‘Artyom! Run!’ A glove slapped him on the cheeks, burning his skin. He roused himself and was stupefied: the brown slush was creeping up through the tunnel, swelling visibly, expanding, frothing like steaming pig’s milk. His legs would not obey, and his flash of consciousness was extremely short. Whatever controlled him set him free for only a flash in order to grasp him firmly and draw him back into the haze once more.
‘Pull him!’
‘The lad first! And don’t cry…’
‘Heavy… And the wounded guy is still here…’
‘Drop it, drop the stretcher! Where are you going with the stretcher!’
‘Wait a moment, I’ll climb it too, it’s easier with two…’
‘Your hand, give me your hand! Quickly!’
‘Mother of God. It’s already come out…’
‘Tighten it up… Don’t look! Don’t look there! Do you hear me?’
‘On his cheeks! That’s it!’
‘To me! That’s an order! I’ll shoot!’
Strange pictures were flickering: green, the side of a railcar sown with rivets, an inverted ceiling for some reason, then a soiled floor… darkness… green armour again… then the world stopped swaying, grew calm and froze.
Artyom raised himself up and looked around. They were sitting around him on the roof of the armoured train. All the flashlights had been turned off, only one was lit, a small pocket light, which lay in the centre. Its light was not enough to see what was happening in the hall, but something could be heard bubbling, seething and overflowing from all sides. Someone again was carefully, as if trying by touch, to reach into his mind, but he shook his head and some of his fog dissipated. He looked and mechanically recounted the members of the party huddled on the roof. Now there were five of them, not counting Anton, who still had not come to, and his son. Artyom dully noted that one fighter had disappeared somewhere, but then his thoughts again faded away. As soon as his head emptied, reason once more began to slide into a turbid abyss. It was difficult to fight it alone. Melnik recognized what was happening, and Artyom tried to grasp this thought; he had to think about whatever he liked, if only to keep his mind occupied. It was apparent the same thing was happening to the others.
‘This is what happened to this trash when it was exposed to the radiation… They were exactly right, biological weapons! But they didn’t think what the cumulative effect would be. It’s also good that it stays behind the wall and doesn’t get out into the city…’ Melnik was saying.
No one answered him. The fighters had calmed down and listened absent-mindedly.
‘Speak, speak! Don’t be quiet! This crap will stay in your subconscious. Hey, Oganesian! Oganesian! What are you thinking about?’ The stalker shook one of his subordinates. ‘Ulman, dammit! Where are you looking? Look at me! Don’t be quiet!’
‘Sweet… It’s calling…’ the strong Ulman said, fluttering his eyelashes.
‘Just how sweet! Didn’t you see what happened to Delyagin?’ The stalker slapped the fighter on the cheek with all his might, and Ulman’s lethargic look brightened.
‘Hold hands! Everyone is to take each other’s hand!’ Melnik cried at the top of his lungs.
‘Don’t be quiet! Artyom! Sergey! At me, look at me!’ And a metre below bubbled and seethed that terrible mass that, it seemed, already had covered the whole of the platform. It was becoming ever more persistent, and they were no longer able to withstand its pressure.
‘Guys! Fellows! Don’t give in! But press on… altogether! Let’s sing!’ The stalker was not giving up, calling his soldiers to order, handing out slaps in the face or bringing them to their senses with light touches. ‘Rise up, huge country… Rise up for a mortal fight!’ he dragged it out, wheezing and out of tune. ‘With the dark fascist force… Against their curs-ed hordes…’
‘Let noble fu-ry… Boil up like a wave,’ Ulman carried on. It seethed around the train with double the strength. Artyom hadn’t begun to sing along: he didn’t know the words to this song, and anyhow it occurred to him that the fighters had begun to sing, for some hidden reason, about the power of darkness and a boiling wave. No one knew any more words than the first verse and the refrain, except Melnik, and he sang the next quatrain alone, his eyes flashing menacingly and not allowing anyone to be distracted: ‘As two-oo different poles, We are hostile to all! For Wo-rl-d and peace, we battle, They for a reign of darkness…’ Almost everyone sang the refrain this time, even little Oleg tried to echo the adults. The discordant choir of coarse, male voices, cracked and hoarse from smoking, resounded, returning in an echo, in the boundless dark hall. The sound of the singing soared to the high arches painted with the mosaic, bounced off them, fell and sank into the teeming, living mass below. And although this picture of seven healthy men, perched on the roof of a train and, while holding hands, singing these senseless songs would have appeared absurd and funny to Artyom in any other situation, now it resembled more a chilling scene from a nightmare. He really, truly wanted to wake up. ‘Let no-o-o-ble fu-ry bo-il up like a wa-a-a-ve… A people’s war is going on, a sa-a-a-cred wa-a-a-r!’ Artyom himself, although he was not singing, diligently opened his mouth and rocked in time to the music. Not having caught the words in the first verse, he even decided that it was about either the people living in the metro, or about the opposition to the dark ones, under whose onslaught his home station was soon supposed to fall. Then in one verse he heard fascists, and Artyom understood it was about the battle of the Red Brigade fighters with the inhabitants of Pushkinskaya… When he tore himself away from his reflections, he discovered that the choir had fallen silent. Perhaps even Melnik himself didn’t now the next verses.
‘Guys! Let’s do “Combat”, hey?’ The stalker was trying to persuade his fighters. ‘A combat, my father, my father-combat, You didn’t hide your heart behind the guys’ back…’ He had only just started, but then he too fell silent. A stupor enveloped the party. The fighters began to unclench their hands and the circle disintegrated. Everyone was quiet, even Anton who had been raving and muttering the whole time. Feeling a warm and turbid slush of indifference and fatigue filling the emptiness that had occurred in his head, Artyom tried to push it out, thinking about his mission, then telling himself nursery rhymes as he remembered them, then simply repeating: ‘I think, think, think you will not worm yourself into me…’ The fighter whom the stalker had called Oganesian suddenly stood up and brought himself to his full height. Artyom lifted his eyes to him with indifference.
‘Well, it’s time for me. Take care,’ he said taking his leave. The rest dully looked at their comrade, not answering, only the stalker nodded at him. Oganesian approached the edge and unhesitatingly stepped forward. He didn’t even scream, but from below was heard an unpleasant sound, a combination of a splash and a hungry rumbling.
‘It calls… It… calls,’ Ulman said in a sing-song voice and also began to get up. Artyom was spellbound.
‘I think you won’t worm yourself into me!’ He got stuck on the word ‘I,’ and now he simply repeated it, not even noticing that he was speaking aloud: ‘I, I, I, I, I.’ Then he strongly, irresistibly wanted to look down in order to understand whether the heaving mass there was as deformed as it had appeared to him at first. But had he suddenly been wrong about it? Recalling again the stars on the Kremlin towers, distant and beckoning… And here the small Oleg sprang lightly to his feet and, taking a short run, threw himself down with a happy laugh. The living quagmire below chomped quietly, receiving the boy’s body. Artyom understood that he envied him and also intended to follow.
But several seconds later, as the mass closed over Oleg’s head, perhaps at that very moment when it had taken his life from him, his father screamed and regained consciousness. Breathing heavily and exhaustedly looking from side to side, Anton lifted himself and set about shaking the others, demanding an answer from them: ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him? Where is my son? Where is Oleg? Oleg! Olezhek!’ Little by little the faces of the fighters began to regain intelligence. Even Artyom began to become conscious. He was no longer certain what he really had seen as Oleg jumped into the seething mass. Therefore, he didn’t answer, just tried to calm Anton, who, it seemed, felt in a mysterious way that what had happened was irrevocable. And then his hysterics broke into the numbness felt by Artyom and in Melnik, and the others. His agitation and his baleful despair were transferred to them, and the unseen hand firmly grasping their consciousness, was yanked away.