Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2033

‘Hey, that’s enough of a nap, you’ll sleep through the meeting.’ Ulman pushed him on the shoulder.

Artyom roused himself and looked guiltily at the others. It appeared that he had dropped off for only for a few minutes. They were all sitting in a circle. In the centre was Melnik with the map, pointing and explaining.

‘Well,’ he said,’ it’s about twenty kilometres to our destination. If we keep up a good pace and nothing gets in our way, it’s possible to make it in half a day. The military unit is located on the surface, but there is a bunker under it and the tunnel leads to it. However, there’s no time to think about that. We have to split up.’ He looked at Artyom. ‘Are you up? You are returning to the metro, I will appoint Ulman to look after you,’ he said. ‘The others and I are going to the missile division.’

Artyom was on the verge of opening his mouth, intending to protest, but the stalker stopped him with an impatient gesture. Leaning towards the heap of rucksacks, Melnik started to distribute the supplies.

‘You take two protective suits, we have four left, and we don’t know what it will be like there. There’s one radio for you and one for us. Now the instructions. Go to Prospect Mir. They are waiting for you there. I have sent some messengers.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘In exactly twelve hours go up to the surface and look for our signal. If everything is OK and we are on the air, we’ll move to the next stage of the operation. Your mission is to find the best way to the Botanical Gardens and then to get up high in order to help us direct and correct the fire. The “Smerch” has a limited destruction area and we don’t know how many missiles are still there. And the gardens aren’t small. Don’t worry,’ he said to Artyom, ‘Ulman will be doing it all, you are there as company. We have use for you too, of course. You know what these dark ones look like.

‘The Ostankino tower is very suitable for guidance. It’s wider in the middle: there was a restaurant there. They served tiny sandwiches with caviar there at prices that were out of sight. But people didn’t go there because of them, but for the view of Moscow. The Botanical Gardens can be seen clearly from there. Try to get to the tower. If you can’t get to the tower, there is a multi-storey building alongside, sort of white, shaped like the letter P, and almost uninhabited. So… This is a map of Moscow for you, and this one is for us. It’s a shambles there around the squares. You simply look and communicate. The rest, follow us. It’s nothing too complex,’ he assured them. ‘Questions?’

‘And if they don’t have a nest there?’ Artyom asked.

‘Well, we can’t do the impossible,’ the stalker slapped his palm on the map. ‘And I have a surprise here for you,’ he added, winking at Artyom.

Reaching into his backpack, Melnik took out a white polyethylene bag with a worn coloured picture on the side. Artyom looked inside and took out the worn passport and the children’s book with the cherished photograph that he had found in the neglected apartment at Kalinskiy inside. Having raced after Oleg, he had left his treasures at Kievskaya, and Melnik had gone to the trouble to collect them and carry them with him all this time. Ulman sitting alongside looked at Artyom with a puzzled look, then at the stalker.

‘Personal things,’ Melnik said, smiling. Artyom wanted to thank him but the stalker had already got up from his seat and was giving orders to the fighters going with him.

Artyom went up to Anton who was absorbed in his own thoughts.

‘Good luck!’ Artyom extended his hand to the lookout. Anton silently nodded, putting his rucksack onto his back. His eyes were totally empty.

‘Well, that’s all! We won’t say goodbye. Note the time!’ Melnik said. He turned and, without saying another word, was off.

Having moved the heavy cast-iron lid of the closed manhole aside, they began their descent. The narrow, vertical shaft was composed of concrete rings, from each of which jutted a metal bracket. As soon as they were left alone, Ulman changed. He spoke to Artyom in short, monosyllabic phrases, mainly giving orders or admonishing him. As soon as the lid of the hatch had been removed, he ordered Artyom to put out the flashlight and, putting on the night vision instrument, dived inside first. Artyom had to crawl down, holding on to the brackets. He didn’t really understand what all these precautions were for, as, after the Kremlin, they hadn’t encountered any danger along their way. Finally, Artyom decided that the stalker had given Ulman special instructions and, having been left without a commander, he was enthusiastically filling the role himself. Ulman smacked Artyom on the foot, giving the sign to stop. Artyom obediently froze, waiting until the other man explained to him what was happening. But, instead of explanations, a soft thump was heard from below. It was Ulman jumping to the floor. A few seconds later, Artyom heard muffled gunshots.

‘You can come down,’ his partner said to Artyom in a loud whisper, and a light came on.

When the brackets ended, he released his hands, and dropped about two metres, landing on a cement floor. Lifting himself up, he dusted off his hands and looked around. They were in a short corridor, about fifteen paces long. The opening of the manhole yawned above them in the ceiling. There was another hatch just like it in the floor, with the very same cast-iron grooved cover. Beside it, in a pool of blood, lay a dead savage face downwards, squeezing his blow pipe tight in his hand even after death.

‘He was guarding the passage,’ Ulman replied quietly at Artyom’s questioning glance, ‘but he had fallen asleep. Most likely he didn’t expect anyone to crawl in from this side. He had put his ear to the hatch and dropped off.’

‘You killed him… what, while he was sleeping?’ Artyom asked.

‘So what? It wasn’t a fair fight.’ Ulman sniffed. ‘If nothing else, now he’ll know not to sleep on duty. Anyway, he was a bad person: he wasn’t observing their holy day. He was told not to go into the tunnels.’

Dragging the body to the side, Ulman opened the hatch and again put out his flashlight. This time the shaft was extremely short and led to an office filled with trash. A mountain of metal plates, gears, springs and nickel-plated handrails, enough parts for a whole coach, completely hid the manhole from prying eyes. They were heaped on top of each other in disarray right up to the ceiling and stayed there only by some kind of miracle. There was a narrow passage between this pile and the wall, but getting through it without touching and bringing a whole mountain of metal down was almost impossible.

A door buried in dirt up to its middle led from the office to an unusual square tunnel. A line from the left there: either there was an obstruction or they had stopped laying the track for some reason. To the right there was a standard tunnel, round and wide. It seemed as if there was a border between two intertwined subterranean worlds here. Even breathing was different: the air was damp but not so ghastly and stagnant as in the secret D-6 passages. They weren’t sure where to go. They decided not to move out at random, as there was a frontier post of the Fourth Reich located on this line. Judging by the map, it was only about twenty minutes from Mayakovskaya to Chekhovskaya. Digging into the bag with his things, Artyom found the bloodied map he had got from Daniel, and worked out the true direction from it. Less than five minutes later they reached Mayakovskaya.

Sitting down on a bench, Ulman took the heavy helmet off his head with a sigh of relief, wiped his red, damp face with a sleeve and ran his fingers through his dark-blond crew cut. Despite his powerful frame and having the habits of an old tunnel wolf, Ulman, it seemed, was only slightly older than Artyom.