Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (27 page)

She slipped into it, walked out the room into the corridor with heavy steps and through the door onto the train platform. Somewhere she heard the faint echo of the magical
music; she hadn’t had time to find its origin. Only for a moment she stopped … But then she resisted the temptation and approached her goal.

When it was day there was only one guard at the escalator. As long as it was bright outside the creatures left the inhabitants of the station alone.

Sasha didn’t even need five minutes to explain her situation: The way to the surface was always open. It was impossible though to take the escalator back down. She gave half of her magazine to the willing guard and put her foot onto the first step that would lead her to the sky.

Then she raised her leg and began to climb up.

Chapter 12 (Signs)

At home at the
Kolomenskaya
, it hadn’t been far to the surface: Exactly 56 flat steps. The
Pavelezkaya
was a lot deeper in the earth though. While Sasha stepped up the escalator that had been holed by machine guns, she couldn’t see the end of her climb. Her lamp was just powerful enough to rip out the broken glass of the lamps and the rusted, oblique hanging signs with their darkened faces out of the darkness.

Why did she want to go up here? Why die?

But who needed her down there? Who needed her really, as a human and not as an acting person in a book?

Why should she try to keep deceiving herself …?

When Sasha had left the body of her father in the lonely
Kolomenskaya
, she had believed to for fill the escape they had made. Through carrying a small part of him in herself, she thought it would help him to be free.

But since that he had never appeared in her dreams and when she had tried to summon his picture in her fantasies and share with him what she had lived through, he had only appeared obscure and silent.

Her father couldn’t forgive her that she saved him in that way.

Under the books he had brought from time to time, she had always read them if possible before they exchanged them for food and ammunition, an old botanic book was her favorite. The illustration weren’t very colorful, only bleached black and white pictures and pencil drawings, but in the other books that she had gotten her fingers on there weren’t any pictures in them at all. Of all plants she liked the climbing plants the most:

She felt like they were part of her soul. Like those flowers she needed something on that she could lean on. To grow up on. To the light.

No before all she had needed a powerful log, to lean on it and to hug it. Not to rob it from light and warmth, no.

Without it she was just too soft, she had not enough spine to stand up straight. Standing on her own she would have to crawl on the ground.

Her father had said that she shouldn’t rely on anybody else. Except for him there had been nobody in this god forsaken station and he had known that he wouldn’t live forever. He would have rather seen her grow up like a tree and not like ivy. But he had forgotten that wasn’t in her
female nature. Sasha had survived without him. Without Hunter. But to be united with another human being had been the only reason for her to think about the future. When she had hugged the brigadier on the rushing railcar her life had gained new hold. She reminded herself that it was dangerous to rely on others and unworthy to be depended on somebody.

The harder it was to overcome and explain it to hunter.

Sasha just had wanted to lean, but he had thought that she wanted to hold on to his boot. Now that there was nobody to lean on and also having been kicked in the dirt, it seemed under her honor to keep searching. He had chased her away, said she should go to the surface, well good, then it should be like that. When something happened to her up there it was his fault, it was only in his power to change that.

Finally her steps were at the end. Sasha stood at the edge of a giant marble room, the holed metal ceiling was being kept standing by a few pillars. Through the holes in the distance you could see bright rays of light. They were of surprising grey white color and some of the even shined to the part were Sasha stood. She switched of her lamp, held her breath and continued silently.

Traces of shots and splinters on the walls at the exit of the escalator pointed to humans having been there. But just a
few more steps later other creatures ruled. Out of the dried hills of crap that were everywhere bones and pieces of skin stuck out, Sasha knew that she was inside a cave that was inhabited by wild animals. She covered her eyes from the burning light and approached the exit. The closer she got to the origin of the light the deeper became the darkness in the farthest edges of this giant hall she stepped through. She gradually got used to the light, but also lost her feeling for the darkness.

Fallen down kiosks, hills of unimaginable trash and old, stripped technical machines filled the neighboring halls.

It seemed that the humans who had used this room at the
Pavelezkaya
had stored things which you could still use here, until one day stronger creatures had chased them away from here.

From time to time Sasha thought she could see an almost unnoticeable movement in the dark corners, but she thought it was of her stronger getting blindness. The darkness that was here was already too thick so she didn’t see the silhouettes of the sleeping monster next to the hills of trash.

The air moved gradually over her head, sounded over the heavy breathing and Sasha realized that just a few meters next there she had passed a slightly moving hill. She stood
still, listened and starred at the contours of the fallen down kiosks. There between the rubble she saw a strange hump and froze.

The hill that had dug itself into the little house was breathing. Even almost all of the other hills moved in the same rhythm. To be sure Sasha switched on her lamp and put it onto one of the hills. The weak ray of light exposed the wrinkled white skin that ran over a gigantic chest. It was one of the chimaeras that had almost killed her, just a lot bigger.

The creatures were in some kind of stasis and didn’t seem to notice her. Suddenly the animal’s groaned, breathed out through the oblique slits of its snout and started to move … Hastily Sasha put the lamp away and rushed on. The few steps through the scary camp cost her lot of strength: The further she got from the entrance to the metro the denser the chimaeras lay next to each other and the harder it got to find a way past their bodies.

But it was too late to turn around now. Right now Sasha didn’t care about how she would get back to the metro, it only counted for her to get past these creature without any of them noticing. To remain unseen, to feel … If they just didn’t wake up, if they would let her go …. She didn’t need a way back.

She almost didn’t dare to breathe and didn’t even try to think and slowly enclosed on the exit. A split tile on the ground made a deceiving sound under her boot. Another wrong step or another coincidental noise and they would awake and rip her to pieces immediately.

Sasha couldn’t shake the thought that just short time ago, maybe yesterday or even today she had wandered between sleeping monsters too, so at least the feeling she had right now was somewhat familiar to her. Suddenly she stopped.

Sasha kne Sometimes you can feel strangers look on your neck. And even though these creatures had no eyes with them they were searching the room, she clearly felt an intrusive starring on her.

She didn’t have to turn around to realize that one of the animals behind her had awoken and had put its heavy head into her direction.

But she did and turned around.

The girl was gone and homer didn’t care to search for her right now.

To be honest he didn’t care about anything anymore.

The diary of the radio operator had left one small spark that the disease would spare the old man and Hunter had extinguished that spark with his merciless boot. Homer had started a well prepared conversation, a kind of death sentence. But he hadn’t wanted to pardon him and he wouldn’t have been able to. Homer was the only one responsible for his inevitable fate.

Just a few more weeks, maybe even less. Only ten pages left in his small book with the plastic cover.

He still had so much to say. For homer it wasn’t just a wish but his duty, even thought the unwilling rest was coming to an end very soon.

He straightened the paper so he could continue from his last point, when the doctor cut him off. But again his hand wrote: “What remains of me?”

And what of the unlucky prisoners at of the
Tulskaya
? Maybe they had already lost hope, maybe they were still waiting for help and in that case they had a cruel end in front of them. Their memories? There weren’t enough people that he still remembered.

Memories weren’t really strong mausoleum. If Homer wouldn’t die in the far future all those who he once knew
would die with him. Even his own, his personal Moscow would dissolve into nothing.

Where was he? At the
Pavelezkaya
? The garden ring was now empty and without any live, for the last few hours they had been relocating heavy military gear so that the paramedics and police escorts could pass freely. Out of the side streets stood destroyed city villas and stared like decayed, half fallen out teeth …. Homer could imagine the landscape above him even though he had never himself.

Before the war he had been up there. Had had an appointment with his fiancé in a café, a rendezvous next to the metro and then later had gone into the matinee showing of a movie at the cinema. He also remembered how he had gone under a pricy and clumsy medical examination for his driver’s license test. Also that he had used to leave from this station with his colleagues to go have a barbecue in the forest …

On the squared paper of his notebook suddenly the railway station in the autumn fog and the two in dust sinking towers appeared, a new office building at the ring where one of his friends had worked and the winding top of a new hotel with another just as expensive concert hall next to it. He had once asked for the price of a ticket and it had cost more than what he had made in two weeks.

He saw and heard the clinging, edgy white blue streetcars, filled with unsatisfied passengers, the anger of this harmless crowd made him smile, the garden ring, magnificently lit from thousands of search lights and blinking like one giant garland, timid snowflakes that didn’t fit to the scenery, melting when they touched the dark asphalt and the crowds, myriads of particles, loaded, bumping into each other, at the same time chaotic and racing but everyone moving in a well thought-out lane.

He saw the lane between the Stalin monoliths, where slowly the big river of the garden ring flew onto the plaza.

Hundredths of windows shined like small aquariums to both sides of the broad street. The neon fire of the signs and gigantic billboards which were soon many floors tall buildings would stand … But nobody would ever be able to finish them

He saw everything and realized that he couldn’t describe this beautiful picture anyways. So at the end there was nothing left but the graves of the business center and the luxurious hotel?

She didn’t come back, whether after one nor after three hours. Worried Homer searched the entire station asking the merchants and musicians and even asking the guards on the entrance to Hanza. Nothing. It was like the ground had swallowed her whole. The old man didn’t know what to do.

Again he leaned himself against the door of the room where the brigadier was laying. He was the last person with who he wanted to talk about the disappearance of the girl, but what else could he do?

Hunter was laying there breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling. His right arm rested on the blanket, his fist showed fresh wounds. From small scratches blood dropped onto the blanket but the brigadier didn’t seem to notice it.

“When are you ready to go?” He asked Homer without turning around.

“If it was only about me, immediately.” The old man hesitated. “It’s just … I can’t’ find the girl. And how do you want to walk in your condition? You’re still totally …”

“I’m going to survive it.” Answered the brigadier

“Also death isn’t the worst thing. Pack your things.

In not even one and a half hour I’m back on my feet. We are going to the
Dobryninskaya
”

“One hour is enough for me.” Said Homer hastily.

“But before that I have to find her. I want her to come with us … I really need her, you know …”

“I’ll leave in one hour.” Said hunter. “With you or without you. And also without her”

“I just don’t understand, where could she have gone?” Homer sighed disappointed. “If I just knew …”