“No contact. The telephone is silent. Probably sabotage. Someone who had been exiled? Out of revenge?”
“Still in front of us”
“The situation is without a way out. No help can be expected from anywhere. To ask the
Sevastopolskaya would be the end for our men. We can only wait… But for how long?”
“We cannot get out… They went crazy. If not them then who? Flee!”
And then there was something else. Immediately after the last words that warned about storming the Tulskaya there was a signature, almost unreadable, stamped with the brown weal of a bloody finger.
Homer had heard the name before, he had even said it.
This diary belonged to the radio operator that had left with the caravan for the Tulskaya a week ago.
They passed the tunnel to another metro depot that hadn’t been emptied out. Without a doubt it would have if it hadn’t been hit by so much radiation. The black tunnel that leads there had been barricaded with welded together metal of all kinds. On a metal sign which hang down from a piece of wire that was attached to one of the bars, a dull smiling skull stared at them and under it were remains of a warning in red paint, that had now fallen off or been removed intentionally.
This barred of tunnel held Homer’s look magically and when he was finally able to take his gaze from it he was thinking that this line wasn’t as lifeless as many thought at the Sevastopolskaya.
Then they passed the Warschavskaya, a horribly rusted and fungus covered station that looked like a body that had laid too long in stagnant water. The tile covered walls sweated some kind of murky fluid and through the half-opened hermetic door a cold wind blew from the surface as if a giant creature tried to breathe air into this rotten station. The hysterical ticking sound of the Geiger counter exhorted them to leave this place as fast as possible.
They were already approaching the Kaschirskaya when the system stopped working and the indicator stopped at the end of the scale. Homer felt a bitter smell on his tongue.
“Where did it go down?’ asked Hunter.
The voice of the brigadier was hard to hear as if Homer had put his head into a full bathtub. He stopped, finally he had an excuse for a just short but welcome pause and pointed with his glove to the southeast.
“At the Kantemirovskaya. We think that the ceiling and the airshaft went down with it. Nobody knows for certain.”
“That means the Kantemirovskaya is abandoned?
“Always has been. Past the Kolomenskaya you won’t find a single human soul.”
“Somebody once told me…” started Hunter but then he went silent, making a gesture for Homer to be silent as well.
He seemed to feel some kind of invisible wave. Finally he asked:”Does anybody know what happened at the Kaschirskaya?”
“How?” Homer didn’t know if his sarcastic tone sounded though the filters.
“Then I am going to tell you. The radiation is so high here that we will be cooked in a matter of minutes. With the radiation suit or without. We are going back.”
“Back? To the Sevastopolskaya?”
“Yes, there I will go to the surface. Maybe I get there from the surface.” said Hunter sunken in thoughts.
It was as if he was already planning his route.
Homer couldn’t find the right words: “You want to go alone?”
“I can’t always look after you. I have to watch out that I won’t die too. We won’t get through together anyway. It isn’t even sure that I am going to make it alone.”
“Don’t you understand? I have to go with you, I want…”
Homer desperately searched for a reason, an excuse.
“…to do something useful before you die?” ended the brigadier the sentence. His tone was indifferent, even though Homer knew that the filter of the gasmasks filtered any fumes so that only tasteless sterile air came in and mechanical soulless voices as well.
The old man closed his eyes and tried desperately to remember what he knew about the short stub of the Kachochskaya line, about the irradiated Samoskvorezkaya line, about the way from the Sevastopolskaya to the Serpuchovskaya… Everything but not to turn back, to not return to this lacking life that had nothing to offer to him anymore but false hopes of great stories and legends.
“Follow me!” he croaked as he suddenly walked to the east with such speed that even he was surprised.
They walked east, to the Kaschirskaya, into the middle of hell.
She dreamt that she was working with a saw on the iron ring to which she was chained to the wall, the tool shrieked and slipped again and again but every time she had gotten one millimeter into the steel the thin scratch grew together again in front of her eyes.
But Sasha didn’t give up. Again she took the saw with her bloody hands and continued to work the unyielding metal.
The most important thing was to continue, to show no weakness, not to stop working and to not rest.
Her chained feet were swollen and numb. Sasha knew that even if she succeeded to beat the iron she wouldn’t be able to flee because she could no longer control her legs…
She awoke and opened her eyelids.
The chains hadn’t been a dream. Sasha’s hands were handcuffed. She was lying on the dirty loading area of the mining railcar that shrieked monotones while it tortured itself forward. In her mouth was a dirty piece of cloth and her forehead hurt and bled.
He didn’t kill me, she thought. Why?
From the loading area she could only see a part of the tunnels ceiling. In the randomly moving light the welds of the tunnel rings flickered out of the darkness. Suddenly the tunnel segments disappeared and cracked white paint was to see.
What kind of station was this?
This was a bad place: Not just silent but deathly silent, not just empty of people but empty of life and also dark. She had always thought that the station on the other side of the bridge would be full of people and noise. Should she have been mistaken?
The blanket over Sasha didn’t move anymore. The kidnapper climbed on the platform cursing, his boots with iron spikes and fitted soles made a strange sound. He seemed to scan his surroundings, and seemed to have already taken of his gasmask because Sasha heard him mumble: “There you are. It has been a while.” relieved he breathed out and beat after something – no kicked against something – lifeless, heavy: “A full sack?”
Sasha realized. She bit the stinking rag and started to moan, her body cramped. Now she knew where the fat man in the radiation suit had brought her and to whom his words were pointed at.
Even the thought to leave Hunter behind was absurd.
With a few predator-like jumps he had caught up to him, held on to his shoulder and shook him painfully.
“What’s going on with you?”
“A little further…” croaked the old man. “I remember.There is still a tunnel that leads directly to the Samoskvorezkaya line, even before the Kaschirskaya. If we pass there we get directly into the tunnel and don’t have to run through the station. We circle it and end up directly at the Kolomenskaya. It can’t be far. Please…”
Homer used Hunters hesitation to rip himself free, but one of his legs got caught up in the suit and didn’t move, he fell onto the rails. He stood up immediately after that and continued to set one foot in front of the other. Hunter grabbed the old man with ease as if he was a rat, turned him to his face so that the windows of their gasmasks where at the same height. A few seconds he locked his eyes at Homer, but then he eased his grip. “Okay,” he growled.
