anyone, I can’t do that.”
“But why won’t the inhabitants of the emerald city help us? And you, why don’t you want to admit that you are doing exactly that?”
Leonid was silent until they had reached the
It smelled of smoke, poorness and pride. A shadow attached himself to their steps immediately.
Wherever they went he followed them up to exactly ten steps.
The girl pushed on but the musician held her back.
“Not now. We have to wait.” He found room on a stone bench and opened the locks of his flute box.
“Why?”
“You can only open the door at a specific time.”
“When?” Sasha’s view turned to the station’s clock.
If it was on time they had only twelve hours.
“I’ll tell you soon enough.”
“You’re delaying everything!” She stared at him and distanced herself. “Sometimes you promise to help me and sometimes you try to delay me!”
“Yes.” He breathed in and looked into her eyes. “I want to delay you.”
“Why? For what?”
“I am not playing with you. Believe me, I would’ve found somebody to play by now, I don’t get a no that fast. I think I am in love. By god, how banal that sounds…”
“You don’t believe that in your life! You just say that, that’s all.”
His voice was still dead serious. “There is a method to tell the difference between love and a game.”
“When you lie to get someone is that love?”
“You can always change the rules of a game. Love just destroys your entire former life. True love doesn’t care for circumstances.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. I have never had a life. Now lead me to the gate.”
Leonid looked at the girl with his heavy eyes, leaned against the pillar and crossed his arms in front of his chest. A few times he breathed in as if he wanted to tell Sasha no, but then he breathed out again without saying one word.
Finally he got smaller and admitted: “I can’t go with you. They won’t let me go back.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t go back to the ark. The banished me from it.”
“Banished? Because of what?”
“Because of a certain thing.” He turned away and spoke very silently even thought Sasha was just standing just one step next to him. She still couldn’t understand everything.
“It… was a personal story. With one of the head librarians.
He made me look like a fool in front of others…
In the same night I got drunk and burned down the library. The librarian burnt with the rest of his entire family. It was a pity that they had gotten rid of the death sentence, I would have deserved it. Instead they banished me. For life. For me there is no way back”
Sasha’s hands became fists. “Why did you led me here then? Who did you have to burn my time too?
“You could try to ring,” mumbled Leonid.
“Second side tunnel, twenty meters from the gate there is a marking of white paint. Exactly under it, at the same height as the ground there is the button of a bell. You have to ring three times short, three times long and three times short, that is the signal for returning watchers…”
Leonid helped Sasha to pass the three guard posts and then he went back to the station. As a goodbye he wanted to put an old assault rifle into her hand, which he had gotten somewhere, but Sasha didn’t want it. Three times short, three times long, three times short was all she needed. And a lamp.
The tunnel behind the
Sasha wasn’t afraid. She just thought about one thing: Soon she would see the doorstep to the emerald city.
And if the city wasn’t real she didn’t have to be afraid any longer.
The side tunnel was there were Leonid had said it would be. A damaged grid was in front of the entrance but it was big enough for Sasha to slip through. After a few hundredth feet she saw the steel wall of a security door which made an eternal and unshaken impression.
Sasha counted forty feet and indeed: She saw the white markings on the wet and at the same parts sweating wall out of the darkness. She found the the bell immediately. She searched with her hands for the button and put another look at the watch that Leonid had given her. She had made it!
She had gotten there in time! She just had to wait another few moments and she closed her eyes…
Three times short.
Three times long.
Three times short.
CHAPTER 17
Who’s Talking?
Artyom lowered his glowing barrel. Sweat and tears burnt in his eyes. But the back of his hand only hit his gasmask. Should he just rip it off? What difference did it make now?
What difference did it make now…
The screams of the infected had apparently been louder than the salves of the rifles. How else was could he explain it to himself that more and more had streamed out of the wagon and stormed into the hail of led? Hadn’t they heard the thunder, hadn’t they not understood that they were executed in their close area? For what had they hoped? Or hadn’t they cared at all?
In front of the entrance to the train platform was covered for meters with bloated corpses.
Some were still twitching; yes even some of them were moaning on this terrible graveyard like hill. The pest had spilled out. Those who were still in the wagon had cowered down in fear and hid from the bullets.
Artyom looked at the other marksmen. Was he the only one whose hands and knees were shivering? Nobody said a word and even the commander was silent. You could only here the sighing of the humans who were still in the overcrowded train, like they were cramped trying to suppress bloody coughing. Out of the morgue the last dying man cursed them: “You monsters… Pigs… I’m still alive… Can’t stand it.”
The commander looked for the unlucky until he found him, went to his knees and fired the rest of his clip of his magazine into the man until you could only hear an empty clicking sound and even then he pulled the trigger a few more times.
Then he rose up again, looked at his pistol and strangely cleaned it on his pants. “The rest of you: Stay calm!”
He screamed huskily. “Everybody who tries to leave the hospital without permission will get the same treatment.”
“What are we supposed to do with the bodies.”
Asked someone.
“Back into the train. Ivanenko, Aksyonov you do it!”
The stability had been renewed. Artyom could return to his seat again and try to find some sleep: Until the wake-up call there were still a few hours so he could make it till tomorrow…
But it came differently.
Ivanenko made a step back, shook his head and said he refused to touch the in pus covered, half fallen
