weakened fingers of the author. Maybe he had added this later because there was no more room or because it made no difference where he wrote it. Then the chronologic order was there again: “At the Nagornaya they let me pass, many thanks! I have no more strength. I walk and walk. Passed out.”
How long did I sleep? Don’t know. Blood in the lung? From the bullet, or am I sick? I…” The curve of the last letters stretched itself to a straight line like the encephalogram of a dying. But then he seemed to have come to his senses again and continued the sentence to an end: “Can’t find the defective part.”
What now flow in red streams over the paper had no more connection to each other: “The Nachimovski. I am here. I know where the telephone is. I am going to warn them… Everything but rescue… miss you… got through. If they heard me? The end is near. Strange, I am tired. No more bullets. I want to sleep, before those… standing there and waiting. Go away!… I am still alive.”
He probably had written the end of the diary before that. With formal, straight writing he had repeated the warning not to storm the Tulskaya, added his name, the name of the man who had given his life to stop that from happening.
But Homer knew: The last thing the radio operator had written, before his signal had been silenced was the sentence: “Go away!… I am still alive.”
A heavy silence surrounded the two humans that cowered at the fire. Homer didn’t bother to get the girl to talk anymore. Silent he scratched in the ashes of the fire with a stick, there where the wet notebook burned reluctantly like a heretic and waited for the storm to blow it out.
Fate made fun of him. How he had longed to decipher the riddle of the Tulskaya. How proud had he been that he had discovered the notebook. How he had hoped to weave the threads of history by himself. Now? Now that he had found the answerer to all questions he cursed his curiosity.
Of course when he took the notebook at the Nachimovski he had worn a mask and even now he was wearing a suit. But nobody knew how this disease was transmitted!
He had been an idiot to tell himself that he hadn’t much time anymore. Of course overreacting had helped him to get over sloth and fear. But death had his own will and didn’t like it very much to be ordered around. And now the diary had given him a concrete ultimatum: From infection to death it was only a few weeks. It could even be a whole month: How much he still had to do in those puny thirty days!
What should he do? To confess to his companions that he was sick and to remain at the Kolomenskaya so he could die there, if not from the epidemic but hunger and radiation?
On the other hand: When he carried the terrible disease in him so were Hunter and the girl who had shared the same air with him. Before all, the brigadier who had talked with the guardsmen at the Tulskaya, he had been especially close to them.
Or should he hope that the disease would spare him, to keep it to himself and wait? Not just like that but to continue the journey with Hunter. So that the storm of events that had carried him away wouldn’t stop and he could continue to get his inspiration from it.
Because Nikolai Ivanovitsch, this commoner, this useless inhabitant of the Sevastopolskaya, this former helper of the train operator, this former gravity bound caterpillar, had to die through the discovery of this cursed diary so Homer the chronic and myth creator would come to light as a beautiful butterfly. If even just for a short time. Maybe he had been appointed a tragedy that was worthy of the feathers of the great masters, but everything depended on what he would be able to put on a piece of paper in the next thirty days.
Had he the right to let this chance pass? Had he the right to turn into an eremite, to forget his legend, to voluntarily pass on true immortality and rob all other around him from it as well? What was the bigger crime, the bigger stupidity: To carry the pest through half of the metro or to burn his manuscript with himself?
He was without courage, but he was still seeking fame.
Homer had already decided and just searched for arguments for it. What did it bring him that he put himself next the two corpses at the Kolomenskaya, to let himself be turned into a mummy while he was still alive? He hadn’t been made for heroics. When the fighters of the Sevastopolskaya had been ready to go to their certain death at the Tulskaya it was their own decision. At least they didn’t die alone.
But what was the point that Homer sacrificed himself?
He couldn’t stop Hunter anyways. The old man had carried the epidemic around with him unknowingly – but Hunter knew exactly what was going on at the Tulskaya. No wonder that he had ordered the complete destruction of all the inhabitants of the station, including the caravan from the Sevastopolskaya. And no wonder he had wanted to use flamethrowers so badly.
But if both of them had already been infected they wouldn’t be able to avoid that the epidemic would hit the Sevastopolskaya. And the first humans to be hit would be all the people that had been next to him. Yelena. The head of the station. The commander of the outer guard posts. The adjutants. So in three weeks the station would have no more leadership. Chaos would emerge and finally the epidemic would kill everyone.
But why had Hunter returned when he had known that they had been infected? Gradually Homer realized that the brigadier hadn’t acted out of intuition but he had followed a certain plan step by step.
But then the old man had mixed the cards anew and thought.
So was the Sevastopolskaya doomed to go under and did his expedition have no more reason?
Even if Homer would have wanted to return home to be reunited with Yelena in death it was impossible.
Alone the way from the Kachovskaya to the Kaschirskaya had been enough to render their gasmask useless and the suits that had got dozen if not hundredths of Rontgen and they had to dispose of them very soon. What to do now?
The girl had rolled together and slept. The campfire had finally eaten the infected diary, the last twigs and had gone out. To save the batteries in his lamp Homer decided to wait in the dark as long as possible.
No, he would continue to follow the brigadier! To reduce the risk of infecting others he would avoid contact with them, leave the backpack with his things here, destroy his clothes, hope for a merciful fate and keep an eye on the thirty day countdown. Every day he would work on his book.
Somehow everything would be solved, he said to himself. The main thing was that he followed Hunter.
If he came back.
It had been over an hour since he had vanished through the obscure exit of the tunnel. Homer had talked to the girl to calm her down but he wasn’t entirely convinced that the brigadier would return.
The more he found out about him the less he understood him. It was possible to doubt the brigadier and to believe him at the same time. He didn’t follow any pattern, didn’t show common human ways. When he trusted himself to himself he exposed himself to Mother Nature. But for Homer it was too late: he had already done it. Regret was pointless.
In the darkness the silence now seemed impenetrable to him. Like through a thin bowl he could hear a strange whispering sound, a distant howling and a rustling sound…
Homer thought it sounded like the staggering walk of one of the corpse eaters then again it was like the giant ghost at the Nagornaya and finally like the screams of the dying.
He gave up before it had been ten minutes.
He switched his lamp back on and winced.
Two steps away from him Hunter was standing, his arms crossed in front of his chest and looking at the sleeping girl. He protected his eyes from the blinding ray of light and said calmly: “They are going to open the door very soon.”
Sasha dreamt… of when she was alone at the Kolomenskaya and had to wait for the return of her father’s expedition. He was late and she definitely had to wait and help him out of the radiation suit, pull off the gasmask and help him eat. The table was already laid and she didn’t know what else she could to do to keep herself occupied. She already wanted to go away from the door that lead the surface but what would he think when he came back and she wasn’t around? Who would open the door for him? So she sat on the cold ground at the exit, hours passed, days went by and he didn’t come. But she wouldn’t leave her place until the door…
The dull beating of opening bars awoke her; it was the same sound like at the Kolomenskaya. She awoke smiling, her father had returned. The she looked around and remembered everything.
The only thing that had been real about her dream was the groaning of the heavy bars on the iron gate. Only a few moments later the giant door started to vibrate and opened slowly. A ray of light fell through the widening space and it smelled of burnt diesel. The entrance to the big metro…
