‘This can’t be,’ the stalker whispered. ‘It’s just all nonsense! They couldn’t have overlooked something like this…’

He turned the sheet over, looked at it from the other side, and then began to read it again from the very beginning.

‘They kept it for themselves… They didn’t tell the military. Not a surprise, really… Show them something like this and they’ll immediately take it as something old,’ Melnik mumbled indistinctly while Artyom patiently awaited some explanations. ‘But did they really overlook it? It’s faulty… Well, let’s assume it is OK… That means they must have checked it!’

‘Can it really help?’: Artyom finally couldn’t stand it.

‘If everything written here is true, then there’s hope,’ the stalker nodded.

‘What’s it about? I didn’t understand a thing.’

Melnik didn’t answer right away. Once more he read the message to the end, then thought for several seconds and only after that did he begin his tale:

‘I had heard about such a thing before. Legends were always flying about, but there are thousands of them in the metro, you see. And we live by legends, and not by bread alone. About University, about the Kremlin and about Polis you can’t make out what is the truth and what was contrived around a bonfire at Ploshchad Ilicha. And so you see… Generally, there were rumours that somewhere in Moscow or outside of Moscow a missile unit had survived. Of course, there is no way that could have happened. Military facilities are always the number one target. But the rumours said they were unsuccessful, or they didn’t see it through, or they forgot it – and one missile unit wasn’t damaged at all. They said that someone had even walked there, had seen something there, and, allegedly, the installations were beneath a tarpaulin, brand new in the hangars… True, there’s no need for them in the metro – you can’t reach your enemies at such a depth. They stand – well, let them remain standing.’

‘What have missile installations got to do with it?’ Artyom looked at the stalker in amazement and lowered his feet from the couch.

‘The dark ones come to VDNKh from the Botanical Garden. Hunter suspected that they come down into the metro from the surface right in that area. It’s logical to assume that they live right up there. As a matter of fact, there are two versions. The first says that they come from a place that is like a beehive, figuratively speaking, not far from the metro entrance. The second says that in truth, there is no beehive, and the dark ones come from outside the city. Then there’s the question: why haven’t we noticed more of them anywhere else? It is illogical.

‘Although, perhaps, it’s a matter of time. Generally, this is the situation: if they arrive from somewhere far away, we won’t be able to do anything with them anyhow. We blow up the tunnels beyond the VDNKh or even beyond Prospect Mir – sooner or later they’ll find new entrances.

‘Barricading ourselves in the metro will be our only option, closing ourselves in tight, and forgetting about returning to the surface and forever subsisting on pigs and mushrooms. As a stalker, I can say with certainty that we won’t last so long. But! If they have a beehive, and it is somewhere close by as Hunter thought…’

‘Missiles?’ Artyom said at last.

‘A salvo of twelve rockets with high explosive fragmentation warheads covers an area of 400,000 square metres,’ Melnik read, finding the necessary place in the message. ‘Several such salvos from the Botanical Garden will turn them to dust.’

‘But you just said that these are legends,’ Artyom objected.

‘Well, the Brahmins say they aren’t.’ The stalker waved the sheet. ‘It even explains here how to find our way to the location of this military unit. True, it also says that the installations are partially inoperable.’

‘Well, just how then do we get there?’

‘D-6. It mentions D-6 here. Metro-2. The location of one of the entrances is indicated. They maintain that the tunnel leads from there towards this unit. But they stipulate themselves that unforeseen obstacles may arise on trying to get through to Metro- 2.’

‘Unseen observers?’ Artyom recalled a conversation he had heard once.

‘Observers? That’s rubbish and nonsense.’ Melnik wrinkled his face.

‘The missile unit was also just a legend,’ Artyom added.

‘And it remains a legend as long as I haven’t seen it myself,’ the stalker cut him short.

‘And where is the exit to Metro-2?’

‘It’s written here: Mayakovskaya station. That’s strange… As many times as I’ve been to Mayakovskaya, I never heard anything like that.’

‘So what will we do now?’ Artyom was curious.

‘Come with me,’ the stalker answered. ‘You have a bite, relax, and I’ll think about it for a while. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.’

Only when Melnik began to talk about food did Artyom suddenly become aware of how hungry he was. He sprang to the cold, tiled floor and was at the point of hobbling toward his boots when the stalker stopped him with a gesture.

‘Leave your shoes and all your clothes, put them there in that box. They will clean and disinfect them. They will also check your rucksack. Over there on the table are trousers and a jacket, put those on.’

Smolenskaya looked gloomy: a low semi-circular ceiling and narrow arches in massive walls lined with marble that was once white. Although decorative false columns overhung from the arches and well-preserved plasterwork adorned the walls at the top, all of it only accentuated his first impression.

The station gave the impression of a citadel besieged for a long time that its defenders had adorned in their own manner, giving the place an even more stern appearance. The double cement wall with the massive steel doors along both sides of the pressurized gate, the concrete firing points at the entrances to the tunnels, all said that the inhabitants here had grounds to fear for their safety. Women were hardly seen at Smolenskaya, but all the men were carrying weapons. When Artyom asked Melnik directly what happened at this station, the latter only vaguely shook his head and said that he could not see anything unusual here.

However, a strange sensation of tension hanging in the air did not leave Artyom. It was as if everyone here was waiting for something. The stalls were arranged in a line in the centre of the hall, and all the arches were left free, as though they were afraid to obstruct them so as not to hinder an emergency evacuation. At the same time, all the housing was situated exclusively in the spaces between the arches.

Halfway along each train platform, where it went down to the rails, sat duty personnel, who constantly kept the tunnels under observation from both sides. The almost total silence at the station added to the picture. The people here spoke in low voices among themselves, sometimes going into a whisper altogether, as if they were afraid that their voices may drown out some kind of troubling sounds coming from the tunnels.

Artyom tried to recall what he knew about Smolenskaya. Did it perhaps have dangerous neighbours? No, on one side the rails led to the bright and safe Polis, the heart of the metro, and the other tunnel led to Kievskaya, about which Artyom remembered only that it was populated mainly by those very same ‘Caucasians’ he had seen at Kitai Gorod and in the cells of the fascists, at Pushinskaya. But these were normal people, and they were hardly worth being so concerned about…

A dining room was located in the central tent. Dinner-time, judging by everything, had already passed, because only a few people remained at the crude, homemade tables. Sitting Artyom at one of the tables, Melnik returned a few minutes later with a bowl in which an unappetizing grey, thin gruel smoked. Under the reassuring glance of the stalker, Artyom dared to try it and didn’t stop until the bowl had been emptied. The local dish turned out to be simply remarkable in taste, although it was difficult to define from what specifically it had been prepared. One could say for certain that the cook hadn’t spared the meat.