‘It’s death, Hunter,’ Sukhoi’s mood suddenly darkened. ‘It’s our death stealing up from the future. Our fate is creeping in. That’s what it is.’
‘Why death? I heard that you crushed them very successfully. That they’re disarmed. Well? Where are they from and who are they? I’ve never heard anything like this at any of the other stations. Never. And that means that it isn’t happening anywhere else. I want to know what’s up. I’m sensing a great danger. I want to know the level of danger, I want to understand its nature. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Danger should be liquidated, right Hunter? You’re still a cowboy, Hunter. But can danger be liquidated - that’s the question.’ Sukhoi grinned sadly. ‘That’s the hitch. Everything here is more complicated than it seems to you. A lot more complicated. This is not just zombies and corpses walking across cinema screens. That’s too simple: you load a revolver with silver bullets,’ Sukhoi demonstrated by putting his palms together and pretending to point a pistol as he continued, ‘pow-pow! And the forces of evil are slain. But this is something different. Something frightening . . . And as you well know, it’s hard to scare me.’
‘You’re panicking?’ Hunter asked, surprised.
‘Their main weapon is horror. The people are barely maintaining their positions. People are sleeping with machine guns, with uzis - and they’re coming at us unarmed. And everybody knows that there’s a higher quality and quantity of them still to come, they are almost running away, going crazy from the horror of it - some have already gone crazy, between you and me. And this isn’t just fear, Hunter!’ Sukhoi lowered his voice. ‘This . . . I don’t even know how to explain it to you plainly . . . It gets stronger every time. They are getting into our heads somehow . . . And it seems to me that they’re doing it on purpose. You can sense them from afar, and the feeling gets stronger and stronger, and the agitation is so vile that your knees start to shake. And you can’t hear anything yet, and you can’t see anything, but you already know that they’re coming nearer . . . nearer . . . And then there’s a howl - and you just want to run . . . But they’re coming closer - and you’re starting to shake. And a while later you can see them walking with open eyes into the searchlights . . .’
Artyom shuddered. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one tormented by nightmares. He used to try not to talk about it to anyone before. He was afraid that they would take him for a coward or for a lunatic.
‘They’re crippling our minds, the reptiles!’ Sukhoi continued. ‘And you know, it’s like they adjust themselves to your wavelength, and the next time they come, you feel them even more strongly, and you’re even more afraid. And this isn’t just fear, I can tell you.’
He went silent. Hunter was sitting there without moving, studying him, and apparently thinking over what he’d heard. Then he took a mouthful of hot brew and spoke, slowly and quietly: ‘This is a threat to everybody, Sukhoi. To the whole filthy metro, not just to your station.’
Sukhoi was silent, as though he didn’t want to reply, but suddenly he burst out: ‘The whole metro you think? No. Not just the metro. This is a threat to the progress of mankind, which got itself into trouble with its progress already. It’s time to pay! It’s a battle of species, Hunter! A battle of species. And these dark ones are not evil spirits, and they aren’t some kind of ghoul. This is Homo novus - the next stage in evolution, better adapted to the environment than us. The future is behind them, Hunter! Maybe, Homo sapiens will rot for another couple of decades, or for another fifty in these demonic holes that we’ve dug for ourselves, back when there was plenty and not everyone could fit above ground so the poorer folk were driven underground in the daytime. We will become as pale and sick as Wells’ Morlocks. Remember them? From The Time Machine where beasts of the future lived underground? They too were once Homo sapiens. Yes, we are optimistic - we don’t want to die! We will cultivate mushrooms with our own dung, and the pig will become man’s best friend, as they say, and our partner in survival. And we will guzzle multivitamins with an appetizing crunch that were prepared by our careful ancestors in the tonnes. We will shyly crawl up to the surface to quickly steal another canister of petrol, a few more rags, and if you’re really lucky, a handful of cartridges - only to quickly run back down into the stuffy vaults, looking shiftily around like thieves to see if anyone noticed. Because we aren’t at home there on the surface anymore. The world doesn’t belong to us anymore, Hunter . . . The world doesn’t belong to us anymore.’
Sukhoi fell silent, looking at the steam slowly rising from his cup of tea and condensing in the twilight of the tent. Hunter said nothing, and Artyom suddenly realized that he had never heard anything like it from his stepfather. There was nothing left of his former confidence in the fact that everything would necessarily be fine; nothing left of his ‘don’t panic, we’ll get through it!’; and nothing left of his encouraging winks . . . Or was that just all for show?
‘You don’t have anything to say, Hunter? Nothing? Go on, contradict me! Where are your arguments? Where is that optimism of yours? Last time when I spoke to you, you were certain that the levels of radiation would lower, and people could return to the surface again. Eh, Hunter . . . “The sun will rise over the woods, but just not for me . . .” ’ Sukhoi sang in a teasing voice. ‘We’ll seize life with our teeth, we will hold onto it with all our strength - but what would the philosophers have said and the sectarians confirmed, if there was suddenly nothing to grab? You don’t want to believe it, can’t believe it, but somewhere in the depths of your soul you know that that’s how it is . . . But we like this whole business, Hunter, don’t we? Me and you, we really love living! We will crawl through the stinking underground, sleep in an embrace with pigs, eat rats, but we will survive! Right? Wake up, Hunter! No one will write a book about you called The story of a real person, no one will sing about your will to live, your hypertrophic instinct for self-preservation . . . How long will you last on mushrooms, multivitamins and pork? Surrender, Homo sapiens! You are no longer the king of nature! You’ve been dethroned! No, you don’t have to die instantly, nobody will insist on that. Crawl on a little more in agony, choking on your own excrement . . . But know this, Homo sapiens: you are obsolete! Evolution, the laws of which you understood, has already created its new branch, and you are no longer the latest stage, the crown of creation. You are a dinosaur. Now you must step aside for a new, more perfect species. No need to be egotistical. Game over, it’s time you let others play. Your time is up. You’re extinct. And let future generations wrack their brains over the question of what made Homo sapiens extinct. Though, I doubt anyone will be interested . . .’
Hunter who was studying his fingernails through this monologue, raised his eyes to Sukhoi and said gravely, ‘You have really given up on everything since I last saw you. I remember that you were telling me that if we preserve culture, if we don’t turn sour, if we don’t stop using proper Russian, if our children learn to read and write, then we’ll be fine and we’ll last here underground . . . Didn’t you say all that - or wasn’t it you? And now, look at you - surrender, Homo sapiens . . . What the hell is that?’
‘Yeah, well, I just figured out a thing or two, Hunter. I have felt something which you have yet to get, and maybe you’ll never get it: we are dinosaurs, and we are living the last days of our life . . . It might take ten or even a hundred years, but all the same . . .’
‘Resistance is futile, right?’ Hunter offered, in a mean voice. ‘What are you driving at?’
Sukhoi was silent, his eyes downcast. Clearly this had cost him a lot - having never admitted his weaknesses to anybody, or said such a thing to an old friend. Even worse that it was in front of Artyom. It was painful to him to hold up a white flag.
‘But no! You won’t wait!’ Hunter slowly said, standing up to full height. ‘And they won’t wait! New species you say? Evolution? Inevitable extinction? Dung? Pigs? Vitamins? I’m not there yet. I’m not afraid of it either. Got it? I am not putting my hand up to volunteer. The instinct of self-preservation? You call it that. Yes, I will sink my teeth into life. Fuck your evolution. Let other species wait their turn. I’m not a lamb being led to slaughter. Capitulate and go off with your more perfect and more adapted beings - give them your place in history! If you feel that you’ve fought all you can fight, then go ahead and desert, I won’t judge you. But don’t try to scare me. And don’t try to drag me along with you into the slaughterhouse. Why are you giving me a sermon? If you don’t do it alone, if you need to do it collectively, you won’t be so ashamed? Or has the enemy promised you a bowl of hot porridge for each person that you bring to them in captivity? My fight is hopeless? You say that we’re at the edge of the abyss? I spit on your abyss. If you think that your place is at the bottom of the abyss then take a deep breath and forward march. But I’m not coming for the ride. If rational man, refined and civilised Homo sapiens chooses to capitulate - then I refuse to be called one and would rather become a beast. And I will, like a beast, sink my teeth into life and gnaw on the throats of others in order to survive. And I will survive. Got it?! I will survive!’
He sat down and quietly asked Artyom for another splash of tea. Sukhoi stood up himself and went to fill and heat the kettle, gloomily and silently. Artyom stayed in the tent alone with Hunter. His last words were ringing with contempt; his malicious confidence that he would survive lit a fire in Artyom. For a long time he was trying to decide whether to say something. And then Hunter turned to him and said: ‘And what do you think my friend? Tell me, don’t be shy . . . You want to turn into vegetation too? Like a dinosaur? To sit on your things and wait until someone comes for you? Do you know the parable about the frog in the cream? Two frogs landed in a pail of cream. One, thinking rationally, understood straight away that there was no point in resistance and that you can’t deceive destiny. But then what if there’s an afterlife - why bother jumping around, entertaining false hopes in vain? He crossed his legs and sank to the bottom. The second, the fool, was probably an atheist. And she started to flop around. It would seem that she had no reason to flail about if everything was predestined. But she flopped around and flopped around anyway . . . Meanwhile, the cream turned to butter. And she crawled out. We honour the memory of this second frog’s friend, eternally damned for the sake of progress and rational thought.’
‘Who are you?’ Artyom ventured at last.
‘Who am I? You already know who I am. The one who hunts.’
‘But what does that mean - the one who hunts? What do you do? Hunt?’
‘How can I explain it to you? You know how the human body is built? It’s made up of millions of tiny cells - some emit electrical signals, others store information, others still soak up nutrients, transfer oxygen. But all of them - even the most important among them - would be dead in less than a day, and the whole organism would die, if it wasn’t for cells responsible for immunity. They’re called macrophages. They work methodically and regularly like a clock, a metronome. When an infection gets into an organism, they find it, track it down, wherever it’s hiding, and sooner or later, they get to it and . . .’ He made a gesture as though he was wringing someone’s neck and let out an unpleasant crunching sound. ‘Liquidate it.’
‘But what relevance does that have to your job?’ Artyom insisted.
‘Imagine that the whole metro was a human organism. A complex organism, made up of about forty thousand cells. I am the macrophage. The hunter. This is my job. Any danger that is sufficiently serious as to threaten the whole organism must be liquidated. That’s what I do.’
Sukhoi finally came back with the kettle and poured the boiling brew into the mugs. He had obviously gathered his thoughts in the meantime, and he said to Hunter, ‘So you’re going to take on the liquidation of the source of danger, cowboy? You’re going to go hunting and shoot down all the dark ones? It’s hardly possible that anything will come of it. There’s nothing to be done, Hunter. Nothing.’
‘There is always one last option - the last resort. To blow your northern tunnel to pieces. Collapse it completely. To cut off that new species of yours. Let them procreate from above and leave us moles alone. The underground is now our natural habitat.’
‘I’ll tell you something interesting. Only a few people know about this at the station. They’ve already blown up one tunnel. But above us, above the northern tunnel, there is a stream of ground water. And, when they blew up the second northern tunnel, we were almost flooded. If the explosion had been just a bit stronger - goodbye my dear
VDNKh.
So, if we now blow up the remaining northern tunnel, then we’ll be flooded. We’ll be covered in radioactive swill. Then that will be the end, not only for us. Therein lies the real danger to the metro. If you start an inter-species battle now and in this way, then our species will lose. As they say in chess: check.’
‘What about the hermetic gate? Surely we can simply close the hermetic gate in that tunnel?’ Hunter said.
‘The hermetic gate was already dismantled along with the rest of the lines gates fifteen years ago by some smart guys - and they sent the material to fortify one of the stations. No one remembers which one anymore. Surely you knew about this? There you go, check again.’
‘Tell me . . . Have they increased their pressure recently?’ Hunter, it seems, was conceding and shifting the conversation to another tack.
‘Increasing? And how! It’s hard to believe that it was only a little while ago that we didn’t know they existed. And now, here they are - a major threat. And believe me, the day is near when they will sweep us away, with all of our fortifications, searchlights and machine-guns. It’s impossible to raise the whole metro to defend one good-for-nothing station . . . Yes, we make pretty good tea, but it’s unlikely that anyone will risk their life even for such excellent tea as ours. In the end, there’s always competition with Pechatniki. . . . check again!’ Sukhoi grinned sadly. ‘No one needs us. We ourselves will soon not be in any condition to handle the onslaught. We can’t blow up the tunnel and cut them off. We also don’t have the means to go to the surface and burn them down, for obvious reasons . . . Checkmate. Checkmate to you, Hunter! And checkmate to me. Checkmate to all of us in the near future, if you see what I mean.’ Sukhoi grinned sourly.