Exactly in the centre of the courtyard, with their faces pointed up, several grey creatures stood motionless, looking at the windows, and - it seemed - directly at him. Petrified, Artyom pressed himself against a side wall and resumed his descent, treading softly. Now that he had stopped tramping his boots down the stairs, he could hear the patter of bare feet, which got louder and louder. Then, having completely lost control of himself, he resumed a headlong rush down the stairs.
Jumping out at the next level so as to fitfully look around in search of a familiar door, not finding it and then flinging himself onward, stopping and squeezing into dark corners when it seemed he could hear steps nearby, desperately looking around in dead-end passages and crawlways and again entering the stairs to go down one more floor or go up two more levels - perhaps he overlooked something? - understanding that the infernal noise with which he was desperately trying to find an exit from this labyrinth would attract every monstrous inhabitant of the Library but unable to calm himself down, Artyom pointlessly and unsuccessfully tried to find the exit. That is, until he made out a familiar, half-bent silhouette against the background of a knocked-out window as he was about to enter the stairwell again. Artyom moved back, dived into the first passage that presented itself, pressed his back to the wall, pointed his rifle at the opening from where he reckoned the librarian had to appear, and held his breath . . .
Silence.
The brute either decided not to pursue Artyom alone, or was waiting for Artyom to blunder and come out of hiding. He didn’t have to go back the same way, though. The passage led onward. Thinking hard for a second, Artyom began to step backward from the opening, keeping his sight trained on it.
The corridor turned to the side, but at that very place the turn began, there was a black hole in the wall. The area was strewn with shards of brick and sprinkled with lime. Obeying an impulse, Artyom stepped through the hole, into a room full of broken furniture. Pieces of photographic and movie film were scattered over the floor. A slightly open door could be seen ahead, from behind which a narrow wedge of pale moonlight fell onto the floor. Stepping carefully on the treacherously creaky parquet, Artyom reached the door and looked out.
He recognized the room, although now he was at its opposite end. The imposing statue of the person reading, the incredible height of the ceiling and the gigantic windows, the path which led to the grotesque wooden portal of the exit, as well as the disturbed rows of reading tables along the sides: without a doubt, he was in the Main Reading Room. He stood on the enclosed wooden balustrade of the narrow gallery that girdled the hall at a height of four metres. It was from this gallery that the librarians came down at them. He had no idea how he had managed to get here from the stack archives, not to mention from the other side, bypassing the route he and Daniel had travelled to get there. But there was no time to reflect. The librarians could be hard on his heels.
Artyom ran down one of the two symmetrical stairs that led to the pedestal of the monument, and sprang to the doors. Not far from the carved wooden arch of the exit, several deformed bodies of librarians lay spread-eagled on the floor, and as he passed by where the battle had taken place, Artyom almost fell after losing his footing in a pool of thickening blood.
The heavy door was opened unwillingly, and a bright white light blinded him at once. Recalling Melnik’s instructions, Artyom gripped his flashlight in his right hand and hastily described a triple circle, giving the sign that he was approaching with peaceful intentions. The dazzling beam immediately went to the side and Artyom, having thrown his machine gun behind his back, slowly moved forward into a round room with columns and a couch, still not knowing who was coming to meet him.
A light machine gun stood on its tripod on the floor, and Melnik was leaning over his partner. Ten was reclining with his eyes closed on the couch, making short moaning sounds from time to time. His right leg was twisted unnaturally, and, having seen him, Artyom understood that it was broken at the knee and bent, not forward, but backward. He could not imagine how such a thing might occur and what strength the one who had been able to so mutilate the stalwart tracker must have possessed.
‘Where’s your comrade?’ Melnik tossed the question at Artyom, turning away from Ten for a second.
‘The librarians . . . in the depository. They attacked,’ Artyom tried to explain. For some reason he didn’t want to say that he had killed Daniel himself, out of mercy.
‘Did you find the Book?’ the tracker asked just as abruptly.
‘No,’ Artyom shook his head, ‘I didn’t hear anything there and I didn’t feel anything.’
‘Give me a hand lifting him up . . . No, better take his rucksack, and mine, too. See what his leg looks like . . .’ They nearly tore it off. ‘Now he can only be carried piggy-back,’ Melnik nodded at Ten.
Artyom gathered all the equipment, three rucksacks, two machine guns and the light machine gun, about thirty kilos of weight in all, and it wasn’t easy lifting it. It was even more difficult for Melnik, shouldering the limp body of his partner with some difficulty, and even the short trip down the staircase - toward the exit - took them several long minutes.
They could no longer see any librarians all the way to the doors, but when Artyom flung open the heavy wooden doors, letting through the groaning tracker, a squawking howl was heard from the darkest bowels of the building, full of hatred and anguish. Artyom felt shivers running through him again and he hurried to shut the door. Now the main thing was to reach the metro as soon as possible.
‘Lower your eyes!’ Melnik ordered when they were on the street.
‘The star will be right in front of you now. Don’t even think of looking over the roofs . . .’
Barely moving his stiffening legs, Artyom obediently stared at the ground, dreaming only of overcoming those inconceivably sprawling two hundred metres from the library to the descent to Borovitskaya. However, the tracker wouldn’t allow Artyom to enter the metro.
‘It’s impossible to go to the police now. You don’t have the Book, and you lost their guide,’ Melnik pronounced, gently lowering his wounded comrade to the ground and breathing heavily. ‘The Brahmins would hardly like it. And, mainly, this means that you are not the chosen one and they have entrusted their secrets to you. You’d disappear without a trace if you returned to the police. They have specialists there, regardless whether they are intelligent or not. And even I won’t be able to protect you. Now you have to leave. It’s best you go to Smolenskaya. Go straight through, there are few houses, and there’s no need to go deep into any alleys. Maybe you’ll get there. If you hurry, before sunrise.’
‘What sunrise?’ Artyom asked, puzzled. The news that he would have to reach the other metro station on the surface alone, to which, judging by the map, was about two kilometres away, was for him like a kick in the head.
‘The sun. People are night animals, and it’s better for them if they don’t show themselves on the surface by day. But there are those who crawl out of the ruins to warm themselves in the sun and you’ll regret it a hundred times over if you interrupt them. And I’m not just talking about the light: you’ll go blind in two seconds flat, and the dark glasses won’t save you.’
‘But why am I going alone?’ Artyom asked, still not believing his ears.
‘Never fear. You’ll be walking straight ahead the whole way. You’ll exit onto Kalininskiy and continue along it, there aren’t any turns. Don’t show yourself on the way, but stay really close to the houses, they live everywhere there. Go on, until you reach the intersection with a second broad avenue, this will be Sadovoye Koltso. There you turn left and straight ahead to a white stone apartment building. It was once the House of Fashion . . . You’ll find it right away, right opposite, across Sadovoye, stands a half-ruined very tall building, the trade centre. There will be sort of a yellow arch behind the House of fashion on which “Metro Station Smolenskaya” is written. Turn into it, you’ll come to a small square, a sort of inside courtyard, and you’ll see the station itself there. If everything is quiet, try to get below. One entrance is closed there and guarded, they keep it for their own trackers. Knock on the gate like this: three fast raps, two slow, then three fast. They should open it. Tell them that Melnik sent you and wait for me there. I’m taking Ten to the infirmary and will leave right away. I’ll be there before noon. I’ll find you myself. Take the machine guns with your, we don’t know how it all will turn out.’
‘But there’s another station, closer, on the map, you know . . . Arbatskaya,’ Artyom had recalled the name.
‘There is such a station. But you don’t have to go near it. And you don’t even want to. You’ll pass right by it, stay on the other side of the street and move quickly, but don’t run. That’s it. Don’t waste any time!’ he concluded, and he nudged Artyom towards the exit from the vestibule. Artyom didn’t want to argue anymore. Having thrown one of the machine guns over his shoulder, he held the second at the ready, went into the street and hurried back toward the monument, covering his eyes with his right hand so as not to see the beckoning radiance of the Kremlin’s stars by accident.
CHAPTER 14
There Up Above
Before reaching the old stone man in the easy chair, Artyom turned left in order to cut across the corner of the street along the Library steps. Passing it, he glanced at the majestic building and a shiver went down his spine: Artyom remembered the terrible inhabitants of the place. Now the Library once more was immersed in dreary silence. The custodians of the predominant silence in it most likely had dispersed among the dark corners, licking their wounds after their impudent incursions and preparing to pay the next adventurers back for it.
The pallid, drained face of Daniel appeared before his eyes. It occurred to Artyom that the Brahmin, not without reason, had been frightened of these creatures, refusing even to speak of them. Had he seen his own death in his nightmares? His body would remain forever lying in the stacks, embracing the librarian who had killed him. Of course, if these creatures disdain carrion . . . Artyom winced. Would he ever be able to forget how his partner, who had become almost a friend to him in only two days, had died? It seemed to him that Daniel would trouble his dreams for a while longer, trying again and again to speak with him in the night, putting together indistinct words with his bloodstained lips.
Exiting onto the broad avenue, Artyom hastily turned over in his mind the instructions given him by Melnik. Go straight to the Kalininskiy intersection with Sadovoye Koltso, do not turn off anywhere . . . Try to guess again which of the streets is Koltso itself. Don’t go into the middle of the road, but also don’t press up to the walls of the houses, and mainly, get to Smolenskaya before the sun comes up.
The famous Kalininskiy high-rises, which Artyom knew from the yellowed postcards with views of Moscow, began half a kilometre from the very place where he was standing. Now, low, detached houses stood along the sides of the street, which curved left into New Arbat. The outlines of buildings, clear close-up, blurred when he moved away and they blended into the twilight. The moon was hidden behind low clouds. The meagre milky light barely filtered through them and only when the misty curtain had dissipated, did the ghostly silhouettes of the homes again take shape for a short while. But even in such lighting, in the alleys that dissected the street every hundred metres, the powerful contour of an ancient cathedral could be seen on the left. A huge winged shadow once more circled over the cross-capped dome.
Perhaps it was for that reason Artyom stopped, in order to look at the soaring beast in the air, that he noticed it. It was hard to determine in the twilight whether his imagination was drawing the strange figure that had stopped dead in the depths of the alley and had fused with the partly destroyed walls of the houses. And only when he examined it further, did it appear to him that this blob of darkness moved a little and possessed its own free will. It wasn’t easy to determine precisely the form and dimensions of the creature at such a distance, but it clearly stood on two legs and Artyom decided to act as the stalker had told him. Switching on his flashlight, he aimed the beam into the alley and made a circular movement with it three times.
There was no response. Artyom waited for it in vain for a minute until he realized that staying in that same place could be very dangerous. But before he could go on, he illuminated the motionless figure in the alley again. What he saw forced him to turn off his flashlight immediately and try to pass the alley as soon as he could.
It clearly had not been a man. Its silhouette had become more distinct in the spot of light, and it was no less than two and a half metres, its shoulders and neck were missing and the large round head emerged directly from a powerful body. The creature had hidden, biding its time. Despite this apparent indecisiveness, Artyom felt in his bones a threat from it.
He did the hundred and fifty metres to the last alley in less than a minute. Taking a hard look, he understood that it wasn’t even an alley, but an opening burnt into a residential neighbourhood by some kind of weapon: they had either bombed here or simply demolished a whole row of buildings with heavy military equipment. Artyom looked with curiosity at the half-ruined homes fading into the distance but then his attention was fixed on the unclear, motionless shadow. It was enough to put the beam of the flashlight on it for a second to dispel all doubt: it was that very same creature or its mate. Standing right in the middle of the alley in the same block, it wasn’t even trying to hide.
If the creature was the same one he had observed in the block behind him earlier, that meant it had snuck along the street parallel to the one he was walking along, Artyom thought. It turned out that it had covered this distance twice as fast as he: for at the very moment he reached the next crossing, it was already waiting for him there. But something else was even worse: this time he also saw a similar figure in the alley to the right of the avenue. As the first one, it was standing there, frozen in place, like a statue. For a moment Artyom thought that perhaps they weren’t living beings, but signs placed here by someone for intimidation or as a warning . . .