Artyom sat up in bed and stared at him, stunned. ‘Oh, Uncle Sash… You… Is everything OK with you?’ he asked at last, after a minute of blinking. It was hard for him to overcome the urge to ask him if he was alive or not, and that was only because the fact of it was standing in front of him.
‘Yes, as you can see! Come on, come on, get up, no point lying about. I want to introduce you to my friend,’ said Sukhoi. There was a familiar but muffled voice nearby, and Artyom was covered in perspiration, remembering his recent nightmare.
‘So, you’ve met already?’ Sukhoi was surprised. ‘Well, Artyom, you’re sharp!’
Finally, the visitor squeezed into the tent. Artyom shuddered and pressed against the tent wall – it was Hunter. The nightmare came alive again: dark, vacant eyes; the roar of heavy boots behind him; the stiff corpse sitting at the fire…
‘Yes. We’ve met.’ Artyom managed to squeeze out his reply and reluctantly extended a hand to the visitor. Hunter’s hand was hot and dry, and Artyom slowly started to convince himself that it was just a dream, that there was nothing sinister about this person, that it was just his imagination, ignited with fear after eight hours at the cordon, playing out in his dreams.
‘Listen, Artyom! Do us a favour! Boil some water for tea! Have you tried our tea?’ Sukhoi winked at the visitor. ‘A poisonous potion!’
‘I know it,’ Hunter responded, nodding. ‘Good tea. They make it at Pechatniki too. Pig’s swill. But here, it’s a different matter.’
Artyom went to get the water, then to the communal fire to boil the kettle. It was strictly forbidden to make fires inside tents: a couple of stations had burnt down due to tent fires before now.
On the way he thought about Pechatniki – it was at the other end of the metro system, and who knows how long it would take to get there, how many transfers, crossings, through how many stations you’d have to go – lying sometimes, fighting sometimes, other times getting through thanks to connections… And this guy says casually, ‘They make it at Pechatniki too…’ Yes, he’s an interesting character, even if a little scary. His grip squeezes like a vice, and Artyom wasn’t a weakling – he was always eager to compare strength with a good handshake.
Having boiled the kettle, he returned to the tent. Hunter had already thrown off his raincoat under which you could see a black polo-neck jumper, tightly filled with a powerful neck and a bulging, strong body, and military trousers drawn tight with an officer’s belt. On top of the polo-neck, he was wearing a vest with lots of pockets, and a holster hung under his arm containing a burnished pistol of monstrous size. Upon closer inspection, Artyom could see that it was a ‘Stechkin’ with a long silencer, and it had something attached to it, which by the looks of it was a laser sight. A monster like that would cost you all you had. The weapon, Artyom noted immediately, was not a simple one – not for self-defence, that was for sure. And then he remembered that when Hunter introduced himself he added, ‘as in someone who hunts.’
‘So, Artyom, pour the visitor some tea! Yes, and you Hunter, take a seat! Tell us how you are!’ Sukhoi was excited. ‘Devil knows how long it’s been since I last saw you!’
‘I’ll tell you about myself later. There’s not much to say. But strange things are going on with you, I hear. Goblins are crawling around. Coming from the north. Today I was listening to fairy stories while standing with the patrol. What’s up?’ Hunter spoke in brief, choppy phrases.
‘It’s death, Hunter,’ Sukhoi’s mood suddenly darkened. ‘It’s our death stealing up from the future. Our fate is creeping in. That’s what it is.’
‘Why death? I heard that you crushed them very successfully. That they’re disarmed. Well? Where are they from and who are they? I’ve never heard anything like this at any of the other stations. Never. And that means that it isn’t happening anywhere else. I want to know what’s up. I’m sensing a great danger. I want to know the level of danger, I want to understand its nature. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Danger should be liquidated, right Hunter? You’re still a cowboy, Hunter. But can danger be liquidated – that’s the question.’ Sukhoi grinned sadly. ‘That’s the hitch. Everything here is more complicated than it seems to you. A lot more complicated. This is not just zombies and corpses walking across cinema screens. That’s too simple: you load a revolver with silver bullets,’ Sukhoi demonstrated by putting his palms together and pretending to point a pistol as he continued, ‘pow-pow! And the forces of evil are slain. But this is something different. Something frightening… And as you well know, it’s hard to scare me.’
‘You’re panicking?’ Hunter asked, surprised.
‘Their main weapon is horror. The people are barely maintaining their positions. People are sleeping with machine guns, with uzis – and they’re coming at us unarmed. And everybody knows that there’s a higher quality and quantity of them still to come, they are almost running away, going crazy from the horror of it – some have already gone crazy, between you and me. And this isn’t just fear, Hunter!’ Sukhoi lowered his voice. ‘This… I don’t even know how to explain it to you plainly… It gets stronger every time. They are getting into our heads somehow… And it seems to me that they’re doing it on purpose. You can sense them from afar, and the feeling gets stronger and stronger, and the agitation is so vile that your knees start to shake. And you can’t hear anything yet, and you can’t see anything, but you already know that they’re coming nearer… nearer… And then there’s a howl – and you just want to run… But they’re coming closer – and you’re starting to shake. And a while later you can see them walking with open eyes into the searchlights…’
Artyom shuddered. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one tormented by nightmares. He used to try not to talk about it to anyone before. He was afraid that they would take him for a coward or for a lunatic.
‘They’re crippling our minds, the reptiles!’ Sukhoi continued. ‘And you know, it’s like they adjust themselves to your wavelength, and the next time they come, you feel them even more strongly, and you’re even more afraid. And this isn’t just fear, I can tell you.’
He went silent. Hunter was sitting there without moving, studying him, and apparently thinking over what he’d heard. Then he took a mouthful of hot brew and spoke, slowly and quietly: ‘This is a threat to everybody, Sukhoi. To the whole filthy metro, not just to your station.’
Sukhoi was silent, as though he didn’t want to reply, but suddenly he burst out: ‘The whole metro you think? No. Not just the metro. This is a threat to the progress of mankind, which got itself into trouble with its progress already. It’s time to pay! It’s a battle of species, Hunter! A battle of species. And these dark ones are not evil spirits, and they aren’t some kind of ghoul. This is Homo novus – the next stage in evolution, better adapted to the environment than us. The future is behind them, Hunter! Maybe, Homo sapiens will rot for another couple of decades, or for another fifty in these demonic holes that we’ve dug for ourselves, back when there was plenty and not everyone could fit above ground so the poorer folk were driven underground in the daytime. We will become as pale and sick as Wells’ Morlocks. Remember them? From The Time Machine where beasts of the future lived underground? They too were once Homo sapiens. Yes, we are optimistic – we don’t want to die! We will cultivate mushrooms with our own dung, and the pig will become man’s best friend, as they say, and our partner in survival. And we will guzzle multivitamins with an appetizing crunch that were prepared by our careful ancestors in the tonnes. We will shyly crawl up to the surface to quickly steal another canister of petrol, a few more rags, and if you’re really lucky, a handful of cartridges – only to quickly run back down into the stuffy vaults, looking shiftily around like thieves to see if anyone noticed. Because we aren’t at home there on the surface anymore. The world doesn’t belong to us anymore, Hunter… The world doesn’t belong to us anymore.’