Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (22 page)

When he had realized that their small wishes and passions had been their last they had 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. This plot was best for it, better 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 a dune and stare at the horizon in the hope that out of tiny grains of sands and flickering air again a personal ivory tower would emerge.

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

An ironic smile was on his lips, Homer thought:

Whatever the girl had said, it had been the look in her empty eyes which 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 he would have to search for something for her as well, he thought while he started to fall asleep.

At the
Pavelezkaya
the night was always restless. The shine of the stinking torches twitched over the marble walls, the tunnel breathed restlessly, only at the foot of the escalator a few silhouettes if it was to each other almost inaudible. 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 down reaching entrance and smelt 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 struggle and
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 who 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. Every moment his companions would return 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 from 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 was holding the useless assault rifle in front of him. He just wanted to make sure that he couldn’t help his people anymore.

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

He wanted to scream but his lungs were out of 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, yes even dreary
Kolomenskaya
had been a comfortable home and she had known every inch of it. The
Avtosavo
dskaya
, 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 was 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
been dreary and poor, 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 just had to escape the
Kolomenskaya
to meet other peoples and 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, there were 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 had been a lot easier.

Then the game of hide and seek was at an end: The sound of a fight jumped from wagon to wagon to Sasha’s and finally reached her.

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 not moving search light, over the burnt down fire in the middle of the hall. Other fighters had apparently given up early and 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 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 stared down from its height of two meters. From its lower jaw it dripped red and the heavy jaw was gnawing on a terrible chunk of flesh. Never endingly.

Under the flat forehead there was nothing but that the creature had no eyes didn’t seem to keep it from sensing other beings or from moving and 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 set out a beat.

There stood, scarred and looking around, the girl.

“Run!” Yelled Homer and his voice was suffocated by 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 knife which you should only use to cook 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 who 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.

I 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 winched and moved back, scratched at a bigger getting spot 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 and 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, it tumbled for a second, found its center of gravity again and stormed forwards.

Hunter’s bullets dried up but he was able to bury his machete into the enormous chest of the creature. The chimera fell on it, buried it under it and suffocated him with its weight.

Like if it wanted to destroy all hope 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 it 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 even started.

Chapter 10 (After death)

What
remains
of
the
dead? What remains of
every one
of us?
Tombstones
sink in, moss covers the
, and after a few centuries the
insignia
can no longer be read.

Even in earlier times a grave
who
nobody
cared
about
anymore
,
would
be
assigned to a new dead. Most only visited their children or
the
adults of the dead, grandchildren
even less often
and grand-grandchildren almost never.

What
was
called
everlasting
peace
,
only
lasted half a century in big cities, then the bones where disturbed, to increase the density of the grave because you wanted to
transform
the graveyard into a
suburb
. The earth had become
too
small, for the living and the dead.