Metro 2034

CHAPTER 3 Afterlife

That look that the guard 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, that the Japanese engineers had outfitted wit bombs. 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 grimly. He on the other hand wasn’t in a rush to find out what happened at the Sevastopolskaya.

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 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 grit out of steel, 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 Sevastopolskaja to the Tulskaya – 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 edgily, “I will do what I have to do.”

“It was Andrej. 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 Tulskaya 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, because 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 will scream differently! And with pliers I could turn a bass into a soprano for life!” He knew what he had to, 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 finally said. 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 intention 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 Istomin’s. 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?

Istomin’s instincts said something completely different: Remain calm. Wait. The heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya would find some kind of mysterious and invincible enemy at the Tulskaya.

Vladimir Ivanovitsch searched his pockets, found his lighter and lit it. Smoke rings rose over him and he was looking directly into the mouth of the tunnel. Hypnotized – like a rabbit looking into the tempting mouth of a snake.

When he finished his smoke, he shook his head again and strolled back to his office. The adjutant broke free from the shadow of one of the pillars and followed him, but he kept his distance.

A damp rattling sound – a beam of light illuminated the first 50 meters of the ribbed tunnel; Hunters lamp was big and high-powered like a search light. Homer exhaled silently.

In the last few minutes he thought that the brigadier would never turn on the light.

Since they had dived into the darkness the brigadier had nothing in common with a normal human being anymore. His movement was fluently and fast like an animal. It seemed that he had only turned on the light for his followers, the Hunter trusted only his senses. He had put down his helmet and was listening to the sounds of the tunnel. Again and again. From time to time he inhaled the rusted air as if he could smell something, which only made his suspicions stronger.

Hunter stepped through the tunnel without making any sounds and he didn’t look back. It seemed that he had forgotten their existence. Achmed who only accusingly had guard duty at the southern guard post and because of that didn’t know the habits of the brigadier poked the old man in his side: What was going on with him? Homer spread his arms. How was he supposed to explain it to him in two words?

Why did he even need them? Hunter seemed to feel considerably securer in these tunnels than Homer. At the same time he would have thought himself to be the guide of the group. If he would have asked the old man he could have told him much about this region. Legends, but also true stories that were mostly more terrible and bizarre than the unlikely stories that the guards told themselves at the lonely guard fire when they were bored.

Homer had a different metro plan in his head – Istomin’s map was nothing compared to it. He could have filled all the white parts with his own markings and notes.

Vertical shafts, open ones, even some operational service rooms and connecting lines like spider webs.

As an example of his plan there was a junction between the Sevastopolskaya and the Juschnaya, so one station to the south, it ended like a gigantic hose at the gigantic train depot, the Warschavskoye that had gathered dozens of sidings like small veins.

Homer, who had a holy awe for trains, saw this depot as a dark but also mysterious place, like some kind of elephant graveyard, he could talk about it for hours, provided that there were listeners.

Homer thought that the section between the Sevastopolskaya and the Nachimovski prospect was especially difficult. Preclusions and a healthy human mind demanded that they stayed together, moved forwards slowly, carefully, kept watching the walls and the floor at all times.

You couldn’t even keep the tunnel, where all vents and cracks had been bricked up and sealed by the construction teams of the Sevastopolskaya, behind you, out of your sight.

The darkness had only been ripped open by their light for a short time and had already grown together in to a large fog. The echo of their footsteps was thrown back from the rips of the tunnel segments and somewhere in the distance a lonely wind howled through the vents. Big, heavy drops gathered in the cracks on the ceiling and fell down. Maybe they were only made out of water, but Homer preferred to move out of their way. Just to make sure.

In old times when the bloated monster city lived its life and the metro was nothing but a soulless traffic system for the restless people of the city, a young Homer that everybody just called Kolya, walked with his flashlight and iron toolbox through the tunnels.

The way there was prohibited for mortals. The only things that were meant for them were around 150 polished marble pillars and tight wagons that were covered with colorful advertising. Even though they spent between two or three hours in the rocking trains of the metro, millions of people weren’t aware that they only saw a tenth of this unimaginable big underground kingdom face to face. And so that they wouldn’t start to think about its real extent or about where the inconspicuous doors and iron blockades, the dark side tunnels and the over passing that had been closed for months because of reparations lead, they turned their attention away with conspicuous posters, lead them with provocative but dumb slogans into nowhere and even chased them on the escalators with wooden advertising announcements from the loudspeaker.

It seemed like this to Kolya after he began to deal with secrets of this state within a state.

The colorful plan of the metro should convince curious minds that they dealt with a civilian object here. But in reality these lines in those happy colors were crossed by invisible lines of military tunnels that lead into government bunkers and military depots. Even some lanes were connected by a labyrinth of catacombs, out of the hidden times of the city.

When Kolya was very young and his country was too poor to compete with the ambitions of others, the bunkers and air raid shelters that had been build for judgment day collected dust. But with money people returned with bad intentions. Rusted, weighting tons, doors opened creaking, food and medicament supplies were renewed and air and water filters were brought back on the newest level.

Just in time.

The job in the metro was like a welcome into the society of the freemasons. He felt like that because he came from a small town. Once an unemployed loner, now a member of one of the most powerful organizations that rewarded his humble service generously and brought him insight into the deepest secrets of the world order. He also liked the pay of his job; they didn’t request much from future service men.

It took him some time to realize through his colleges hesitant explanations why the metro organization had to lure their employees with high wages and extra money for dangerous work. No it wasn’t even for tight work shifts and the voluntary sacrifice of daylight. It was about totally different dangers.

Homer, a skeptical man, never paid much attention to the never dying rumors or even darker tells of the devils work in the tunnel. But one day one of his colleges didn’t return from his site inspection of the service tunnels. Like the man all documents vanished that he had ever worked in the metro.

Only Kolya, still young and naïve didn’t want to settle with the disappearance of his friends. Until one of the older employees took him to the side and whispered, looking around hastily, that they had “taken” his friend. Kolya realized just too well that something sinister was going on in the Moscow underground and that long before Armageddon broke over the huge city and destroyed all life with its flaming breath.

The loss of his friend and the initiation into this forbidden knowledge should have scared Kolya.

He should have left his work and found a different one. But his arranged marriage with the metro had progressed into a passionate affair. When he was feed up with endless wandering through tunnels he let himself be trained as a substitute train driver and secured himself a firm place in the complex metro hierarchy.

The closer he got to know this ignored world wonder, the more nostalgic he turned as he looked at the antic labyrinth, this master less, cyclonic city, a upside down reflection of the surface of Moscow, and fell in love with it. This from human hand created tartarus was worthy of a real Homer, at least the feather of a swift bird and it would have impressed him more than the island Laputa… But it was only Kolya that honored the metro in secret and sang clumsy of its greatness. Nikolai Ivanovitsch Nikolayev.

Ridiculous.

It was possible to love the mistress of the cooper mountain, but the cooper mountain in particular?{Russian fable.}

But this relationship was based on love on both sides and envy. It would rob Kolya of his family and save his life.

Hunter suddenly stopped and Homer wasn’t able to get up from his soft bed of memories fast enough so he ran straight into the brigadiers back without slowing down. Without saying a word he pushed the old man back and stopped again, he lowered his head and held the distorted ear into the tunnel.

Like blind bats made its picture from their surrounding room it seemed that he perceived invisible sound waves as well.

Homer on the other hand felt something different: The smell of the Nachimovski prospect, a smell that you couldn’t mistake for anything else. How fast they had gotten through the tunnel…

Hopefully they didn’t have to pay for being allowed to pass so freely…

As if he had heard Homer’s thoughts, Achmed took his assault rifle from his back and switched the safety off.

“Who is there?” whispered Homer to Hunter.

Homer smiled in secret: Who knew what the devil had brought them? Through the wide open doors of the Nachimovski prospect horrible creatures feel through the ceiling like through a funnel. But there were also permanent residents in this station. Even though they were seen as not dangerous Homer felt about them in a special way: A sticky mixture of fear and disgust.

“Small… hairless”, the brigadier tried to describe them.

That was enough for Homer: There they were. “Corpse-eaters”, he said silently.

Between the Sevastopolskaya and the Tulskaya, maybe in different regions of the metro, this curse had achieved a new literally meaning in the last years.

“They feed on flesh?” asked Hunter.

“More on dead flesh,” answered the old one, unsure.

These disgusting creatures – spiderlike primates – didn’t attack humans; they fed on dead flesh that they had dragged down from the surface. And a big clan had made their nest at the Nachimovski prospect. The reason you could smell the disgusting-sweet smell rotting flesh in the neighboring tunnels, in the station, it was so heavy that it could make your head spin, was that they gathered dead bodies as food. Some wore their gasmasks before entering so that they could tolerate the smell.

Homer who remembered the special feature of the Nachimovski very vividly, reached hastily for his gasmask and put it over his mouth and nose.

Achmed that didn’t have enough time to pack looked at it with envy and covered his nose with his arm. The miasma that grew in this station covered them, surrounded them and chased them forwards.

Hunter didn’t seem to experience anything like them. “Is that toxic? Spores?” asked Hunter.

“The smell,” said Homer under his mask.

The brigadier looked at Homer as if he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t trying to make a joke at his expense.

Than the shrugged his broad shoulders and said: “So just the usual”. He held his assault rifle more comfortably and made clear that they should follow him and continued with soft steps.

After maybe fifty meters an almost unnoticeable whispering joined the horrendous smell. Homer wiped the warm sweat from his head and tried to keep his galloping heart at bay. They were close.

Finally the shine of the lamp illuminated something, the broken lights of a train that tried so hard to fight against the rust, its headlights starring blindly into the dark; a shattered windshield… in front of them was the first wagon of a train that blocked the tunnel like a giant cork.

The train laid hopelessly dead for a long time, but every time he saw it he had the childish wish to climb into the dusty driver cabin, touch the buttons of the panel and to imagine with his eyes closed that he was rushing through the tunnel, behind him a garland of bright lit wagons, full of people, that read, slept, stared at the advertising and tried to hold a conversation over the sound of the rushing train.

“When the alarm signal is given, you are to go to the next station. There you are to man the station. The doors are to be opened. The civilian teams have to help with the evacuation of wounded and the hermetic closure of the metro stations.”

For judgment day he had gotten clear and easy instructions. Everywhere possible they were followed. Most of the trains broke down on the tracks and fell into a lethargic sleep and then there where the survivors that instead of a few weeks, what had been promised to them, now had to stay there forever. Most of the trains had been completely dismantled for inventory and spare parts.

In some places they used them as homes, but Homer, who viewed the trains as living beings, thought that that was like vandalizing a corpse, as if they had stuffed his favorite cat.

In uninhabitable places like the Nachimovski prospect time and vandals had left their mark on the train but it remained intact.

Homer couldn’t turn away. The rustling and hissing that approached from the station, faded into the background and once again he heard the ghostly howling alarm siren and then the deep signal of the train that spread the unheard message, once long, twice short: “Atom!”

Brakes squeaked and through the speakers came the confusing message: “Dear passengers, because of technical emergency the train can’t continue its ride…”

Nor the train driver whispering into his microphone neither his assistant Homer knew the full extent of overwhelming hopelessness of this formal sentence. The exhausting creaking sound of the hermetic gates… they separated the living from the dead, once and for all. Protocol demanded that the doors had to be closed six minutes after the alarm had been sound and they had to be closed forever, it didn’t matter how many people where still on the other side.

Those who resisted the closing of the gates were to be shot immediately.

Would a tiny police officer that normally chased homeless people and drunks out of the station be capable of shooting a man into his stomach because he resisted the ton heavy machine so that his wife with her broken heel would still be able to slip through? Would the feisty women with her uniform and her cap, who checked tickets and had only brought two things to perfection in her 30 years of service, be able to get in and cut off a gasping old man that was still trying to pass through the door?

The instructions saw six minutes for a human to become a machine. Or a monster.

The screaming of the women and the screams of the men, the unrestrained crying of the children, the sounds of the pistol and machine guns salves… Out of every speaker the request to remain calm sounded metallic and emotionless.

Somebody unaware read it because nobody that knew would be so controlled and indifferent in repeating the same sentence over and over again: “Please remain calm!” Crying, pleading… Again shots.

And exactly six minutes after the alarm, one minute before Armageddon – with the dull sound of a graveyards bell the doors closed. The sound of the bolts locking in place.

Silence.

Like in a grave.

To get around the wagon they had to move along the wall. The driver had braked too late, maybe he had been distracted by something on the track. They climbed upwards over an iron ladder and found

themselves in a roomy hall. It had no pillars but a half-round ceiling with egg shaped holes for the lamps.

The hall was big; it included the train station and both tracks with the trains. An unbelievable elegant, easy construction, simple and laconic.

Just don’t look down, not under your feet nor in front of you.

Don’t look what the station had become.

A grotesque meadow of corpses, where no one ever found peace, a terrible field of flesh, covered with gnawed off skeletons, rotting bodies and ripped off parts of corpses. Grotesque creatures had dragged down greedily everything they could find in their small kingdom, a lot more than they could eat, as reserves. These reserves decayed and dissolved, but they were still growing.

The mountains of rotting flesh moved, ignoring the laws of nature, as if they breathed and from everywhere a disgusting scraping sound could be heard. The shine of the flashlight caught one of the strange creatures: Long nodular arms and legs, slack, wrinkled, hanging, hairless grey skin and a bent back. The dim eyes starring half blind around the room and the big ears moved like they had a life of their own.

The creature made a hoarse scream and retreated slowly on all limbs back through the open train door. As sluggish as this one the other corpse eaters started to climb down from their mountains of bodies. Angered they bared their teeth and growled at the group.

On two feet they wouldn’t have been able to reach Homer to the chest and he knew that the cowardly creatures wouldn’t attack a strong, healthy human. But the irrational horror that he felt for these creatures came with his nightly nightmares: Weakened and abandoned he was laying there alone in an empty station and the monsters came closer and. closer. Like a drop of blood in the ocean attracted countless sharks these creatures could feel the approaching death of a stranger and rushed to look at them.

The fear of getting old, said Homer condescendingly to himself. In his time he had read books about psychology. If they would just help him now.

The corpse eaters on the other hand weren’t afraid of humans. To waste a single bullet for one of these harmless corpse eaters would have been considered a criminal waste at the Sevastopolskaya. The passing caravans tried to ignore them even though the creatures liked to provoke them.

At this station they had reproduced strongly and the more the group progressed, while bones broke under their boots with a disgusting breaking sound, the more corpse eaters abandoned unwillingly their meal and moved slowly back to their dwellings. Their nests were in inside the trains.

And for that Homer hated them even more.

The hermetic gates of the Nachimovski prospect were open. It was said that when you passed the station quickly you would only get a small dose of unhealthy radiation, but you couldn’t stay there for long. So it came that some of the trains were still well preserved: The windshields and windows weren’t broken, through the open doors you could see the dirty but intact seats and also the blue paint of the train was still there. In the middle of the hall was a true mountain of twisted bodies made up by unrecognizable creatures. When Hunter reached them he suddenly stopped.

Achmed and Homer looked at each other worried and tried to see where the danger came from.

But the reason for the delay was a different one. On the edge of the mountain of bodies two little corpse eaters gnawed on the skeleton of a dog– you could hear how they creaked and growled pleasurably. They weren’t able to hide in time. Maybe they hadn’t finished their meal or didn’t understand the signals of their older creatures or their greed had overpowered them.

Blinded by the shine of the light, but still cowering, they started their slow retreat to next wagon when they both suddenly tipped over with a dull sound and hit the ground like two filled sacks.

Homer looked at Hunter surprised while he put his heavy army pistol with the long suppressor back into his shoulder holster. The face of the brigadier was as impenetrable and dead as always.

“Seemed like they had were hungry.” whispered Achmed. A little bit disgusted, a little bit curious at the dark puddles where the pulpy remains of their dead skulls lay.

“I agree.” answered Hunter with an unclear voice and Homer winced.

Without turning around Hunter continued walking and Homer seemed to hear silent, greedy growling. It exhausted him, trying not to be tempted to put a bullet into the head of another creature!

He talked to himself reassuring until he was the same again. He had to proof himself that he was a grown man that could control his nightmares and didn’t have to act crazy. Hunter didn’t seem to suppress his desire.

But what did he actually desire?

The silent demise of the two corpse eaters brought movement to the rest of the pack: The smell of fresh death chased away the boldest and slowest from the train track.

Slowly, croaking and whining they retreated to the two trains, squeezed themselves against the windows or gathered at the two doors and waited. But they didn’t move.

The creatures didn’t seem to feel anger and you couldn’t recognize any intentions to avenge their killed brethrens or to fend off this attack. As soon as the group would leave the station they would eat the two killed corpse eaters without any hesitation.

Aggression is a trait of Hunters, thought Homer. Who survives on dead bodies doesn’t need it because he doesn’t have to kill. Everything living must die some day and becomes food. They just have to wait.

In the shine of the lamp they could see their monstrous grimaces looking through the dirty-greenish windows, the tilted built bodies, their hands with long claws, it was like they viewed into a satanic aquarium. In absolute silence hundreds pairs of eyes watched every move of the small group, the heads of the creatures turned fully synchronized with the passing humans movement. The small ballsin their formaldehyde glasses must have probably looked at the visitors of Petersburg’s art chamber the same way, if their eyes wouldn’t have been sewed shut as a precaution.

Even though the hour of atonement for his godless view of the world came closer and closer for Homer, he couldn’t overcome himself to believe in god or the devil. If there was a purgatory than he was looking straight at it.

Sisyphus was damned to fight against gravity, Tantalus sentenced to endure torture through eternal thirst. For Homer in his wrinkled train driver uniform there was a dead station waiting for him, with this monstrous ghost train, filled with its inhabitants, that reminded him of medieval gargoyles and the laughter and mocking of all gods that where seeking revenge. And when the train left the station the tunnel would transform itself, just like in the old metro-legends into a moebius band, a dragon eating it’s on tail.

Hunter had lost all interest in the station and its inhabitants. He left the rest of the hall behind him with quick steps. Achmed and Homer had problems keeping up with the hasting brigadier.

The old man had the wish to turn around, to scream and to shoot, to do anything that would scare this bold spawn away just like his heavy thoughts. But instead he followed with his head lowered and tried not to step on any rotting body parts. Achmed did the same as he did. While they fled the Nachimovski prospect nobody thought about looking back.

The ball of light from Hunters lamp flew from one spot to the next as if it followed an invisible acrobatic through a fatal circus but even the brigadier did no longer pay attention to what the light illuminated.

In the light of the lamp you were able to see fresh bones and a definitely human head that had been gnawed on, for a second and then they disappeared into darkness.

Right next to it, like a pointless shell laid a steel helmet and a Kevlar vest.

You could still see the with white color printed word on it: SEVASTOPOLSKAYA.