Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (19 page)

“We don’t know how it is transmitted. Through the air? Through contact?
”
The entry was now already from the next day. The return of the group had been delayed.

Why hadn’t they reported what they had found?

Thought Homer. Instantly he remembered that he had already read the answer. He turned back some pages …
“No connection. The telephone is dead. Maybe sabotage. One of
the exiled, out of revenge? They had realized it before we had arrived. At first they had c
hased the sick into the tunnel.

Maybe
one of the
m has cut the
cable
?”

At that point Homer ripped himself away from the letters and stared into the darkness without seeing anything.

If they cable had been cut, why hadn’t they returned to the
Sevastopolskaya
?

“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
i
s 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 … T
hey
resist
, want out
.
”
Then the most horrible sentence:
“T
hey 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 n
othing put to endure it here … H
ow
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 week
s
ago and some are still not sick … But they are
becoming more and more. We are li
ving 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 Sevastopolskay
a
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 s
ome
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:”
N
ot 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 o
ut.

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 en
d is near. Strange, I am tired.

No more bullets. I
want to sleep, before those … S
tand
ing
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 couldn’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 …