‘Take his shield, helmet and machine gun! Quickly,’ he ordered Artyom. ‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ he screamed to the rest.
The titanium helmet was soiled with the awful foam, and he would have to take it from the dead man’s head. Artyom was unable to force himself to do it. Limiting himself to the machine gun and shield, he took his place at the rear of the formation, covered himself with the shield, and moved behind the others. Now they were nearly running. Then someone threw a smoke bomb far ahead and, availing themselves of the confusion, the party began to climb down to the tracks. Another fighter cried out in surprise and fell to the ground. Now only three were able to carry the stretcher with the wounded Anton. Artyom was reluctant to show himself from behind the shield and fired back several times without looking. Then things grew strangely quiet: the needles were no longer flying at them, although, judging by the rustle of the steps and voices all around, the pursuit had not ceased. Summoning his courage, Artyom looked out from behind his shield. The party was ten metres from the entrance to the tunnel. The first fighters had already stepped inside. Two, turning, swept the approaches with their lights and covered the rest. But there was no need for it: the savages, it seemed, did not intend to follow them into the tunnels. Crowding around in a semi-circle, lowering their pipes and shading their eyes with their hands from the blinding light of the flashlights, they awaited something in silence.
‘Enemies of the Great Worm, listen!’ The bearded leader appeared from the crowd. ‘The enemies are going into the holy passages of the Great Worm. Good people do not go after them. It is forbidden to go there today. Great danger. Death, and damnation. Let the enemies give back the old priest and leave.’
‘Don’t let him go, don’t listen to them,’ Melnik commanded slowly. ‘Let’s go.’
They continued moving cautiously. Artyom and several other fighters were moving backwards and not taking their eyes off the station they were leaving behind. At first no one actually came after them. A voice was heard from the station: someone was arguing, at first not loudly, but then beginning to scream.
‘Dron cannot! Dron must go! For the teacher!’
‘Forbidden to go! Halt! Halt!’ A dark figure dashed from the darkness into the beams of the flashlights with such speed that it was impossible to hit it. Immediately behind it others too appeared in the distance. Not able to target the first savage, one of the fighters tossed something forward.
‘Get down! Grenade!’ Artyom flung himself onto the ties with his face down, covering his head with his hands, and opened his mouth as his stepfather had taught him. The incredible sound and deafening force of the shock wave hit his ears and pressed him to the ground. He lay there for several minutes, opening and closing his eyes, trying to come to his senses. His head pounded, coloured spots circled before his eyes. Clumsy, endlessly repeated words were the first sound he heard after coming to his senses. ‘No, no, don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot, Dron doesn’t have a weapon, don’t shoot!’ He turned his head and looked around. In the intersection of the beams, with hands lifted high, the savage who had been guarding them while they were imprisoned in the monkey cage stood. Two fighters kept him in their sights, awaiting orders, and the rest got up from the ground and shook themselves. A heavy dust from the rock hung in the air while a pungent smoke crept from the side of the station.
‘What? Did it collapse?’ asked someone.
‘From one grenade . . . The whole metro holds on by a hair . . .’
‘Well, they won’t try to get in here any more. Until they get rid of the blockage . . .’
‘That should tie them up. Let’s go, there’s no time, we don’t know when they’ll come to their senses,’ the approaching Melnik ordered.
They halted only an hour later. During this time, the tunnel split in two directions, and the stalker, who was walking ahead, chose which way to go. Huge, cast-iron loops were seen in one place. Most likely at some time they had strong shutters hanging from them. Next to them was scattered the debris of a pressurized gate. Except for that, nothing of interest was found: the tunnel was completely empty, pitch-black and lifeless.
They walked slowly. The old man stumbled at every step, and several times he fell to the ground. Dron walked unwillingly and mumbled to himself about a prohibition and damnation, until they stuffed a gag into his mouth. When the stalker finally allowed them to stop and he had dispatched sentries with night vision instruments fifty metres on both sides, the exhausted priest collapsed to the floor. The savage continued pleading inarticulately through the gag, until the escorts brought him closer to the old man and he dropped to his knees in front of him and stroked the old man’s head with his bound hands. The young Oleg rushed to the stretcher on which his father lay and began to cry. Anton’s paralysis had passed, but he was unconscious, just as after the first needle had struck him. The stalker, meanwhile, beckoned Artyom to his side. Artyom was no longer able to contain his curiosity.
‘How did you find us? I was already thinking, you know, they were going to eat us,’ he admitted to Melnik.
‘You think it was difficult? You left the handcar right under the hatch. The lookouts noticed it when Anton didn’t show up for tea. They just didn’t try to poke around in there themselves. They placed a guard and reported it to the chief. You actually didn’t wait for me even for a little while. Then I left for Smolenskaya again, to the base, for corroboration. We assembled at the alarm, but we needed time. While we got equipped, I began to remember what’s what at Mayakovskaya. It was a similar situation: there was a crumbling side tunnel there as well where Tretyak and I had separated. We had been looking for the entrance to D-6 on the map. We were about fifty metres apart. He, most likely, had got closer to it. I’d been gone for only three minutes. I shouted to him, but he didn’t respond. I ran to him. He was lying there all blue, swollen, his lips cracked by this crap. I grabbed him by the legs and dragged him to the station. While I was dragging him, I recalled Semyonych and his story about the poisoned watchman. I shined my light at Tretyak and there was a needle in his leg. Then everything began to fall into place. I sent the messenger to you as soon as possible so that you would remain at the station, arrange your affairs, and return. But I was unsuccessful.’
‘Are they really at Mayakivskaya, too?’ Artyom was surprised. ‘But just how did they get there from Park Pobedy?’
‘This is how they get there.’ The stalker removed his heavy helmet and placed it onto the floor. ‘You will, of course, forgive me, but we didn’t just come for you, but for intelligence as well. I think there must be one more exit to Metro-2 from here. These cannibals of yours also made it through to Mayakovskaya. There, by the way, it’s the same story as here: children disappear from the station at night. And only the devil knows where they get to, and we see neither hide nor hair of them.’
‘That is . . . you want to say . . .’ The thought itself had seemed so unbelievable to Artyom that he didn’t dare utter it aloud. ‘In your opinion, is the entrance to Metro-2 somewhere around here?’ Was the gate to D-6, that mysterious metro phantom, really located in the immediate vicinity? Rumours, stories, legends and theories of Metro-2 that he had heard throughout his life swirled in Artyom’s head.
‘Let me tell you something else,’ the stalker winked at him. ‘I think we’re already in it. It has just been impossible to verify it.’
Requesting a flashlight from one of the fighters, Artyom began to study the tunnel’s walls. He caught the surprised looks of the others, knowing that must look really stupid, but he couldn’t help himself. And he only partly understood what had he expected to see on reaching Metro-2. Golden rails? People living as they once had, not knowing about the horrors of present-day existence, in fairy-tale abundance? Gods? He passed from one lookout to the other, but, as he didn’t find anything, turned towards Melnik. He was speaking with the fighter who was guarding the savages.
‘What about the hostages? Finish them off?’ the escort asked casually.
‘First we’ll have a little talk,’ the stalker answered. Bending down, he pulled the gag from the old man’s mouth. Then he did the same with the second prisoner.
‘Teacher! Teacher! Dron is coming with you. I am coming with you, Teacher!’ the savage immediately began to lament, swaying from side to side above the groaning priest. ‘Dron is violating the prohibition of the holy passages, Dron is ready to die at the hand of the enemies of the Great Worm, but Dron is coming with you, to the end!’
‘What else is there? What’s this about a worm? What about the holy passages?’ Melnik asked.
The old man was silent.
Looking at the escorts in fright, Dron hurriedly said, ‘The holy passages of the Great Worm are forbidden for good people. The Great Worm may appear there. Man can see. It is forbidden to look! Only the priests can. Dron is afraid, but is coming. Dron is coming with the teacher.’
‘What worm?’ The stalker wrinkled his nose.
‘The Great Worm . . . The creator of life,’ explained Dron. ‘The holy passages are further. One cannot go every day. There are forbidden days. Today is a forbidden day. If you see the Great Worm, you will turn to ashes. If you hear him, you will be cursed, you will die quickly. Everyone knows. The elders say so.’
‘What? Are all the morons like this there?’ The stalker looked at Artyom.
‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘talk to the priest.’
‘Your Eminence,’ Melnik addressed the priest tongue in cheek.
‘You will excuse me, I am just an old soldier . . . How best to express it . . . I don’t know haughty language. But here there is one place in your possession that we are searching for. Supposedly accessible . . . Things are kept there . . . Flaming arrows? Grapes of wrath?’ He gazed into the old man’s face, hoping that he would respond to one of his metaphors, but the priest stubbornly remained silent, sullenly staring at him from beneath his brows. ‘The hot tears of the gods?’ The stalker was continuing, to the surprised looks of Artyom and the others, to try get answers. ‘Zeus’ lightning bolts?’
‘Stop playing the fool,’ the old man finally interrupted him with contempt. ‘There is nothing transcendental to trample with your dirty soldier boots.’
‘Missiles,’ Melnik at once became business-like. ‘The missile unit just outside Moscow. An exit from the tunnel by Mayakovskaya. You must remember what I’m talking about. We have to get there right away, and it would be better for you to help.’
‘Missiles . . .’ the old man repeated slowly, as if testing the flavour the word.
‘Missiles . . . You, probably, are about fifty years old, right? You still remember. They named the SS-18 “Satan” in the West. It was the only insight of a blind-from-birth human civilization.’
‘Are you really so great?! You have destroyed the whole world. Are you really so great?’
‘Listen, Your Eminence, we don’t have time for this.’ Melnik cut him off. ‘I am giving you five minutes.’ His fingers cracked as he stretched out his hands.
The old man made a face. It was as if neither the combat dress of the stalker and his fighters, nor the poorly concealed threat in Melnik’s voice had the slightest impact on him.
‘And what, what can you do to me?’ he smiled. ‘Torture me? Kill me? Go ahead, I’m already old, and in our faith there are not enough martyrs. So just kill me, like you killed hundreds of millions of other people! As you killed my whole world! Our whole world! Go ahead, squeeze the trigger of your damned machine, as you pressed the triggers and buttons of dozens of thousands of different lethal devices!’ The old man’s voice, at first weak and hoarse, quickly turned steely. Despite his matted grey hair, tied hands and short stature, he no longer looked pathetic: a strange force emanated from him, his every new word sounded more convincing and menacing than the last. ‘You don’t have to smother me with your hands, you don’t even have to see my agony . . . You and all your machines will be damned! You have devalued both life and death . . . Do you consider me a madman? But the true madmen are you, your fathers and your children! Wasn’t it really a perilous madness to try to subjugate the whole earth to yourselves, throw a bridle on nature and cause it to cramp and convulse? Where were you when the world was destroyed? Did you see how it was? Did you see what I saw? The sky, at first melting, and then engulfed with lifeless clouds? Boiling rivers and seas, expelling onto the shores creatures boiled alive, and then converted into frozen custard? The sun, disappearing from the sky, not to reappear for years? Homes turned to dust in a split second, and the people living in them turned to ashes? Did you hear their cries for help?! And those who died from epidemics and maimed by radiation? Did you hear their curses?! Look at him!’ He pointed at Dron. ‘Look at all those without arms, without eyes, with six fingers! Even those who have obtained new capabilities!’
The savage fell to his knees and seized on every word of his priest with awe. And Artyom himself felt something similar. Even the other soldiers unwillingly took a step back. Only Melnik continued, screwing up his eyes, to look the old man in the eyes.
‘Have you seen the death of this world?’ the priest continued. ‘Do you understand who is to blame for it? Who converted boundless green forests into scorched deserts? What did you do with this world? With my world? Earth has not known a greater evil than your damned mechanized civilization. Your civilization is a cancerous tumour, it is a huge amoeba, greedily soaking up everything is useful and nourishing and belching out only fetid, poison wastes. And now you once more need missiles! You need the most frightful weapons created by a civilization of criminals! Why? In order to complete what you started? Murderers! I hate you, hate you all!’ he yelled in a rage, then had a coughing fit and fell silent. No one breathed a word until he stopped coughing and continued, ‘But your time is coming to an end . . . And even if I do not survive until then, others will come to replace me, those will come who understand the perniciousness of technology, those who will be able to manage without it! Your numbers are dwindling and you will not be here much longer. It’s sad that I will not see your agony! But we are nurturing sons who will! Man will repent that he destroyed everything of value to him in his arrogance! After centuries of deception and illusions, he finally will learn to distinguish between evil and good, between the truth and a lie! We are cultivating those who will populate the earth after you. And so that your agony is not dragged out, we soon will drive the dagger of mercy into your very heart! Into the flabby heart of your rotted civilization . . . That day is near!’