It was like somebody had emptied a bucket of cold water over her head. Sasha was shivering but she stood her ground. “You feel it. That you are complete with me. That I can be near you and that I have to. Why else would you have taking me with you?”
“I did my partner a favor” his look was empty.
“Why did you defend me against the people on the railcar?”
“I would have killed them anyways.”
“Why did you safe me from that beast?”
“I have to kill them all.”
“It should have eaten me!”
“You’re not happy to be alive?” He asked surprised.
“Then you just have to go up the escalator. There’re more of them.”
“I… You want, that I…”
“I want nothing from you.”
“I am going to help you to stop!”
“You’re clinging on to me.”
“Don’t you feel anything, that…”
“I don’t feel anything.” His words tasted like rusty water.
Even the grotesque claw of the pale monster couldn’t have hit that deep. Surprised Sasha jumped up and ran out of the room.
She looked into the room and it was empty. She fell down at the corner, rolled up, was looking in her pocket for her mirror, to throw it away but she didn’t find it. It must have fallen out of her pocket in the room of the bold one.
When her tears had dried, she knew what she would do. There was no time to pack. The old man would forgive her for taking his Kalashnikov, he would forgive her everything. In the room next to her she found her radiation suit hanging on a hook, cleaned and decontaminated. As if a magician had emptied the dead body of the fat man into which Sasha had to step into again and again. Following her for eternity.
She slipped into it, walked out the room into the corridor with heavy steps and through the door onto the train platform. Somewhere she heard the faint echo of the magical music; she hadn’t had time to find its origin. Only for a moment she stopped… But then she resisted the temptation and approached her goal.
When it was day there was only one guard at the escalator. As long as it was bright outside the creatures left the inhabitants of the station alone.
Sasha didn’t even need five minutes to explain her situation: The way to the surface was always open. It was impossible though to take the escalator back down. She gave half of her magazine to the willing guard and put her foot onto the first step that would lead her to the sky.
Then she raised her leg and began to climb up.
CHAPTER 12
Signs
At home at the
Why did she want to go up here? Why die? But who needed her down there? Who needed her really, as a human and not as an acting person in a book? Why should she try to keep deceiving herself…?
When Sasha had left the body of her father in the lonely
But since that he had never appeared in her dreams and when she had tried to summon his picture in her fantasies and share with him what she had lived through, he had only appeared obscure and silent.
Her father couldn’t forgive her that she saved him in that way.
Under the books he had brought from time to time, she had always read them if possible before they exchanged them for food and ammunition, an old botanic book was her favorite. The illustration weren’t very colorful, only bleached black and white pictures and pencil drawings, but in the other books that she had gotten her fingers on there weren’t any pictures in them at all. Of all plants she liked the climbing plants the most: She felt like they were part of her soul. Like those flowers she needed something on that she could lean on. To grow up on. To the light.
No before all she had needed a powerful log, to lean on it and to hug it. Not to rob it from light and warmth, no.
Without it she was just too soft, she had not enough spine to stand up straight. Standing on her own she would have to crawl on the ground.
Her father had said that she shouldn’t rely on anybody else. Except for him there had been nobody in this god forsaken station and he had known that he wouldn’t live forever. He would have rather seen her grow up like a tree and not like ivy. But he had forgotten that wasn’t in her female nature. Sasha had survived without him. Without Hunter. But to be united with another human being had been the only reason for her to think about the future. When she had hugged the brigadier on the rushing railcar her life had gained new hold. She reminded herself that it was dangerous to rely on others and unworthy to be depended on somebody.
The harder it was to overcome and explain it to hunter.
Sasha just had wanted to lean, but he had thought that she wanted to hold on to his boot. Now that there was nobody to lean on and also having been kicked in the dirt, it seemed under her honor to keep searching. He had chased her away, said she should go to the surface, well good, then it should be like that. When something happened to her up there it was his fault, it was only in his power to change that.
Finally her steps were at the end. Sasha stood at the edge of a giant marble room, the holed metal ceiling was being kept standing by a few pillars. Through the holes in the distance you could see bright rays of light. They were of surprising grey white color and some of the even shined to the part were Sasha stood. She switched of her lamp, held her breath and continued silently.
Traces of shots and splinters on the walls at the exit of the escalator pointed to humans having been there. But just a few more steps later other creatures ruled. Out of the dried hills of crap that were everywhere bones and pieces of skin stuck out, Sasha knew that she was inside a cave that was inhabited by wild animals. She covered her eyes from the burning light and approached the exit. The closer she got to the origin of the light the deeper became the darkness in the farthest edges of this giant hall she stepped through. She gradually got used to the light, but also lost her feeling for the darkness.
Fallen down kiosks, hills of unimaginable trash and old, stripped technical machines filled the neighboring halls.
It seemed that the humans who had used this room at the
From time to time Sasha thought she could see an almost unnoticeable movement in the dark corners, but she thought it was of her stronger getting blindness. The darkness that was here was already too thick so she didn’t see the silhouettes of the sleeping monster next to the hills of trash.
The air moved gradually over her head, sounded over the heavy breathing and Sasha realized that just a few meters next there she had passed a slightly moving hill. She stood still, listened and starred at the contours of the fallen down kiosks. There between the rubble she saw a strange hump and froze.
The hill that had dug itself into the little house was breathing. Even almost all of the other hills moved in the same rhythm. To be sure Sasha switched on her lamp and put it onto one of the hills. The weak ray of light exposed the wrinkled white skin that ran over a gigantic chest. It was one of the chimaeras that had almost killed her, just a lot bigger.
