After that they walked in silence for quite a long time, but the silence was getting more and more oppressive and finally Artyom couldn’t bear it.

‘Listen, Bourbon,’ he said, trying to disperse any hallucinations, ‘is it true that some morons attacked a caravan here not long ago?’

Bourbon didn’t answer at once and Artyom thought that perhaps he hadn’t heard the question and was about to repeat it when Bourbon responded, ‘I heard something like that. But I wasn’t here then so I can’t tell you for sure.’

His words made a dull sound and Artyom barely caught their sense, and had a hard time separating the words he heard from his own grinding thoughts about the fact that everything was so hard to hear in this tunnel.

‘What? No one saw it? There’re stations at either end – how could that be? Where could they have gone?’ he continued, and not because he was especially interested in the answer but simply in order to hear his own voice.

Several minutes went by before Bourbon replied at last, but this time Artyom hadn’t wanted to rush him, because there was an echo of the words he had just said resounding in his head and he was too busy listening to them.

‘They say that somewhere here there’s a… kind of hatch. It’s covered over. It’s not really visible. Well, how likely is it anyway that you’d see something in this darkness?’ Bourbon added with a sort of unnatural irritation in his voice.

It took some time for Artyom to remember what they were talking about, and he agonizingly tried to catch hold of the sense of it all and to pose another question simply because he wanted to continue the conversation. Even if it was clumsy and difficult, it was saving them from the silence.

‘And is it always so dark in here?’ Artyom asked, feeling a bit spooked that his words made such little sound, as though there was something covering his ears.

‘Dark? Yes, always. Everywhere is dark. It comes in… the great darkness, and… it shrouds the world and it will… dominate eternally,’ Bourbon responded, making strange pauses.

‘What’s that? A book or something?’ Artyom said, noticing that he had to make increasing efforts to catch the sound of his own words, and also paying attention to the fact that Bourbon’s language had altered in a frightening way. But Artyom didn’t have enough strength to be surprised by this.

‘A book… Be afraid… of truths, concealed in ancient… volumes, where… words are embossed in gold on paper… slate-black… they don’t decay,’ Bourbon said ponderously and Artyom was struck by the thought that the man wasn’t turning to speak to him as he had before.

‘Beautiful!’ Artyom almost yelled. ‘Where does it come from?’

‘And beauty… will be overthrown and crushed, and… the prophets will choke, endeavouring to pronounce their premonitions… for a day… the future will be… blacker than their most ominous… fears and what they see… will poison their reason…’ Bourbon continued quietly.

Suddenly he stopped and he turned his head to the left so sharply that Artyom could hear how his vertebrae cracked and and he looked Artyom straight in the eye.

Artyom started and stepped backwards, groping for his machine gun just in case. Bourbon looked at it with wide-open eyes, but his pupils were contracted into two tiny dots even though in the pitch black darkness of the tunnel they should have been thrown open to their limits in an attempt to capture as much light as possible. His face seemed unnaturally peaceful, not one muscle was tense, and there was even a contemptuous smile which had just disappeared from his lips.

‘I’ve died,’ Bourbon said. ‘There is no more me.’

And as straight as a cross-tie, he fell face down.

And then that same terrible sound rushed into Artyom’s ears but this time it did not expand and amplify gradually as it had the last time. No, it burst suddenly at full volume, deafening him and knocking him from his feet. The sound was more powerful here than it had been when he met it before, and Artyom, laid out on the ground, couldn’t muster the will to stand for some time. But once he had covered his ears like before, and yelling as loudly as he could, he rushed and got up from the ground. Then he picked up the flashlight that had fallen from Bourbon’s hands, he started feverishly to scan the walls, trying to find the source of the noise – the broken pipe. But the pipes were absolutely intact here, and the sound was coming from somewhere above.

Bourbon was lying there, immobile, still face down, and when Artyom turned him over, he saw that Bourbon’s eyes were still open. Artyom tried hard to remember what to do in situations like this, and he put his hand on the man’s wrist to look for a pulse. Even if it was as weak as a thread, or inconsistent, he wanted to feel it… But it was useless. Then he grabbed Bourbon by the hands and, pouring with sweat, he dragged his ever-heavier body forward, straight out of this place. It was fiendishly hard and made even more so because he had forgotten to remove his companion’s rucksack.

After a few dozen steps Artyom suddenly stumbled on something soft and his nose was struck by a sickening and slightly sweet smell. He immediately remembered the words ‘we might bump into them’ and he redoubled his efforts, trying not to look underfoot, passing bodies stretched out on the rails.

He pulled and pulled Bourbon along. Bourbon’s head hung lifelessly and his hands were growing cold and slipping out of Artyom’s sweaty hands but he didn’t acknowledge it, he didn’t want to acknowledge it, he had to get Bourbon out of there and he had promised him, they had an agreement!

The noise gradually began to die down and suddenly disappeared. Again there was a deathly silence and, feeling an enormous relief, Artyom allowed himself to finally sit down on the rails and catch his breath. Bourbon was lying motionless next to him and Artyom was looking with despair at his pale face as he breathed heavily. After about five minutes he made himself get up onto his feet and, taking Bourbon by the wrists, he moved forward stumbling. His head was absolutely empty apart from the vicious determination to drag this person to the next station.

Then his legs buckled and he tumbled onto the cross-ties but after lying there for a few minutes he crawled forward and grabbed Bourbon by the collar. ‘I’ll get there, I’ll get there, I’ll get there, I’ll get there, I’llgetthereI’llgetthereI’llgetthereI’llgetthere,’ he assured himself although he barely believed it. Having lost his strength entirely, he pulled his machine gun down from his shoulder and switched the safety lock to single shots and he directed the barrel to the south, let out a shot and called out: ‘People!’ But the last sound that he heard was not a human voice but the rustle of rat paws.

He didn’t know how long he had lay there like that, gripping Bourbon by the collar, squeezing the handle of his machine gun, when his eyes perceived a ray of light. An unfamiliar old man with a flashlight in one hand and a strange gun in the other was standing above him.

‘My young friend,’ he was saying in a pleasant and sonorous voice. ‘You can forget about your friend. He’s as dead as Ramses the Second. Do you want to stay here and reunite with him in the heavens as soon as possible or can he wait for you for a little while?’

‘Help me to take him to the station,’ Artyom asked the man in a weak voice, covering his eyes from the light.

‘I’m afraid that it’s necessary for us to reject that idea,’ the man said bitterly. ‘I am resolutely against turning the metro station of Sukharevskaya into a tomb, it’s not even that comfortable as it is. And then, if we take this lifeless body there then it’s unlikely that anyone in the station will undertake to put him on his final path in a respectable way. What difference does it make whether the body decomposes here or at the station if its immortal soul has already returned to his Creator? Or to be reincarnated, depending on your religious views. Although all religions are mistaken to differing degrees.’