Metro 2034

CHAPTER 9 Air

Fear and terror aren’t in the slightest way the same. Fear pushes, forces you to act, forces you to be intuitive. Terror paralyzes body and mind and robs humans of their humanity. Homer had seen enough in his life to know the difference between the two.

The brigadier didn’t know fear, but terror could apparently overthrow him. But that wasn’t what Homer was wondering right now but even more what had trigged the reaction.

The body was unordinary. Under the black rubber mask, dark shimmering skin, full lips and a broad, slightly compressed nose were exposed. Homer had never seen any people with dark skin in the ten years without music channels. But he realized immediately that the dead man was an African-American. A rarity in the metro for sure. But was so terrifying about him?

The brigadier had already calmed down; the strange seizure hadn’t lasted for a minute. He lit the flat face, groaned something incomprehensible, and started to undress the resisting body. Homer could have sworn that some finger bones broke.

“They want to mock me… With friendly greetings, what?… And this here is supposed to be humane?… such a punishment…” mumbled Hunter silently.

Had he mistaken the body for somebody else? Did he maim the dead man out of revenge for the humiliation that he had just suffered, or was there an older and more serious score to settle? While Homer suppressed his disgust as he helped to remove the clothes of the body, he looked covertly again and again to the brigadier.

The girl didn’t participate in the scavenging and Hunter left her in peace. She sat a distance on the rail, her face in her hands. Homer believed that she was crying.

Finally Hunter threw the body outside the door on a pile. In less than 24 hours there would be nothing left. By day the city was ruled by such terrible creatures that even the most dangerous tunnel monsters retreated into their caves without complaint.

The strange, but still fresh blood on the dark uniform was not to se but it stuck, like a cold plaster, to his chest as if it wanted to return to a living organism again. It disgusted them.

Homer asked himself if this masquerade was even necessary. He reassured himself that at least they would be able to prevent more victims at the Avtosavodskaya. When Hunter’s plan would work they would pass through freely, thinking they were one of them…. but what if it didn’t work? Did he even have the intention to leave unnecessary victims behind?

The bloodlust of the brigadier disgusted Homer but also fascinated him at the same time. Not even a third of his murders could be justified by self defense, but still there was even more sadism behind them than usual. More importantly a question tormented the old man: had Hunter volunteered to just go to the Tulskaya to satisfy his bloodlust in the end?

The unforunates that had laid a trap for them hadn’t found a cure for the mysterious fever but that didn’t mean that there was none. Here in the underground there existed places where more scientific thinking was present, where people researched, developed new medicaments and mixed serums together. Take for example, Polis, the heart of the metro, where all four arteries merged. The Polis was the last allusion of a city, which stretched over the labyrinth of stations from the Arabatskaya, Borovizkaya, Alexandrovski sad and Biblioteca Imeni Linian.

All the doctors and scientists had settled there or the giant bunker next to the Taganskaya, the secret city of science for Hanza.

The Tulskaya may not have been the only station where the epidemic had stricken. Probably they had fought it successfully? How could you abandon hope for rescue that easily? Of course now that Homer carried the time bomb inside him he only cared about his own egoistic interests. His mind had already made his peace with the death that was in front of him, but his instincts resisted and ordered him to find a way out. Maybe if he found a way to rescue the Tulskaya he could save his own station from oblivion and maybe even himself…

Hunter on the other hand seemed to apparently believe that there was a cure for the disease… The few words that he had exchanged with the guard at the Tulskaya had been enough to condemn them to death and make himself the judge of the sentence. First he had led the commander of the Sevastopolskaya on a false path then he had fastened the decision and now he readied the uncompromised implementation: the Tulskaya would go under in fire.

But maybe he knew something about the events at the station that turned everything on its head again? Something that nobody knew, whether Homer nor the man that had left his diary at the Nachimovski Prospect…

After he was finished with the bodies the brigadier ripped the flask from its holder and sucked the rest of the contents. What had been in it? Alcohol? Was this a potion or an ingredient, or did he try to dispel the sour aftertaste in his mouth? Did he enjoy the moment, or hope to kill something with the alcohol?

The old smoking railcar was something like a time machine for Sasha, like in those fables her father had told her.

It didn’t just transport her from the Kolomenskaya to the Avtosavodskaya, but transported her from the present into the past. Even though she didn’t know if she could call her life in this prison made of stone, these worm tunnels, the past and. And she didn’t know if she could call where she was now the “present”.

She remembered the whole journey there: Her father had been bound and was sitting next to her, a sack over his eyes and a gag in his mouth. She had just been a small girl and had cried all the way. One of the soldiers of the execution squad had made animals with his fingers; their shadows had danced over a small yellow stage which was on the ceiling. The shadows had tried to outrun the railcar.

When they had reached the other side they had told her father his sentence: the tribunal of the revolution had pardoned him. The death sentence had been replaced by lifelong exile. They had pushed them onto the rails, with a knife, an assault rifle with a spare clip and an old gasmask, and sat Sasha next to him. The soldier that had showed her the horse and the dog waved his hand as they left. Had he been one of those that Hunter had shot?

When she put on the black gasmask of one of the dead, her feelings became stronger that she was breathing the air of a dead man. Every small part of her journey somebody paid with his life. The bold one would have probably shot them no matter what, but now Sasha thought herself to be his accomplice by just being there.

Her father didn’t want to return back home not because he had been tired of fighting. He had once said that his humiliation and deprivation no longer weighed on another strangers life, so he preferred to suffer himself then to cause anybody else harm again. Sasha hadn’t known that the scale of life had been weighed down by all the things on his conscience, and he had tried to bring it back into balance.

The bold one could have acted sooner, could have scared the people on the railcar just by his presence so that they could have laid down their weapons without firing a shot. None of the dead had been an equal enemy.

Why did he do all this?

The station of her childhood approached sooner then she thought. Not even ten minutes passed until the lights started to flicker. The tunnel to the Avtosavodskaya wasn’t guarded; it seemed that the inhabitants relied on the hermetic gates. Around fifty meters before the train platform, the bold one slowed down the motor, commanded the old man to take over the steering wheel and stood next to the machine gun.

The railcar rolled almost silently and very slowly into the station. Or was it time itself that was bending for Sasha, because she recalled the days of her youth…

It was on that day that her father had ordered the adjutant to hide until everything was over. The man had lead them deep into the work offices in the belly of the station, but even there you could still hear the screams of hundredths of throats shouting at the same time and her companion had immediately rushed back to his commander. Sasha had followed him, out into the main hall of the station…

While they ran over the train platform Sasha saw the roomy family tents and the train wagon offices, children played catch, old men put their heads together, cranky women were cleaning guns…. And she saw her father behind a small troop of grim, maybe even scary looking men, how they tried to keep the never ending and angry group of people at bay. She ran to him and pressed herself against his back.

Surprised he shook her away, turned around and accidentally hit his surprised adjutant’s face. But something had happened. The formation that had already readied their rifles for the fire order was given an all-clear. There was only one shot, into the air, as her father explained that he was ready to hand over the station to the revolutionaries peacefully and negotiate.

Her father had always firmly believed that man always received signs.

You had to recognize them and interpret them correctly.

But time hadn’t just slowed down so that Sasha could relieve the last days of her childhood. She saw the armed man that had risen to stop the railcar. She saw how the bold one appeared behind the heavy machine gun with in a fluent motion and how he pointed the heavy barrel at the surprised guards.

The order to stop the railcar was like the crack of a whip . She knew in just a few seconds so many people would die that the feeling that she was breathing the air of a stranger would last to the end of her days.

She could still prevent a bloodbath, she could still rescue these people, she could prevent herself and another human being from doing something terrible…

The guardsmen were already clicking off the safety on their assault rifles, but they took too long, the bold one was a few seconds ahead of them…

She did the only thing that came to her mind.

She jumped up and hugged the iron hard back, crossed her hands in front his not moving chest that didn’t seem to breathe. The bold one winced as if somebody had hit him, but he hesitated. The soldiers on the other side that were ready to shoot froze as well.

The old man realized immediately.

The railcar spat out bitter black clouds and rushed on and the Avtosavodskaya remained behind them.

In the past.

During the drive to the Pavelezkaya nobody said a word. Hunter had had freed himself out of the surprising hug of the girl. He had bent her arms away from him like a ring of iron that had been too tight.

They rushed past a single guard post with full speed.

The salvos that the guards shot flew went right over their heads into the ceiling. The brigadier was just quick enough to pull out his pistol and fire three silent bullets as an answer. He apparently managed to kill one of the guards; the others ducked behind the flat tunnel segments and got away with their lives.

I don’t believe this, thought Homer as he looked at the girl that was cowering on the ground. He had hoped that the entry of the female protagonist would have created some kind of love story but the whole thing was developing way too fast. He didn’t even have time to realize what it meant, far less write it down.

Only when they had reached the Pavelezkaya did they decrease in speed.

The old man already knew the station: It seemed to be from a horror novel. While the tombs of the newer station in Moscow’s outer regions rested on normal pillars, the Pavelezkaya rested on an array of tall and round arches that were bigger than any humans. And just like in a horror novel there was a curse on the Pavelezkaya: at exactly eight o clock at night, before deals could be finished, the station was emptied. From all the busy and sly inhabitants only a few daredevils remained on the platform. All others disappeared with children, furniture, bags full of wares, not even benches and stretchers remained.

They crawled into their bunker, the tunnel to the Ring line which stretched for almost a kilometer, and shivered there for the entire night because where the Pavelezkaya station was; terrible creatures awoke on the surface. It was said that the entire region was under their unchallenged rule and even when those creatures slept, others didn’t dare to go near them. The inhabitants of the Pavelezkaya were at their mercy because the hermetic doors that protected other stations and the escalators were entirely missing, so that the entrance to the surface was always open.

In Homer’s opinion there was no worse place to camp overnight, but Hunter seemed to think differently: he brought the railcar to a stop at the end of the station, took off his gasmask and pointed at the train platform. “We’ll remain here until morning. Search for a place to sleep.”

Then he left. The girl looked after him then rolled together on the hard ground of the railcar. Even though Homer tried to make himself as comfortable as possible, it was in vain. Once again his thoughts drifted to the epidemic and how he would carry it through all the healthy stations. The girl was silent as well, but awake.

“Thanks,’” she said suddenly. “At first I thought you were just like him.”

“I don’t think there is anybody just like him,” said Homer.

“Are you friends?”

“Like a shark and its pilot fish.” He smiled sadly because he thought how fitting this picture was: of course it was Hunter that eliminated all these humans, but a few bloody shreds were Homer’s to clean up.

She stood up a bit. “What do you mean?”

“Where he goes I go. I think I can’t go alone anywhere without him and he… Well maybe he thinks that I clean him up like one of the pilot fish. But I don’t really know what he is thinking myself.”

The girl sat down closer next to the old man: “And what do you want from him?”

“I have a feeling that as long as I am near him… I keep my inspiration.”

“What does inspiration mean?”

“Actually it means to breathe in something.”

“What do you want to breathe in? What does it get you?”

Homer shrugged his shoulders. “It is nothing that we breathe in. It is what something breathes into us.”

The girl drew something into the dirty floor of the railcar. “As long as you breathe in death nobody is going to want to touch your lips. Everybody is going to back away from the smell of corpses.”

“When you see death you think about many things.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to cause death anytime you want to think about something,” she said.

“I’m not doing that” justified the old man. “I am just standing next to him. But for me it is not about death, not just about it. It is so that I will be shook awake, to get my head clear.”

“Have you had a bad life?” asked the girl.

“A boring one. When one day is like the other, they fly by so fast that the last seems to approach with great speed,” Homer tried to explain. “You fear that can’t take care of things anymore. And every day is filled with thousands of small things. After you are finished with one you shortly catch a breath and do the next thing. At the end you don’t have the strength or the time to do something really important. You think to yourself: Ok, I’ll just start tomorrow. But that tomorrow never comes and it is always today.”

“Have you seen many stations?” It seemed that she hadn’t really listened to him.

“I don’t know,” answered Homer surprised. “Probably all.”

“I only two,” sighed the girl. “At first my father and I lived at the Avtosavodskaya, and then they chased us away, to the Kolomenskaya. I have always wished to see at least one other. But this one here is so strange”. Her view wandered along the array of round arcs. “Like thousands of entrances without any walls in between them. Now they are all open, but I no longer want to go there. I am afraid.”

“The second one… was that your father?” Homer hesitated. “Is he dead?”

The girl retreated into her shell and was silent for a while before she answered: “Yes”.

Homer took a deep breath. “Stay with us. I am going to talk to Hunter that I need you, to…” He spread his arms but he didn’t know how he could explain to the girl that she would be his muse.

“Tell him that he needs me,” she jumped onto the rails and distanced herself from the railcar.

While doing so she looked at every single pillar she passed.

She wasn’t a bit flirtiest nor did she play with him. She wasn’t interested in guns and she felt indifferently about using her female arsenal, like gripping looks and lovely gestures. She didn’t know anything, that a blink in a man’s direction could rise up a storm, and that some people were ready to kill others over a fleeting glance. Or was she just not able to use them in the right way?

Whatever, she didn’t need this arsenal. With her hard, direct look she had forced Hunter to change his decision, with a single move she had thrown her net over him and stopped him from committing another murder.

Had she broken his armor? Had she found his soft core? Or did he need her for something? Probably the last one: the thought about the brigadier having a weakness was too much for Homer.

He just could not sleep. Even though he had changed the heavy and sticky gasmask with a lighter one he still had trouble breathing and it was like somebody had put his head into a vise.

Homer had left all his possessions at the tunnel. He had cleaned his hands with a piece of grey soap, washed away the dirt with the foul water out of his canister and decided to wear a gasmask at all times. What else could he do protect the people in his immediate area?

Nothing. Truly nothing anymore. Not even to go away, fight through the tunnels and become a rotten pile of shreds would have helped. But now that he was so close to death it immediately put him back more than twenty years, into his time, when he had just lost the people that he had loved. And this gave his plans new and true purpose.

If it would have been in Homers power he would have given them a memorial. But they hadn’t earned even a common tombstone. They had been born generations apart and had all died on the same day: His wife, his children and his parents.

And his classmates and friends at school. The actors and musicians that he had worshipped. All who still had been at work, already at home or stuck in traffic.

Those who didn’t die, those that remained for many days in the irradiated, half destroyed capitol, had tried to survive and weakly scraped at the closed security gates of the metro.

Those that had been instantly pulverized into their smallest atoms and those that had bloated and fallen into pieces, were eaten alive by radiation sickness.

The scouts that were the first to go to the surface had trouble finding sleep for many days. Homer had met some of them at the campfire near the transfer station. In their eyes there was still the inextinguishable impression that the city had left on them, their eyes were like frozen rivers that spilled over with dead fish. Thousands of not moving cars with their lifeless passengers that blocked the prospects and exits of Moscow. Bodies everywhere. Nobody there to get rid of them until finally new creatures took over the reign of the city.

To keep their sanity they avoided schools and kindergartens. But it was enough to lose your mind if you coincidentally saw the staring look through the dusty window from the backseat of a car.

Millions of lives had stopped. Millions of words left unspoken, milliions of dreams left unfulfilled and milliards of arguments unsolved. Nikolai’s youngest son had asked him for a big package of colored felt tip pens, his daughter had been afraid of figure skating training, and his wife had described to him that they should do a short vacation, just the two of them at the ocean, before going to bed…

When he had realized that their small wishes and passions had been their last, they appeared far more important to him.

He would have liked to engrave a memorial plate for every one of them, but an engraving on a giant mass grave of humanity was also a worthy cause. And now that his time was running out he thought that he now knew how to find the right words.

He didn’t know in which order he should put them together yet, with what he could fix them to a place, with what he would decorate them, but he felt: In the story that played in front of his eyes he would find a place for all the restless souls, all the feelings and all the small grains of knowledge that he had gathered so meticulously. In the end also for himself. The plot was best for this, better for this than for anything.

As soon as he would be up there again and it would be bright and the merchant s would venture to their station again he would try to find a clean notebook and a pen. He had to hurry: If he didn’t bring this mirage of his novel that was floating in the distance to paper soon it could disappear into thin air again and he didn’t know how long he would have to sit on the dune and stare at the horizon in the hope that out of tiny grains of sands and flickering air again an ivory tower would emerge.

He probably didn’t have enough time for even that.

An ironic smile on his lips, Homer thought: whatever the girl said, it was the look in her empty eyes that forced him to act. Then he had to think about the curved eyebrows, the two bright rays in her dark, dirty face, the chewed on lips, the shaggy blond hair and he smiled again.

Tomorrow at the market hew would have to search for something for her as well, he thought, as he drifted to sleep.

At the Pavelezkaya the night was always restless. The shadow of the odorous torches twitched over the marble walls, the tunnel breathed restlessly, only at the foot of the escalator a few silhouettes talked to each other almost inaudibly. The station acted like it was dead. Everyone hoped that the wild creatures on the surface didn’t lust after corpses.

But sometimes the curious animals discovered the deep entrance and smelled the fresh sweat, heard the regular beating of human hearts and felt the warm blood running through their veins.

And sometimes they even came down.

Homer had finally sunken into a half sleeplike state and the excited voice on the other side of the train platform only got through to his conscience with a struggle, distorted. But then the sound of the machine gun ripped him out of his slumber. The old man jumped up and searched the floor of the railcar for his weapon.

The ear numbing heavy machine gun salve was joined by shots out of assault rifles. The screams of the guards weren’t just nervous but scared. Whatever it was that they were shooting at with their calibers they seemed to not do any damage. From an organized defense against the moving target was not to speak, here people fired around wildly and only thought about saving their own skin.

Finally Homer had found his Kalashnikov but he didn’t dare to step onto the train platform. He resisted the temptation to start the motor and flee and it didn’t matter to him where. He remained on the railcar and put his head through the pillars to watch the place where the fighting was happening.

Suddenly the penetrating scream came from a close distance, where the guards yelled and cursed.

The heavy machine gun fire ebbed, somebody screamed terrible and then turned silent. Sudden like something had ripped his head off.

Again the assault rifles sounded off, but only scarce and only for a short time. Again screaming, it seemed further away… and suddenly the creature that had made the sound and which echo he had heard came from the close proximity of the railcar.

Homer counted to ten and started the motor with his shivering hands. In a moment his companions would return and or he would leave, he did this for them not for himself…

The railcar vibrated, started to smoke, the motor overheated and something jumped through the pillars unimaginably fast. Fast like lighting it disappeared out of his point of view, so that no picture of it could emerge in his head.

The old man held on to the rails, put his foot on the accelerator and took a deep breath. If they wouldn’t return in ten seconds he would leave them and…

Without realizing he had stepped onto the train platform and held the useless assault rifle in front of him. He just wanted to make sure that he couldn’t help his people.

He pressed himself against the pillar and threw a look at the middle floor…

He wanted to scream but his lungs were missing the air.

Sasha had always known that the world wasn’t just the two stations where she had lived up till now. But she had never known that the world was so beautiful. Even the boring, even dreary

Kolomenskaya had been a comfortable home and she had known every inch of it. The Avtosavodskaya, roomy and cold had arrogantly turned away from her father, exiled him and she couldn’t forget about it.

Her relationship to the Pavelezkaya on the other hand wasn’t unstressed and with every minute Sasha felt that she was falling in love with the station. The soft, wide reaching pillars, the big, inviting arches, the noble marble, the fine veins on the walls let it look like the soft skin of a human…

Had the Kolomenskaya dreary poor and the Avtosavodskaya been dark, this station was like a woman: In her unworried and playful nature the Pavelezkaya had even after centuries retained her former beauty.

The humans here couldn’t bee merciless or evil, thought Sasha. She and her father would have only had to get over two hostile station to get to this magical place… He would have just had to live one more day to escape from exile and get his freedom… She would have forced the bold one to take both of them with them…

In the distance a campfire flickered where moments before the guardsman had sat around. The ray of light of the search light climbed up to the high ceiling but Sasha didn’t get pulled to there. How many years had she believed that she had just to escape the Kolomenskaya and to meet other peoples to be happy! But now she only wanted one human to share her company, her awe that the earth was a whole third bigger and her hope that she could repair it. But who would need her, Sasha? No other human would need her, no matter what she and the old man had said.

And so the girl walked into the other direction, where there was a fallen train with smashed windows and an open door stood in the half of the right tunnel. She stepped into the wagon, from one to the next, inspected the first, the second and then the third. In the last one she discovered a miraculously unharmed couch and laid on it. She looked up and imagined that the train would start to drive to the next station at any second where bright and loud human voices were. But now she didn’t have enough strength to imagine that all these tons of steel scraps would move from its place.

With her bicycle it would have been a lot easier.

The game of hide and seek came to an end: the sound of a fight jumped from wagon to wagon until it reached Sasha.

Again?

She jumped up and ran onto the train platform, the only place where she could still do something.

The shredded corpses of the guards were lying next to the glass cabin with the static search light, over the smoldering fire in the middle of the hall. Other fighters had apparently given up earlier and had started running to find cover in the passage way, but death had caught up to them halfway.

Over one of the bodies a terrible and unnatural figure was covering down. Even though you could only see it badly from this distance, Homer recognized a smooth white skin, a powerful, twitching comb and the impatiently twitching legs with many strongly bent joints.

The battle was lost.

Where was Hunter? Homer leaned forwards again and froze…. maybe ten steps from him, leaning as far behind the pillar as Homer, as if it wanted to lure him or play with him. A terrible visage started down from its height of two meters. From its lower jaw it dripped red and the heavy jaw gnawed on a terrible chunk of flesh. Under the flat forehead there was nothing, but the fact that creature had no eyes didn’t seem to keep it from sensing other beings or from moving or attacking.

Homer turned around and pulled the trigger but the rifle remained silent. The chimera made a long ear numbing scream and jumped into the middle of the hall. Panicking Homer fumbled with the locking handle, even though he knew that there was no use in it…

But suddenly the creature lost all interest in him, and turned its attention to the train platform.

With a strong movement Homer followed the look of the blind creature and his heart skippeda beat.

There stood, scared and looking around, the girl.

“Run!” yelled Homer and his voice suffocated a painful croaking sound.

The white chimera jumped forward many meters and now stood directly in front of the young women. She pulled out a cooking knife, and made a threatening move to the side.

As an answerer the creature swooshed with its front paws at the girl and she fell to the ground.

The blade flew to the side.

Homer already stood next to the railcar but he didn’t think about fleeing. Rasping he waved his assault rifle and tried to get the white dancing silhouette into his sights.

Without success: The creature had reached the girl.

The guards that could have been a threat to this creature had been shredded after a few minutes and now there were only these two helpless beings left, backed into a corner.

It seemed to want to play with them for a while before it killed them.

It was hovering over Sasha so that the old man couldn’t see anything. Was it turning her insides out?

But then it winced and moved back, scratched at an expanding dark blotch on its back with its claws, turned around screaming, ready to eat its attacker.

Hunter stumbled to the creature.

In one hand an automatic assault rifle, the other hanging down limp. You could see that every move hurt.

The brigadier shot another salve at the creature, but it turned out to be surprisingly tough. The monster stumbled for a second, found its center of gravity again and stormed forwards.

Hunter’s bullets were spent but he was able to bury his machete into the enormous chest of the creature. The chimera fell on it, the blade submerged in his chest, and suffocated Hunter with his weight Like if it wanted to destroy all hope, a second creature jumped next to it. It stared over the twitching body of its own kind, put a claw on the white skin as if it wanted to wake it and turned its eyeless grimace to Homer…

He couldn’t pass that chance. The big caliber shredded the chest of the chimera, split its head and when the animal had finally fallen to the ground split the marble plates to shreds and dust. Homer needed time until his heart had calmed down and his finger had loosened from the trigger. Then he closed his eyes, ripped the mask from his head and breathed in the cold air that was filled with the smell of fresh blood.

All heroes had fallen and he had been left on the battlefield.

His book was over before it had begun.