Perhaps it was for that reason Artyom stopped, in order to look at the soaring beast in the air, that he noticed it. It was hard to determine in the twilight whether his imagination was drawing the strange figure that had stopped dead in the depths of the alley and had fused with the partly destroyed walls of the houses. And only when he examined it further, did it appear to him that this blob of darkness moved a little and possessed its own free will. It wasn’t easy to determine precisely the form and dimensions of the creature at such a distance, but it clearly stood on two legs and Artyom decided to act as the stalker had told him. Switching on his flashlight, he aimed the beam into the alley and made a circular movement with it three times.
There was no response. Artyom waited for it in vain for a minute until he realized that staying in that same place could be very dangerous. But before he could go on, he illuminated the motionless figure in the alley again. What he saw forced him to turn off his flashlight immediately and try to pass the alley as soon as he could.
It clearly had not been a man. Its silhouette had become more distinct in the spot of light, and it was no less than two and a half metres, its shoulders and neck were missing and the large round head emerged directly from a powerful body. The creature had hidden, biding its time. Despite this apparent indecisiveness, Artyom felt in his bones a threat from it.
He did the hundred and fifty metres to the last alley in less than a minute. Taking a hard look, he understood that it wasn’t even an alley, but an opening burnt into a residential neighbourhood by some kind of weapon: they had either bombed here or simply demolished a whole row of buildings with heavy military equipment. Artyom looked with curiosity at the half-ruined homes fading into the distance but then his attention was fixed on the unclear, motionless shadow. It was enough to put the beam of the flashlight on it for a second to dispel all doubt: it was that very same creature or its mate. Standing right in the middle of the alley in the same block, it wasn’t even trying to hide.
If the creature was the same one he had observed in the block behind him earlier, that meant it had snuck along the street parallel to the one he was walking along, Artyom thought. It turned out that it had covered this distance twice as fast as he: for at the very moment he reached the next crossing, it was already waiting for him there. But something else was even worse: this time he also saw a similar figure in the alley to the right of the avenue. As the first one, it was standing there, frozen in place, like a statue. For a moment Artyom thought that perhaps they weren’t living beings, but signs placed here by someone for intimidation or as a warning…
He was already running to the third intersection, stopping only at the last detached house to look carefully around the corner into the alley and make certain that the mysterious pursuers had outpaced him once more. There already were several of the huge figures, and now they were a little easier to see: the layer of clouds that had been covering the moon had thinned out a little.
And as before, the creatures stood there, not stirring, as if waiting until he appeared in the opening between the houses. And for all that, had he not deceived himself, taking stone or concrete stubs of collapsed structures for living beings? His acute senses were able to stand him in good stead down below, in the metro. On the surface lay a deceptive world, unknown to him, and here everything was different and life went on with different rules. He was no longer justified in relying on his impressions and intuition.
Having tried to dart past a new alley as quickly and inconspicuously as possible, Artyom pressed himself against the wall of a house, waited a second and again looked around the corner. He gasped: the figures were moving, and in a surprising manner. Stretching still higher and raising its head as if sniffing the air, one of them unexpectedly dropped onto all fours and disappeared around the corner in one long bound. The rest followed it several seconds later. Artyom moved back, hid and, sitting onto the ground, caught his breath.
There were no more doubts – they were pursuing him. It was as if the creatures were leading him, moving along parallel streets. They were biding their time until he passed a new opening. They would appear in an alley to make certain that he had not deviated from his route and they continued their silent shadowing of him. Why? Choosing a suitable moment for an attack? Simply out of curiosity? Why hadn’t they made up their minds to come out to the avenue, preferring to hide in the gloomy shadows? He again recalled Melnik’s words which forbade him to turn away from the straight road. Was it because they were laying in wait for him there and Melnik knew about this danger?
In order to calm down, Artyom replaced the clip in his machine gun, pulled back the bolt, and turned the laser gunsight on and off. He was well armed and, in contrast to the library, was able to shoot here without any dangers; it would be easier to defend himself. Taking a deep breath, he got to his feet. The stalker had forbidden him to stop and waste time. He had to hurry. It seemed that here, on the surface, one always had to hurry.
Passing another block, Artyom slowed his pace in order to look around. The street here had got wider, forming something like a square, part of which, cut off from the road by a fence, had been converted into a park. In any case, it looked as if there had been a park there at some time: trees still stood in places, but they were not at all the trees Artyom had happened to see in postcards and photographs. Thick, gnarled trunks carried spreading crowns to a height of a five-storey building which stood to the rear of the park. Most likely, the stalkers went to such parks for the firewood that heated and lit the whole metro. Strange shadows flickered in the spaces between the trunks and, somewhere in the distance, a faint fire flickered. Artyom would have taken it for the flame of a bonfire if it were not for its yellowish color. The building itself also looked sinister: it created the impression that it had been the arena of brutal and bloody clashes more than once. Its upper floors had collapsed and in many places bullet holes showed black. In places only two walls remained intact, and the dim night sky was visible through empty windows.
The buildings parted beyond the square and a broad boulevard intersected the street. Above him, appearing out of the darkness, like watch towers, rose the first high-rise buildings of New Arbat. Judging by the map, entry to Arbatskaya should have been located nearby, to his left. Artyom again looked at the gloomy park. Melnik had been right: one didn’t want to delve deeply into this labyrinth while trying to find a descent into the metro within it. The longer he stared at the black bushes scattered next to the base of the ruined structure, the greater it seemed to him that he saw those most mysterious figures that had been following him earlier moving among the roots of the giant trees.
A swooping puff of wind shook the heavy branches, and the crowns creaked under the strain. The wind carried some drawn-out wail from afar. The thicket itself was quiet, but not because it was dead. Its silence was akin to the hush of Artyom’s mysterious pursuers and it seemed it too was waiting for something.
Artyom was overtaken by the feeling that if he stopped here, examining the park’s innermost depths, he could not escape retribution. He better gripped his machine gun, looked around to see if the creatures had approached, and moved forward.
But only several seconds later he stopped again, when he was crossing the boulevards in front of the start of Kalininskiy Prospekt. Such a view was revealed here that Artyom simply was unable to force himself to go further.