From now on Homer dragged the brigadier behind him without stopping for a second. The sound of his blood in his ears pumped over the clicking sound of the Geiger counter, his stiff legs were almost no longer under his control and his lungs seemed to explode, struggling to get air.
He had almost overlooked the deep dark stain of the hole. They squeezed through and ran for another few minutes until they left through another new tunnel. The brigadier looked around hastily, went back into the tunnel and asked the old man angry: “Where have you lead me? Have you even been here before?”
Around another thirty meters to left, into the direction that they had to go, the tunnel had been filled from the floor to the ceiling by something that vaguely reminded him of the web of a spider. Homer didn’t have enough air to breathe so the just shook his head. It was the whole truth, he had never been here. Everything else he had heard about this place he wouldn’t tell Hunter.
The brigadier held the assault rifle in his left hand, pulled a long straight knife out of his backpack; it was some kind of self-made machete and started to slice the sticky white mass. The dried shells of flying roaches that hung in the web started to shiver and made sounds like rusted bells. The edges of the wound started to grow back together immediately.
The brigadier raised the half transparent piece of spider web, put his search light through and lit the side tunnel.
They would need hours to cut their way through. The sticky web had grown in the tunnel in many layers.
Hunter looked at the Geiger counter, made a strange but disappointed noise and started to ripped through the web that was between the walls. The web only gave in reluctantly, it cost them more time then they had. In around ten minutes they had only gotten around thirty feet and the net became denser and denser, it seemed to block the entry like a big piece of cotton. When they finally passed a overgrown vent where an ugly two headed skeleton laid on the ground the brigadier threw his knife to the ground.
They hung in this web like the roaches and even if the creature that had made this giant web was already dead the radiation would do its job.
While Hunter was looking for an exit Homer suddenly remembered what he had heard about this place.
He dropped to his knees, shook a few bullets out of his reserve clip, turned them around, opened them with his knife and shook the gunpowder in to his hand.
Hunter realized immediately. A few moments later they stood at the entrance of the side tunnel again, covered a piece of cotton with the coarse grey powder and held a lighter to it.
The powder hissed and started to smoke and suddenly the unimaginable happened, the small flame began to shoot into all direction at the same time, reached the ceiling, wandered along the walls and filled the entire tunnel.
Greedily it ate the web and rushed into the deep. Like a roaring ball of fire it moved forwards, lit the dark tunnel segments and left burned pieces on the ceiling. On its way to the Kolomenskaya the fire narrowed and dragged all the air with it. Then the tunnel turned around and the flame that dragged a purple cape behind it was no longer to see.
In the distance Homer believed to hear an inhuman, desperate shrieking over of the deafening sound of the fire.
But the old man was still hypnotized by what he had seen so he didn’t entirely trust his senses.
Hunter but his knife back into his backpack and pulled out two new and sealed filter-boxes for their gasmasks. “They were meant for the way back” He changed his filter and gave the other box to Homer. Because of the fire the radiation is now as high as back then.”
The old man nodded his head. The flame had whirled up radioactive particles that had deposited in the web. In the black vacuum of these tunnels there had to be millions of death bringing molecules.
Uncountable small underwater mines hung in this empty room and blocked their way. They couldn’t move out of it, there was only one way out, directly through them.
“If your father could see you now” the fat man mocked her.
Sasha was sitting directly in front of her father’s corpse that was laying in his blood facedown.
The kidnapper had opened his overalls, he was wearing a bleached t-shirt with some kind of happily laughing animal.
Every time she raised her eyes her kidnapper blinded her with his flashlight so that she wouldn’t be able to see his face. He had pulled the cloth out of her mouth but Sahsa didn’t even think about pleading for something.
“You don’t look like your mother. Too bad, I was hoping…” The elephant legs in the high, stained rubber boots wandered for the second time around the pillars. Sasha was leaning on them with her back so she didn’t know what was going on. Now his voice came from behind. “Your father must have thought that in time they would forgive him. But there are crimes that don’t lapse… Like slandering and treason”. His obscure silhouette emerged out of the dark from the other side. He stopped in front of her father’s corpse, kicked at it with his boot and spit out thick slime. “Too bad that the old man already died without my help.”
The fat man moved the ray of light through the murky, faceless station where mountains of useless scrap laid around.
At the bicycle the light stopped. “You got a nice place here. I think if not for you, your father would have already hung himself.”
While he lit the station Sasha tried to crawl away but one second later the ray of light caught her.
“I can relate,” with one jump her kidnapper stood next to her. “she made a nice lady. But like I said, to bad that she doesn’t look like her mother. It probably bothered him too. Well whatever.” He kicked her side with his boot so that she fell over. “After all I have crossed the entire metro to get here.”
Sasha winced and shook her head. “You see Petya, how easy it was to predict what would going to happen?’ once again he had turned to her father.
“Back then you always brought your rivals in front of the tribunal. And much thanks for the lifelong exile instead of the execution! Well, life is really long and your situation changes. And not always in your favor. I am back even thought it took me ten years longer than planned.”
“You never accidently returned to the same place,” she whispered her father’s words.
“Too true.” answered the fat man sarcastic. “Hey, who’s there?”
At the other end of the platform you could hear a scraping sound, then something heavy fell to the floor.
Some kind of hissing sound emitted and another that sounded like steps of a big animal. The silence that followed was deceptive but Sasha and her kidnapper both felt that something approached them.
The fat man clicked the safety off his weapon loudly and went down on one knee next to her, he had pressed the stock against his shoulder and sent a flickering spot of light over the pillars that were standing around. That something had moved in the century-abandoned southern tunnels was scarier than all the marble statues in the central station suddenly coming to life.
In the wandering ray of light a blurred shadow appeared for a second, but its silhouette nor its speed was human. When the ray of light quickly returned to the same place, strangely there was no trace left of the strange creature. A few seconds the panicky searching light caught it again, now only twenty feet away from them.
“A bear?” whispered the fat man doubting what he had just seen. He pulled the trigger.
The bullets rushed to the pillars, hit the walls, but the animal had vanished into thin air at the same time, not one of the shots had reached its goal. Then the fat man switched to pointless auto fire, dropped the Kalashnikov and pressed his hands onto his stomach. The flashlight rolled to the side so the light fell on the heavy, cramped figure from the ground upwards.
Without any haste a human emerged out of the twilight, with astonishing, soft and almost inaudible steps even though he was wearing heavy boots. The radiation suit was even too big for his colossal stature, so that you could actually think that he was a bear.
He didn’t wear a gasmask. The cleanly shaven head that was full of scars that it reminded of a dried desert. One part of his face had a brave look, if not a bit rough, you could have said that it looked beautiful if it hadn’t
