‘What’s this?’ Ace asked, suddenly stopping and uneasily looking at Khan.
‘Do you feel that? From behind…’
Artyom stared in puzzlement at him and wanted to let out a sarcastic comment about jangled nerves because he didn’t feel anything in the slightest. The claws of the heavy sensation of depression and danger had even seemed to unclench since they’d left Turgenevskaya. But Khan, to his surprise, froze in place, gestured to him to keep quiet, and turned to face the direction from which they’d just come.
‘What a keen sense!’ he said after a half minute. ‘We’re in admiration. The queen of admiration,’ he added for some reason. ‘We must definitely discuss this in more detail if we get out of here. You don’t hear anything?’ he inquired of Artyom.
‘No, everything seems quiet,’ Artyom listened and responded. At that moment he was filled with something… jealousy? Offence? Vexation, that his protector had said such things about the rough bearded scumbag who had only two hours ago threatened their lives? Please…
‘That’s strange. I think you have the rudiments of the skill to hear tunnels… Maybe it hasn’t developed itself totally in you yet. Later, later. That will all come later.’ Khan shook his head. ‘You’re right,’ he addressed Ace, confirming the man’s suspicions. ‘Something’s coming this way. We have to move and fast.’ He listened again and sniffed the air in a very wolf-like manner. ‘It’s coming from behind like a wave. We have to run! If it covers us, then the game is over,’ he concluded, tearing off.
Artyom had to rush after him and break into a run so he wasn’t left behind. The bearded guy was now keeping pace with them quickly, moving his short legs and breathing heavily.
They went along like that for ten minutes, and all that time Artyom couldn’t understand why they were rushing so much, getting so out of breath, stumbling on the cross-ties if the tunnel behind them was empty and quiet, and there was no evidence that they were being chased. Ten minutes passed before they felt IT. It was definitely rushing after them, hard at their heels, chasing them step after step – something black. It wasn’t a wave, but more like a whirlwind, a black whirlwind, cutting through the emptiness… And if it overtook them, then the same fate awaited them as had met the other six and all the other daredevils and fools who entered the tunnel alone or at a fatal time, when fiendish hurricanes raged, sweeping up any living thing. Such suppositions and a vague understanding of what was going on, were rushing through Artyom’s mind, and he looked at Khan with anxiety. Khan returned his look and everything was clear.
‘What, have you got it now?’ He exhaled. ‘It’s a bad business! That means, it’s already very close.’
‘We have to go faster!’ Artyom wheezed as he ran. ‘Before it’s too late!’
Khan picked up his pace and now he was trotting along with wide paces, saying nothing, not answering Artyom’s questions anymore. Even the traces of exhaustion that Artyom had seen in the man seemed to have disappeared and something beast-like had emerged in him again. Artyom had to run to keep up but, when it seemed that they had broken away from the thing that was pursuing them inexorably, Ace tripped on a cross-tie and fell head over heels onto the ground. His face and hands were covered in blood.
Out of inertia, they ran another dozen paces before they took in that Ace had fallen and Artyom thought quickly that he didn’t really feel like stopping and going back for the guy – he wanted to leave him to the dogs, the short-arse bootlicker with his amazing intuition. He wanted to keep going before the thing got to them.
It was a disgusting thought but Artyom was seized by such a compulsion to flee and leave the fallen man that his conscience had gone silent. Therefore he felt a certain disappointment when Khan rushed back and, with a powerful jerk, lifted the bearded man to his feet. Artyom had secretly hoped that Khan with his more than disdainful attitude towards others’ lives, and indeed their deaths, wouldn’t hesitate to forget the guy and leave him in the tunnel like the burden he was, and rush on.
Having ordered Artyom to take one of the injured Ace’s arms, he took the other and pulled them along. This made running considerably more difficult. Ace was moaning and grinding his teeth from pain with each step, but Artyom didn’t feel anything for him, apart from growing irritation. The long, heavy machine gun was painfully knocking against his legs, and he didn’t have a free hand to hold onto it.
But death was very near. If they stopped and waited for half a minute, the ominous vortex would overtake then, whip and tear them into the smallest particles. In the course of a second they would no longer be of this universe and death cries would burst from them with unnatural speed… These thoughts didn’t paralyse Artyom but, mixed with malice and irritation, they gave him strength and he gained more and more with each step.
And suddenly it disappeared, vanished entirely. The feeling of danger was released so suddenly that one’s consciousness was left unusually empty, like the gap after a pulled tooth, and it was as though Artyom was now feeling around with the tip of his tongue for the pit. There was nothing behind them. Just tunnel – clean, dry, clear and completely safe. All that running from fear and paranoid fantasies, the unnecessary belief in some sort of special feelings and intuition, seemed so funny to Artyom now, so silly and absurd, that he burst out laughing. Ace, who had stopped next to him, looked at him with surprise at first and then also started to laugh. Khan looked at them, annoyed and finally spat at them:
‘Well, what’s so funny? It’s nice here right? So quiet, so clean, right?’ And he walked on alone. Then Artyom realized that they were altogether only about fifty paces from the station, and that light was clearly visible at the end of the tunnel.
Khan waited at the entrance, standing on the iron stairs. He had had time to smoke some kind of home-made cigarette, while they, laughing away, completely relaxed, made the fifty paces.
Artyom was penetrated by a feeling of sympathy and compassion for the limping Ace who was moaning through his laughter. He was ashamed at the thoughts that had flashed through his mind back there when Ace had fallen. His mood was dramatically improved, and therefore the sight of Khan, tired, emaciated, scrutinizing them with a strange look of suspicion, seemed a little unpleasant to Artyom.
‘Thanks!’ Boots rumbled on the stairs and Ace climbed up onto the platform saying to Khan, ‘If it weren’t for you… You… Well, it would have all been over. But you… didn’t leave me there. Thank you! I don’t forget things like that.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Khan responded without any enthusiasm.
‘Why did you come back for me?’
‘You’re interesting to me as someone to talk to.’ Khan flung his cigarette butt on the ground and shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s all.’
After climbing a little higher, Artyom understood why Khan had gone up the stairs to the platform and not continued along the path. In front of the actual entrance to Kitai Gorod, the path was heaped with sandbags as high as a man. Behind the sandbags was a group of people sitting on wooden stools with a very serious look about them. Buzz cuts and wide shoulders under beaten-up leather jackets, shabby sports trousers – all this looked rather amusing but, for some reason, it hadn’t produced any merriment. Three of them sat there and on a fourth stool there was a deck of cards, which the thugs had strewn carelessly about. There was such abusive language being used that listening to it, Artyom couldn’t make out even one normal word in the conversation.
To get through the station you could only pass along a narrow path and up the little stairway, which ended with a gate. But diagonally across from the path, there was an even more imposing pack of four guards. Artyom threw them a look: shaved heads, watery-grey eyes, slightly bent noses, cauliflower ears, wearing training pants with a heavy ‘TT’ imprinted on the stripe. And there was an unbearable smell of fumes, which was making it hard to think.