‘Do you hear how quiet it is? It’s not the motor moving it, you know. The machine room is not working. Ulman facilitated it.’
But of course, that was it. The creak of the stairs and the grinding of the ungreased gears, and all the sounds that the revived mechanism emitted. Was that all? Artyom again heard the disgusting gurgling and slurp that had reached him in the tunnel. The sounds were coming from the depths where the escalators led. He gathered his courage and, approaching the edge, illuminated the inclined tunnel along which the blackish brown ribbon of steps crawled ever faster. For something like a moment it seemed that the Kremlin’s secret had been opened up before him. He saw something dirty, brown, oily, overflowing and unambiguously alive oozing through the slits between the steps. It emerged from these slits in short spurts, rising and falling in step along the whole length of the escalator as far as Artyom could see. But it was not a meaningless fluctuation. All these spurts of a living substance were part of one gigantic whole, which was straining to move the steps. And somewhere far below, at a depth of several dozen metres, this very dirty and oily stuff spread freely about the floor, swelling and clearing away, overflowing and quivering, emitting those same strange and revolting sounds. The arch was like a monstrous jaw to Artyom, the domes of the escalator tunnel a throat, and the steps themselves, the greedy tongue of a terrible ancient god awakened by strangers. And then it was as if a hand touched his consciousness, stroking it. And his head emptied, as in the tunnel. And he wanted only one thing - to step onto the escalator and ride below, where the answer to all his questions waited. The Kremlin’s stars once more flashed before his imagination’s gaze . . .
‘Artyom! Run!’ A glove slapped him on the cheeks, burning his skin. He roused himself and was stupefied: the brown slush was creeping up through the tunnel, swelling visibly, expanding, frothing like steaming pig’s milk. His legs would not obey, and his flash of consciousness was extremely short. Whatever controlled him set him free for only a flash in order to grasp him firmly and draw him back into the haze once more.
‘Pull him!’
‘The lad first! And don’t cry . . .’
‘Heavy . . . And the wounded guy is still here . . .’
‘Drop it, drop the stretcher! Where are you going with the stretcher!’
‘Wait a moment, I’ll climb it too, it’s easier with two . . .’
‘Your hand, give me your hand! Quickly!’
‘Mother of God. It’s already come out . . .’
‘Tighten it up . . . Don’t look! Don’t look there! Do you hear me?’
‘On his cheeks! That’s it!’
‘To me! That’s an order! I’ll shoot!’
Strange pictures were flickering: green, the side of a railcar sown with rivets, an inverted ceiling for some reason, then a soiled floor . . . darkness . . . green armour again . . . then the world stopped swaying, grew calm and froze.
Artyom raised himself up and looked around. They were sitting around him on the roof of the armoured train. All the flashlights had been turned off, only one was lit, a small pocket light, which lay in the centre. Its light was not enough to see what was happening in the hall, but something could be heard bubbling, seething and overflowing from all sides. Someone again was carefully, as if trying by touch, to reach into his mind, but he shook his head and some of his fog dissipated. He looked and mechanically recounted the members of the party huddled on the roof. Now there were five of them, not counting Anton, who still had not come to, and his son. Artyom dully noted that one fighter had disappeared somewhere, but then his thoughts again faded away. As soon as his head emptied, reason once more began to slide into a turbid abyss. It was difficult to fight it alone. Melnik recognized what was happening, and Artyom tried to grasp this thought; he had to think about whatever he liked, if only to keep his mind occupied. It was apparent the same thing was happening to the others.
‘This is what happened to this trash when it was exposed to the radiation . . . They were exactly right, biological weapons! But they didn’t think what the cumulative effect would be. It’s also good that it stays behind the wall and doesn’t get out into the city . . .’ Melnik was saying.
No one answered him. The fighters had calmed down and listened absent-mindedly.
‘Speak, speak! Don’t be quiet! This crap will stay in your subconscious. Hey, Oganesian! Oganesian! What are you thinking about?’ The stalker shook one of his subordinates. ‘Ulman, dammit! Where are you looking? Look at me! Don’t be quiet!’
‘Sweet . . . It’s calling . . .’ the strong Ulman said, fluttering his eyelashes.
‘Just how sweet! Didn’t you see what happened to Delyagin?’ The stalker slapped the fighter on the cheek with all his might, and Ulman’s lethargic look brightened.
‘Hold hands! Everyone is to take each other’s hand!’ Melnik cried at the top of his lungs.
‘Don’t be quiet! Artyom! Sergey! At me, look at me!’ And a metre below bubbled and seethed that terrible mass that, it seemed, already had covered the whole of the platform. It was becoming ever more persistent, and they were no longer able to withstand its pressure.
‘Guys! Fellows! Don’t give in! But press on . . . altogether! Let’s sing!’ The stalker was not giving up, calling his soldiers to order, handing out slaps in the face or bringing them to their senses with light touches. ‘Rise up, huge country . . . Rise up for a mortal fight!’ he dragged it out, wheezing and out of tune. ‘With the dark fascist force . . . Against their curs-ed hordes . . .’
‘Let noble fu-ry. . . . Boil up like a wave,’ Ulman carried on. It seethed around the train with double the strength. Artyom hadn’t begun to sing along: he didn’t know the words to this song, and anyhow it occurred to him that the fighters had begun to sing, for some hidden reason, about the power of darkness and a boiling wave. No one knew any more words than the first verse and the refrain, except Melnik, and he sang the next quatrain alone, his eyes flashing menacingly and not allowing anyone to be distracted: ‘As two-oo different poles, We are hostile to all! For Wo-rl-d and peace, we battle, They for a reign of darkness . . .’ Almost everyone sang the refrain this time, even little Oleg tried to echo the adults. The discordant choir of coarse, male voices, cracked and hoarse from smoking, resounded, returning in an echo, in the boundless dark hall. The sound of the singing soared to the high arches painted with the mosaic, bounced off them, fell and sank into the teeming, living mass below. And although this picture of seven healthy men, perched on the roof of a train and, while holding hands, singing these senseless songs would have appeared absurd and funny to Artyom in any other situation, now it resembled more a chilling scene from a nightmare. He really, truly wanted to wake up. ‘Let no-o-o-ble fu-ry bo-il up like a wa-a-a-ve. . . . A people’s war is going on, a sa-a-a-cred wa-a-a-r!’ Artyom himself, although he was not singing, diligently opened his mouth and rocked in time to the music. Not having caught the words in the first verse, he even decided that it was about either the people living in the metro, or about the opposition to the dark ones, under whose onslaught his home station was soon supposed to fall. Then in one verse he heard fascists, and Artyom understood it was about the battle of the Red Brigade fighters with the inhabitants of Pushkinskaya . . . When he tore himself away from his reflections, he discovered that the choir had fallen silent. Perhaps even Melnik himself didn’t now the next verses.
‘Guys! Let’s do “Combat”, hey?’ The stalker was trying to persuade his fighters. ‘A combat, my father, my father-combat, You didn’t hide your heart behind the guys’ back . . .’ He had only just started, but then he too fell silent. A stupor enveloped the party. The fighters began to unclench their hands and the circle disintegrated. Everyone was quiet, even Anton who had been raving and muttering the whole time. Feeling a warm and turbid slush of indifference and fatigue filling the emptiness that had occurred in his head, Artyom tried to push it out, thinking about his mission, then telling himself nursery rhymes as he remembered them, then simply repeating: ‘I think, think, think you will not worm yourself into me . . .’ The fighter whom the stalker had called Oganesian suddenly stood up and brought himself to his full height. Artyom lifted his eyes to him with indifference.
‘Well, it’s time for me. Take care,’ he said taking his leave. The rest dully looked at their comrade, not answering, only the stalker nodded at him. Oganesian approached the edge and unhesitatingly stepped forward. He didn’t even scream, but from below was heard an unpleasant sound, a combination of a splash and a hungry rumbling.
‘It calls . . . It . . . calls,’ Ulman said in a sing-song voice and also began to get up. Artyom was spellbound.
‘I think you won’t worm yourself into me!’ He got stuck on the word ‘I,’ and now he simply repeated it, not even noticing that he was speaking aloud: ‘I, I, I, I, I.’ Then he strongly, irresistibly wanted to look down in order to understand whether the heaving mass there was as deformed as it had appeared to him at first. But had he suddenly been wrong about it? Recalling again the stars on the Kremlin towers, distant and beckoning . . . And here the small Oleg sprang lightly to his feet and, taking a short run, threw himself down with a happy laugh. The living quagmire below chomped quietly, receiving the boy’s body. Artyom understood that he envied him and also intended to follow.
But several seconds later, as the mass closed over Oleg’s head, perhaps at that very moment when it had taken his life from him, his father screamed and regained consciousness. Breathing heavily and exhaustedly looking from side to side, Anton lifted himself and set about shaking the others, demanding an answer from them: ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him? Where is my son? Where is Oleg? Oleg! Olezhek!’ Little by little the faces of the fighters began to regain intelligence. Even Artyom began to become conscious. He was no longer certain what he really had seen as Oleg jumped into the seething mass. Therefore, he didn’t answer, just tried to calm Anton, who, it seemed, felt in a mysterious way that what had happened was irrevocable. And then his hysterics broke into the numbness felt by Artyom and in Melnik, and the others. His agitation and his baleful despair were transferred to them, and the unseen hand firmly grasping their consciousness, was yanked away.
The stalker made several test shots at the bubbling mass, but with no success. Then he told the fighter armed with the flame-thrower to remove the backpack with the fuel from his shoulders and, when told to, toss it as far as possible from the train. Having ordered two others to direct their flashlights on the spot where the backpack would fall, he prepared to fire and gave the go-ahead. Spinning in place, the fighter hurled the backpack and almost flew right after it himself, barely managing to hold on to the edge of the roof. The backpack flew into the air and began to fall about fifteen metres from the train.
‘Get down!’ Melnik waited until it touched the pulsing, oily surface, and squeezed the trigger.
Artyom watched the backpack’s flight while stretched out on the roof. As soon as the shot rang out, he hid his face in the fold of his elbow and grasped the cold armour with all his might. The explosion was powerful: Artyom nearly flew off the roof as the train rocked. A dirty, orange glow of blazing fuel splashing along the platform reached his blinking eyes. Nothing happened for a minute. The squelching and chomping of the quagmire did not weaken, and Artyom was already preparing for it to recover from the annoying unpleasantness and begin to envelop his mind again. But instead, the noise began gradually to move further away.
‘It’s leaving! It’s leaving!’ Ulman bellowed right beside his ear. Artyom lifted his head. In the light of the flashlights he could clearly see that the mass, which recently had occupied nearly the whole huge hall, was shrinking and retreating, returning to the escalator.
‘Hurry!’ Melnik jumped to his feet. ‘As soon as it slides down, everyone behind me, right to that tunnel!’
Artyom was surprised how Melnik could be so certain, but he wasn’t about to ask, having put the stalker’s previous indecisiveness down to whatever had been controlling his mind. Now the stalker was transformed. He was again the sober, decisive commander who did not put up with any arguments. Not only was there no time to think about it, but he didn’t even want to. The only thing that now occupied Artyom was how to get out of this damned station as soon as possible before the strange being that dwelled in the Kremlin’s basements recovered its wits and returned in order to consume them. The station no longer seemed marvellous and beautiful to him. Now everything here was hostile and repulsive. Even the workers and peasants looked down in outrage from its wall panels. They still smiled, but it was strained and sickly sweet.
Having jumped pell-mell to the platform, they tore to the opposite end of the station. Anton had come to completely and ran as fast as the others, so that now nothing was delaying the party. After twenty minutes of mad racing through the black tunnel, Artyom began to gasp, and even the others had begun to tire. The stalker allowed them to slow to a quick march.
‘Where are we going?’ Artyom asked, overtaking Melnik.
‘I think right now we are beneath Tverskaya . . . We should exit soon toward Mayakovskaya. We’ll sort it out there.’
‘But how did you know which tunnel to enter?’ Artyom was curious.
‘It was shown on the map we found at Genshtab. But I only recalled that at the last moment.’
As they arrived at the station, everything flew from their heads. Artyom pondered. Had his delight with the Kremlin station, with the pictures and the sculptures, and its space and magnitude come to nothing? Or was it some trickery, evoked by the terrible entity lurking in the Kremlin? Then he remembered the disgust and fear that the station had inspired in him when the drug had dissipated. And he began to doubt that these were his real feelings. Maybe the ‘doodlebug’ forced them to feel an irresistible desire to run from there at breakneck speed when they caused it pain? Artyom was no longer sure of his true feelings. Did a monstrous creation of his mind release him or did it continue to dictate thoughts to him and inspire his emotional experiences? At what moment did Artyom fall under its hypnotic influence? And was he sometimes free to make his own choices? And could his choice ever be free? Artyom again recalled the meeting with the two strange residents of Polyanka.