conversations.
Even when someone asked him something, he answered, if at all with one word.
He still had his back turned at them, continuously looking into the mouth of the tunnel. “At the Komsomolskaya the ceiling is too high and the pillars are too thin, the whole station lies in the open. Also it is very hard to barricade all passage ways. And at the Novoslobodskaya all of the walls have cracks, it doesn’t matter how often they repaired them. You can destroy the entire station with one grenade. And the stained windows are already broken. Way too brittle.”
One could have countered this argument very well, but nobody dared to raise their voice. The brigadier was silent for a while, than he said casually: “I am going to the station. Come with me Homer. Shift changes in one hour. Arthur you are in command.”
The sharpshooter stood up hastily and nodded his head, even though the brigadier wasn’t looking at him. Even the old man stood up and gathered his possessions, even though he wasn’t finished with eating. When the fighter returned to the campfire he was already in full gear and carrying his enormous rucksack.
As the contrasting figures – the colossal brigadier and the thin Homer – gradually entered into the lit part of the tunnel, the sharpshooter followed them with his eyes. Then he rubbed his cold hands together and realized he was shaking.
“I’m feeling cold. Someone put more coals on the fire.”
On their way the brigadier didn’t speak a single word. He only asked if Homer really once had been working in the metro and if he had ever drove a train. The old man looked at him with a distrusting look at first, but then he nodded his head.
He said he drove trains at the Sevastopolskaya, but he never mentioned that he used to maintain tracks before that. That was a embarrassing subject.
The brigadier greeted the guards with a military salute.
Those stepped out of his way and he entered the office of the head of the station without knocking.
Istomin and the colonel stood up surprised from their chairs and walked into his direction. Both looked tousled somehow, tired and lost.
While Homer remained shyly at the entrance, stepping from one leg onto the other, the brigadier took off his helmet, put it right on top of Istomins papers and scratched his clean-shaven head. You could see once again how badly distorted his face was: The left cheek had contracted like after a heavy fire injury, the eye above it was a small crack and a big violet scar ran from his mouth to his ear. Although Homer knew this sight; chills still ran down his back, like he had seen it for the first time.
“I will go to the Ring line myself,” said the brigadier.
He hadn’t even greeted any of them. Deep silence followed. Homer already knew that the man was an extraordinary fighter and that had earned him a special reputation with the leaders of the station. But it took him until now to realize that compared to other inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya the brigadier didn’t follow orders. He wasn’t waiting for a permission of the two old and exhausted men; it almost seemed like he was giving them orders and expected them to follow them. And again – how many times now? – Homer asked himself: Who was this man?
The colonel looked at Istomin. His face darkened as if he wanted to argue.
“Whatever you want, Hunter,” he said. “Nobody can talk you out of it anyway.”
CHAPTER 2
Return
Homer listened. Hunter. He had never heard that name at the Sevastopolskaya. It sounded like a nickname – like his own, of course he wasn’t called Homer, but Nikolai Ivanovitsch. They named him after the creator of the Greek epics, because he loved stories and rumors of all kind.
“Your new brigadier,” said the colonel to the guards in the southern tunnel two months ago. They looked at the broad-shouldered man in the Kevlar armor and the heavy helmet with distrust and curiosity. He just looked at them indifferently and returned to the fortifications as if he couldn’t care less.
He shook the hands of those who came to introduce themselves, but didn’t speak a word. He nodded his head silently, remembered their names and puffed blue smoke in their faces like he wanted to keep them at distance. His lifeless eye shimmered in the shadow of his folded up visor. Not then nor later the guards dared to ask for his name and so he remained “the brigadier”. It seemed that the station had hired a mercenary that didn’t need a name.
Hunter.
While Homer stood in the entrance of Istomin’s office undecided he formed the strange word silently with his lips. It didn’t fit for a human – more for a shepherd hound. He couldn’t suppress a smile: actually there had been such dogs here. How did all this come to his head?
A militant race, with a shortened tail and ears directly on the head – nothing superfluous.
But the more often he said his name, the more he thought that he knew it. Where had he heart it? It probably got stuck in the endless stream of legends and rumors and had sunken to the ground of his mind. Meanwhile a thick layer of names, facts, rumors and numbers had appeared in his mind – all that useless data about the lives of other humans that Homer had always listened to eagerly and tried to remember faithfully.
Hunter… a criminal with a price on his head from Hanza? Homer threw a stone into the dim lake of his mind and listened. No. A stalker? Didn’t match his appearance. A field commander? More like it.
And apparently a legend as well. Homer studied the face of the brigadier in secret. The name of a dog suited him surprisingly good.
“I still need two men. Homer comes with me, he knows these tunnels.” The brigadier didn’t ask for his approval and nor did he turn to him.
“And a runner, a currier. I will leave today.” Istomin nodded his head, but then he gave the colonel an asking look.
The colonel mumbled his approval, even though he had fought like a wildcat for the same issue with the commander. Homer’s opinion didn’t seem to interest anyone, but he didn’t think about protesting at all.
Despite his age he had never refused any missions like this one. He had his reasons.
The brigadier took his helmet from the table and moved to the exit. He held the door for a moment and said in Homers direction: “Say goodbye to your family. Arm yourself for a long march.
Don’t take ammunition with you; you’ll get it from me.”
Then he disappeared.
Homer ran after Hunter to find out what would await him on this expedition. But when he stepped on the train station he saw that Hunter had already left. It was pointless to try to catch up to him. Homer looked after him and shook his head.
Against his habit the brigadier didn’t put on his helmet. Maybe he was in thoughts or he needed more air. He passed a few young girls that sat on the train platform. They were pig shepherds on a break.
One of them whispered: ”Look, what a monster.”
“Where did you dig him up?” asked Istomin. Relieved he sank into his chair and reached for a package of his beloved tobacco.
The cigarretes that were smoked in this station had been allegedly found by a stalker near the Bitzewski Place. One time the colonel had held a Geiger-counter next to the cigarettes and the counter started to tick.
After that he decided to stop smoking immediately and the coughing that had haunted his nights as he dreamed about lung cancer became less frequent. Istomin on the other hand refused to pay the story about the radiation much credit. And he wasn’t so wrong – in the entire Metro there was almost nothing that didn’t radiate more or less.
“He has known us forever.” replied the colonel unwillingly. After a short break he added: “Back then he was different. Something must have happened to him.”
