Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (6 page)

He had made his decision. “Another tea and then I’ll go to the boys.” He said overly energetic and snapped his fingers.

Istomin rose from his Metro plan and smiled tired. He wanted to dial the number for the adjutant when the telephone ringed. Both were startled and looked at each other. They hadn’t heard that sound for a week. If the officer on duty wanted something he knocked on the door and there was no one else in the station that was able to call the foreman directly.

“Istomin here.” He answered carefully.

“Vladimir Ivanowitsch! The
Tulskay
a
is on the phone.” He heard the hastily voice of the adjutant. “But the connection is very bad … Probably our men … But the connection …”

“Connect me already!” Istomin screamed into the receiver and hammered his fist on the table with such force that the telephone ringed in pain.

The adjutant turned silent immediately. Istomin could hear a ringing sound, then static and then he heard a distant, almost unrecognizable voice.

Yelena had turned her face towards the wall, to hide her tears. What could she still do to hold him back? Why did he always reach for the first possibility to leave the station?

His miserably excuses. “Orders from above.” And. “Desertion.” She had heard them a hundred times. What wouldn’t she have given, wouldn’t have tried to get rid of his nonsense in these 15 years? But once again it drew him to the tunnels, as if he thought to find something other than darkness, emptiness and doom in it. What was he searching for?

Homer knew exactly what she was thinking, as if she had spoken it out loud. He felt miserably, but it was too late to retreat. He opened his mouth to say something excusing, something warm but he remained silent, with every single one of his words he would just have added oil to the flame.

Over Yelena’s head Moscow cried. A carefully framed color-picture of the
Tv
erskay
a U
liza
, shining through the
translucent midsummer rain, cut out of a shiny almanac was hanging on the wall. A long time ago, when he was able to move through the Metro freely all of his fortune was made up by his clothes and this one picture. Others carried crumpled, torn out pages from man oriented magazines in their pockets.

But for Homer that wasn’t a replacement. But this picture reminded him of something unspeakable beautiful … something that has been lost forever.

Helplessly he whispered: “Forgive me.” Stepped out into the hallway, closed the door carefully behind him and sat himself in front of his apartment. The door of the neighboring apartment was open and two sickly pale children played on the doorstep – a boy and a girl. When they saw Homer they stopped. The patched up teddy bear that the children had argued about just one second ago fell to the ground.

“Uncle Kolya, uncle Kolya! Tell us a story! You promised to tell us one when you returned!”

Homer couldn’t hold back a smile. He forgot the argument with Yelena immediately. “About what?”

“Headless mutants!” Screamed the boy excited.

“No! I don’t want mutants!” Said the girl shocked.

“They are so terrible, they scare me!”

Homer sighed: “What story do you want, Tanyuscha?”

But the boy answered before her: “Than about the fascists! Or the partisans!”

“I want the story about the
E
merald city
!” said Tanya and smiled.

“But I told it yesterday. Maybe about the war of Hanza against the Reds?”

“About the
E
merald city
, about the
E
merald city
!”

Both yelled.

“Ok.” Agreed Homer. “Somewhere, behind the end of the
Sokolnitscheskay
a
line, behind the seven abandoned stations, the three destroyed bridges and a thousand times a thousand doorways, there lies a mysterious, secret city. It is magical so humans can’t enter. Wizards live there and only they can leave through their portals and enter the city through them again. On top of it, on the surface there is a castle with towers where once the wizards lived. The name of the castle was …”

“Virsity!” Yelled the small boy and looked at his sister triumphal.

“University.” Homer nodded his head.”When the war began and the atomic bombs were dropped on the earth, the wizards retreated into the castle and laid a spell on the
entrance so that the bad humans, who had started the war wouldn’t be able to reach them. And then they lived …”

Homer cleared his throat and stopped.

Yelena was leaning at the doorway, she had listened.

He hadn’t seen her when she stepped onto the hallway.

“I’ll pack your things.” She said huskily. Homer walked over to her and took her hand. She clumsily laid his arms around him, it was embarrassing for her in front of the children and asked silently: “You’ll come back soon?

Nothing is going to happen to you, right?”

For the thousandth time in his long life he realized how much women longed for promises – it didn’t matter if he could fulfill them or not. “Everything is going to be alright”

“You are so old and you still kiss like you two just married.” Said the girl, made a grimace and the boy yelled after them cocky: “Daddy says that nothing about the story is true. That there is no emerald city”

“Maybe.” Homer shrugged his shoulders. “It is a fairy tale. What would we do without fairy tales?”

The connection was truly bad. A vaguely familiar voice fought against the terrible static: It seemed it was one of the recon team that they had sent to the
Serpuchov
skay
a
on the railcar.

“At the
Tulskay
a
… We can …
Tulskay
a
.
” He tried to give their position.

“Understood, you are at the
Tulskay
a
”, Istomin yelled into the receiver. “What happened? Why haven’t you returned?”

“
Tulskay
a
… Here … You can’t … Everything but …”

Again and again parts of his sentence were swallowed by the static.

“What can’t we do? Repeat, what can’t we do?”

“Don’t storm the station! Everything but storming the station!” It sounded out of the telephone clearly for once.

“Why?” Asked Istomin “What by the devil is going on?”

But the voice was no longer to be heard. The static became louder and louder, than the line went dead. Istomin didn’t want to believe it at first and kept the telephone in his hand.

“What is going on there?” He whispered.

Afterlife (Chapter 3)

That look that the guards on the northern post gave him, Homer would never forget it, as long as he lived. A look filled with admiration and melancholy, like for a fallen hero.

He could hear the salute shots of the honor regiment in the background. Like a farewell forever.

The living didn’t get those looks. Homer felt like he climbed the shaky ladder of a small cabin of a plane, unable to land, which the Japanese engineers had upgraded to a machine from hell. The emperor’s flag with the red stripes flattered in the salty wind, on the summery airfield mechanics ran around, motors roared and a thick general with wet eyes, filled with the envy of the samurai raised his hand in a military salute …

“Why are you so excited?” Asked Achmed the dreaming elderly grimly. He on the other hand wasn’t in a rush to find out what had happened at the
Sev
astopolskay
a
.

His wife was standing near the train track, his oldest son on one hand, a screaming bundle in the other, holding it carefully.

“It is like a sudden banzai attack: You stand up and run directly at the machine guns.” Homer tried to explain.

“Courage out of distress. In front of us lies a deadly fire …”

“No wonder why you call it a suicide-attack.” Growled Achmed and looked back to the tiny bright light at the end of the tunnel. “The right thing for somebody as crazy as you. A normal human doesn’t run straight into a machinegun. Those heroics don’t bring anyone very far”

The old one didn’t answer immediately. “Well, that’s the thing. When you feel that your time is over you are starting to think: What remains when I am gone? What have I accomplished?”

“Hm. I don’t know about you, but I have my children.

They won’t forget me.” After a short pause he added:

“At least not my oldest.”

Homer wanted to reply upset but Achmed’s last sentence took the wind out of his sails. Of course it was easier for him to risk his old and childless hide. That boy on the other hand had his entire life in front of him and didn’t need to think about achieving his immortality yet.

They had passed the last lamp; a glass can with a weak light bulb and a grid out of steel around it, full of burned flies and winged roaches. The chitin-mass moved almost unnoticeably: Some insects were still alive, trying to crawl
out of a pit – like wounded death candidates trying to crawl out of a mass grave.

For a second Homer got stuck at the trembling, reaching, weakly-yellowish light, looking like it swelled out of graveyard’s lamp. Then he took a deep breath and dove into the deep-black darkness that reached from the
Sev
astopolskaja
to the
Tulskay
a
– if the station still existed.

It seemed like the sad woman and her children had grown together with the granite plate. They weren’t the only ones: A little bit next to them a one-eyed man with shoulders like a wrestler looked after the group that was vanishing into the darkness. Behind him a thin old man in a military jacket was silently talking with the adjutant.

“No we can only wait.” Said Istomin, while he crushed the self-made cigarette.

“You can wait.” Answered the colonel edgy. “I’ll do what I have to do”

“It was Andrey. The leading officer of the railcar that we sent.” Vladimir Ivanovitsch could hear the voice out of the receiver once again – he couldn’t get it out of his head.

“And?” The colonel raised his brow. “Maybe he talked under torture. There are specialists that new certain methods.”

“Unlikely. You didn’t hear his voice. There is something different going on. Something unexplainable. A surprise attack won’t matter …”

“I can explain it to you.” Assured Denis Michailovitsch.

“At the
Tulskay
a
there are bandits. They overpowered the station, killed some of our guys and took the others hostage. They didn’t cut the power of course, they need power as well and they didn’t want to make Hanza nervous.

They probably just turned off the telephone. How else would you explain that the telephone works some times and then it doesn’t?”

“But his voice was so …” Mumbled Istomin as if he didn’t even listen to the colonel.

“Well how?” Exploded the colonel. The adjutant carefully took a few steps back. “When I drive a nail under
your fingernail then you’ll scream differently! And with pliers I could turn a bass into a soprano for life!” He knew what he had to do, he had made his choice. Now after he had defeated his doubts he was on a new high and his fingers twitched to his sword. Istomin can complain as much as he wants.

Istomin didn’t answer immediately. He wanted to give the colonel time to blow off steam. “We are going to wait.”

He said finally. It sounded assuring, but relentless.

Denis Michailovitsch crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Two days”

“Two days”. Istomin nodded his head.

The colonel turned around on the spot and returned to the barracks. He had no intend to lose valuable hours. The commanding officers of the strike teams already waited for about an hour at the long table. Only two chairs were empty:

His and Istomins. But this time they would have to start without their leaders.

The commander of the station hadn’t realized that the colonel had already left. “It’s strange how our roles have been swapped isn’t it?” Said Istomin sunken in thoughts.

When he got no answer he turned around and saw the helpless look of the adjutant. He made a hand gesture that he could go. He didn’t recognize the colonel anymore, he thought. Normally he always refused to give up even a single fighter. He felt something, that old wolf. But could he rely on his nose this time?