Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

The automatic twirled in his hands, swinging round with the butt forward, and struck her on the temple, mercifully snuffing out the light of her consciousness.

After Nakhimov Prospect Hunter had kept Homer close beside him, and the old man had no chance to examine the notepad properly. The brigadier was suddenly thoughtful and considerate: not only did he try not to leave his companion too far behind, he actually walked in step with him, although he had to hold himself back to do it. A couple of times he stopped, as if to see whether anyone was dogging their footsteps. But as the glaring beam of his searchlight was turned backwards, it always ran across Homer’s face, making the old man feel like he was in a torture chamber. He swore and blinked as he struggled to recover, sensing the brigadier’s sharp eyes creeping all over his body, probing him, searching for what he had found at the Prospect. Nonsense! Of course Hunter couldn’t have seen anything, he was too far away at that moment. He’d probably simply sensed the change in Homer’s mood and suspected him of something. But every time their gazes met, the old man broke out in a sweat. The little bit he had managed to read in the notepad was more than enough to make him feel doubts about the brigadier.

It was a diary.

Some of the pages were stuck together with dried blood and Homer didn’t touch them: he was afraid of tearing them with his stiff, tense fingers. The entries on the first pages were incoherent – the author couldn’t even keep his letters under control, and his thoughts galloped in a way that made it impossible to keep up with them.

‘We got through Nagornaya with no losses,’ the diary stated, and then immediately skipped on: ‘Tula is in chaos. There’s no way out to the Metro, Hansa is blocking it. We can’t go back home.’

Homer leafed forward a bit, watching out of the corner of his eye as the brigadier came down off his grave mound and walked towards him. The old man realised that Hunter mustn’t be allowed to get his hands on the diary. But just before he thrust the notepad into his knapsack, Homer managed to read: ‘We have brought the situation under control and appointed a commandant…’ And then immediately: ‘Who’ll be the next to die?’

And another thing: framed in a little square above the dangling question was a date. From the withered state of the notepad’s pages, anyone would have thought the events described in the diary must be at least a decade old, but the figures indicated that the entry had been made only a few days ago.

With long-forgotten agility, the old man’s ossifying brain fitted together the scattered pieces of the mosaic: the mysterious wanderer seen by the miserable tramp at Nagatino, the guard’s voice that seemed familiar at the hermetic door, the words ‘We can’t go back home…’ A complete picture began taking shape in front of his eyes. Maybe the scribble on the stuck-together pages could fill in the meaning of all the other strange events?

What was absolutely certain was that Tula had not been captured by bandits; something far more complicated and mysterious was going on there. And Hunter had spent a quarter of an hour questioning the sentries at the gates of the station – so he knew that just as well as Homer did.

That was precisely why Homer must not show him the notepad.

And it was why Homer dared to oppose him openly at the meeting in Istomin’s office.

‘We can’t do that,’ he said.

Hunter turned his head in Homer’s direction as slowly as a battleship training its main gun on the target. Istomin shifted his chair backwards, then decided to come out from behind his desk anyway. The colonel screwed his face up wearily.

‘We can’t blow up the hermetic door, there’s ground water all around, the line would be flooded instantly. The whole of Tula Station is held together by no more than a lick and a promise, they’re always praying it won’t spring a leak anywhere. And the parallel tunnel, you know yourselves… It’s ten years since…’ Homer went on.

‘So do we just knock and wait for them to open up?’ Denis Mikhailovich enquired.

‘Well, there’s always the bypass route,’ Istomin reminded him.

Astounded by that suggestion, the colonel started coughing violently and furiously accusing his superior of wanting to cripple and kill his best men. And then the brigadier fired a broadside.

‘Tula has to be cleaned out. The situation requires the extermination of everyone there. Not one of your men is left. They’ve all been finished off. If you don’t want to suffer any more losses, it’s the only possible decision. I know what I’m talking about. I have information.’

The final words were clearly intended for Homer. They made the old man feel like a naughty little puppy dog being shaken by the scruff of the neck to bring him to his senses.

‘Well, since the tunnel is sealed on our side,’ said Istomin, tugging down his tunic, ‘there is only one way to get into Tula. From the other side, through Hansa. But we can’t take armed men through that way, it’s out of the question.’

‘I’ll find men,’ Hunter said dismissively, and the colonel started.

‘Just to get to Hansa, you have to go through two stretches of tunnel on the Kakhovka Line as far as Kashira Station.’

‘What of it?’ asked the brigadier, crossing his arms on his chest.

‘In the region of Kashira the background radiation shoots off the scale,’ the colonel explained. ‘A fragment of a warhead fell nearby. It didn’t explode, but it’s quite bad enough as it is. Every second man who gets a dose of it dies within a month. Even now.’

An ominous silence fell. Homer took advantage of the hitch to initiate a furtive withdrawal – tactical, of course – from Istomin’s office. Eventually, Vladimir Ivanovich, apparently afraid that the uncontrollable brigadier would go off to demolish the hermetic door at Tula anyway, made a confession.

‘We have protective suits. But only two. You can take the most able-bodied soldier you can find, anyone. We’ll wait…’ He glanced round at Denis Mikhailovich. ‘What else can we do?’

‘Let’s go over to the lads,’ the colonel said with a sigh. ‘We’ll have a talk with them and you can choose yourself a partner.’

‘No need,’ said Hunter, with a shake of his head. ‘Homer’s the one I want.’

As the trolley passed through the long section of tunnel marked with bright-yellow paint on the floor and walls, the helmsman couldn’t pretend any longer not to hear the radiation dosimeter clicking faster and faster. He took hold of the brake and muttered apologetically.

‘Comrade Colonel, we can’t go any further without protection.’

‘Let’s go just another hundred metres,’ Denis Mikhailovich suggested gently, turning to face him. ‘I’ll release you from watch duty for a week afterwards, as a hazard bonus.’

‘But this is the extreme limit, Comrade Colonel,’ the helmsman whined, still not daring to reduce speed.

‘Stop,’ Hunter ordered. ‘We’ll walk on from here. He’s quite right, the radiation level is really getting too high.’

The brake blocks squealed, the lantern hanging on the frame swayed, and the trolley came to a halt. The brigadier and the old man, who were sitting with their legs dangling over the edge, climbed down onto the tracks. The heavy protective suits, made of lead-impregnated fabric, looked like deep-sea divers’ outfits. They were incredibly expensive and rare – probably less than two dozen of them could be found in the entire Metro. The two at Sebastopol had almost never been used, they’d just been waiting for their time to come. These suits of armour could absorb the fiercest radiation, but they turned even simple walking into a difficult task – at least they did for Homer.