‘I knew that you and I would see each other again, that you would come,’ Sukhoi said, pouring the tea once they were in the command room. ‘A man arrived here a week ago looking for you.’
‘What man?’ Artyom was put on his guard.
‘He said you and he are acquainted. Tall, skinny, with a small beard. He had a strange name, similar to Hunter’s.’
‘Khan?’ Artyom was surprised.
‘That’s it. He told me that you would come back here again, and was so certain that I was put at ease at once. And he also gave me something for you.’ Sukhoi reached for the wallet in which he kept notes and objects known only to him and pulled out a sheet of paper folded a couple of times. Unfolding the paper, Artyom lifted it to his eyes. It was a short note. The words written in a sloppy fleeting hand baffled him. ‘He who is brave and patient enough to peer into the darkness his whole life will be first to see a flicker of light in it.’
‘And didn’t he give you anything else?’ Artyom asked with a puzzled look.
‘No,’ replied Sukhoi. ‘I thought it was a coded message.’
But the man had come here especially for this. Artyom shrugged his shoulders. Half of everything Khan had said and done seemed complete nonsense to him but, on the other hand, the other half had compelled him to look at the world otherwise. How was he to know to which part this note pertained?
They drank tea and chatted for quite a while. Artyom was unable to throw off the feeling that he was seeing his stepfather for the last time, and it was as if he was trying to talk long enough with him to last him for the rest of his life. Then the time to leave arrived.
Sukhoi tugged the handle and, with a grinding sound, the heavy cover lifted a metre. Stagnant rainwater poured down from outside. Standing in slime up to his ankles, Artyom smiled at Sukhoi, though the tears were welling up in his eyes. He was on the point of saying goodbye when, at the last moment, he remembered the most important thing. Withdrawing the children’s book from his rucksack, he opened it to the page with the photograph inside and handed it to his stepfather. His heart began to beat anxiously.
‘What is it?’ Sukhoi was surprised.
‘Do you recognize her?’ Artyom asked hopefully. ‘Look closer. Isn’t this my mother? You would have seen her when she gave me away to you.’
‘Artyom,’ Sukhoi smiled sadly, ‘I hardly saw her face. It was very dark there and I was looking at a rat. I don’t remember her at all. I remember how you then grabbed my hand and didn’t cry at all, and then she was gone. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you. Bye.’ Artyom was on the verge of saying, ‘Daddy,’ but a lump got caught in his throat. ‘Maybe we’ll meet again…’ He tightened his gas mask, bent over, slipped beneath the curtain and ran up along the rickety steps of the escalator, carefully pressing the crumpled photograph to his breast.
The escalator seemed simply endless. One had to climb it slowly and very carefully. The steps creaked and chattered beneath his feet, and in one place they unexpectedly moved downwards, and Artyom barely managed to yank away his foot. Moss-covered remnants of huge branches and small saplings were scattered everywhere, carried here by the explosion, perhaps. The walls were overgrown with bindweed and moss and, through holes in the plastic covering of the side barriers, the rusty parts of the mechanism could be seen. He didn’t once glance back. Everything was black up above. That was a bad sign. Suddenly he thought, what if the station pavilion crumbled and he couldn’t overcome the obstacle? If it were just a moonless night, it wouldn’t be too bad: but it wouldn’t be easy guiding the fire of the missile battery in poor visibility. The closer to the end of the escalator, the brighter the glares on the walls and the thin beams penetrating the slits became. The exit to the exterior pavilion was blocked, not by stones but by fallen trees. After several minutes of searching, Artyom discovered a narrow trapdoor through which he could just about squeeze. A huge gap, almost the length of the whole ceiling, yawned in the roof of the vestibule through which the pale lunar light fell. The floor was covered with broken branches and even with whole trees. Artyom noted several strange objects next to one of the walls: large, dark-grey leather spheres, as tall as a man, rolling in the brush. They looked repulsive and Artyom was afraid to go any closer to them. Switching off his flashlight, he exited onto the street. The upper station vestibule stood among an accumulation of the expanded frames of once graceful merchants’ pavilions and kiosks. Ahead he could see an enormous building. It was strangely bent and one of the wings was half demolished. Artyom looked around: Ulman and his comrade were not around. They must have been delayed along the way. He had a little time left to study the surroundings.
CHAPTER 20. Born to Creep
After catching his breath for a minute, he listened, trying to detect the heartrending howl of the dark ones. The Botanical Gardens were not far from here, and Artyom couldn’t understand why these beasts had not reached their station along the surface before now. Everything was quiet, but somewhere in the distance wild dogs howled sadly. Artyom didn’t want to run into them. If they had managed to survive on the surface all these years, something must have distinguished them from the dogs the metro residents kept.
Moving a little further away from the entrance to the station, he discovered something strange: a shallow, crudely dug trench encircled the pavilion. A stagnant dark liquid filled it as if it were a tiny moat. Jumping the trench, Artyom approached one of the kiosks and looked inside. It was completely empty. On the floor was broken glass. Everything else had been taken. He investigated several other kiosks, until he stumbled onto one which promised to be more interesting than the others. Outwardly, it resembled a tiny fortress: it was a cube welded from thick sheets of iron with a tiny window made of plate glass. A sign over the window read ‘Currency Exchange’. The door was secured with an unusual lock. It wasn’t opened with a key, but with the correct digital combination. Approaching the little window, Artyom tried to open it, but he couldn’t. He noticed some faded handwriting on the windowsill. Forgetting the danger, Artyom turned on his flashlight. It looked as if whoever had written it had been left handed but he was able to read the uneven letters. It said, ‘Bury me the human way. Code 767.’ And as soon as he understood what it might mean, an angry chirr was heard overhead. Artyom recognized the sound right away. The flying monsters above Kalinskiy had cried exactly like that. He hastily put out the flashlight, but was too late: he heard the call again, directly above him.
Artyom desperately looked around, searching for somewhere to hide. He decided to try the numbers written on the windowsill. Pressing the buttons with the digits in the necessary sequence, he pulled the handle toward him. He’d been right. A dull click was heard inside the lock, and the door gave with difficulty, creaking on its rusty hinges. Artyom wriggled inside, locked himself in and again turned on his light. In a corner, resting with its back to the wall, sat the shrivelled mummy of a woman. It was squeezing a thick felt-tip pen in one hand, and in the other a plastic bottle. The walls were covered with neat female handwriting from top to bottom. An empty tin of pills, bright chocolate wrappers and soda cans lay on the floor, and in a corner stood a half-opened safe. Artyom wasn’t afraid of the corpse. He felt only pity for the unknown girl. For some reason he was sure that it was a girl. The cry of the flying beast was heard once more, and then a powerful blow on the roof shook the kiosk. Artyom fell to the floor, waiting.