
“Stop.” Or
dered Hunter. “We continue on foot. The radiation is really too high”
The brakes squealed, the search light attached to the vehicles frame started to shake back and forth and the railcar came to a stop. The brigadier and Homer who had let their feet hang over the edge of the railcar jumped onto the rails. In their heavy suits made out off led soaked material they looked like cosmonauts.
These suits were unimaginable expensive and rare; in the entire metro there were maybe a few dozen of them.
At the Sevastopolskaya they had almost never been used – they had saved them for more important missions.
They withstood the highest levels of radiation but even small movement was an arduous matter. At least for Homer.
Denis Michailovitsch left the railcar behind him and walked with them for another few minutes. He and Hunter exchanged a few sentences – intentionally fragmented that Homer wouldn’t be able to decipher them.
“Where are you going to get them?” Asked the colonel the brigadier grumpy.
“They’re going to give me some. They can’t do anything else.” Answered the other hollow.
“Nobody is waiting for you. For them you died. Dead, you understand?”
Hunter stood still for a moment and spoke silently, more to himself than to the officer: “If it would be that simple”
“To desert from the order is worse than death.”
Growled Denis Michailovitsch.
The brigadier made a surly gesture with his hand, like if he saluted the colonel but at the same time cut an invisible rope that was attached to an anchor. Denis Michailovitsch understood the gesture and remained at the pier, while the other two distanced themselves from the shore, slowly but steadily continuing their journey over this ocean of darkness.
The colonel took his hand from his forehead and gave the helmsman of the railcar the signal to start the motor.
He felt empty: There was nobody that he could give an ultimatum anymore, nobody against he could fight anymore.
As the commander of the military of his lonely island in the sea he could now only hope that the small expedition wouldn’t sink, but to one day return from the other side as proof that the earth was still round.
The last guard post in the tunnel had been directly behind the Kachovskaya which every human soul had abandoned. As long as Homer could remember the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya had never been attacked from the east.
The yellow line seemed to not only separate two parts of the metro but to connect two planets that were hundredths of light-years away. Beyond this line the living area of the earth had almost unnoticeable changed into a dead moon landscape and both were strangely similar. While Homer concentrated himself to not trip over his many kilos heavy boots he heard how his breath squeezed itself through the complex system of tubes and filters and he imagined that he was an astronaut that somebody had abandoned on the far reaches of a far away planet. He allowed his childish fantasy because it was easier to deal with the suit that way, because on this moon there was more gravity and the thought that for many kilometers they would be the only living beings.
Neither scientist, nor science fiction writers had been able to foresee this future, thought the old man. In the year 2034 mankind would have already conquered half of the galaxy, or at least the neighboring sun systems, they had promised Homer when he was young. But the authors of science fiction novels and the scientist had always believed that humanity would act rational and consequent. As if it wasn’t made off a few milliards of slow, careless and enjoyment seeking individuals but some kind of bee hive with collective reason and a focused will. As if they had ever had the intentions to conquer space. Instead they had been become bored with the game and had abandoned their goal halfway and turned to electronics at first then to biotechnology without getting any halfway impressing results in those areas. Maybe in nuclear physics.
And now he was here, a flightless astronaut, surviving only because of this space suit, a stranger to his own planet.
Ready to conquer the tunnel between the Kachovskaya Nad and the Kaschirskaya. He could forget about all others and the survivors. He could no longer see the stars anyway.
Strange: Here past the yellow line his body moaned under gravity but his heart was weightless. Days before the march to the Tulskaya when he had said goodbye to Yelena he had known that he had to return. But when hunter had chosen him as his companion for the second time he kne
This time it was serious. So he had prayed for a challenge, enlightenment and he had finally been heard. To be too afraid would have been dumb and unworthy. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to do his life’s work as side job. But fate didn’t let itself be stopped. A motto said that it will come, maybe later, one last time … There would probably be no last time and when he didn’t decide now for what should he still live? Should he spent the time that he still had as Nikolai Ivanovitsch, the fool of the station, an old, slobbering and stupid smiling story teller?
But to transform himself from a caricature of the real Homer to his inheritor, to transform himself from a lover of the old myths to their creator, to rise from the ashes as a new human he first had to burn his old image. He believed that when he continued to doubt, to give in to his longing for home and wife, continuously looking back at the past he would overlooks something very important that been laying in front of him in the end. He had to cut that all from him.
From this new expedition he would if at all not return unharmed. Of course he was sorry for Yelena. At first she didn’t believe that Homer had returned alive and healthy after one day. She had tried to keep him from embarking on this voyage, in vain.
When they parted ways in tears again he didn’t promise anything anymore. He pressed her against him and watched over her shoulder at clock. It was time to go. He knew that. He couldn’t amputate ten years of his live so easily and he would probably get phantom pains from doing so.
He had believed that he would have wanted to look back all the time. But as soon as he crossed the yellow strip it was if he had actually died and his souls had freed himself from the both heavy and unmoving wraps and had ascended. He was free.
The suit didn’t seem to slow hunter down. The clothing had transformed his muscular, wolf like figure into a formless mountain but it hadn’t limited his movement. He walked alongside the heavy breathing homer but only because he hadn’t left him out of his line of sight since the Nachimovski prospect.
After all he had seen ant the Nagatinskaya, the Nagornaya and the Tulaskaya it hadn’t been easy for Homer to agree to go onto another journey with Hunter. But there was something that had convinced him. The brigadier presence had started his long awaited metamorphoses that promised his reincarnation. The old man didn’t care why Hunter carried him around again; let it be as a guide or walking provision.
The main thing was to not let this moment pass, to use it as long as it lasted, to imagine something and to write down something.
And then when Hunter had called for Homer he had felt that also wanted something of him. It wasn’t because he showed him the way in the tunnels or protected him from all possible dangers. Maybe the brigadier took something from the old man without asking for it while he gave him what he wanted?
But what would he need?
Hunter’s lack of emotions could no longer deceive Homer. Behind the crust of the paralyzed face magma cooked and it shot over the crater of his eternally open eyes from time to time. He was uneasy. He was looking for something as well.
Hunter seemed to be perfect for the role of Homers epic hero in his book. At first the old man had hesitated but after a few tries he had acknowledged him. Even if many characteristics of the brigadier, his passion for killing, his silence and sparse gestures had made Homer careful. Hunter was like those murders that gave the police cryptic messages so they could be caught. Homer didn’t know if the brigadier saw a priest waiting for a confession, a biographer or some kind of donor of something in Homer, but he felt that this attachment was mutua
l. And that it would soon become stronger than his fear.
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 situation 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 get 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 Tulskaya 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.
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 11