cracks, passing by very close behind the walls of the station like if it was trying to lull the inhabitants to sleep. The groundwater prevented them from blowing up unnecessary parts of the tunnels. And exactly through these tunnels, hordes of nightmarish creatures move towards Sevastopolskaya, like an endless poisonous centipede crawling into a grinder.
The residents of the station felt like the crew of a ghost ship on its way through hell. They were damned to fill the holes constantly, because the frigate has been leaking for a long time. And a harbor, where they could find protection and silence, wasn’t in sight.
At the same time they had to fend off one attack after another, because from the Tschertanovskaya in the south and from the Nachimovski prospect to the north of the station, monsters crawled through the vents, appeared from the murky sewers or stormed out of the tunnels. The whole world seemed to be against Sevastopolskaya, trying to erase their home station from the metro’s map. But they defended their station with tooth and nail, like it was the last fortress in the entire universe.
But no matter how skillful the engineers could be, how tough and relentless the training of their fighters was – without bullets, without light bulbs for the spotlights, without antibiotics and bandages they wouldn’t be able to hold the station. Of course they delivered electricity, and Hanza was willing to pay a good price. But while the ring line had other and own suppliers; the Sevastopolskaya wouldn’t survive a month without supplies from outside. Their supply of bullets reached a dangerously low count.
Every week armed caravans were sent to Serpuchovskaya to use their earned credit to pay the merchants of Hanza for everything that was needed and return immediately. As long as the earth would turn, as long as the underground rivers flowed and as long as the metro would hold, nothing would change that.
This time the return of the caravan had been delayed. And so much so that there was only one explanation: Something unexpected must have happened, something terrible, something that even the heavy armed caravan guards, nor the long and fair relations with the leadership of Hanza couldn’t prevent.
The whole situation would have been a lot less unsettling if at least they could communicate with the Ring line.
But something was wrong with the telephone line to the Ring; they had lost the connection on Monday and the squad that was sent to find the faulty part of the line returned without any results.
The lamp with the green lampshade hanged low over the round table. It illuminated yellowed papers on which graphics and diagrams were drawn on it in pencil. It was a weak bulb, maybe 40 watts, but not because you had to save electricity – that was certainly no problem in the Sevastopolskaya - but because the owner of the office didn’t like glaring light. The ashtray was full of cigarette butts – all self-made and of bad quality. Biting, blue-grey smoke collected itself under the low ceiling.
The head of the station, Vladimir Ivanovitsch Istomin wiped his forehead, raised his hand and looked with his one eye at the clock – for the fifth time in half an hour. He crackled with his fingers and stood up burdensomely. “A decision must be found. We can no longer delay it”.
On the other side of the table sat an older, but strong built man with a lined camouflaged jacket and a worn blue beret. He opened his mouth to say something, but he had a coughing fit. Grumpily he narrowed his eyes and cleared away the smoke with his hand. Then he said: “Well, Vladimir Ivanovitsch, I repeat it again: We can’t withdraw anymore forces from the southern tunnel. The pressure on the guards is enormous – even now they almost can’t hold it. Last week alone they had three wounded, one of them heavy and that even with the fortifications. I won’t sit here and watch how you continue to weaken the south. Especially when we need to have six scouts patrolling in the vents and the connecting tunnels at all times. And in the north we have to secure the arriving caravans, and we can’t spare a single fighter there. I am sorry, but you will have to search by yourself”.
“You are the commander of the outer guard post, so you search!” growled Vladimir. “I deal with my own business. In one hour a group must leave. We both think in different ways. This isn’t just about our problems here and now! What if something worse happened?”
“And I think, Vladimir Ivanovitsch that you are over reacting. We have two unopened crates of 5.45 caliber ammunition in the armory which will last us over one and a half week. And then I still have something at home under my pillow.” The colonel smiled, so that his big, yellow teeth could be seen. “I can surely get another crate together. Bullets aren’t our problem, but people.”
“And now I tell you again what our problem is. If we don’t get any shipments anymore, we will have to close the gates to the south, because without ammunition we can’t hold the tunnels anyway. That means that we can’t maintain two thirds of our mills anymore. Just after a week the first mill break down and Hanza doesn’t like a loss in current delivery at all. If they are lucky they will find a new supplier immediately, if not… but what do I care about the electricity! For almost five days now the tunnels are stone-dead and not a single pig in sight. What if something collapsed? Or broke through? What if we’re cut off?”
“Hold your breath. The power lines are all right. The counters are running, so Hanza seems to be getting their power. We would have noticed a collapse immediately. And if it was sabotage, then the power line would have been cut and not the telephone line. As for the tunnel – what are you afraid of? Even in good times nobody strayed away from the tunnels, got lost and ended up here. Alone at the Nachimovski prospect: Without an escort you can’t get through. Foreign merchants haven’t risked coming to us for a long time. And the bandits already know – after all we let one of them go alive every time. So don’t panic.”
“Easy for you to say,” growled Vladimir Ivanovitsch. He lifted the eye patch over his empty eye socket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“I’ll give you three men,” said the colonel, now a little milder. “More isn’t possible, all things considered. And you should stop smoking. You know it’s not good for me and furthermore you are poisoning yourself! I would prefer some tea to be honest…”
“But please, it is my pleasure.” Vladimir rubbed his hands together, took the telephone receiver and barked: “Get tea here, for me and the colonel.”
“Let the officer on duty come as well,” said the commander of the outer guard posts as he took off his beret. “Then we will clear the matter with the search party.”
At Istomin’s you would always get a special tea, a fine selection from the VDNKh station. On its way shipped from the other end of the metro, Hanza taxes the famous mushroom tea (Vladimir Ivanovitsch’s favorite) three times. That made it so expensive that Istomin wouldn’t have indulged in his weakness for the tea, if not for his good connections in Dobryninskaya. There he had served in the war with someone, and so when the caravan leader returned back from Hanza, they always had a neat package for him. Istomin always picked it up personally. One year ago for the first time, his shipment of tea didn’t come and alarming rumors spread that the entire orange line was being threatened apparently unknown mutants from the surface. They were almost invisible, practically invulnerable and could read your mind. It was said that the station had fallen, and Hanza, fearing invasion, had blown the tunnel past Prospect Mir. The price of tea went through the roof and then for some time you couldn’t get any, which made Istomin seriously worried. But a few weeks later the waves calmed down and the caravans continued to bring the famous tea along with bullets and light bulbs to the Sevastopolskaya.
Wasn’t that the main specialty anyways?
While Istomin poured the colonel’s tea into the porcelain cup with a cracked golden edge he closed his eyes and enjoyed the aromatic steam for a moment. Then he poured himself a cup, sank heavily into his chair, and started to stir a Saccharin pill into the tea with a silver spoon.
The men were silent, and for a moment the melancholic sound of the spoon hitting the cup was the only sound in the dark, tobacco smoke clouded office.
Suddenly, the ambience was drowned by a shrill ringing bell, coming out of the loud speakers and the tunnel: “Alert!”
The commander of the outer guard post jumped surprisingly agilely from his place and stormed out of the room.
At first a lonely rifle shot sounded off in the distance, than a Kalashnikov joined in – one, two and then three.
Military boots hammered on the train platform and you could hear the bass voice of the colonel and how it – even from some distance away – was shouting the first orders.
Istomin reached out his hand after the shiny Militia-machine-pistol hanging on his cupboard, but then he
