Metro 2034

CHAPTER 7 Limits

The railcar drove over the wide bright yellow stripe that ran over the ground and the ceiling. The man that controlled it could no longer act like he didn’t hear the faster and faster clicking sound of the Geiger counter. He reached for the brake and mumbled excusing: “Colonel sir, without any protection we can’t proceed…”

“Just another hundredth meters” asked Denis Michailovitsch. “Because of the high exposure you’ll get a week off. For us it is just a two minute drive but the two in the suits would take half an hour for it.”

“This here is the limit,” grumbled the helmsman but he didn’t dare to slow down.

“Stop” ordered Hunter. “We continue on foot. The radiation really is too high.”

The brakes squealed, the search light attached on the vehicles frame started to shake back and forth as the railcar came to a stop. The brigadier and Homer who had let their feet hang over the edge of the railcar jumped onto the rails. In their heavy suits made out off lead soaked material they looked like cosmonauts.

These suits were unimaginably expensive and rare; in the entire metro there were maybe a few dozen of them. At the Sevastopolskaya they had almost never been used – they had saved them for more important missions. They withstood the highest level radiation but even small movement was an arduous matter. At least for Homer.

Denis Michailovitsch left the railcar behind him and walked with them for another few minutes.

He and Hunter exchanged a few sentences – intentionally fragmented that Homer wouldn’t be able to decipher them.

“Where are you going to get them?” asked the colonel, grumpily

“They’re going to give me some. They can’t do anything else.” answered the hollow voice of the brigadier.

“Nobody is waiting for you. For them you died. Dead, you understand?”

Hunter stood still for a moment and spoke silently, more to himself than to the officer: “If it would be that simple.”

“To desert from the order is worse than death.” growled Denis Michailovitsch.

The brigadier made a surly gesture with his hand, as if he was saluting the colonel but at the same time cutting an invisible rope that was attached to an anchor. Denis Michailovitsch understood the gesture and remained at the pier, while the other two distanced themselves from the shore, slowly but steadily continuing their journey over the ocean of darkness.

The colonel took his hand from his forehead and gave the helmsman of the railcar the signal to start the motor.

He felt empty: There was nobody that he could give an ultimatum anymore, nobody that he could fight anymore. As the commander of the military of his lonely island in the sea he could now only hope that the small expedition wouldn’t sink, but to one day return from the other side, as proof that the earth was still round.

The last guard post in the tunnel had been directly behind the Kachovskaya, which every human soul had abandoned. As long as Homer could remember the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya had never been attacked from the east.

The yellow line seemed to not only separate two parts of the metro but to connect two planets with each other which were hundreds of light-years away from each other. Beyond this line the living area of the earth had changed into a lunar, dead landscape, and both were strangely similar. While Homer concentrated himself to not trip over his heavy boots he heard how his breath squeezed itself through the complex system of tubes and filters, imagining that he was an astronaut that somebody had abandoned him on the far reaches of a far away planet. He allowed his childish fantasy because it was easier to deal with the suit that way, because on this moon there was more gravity. He shivered with the thought that for many kilometers they would be the only living beings.

Neither scientist, nor science fiction writer had been able to foresee this future, thought the old man. In the year 2034 mankind would have already conquered half of the galaxy, or at least the neighboring sun systems, they had promised Homer that when he was young. But the authors of science fiction novels and the scientist had always believed that humanity would act rationally. As if it wasn’t made off a few billions of slow, careless and enjoyment seeking individuals, but some kind of bee hive with collective reason and a focused will. As if they had ever had the intentions to conquer space.

Instead they had been become bored with the game and had abandoned their goal halfway and turned to electronics at first then to biotechnology without getting any halfway impressing results in those areas. Maybe in nuclear physics.

And now he was here, a flightless astronaut, surviving only because of this space suit, a stranger to his own planet. Ready to conquer the tunnel between the Kachovskaya Nad and the Kaschirskaya. He could forget about all others and the survivors, he could no longer see the stars anyway.

Strange: Here past the yellow line his body moaned under gravity but his heart was weightless.

Days before the march to the Tulskaya, when he had said goodbye to Yelena he had known that he had to return. But when Hunter had chosen him as his companion for the second time he knew that this time it was serious. So he had prayed for a challenge, an enlightenment and he had finally been heard.

To be too afraid would have been stupid and unworthy. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to do his life’s work as a side job. But fate didn’t let itself be stopped. A motto said that it will come, maybe later, one last time… there would probably be no last time, and when he didn’t decide now if he weould still live?

Should he spent the time that he still had as Nikolai Ivanovitsch, the fool of the station, an old, slobbering and stupid smiling story teller?

But to transform himself from a caricature of the real Homer to his inheritor, to transform himself from a lover of the old myths to their creator, to raise from the ashes as a new human he first had to burn his old image. He believed that when he continued to doubt to give in to his longing for home and wife, continuously looking back at the past he would overlook something very important that been laying in front of him in the end. He had to cut that all from him. From this new expedition he would if at all not return unharmed. Of course he was sorry for Yelena. At first she didn’t believe that Homer had returned alive and healthy after one day. She had tried to keep him from embarking on this voyage, in vain.

When they parted ways in tears again he didn’t promise anything anymore. He pressed her against him and watched the clock over her shoulder. It was time to go. He knew that. He couldn’t amputate ten years of his life so easily and he would probably get phantom pains from doing so.

He had believed that he would have wanted to look back all the time. But as soon as he crossed the yellow strip it was if he had actually died and his souls had freed himself from the both heavy and unmoving wraps and ascended. He was free.

The suit didn’t seem to slow Hunter down. The clothing had transformed his muscular, wolf like figure into a formless mountain but it hadn’t limited his movement. He walked alongside the panting Homer but only because he didn’t want to leave him out of his sight.

After all he had seen ant the Nagatinskaya, the Nagornaya and the Tulaskaya it hadn’t been easy for Homer to agree on another journey with Hunter. But there was something that had convinced him. The brigadier’s presence had started his long awaited metamorphoses that promised his reincarnation. The old man didn’t care why Hunter carried him around again, let it be as a guide or walking provision.

The main thing was to not let this moment pass, to use it as long as it lasted, to imagine something, to write down something.

And then when Hunter had called for Homer he had felt that also wanted something of him. It wasn’t because he showed him the way in the tunnels or protected him from all possible dangers. Maybe the brigadier took something from the old man without asking for it while he gave him what he wanted?

But what would he need?

Hunter’s lack of emotions could no longer deceive Homer. Behind the crust of the paralyzed face magma cooked, and it shot over the crater of his eternally open eyes from time to time. He was uneasy. He was looking for something as well.

Hunter seemed to be perfect for the role of Homers epic hero in his book. At first the old man had hesitated but after a few tries he had acknowledged him. Even if many characteristics of the brigadier, his passion for killing, his silence and sparse gestures had made Homer careful. Hunter was like those murderers that gave the police cryptic messages so they could be caught. Homer didn’t know if the brigadier saw a priest waiting for a confession, a biographer or some kind of donor of something in Homer, but he felt that this attachment mutual. And that it would soon become stronger than his fear.

Homer couldn’t shake the feeling that Hunter was delaying a really important conversation. From time to time the brigadier looked at him as if he wanted to ask something but he remained silent. But maybe the old man had confused a wish with reality again and he wasn’t an unnecessary witness that Hunter would choke to death somewhere in the tunnel once unneeded.

More frequently the brigadiers gaze fell on the old man’s backpack where the mysterious diary was. He seemed to feel that Homers thoughts circled around a certain object and he closed in it, approaching slowly but steady. Cramped Homer tried not to think about the diary, in vain.

He hadn’t had much time to pack and had only spent a few minutes with the diary. Of course it hadn’t been enough to wet all with blood glued together pages and separate them from each other but he had been able to read a part of the pages. They were all over the place, the writing was in fragments and events weren’t in order, as if the author was in peril as he jotted down the words. So that they would make sense, Homer had to bring them in the right order.

“No contact. The telephone is silent. Probably sabotage. Someone who had been exiled? Out of revenge?”

“Still in front of us”

“The situation is without a way out. No help can be expected from anywhere. To ask the

Sevastopolskaya would be the end for our men. We can only wait… But for how long?”

“We cannot get out… They went crazy. If not them then who? Flee!”

And then there was something else. Immediately after the last words that warned about storming the Tulskaya there was a signature, almost unreadable, stamped with the brown weal of a bloody finger.

Homer had heard the name before, he had even said it.

This diary belonged to the radio operator that had left with the caravan for the Tulskaya a week ago.

They passed the tunnel to another metro depot that hadn’t been emptied out. Without a doubt it would have if it hadn’t been hit by so much radiation. The black tunnel that leads there had been barricaded with welded together metal of all kinds. On a metal sign which hang down from a piece of wire that was attached to one of the bars, a dull smiling skull stared at them and under it were remains of a warning in red paint, that had now fallen off or been removed intentionally.

This barred of tunnel held Homer’s look magically and when he was finally able to take his gaze from it he was thinking that this line wasn’t as lifeless as many thought at the Sevastopolskaya.

Then they passed the Warschavskaya, a horribly rusted and fungus covered station that looked like a body that had laid too long in stagnant water. The tile covered walls sweated some kind of murky fluid and through the half-opened hermetic door a cold wind blew from the surface as if a giant creature tried to breathe air into this rotten station. The hysterical ticking sound of the Geiger counter exhorted them to leave this place as fast as possible.

They were already approaching the Kaschirskaya when the system stopped working and the indicator stopped at the end of the scale. Homer felt a bitter smell on his tongue.

“Where did it go down?’ asked Hunter.

The voice of the brigadier was hard to hear as if Homer had put his head into a full bathtub. He stopped, finally he had an excuse for a just short but welcome pause and pointed with his glove to the southeast.

“At the Kantemirovskaya. We think that the ceiling and the airshaft went down with it. Nobody knows for certain.”

“That means the Kantemirovskaya is abandoned?

“Always has been. Past the Kolomenskaya you won’t find a single human soul.”

“Somebody once told me…” started Hunter but then he went silent, making a gesture for Homer to be silent as well.

He seemed to feel some kind of invisible wave. Finally he asked:”Does anybody know what happened at the Kaschirskaya?”

“How?” Homer didn’t know if his sarcastic tone sounded though the filters.

“Then I am going to tell you. The radiation is so high here that we will be cooked in a matter of minutes. With the radiation suit or without. We are going back.”

“Back? To the Sevastopolskaya?”

“Yes, there I will go to the surface. Maybe I get there from the surface.” said Hunter sunken in thoughts.

It was as if he was already planning his route.

Homer couldn’t find the right words: “You want to go alone?”

“I can’t always look after you. I have to watch out that I won’t die too. We won’t get through together anyway. It isn’t even sure that I am going to make it alone.”

“Don’t you understand? I have to go with you, I want…”

Homer desperately searched for a reason, an excuse.

“…to do something useful before you die?” ended the brigadier the sentence. His tone was indifferent, even though Homer knew that the filter of the gasmasks filtered any fumes so that only tasteless sterile air came in and mechanical soulless voices as well.

The old man closed his eyes and tried desperately to remember what he knew about the short stub of the Kachochskaya line, about the irradiated Samoskvorezkaya line, about the way from the Sevastopolskaya to the Serpuchovskaya… Everything but not to turn back, to not return to this lacking life that had nothing to offer to him anymore but false hopes of great stories and legends.

“Follow me!” he croaked as he suddenly walked to the east with such speed that even he was surprised.

They walked east, to the Kaschirskaya, into the middle of hell.

She dreamt that she was working with a saw on the iron ring to which she was chained to the wall, the tool shrieked and slipped again and again but every time she had gotten one millimeter into the steel the thin scratch grew together again in front of her eyes.

But Sasha didn’t give up. Again she took the saw with her bloody hands and continued to work the unyielding metal.

The most important thing was to continue, to show no weakness, not to stop working and to not rest.

Her chained feet were swollen and numb. Sasha knew that even if she succeeded to beat the iron she wouldn’t be able to flee because she could no longer control her legs…

She awoke and opened her eyelids.

The chains hadn’t been a dream. Sasha’s hands were handcuffed. She was lying on the dirty loading area of the mining railcar that shrieked monotones while it tortured itself forward. In her mouth was a dirty piece of cloth and her forehead hurt and bled.

He didn’t kill me, she thought. Why?

From the loading area she could only see a part of the tunnels ceiling. In the randomly moving light the welds of the tunnel rings flickered out of the darkness. Suddenly the tunnel segments disappeared and cracked white paint was to see.

What kind of station was this?

This was a bad place: Not just silent but deathly silent, not just empty of people but empty of life and also dark. She had always thought that the station on the other side of the bridge would be full of people and noise. Should she have been mistaken?

The blanket over Sasha didn’t move anymore. The kidnapper climbed on the platform cursing, his boots with iron spikes and fitted soles made a strange sound. He seemed to scan his surroundings, and seemed to have already taken of his gasmask because Sasha heard him mumble: “There you are. It has been a while.” relieved he breathed out and beat after something – no kicked against something – lifeless, heavy: “A full sack?”

Sasha realized. She bit the stinking rag and started to moan, her body cramped. Now she knew where the fat man in the radiation suit had brought her and to whom his words were pointed at.

Even the thought to leave Hunter behind was absurd.

With a few predator-like jumps he had caught up to him, held on to his shoulder and shook him painfully.

“What’s going on with you?”

“A little further…” croaked the old man. “I remember.There is still a tunnel that leads directly to the Samoskvorezkaya line, even before the Kaschirskaya. If we pass there we get directly into the tunnel and don’t have to run through the station. We circle it and end up directly at the Kolomenskaya. It can’t be far. Please…”

Homer used Hunters hesitation to rip himself free, but one of his legs got caught up in the suit and didn’t move, he fell onto the rails. He stood up immediately after that and continued to set one foot in front of the other. Hunter grabbed the old man with ease as if he was a rat, turned him to his face so that the windows of their gasmasks where at the same height. A few seconds he locked his eyes at Homer, but then he eased his grip. “Okay,” he growled.

From now on Homer dragged the brigadier behind him without stopping for a second. The sound of his blood in his ears pumped over the clicking sound of the Geiger counter, his stiff legs were almost no longer under his control and his lungs seemed to explode, struggling to get air.

He had almost overlooked the deep dark stain of the hole. They squeezed through and ran for another few minutes until they left through another new tunnel. The brigadier looked around hastily, went back into the tunnel and asked the old man angry: “Where have you lead me? Have you even been here before?”

Around another thirty meters to left, into the direction that they had to go, the tunnel had been filled from the floor to the ceiling by something that vaguely reminded him of the web of a spider. Homer didn’t have enough air to breathe so the just shook his head. It was the whole truth, he had never been here. Everything else he had heard about this place he wouldn’t tell Hunter.

The brigadier held the assault rifle in his left hand, pulled a long straight knife out of his backpack; it was some kind of self-made machete and started to slice the sticky white mass. The dried shells of flying roaches that hung in the web started to shiver and made sounds like rusted bells. The edges of the wound started to grow back together immediately.

The brigadier raised the half transparent piece of spider web, put his search light through and lit the side tunnel.

They would need hours to cut their way through. The sticky web had grown in the tunnel in many layers.

Hunter looked at the Geiger counter, made a strange but disappointed noise and started to ripped through the web that was between the walls. The web only gave in reluctantly, it cost them more time then they had. In around ten minutes they had only gotten around thirty feet and the net became denser and denser, it seemed to block the entry like a big piece of cotton. When they finally passed a overgrown vent where an ugly two headed skeleton laid on the ground the brigadier threw his knife to the ground.

They hung in this web like the roaches and even if the creature that had made this giant web was already dead the radiation would do its job.

While Hunter was looking for an exit Homer suddenly remembered what he had heard about this place.

He dropped to his knees, shook a few bullets out of his reserve clip, turned them around, opened them with his knife and shook the gunpowder in to his hand.

Hunter realized immediately. A few moments later they stood at the entrance of the side tunnel again, covered a piece of cotton with the coarse grey powder and held a lighter to it.

The powder hissed and started to smoke and suddenly the unimaginable happened, the small flame began to shoot into all direction at the same time, reached the ceiling, wandered along the walls and filled the entire tunnel.

Greedily it ate the web and rushed into the deep. Like a roaring ball of fire it moved forwards, lit the dark tunnel segments and left burned pieces on the ceiling. On its way to the Kolomenskaya the fire narrowed and dragged all the air with it. Then the tunnel turned around and the flame that dragged a purple cape behind it was no longer to see.

In the distance Homer believed to hear an inhuman, desperate shrieking over of the deafening sound of the fire.

But the old man was still hypnotized by what he had seen so he didn’t entirely trust his senses.

Hunter but his knife back into his backpack and pulled out two new and sealed filter-boxes for their gasmasks. “They were meant for the way back” He changed his filter and gave the other box to Homer. Because of the fire the radiation is now as high as back then.”

The old man nodded his head. The flame had whirled up radioactive particles that had deposited in the web. In the black vacuum of these tunnels there had to be millions of death bringing molecules.

Uncountable small underwater mines hung in this empty room and blocked their way. They couldn’t move out of it, there was only one way out, directly through them.

“If your father could see you now” the fat man mocked her.

Sasha was sitting directly in front of her father’s corpse that was laying in his blood facedown.

The kidnapper had opened his overalls, he was wearing a bleached t-shirt with some kind of happily laughing animal.

Every time she raised her eyes her kidnapper blinded her with his flashlight so that she wouldn’t be able to see his face. He had pulled the cloth out of her mouth but Sahsa didn’t even think about pleading for something.

“You don’t look like your mother. Too bad, I was hoping…” The elephant legs in the high, stained rubber boots wandered for the second time around the pillars. Sasha was leaning on them with her back so she didn’t know what was going on. Now his voice came from behind. “Your father must have thought that in time they would forgive him. But there are crimes that don’t lapse… Like slandering and treason”. His obscure silhouette emerged out of the dark from the other side. He stopped in front of her father’s corpse, kicked at it with his boot and spit out thick slime. “Too bad that the old man already died without my help.”

The fat man moved the ray of light through the murky, faceless station where mountains of useless scrap laid around.

At the bicycle the light stopped. “You got a nice place here. I think if not for you, your father would have already hung himself.”

While he lit the station Sasha tried to crawl away but one second later the ray of light caught her.

“I can relate,” with one jump her kidnapper stood next to her. “she made a nice lady. But like I said, to bad that she doesn’t look like her mother. It probably bothered him too. Well whatever.” He kicked her side with his boot so that she fell over. “After all I have crossed the entire metro to get here.”

Sasha winced and shook her head. “You see Petya, how easy it was to predict what would going to happen?’ once again he had turned to her father.

“Back then you always brought your rivals in front of the tribunal. And much thanks for the lifelong exile instead of the execution! Well, life is really long and your situation changes. And not always in your favor. I am back even thought it took me ten years longer than planned.”

“You never accidently returned to the same place,” she whispered her father’s words.

“Too true.” answered the fat man sarcastic. “Hey, who’s there?”

At the other end of the platform you could hear a scraping sound, then something heavy fell to the floor.

Some kind of hissing sound emitted and another that sounded like steps of a big animal. The silence that followed was deceptive but Sasha and her kidnapper both felt that something approached them.

The fat man clicked the safety off his weapon loudly and went down on one knee next to her, he had pressed the stock against his shoulder and sent a flickering spot of light over the pillars that were standing around. That something had moved in the century-abandoned southern tunnels was scarier than all the marble statues in the central station suddenly coming to life.

In the wandering ray of light a blurred shadow appeared for a second, but its silhouette nor its speed was human. When the ray of light quickly returned to the same place, strangely there was no trace left of the strange creature. A few seconds the panicky searching light caught it again, now only twenty feet away from them.

“A bear?” whispered the fat man doubting what he had just seen. He pulled the trigger.

The bullets rushed to the pillars, hit the walls, but the animal had vanished into thin air at the same time, not one of the shots had reached its goal. Then the fat man switched to pointless auto fire, dropped the Kalashnikov and pressed his hands onto his stomach. The flashlight rolled to the side so the light fell on the heavy, cramped figure from the ground upwards.

Without any haste a human emerged out of the twilight, with astonishing, soft and almost inaudible steps even though he was wearing heavy boots. The radiation suit was even too big for his colossal stature, so that you could actually think that he was a bear.

He didn’t wear a gasmask. The cleanly shaven head that was full of scars that it reminded of a dried desert. One part of his face had a brave look, if not a bit rough, you could have said that it looked beautiful if it hadn’t been unmoving like he was dead. Sweat ran down Sasha’s back when she saw him.

The other half was just outrageously wounded, a complex network of scars made a mask of pure ugliness out of his face. Still, his appearance would have had something repulsive and not scary if it weren’t for his eyes. An always wandering, half mad stare was the only thing that kept the unmoving face alive. A life without a soul.

The fat man tried to get onto his feet but slipped on the ground and immediately screamed in pain. The colossal man crouched; slowly pointed the long barrel of the suppressed pistol against the back of the fat man’s head and pulled the trigger. The screaming stopped instantly, but the echo wandered around in the tomb of the station for a bit longer, like a lost creature that had been deprived of a body.

The shot had ripped his lower jaw from him, the kidnapper showed his face to her, which was now a slimy red funnel. Sasha lowered her head and started to cry.

The terrible man pointed the barrel of the gun at her, slowly and sunken in his thoughts. Then he turned around and decided differently. The pistol returned to his shoulder holster and he himself stepped back as if he wanted to distance himself from his doing. He opened a flat flask and put it to his lips.

Now another character stepped onto the small stage that was lit by the fading flashlight of the fat man: An old man. He was breathing heavily and pressed his hand against his rips. He wore the same suit as the killer but moved a lot more clumsily as him. As soon as he had caught up to his follower he fell to the ground. He didn’t even realize that everything was covered in blood. Only after he had rested and opened his eyes again he saw the two distorted corpses and the completely scared girl.

He had just calmed down his heart and now it started to beat faster again. Before Homer had found words for it he knew: He had found her. After all his inconclusive tries he had found the heroine for his novel which had started to take shape in front of his inner eye at night, her lips, hands, her clothing, her smell, her movement and thoughts of the person he had tried to create were now suddenly standing exactly in front of him. In flesh and blood. Directly out of his imagination.

But no, honestly he had imagines her differently, more elegant, with smother edges… And definitely older. She here had too many hard edges and her eyes weren’t filled with warmth but tow splinters of hard ice. But he knew that it had been him that had been mistaken, he hadn’t been able to foresee how she would be. Her chased look, the scared face, and the cuffed hands – it all fascinated him. Of course he knew how to tell many extraordinary stories but to write a tragedy of the likes of what had happened to this young woman was not in his power. Her helplessness, being exposed to the cruel world, her wonderful rescue and the way fate had woven her, his and Hunter’s story together, all that could only mean that he was on the right path.

He believed her before she had said a single word.

Because next to everything this girl possessed a kind of beauty in her confused, blond, sloppily cut hair, pointy ears, dirt covered cheeks, fragile, exposed, astonishing white shoulders, her childish lips, so that a spontaneous attachment joined his curiosity and pity.

Homer approached her and crouched. She lowered her head and closed her eyes. She probably didn’t have a lot of contact with other people he thought. Because he didn’t know what to say so he just softly held on to her shoulder.

“We need to go,” growled Hunter.

“And what’s with…” Homer pointed at the girl with an asking look.

“Nothing, she’s none of our business.”

“We can’t leave her here alone!”

“Then we give her a bullet.” answered the brigadier harsh.

“I don’t want to go with you,” said the girl surprisingly clearly. “Just get these handcuffs off of me. He probably has the keys.” She pointed at the faceless body on the ground.

With a few moves of his hand Hunter fished the iron keys out of the fat mans pocket and threw them to the girl: “Satisfied?”

The old man played for time. “What did that pig do to you?” he asked the little one.

“Nothing” she replied while she fumbled at the lock.

“He didn’t get far. He is no monster. Just a normal human being. Horrible, stupid and unforgiving. Like all people.”

“Not all,” answered the old man but it didn’t sound very convincing.

“All,” repeated the girl. She made a grimace but she accomplished to stand up with her swollen feet.

“Well it isn’t always easy to remain human.”

How fast she had laid down her fear! Now her eyes were no longer looking at the ground but she was looking at the two men as if she was up for a challenge. She fell to her knees next to one of the bodies, carefully turned it on his back, straightened his arms and kissed the forehead of the dead man. Then she turned to Hunter, closed her eyes and said “Thank you.”

She took nothing with her. She climbed down to the rails and walked, slightly limping, towards the tunnel.

The brigadier followed her with a dark look. His hand wandered undecided from his flask to his knife.

Finally he made a decision. He stood up and yelled: “Wait!”