Metro 2035 Read online

  “I won’t … Not with you! I won’t! Don’t touch her! Worse than animals! All of you! Where can you go? I know where!”

  “And where’s that? Eh?”

  “To search! Search for where other people have survived! Search! Leave this cursed place. Here we … Who are we turning into? Why you make me …”

  “A stalker! A dreamer! Did you hear that? Go up on top! Have you seen the back of your head? You’re going bald, brother! And you want us to follow you! Uh-huh!”

  “Aaaagh!”

  “Oh, that’s good! Oh that’s sweet! Eh, you little bitch?”

  “What can we do here, in the Metro? We’ll degenerate. People with two heads will be born! People with no fingers! Hunchbacks! People with no eyes will be born! Slime instead of eyes! One out of three with cancer! Goiter! Just go and count up how many have goiter! While you still know how to count! Your children won’t know how to do anything! You whip girls to amuse yourselves! But at the next … At Mendel … Mendeleev … It’s all over! Finished! They’re cavemen! In twenty years! Cave! Men!”

  “Hang on … Hang on there, stalker! You’re talking good sense there. He’s talking sense. Eh? He’s our man!”

  “And Mendeleev’s a grand old station! Compared to it, this brothel—phooey …”

  “But what he says is right! We’re degenerating! Our genes … Our genes are polluted. Let’s have a drink, stalker. What’s your name? Isn’t that right, guys?”

  “Our genes are polluted! There’s no purity. Pour him a drink … We’ve got something here with a little secret to it, stalker. Here’s to you. To the purity of our genes.”

  “Eh? What?”

  “There’s no other way we can save ourselves. It’s hard work. Dirty work. But someone’s got to do it. Here’s to us!”

  “To us!

  “To the Reich!”

  “To the Reich!”

  “Ah, go to hell. Me, drink to fascists … They fought … Our grandfathers …”

  “Just look at this stalker, eh? Getting his dander up! Fascists! You haven’t been following the Führer’s speeches! There haven’t been any fascists around for ages. A change in the general line! Even the nigg— Right! All men are brothers—are you taking this in? If their genes aren’t broken! People have to stick together. Against the freaks! Because to survive the Metro, there’s only one way to go … A-a-a-and …”

  “Purity! Of genes! Salvation! Of the people!” they yelled in chorus.

  “Darwin was a fine boyo for sure.”

  He wasn’t going anywhere on these legs.

  “And it has to be done! We have to purge, stalker! You climb up there. Keep climbing up. Look for a place where we can live. Go right ahead. Hahaha! And in the meantime we’ll be … purging. Everyone. Has his own. Job to do! You’re okay! Okay! Don’t distress yourself! Lay into her.”

  He gathered up enough strength to slip down and collapse under the table. And there were naked girls down there, stuck between the legs of the orators. He puked.

  He crept out of there on all fours. Followed by applause.

  “Vile brutes … You’ve degenerated into brutes … And me along with you … I’m a vile brute …”

  And then the rooms and tiny little rooms and cubbyholes started swirling about strangely. Were they real or not? Colored, made of cardboard glued together with naked, naked, naked … And naked people climb into his face, and someone naked tries to ride along on him, and all the time, all the time someone’s following him, prowling after him, catching up with him. Is it a devil or someone else, or have those merrymakers sent a killer? I wouldn’t want to find myself floundering in their noose. Are the ones who condemned me to death two years ago with them? Maybe they are and those steps are still there behind me and I have to move faster. But I’m on all fours, and what if it isn’t a killer after all but a devil—Satan come to take me. He wants to drag me back down eight meters into the next circle, and what’s there? Go away go away. I don’t want you. Where’s my mushroom—the mushroom she put in my pocket? Where’s my talisman against these evil spirits? Lord save and protect me.

  “Over here. This way. That’s it. We’ve got a comfortable little sofa in here too.”

  A strange hall, what a strange hall, and that chandelier and the ceiling here so high. Four meters. How can that really be possible, and where’s all this light from? What are they offering me? What kind of man is this? No strength left, no strength. Why the guards in the doorway, who are they? I beg your pardon, I couldn’t help overhearing. I got interested. A stalker, right? You dream of still finding other survivors. Don’t believe we’ve been left here all alone. It’s sickening, I understand. Sickening even to imagine that apart from our Metro no one was saved at all, absolutely nowhere.

  “Who? Who are you?”

  But what do you think, if it suddenly turned out that the world hadn’t really been destroyed at all? What, do you think people would leave the Metro? Abandon everything here. Start making a new life for themselves somewhere else instead? Don’t talk nonsense.

  “In an instant! Our disaster … Tragedy … We’ve got nowhere to go … All of us … We’re stuck slaving away down here … down in the vaults …”

  Come on now, what do you mean, nowhere to go? Look what a choice there is. There you have the fascists; there you have the communists; there you have any religious sect you like, just choose a god, or invent yourself one to suit your own taste. If you like you can even dig a stairway down into hell and basically you can settle wherever you like. There are lots of stations, rescue books if you want to, develop a taste for human flesh if you like, fight a war—by all means! What else do you need? Do you think people here are lacking something? And what would that be, I wonder? Take you, for instance? Yes, and you can do whatever you like with the women, they’re not going to go anywhere. Right, by the way, we’ve got something set up for today. Sasha, Sashenka, come on in. We’ve got a visitor. Yes, he’s unwashed and wild, but you know, don’t you, you know that’s precisely the kind I like to make happy. Come on, little one, be gentle with him, look what a crust he’s grown, this man, he’s got a splinter of ice in his heart, like little Kai, you have to breathe on his heart, hold him in your hands, or else it won’t thaw out. Yes, I want to watch how you caress him and he caresses you, but you don’t have to hurry, we’ve got time. Kiss him. That’s it. And don’t forget about me, my little one.

  No, stop, don’t. I’ve got a mushroom here, and it will protect me. Of course you’re the devil, the devil, but you must be afraid of mushrooms. All holiness is in them. You’re Sasha. Where have I heard that name? Your name’s Sasha Sasha Sasha Sasha Sasha.

  * * *

  “Hey! Do you hear me? Hey-ey! Is he even breathing at all?”

  “Seemed like he was breathing. Try blocking his nose. If he’s alive, he’ll open his mouth.

  “Hey! Brother! How are you? Is it definitely him?”

  Something white. White and cracked. A black crack. Like the river Moscow exposed between banks still covered in snow. And it hurts; it hurts the river so badly when the ice breaks. Meltwater. Spring, probably.

  “Turn him over. Why has he got his face stuck in the tiles?”

  The picture changed: No more snow or river to be seen, but the pain is still flowing along it, strange. His cheek’s scorched. His arm’s smarting. Someone’s eye has manifested itself in the empty void. It looks inside Artyom, creeping in where it hasn’t been invited.

  “It’s him! Get up, Artyom! What did you do to him?”

  “It’s nothing to do with us. He was like that already!”

  “And where are his clothes? Where’s his jacket? And his vest? And what’s this here, on his arm? Bloody hell …”

  “I definitely didn’t do that. I swear on my own mother.”

  “Your mother … Okay, get him up. Get him up, I say! That’s it. Sit him with his back against the wall. And bring some water.”

  The distance opened up. A corridor, doors, doors a
nd light at the end. Maybe that was where he ought to go? Could that be where his mother was waiting for him?

  “Mama …” Artyom called.

  “He can hear everything. Right as rain. Coming back from outer space. Mixed worms and moonshine, did you? You mixed them, you suicidal freak. And something on top of them as well. How long is it since you lost him?”

  “We parted the day before yesterday.”

  “A good job you copped on. A corner like this … He could have been lying here for a week. Even six months.”

  “We don’t abandon our friends in trouble. Here’s your three cartridges. Hey, Artyomich! That’s it. No more of that. Reveille. The bugle’s calling.”

  Something clicked and the pain eased off a bit. They changed the lenses. First they focused one on the world, and then the other, selecting the right one. Eventually it all matched up and outlines became distinct. They adjusted the focus.

  “Who are you?”

  “A shit shifter in a leather coat! Lyokha, that’s who!”

  “Why? Why you?”

  It’s strange. Strange, Artyom thought excruciatingly. And there was something even stranger: This wasn’t their Lyokha. Something was missing. Missing.

  The stink.

  * * *

  Because when Artyom disappeared in TsvetnoI Boulevard, Homer wasn’t able to find him. Then he ran into Lyokha in the labyrinth, and Lyokha recognized him and helped, thanks for that. They found him on the third day in a toilet that didn’t work, smeared with filth, with no clothes left except his trousers.

  “What happened?”

  He didn’t know.

  Grope around in your memory with your hands, and they don’t catch anything. Blackness, just like in the tunnel. Is there anything there or isn’t there—you can’t tell. Maybe it’s empty. Or maybe there’s someone standing right behind your back, breathing on the back of your head and smiling. Or maybe that isn’t a smile, but gaping jaws. You can see damn all.

  “My arm. What’s wrong with my arm?” Artyom touched it and winced.

  “Don’t you remember that either?” Homer was alarmed.

  “Not a thing.”

  “Your tattoo.”

  “What about it?”

  On his forearm it used to say: “If not we, then who?” But not a single letter was left. They were all covered in something charred and swollen, with something red and white oozing out from under it. Over every letter there was a little round brand.

  “They burned it out with a cigarette,” Lyokha announced.” What was it, then? ‘Lusya, I’m yours forever’? Did you run into a jealous one?”

  The Spartan tattoo. Everyone in the Order had one like it. When you were accepted, they marked you with it. A reminder: This is forever; there aren’t any ex-members of the Order. And Artyom, it was a year since he’d been discharged, but he’d have choked before he would have erased those words.

  “Who could have done this?” Homer asked.

  Artyom touched the cauterized bumps without speaking. It stung, but not as badly as he would have liked. More than one day had gone by. A crust had already started growing. A crust?

  A table floating in the moonshine like a little rescue raft, and behind the table, faces of some kind, and he himself, Artyom, clinging to this raft for a while, but they didn’t torture him there, they didn’t burn him, they applauded him for something … And after that it was all some kind of nonsense or other. Or was it maybe a delirious dream? There was no way he could tear his dreams apart from the reality.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “Take a hair of the dog,” Lyokha suggested.” That’ll revive you. And here’s a little jacket I got for you, to replace yours.”

  Artyom wrapped himself in the jacket. It was two sizes too big for him.

  He couldn’t make out if it was night or day at TsvetnoI Boulevard. There was the same soup in the bowl, the irrepressible neighbors were still moaning and shaking the ramshackle walls in the same way, the glutinous music was stewing in the murky air, a different girl was swinging round the pole in exactly the same way. Artyom took a sip of his hot soup—exactly the same as at Exhibition, exactly the same as everywhere in the Metro, and thought slowly: Why this brand? Who could have done it? Who had dared?

  The Order had never interfered in the squabbles between the lines. It had always stood above the fighting. Miller despised politics. He wouldn’t tolerate any command structure above him, he didn’t obey anybody’s commands, and he wasn’t on anybody’s payroll. Twenty years ago he had been the first to swear an oath not to take sides. To defend, without making any exceptions, all the people in the Metro. Against the kind of threats that no one else could stand up to, or the kind that no one understood yet. The oath of the Order was only administered to a few, and only after long trials and tests—Miller didn’t want an army. Former special services soldiers, stalkers, and agents of the Order wandered through the Metro, invisible, reconnoitering, remembering, reporting. Miller listened to them. And if a threat arose—a genuine, unavoidable threat against the entire Metro—then the Order struck a calculated, deadly blow. Because of its small numbers it couldn’t wage open wars; and so Miller tried to destroy the enemy secretly, suddenly, in the embryo, in the cradle. And so it turned out that not many knew about the Order, and everyone who knew was afraid of it.

  Only now someone hadn’t been afraid.

  But why hadn’t they finished off the job?

  “While I was looking for you, I walked into a dead end. I saw stained glass pictures there. At Novoslobodskaya they broke, but here they’ve survived!” Homer paused and added.” Filthy, rotten station.”

  “We have to get going.” Artyom put down his empty bowl.

  “I’m leaving in an hour!” Lyokha announced.

  “Going back? You think they’ll let you into Hansa?”

  “Nah. I thought about it and I realized. I’ve outgrown shit. I’m going to join the Iron Legion.”

  “Eh?” Artyom turned his eyes towards the broker: red, strained eyes.

  That was what Lyokha had washed himself off for.

  “I listened to the lads: It’s good sense. Until we normal people fling the freaks out onto the surface, life here won’t be worth living. Anyway, I’m setting off to the Reich with a platoon of volunteers. Remember me kindly.”

  Homer merely blinked moistly: Apparently he was already in the know

  “What are you, a cretin?” Artyom asked Lyokha.” A cretin, is that it?”

  “You go to hell! What do you know about the freaks? Do you at least understand what a savage mafia they have right through all the Metro? And all those bastards at Riga … For dead sure! I’m going back to them in metal-tipped boots. They issue these brilliant boots there.”

  “I know a thing or two about freaks,” Artyom replied.

  “Well that’s it!” Lyokha said, as if that was the end of the conversation.

  “Well now,” said Artyom.” We’ll meet up again sometime, then!”

  “Definitely,” Lyokha responded merrily “We’ll definitely meet up.”

  He got up and crunched his finger joints happily: It was time to take his life into his own hands. At that point his glance fell on the chicken pecking at the floor.

  “Maybe we should divide it up then?” he suggested.

  “What about Olezhek, by the way?” asked Artyom, suddenly remembering.

  “Snuffed it!” the broker declared cheerfully.” Just as I thought he would.”

  * * *

  He was still unsteady on his feet. But he didn’t want to stay at TsvetnoI a single second longer than necessary. But forcing his way through Gomorrah with a knapsack and a big bag was even harder than doing it naked.

  The labyrinth came to life; the kaleidoscope of crummy dives shook itself, settled into a new pattern, and the right way out of there didn’t work anymore.

  And so, instead of the pedestrian passage to Trubnaya Station, they were jostled out to the canal tracks.<
br />
  “Oh! Look here now. It’s our brother in arms! The stalker!”

  It was spoken to his back.

  Artyom didn’t even think it was meant for him. But a slap on the shoulder made him turn round.

  Four man in black uniforms, with three-legged spiders on the sleeves, were standing there: Artyom didn’t recognize them at first. And then it was as if he glanced into that three-liter jar of salted mushrooms, and there in the murky brine their faces turned towards him. From out of the day before yesterday. This one … This one, hadn’t he been sitting at the table? He welcomed Artyom and poured him the poison. A mole on the bridge of his nose. Artyom had peered hard at that mole of his, while the others … But what had they talked about? And after that conversation, why were they glad to see him? They ought to bite his throat out.

  “Remember, comrades? That stalker, right? The one who’s one of us! And he crawled away from us like a moon rover.”

  “Ho-ho! Well fancy seeing you again!” Artyom hadn’t seen such sincere smiles for a long time.

  “Why not come along with us? We need men of principle!” the man with the mole suggested.

  Their collars had Unteroffizier tabs, and behind them a column of riff-raff was lined up in threes. Somewhere at the end of it Artyom glimpsed the former broker as well. He guessed: the volunteers. The Iron Legion. For the purity of our genes. But then, hadn’t he drunk to that? He ought to have puked then instead.

  “Go get fucked.”

  And he stomped away from them, well out of harm’s way.

  But what he fancied now was that all the inhabitants of the glorious city of Gomorrah were watching him through narrowed eyes, recognizing him and winking at him: What’s all this then, we met you just recently down on all fours without any trousers, why don’t you say hello?

  He remembered: He puked.

  And he remembered something else too: Someone following him, pursuing him, keeping up with him—sober, contemptuous, adult—while Artyom fled from his disgrace on sprawling hands and knees like a one-year-old child. And that man wanted something from Artyom.

  As clammy as a nightmare, but was it a nightmare?