CHAPTER 20
Born to Creep
After catching his breath for a minute, he listened, trying to detect the heartrending howl of the dark ones. The Botanical Gardens were not far from here, and Artyom couldn’t understand why these beasts had not reached their station along the surface before now. Everything was quiet, but somewhere in the distance wild dogs howled sadly. Artyom didn’t want to run into them. If they had managed to survive on the surface all these years, something must have distinguished them from the dogs the metro residents kept.
Moving a little further away from the entrance to the station, he discovered something strange: a shallow, crudely dug trench encircled the pavilion. A stagnant dark liquid filled it as if it were a tiny moat. Jumping the trench, Artyom approached one of the kiosks and looked inside. It was completely empty. On the floor was broken glass. Everything else had been taken. He investigated several other kiosks, until he stumbled onto one which promised to be more interesting than the others. Outwardly, it resembled a tiny fortress: it was a cube welded from thick sheets of iron with a tiny window made of plate glass. A sign over the window read ‘Currency Exchange’. The door was secured with an unusual lock. It wasn’t opened with a key, but with the correct digital combination. Approaching the little window, Artyom tried to open it, but he couldn’t. He noticed some faded handwriting on the windowsill. Forgetting the danger, Artyom turned on his flashlight. It looked as if whoever had written it had been left handed but he was able to read the uneven letters. It said, ‘Bury me the human way. Code 767.’ And as soon as he understood what it might mean, an angry chirr was heard overhead. Artyom recognized the sound right away. The flying monsters above Kalinskiy had cried exactly like that. He hastily put out the flashlight, but was too late: he heard the call again, directly above him.
Artyom desperately looked around, searching for somewhere to hide. He decided to try the numbers written on the windowsill. Pressing the buttons with the digits in the necessary sequence, he pulled the handle toward him. He’d been right. A dull click was heard inside the lock, and the door gave with difficulty, creaking on its rusty hinges. Artyom wriggled inside, locked himself in and again turned on his light. In a corner, resting with its back to the wall, sat the shrivelled mummy of a woman. It was squeezing a thick felt-tip pen in one hand, and in the other a plastic bottle. The walls were covered with neat female handwriting from top to bottom. An empty tin of pills, bright chocolate wrappers and soda cans lay on the floor, and in a corner stood a half-opened safe. Artyom wasn’t afraid of the corpse. He felt only pity for the unknown girl. For some reason he was sure that it was a girl. The cry of the flying beast was heard once more, and then a powerful blow on the roof shook the kiosk. Artyom fell to the floor, waiting.
The attack was not repeated, and the squeals of the creature began to grow more distant, so he decided to stand up. When it came down to it, he was able to hide as long as he liked in his shelter: the girl’s corpse had not been disturbed all this time, though certainly enough hunters had feasted on those around it. Of course, he might have been able to kill the monster, but he would have had to go outside. And if he missed or the beast turned out to be armoured, a second chance wouldn’t present itself. It was more reasonable to wait for Ulman. If he was still alive.
Artyom began to read the handwriting on the walls to pass the time. ‘I write because I am bored and so I don’t go insane. I’ve been sitting in this stall for three days already and I am afraid to go outside. I have seen ten people who were not able to run into the metro, they suffocated and are lying right in the middle of the street even now. It’s good that I managed to read in the paper how to glue adhesive tape to the seams. I will wait until the wind carries the cloud away. They wrote that there won’t be any more danger after a day. 9 July. I tried reaching the metro. Some kind of iron wall starts beyond the escalator. I wasn’t able to lift it and no matter how much I beat on it, no one opened it. I started feeling really bad after ten minutes, so I came back here. There are many dead around. Everything is horrible, they are all swollen up and they smell. I broke the glass in a grocery stall and took the chocolate and mineral water. Now I won’t starve to death. I have felt terribly weak. I have a safe full of dollars and roubles and nothing to do with them. That’s strange. It turns out they are only bits of paper. 10 July. They have continued bombing. An awful roar was heard all day to the right, from Prospect Mir. I thought no one was left, but yesterday a tank passed at a high speed. I wanted to run out and attract their attention, but I couldn’t. I really miss Mom and Leva. I’ve been throwing up all day. Later I fell asleep. 11 July. A horribly burnt man has passed by. I don’t know where he has been hiding all this time. He was forever crying and wheezing. It was really awful. He went toward the metro, then I heard a loud bang. Most likely he was knocking on that wall, too. Then everything went quiet. Tomorrow I’ll go take a look and see whether they opened it for him or nor.’
A new blow shook the booth - the monster wasn’t giving up on its catch. Artyom staggered and nearly fell on the dead body, barely able to hold himself up by grabbing onto the counter. Bending down, he waited another minute, then continued reading.
‘12 July. I’m not able to leave. I’m shivering, I don’t understand whether I am sleeping or not. I was talking to Leva for an hour today and he said he will marry me soon. Then Mom arrived and her eyes were flowing. Then I was left alone again. I’m so lonely. When it all ends, when will they rescue us? Some dogs are here and are eating the corpses. Finally, thank you. I have been throwing up. 13 July. There’s still some canned food, chocolate and mineral water, but I don’t want it any more. It’ll be another year before life returns to normal. The Great Patriotic War went on for 5 years. Nothing can be longer. Everything will be OK. They will find me. 14 July. I don’t want it any more. I don’t want it any more. Bury me the human way, I don’t want to be in this damned iron box . . . It’s cramped. Thanks for the Phenazepam. Good night.’
Alongside was some more handwriting, but ever more incoherent and ragged, and drawings: imps, young girls in large hats or bows, human faces. ‘Obviously she was hoping that the nightmare that she survived would soon be over,’ Artyom thought. ‘A year or two, and everything would come full circle, everything would be as it was before. Life would go on and everyone would forget about what had happened. How many years have passed since then? Mankind has only further distanced itself from returning to the surface during this time. Did she dream that only those who managed to get down into the metro would survive?’
Artyom thought about himself. He had always wanted to believe that once people were able to get out of the metro in order to live again as they had before, they would be able to restore the majestic buildings erected by their ancestors, and settle down in them so as not to squint at the rising sun and to breathe not the tasteless mixture of oxygen and nitrogen filtered by gas masks, but to swallow with delight the air suffused with the fragrances of plants . . . He didn’t know how they smelled before, but it was supposed to be wonderful. His mother had reminisced about flowers. But, looking at the shrivelled body of the unknown girl who didn’t live to see the cherished day when her nightmare ended, he began to doubt that he would. How did his hope to see the return of a previous life differ from hers? During the years of existence in the metro, man had not amassed the strength to climb the steps of the shining escalator leading to his past glory and splendour in triumph. On the contrary, he was reduced, becoming used to the darkness. Most people had already forgotten the absolute authority mankind had once had over the world, others pined for it, and a third group cursed it.
A horn sounded from outside and Artyom threw himself to the window. A very unusual vehicle stood on a patch of ground in front of the kiosks. He had seen automobiles before: in his distant childhood, then in pictures and photographs in books and, finally, during his previous climb to the surface. But not one of them looked like this. The huge six-wheeled truck was painted red. Behind its cab, whi
ch had two rows of seats, the metal body of the truck had a white line along the side, and some pipes piled on the roof. Two rotating blue lights blinked. Instead of struggling out of the booth, he shone his flashlight through the glass, waiting for an answering signal. The truck’s headlights flashed on and off several times, but Artyom was unable to leave the kiosk: two huge shadows were diving headlong one after the other. The first grabbed the roof of the truck with its talons and was trying to lift the vehicle up, but it was too heavy. Lifting the vehicle’s body a half metre from the ground, the monster tore off both pipes, squealed with displeasure and dropped them. The second creature struck the automobile in the side with a screech, counting on turning it over. A door swung open, and a man in a protective suit jumped to the asphalt with a bulky machine gun in his hands. Lifting the barrel, he waited several seconds, evidently allowing the monster to come closer, and then let loose a spray of bullets. Offended chirring was heard from overhead. Artyom hastily opened the lock and ran outside. One of the winged monsters was describing a wide circle about thirty metres above their heads, preparing to strike again but the other couldn’t be seen anywhere.
‘Get in the vehicle!’ yelled the man with the machine gun. Artyom raced towards it, scrambled into the cab and sat on the long seat. The machine gunner let off a burst of shots several more times, then jumped onto the footboard, slid into the cab and slammed the door behind him. The vehicle roared off.
‘You feeding the pigeons?’ Ulman hooted, looking at Artyom through his gas mask. Artyom thought that the flying beasts would pursue them, but instead, having flown past about another hundred metres behind the vehicle, the creatures turned back towards VDNKh.
‘They are defending a nest,’ the fighter said. ‘We’ve heard about that. They would not just have attacked the vehicle like that. They aren’t big enough. Where is it, I wonder?’
Artyom suddenly understood where the monsters had their nest, and why not one living thing, including the dark ones, dared be seen next to the exit from VDNKh.
‘Right in our station’s hall, above the escalators,’ he said.
‘It that so? Strange, usually they are higher, they nest on buildings,’ the fighter replied. ‘Most likely, it’s another type. Right . . . Sorry we were late.’
It turned out to be rather cramped in the suits and with the bulky weapons in the vehicle’s cab. The rear seats were occupied by some of rucksacks and cases. Ulman had taken the outside seat, Artyom had ended up in the centre, and left of him, behind the wheel, sat Pavel, Ulman’s friend from Prospect Mir.
‘What’s there to excuse? It wasn’t on purpose,’ the driver said. ‘Something the colonel didn’t warn us about. We had the impression a steamroller had passed over the street that runs from Prospect Mir to Rizhskaya. Why that bridge hasn’t collapsed I don’t know. There wasn’t anywhere to hide. We barely got away from some dogs.’
‘Haven’t you seen any dogs yet?’ Ulman asked.
‘I only heard them,’ Artyom responded.
‘Well, we had a good look at them,’ Pavel said, turning the wheel.
‘What about them?’ Artyom was interested in learning from him.
‘It wasn’t anything good. They tore off the bumper and nearly gnawed through the wheel, even though we were moving. They only stopped when Petro took out the leader with the sniper rifle,’ he nodded at Ulman.
It wasn’t easy going: the ground was covered with trenches and holes. The asphalt was cracked and they had to make their way carefully. In one place they got stuck and it took about five minutes to cross a mountain of concrete rubble left from a collapsed bridge. Artyom looked out the window, squeezing the machine gun in his hands.
‘It’s going OK.’ Pavel was talking about the vehicle.
‘Where did you find it?’ Artyom asked.
‘At the depot. In pieces. They weren’t able to fix it, so it couldn’t go to fires while Moscow was burning down. Now we use it from time to time. Not for what it was built for, of course.’
‘Got you.’ Artyom again turned towards the window.
‘We’ve been lucky with the weather.’ Pavel, it seemed, wanted to talk. ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky. That’s good. We’ll be able to see a long way from the tower. If it turns out we reach it.’
‘I’d rather be up there than walking from house to house,’ nodded Ulman.
‘True, the colonel was saying that almost no one lives in them, but I don’t like the word “almost”.’
The vehicle turned left and rolled along a straight, broad street, divided in two by a plot of grass. On the left was a row of almost undamaged brick homes, on the right stretched a gloomy, black forest. Powerful roots covered the roadway in several places and they had to go round them. But Artyom managed to see all this only in passing.
‘Look at it. What a beauty!’ Pavel said with admiration. Straight ahead of them the Ostankino tower supported the sky, rising like a gigantic club threatening enemies brought down long ago. It was a perfectly fantastic structure. Artyom had never seen anything like it even in the pictures in books and magazines. His stepfather, of course, had told him about some Cyclopean structure located only two kilometres from their station, but Artyom hadn’t been able to imagine how it would astound him. For the rest of the way, his mouth was open his mouth in surprise and stared at the grandiose silhouette of the tower, devouring it with his eyes. His delight at seeing this creation of human hands was mixed with the bitterness of finally understanding that nothing like it ever would be created again.
‘It has been so close all this time, and I didn’t even know.’ He tried to express his feelings.
‘If you don’t come to the surface, there’s much you will not understand in this life,’ Pavel responded. ‘Do you at least know why your station is named what it is - VDNKh? It means Great Achievements of Our Economy, that’s what. There was a huge park there with all kinds of animals and plants. And this is what I am telling you: you are really lucky that the “birdies” spun their nest right at the entrance to your station. Because, some of these structures have been softened so much by the X-rays now they can’t even sustain a direct hit from a grenade launcher.’
‘But they respect your feathered friends,’ Ulman added.
‘It is, so to say, your roof.’ Both men began to laugh, and Artyom, who couldn’t be bothered to set Pavel straight regarding the name of his station, stared once more at the tower. He noticed that the enormous structure had leaned a little, but it seemed to have attained a delicate balance and hadn’t fallen. How in hell could something put here decades ago remain standing? Neighbouring houses had been swept away, but the tower proudly rose among this devastation, as if it had been magically preserved from the enemy’s bombs and missiles.
‘It’s interesting how it has survived,’ Artyom muttered.
‘They didn’t want to demolish it, most likely,’ Pavel said. ‘Anyhow, it’s a valuable infrastructure. It was twenty-five per cent higher you know, and there was a pointed spire on top. But now, you see, it’s broken off almost right at the observation deck.’
‘But why spare it? Didn’t they really care anymore? Well, I suppose that it might not have gone well with the Kremlin.’ Ulman was doubtful.
Sweeping through the gate behind the steel rods of the fence, the vehicle approached the very foundation of the television tower and stopped. Ulman took the night vision instrument and the machine gun and jumped to the ground. A minute later he gave the go-ahead: everything was quiet. Pavel also crawled out of the cab and, having opened the rear door, undertook dragging out the rucksacks with the equipment.
‘There should be a signal in twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘We’ll try to catch it from here.’
Ulman found the rucksack with the radio transmitter and began to assemble a long field antenna from the multiple sections. Soon the radio antenna reached six metres in height and lazily swung too and fro in the slight breeze. Sitting at the transmitter, the fighter put the headset with the mic
rophone to his head and began to listen for a transmission. Long minutes of waiting wore on. The shadow of a ‘pterodactyl’ covered them for an instant, but after describing a few circles over their heads, the monster disappeared behind the houses; apparently one encounter with armed people had been enough for it to remember a dangerous enemy.
‘And what do they look like anyhow, these dark ones? You’re our specialist on that,’ Pavel asked Artyom.
‘They look very scary. Like . . . people inside out,’ Ulman was trying to describe them. ‘The complete opposite of a human. And it’s clear from the name itself: the dark ones - they are black.’
‘You don’t say . . . and where did they come from? No one even heard of them before, you know. What do they say about that?’
‘It doesn’t matter what you never heard of in the metro.’ Artyom hastened to change the subject. ‘Who from Park Pobedy knew anything about the cannibals?’