Metro 2034

“I am just going to be near you. What else do I need to be happy?”

She shook her head. “You’re just saying that. You don’t even know me. How could I make you happy?”

“I know how. But it is already enough for me to look at a beautiful girl and I am happy. And what…”

“So you’re saying that you know beauty when you see it?” She looked at him.

He nodded his head. “The only thing that I’m good at”. Suddenly the wrinkles on her forehead smoothened.

“What’s so extraordinary about me?”

“You are shining.”

This time his voice had almost sounded serious. But at the next moment the musician took a step back and put his look on her. “Just to bad that you’re wearing those rough clothes.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?” She moved slower.

It was irritating her that he was looking at her back.

“Your clothes don’t let any light through. And I am like a moth.” He moved his hands as if they were wings and made a stupid face. “Always flying to the fire.”

A slight smile was on her face for a moment. She took part in the game. “So you’re afraid of the dark?”

“Loneliness.” Leonid made a sad face and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

He shouldn’t have said that. While he had tuned his instrument, he had thought that the resistance had been weake, and the weakest and softest string had broken with an ugly noise.

The slight movement of the air in the tunnel had blown away all serious thoughts and had Sasha made play with the the musician. But now she had stopped. With one beat the happy feeling that Leonid’s words had created was gone. Now she was sober again and asked herself why she had given in.

Had she gone with him because of that and left the old man and hunter?

“Loneliness. You don’t even know about what you’re talking about.”

The Serpuchovskaya had sunken into darkness and fear. Soldiers with army issue gasmask blocked the entrance to the tunnel and the passageway to the ring line. The station was humming, with premonition of a catastrophe, like a stirred up bee hive. Hunter and Homer were brought through the hall under guard. Here the inhabitants of the Serpuchovskaya tried to find if they know their fate by looking at their eyes. Homer looked at the ground; he didn’t want to remember their faces.

The brigadier hadn’t told him where they were going but the old man was beginning to suspect.

To polis.

Connecting four metro lines it was a real city with thousands of inhabitants. The rest of this underground realm had split into warring stations long ago. Polis was a heaven for science and culture.

The holiest place in the metro that no one dared to attack.

Nobody but the old Homer, that half crazy rider of the apocalypse…

But in the last 24 hours he had felt better. His nausea had gone and the coughing that had forced him to clean his bloody gasmask had stopped as well. Maybe his organism was winning against the epidemic? Or maybe he hadn’t been infected in the first place? Maybe he had just imagined it. He had known that from the beginning but he had still been afraid…

The tunnel behind the Serpuchovskaya was dark and silent and had a bad reputation. Homer knew: Until polis they wouldn’t meet a single human soul, the station between the Serpuchovskaya and the Borovizkaya had always a surprise ready for its visitors. Over the Polyanka the only station on their journey, he knew a lot of legends.

Everybody who passed it generally didn’t have to fear for his life but his mind could be damaged.

Homer had been there a few times but never noticed anything out of the ordinary. He knew all legends and had an explanation for every single one of them. So he was hoping that the station would remain dead once more and lay abandoned like in better times. But around one hundredth meters in front of the Polyanka he noticed the electrical light and the first sounds echoed to him and he had a premonition.

He could clearly hear human voices but was that actually possible? Even worse: Hunter who could normally feel the presence of all living beings even a few hundred steps before they met them didn’t seem to hear anything.

He didn’t even take notice of Homers worried face.

He was totally beside himself and it seemed that he didn’t know what was happening here. The station was inhabited! Since when? Homer had asked a lot of times why the inhabitants of polis had never tried to get to the Polyanka.

They were already running out of space so why not just annex it? It was just legends that had stopped them! But had been enough for them to let this station in peace.

But someone seemed to have gotten over their fear and built a city of tents. They had even installed new lights.

How they were wasting electricity! Still, in the tunnel Homer put his hand in front of his eyes, to keep them from looking into bright light that was coming out of the mercury lamps which were hanging from the ceiling.

Incredible! Even polis had never looked so clean and for. The walls weren’t covered in ashes and dirt of the last years. The marble tiles were shimmering and it looked like the ceiling had been renewed with white paint just yesterday.

Homer looked through the arc of the entrance into the station and he couldn’t see a single tent.

Hadn’t they gotten to that part, putting them up? Or did they want to turn it into a museum?

He could believe that, after all some strange people where in charge of polis. Gradually the train platform was filling with people. They didn’t care for the to the teeth armed mercenary with his titan helmet and the stumbling, dirty old man.

And still: Homer knew while he looked at them he couldn’t move even one bit, his legs were numb.

Every human who had gathered at the platform was dressed like if they were making a movie about the first year of 2000 at the Polyanka. Fine coats, colorful warm jackets; dark blue jeans… People had worn those clothes before the catastrophe. Where were the coats made from rough pig leather, where was the eternal brown of the metro, the graveyard of all color? Where had it gone?

Where did they get all this richness? And their faces!

That weren’t faces of people who had lost their families in one moment. Those people seemed to have seen the soon not a while ago, they looked like they had started their day, like always with a hot shower. Homer could have sworn… And then… He had the feeling that he knew those people from somewhere. More and more of these wonderful people gathered at the edge of the platform without stepping onto the tracks though. Soon the colorful crowd filled the entire station, from the beginning of the station to its end. It seemed that they had all stepped out of an old photos that had been made 30 years ago.

Still none of them were looking at homer directly, they looked everywhere, the walls, the newspapers, looked at each other in secret, out of envy or curiosity. But they didn’t look at the old man, as if he was a ghost.

Why had they gathered here? For what were they wafting? It took him some time until he had himself under control again. Where was the brigadier? Why hadn’t he said anything? Hunter had stopped a few steps behind him. He seemed to not be interested in the station full of people. With a heavy look he stared into the room, as if was standing in front of something that was blocking his way. A few steps in front of him something must have been hanging above his head. Homer stepped closer and looked carefully under his visor… And suddenly hunter started to punch. The fist went through the air, made a strange circle to the left and then to the right, as if the brigadier was trying to stab an invisible creature with an imaginary blade. He almost hit Homer but he jumped to the side. Hunter continued his fight. He punched, stepped back, defended himself and seemed to hold on to something with his iron hard fingers, groaned in the next moment as if something was squeezing his neck and choking him with its grip. The old man felt like he had seen something similar before, just a while ago. Where and when? And what the