Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) Read online

  Something only remains if it conquers the fantasy of mankind, makes their heart beat faster, to move them, make them feel something. A gripping story of a hero or a great love could survive an entire civilization because it remains in the brain and is told by generation to generation.

  When he had realized that he transformed himself from a wannabe scientist to an alchemist – and out of Nikolai Ivanowitsch became Homer.

  And from now on he no longer spent his nights to create some chronics but to search for the formula for immortality. For a story as long living as Gilgamesh and a hero that was tough as Odysseus. On the thread of this story he would attach all his accumulated knowledge. And in a world where paper was transformed into warmth, where you carelessly sacrificed the past for a small moment in the here and now this legend of this hero would storm the hearts of the people and redeem them from their collective amnesty.

  But the sought after formula let him wait, the hero just didn’t want to step onto the stage. The copying of the newspaper articles hadn’t taught Homer how to create myths, to breathe life into this golem and make this made up story more interesting than reality. His worktable seemed like Frankenstein’s laboratory to him: Crumpled pages with fragments of the first chapters of his saga, which characters weren’t convincing, weren’t able to survive. The only things that he gotten from these nightly seating were dark rings under his eyes and a sore bitten lip.

  And Homer still didn’t give up on his new destiny that easy. He chased away every suspicion that it could be that he wasn’t suited for it, that you needed a skill to create worlds that he hadn’t received.

  He just had to wait for an inspiration, he said to himself … And from where should it come from? From the humid air in the station maybe? The tea ritual at his home or during his shift doing agriculture? Or while on guard duty, which became and more scarce for him because of his age?

  No, he needed excitement, adventure and the storm of passion. Maybe then the dams of his mind would break and he could start his creation …

  Even in the hardest times the Nagatinskaya had never been abandoned completely. Of course it wasn’t an ideal place to life. Nothing grew here and the exits were closed.

  But many used the station to slip under the radar for a while or for some intimate time with their lover.

  But now the station was empty.

  Hunter moved with silent steps up the stairs, up to the tracks and then he stopped. Homer followed him, breathing heavily and looked around nervously at all sides. The station was dark, only the dust hanging in air glittered in the shine of their lamps. The sparse hills of shredded cardboard on which the inhabitants of the Nagatinskaya slept on were spread out all over the floor. Homer leaned his back against a pillar and sledded down slowly to the ground. The Nagatinskaya had once been one of his favorite stations because of the elegant and colorful marble mosaics. Now the station was dark and lifeless. The Nagatinskaya was nothing like he remembered.

  Like the picture of a dead man on his tomb, from an old picture from his passport at a time where he didn’t know that he wasn’t just looking into a camera but eternity.

  “Not a single soul is here.” Said Homer hesitantly and confused.

  “Except one.” Said Hunter and nodded into Homers direction.

  “I meant …” Started Homer but Hunter cut him off with a gesture of his hand

  At the end of the station where the row of pillars ended and even the brigadier’s search light couldn’t shine, something crawled slowly onto the platform …

  Homer fell onto the ground next to him, lightened his fall with his arms and stood up clumsily. Hunters lamp was turned off and the brigadier himself had disappeared into thin air. Sweating because of his fear, Homer switched his rifle to auto-fire and pressed the stock shivering against his shoulder.

  Out of the distance he heard two suppressed shots.

  Encouraged he looked past the pillar and hasted forward. In the middle of the platform Hunter was standing upright. At his feet was lying a difficult to see, skinny and pitiful figure. It seemed to be made out of boxes and rags and only had a slight remembrance to a human being. But it was one. You couldn’t determine its age or sex – in its dirty face you could only see its eyes. It made almost inaudible, sighing sounds and tried to crawl away from the brigadier. He seemed to have shot through both of its legs.

  “Where is everyone?” Why is nobody here?” Hunter put his foot on the stinking bundle of torn rags that the homeless person was wearing.

  “They are all gone … Left me alone. Left me all by myself” It croaked. At the same time its hands scrapped over the granite without moving forwards.

  “Where did they go?”

  “To the Tulskaya …”

  Homer had reached both of them and joined the conversation immediately: “What is going on there?”

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  The homeless person made a grimace. “Everybody that went there, died there. Go and ask them. I had no more strength to move around in those tunnels. I’d rather die here”

  The brigadier didn’t give up: “Why did they leave?”

  “They were afraid, boss. The station got more and emptier over time. So they decided to break through. Nobody returned”

  “Not a single one?” Hunter raised his pistol.

  “Nobody. Only one.” The man corrected himself.

  When he realized that the barrel of the gun was still pointed at him he floundered around like an ant under a magnifying glass.

  “He went to the Nagornaya. I was asleep. I could have imagined it”

  “When?”

  The homeless man shook his head. “I don’t have a watch. Maybe yesterday, maybe last week”

  No more questions came but the barrel of the pistol was still pointed at the forehead of the interrogated man.

  Hunter was silent. Strange, but he was breathing heavily; you could have thought that the conversation with the bum had cost him a lot of strength.

  “Can I …” Asked the homeless man.

  “There, eat!” Growled the brigadier and before Homer knew what was going he had pulled the trigger twice. The dark blood coming from the hole in the unlucky man’s forehead shoot over his wide open eyes. He fell to the ground – once again nothing but rags and cardboard. Without looking up Hunter loaded four more bullets into the clip of the Stetschkin (a suppressed pistol with almost no recoil) and jumped on the tracks. “We will find out for ourselves soon enough” He yelled at the old man.

  Homer lowered himself unwillingly over the body, took a piece cloth and put it over the destroyed head of the homeless man. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking.

  “Why did you kill him?” He asked weakly.

  “Ask yourself” Answered Hunter in a dull voice.

  Even when he gathered all his strength the only thing he could still do was open and close his eyes. Strange that he had awoken at all … He had been laying there unconscious for about an hour and his body had felt as numb as if it was covered with a layer of ice. His tongue had dried at his palate and a ton heavy weight was lying on his chest. No he couldn’t even say goodbye to his daughter, it would have been the only thing worth delaying the end of his eternal fight for survival.

  Sasha didn’t smile anymore. It seemed she was now dreaming uneasy, laid rolled up on her camp bet, both arms crossed in front of her chest. Even when she was a child he had always woken her when she had been tormented by nightmares, but now he had only enough strength to slowly movie his eyelids.

  And then even that became harder and harder. When he wanted hold on till Sasha awoke he would have to continue the fight. It lasted for over twenty years now, every day, every minute and he was damned tired of it. Tired of fighting, hiding, hunting, proving, hoping and lying.

  While his mind darkened he only had two wishes: To see Sasha’s eyes one more time and then … To finally find peace. But he couldn’t do it. Once again the pictures of the past rose up in front of his inner eye and
mixed with reality.

  He had to make a decision. To break others or be broken himself. To punish or to penance …

  The guardsmen closed the rows. Every single one of them was loyal to him alone. Ready to die here and now, to let themselves be torn apart by the masses or to shot at the innocent. He was the commander of the last unbreakable station of the metro, president of a no longer existing confederation. Under his soldiers his authority was unquestioned, unmistaken, every single of his orders was to be executed immediately, without question. He would take full responsibility for it like he had always done.

  When he retreated now this station would sink into anarchy at first and then it would be swallowed by the boiling red empire that had swelled over its usual borders and had annexed more and more territories. When he would open fire on the demonstrators, power would remain in his hands – at least for some time. And if he wouldn’t shy away from mass executions and torture maybe even forever.

  He aimed his rifle. One moment after him the entire unit did so too.

  There they raged, not just a few hundredth demonstrators but a giant, faceless human mass: Bared fangs, wide open eyes, raised fists.

  He unsecured his rifle. His unit answered with the same clicking sound.

  It was time take fate into his own hands.

  He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. Chalk fell from the ceiling. For a moment the masses turned silent. He signaled his fighters to lower their weapons and made on step towards the demonstrators. He had made his decision.

  And finally the memory let him in peace.

  Sasha was still sleeping. He took his last breath, tried to look at her one last time but he could no longer raise his eyelids … But instead of eternal, impenetrable darkness he saw an unimaginable blue sky – clear and bright, like the eyes of his daughter.

  “Stop!”

  Homer would have almost jumped and raised his hands, he was that surprised. But he kept it together. The voice – probably from a megaphone – out of the depths of the tunnel had surprised him. The brigadier wasn’t surprised at all. Tense as a cobra before it strikes; he took the heavy automatic rifle from his back almost unnoticeable.

  Hunter hadn’t just refused to answer a single one of the old man’s questions but hadn’t said a word. The one and a half kilometer from the Nagatinskaya to the Tulskaya had felt as endless as the journey to Golgatha. He feared that death waited at the end of the tunnel and it was getting harder for him to retain Hunter’s speed.

  At least he had time to prepare himself and to think about old times. He thought about Yelena, cursed himself for his egoism and asked her to forgive him. He once saw the magical, soft, sad light on that slightly rainy summer day on the Tverskaya. He regretted that he hadn’t said what should happen to his newspapers before he left.

  He had been ready to die – to be ripped apart by monsters, eaten by giant rats, poisoned by some kind of gas … What other explanation was there why the Tulskaya had transformed itself into a black hole which had swallowed everything outside and didn’t let it go?

  But when he heard the mysterious but familiar human voice he didn’t know what to think anymore. Had the Tulskaya just been captured? But who was able to destroy all the recon teams of the Sevastopolskaya, vagabonds that traveled through the tunnels systematically, not even sparing women and old people?

  “Thirty steps forward!” Said the voice out of the distance.

  It sounded vaguely familiar and if he would have had time to think about it he would’ve been able to determine whose it was.

  Wasn’t that someone from Sevastopolskaya?

  Hunter put his Kalashnikov in one hand and carefully counted his steps: For the thirty Homer needed fifty. In front of them was a fuzzy barricade that had been constructed out of random objects. Strangely the defenders didn’t use any light …

  “Lamps out!” Commanded somebody from behind the pile. “One of you, come twenty steps closer”

  Hunter unsecured his rifle and moved forwards.

  Homer remained behind alone again; he didn’t dare to refuse the orders. In the deep darkness that reigned here now, he carefully sat down on the ground, reached for the wall and leaned at it.

  The steps of the brigadier stopped silent at the wanted distance. Somebody asked him something inaudible and he gave a growling answer. Then the situation got tense: Instead of the first neutral mood now you could hear curses and insults. It seemed that Hunter demanded something that the invisible guardians denied him.

  Now they almost screamed at each other and Homer could almost make out single words … But he could make out one word: “Punishment!”

  In this moment the sound of a Kalashnikov ended the conversation and a heavy salve from a Petscheng (a heavy machine gun) answered. Homer threw himself to the ground, unsecured his rifle but didn’t fire, he didn’t knew if he should shot or not, or at whom.

  But it was over before it started; Homer hadn’t even time to aim his rifle.

  In the small brakes between the machine gun salves that almost sounded like Morse signals, the stomach of the tunnel made a long shrieking sound that Homer wouldn’t have mistaken for anything else.

  The hermetic doors where closing! Tons of steel slammed against each other muzzling the screams and the machine gun salves.

  The only entrance to the metro was closed.

  Now there was no more hope for the Sevastopolskaya.

  From the other side (chapter 6)

  One moment after that Homer almost believed that he had imagined everything: The vague outline of the barricades at the end of the tunnel, the somehow familiar distorted voice … When the light went out all other sounds faded as well. He felt like a convict that had been put a sack over his face just before the execution. In the absolute darkness and sudden silence the whole world seemed to have disappeared. Homer touched his face to reassure himself that he hadn’t vanished into this cosmic blackness as well. Then he calmed down again, tried to find his lamp and held the trembling beam of light in front of him where a few seconds ago the invisible battle had taken place. About thirty meters from where he had taken cover during the fight the tunnel ended. A steel door cut through the tunnel like the blade of a guillotine. So he had heard right: Somebody had really activated the hermetic door. Homer knew of its existence but he hadn’t thought that it was still functional. But it turned out that you could still use it. His from paperwork weakened eyes didn’t immediately see the human figure that leaned on the iron wall. Homer pointed his rifle forward and took a step back. At first he thought that one of the men from the other side had remained outside in the confusion, but then he recognized Hunter.

  The brigadier didn’t move. Homer started to sweat.

  Hesitantly he approached Hunter. Probably he would see blood on the wall … But no. Even though they had fired at Hunter in an empty tunnel with a machine gun he was completely unharmed. He pressed his mutilated ear against the metal and listened for sounds that only he could hear.

  “What happened?” Homer asked carefully and got closer.

  The brigadier didn’t pay attention to him. He whispered something to himself, repeating the words that were spoken on the other side of the closed door. Several minutes passed till he moved away from the door and turned to Homer: “We go back”

  “What happened?”

  “There are bandits. We need reinforcements”

  “Bandits?” Asked the old man confused. “That voice back there seemed …”

  “The entire Tulskaya is in the hand of the enemy. We will have to storm it. For that we need backup with flamethrowers”

  “Why flamethrowers?” Homer was beside himself.

  “To be sure. We go back.” Hunter turned around and moved away from Homer.

  Before Homer followed Hunter he looked at the door observantly, yes he even pressed his own ear against the cold metal in the hope to hear a part of the conversation as well. But he heard only silence.

  And suddenly Homer realized th
at he didn’t believe Hunter. Whoever this enemy was that had captured the station behaved completely incomprehensible. Why did they activate the hermetic door? To protect themselves from two people? Which bandits negotiated with some armed men instead of mowing them down before they even got to them?

  And then: What meant the word “punishment” that the mysterious guardian had mentioned?

  Nothing was more valuable than a human life, Sasha’s father had once said.

  For him it weren’t just empty words, not just a saying. There had been a time where he thought differently, he hadn’t been youngest military commander in the whole line for nothing.

  With twenty you don’t think much about murder and death. Your whole life seems like a game and in the worst case scenario you just start over again. It wasn’t a coincidence that the armies of the world recruited young men that who been students before. And those boys that played war were only blue and red arrows for only one man that commanded thousands. One that didn’t think about ripped off legs, guts swelling out and crushed skulls when he decided to sacrifice a regiment.

  There had been a time where her father had hated his enemies as much as himself. Back then he had looked at tasks that put him in danger with strange frivolity. But he had never foolishly moved forward but with strict calculations. Smart, striving and indifferent for his life he couldn’t feel reality, didn’t waste a thought about the consequences and felt no regrets. He had never shot at women and children but he had executed deserters with his own hands and had always been the first to storm the enemy fortifications. Pain couldn’t harm him. Most of the time he didn’t care.

  Until he met Sasha’s mother.

  She defeated him, him who was used to winning with her indifference. His only weakness, his ambition that had driven him against machineguns before was now directed at a desperate storm attack that always transformed itself into a long siege.