looking directly into the mouth of the tunnel. Hypnotized – like a rabbit looking into the tempting mouth of a snake.
When he finished his smoke, he shook his head again and strolled back to his office. The adjutant broke free from the shadow of one of the pillars and followed him, but he kept his distance.
A damp rattling sound – a beam of light illuminated the first 50 meters of the ribbed tunnel; Hunters lamp was big and high-powered like a search light. Homer exhaled silently.
In the last few minutes he thought that the brigadier would never turn on the light.
Since they had dived into the darkness the brigadier had nothing in common with a normal human being anymore. His movement was fluently and fast like an animal. It seemed that he had only turned on the light for his followers, the Hunter trusted only his senses. He had put down his helmet and was listening to the sounds of the tunnel. Again and again. From time to time he inhaled the rusted air as if he could smell something, which only made his suspicions stronger.
Hunter stepped through the tunnel without making any sounds and he didn’t look back. It seemed that he had forgotten their existence. Achmed who only accusingly had guard duty at the southern guard post and because of that didn’t know the habits of the brigadier poked the old man in his side: What was going on with him? Homer spread his arms. How was he supposed to explain it to him in two words?
Why did he even need them? Hunter seemed to feel considerably securer in these tunnels than Homer. At the same time he would have thought himself to be the guide of the group. If he would have asked the old man he could have told him much about this region. Legends, but also true stories that were mostly more terrible and bizarre than the unlikely stories that the guards told themselves at the lonely guard fire when they were bored.
Homer had a different metro plan in his head – Istomin’s map was nothing compared to it. He could have filled all the white parts with his own markings and notes.
Vertical shafts, open ones, even some operational service rooms and connecting lines like spider webs.
As an example of his plan there was a junction between the Sevastopolskaya and the Juschnaya, so one station to the south, it ended like a gigantic hose at the gigantic train depot, the Warschavskoye that had gathered dozens of sidings like small veins.
Homer, who had a holy awe for trains, saw this depot as a dark but also mysterious place, like some kind of elephant graveyard, he could talk about it for hours, provided that there were listeners.
Homer thought that the section between the Sevastopolskaya and the Nachimovski prospect was especially difficult. Preclusions and a healthy human mind demanded that they stayed together, moved forwards slowly, carefully, kept watching the walls and the floor at all times.
You couldn’t even keep the tunnel, where all vents and cracks had been bricked up and sealed by the construction teams of the Sevastopolskaya, behind you, out of your sight.
The darkness had only been ripped open by their light for a short time and had already grown together in to a large fog. The echo of their footsteps was thrown back from the rips of the tunnel segments and somewhere in the distance a lonely wind howled through the vents. Big, heavy drops gathered in the cracks on the ceiling and fell down. Maybe they were only made out of water, but Homer preferred to move out of their way. Just to make sure.
In old times when the bloated monster city lived its life and the metro was nothing but a soulless traffic system for the restless people of the city, a young Homer that everybody just called Kolya, walked with his flashlight and iron toolbox through the tunnels.
The way there was prohibited for mortals. The only things that were meant for them were around 150 polished marble pillars and tight wagons that were covered with colorful advertising. Even though they spent between two or three hours in the rocking trains of the metro, millions of people weren’t aware that they only saw a tenth of this unimaginable big underground kingdom face to face. And so that they wouldn’t start to think about its real extent or about where the inconspicuous doors and iron blockades, the dark side tunnels and the over passing that had been closed for months because of reparations lead, they turned their attention away with conspicuous posters, lead them with provocative but dumb slogans into nowhere and even chased them on the escalators with wooden advertising announcements from the loudspeaker.
It seemed like this to Kolya after he began to deal with secrets of this state within a state.
The colorful plan of the metro should convince curious minds that they dealt with a civilian object here. But in reality these lines in those happy colors were crossed by invisible lines of military tunnels that lead into government bunkers and military depots. Even some lanes were connected by a labyrinth of catacombs, out of the hidden times of the city.
When Kolya was very young and his country was too poor to compete with the ambitions of others, the bunkers and air raid shelters that had been build for judgment day collected dust. But with money people returned with bad intentions. Rusted, weighting tons, doors opened creaking, food and medicament supplies were renewed and air and water filters were brought back on the newest level.
Just in time.
The job in the metro was like a welcome into the society of the freemasons. He felt like that because he came from a small town. Once an unemployed loner, now a member of one of the most powerful organizations that rewarded his humble service generously and brought him insight into the deepest secrets of the world order. He also liked the pay of his job; they didn’t request much from future service men.
It took him some time to realize through his colleges hesitant explanations why the metro organization had to lure their employees with high wages and extra money for dangerous work. No it wasn’t even for tight work shifts and the voluntary sacrifice of daylight. It was about totally different dangers.
Homer, a skeptical man, never paid much attention to the never dying rumors or even darker tells of the devils work in the tunnel. But one day one of his colleges didn’t return from his site inspection of the service tunnels. Like the man all documents vanished that he had ever worked in the metro.
Only Kolya, still young and naive didn’t want to settle with the disappearance of his friends. Until one of the older employees took him to the side and whispered, looking around hastily, that they had “taken” his friend. Kolya realized just too well that something sinister was going on in the Moscow underground and that long before Armageddon broke over the huge city and destroyed all life with its flaming breath.
The loss of his friend and the initiation into this forbidden knowledge should have scared Kolya.
He should have left his work and found a different one. But his arranged marriage with the metro had progressed into a passionate affair. When he was feed up with endless wandering through tunnels he let himself be trained as a substitute train driver and secured himself a firm place in the complex metro hierarchy.
The closer he got to know this ignored world wonder, the more nostalgic he turned as he looked at the antic labyrinth, this master less, cyclonic city, a upside down reflection of the surface of Moscow, and fell in love with it. This from human hand created tartarus was worthy of a real Homer, at least the feather of a swift bird and it would have impressed him more than the island Laputa… But it was only Kolya that honored the metro in secret and sang clumsy of its greatness. Nikolai Ivanovitsch Nikolayev.
Ridiculous.
It was possible to love the mistress of the cooper mountain, but the cooper mountain in particular?{Russian fable.}
But this relationship was based on love on both sides and envy. It would rob Kolya of his family and save his life.
Hunter suddenly stopped and Homer wasn’t able to get up from his soft bed of memories fast enough so he ran straight into the brigadiers back without slowing down. Without saying a word he pushed the old man back and stopped again, he lowered his head and held the distorted ear into the tunnel.
Like blind bats made its picture from their surrounding room it seemed that he perceived invisible sound waves as well.
Homer on the other hand felt something different: The smell of the Nachimovski prospect, a smell that you couldn’t mistake for anything else. How fast they had gotten through the tunnel…
Hopefully they didn’t have to pay for being allowed to pass so freely…
As if he had heard Homer’s thoughts, Achmed took his assault rifle from his back and switched the safety
