Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

However, Homer refused to abandon his new destiny. He tried not to think that he was simply not born for this, that creating universes required a talent that he had been denied.

It’s just the inspiration that’s lacking – that was what he told himself. And where could he draw inspiration from in a stuffy station, locked into the routine of drinking tea at home and agricultural work? Even the watches and patrols were routine, and they took him on them less and less often because of his age. He needed a shake-up, an adventure, intense passions. Perhaps then the pressure would sweep clear the blocked channels in his mind and he would be able to create?

Even in the most difficult times people had never completely abandoned Nagatino. It wasn’t really fit for habitation: nothing grew here and the exits to the surface were closed off. But many found the station useful for staying out of sight and lying low for a while, for sitting out disgrace or as a secluded spot with a lover. Right now, though, it was empty.

Hunter flew soundlessly up a ladder that should have creaked obstinately and stopped on the platform. Homer followed him, puffing and panting, looking round warily. The hall was dark, and dust hung in the air, shimmering silver in the beams of their flashlights. Scattered sparsely across the floor were the heaps of rags and cardboard on which visitors to Nagatino usually spent the night.

The old man leaned back against a column and slid down it slowly. There was a time when Nagatino, with its elegant coloured panels, assembled out of various kinds of marble, had been one of his favourite stations. But now, dark and lifeless, it resembled its former self no more than a ceramic photo on a gravestone resembles the person who had the photo taken for a passport a hundred years ago, never suspecting that he was not just gazing into a camera lens, but into eternity.

‘Not a soul,’ Homer murmured disappointedly.

‘There is one,’ the brigadier objected, pointing at him.

‘I meant…’ the old man began, but Hunter stopped him with a gesture of his hand.

At the far end of the platform, where the colonnade came to an end and even the brigadier’s searchlight could barely reach, something was crawling out slowly onto the platform.

Homer tumbled over onto his side, braced his hands against the platform and got up awkwardly. Hunter’s flashlight went out and the brigadier himself seemed to vanish into thin air. Sweating with fear, the old man fumbled at the safety catch and pressed the trembling butt of his automatic hard into his shoulder. He heard the faint pops of two shots in the distance. Feeling bolder, he stuck his head out from behind the column and then hurried forward.

Hunter was standing fully erect in the centre of the platform, with an amorphous, wizened figure squirming pitifully at his feet. It looked as if it had been assembled out of cardboard boxes and rags, and barely even resembled a human being at all, but it was one – ageless and sexless, so dirty that only the eyes could clearly be made out on its face, it whined inarticulately and tried to crawl away from the brigadier towering up over it. It looked as if it had been shot in both legs.

‘Where are the people? Why isn’t there anyone here?’ asked Hunter, setting his boot on the train of tattered, stinking rags trailing after the tramp.

‘They’ve all gone… They left me. I’m all alone here,’ the tramp hissed, scraping at the slippery granite with his hands, but not moving from the spot.

‘Where did they go to?’

‘Tula…’

‘What’s happening there?’ Homer put in as he came up to them.

‘How should I know?’ the filthy creature said with a crooked grin. ‘Everyone who went there just disappeared. Ask them. But I don’t have any strength for staggering through the tunnels. I’ll die here.’

‘Why did they go?’ the brigadier persisted.

‘They were frightened, boss. The station’s deserted, they decided to break out. No one came back.’

‘No one at all?’ asked Hunter, raising his gun barrel.

‘No one… Only one,’ said the tramp, correcting himself when he spotted the raised gun and shrivelling up like an ant in the sun’s rays under a lens. ‘He was going to Nagornaya. I was asleep. Maybe I imagined it.’

‘When?’

‘I haven’t got a watch,’ said the tramp, shaking his head. ‘Maybe yesterday, maybe a week ago.’

The questions had dried up, but the pistol barrel was still staring into the tramp’s eyes. Hunter stopped speaking, as if his spring had suddenly run down. And he was breathing strangely, as if the conversation with the tramp had cost him too much of his strength.

‘Can I…?’ the tramp began.

‘Here, eat that!’ the brigadier snarled, and before Homer realised what was happening, he squeezed the trigger twice.

Black blood from the bullet holes in his forehead flooded the unfortunate victim’s staring eyes. Flattened against the ground by the bullets, he disintegrated again into a heap of rags and cardboard. Without looking up, Hunter inserted four more cartridges into the clip of his Stechkin and jumped down onto the tracks.

‘We’ll find out everything for ourselves soon enough,’ he shouted to Homer.

Ignoring his feeling of disgust, the old man leaned down over the body, took a scrap of material and covered the tramp’s shattered head with it.

‘Why did you kill him?’ he asked feebly.

‘Ask yourself that,’ Hunter replied in a hollow voice.

Now, even if he clenched all his willpower into a single tight fist, all he could do was raise and lower his eyelids. It was strange that he’d woken up at all… During the hour he’d been oblivious, the numbness had crept across his entire body like a crust of ice. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his chest seemed to be weighed down by something massively heavy. He couldn’t even say goodbye to his daughter, and that was the only thing worth coming round for, without following that old battle all the way to the end.

Sasha wasn’t smiling any longer. Now she was dreaming of something alarming, curled up tight on her makeshift bed and hugging herself, with a scowl on her face. Ever since she was a little child her father had woken her if he saw she was being tormented by nightmares, but now it took all his strength just to blink slowly.

And then even that became too exhausting.

To hold out until Sasha woke up he would have to carry on fighting. He had never stopped fighting for over twenty years, every day, every minute – and he was deadly tired of it. Tired of battling, tired of hiding, tired of hunting. Arguing, asserting, hoping, lying.

Only two desires remained in his fading consciousness: he wanted to look into Sasha’s eyes at least one more time, and he wanted to find peace. But he couldn’t manage either. Alternating with reality, images from the past starting flickering in front of his eyes again. He had to take a final decision. Break or be broken. Punish or repent… The guardsmen had closed ranks. Every one of them was loyal to him personally. Every one of them was willing to die now, torn to pieces by the mob, or to fire on unarmed people. He was the commander of the last unconquered station, the president of a confederation that no longer existed. For them his authority was indisputable, he was infallible, and any order he gave would be carried out immediately, without a second thought. He would take responsibility for everything, just as he had always done.

If he backed down now, the station would sink into anarchy, and then it would be annexed by the Red Empire that was expanding so fast, frothing over its original boundaries, subjugating more and more new territory. If he ordered his men to open fire on the demonstrators, he would retain his grasp on power – for a while. Or perhaps forever, if he didn’t balk at mass executions and torture.