Whatever the reason, she could manage without them. A single dagger thrust from those eyes of hers had made Hunter reverse a decision, a single movement from her had snared him in a net and kept him from killing. But had that thrust really pierced through his armour into the soft flesh? Or did he need her for something? That was probably it. It seemed strange to Homer even to imagine that the brigadier had any vulnerable spots, that he could even be pricked, let alone wounded.
Homer simply couldn’t sleep. Although he had swapped the stifling black gas mask for a light respirator, he still found it just as hard to breathe and the vice that was crushing his head hadn’t slackened its grip. Homer had dumped all his old things in the tunnel. He had scrubbed his hands clean with a piece of grey soap, washed off the dirt with greenish water from an old fuel can and made a voluntary decision always to wear a white face mask from now on. What else could the old man do to avoid danger to people he was with?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all now, not even going into the tunnel and reducing himself to an abandoned heap of rotten rags would do any good. But today’s close brush with death had suddenly taken him back twenty years, to the days when he had just lost everyone he loved. And that had given his plans a new, authentic meaning.
If it was up to Homer, he would have erected a genuine monument to them. But they surely deserved at least a basic headstone. Born decades apart, they had all died on the same day: his wife, his children, his parents.
And there were all his classmates from school and friends from the technical college. His favourite movie actors and musicians. And all those people who were still at work that day, or had already got home, or were stuck somewhere halfway in the traffic jams.
The ones who died immediately and the ones who tried to survive, lingering for a few more days in the poisoned, half-ruined capital, scraping feebly at the locked hermetic doors of the Metro. The ones who disintegrated instantly into atoms, and the ones who swelled up and crumbled away while still alive, devoured by radiation sickness.
The scouts who went up onto the surface first couldn’t get to sleep for days after they returned from their mission. Homer had met some of them round the campfires at transfer stations, he had looked into their eyes and seen streets like frozen rivers swollen with dead fish, imprinted on those eyes forever. Thousands of stalled cars with dead passengers choked the avenues and the highways leading out of Moscow. Dead bodies were lying everywhere. Until the city’s new masters arrived, there was no one to clear them away.
To spare themselves, the scouts tried to avoid the schools and kindergartens. But to lose your mind, it was enough to catch a single frozen gaze from the back seat of a family car. Billions of lives were broken off simultaneously. Billions of thoughts were left unspoken, billions of dreams were left unrealised, billions of grievances were left unforgiven. Nikolai’s little son had asked him for a big set of coloured felt-tip pens, his daughter had been afraid to go to her figure skating lessons; before she went to sleep, his wife had described in vivid detail how they would spend a short holiday by the sea together, just the two of them. When he thought that these little wishes and desires were the last they had, they suddenly became exceptionally important. Homer would have liked to carve an epitaph for each one of them. But humanity certainly deserved at least one epitaph for its gigantic mass grave. And now, when he himself had almost no time left, Homer felt he could find the right words for it.
He still didn’t know what order to arrange them in, what he would use to bind them together, how he would embellish them, but he could already sense that the story unfolding before his very eyes would have a place for every restless, troubled soul, for every single feeling and every crumb of knowledge that he had gathered so painstakingly, and for him too. No plot could have suited his purpose better.
When dawn came up on the surface, the rows of market stalls would stir into life down below, and then he would definitely take a walk along them to get himself a clean exercise book and a ballpoint pen. And he had to hurry: if he didn’t get down on paper the outlines of the future novel that he could see glimmering like a mirage ahead of him, it could melt away, and who could say how much longer he would have to sit on the summit of his sand dune, gazing into the distance and hoping that his ivory tower would start rising up again out of the fine grains of sand and the shimmering, incandescent air?
There might not be enough time.
‘No matter what nonsense the girl might talk, a glance into the empty eye sockets of eternity is certainly a great stimulus to action,’ the old man chuckled to himself. And then, recalling the arches of her eyebrows – two flashes of white on the sombre, grimy face – and the bite marks on her lip, and her tousled, straw-blonde hair, he smiled again.
‘I’ll have to find something else at the market tomorrow as well,’ Homer thought as he fell asleep.
Night at Pavelets Station is always restless. Glimmers of light from the smoking torches flicker across the soot-stained marble walls, the tunnels breathe uneasily and the men sitting at the foot of the escalators talk to each other in voices so low, they can hardly be heard. The station pretends to be dead, hoping the predatory beasts from the surface won’t be tempted by the smell of meat.
But sometimes the most curious of those beasts discover a passage that leads down deep, start sniffing at it and catch the scent of fresh sweat, the beating of hearts, the murmur of blood coursing through veins. And they set off downwards.
Homer had finally dozed off, and the alarmed voices from the far end of the platform filtered into his awareness as dull, distorted echoes. But then a shot rang out, instantly jerking him out of his hazy half-sleep. The old man jumped up, staring around wildly and groping for his gun on the floor of the trolley.
The deafening, thunderous rumbling of the machine-gun was joined by the stuttering of several sub-machine-guns and the alarm in the sentries’ shouts was replaced by genuine terror. Whoever it was they were firing all their weapons at, it wasn’t having any effect. This was no longer coordinated fire at a moving target, but the desperate, ragged shooting of men simply trying to save their own skins.
Homer found his automatic, but he couldn’t make himself go out into the hall; it took all his willpower to resist the temptation to start the motor and shoot out of the station at top speed – it didn’t matter a damn where to. But he stayed in the trolley, craning his neck to make out the battle zone through the crowded line of the columns. Slicing through the yelling and swearing of the sentries trying to defend themselves came a piercing shriek that sounded surprisingly close.
The machine-gun choked and someone gave a terrible scream that was cut short as suddenly as if his head had been torn off. The chatter of sub-machine-guns hammered at Homer’s ears again. But now it was sparse and scattered. The shriek was repeated – it sounded a little further away now . . . And suddenly the creature that made it was answered by an echo – somewhere close to the trolley.
Homer counted to ten and started the motor with trembling hands: any moment now his companions would come back, and they could go racing off immediately – he was doing it for their sake, not his own . . . The trolley trembled and smoked as the motor warmed up, and then something flickered between the columns at an unbelievable speed, blurring past and slithering out of view faster than his mind could process the image. The old man grabbed hold of the handrail, set his foot on the accelerator pedal and took a deep breath. If they didn’t come in the next ten seconds, he’d just drop everything and . . . And then, without even knowing why he was doing it, Homer stepped out onto the platform, holding his useless automatic out in front of him. Just to make sure that there was nothing more he could still do for either of his companions. He pressed himself tight against a column and glanced out into the hall . . . He tried to scream, but he didn’t have enough air.
Sasha had always known the world wasn’t limited to the two stations where she had lived, but she could never have imagined that the world beyond them could
be so beautiful. Dull and bleak as Kolomenskoe was, to her it had seemed like a home, cosy and familiar in every little detail. Avtozavod was haughty and spacious, but cold, it had turned its back on her father and her, rejected them, and she couldn’t forget that.
But in her relationship with Pavelets she could turn a new leaf, and Sasha’s desire to fall in love with this station grew stronger with every minute she spent there. She wanted to fall in love with its light, branching columns, with its huge, inviting arches, with its noble marble covered in darling little veins that made the walls look like someone’s delicate skin . . . Kolomenskoe was ugly, Avtozavod was too severe, but this station seemed to have been built by a woman, it was playful, even frivolous. Even decades on, Pavelets refused to forget its own former glory. The people who lived here couldn’t be vicious and cruel, Sasha thought. Did she and her father really only have to get past one hostile station in order to find themselves in this magical land? Would it really have been enough for him to live just one more day, in order to escape from his exile and hard labour and be free again? She would have been able to persuade the man with the shaved head to take both of them . . .
In the distance a campfire flickered, surrounded by sentries, and the beam of a searchlight probed at the high ceiling, but Sasha didn’t want to go that way. For so many years it had seemed to her that once she broke out of Kolomenskoe and met other people, she would be happy! But now Sasha needed only one person – to share her delight and amazement that now the world really was bigger by a whole third and her hope that everything could still be put right. But there probably wasn’t anyone at all who needed Sasha, no matter what she might try to make herself and the old man believe.
So the girl wandered off in the opposite direction, to where a dilapidated train stood halfway into the right tunnel, with its windows broken and doors wide open. She walked inside and along through the train, soaring over the gaps between the carriages as she inspected the first, the second, the third . . . In the last one Sasha found a seat that had miraculously survived and clambered onto it, pulling up her legs. She looked round, trying to imagine that any moment now the train would start moving and carry her on to more stations, brightly lit and vibrant with human voices. But her faith and imagination weren’t strong enough to set thousands of tons of scrap iron moving. It had all been so much easier with her bicycle. And her attempt to hide failed: skipping from carriage to carriage in her wake, the noise of the battle unfolding in Pavelets Station finally caught up with her. Again?
She lowered her feet onto the floor and dashed back to the station – to the only place where she could at least do something.
The mutilated bodies of sentries were lying by the glass booth with the frozen searchlight, and in the extinguished campfire, and in the centre of the hall – those men had already abandoned any resistance and were running to seek refuge in the passage, but death had overtaken them halfway there.
A sinister, unnatural figure was doubled up over one of the bodies. From that distance it was hard to make it out clearly, but Homer saw smooth white skin, an immensely powerful, twitching neck, and legs bent at too many joints, with impatiently shuffling feet.
The battle had been lost. But where was Hunter?
The old man peeped again and froze in horror . . . About ten steps away from him, more than two metres up in the air, a nightmarish face was staring at him, peeping out from behind a column exactly like Homer, as if it was playing peek-a-boo. Something red was dripping from the drooping lower lip, the lower jaw was working incessantly, grinding up its hideous cud, and the space below the sloping forehead was absolutely empty, but the lack of eyes didn’t seem to cause the beast any difficulty in moving about and attacking.
Homer pulled back, squeezing the trigger – his automatic didn’t make a sound. The monster let out a long, deafening howl and darted into the centre of the hall. The old man started jerking the jammed breech backwards and forwards, realising he didn’t have enough time . . .
But suddenly the monster lost all interest in him: now its attention was riveted to the edge of the platform. Homer swung round sharply, following the line of that blind gaze, and his heart stopped dead. The girl was standing there, gazing round in fright.
‘Run!’ Homer yelled, his voice instantly breaking into a croak that scraped at his throat.
The white monster sprang forward, covering several metres in a single bound, and stood in front of the girl. She pulled out a knife that was useless for anything but cooking and made a warning lunge. In reply the beast swung one of its front paws and the girl collapsed on the ground; her knife went flying several metres through the air.
The old man was already on the trolley. But he wasn’t thinking about running away any more. Puffing and panting, he swung the machine-gun round, trying to catch that white, dancing silhouette in the cobweb lines of the sight. He couldn’t: the monster was moving in on Sasha. Homer had the impression that after savaging the sentries, who represented at least some kind of danger to it, the creature was amusing itself by driving two helpless victims into a corner and toying with them before it finished them off.
Now it was hunched over Sasha, screening her from the old man’s view. Skinning its prey?
Suddenly it jerked and staggered backwards, scraping with its claws at a dark patch spreading across its back, and swung round with a roar, preparing to devour its attacker.
Treading unsteadily, holding his automatic out in one hand, Hunter walked towards it. His other arm dangled limply at his side and it was clear that every step he took cost him an immense effort and great pain.
The brigadier raked the monster with another burst of fire, but the creature was incredibly tough; it merely swayed, then immediately recovered its balance and came hurtling forward. Hunter had run out of cartridges and he pivoted round in an incredible turn, taking the immense carcass on the blade of his machete as the monster collapsed down onto him, stifling him with its sheer weight and breaking his bones.
The second monster came running up to destroy any remaining hope. It froze over the twitching body of its fellow and plucked at the white skin with its claw, as if trying to wake the other beast up, then slowly raised its eyeless face towards the old man . . .
Homer didn’t miss his chance. The heavy calibre bullets shredded the monster’s torso and shattered its skull, knocking it to the ground, then continued reducing the marble slabs behind its back to chips and dust. It was some time before the old man could calm his heart and unclasp his cramped fingers.
Then he closed his eyes, took off his respirator and let the frosty air, saturated with the rusty smell of fresh blood, flood into him. All the heroes had fallen, he was left alone on the battlefield.
His book was over before it had even begun.
CHAPTER 10
After Death
What remains after people die? What will remain after each one of us?
Gravestones subside and become overgrown with moss, and it takes only a few decades for the inscriptions on them to become illegible.
Even in former times, when no one was left to take care of graves, the ground in a cemetery was redistributed among the newly deceased. The only people who came to visit the dead were their children or parents; grandchildren came far more rarely, great-grandchildren almost never.
In major cities, what was customarily referred to as ‘eternal peace’ meant a respite of only half a century before the bones would be disturbed, perhaps so that more remains could be crammed into the cemetery, or perhaps so that it could be ploughed up and a new residential district built on it. The earth was becoming too cramped for both the living and the dead.
Half a century is a luxury that only those who died before Doomsday could afford. Who can be concerned with a single dead man, when an entire planet dies? None of the inhabitants of the Metro has ever been afforded the honour of being buried, or been able to hope that his body will not be destroyed by rats.
Formerly, remains had the right
to exist for exactly as long as the living remembered the people to whom they belonged. A man remembers his relatives, his schoolfellows and his workmates. But his memory is only long enough for three generations – for that same period of fifty-something years.
In the same careless manner as we all discard from our memory the image of our grandfather or school friend, some day someone will discard us into absolute oblivion. The memory of a man can last for longer than his skeleton, but when the last of those who still remember us departs, we dissolve into time with him. Photos? Who still has them made these days? And how many of them were kept, even when everyone used to take them? At one time, at the end of every thick family album there used to be a small reservation for old brownish snapshots, but not many of those who leafed through the albums could say for certain which of his ancestors they depicted. In effect, photographs of the departed can be regarded as death masks, cast from the body, but certainly not life masks cast from the soul. And then, photos decay only slightly more slowly than the bodies of the people they recorded.
So what does remain?
Children?
Homer touched the candle flame with his finger.
It was easy for him to intellectualise; what Ahmed had said was still tormenting him. Condemned to remain childless, deprived of any chance to continue his line, now the old man could only deny the reality of this route to immortality.
He picked up his pen again.
They can look like us. In their features we can see our own features, miraculously fused with the features of those we have loved. Recognising ourselves in their gestures, in the curve of their eyebrows, in their facial expressions, we will be moved to tenderness. Friends might tell us that our sons and daughters are like stencilled copies of us, that they are cast from the same mould. And this supposedly promises us some kind of continuation of ourselves after we cease to exist. But after all, none of us is an initial image from which subsequent copies are made, but merely a phantasmagorical combination, composed half-and-half of the external and internal features of our father and our mother, exactly as they, in turn, consist of halves of their own parents. Does this mean there is nothing unique about us, that there is only an eternal reshuffling of tiny little pieces of the mosaic, which exist in their own right, combining at random into billions of pictures that have no particular value and crumble away before our very eyes? If so, what sense does it make to be so proud of the fact that we see in our children this particular hook of the nose or that particular dimple in the cheek, which we are used to thinking of as our own, but which has really been wandering through thousands of bodies for half a million years already?
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