“Even worse. Until it breaks out a week passes. What if more …? Until death another week or two. Nobody knows who is sick, nobody knows who is healthy. There is no cure.
The disease is absolute deadly.” On the same page the radio operator had made another entry which Homer already kne “Chaos at the Tulskaya. No way to the metro. Hanza isn’t letting anybody through. We can’t go back as well.”
Two pages ahead he continued: “The healthy shoot at the sick, especially at the aggressive ones. They have herded the infected into a cage … They resist, want out.” Then the most horrible sentence: “They are tearing each other to pieces …”
The radio operator had been afraid too, but the iron discipline of the group had prevented it them from panicking.
Even in the midst of a deadly fever epidemic the brigade of the Sevastopolskaya held their ground.
“Have the situation under control. The station is sealed and we have a new commander”. And then. “Who dies next?” Read Homer. “We are all alright but not enough time has passed.”
The search troop of the Sevastopolskaya had reached the Tulskaya but had been stuck there as well. “Our orders are to stay here until the incubation period has passed so that we don’t endanger …. Or forever”. The radio operator noted dark: “The situation is without hope. We can’t expect help from anywhere. If we demand more men from the Sevastopolskaya we lead them to their doom. There is nothing put to endure it here … How long?”
So the mysterious guard at the hermetic door of the Tulskaya had been put there by the troop of the Sevastopolskaya. That was why the voices had been familiar to Homer: It had been people with whom he had freed the Tschertanovskaya from some monsters just a few days back!
By passing voluntarily on returning they hoped to spare their own station the epidemic …
“Mostly from human to human but apparently also through the air. Some seem immune to it. It has started a few weeks ago and some are still not sick … But they are becoming more and more. We are living in a morgue. Who dies next?”
The chased writing looked like a hysterical scream at that sentence. But then the radio operator had calmed down again and continued normally. “We have to do something. To warn the others. I am going to volunteer. Not to the Sevastopolskaya but to repair the broken part of the cable. We have to reach them”.
Another day passed when the author had probably argued with the commander of the caravan and other soldiers.
A day where his despair had grown stronger. What the radio operator had tried to explain them, after he had calmed down again he had written down in this diary: “They don’t understand! The blockade has lasted for a whole week. The Sevastopolskaya is going to send a new troop and this one won’t come back as well. Then they are going to go mobile and storm the station. But whoever gets to the Tulskaya enters the risk zone. Someone is going to infect himself and run back home. That is the end. We have to keep them from storming the station! Why don’t they understand …?”
Another try to convince the leader turned out to be a failure, like the others: “They won’t let me go. They have gone mad. If not me then who? I have to flee”
“I now act like I agree with them to wait here longer”
Then one day later he wrote: “I let me be assigned for guard duty at the gate. At some time I said that I would find the place where the cable had been cut and just started running. They shot me in the back. The bullet is still inside”.
Homer turned the page:”Not for me. For Natasha and Seryoschka …” Here the feather had fallen out of the weakened fingers of the author. Maybe he had added this later because there was no more room or because it made no difference where he wrote it. Then the chronologic order was there again: “At the Nagornaya they let me pass, many thanks! I have no more strength. I walk and walk. Passed out.
How long did I sleep? Don’t know. Blood in the lung?
From the bullet, or am I sick? I…” The curve of the last letters stretched itself to a straight line like the encephalogram of a dying man. But then he seemed to have come to his senses again and continued the sentence to an end:”Can’t find the defect part”
What now flow in red streams over the paper had no more connection to each other:”The Nachimovski. I am here.
I know where the telephone is. I am going to warn them … Everything but! Rescue … Miss you … Got through.
If they heard me? The end is near. Strange, I am tired.
No more bullets. I want to sleep, before those … Standing there and waiting. Go away! … I am still alive.”
He probably had written the end of the diary before that. With formal, straight writing he repeated the warning not to storm the Tulskaya, added his name, the name of who had given his live to stop that from happening
But Homer kne The last thing the radio operator had written, before his signal had been silenced was the sentence: “Go away! … I am still alive”
A heavy silence surrounded the two humans that cowered at the fire. Homer didn’t bother to get the girl to talk anymore. Silent he scratched in the ashes of the fire with a stick, there where the wet notebook burned reluctantly like a heretic and waited for the storm to blow it out.
Fate made fun of him. How he had longed to decipher the riddle of the Tulskaya. How proud had he been that he had discovered the notebook. How he had hoped to weave the threads of history all by himself. Now? Now that he had found the answerer to all questions he cursed his curiosity.
Of course when he took the notebook at the Nachimovski he had worn a mask and even now he was wearing a suit. But nobody knew how this disease was transmitted!
He had been an idiot to tell himself that he hadn’t much time anymore. Of course overreacting had helped him to get over sloth and fear. But death had his own will and didn’t like it very much to be ordered around. And now the diary had given him a concrete ultimatum: From infection to death it was only a few weeks. It could even be a whole month: How much he still had to do in those puny thirty days!
What should he do? To confess to his companions that he was sick and to remain at the Kolomenskaya so he could die there, if not from the epidemic but hunger and radiation?
On the other hand: When he carried the terrible disease in him so were hunter and the girl who had shared the same air with him. Before all, the brigadier who had talked with the guardsmen at the Tulskaya, he had been especially close to them.
Or should he hope that the disease would spare him, to keep it to himself and wait? Not just like that but to continue the journey with Hunter. So that the storm of events that had carried him away wouldn’t stop and he could continue to get his inspiration from it.
Because Nikolai Ivanovitsch, this common, useless inhabitant of the Sevastopolskaya, this former helper of the train operator, this from gravity bounded caterpillar had to die through the discovery of this cursed diary so Homer the chronic and myth creator would come to light as a beautiful butterfly. If even just for a short time. Maybe he had been appointed a tragedy that was worthy of the feathers of the great masters but everything depended on what he would be able to put on a piece of paper in the next thirty days.
Had he the right to let this chance pass? Had he the right to turn into an eremite, to forget his legend, to voluntarily pass on true immortality and rob all other around him from it as well? What was the bigger crime, the bigger stupidity: To carry the pest through half of the metro or to burn his manuscript with himself?
Seeking fame and without much courage he was.
Homer had already decided and just searched for arguments for it. What did it bring him that he put himself next the two corpses at the Kolomenskaya, to let himself be turned into a mummy while he was still alive? He hadn’t been made for heroics. When the fighters of the Sevastopolskaya had been ready to go to their certain death at the Tulskaya it had been their own decisions. At least they didn’t die alone.
But what was the point that homer sacrificed himself?
He c
ouldn’t stop hunter anyways. The old man had carried the epidemic around with him unknowingly – but Hunter knew exactly what was going on at the Tulskaya. No wonder that he had ordered the complete destruction of all the inhabitants of the station, including the caravan from the Sevastopolskaya. And no wonder he had wanted to use flamethrowers so badly.
But if both of them had already been infected they wouldn’t be able to avoid that the epidemic would hit the Sevastopolskaya. And the first humans to be hit would be all the people that had been next to him. Yelena. The head of the station. The commander of the outer guard posts. The adjutants. So in three weeks the station would have no more leadership. Chaos would emerge and finally the epidemic would kill all others.
But why had hunter returned when he had known that they had been infected? Gradually Homer realized that the brigadier hadn’t acted out of intuition but he had followed a certain plan step by step. But then the old man had mixed the cards new.
So was the Sevastopolskaya doomed to go under and did his expedition have no more reason? Even if Homer would have wanted to return home to be reunited with Yelena in death it was impossible. Alone the way from the Kachovskaya to the Kaschirskaya had been enough to render their gasmask useless and the suits had gotten dozens if not hundredths of Röntgen and they had to dispose of them very soon. What to do now?
The girl had rolled together and slept. The campfire had finally eaten the infected diary, the last twigs and had gone out. To save the batteries in his lamp Homer decided to wait in the dark as long as possible.
No, he would continue to follow the brigadier! To reduce the risk of infecting others he would avoid contact with them, leave the backpack with his things here, destroy his clothes, hope for a merciful fate and keep an eye on the thirty day countdown. Every day he would work on his book.
Somehow everything would be solved, he said to himself. The main thing was that he followed Hunter.
If he came back.
It had been over an hour since he had vanished through the obscure exit of the tunnel. Homer had talked to the girl to calm her down but he wasn’t entirely convinced that the brigadier would return.
The more he found out about him the less he understood him. It was possible to doubt the brigadier and to believe him at the same time. He didn’t follow any pattern, didn’t show common human ways. When he trusted himself to him he exposed himself to Mother Nature. But for Homer it was too late: He had already done it. To regret was pointless.
In the darkness the silence now seemed impenetrable to him. Like through a thin bowl he could hear a strange whispering sound, a distance howling and a rustling sound …
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 Kolomenskaya. 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 Nad 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 br
igadier 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?
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Page 14