Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘There aren’t any bandits,’ he whispered, leaning down over the wounded man’s bed. ‘While you were delirious… You were talking all the time. I know everything.’

‘What do you know?’ Hunter grabbed Homer by the collar and jerked the old man towards him.

‘About the epidemic at Tula… Everything’s all right.’ Homer waved his hand imploringly to restrain the orderly, who had come dashing over to drag him off the brigadier. ‘I’ll manage. We need to have a talk, could I ask you, please…’

The orderly reluctantly complied, put the cap back over the needle of his syringe and walked out of the ward, leaving them alone.

‘About Tula,’ said Hunter, still holding the old man in his wild, inflamed stare, but gradually reducing the pressure. ‘Nothing else?’

‘That’s all. The station is the focus of an unidentified airborne infection… Our men have established a quarantine and they’re waiting for help.’

‘Right. Right,’ said the brigadier, letting go of him. ‘Yes. An epidemic. Are you afraid of getting infected?’

‘God helps those who help themselves,’ Homer replied warily.

‘True enough. It’s okay… I didn’t go close, the draught was blowing in their direction… I shouldn’t have it.’

‘Why that story about the bandits? What are you going to do?’ asked the old man, feeling bolder now.

‘First go to Dobrynin and reach an agreement. Then clean out Tula. We need flamethrowers. Otherwise there’s no way…’

‘Burn everyone at the station alive? What about our men?’

The old man was still hoping the remark the brigadier had passed about flamethrowers had been the same kind of decoy manoeuvre as everything else he told the top command at Sebastopol.

‘Why alive? The corpses. There’s no other way. Everyone who’s infected. Everyone they’ve been in contact with. All the air. I’ve heard about this disease…’ Hunter closed his eyes and licked his cracked lips. ‘There’s no cure. There was an outbreak a couple of years ago… Two thousand corpses.’

‘But it stopped, didn’t it?’

‘A blockade. Flamethrowers.’ The brigadier turned his mutilated face towards the old man. ‘There is no other way. If it breaks out… Just one man. It’s the end for everyone. Yes, I lied about the bandits. Otherwise Istomin wouldn’t have allowed me to terminate everyone. He’s too soft. But I’ll take men who don’t ask any questions.’

‘But what if there are men who are immune?’ Homer began timidly. ‘What if there are men there who aren’t sick? I… You said… What if they could still be saved?’

‘There is no immunity. All contacts get infected. There aren’t any healthy men, only tougher ones,’ the brigadier snapped. ‘But it’s only worse for them. They’ll suffer longer. Believe me… It’s what they need, for me to… to be terminated.’

‘But what do you need that for?’ the old man asked, moving back from the bed just to be on the safe side.

Hunter lowered his eyelids wearily, and Homer noticed once again that the eye on the mutilated half of his face didn’t close completely. The brigadier’s answer took so long to come that the old man was about to run for the doctor. But then, forcing out the words slowly and separately, as if a hypnotist had sent him back into the infinitely distant past for his lost memories, he said through his clenched teeth:

‘I must. Protect people. Eliminate any danger. That’s all. I’m for.’

Had he found the knife? Had he realised it was for him? What if he didn’t guess, or didn’t see it was a promise? She flew along the corridor, trying to drive away the thoughts that were tormenting her, still not knowing what she would say to him. What a pity that he had regained consciousness before she was at his bedside!

Sasha heard almost the entire conversation – she froze in the doorway and shrank back when the subject of killings came up. Of course, she couldn’t decipher everything, but she didn’t need to. She’d already heard all the most important things. There was no point in waiting any longer, and she knocked loudly.

As the old man got up to greet her, his face was a cramped mask of despair. Homer moved as laboriously as if he too had been given a debilitating injection, and the wicks had been unscrewed from the lamps of his eyes. He answered Sasha with a limp nod – as if someone had tugged on a hanged man’s rope from above.

The girl sat right on the edge of the still-warm stool, bit her lip and held her breath before stepping into this new, unexplored tunnel.

‘Did you like my knife?’

‘Knife?’ The man with the shaved head looked round and his gaze ran into the burnished black blade: he stared warily at Sasha without touching it. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘It’s for you.’ She felt as if someone had blown steam into her face.

‘Yours got broken. When you… Thank you…’

‘A strange present. I’d never accept anything like that from anyone,’ he said after a heavy silence. She thought she could hear a half-hint in his words, something important left unsaid, and she accepted the game, but without knowing all the rules, and started groping around for words. It all came out awkward and wrong, but then Sasha’s tongue was a completely inadequate tool for describing what was going on inside her.

‘Do you feel that I have a piece of you too? The part that was torn out of you… That you were looking for? That I could give it back to you?’

‘What are you babbling about?’ he asked. A dash of cold water in her face.

‘No, you do feel it,’ Sasha insisted, cringing on the stool. ‘That you’ll be complete with me. That I can be with you and I must. Otherwise why did you take me with you?’

‘I gave in to my partner.’ His voice was colourless and blank.

‘Why did you protect me from the men on the trolley?’

‘I would have killed them in any case.’

‘Then why did you save me from the beast at the station?’

‘I had to wipe them all out.’

‘I wish it had eaten me!’

‘Are you annoyed because you’re still alive?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘Then take a walk up the escalator, there are plenty more of them up there.’

‘I… You want me to…’

‘I don’t want anything from you.’

‘I’ll help you to stop!’

‘You’re clinging on to me.’

‘Don’t you feel that…?’

‘I don’t feel anything.’ The taste of his words was like rusty water.

Not even the terrible claw of that white monster could have wounded her so badly. Sasha jumped up, cut to the quick, and dashed out of the ward. Luckily her room was empty. She huddled up in the corner, curled into a tight ball. She looked for the mirror in her pocket – she wanted to throw it out – but didn’t find it: she must have dropped it beside the bed of the man with the shaved head.

When her tears dried up, she already knew what to do. It didn’t take her long to get ready. The old man would forgive her for stealing his gun – he would probably forgive her anything at all. The tarpaulin protective suit, cleaned and decontaminated, was waiting for her in the closet, dangling helplessly from a hook. As if some wizard had disembowelled the dead fat man and cursed him after death to follow Sasha everywhere and do her will. She clambered into it, dashed out into the corridor, rushed along the passage and up onto the platform. Somewhere along the way a rivulet of magical music licked at her, music from the same source that she hadn’t identified last time. She didn’t have a spare minute to search for it this time either. Halting for only a brief moment, Sasha overcame the temptation and moved on towards the goal of her trek.

In the daytime there was only one sentry on duty at the escalator: the creatures from the surface never bothered the station during daylight hours. It took her less than five minutes to come to an understanding: the way up here was always open, but it was impossible to come down the escalator. Leaving the amenable sentry a half-empty sub-machine-gun clip, Sasha set her foot on the first step of the stairway that led straight up to the sky.