“That way! That way!” little Kolya shouted from Artyom’s shoulders; he hadn’t noticed yet that his mother had been killed.
Letyaga walked at the front, massive and indomitable. Artyom and Kolya followed him. Lyokha had latched on to his crucifix and was clinging to it like the broken mast of a ship, praying with the only three words he knew as he sculled along. Somehow they managed to stick together, and they were swept along like that as far as the Hansa border.
“Mama! Ma-ma! Where are you?” the little boy called, remembering about her. But there wasn’t anyone now where he had left her.
All the Reds had been swept aside and trampled to death. Flags appeared out of the darkness of the passages—a brown circle on a white ground.
“Up,” Artyom pleaded with the people. “Not this way. Go up.”
“Mama! Maaaaaaaaaa!”
The boy tried to climb down and jump into the grindstones, to drag his mama out himself. But Artyom caught him: He would have been trampled down in a second.
The thought came to Artyom that he couldn’t abandon this boy now. He had to take him as his own. Take him and keep him for as long as his own life lasted. But how could he raise him? Suddenly he pictured himself back with Anya and they had this kid he was clutching by the ankle. And they all lived together … In Polis? At Exhibition? He suddenly wanted to go there, into that life—to take a look, just for a minute.
The searchlights above the fortifications lit up and tried to blind the people. But even blinded, the people knew which way to go.
“MUSHROOOOOMS!”
“This is a state border,” someone shouted to them. “The Federation of Stations! Of the Circle Line! We’ll open fire! And shoot to kill!”
“Have meeeercyyyyyy!”
And that was all: They had all survived in vain back there on the steps.
Artyom took the boy down off his shoulders and into his arms—so that the bullets wouldn’t pick him off above all the heads. The boy tried to break free. And Artyom thought, Damn, what a responsibility—now I have to drag him around with me everywhere.
But Sukhoi … How had SukhoI taken Artyom—just taken him and dragged him around all his life, exactly like that, someone he had picked up by chance. He was able to do it. But what about Artyom—could he do it?
Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat! The guns chattered.
The ones at the front, the bravest, came crashing down; the ones behind them, desperate people, fell, but others kept jostling from behind: the third row, the fourth row, the hundredth, the two hundredth. Artyom turned his back to the front to shield Kolya.
“Mama,” said Kolya.
“Hush,” Artyom told him.
They walked past a dead man in a black balaclava who had lost his way.
It was frightening to take responsibility for someone else, especially a six-year-old. To bind yourself to him for the rest of your life … How did you do that?
Kolya relaxed and stopped struggling.
Artyom looked down—and the boy was dead. With his arms hanging loose and his legs dangling, with his light-blond head thrown back and little holes in his chest. He’d been caught by falling bullets at the end of their flight. And he had shielded Artyom.
“You cowardly bastard,” Artyom told himself. “You stinking coward. You shit.”
He wiped away the snot and looked for a place to put the boy down, but there wasn’t anywhere. And then the three of them were tossed towards the reinforcements and the Hansa machine guns. They were exactly the same kind of machine guns, no different at all from the Reds’. And the bullets were probably the same. And they killed in exactly the same way.
The muzzle was turning towards them, spitting death, but Letyaga remembered about his sniper’s rifle and stopped the machine gunner halfway, and a second later the emplacement was swept away by the wave, and the body was dragged across the stone slabs.
Artyom held Kolya in his arms for as long as he could, but he lost him anyway.
Absolutely everything was smothered in people.
The dead stared indifferently and kept silent. The others couldn’t do that. Those who went on roared. Those the bullets were flying towards mumbled about mercy. The dying finished up their conversations with God. No one was listening to anyone else.
But suddenly they started taking hold of each other’s hands, to walk in a chain and not get split up. Artyom’s hand was taken on one side, then on the other—people he didn’t know. Warm, ardent hands. They didn’t hold on for long. When they’d taken a few steps, the little man on the left let go, then the man on the right.
They were already walking over the crumpling faces of Hansa border guards, and the vanguard of the starving was already bowling through the barbed wire; they had already reached the Circle Line Komsomol Station when the flamethrowers jumped out behind them, like fiends from hell.
Artyom and Letyaga and other people were swept out into a huge, stately hall: a ceiling covered with happy mosaics, chandeliers giving undeserved light, caressing and divine, well-washed little people screeching and recoiling from the invasion, and the defectors, the intruders—like rats, like cockroaches, hurrying and scurrying to get out of this palace and out of sight, into the tunnels, into the burrows, to scatter before they were all caught.
Behind them in the passages the flamethrowers started roaring; the first people who were burned howled, and a smell of roasted flesh and burnt hair spread through the air, but Artyom and Letyaga and Lyokha ran, with their arms round each other, into the blackness of a tunnel, without looking back to see what they had left behind them.
Someone shouted in the tunnel behind them, ordering them to stop. Hansa security guards who had rushed to the scene were already arresting people and dragging them back home, to the Red Line. These fugitives weren’t wanted here.
The three of them didn’t talk to each other.
There wasn’t enough air for talking.
* * *
Before the exit to Kursk Station, there happened to be a connecting passage between tunnels, and after wounding the guards, they managed to get out through it onto another line, the Arbat-Pokrovsk blue line. Letyaga remembered about a ventilation shaft there. They scrambled out among the courtyards of dilapidated detached brick houses, between the flaking gold of church domes and the flaking gold above smashed shop windows.
They sat down to take a breather, deafened by all the shouting and screaming.
Letyaga didn’t say anything; Lyokha batted his eyelids in confusion; Artyom puked. They had a smoke.
“How do you feel about it now?” Artyom asked Letyaga. “Got the idea?”
Letyaga shrugged his bearish shoulders.
“They killed the kid. I was holding him.”
“I saw.”
“He killed them with our cartridges,” Artyom told him. “Svinolup. That scumbag. The major. With your cartridges. He must have run out of his own. They were waiting for us. And he just left. Alive. All those corpses were left back there. But he’s alive. And he’ll go on living.”
“I was following orders.”
“He was following orders too. It’s pretty certain he didn’t think it all up himself. All of them there were following orders.”
“Why the hell are you comparing me with him?”
“It would be gweat if we could kill someone too,” said Lyokha. “The one who did think all this up. That fucking twat. So there’d be no more orders like this.”
“I was sure he’d croaked. I put two bullets into him. I should have shot him in the forehead.”
Artyom’s left arm had gone numb and his shoulder was soaking wet, but he wasn’t allowed to think about his shoulder right now.
“What’s the point of taking out a major?” Lyokha objected. “Theware shitwoads of majors. Take out a major and you onwy make a captain happy. You have to take out the field marshals stwaight off.”
“What if I had finished him back there? What would have changed? They would have charged the machin
e guns anyway. I told them. They don’t understand anything. I told them they could leave that place. Go up on top. They don’t hear anything! None of them! Even the ones who are going to croak any moment. It’s easier for them to storm a machine gun than go up there! What can you do?”
Letyaga snorted bloody snot into his hand and started absentmindedly wiping it on his trousers. He rubbed his forehead.
“Fuck them. You can’t change their direction. They’re like a herd of animals. Where can I go?” he asked. “This is desertion. There isn’t anywhere to go.”
Artyom looked at him for a moment. The fireproof man. He didn’t burn, because there was nothing there to burn. If only Artyom could be like that.
His ears were gradually uncorking themselves.
His stretched eardrums were shrinking back.
And then, from down below, out of the crevices, sewer manholes, and drainage gratings, through the ventilation system, from all sides, sounds started welling up from under the ground. Weeping and howling. Weak, muffled by the heavy Moscow clay, reflected off numerous bends in fractured pipes. An echo. The people couldn’t escape. Only their voices could.
It was like a birth. Moscow was like a woman who had already died, but the children in her petrifying womb were still alive. And they wanted to be born, and they were crying there inside. But Moscow didn’t let anyone else out. She pressed her concrete cunt shut and squeezed all her children to death, and after their torment they fell silent, and were never born.
And their smokes ran out.
It was night.
Moscow had been dunked into this night as if it was a bucket of dirty water, to wash all the blood off it. When the murky night ended, there would be a murky day, and on that day no one would find out what had happened on the day before. Everything would be washed out in the night. Who would find out about the black tunnel where some people had flailed at others with pickaxes? No one. Who would find out about the jammers? No one. Who would find out about the atheists crossing themselves as they charged the machine guns? And what they all died for? What the reason was?
“Letyaga. Letyaga. Do these enemies exist? The West? America? Are they real? Do they exist at all? Tell me honestly.”
Letyaga squinted at him, but in the darkness it seemed as if his eyes had evened out and were looking straight and true.
“They must.”
“What the fuck do we need enemies for?” Lyokha asked. “We get awong just fine without them!”
“If they wanted to, they’d zap us anyway, just to make sure. The coup de grâce. If they were seriously afraid of us. Have you ever thought about that?”
“No.”
“And all the other cities—Petersburg, Vladivostok and all the small fry—why don’t they bomb them? Have you thought about that? Or have they taken them all, and we’re the last ones left unconquered?”
“No! What’s it to you if I’ve thought about it or not?”
“The point is that there aren’t any enemies. They couldn’t give a shit about us, Letyaga. The enemies. Nobody needs us. You bought that story, and so did I. We’re always thinking that someone needs us real bad. That we’re the center of the universe. That we’re the last ones, or the only ones, or the most important ones. That the fate of the world is being decided right here. Like fuck. Nothing’s being decided here. We build empires here, and storm machine guns, croak on construction sites, feed ourselves to the dogs, save the human race, and it’s all under a lid. Our entire struggle, the sacrifices and the heroism. It’s nothing but the heroism of ants in an anthill. No one can hear them. We croak for nothing. Take away that lid …”
“Shield! It’s a shield, not a lid!”
“Take away that shield and nothing will change. I’m certain of it. Our enemies don’t need us, Letyaga; we need our enemies.”
“I’m certain,” Letyaga said painfully and fiercely. “I’m certain the old man is telling the truth.”
“Then he’s a stupid fuck,” Artyom replied just as fiercely. “He’s a stupid fuck, and you’ve been head-fucked. And I’m a stupid fuck too. For swallowing that story back at Balashikha. And now it’s too late. There’s nothing else I can do. That was the moment. We should have smashed all those jammers to hell. Flattened them all. And then seen what happened. Right, Savelii?”
“Wight,” Lyokha replied for the trampled Savelii.
“It wouldn’t have achieved anything,” Letyaga spat out. “There are lots of those jammers planted all around Moscow. And people wouldn’t have believed you anyway.”
“Because you’ve all been head-fucking them for twenty years! How can they believe it? It’s not their fault, is it?”
“I never head-fucked anyone.”
“Uh-huh. You cull everyone who doesn’t fit into your story.”
“That’s with enemies. I’m defending the homeland—against enemies! And if I hadn’t yanked you out of Balashikha, you bullshitter, the Hansa troops would have put you in the ground right there! Before you even knew what hit you!”
“It wasn’t you who yanked me out! It was the old man! And not because he felt sorry for me! But in order to save his shitty equipment! That’s all! He told you to whack me! Me! Think about it! Who am I to him? His son-in-law! His daughter’s husband! But he still sentenced me to death!”
“But I didn’t whack you.”
“Well, thanks a fucking bunch!”
“You’re welcome!”
“And what reason is there to kill me? Because I know about the jammers? Because I know how they mess with people’s heads? Or what? If I happen to object when he gives the Reds cartridges? Twenty thousand cartridges! Twenty thousand! You were treated to a good helping yourself today. It’s time to stop being such a dumb fuck!”
“So at least the war will stop! That was Moskvin’s condition!”
“So that’s what the old man meant when he said at any price! He said it would have to be paid! Just twenty, right?”
“So were we supposed to get more of our boys pulverized? Arrange another bunker?”
Artyom turned away.
“Was that Moskvin there? I recognized him. Moskvin, and the other one was Bessolov. Who is Bessolov in Hansa?”
“Some kind of bigshot. I can’t fucking tell them apart.”
“You’re lying,” said Artyom, sure of himself. “You know. Who is he?”
“Bugger off.”
“He passed on the envelope for the Führer through our old man. And the cartridges for the General Secretary. He did it. And the old man reports to him, doesn’t he? Eh? To AlexeI Felixovich! How come? How did he get such a grip on him? With those shitty jeeps?”
“So? Hansa picked us up off our knees! When was it you cleared off? After the bunker. You took your Anechka and ran out on us, like liquid shit. And what could we do? How many of us were left after the bunker? Maybe half? And all full of holes. If not for Hansa, we’d have fallen to pieces, and that would have been the end of it. The old man did what he could. No one else was willing to help. But what could he do, with no legs and one arm? Hang himself? And were we supposed to turn into mercenaries?”
“Being a mercenary’s more honest than being in your Order now!”
“You fuck off! All right?”
“Do you at least understand what he paid for those off-roaders, and the sniper rifles, and the little caps? Our boys! It was Hansa who set us up, Letyaga! We asked them to come! When we were in the bunker! We called them! But did they come? Some great help, landing us with their wankers instead of our boys! Who were killed because of them! He sold them! And he sold them to Hansa!”
“That’s not. Possible. There must be a reason.”
“And what was the reason for bumping me off?”
“What if you were a spy? Or a saboteur? You tried to break the shield! What if you were playing against us? And you wormed your way back in? He said, if you tried to disrupt the peace agreement … Or put the delivery in danger … Then …”
“Whose spy? Who
se saboteur?”
“America’s. You got in touch with them from your high-rise and …”
“And what? I help them target missiles again? At my own people? At my wife and my father-in-law? At you, you jerk? You were sold, I was sold, all our boys were sold, and their souls too, as a job lot! That’s what happened! Got that?”
“They sacrificed themselves, that’s all. And the Reds … It has to be done. It’s hard, but it’s necessary. Now’s the time to join forces, Artyom. If only with the Reds. There’s a different enemy. A genuine enemy. It’s hard to forget the boys. I know. The old man can’t forget them himself. You saw. You saw how he drinks with them every day.”
“He doesn’t drink with them. He just boozes! He boozes, because he used to be a hero and he turned into a roly-poly toy. No fucking arms and no legs! And if he really thinks the war with the West isn’t over …”
“It isn’t over!” Letyaga roared. “How come you can’t see that?”
“Does he have any proof? This Bessolov? How did he prove to you that the war’s still going on? You’ve been brainwashed. How did he get such a tight grip on your balls?”
“You’re the one who’s been brainwashed! They’re always there! Creeping out of every crack! They want to wipe us off the face of the earth!”
“Bastard!” Artyom skipped up onto his sound leg. “You can’t prove a thing! You can’t prove a thing to anyone!”
“And what have you proved to me? If there aren’t any enemies—then what’s the point?”
“What’s the point?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t know!”
“Then get off my back!”
Artyom thought for a moment. He nodded. And started hobbling away.
“Where are you going?” Letyaga shouted after him.
“You’re right,” Artyom replied to himself, without looking back. “You’re right. There has to be a point. It’s just that we don’t understand it yet. And your old man doesn’t understand it. And Svinolup pretty certainly doesn’t understand it. A good job there’s someone to ask.”
“Wait! Artyom! Artyom!”
Letyaga caught up with Artyom at Lubyanka Square. And handed him his own gas mask.
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