Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

And she was grateful for that. She was ready to forgive, ready to assert what she believed and fight for it again. And all she needed from Hunter was the very slightest hint. Just one more sign.

The setting sun suddenly went out, but immediately flared up again. Sasha flung her head back just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the black silhouette that had hurtled over her head, obscuring the sun’s light for an instant and immediately disappearing from view.

A shrill whistling sound and an ear-splitting howl sliced through the air as the massive hulk lunged down at Sasha out of the sky, missing by only a tiny margin. At the last moment, instinct prompted the girl to fling herself full length on the ground, and that was the only thing that saved her. The outlandish monster skidded along the ground on its outstretched leathery wings, then gave a mighty flap to gain height and started turning in a broad half-circle as it moved in for another attack.

Sasha grabbed her automatic, but immediately abandoned the idea as useless. Not even a burst fired pointblank could knock a carcass like that off course, and it was senseless even to think of bringing it down – she would have to hit it in the first place! The girl dashed back towards the open space from which she had set out on her brief journey, without even thinking about how to get back into the Metro.

The flying monster gave its hunting call and came hurtling at her again. Sasha got her feet tangled in the fat man’s trousers and tumbled face down onto the road, but squirmed round and fired a short, snarling burst. The bullets discouraged the beast, but they didn’t do it any harm at all. In the few seconds she had won herself, the girl managed to get to her feet and dash towards the nearest buildings, realising at last where to find cover from the predator.

There were two shadows circling now, keeping themselves in the air with heavy flaps of broad, webbed wings. Sasha’s calculation was simple: to squeeze up against the wall of any building. The flying monsters were too large and unwieldy to get her there: and after that… She had nowhere to run to in any case.

She made it! She pressed herself against the wall, hoping that the beasts would give up on her. But they didn’t; they had cornered more inventive prey than this before. First one and then the other of the nightmarish creatures landed on the ground about twenty steps away from the girl and started moving towards her, dragging their folded wings behind them.

A burst of automatic fire didn’t frighten, but only infuriated them; the bullets seemed to lodge in their thick, matted fur without reaching the flesh. The beast closer to Sasha snarled balefully, revealing crooked, needle-sharp teeth under the black lip on its upturned snout.

‘Get down!’

Sasha didn’t even bother wondering where the distant voice had come from, she just flung herself face down on the ground. There was a loud explosion very close to her and she was buffeted and scorched by a blast of hot air. A second blast followed immediately, and that was followed by frenzied squealing and the receding sound of flapping wings.

She raised her head timidly, coughed to force the dust out of her lungs and looked around. Not far away the road was gashed open by a fresh crater and splattered with dark, oily blood. A scorched leathery wing, torn out by the roots, was lying near her, with several more charred, shapeless chunks beside it.

A man with a massive, powerful figure, dressed in a heavy protective suit, was striding steadily across the stony space towards Sasha, holding himself erect.

Hunter!

He took her by the hand, helped her up and tugged her along after him. Then he let go of her, seeming to come to his senses. His eyes were concealed behind special smoked glass and Sasha couldn’t see them.

‘Keep up with me! It’s getting dark quickly, we have to get out of here in time,’ he droned through his filters. Then he rushed on, without even glancing at her again.

‘Hunter,’ the girl called to him, straining to recognise her rescuer through the steamed-up lenses of her gas mask.

He pretended he couldn’t hear her and there was nothing Sasha could do but run after him as fast as her legs would carry her. Of course, he was angry with her: this was the third time he’d had to give the stupid little girl a hand. But he had come up here, come up here for her sake, so how could there be any more doubt…?

The man with the shaved head wasn’t planning on going anywhere near the beasts’ lair that had been Sasha’s way out of the Metro: he knew different paths. He turned right off the main road and ducked into an archway, dashed past the rusty iron skeletons of flat boxes that looked like market kiosks for dwarfs, frightened off a blurred shadow with a shot from his gun and stopped in front of a small brick sentry box with heavy bars over the windows. He turned a key in a massive padlock. A shelter? No, the sentry box turned out to be a blind: inside the door a concrete stairway zigzagged down into the depths.

Hanging the lock back up on the inside, her rescuer switched on his flashlight and tramped down the steps. Time had peeled the green-and-white paint off the walls and they were covered with names and dates: in, out, in, out… The man scribbled something illegible of his own. Probably everyone who used the secret way up onto the surface had to write down here when he left and when he came back. Only under many names there was no date of return.

The descent broke off sooner than Sasha was expecting: although the steps ran on downwards, the man with the shaved head halted at a nondescript little cast-iron door, and smashed his fist against it. A few seconds later a bolt grated on the other side and the door was opened by a man with dishevelled hair and a sparse little beard, wearing blue trousers with baggy knees.

‘Who’s this then?’ he asked, looking perplexed.

‘Someone I picked up on the Ring,’ Hunter boomed. ‘He almost got eaten by the birds, I was only just in time with the grenade launcher. Hey kid, how did you get out there?’

He flung back his hood and tugged off his gas mask…

The man standing in front of Sasha was a stranger: close-cropped light brown hair, a pale face with grey eyes, a squashed nose that looked as if it had been broken. And she had persuaded herself not to notice anything, telling herself she was wrong when she thought he moved too easily for a wounded man, that his walk was wrong, not feral enough, and the suit looked different… She suddenly felt stifled and pulled her own mask off too.

Fifteen minutes later Sasha was already inside the Hansa frontier.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t let you stay here without any documents.’ She could hear a note of genuine regret in her rescuer’s voice. ‘Maybe this evening… you know… well, in the passage?’

She shook her head without speaking and smiled.

Where should she go now?

To him? There was still time!

But Sasha couldn’t get over her annoyance with Hunter for not saving her this time too… And she had something else in mind that she didn’t want to put off any longer.

The delicate, enticing cadences of the wonderful music found a way to her through the hubbub of the crowd, the scraping of shoes and the roaring of the traders. She thought it was the same melody that had cast its spell on her the day before. As she stepped towards it, Sasha felt as if she was making her way again towards that opening that radiated an unearthly glow. Only where did it lead to this time?

The musician was surrounded by a tight-packed ring of dozens of listeners. Sasha had to push her way through until the crowd spat her out into the empty circle. The melody drew these people to him and at the same time held them at a distance, as if they too were flying towards the light, but afraid of singeing their wings.