“Lamps out!” commanded somebody from behind the pile. “One of you, come twenty steps closer.”
Hunter unsecured his rifle and moved forwards.
Homer remained behind alone again; he didn’t dare to refuse the orders. In the deep darkness that reigned here now, he carefully sat down on the ground, reached for the wall and leaned on it with his shoulder.
The steps of the brigadier went silent at the wanted distance. Somebody asked him something inaudible and he gave a growling answer. Then the situation got tense: Instead of the first neutral mood now you could hear curses and insults. It seemed that Hunter demanded something that the invisible guardians denied him.
Now they almost screamed at each other and Homer could almost make out single words… but he could make out one word: “Punishment!”
In this moment the sound of a Kalashnikov ended the conversation and a heavy salve from a Petscheng (a heavy machine gun) answered. Homer threw himself to the ground, unsecured his rifle but didn’t fire, he didn’t knew if he should shoot or not, or at whom.
But it was over before it started; Homer hadn’t even time to aim his rifle.
In the small breaks between the machine gun salves that almost sounded like Morse signals, the stomach of the tunnel made a long shrieking sound that Homer wouldn’t have mistaken for anything else.
The hermetic doors where closing! Tons of steel slammed against each other, it muffled the screams and the machine gun salves.
The only entrance to the metro was closed.
Now there was no more hope for the Sevastopolskaya.
CHAPTER 6
From the Other Side
One moment after that Homer almost believed that he had imagined everything: The vague outline of the barricades at the end of the tunnel, the somehow familiar distorted voice… when the light went out all other sounds faded as well. He felt like a convict that had been put a sack over his face just before the execution. In the absolute darkness and sudden silence the whole world seemed to have disappeared.
Homer touched his face to reassure himself that he hadn’t vanished into this cosmic blackness as well.
Then he calmed down again, tried to find his lamp and held the trembling beam of light in front of him where a few seconds ago the invisible battle had taken place. About thirty meters from where he had taken cover during the fight, the tunnel ended. A steel door cut through the tunnel like the blade of a guillotine. So he had heard right: Somebody had really activated the hermetic door. Homer knew of its existence but he hadn’t thought that it was still functional. But it turned out that you could still use it.
His eyes, weakened by paperwork, didn’t immediately see the human figure that leaned on the iron wall.
Homer pointed his rifle forward and took a step back. At first he thought that one of the men from the other side had remained outside in the confusion, but then he recognized Hunter.
The brigadier didn’t move. Homer started to sweat.
Hesitantly he approached Hunter. Probably he would see blood on the wall… but no. Even though they had fired at Hunter in an empty tunnel with a machine gun he was completely unharmed. He pressed his mutilated ear on the metal and listened for sounds that only he could hear.
“What happened?” Homer asked carefully and got closer.
The brigadier didn’t pay any attention to him. He whispered something to himself, repeating the words that were spoken on the other side of the closed door. Several minutes passed till he moved away from the door and turned to Homer: “We go back.”
“What happened?”
“There are bandits. We need reinforcements.”
“Bandits?” asked the old man confused. “That voice back there seemed…”
“The entire Tulskaya is in the hand of the enemy. We will have to storm it. For that we need backup with flamethrowers.”
“Why flamethrowers?”
“To be sure. We go back.” Hunter turned around and moved away from Homer.
Before Homer followed Hunter he looked at the door observantly, yes he even pressed his own ear against the cold metal in the hope to hear a part of the conversation as well. But he heard only silence.
And suddenly Homer realized that he didn’t believe Hunter. Whoever this enemy was that had captured the station behaved completely incomprehensible. Why did they activate the hermetic door? To protect themselves from two people? What kind of bandits negotiated with some armed men instead of mowing them down?
And then: What was the “punishment” that the mysterious guardian had mentioned?
Nothing is more valuable than a human life, Sasha’s father had once said.
For him it wasn’t just empty words, not just a saying. There had been a time where he thought differently, he hadn’t been youngest military commander in the whole line for nothing.
When you’re twenty you don’t think much about murder and death. Your whole life seems like a game and in the worst case scenario you just start over again. It wasn’t a coincidence that the armies of the world recruited young men that had been students before. And those boys that played war were only red and blue arrows for only one man commanded thousands. One that didn’t think about ripped off legs, guts swelling out and crushed skulls when he decided to sacrifice a regiment.
There had been a time where her father had hated his enemies as much as himself. Back then he had looked at tasks that put him in danger with strange frivolity. But he had never foolishly moved forward but with strict calculations. Smart, striving and indifferent for his life he couldn’t feel reality, didn’t waste a thought about the consequences and felt no regrets. He had never shot at women and children but he had executed deserters with his own hands and was always the first to storm the enemies’ fortifications.
Pain couldn’t harm him. Most of the time he didn’t care.
Until he met Sasha’s mother.
She defeated him, him who was used to victory, with her indifference. His only weakness, his ambition that had driven him against machineguns before was now directed at a desperate storm attack that had transformed itself into a long siege.
For a long time he didn’t have to strain himself when it was about women. They had always came to him.
Corrupted by their compliance he had always satisfied his longings at the first night so that the seduced had lost every interest for him before he could fall in love with her. His stormy nature and his fame clouded the girl’s eyes and none tried the good old strategy of letting the man wait so that they could get to know him better.
He couldn’t impress Sasha’s mother with his awards, his rank and his triumphs on the real battlefield and on the battlefield of love as well. She didn’t react to his looks and his jokes only made her shake her head. To storm this young woman would be a challenge. A challenge more important than any conquest of some neighboring station.
She should have been only another mark on the stock of his rifle. But soon he understood: The further the unity with her faded into the distance, the more important she became to him. Being with her about one hour per day felt like a triumph for him. But it seemed that she only agreed to it to torment him.
She doubted his service, laughed about his principles, cursed his coldness and shook his conscience until he was at the end of his strength.
He endured everything. He even liked it. With her he started to think. To question. And then to feel: Helplessness, when he didn’t know how to approach her, regret for all the minutes he couldn’t spend near her, fear to lose what he had never won. Love. Then she rewarded him with a sign: A silver ring.
Only when he no longer knew how to live on without her she gave in.
One year later Sasha was born.
He could never abandon these two lives and he himself couldn’t just die anymore.
When you command the strongest army in your known part of the world with the age of twenty-five it is
