METRO 2033 (24 page)

He started to doubt himself and he paused - and at that moment someone’s hand came lightly down onto his shoulder and it softly pulled him.

‘Let’s go! Let him die alone, he only wants to drag you along into the grave!’ Artyom heard the person say. The meaning of the words made their way to him heavily, he slowly grasped them, and in a moment of resistance he let the man lead him off after the others.

The group set off and moved forward into the darkness of the southern tunnel. They were moving surprisingly slowly, as though affected by the friction of some kind of dense medium - like they were walking in water.

And then Khan, with unexpected lightness, sprang off the platform and onto the path, and in two swift bounds he was at their side. And in one fell swoop he brought down the man who was leading Artyom along, and gripped Artyom and jerked his body backwards. It all seemed to go in slow motion for Artyom. He watched Khan’s leap from over his shoulder with mute surprise, Khan’s flight seemed to have lasted several seconds. And with the same dull reasoning, he saw how the moustached man in the tarpaulin jacket who was softly gripping him his shoulder, fell hard to the ground.

But from the moment when Khan intercepted him, time started to speed up and the reactions of the others upon hearing the sound of impact, seemed to him to be lightning quick. They were making their first steps toward Khan with their guns fixed on him, and Khan retreated softly to the side, squeezing Artyom to himself with one arm, holding him up, shielding his own body. His other hand was stretched forward and in it he held Artyom’s dimly shining new machine gun.

‘Go on,’ Khan pronounced hoarsely. ‘I don’t see the point in killing you, you’ll die anyway in an hour’s time. Leave us. Go on,’ he was saying, moving towards the centre of the station, step by step while the frozen figures of the undecided people were starting to turn into vague silhouettes and merged with the darkness.

Some sort of fuss was heard, they were probably helping the moustached man who’d been knocked down by Khan, and the group started to move toward the entrance to the southern tunnel. They’d decided not to join Khan. Only then did Khan lower the gun and sharply ordered Artyom to get up onto the platform.

‘Any more of this and I’ll get sick of rescuing you, my young friend,’ he said with unconcealed irritation.

Artyom obediently climbed up and Khan followed him. Picking up his stuff, he walked into the black aperture, with Artyom trailing behind.

The hall in Turgenevskaya was quite short. On the left, there was a blind alley, a marble wall, and on the other side, there was a piece of corrugated iron over a break in the wall, and that was as far as you could see by the light of a flashlight. Marble, slightly yellowed with age, covered the whole station, which had only three arches. These led to the stairway which connected this station to Chistyie Prudi whose name had been changed to Kirovskaya by the Reds and which was now walled up with rough grey concrete blocks. The station was completely empty, there wasn’t an object on the floor, there were no traces of human activity, not a rat, not a cockroach. While Artyom looked around, he remembered his conversation with Bourbon, which confirmed that rats were afraid of nothing and if there were no rats in a place then there was something wrong there.

Grabbing him by the shoulder, Khan crossed the hall with a quick step, and Artyom could feel, even through his jacket, that Khan was trembling, as though he’d caught a chill. When they put down their bags at the edge of the platform, getting ready to jump onto the path, a weak light suddenly hit them from behind, and Artyom was again surprised by the speed with which his companion reacted to the danger. Within a short moment, Khan was on the ground, spread out and looking at the source of the light.

The light wasn’t very strong but it was shining straight into their eyes and it was hard to make out who was in pursuit of them. A moment’s delay and Artyom too dropped to the floor. He crawled to his rucksacks and got out the old weapon he was carrying. It was bulky and inconvenient but it made flawless holes of 7.62 calibre and whoever was on the receiving end of it would have a hard time functioning with holes like that in them.

‘What’s your business?’ Khan’s voice growled, and Artyom managed to figure out that if the person had wanted to kill them then they would have done so already.

He could see how it probably looked from the outside: helplessly crouched on the floor, in the light of a flashlight and in his crosshairs too. Yes, if he’d wanted to kill them, they would be lying in a pool of blood already.

‘Don’t shoot!’ a voice called out. ‘No need . . .’

‘Turn off your flashlight!’ Khan said, and he moved over to the column to get his own flashlight.

Artyom finally got hold of his weapon and, holding it fast, he rolled over to the side, out of the line of fire and hid in one of the arches. Now he was ready to emerge on the other side and cut off whoever it was, if the person chose to shoot.

But the stranger followed Khan’s orders as soon as they were given.

‘Good! Now put your weapon on the ground!’ Khan said in a less tense voice.

Metal clinked on the granite floor, and Artyom, aiming his weapon forward, crawled sideways and appeared in the hall. He had calculated correctly - fifteen paces in front of him, lit up by the reflections of the flashlight on the arches, with hands up, was that same bearded man who had initiated the skirmish at Sukharevskaya.

‘Don’t shoot,’ he said again with a trembling voice. ‘I wasn’t planning on attacking you. I decided to come with you. You did say that anyone who wanted could come. I . . . I trust you,’ he said to Khan. ‘I also feel that there’s something going on over there, in the right-hand tunnel. They’ve already left, they all went. But I stayed behind, I want to go with you.’

‘Good sense,’ Khan said, studiously examining the guy. ‘But my friend, you don’t inspire trust in me. Who knows why that is,’ he added mockingly. ‘Basically, we’ll examine your proposal. On condition that you hand over your entire arsenal to me. You’ll walk in front of us in the tunnel. If you want to play the fool then it won’t end well for you.’

The bearded guy pushed his pistol across the floor to Khan with his foot, and carefully put several spare cartridges next to it. Artyom picked them up from the floor and approached him, not lowering his gun.

‘I’ve got him!’ he shouted.

‘Keep your hands up!’ Khan thundered. ‘And jump onto the path, quickly. Stand there with your back to us!’

After about two minutes into the tunnel, as they walked in a tight triangle - the bearded guy called Ace, walked five paces ahead of Khan and Artyom - they heard a muted howl. It stopped almost as soon as it had started . . .

Ace looked back at them frightened, forgetting even to shine his flashlight to the side of them. The flashlight was shaking in his hands, and his face, lit from underneath, was forced into a grimace of horror, and that had a greater effect on Artyom than the howl had.

‘Yes,’ Khan nodded, silently answering the question. ‘They made a mistake. But I guess time will still tell whether we have too.’

They hurried on. Casting looks over to his protector from time to time, Artyom noted in him more and more signs of fatigue. His hands were lightly trembling, his stride was uneven, and sweat had gathered in huge droplets on his face. But they hadn’t been walking for long at all . . . This path was obviously considerably more tiring for him that it was for Artyom. Thinking about what was draining the strength from his companion, the young man couldn’t stop returning to the thought that Khan had seemed to be right in this situation, that he’d saved Artyom again. Had Artyom followed the caravan into the right-hand tunnel, then he would undoubtedly already be dead, he’d have disappeared without a trace.

But there were a lot of them - at least six of them. Had the iron rule not held? Khan had known - he’d known! Whether it really was premonition or if indeed it was thanks to the magic of the Guide . . . It was almost funny that a bit of paper with ink on it could do that. Could that piece of rubbish really help them? Well, the passage between Turgenevskaya and Kitai Gorod had been orange, definitely orange. Or had it really been black?

‘What’s this?’ Ace asked, suddenly stopping and uneasily looking at Khan.

‘Do you feel that? From behind . . .’

Artyom stared in puzzlement at him and wanted to let out a sarcastic comment about jangled nerves because he didn’t feel anything in the slightest. The claws of the heavy sensation of depression and danger had even seemed to unclench since they’d left Turgenevskaya. But Khan, to his surprise, froze in place, gestured to him to keep quiet, and turned to face the direction from which they’d just come.

‘What a keen sense!’ he said after a half minute. ‘We’re in admiration. The queen of admiration,’ he added for some reason. ‘We must definitely discuss this in more detail if we get out of here. You don’t hear anything?’ he inquired of Artyom.

‘No, everything seems quiet,’ Artyom listened and responded. At that moment he was filled with something . . . jealousy? Offence? Vexation, that his protector had said such things about the rough bearded scumbag who had only two hours ago threatened their lives? Please . . .

‘That’s strange. I think you have the rudiments of the skill to hear tunnels . . . Maybe it hasn’t developed itself totally in you yet. Later, later. That will all come later.’ Khan shook his head. ‘You’re right,’ he addressed Ace, confirming the man’s suspicions. ‘Something’s coming this way. We have to move and fast.’ He listened again and sniffed the air in a very wolf-like manner. ‘It’s coming from behind like a wave. We have to run! If it covers us, then the game is over,’ he concluded, tearing off.

Artyom had to rush after him and break into a run so he wasn’t left behind. The bearded guy was now keeping pace with them quickly, moving his short legs and breathing heavily.

They went along like that for ten minutes, and all that time Artyom couldn’t understand why they were rushing so much, getting so out of breath, stumbling on the cross-ties if the tunnel behind them was empty and quiet, and there was no evidence that they were being chased. Ten minutes passed before they felt IT. It was definitely rushing after them, hard at their heels, chasing them step after step - something black. It wasn’t a wave, but more like a whirlwind, a black whirlwind, cutting through the emptiness . . . And if it overtook them, then the same fate awaited them as had met the other six and all the other daredevils and fools who entered the tunnel alone or at a fatal time, when fiendish hurricanes raged, sweeping up any living thing. Such suppositions and a vague understanding of what was going on, were rushing through Artyom’s mind, and he looked at Khan with anxiety. Khan returned his look and everything was clear.

‘What, have you got it now?’ He exhaled. ‘It’s a bad business! That means, it’s already very close.’

‘We have to go faster!’ Artyom wheezed as he ran. ‘Before it’s too late!’

Khan picked up his pace and now he was trotting along with wide paces, saying nothing, not answering Artyom’s questions anymore. Even the traces of exhaustion that Artyom had seen in the man seemed to have disappeared and something beast-like had emerged in him again. Artyom had to run to keep up but, when it seemed that they had broken away from the thing that was pursuing them inexorably, Ace tripped on a cross-tie and fell head over heels onto the ground. His face and hands were covered in blood.

Out of inertia, they ran another dozen paces before they took in that Ace had fallen and Artyom thought quickly that he didn’t really feel like stopping and going back for the guy - he wanted to leave him to the dogs, the short-arse bootlicker with his amazing intuition. He wanted to keep going before the thing got to them.

It was a disgusting thought but Artyom was seized by such a compulsion to flee and leave the fallen man that his conscience had gone silent. Therefore he felt a certain disappointment when Khan rushed back and, with a powerful jerk, lifted the bearded man to his feet. Artyom had secretly hoped that Khan with his more than disdainful attitude towards others’ lives, and indeed their deaths, wouldn’t hesitate to forget the guy and leave him in the tunnel like the burden he was, and rush on.

Having ordered Artyom to take one of the injured Ace’s arms, he took the other and pulled them along. This made running considerably more difficult. Ace was moaning and grinding his teeth from pain with each step, but Artyom didn’t feel anything for him, apart from growing irritation. The long, heavy machine gun was painfully knocking against his legs, and he didn’t have a free hand to hold onto it.

But death was very near. If they stopped and waited for half a minute, the ominous vortex would overtake then, whip and tear them into the smallest particles. In the course of a second they would no longer be of this universe and death cries would burst from them with unnatural speed . . . These thoughts didn’t paralyse Artyom but, mixed with malice and irritation, they gave him strength and he gained more and more with each step.

And suddenly it disappeared, vanished entirely. The feeling of danger was released so suddenly that one’s consciousness was left unusually empty, like the gap after a pulled tooth, and it was as though Artyom was now feeling around with the tip of his tongue for the pit. There was nothing behind them. Just tunnel - clean, dry, clear and completely safe. All that running from fear and paranoid fantasies, the unnecessary belief in some sort of special feelings and intuition, seemed so funny to Artyom now, so silly and absurd, that he burst out laughing. Ace, who had stopped next to him, looked at him with surprise at first and then also started to laugh. Khan looked at them, annoyed and finally spat at them:

‘Well, what’s so funny? It’s nice here right? So quiet, so clean, right?’ And he walked on alone. Then Artyom realized that they were altogether only about fifty paces from the station, and that light was clearly visible at the end of the tunnel.