Metro 2034

where he had started counting so that meant that with every ringing sound the point where this madness was over came closer.

Deceiving oneself? Yeah, probably. But listening to this ringing knowing that it will never stop was unbearable.

Even though at first, it had been the same thing after his very first deployment: Like a metronome it had brought order in the cacophony of his thoughts with its monotone sound, had emptied his head and calmed down his racing pulse.

The ringing cut down minutes of his shift and Artyom felt like he was in a trap made out of time out of which he couldn’t escape. In medieval times there had been such torture: They had undressed a criminal and sat him under a barrel out of which never endingly water dropped onto his head. The cause was that the poor guy slowly lost his mind.

Where the stretch-table was without success, normal water brought extraordinary results…

Bound to the line of the telephone, Artyom didn’t dare to distance himself just for one second.

His whole shift he had tried not to drink so that no important need would lure him from the apparatus.

Days before he hadn’t been able to stand staying in the room, slipped out, hastily run to the exit and had returned immediately. Even on the doorstep he had listened and it had run down cold down his back: The frequency hadn’t been right; the signal was now faster than before. That could only mean one thing: The moment that he had waited for was finally here when he had been gone.

Fearful he looked to the door if somebody had watched him and had quickly dialed the number again and pressed his ear against the telephone.

Out of the apparatus the same clicking sound emerged, the ringing started from anew - in the know rhythm.

From that moment the busy sound hadn’t returned and nobody had picked up. Put Artyom didn’t dare to put down the telephone ever again. Only from time to time he put it from his one already hot ear to his other, cramped trying not to miscount.

He hadn’t said anything to the leadership and he wasn’t even sure if he had heard anything but the eternal rhythm back then. His orders were: Call. For a week there had been only this task. Any violation would bring him in front of the tribunal and there they made no difference between mistakes and sabotage.

The telephone helped him to orientate how long he still had to sit here. Artyom didn’t have his own watch, but the commander had told him, looking at his watch, that the signal repeated itself every five seconds. Twelve sounds were one minute, 720 an hour, 13 680 a whole shift. Like small grains of sand they dropped down from one part of a giant hourglass into another bottomless container. And between the two glasses, directly in the neck Artyom was stuck and listened to time.

Also he didn’t put down the receiver because the commander could return every second to check on him.

Otherwise… What he did was absolutely pointless.

At the other end of the line apparently nobody seemed to be still alive.

He saw the from the inside barricaded office of the head of the station and him pressing his face against the plate of the table, the makarov still in his hand. With his shot through ears he could no longer hear the ringing sound. The ones that were on the other side of the door hadn’t been able to break through, but through the keyhole and the door slit the desperate ringing crawled over the train platform where all the bloated bodies were lying… For a time you hadn’t been able to here the ringing, the noise of the crowd, of the steps, the crying of the children had been too loud, but now it only disturbed the rest of the dead. The gradually dying emergency aggregates still spread their red blinking light.

The ringing.

Again.

2563

2564.

No reaction.

CHAPTER 11 Gifts

Your report! You could say what you wanted; the commander was always good for a surprise. In the entire garrison they told legends about him. Once a mercenary he was skillful with knives and was known that nothing could turn his attention away from his tasks. Back then before he had settled down at the Sevastopolskaya he had massacred the outer guard post of an enemy station alone, using the slightest mistakes of the guards.

Artyom jumped up, pressed the receiver against his ear with shoulder, saluted and stopped, not without some regret, counting. The commander approached the schedule of duty, locked at his clock and put next to his thumb, 3rd November and the numbers 9:22, signed and turned to Artyom.

“My report: Nothing. I mean, nobody picked up”

“Silence?” The commander crackled with his jaws and loosened his neck muscles. “I just can’t believe it”

“What?” Asked Artyom worried.

“That it has already hit the Dobryninskaya. Could the epidemic have already hit Hanza? Do you understand what is going if it has hit the ring line?”

“But we don’t know anything for sure.” Answered Artyom. “Maybe it has already started. We have no contact to them.”

“What if the line is damaged?” The commander lowered his head and started to knock on the table.

“But then there was still a line to the base.” Artyom nodded his head into the direction of the tunnel that lead to the Sevastopolskaya. “That one is completely dead. Here we get at least ringing. That means the line is still working”

“Only that the base seems to no longer need us.” Said the commander calm. “You can’t see anybody from there at the door. Maybe the base is no more. And no more Dobryninskaya. Listen to me, Popov, when nobody is alive there anymore, we die very soon and all of us as well. Nobody is going to come to our help. Why still keep the quarantine up? Maybe we should forget about all this shit, what do you think?” Again his jaws moved.

Artyom was shocked. What heresy! He didn’t want to but he had to think about the commander’s habit to shot deserters into the stomach before reading them their sentence.

“No commander, the quarantine is necessary”

“What you don’t say… Today alone three have become sick. Two from here and one of us. And Akopov is dead”

“Akopov?” Artyom swallowed and closed his eyes. His mouth felt dry.

“Beat his head in on the track.” Continued the commander with the same calm voice.” He had said that he couldn’t take the pain anymore. Not the first case. It got to hurt like hell when you try for half an hour to beat in your skull or what?

“Yes, sir.” Artyom turned his head.

“And what’s with you? Nausea? Weakness?” asked the commander worried and shined his small flashlight into Artyom’s face. “Open your mouth and say >Ahhh<. Good.

Listen up, Popov. You see that finally somebody picks up. Somebody has to pick up, Popov, at the Dobryninskaya and they shall say that Hanza has a vaccine and are reading sanitary brigades who are going to be here soon. And that they are going the get the healthy out. And heal the sick. And that we don’t have to stay in this hell forever. That we will get back to our wives. And you to your Galya and I to Alyona and Vera, understood?”

“Yes, sir!” Artyom nodded his head cramped.

“At ease.”