METRO 2033: The Gospel According to Artyom. (2 page)

I was like a branch broken off a tree – an attempt to attach me to another trunk failed, since the break-off point was so scarred
and
all the cells that were supposed to take root and connect me to a new tree were dead. No amount of effort could make the merge happen.

That's how we'd live together yet apart, he – a loner, me – an orphan. 

             
I could never see her face even in my dreams. I saw that day wit the mandarin ducks a lot of times, but I never saw mother. Her shape, her voice, her laughter... Everything was vague, trying to concentrate, reaching out was useless – she was ever-elusive, ephemeral. Touching her or holding her was completely impossible.

*
             
*
             
*

             
It was my idea to go visit the Botanical Gardens station. Mine completely. I was afraid to go alone, and I wouldn't have made it that way – somebody had to draw the attention of the guards standing watch in the northern tunnel, otherwise we'd be caught at the very first roadblock.

             
I went there to reach the surface. I don't know what did I hope to see there; it was definitely not that long lost summer day with its cerulean sky, not the ice-cream stand   still open for business in an open challenge to all the laws of the universe and not rays of sun dancing on the boardwalk.

Perhaps, somewhere inside that little boy I was then, inside that dirty-faced matryoshka sporting a buzz cut and carrying a rusty shotgun, there was another matryoshka – a happy three-year-old that was fond of ice-cream and still believed in miracles. And was still hoping to meet his mother who'd left him and whom he'd missed greatly up there, on the surface. Lots of new layers have grown on my core since then, like the year rings of a tree. The boy with the shotgun was encased within a shy bookworm of a teenager,  he, in turn, was enveloped by a naïve and adventure-hungry young man, and now they are all imprisoned inside an ugly soul of a burnt and scarred man without an age. This is the final layer, one that I'll never be able to shed, crack or destroy; that's just what I am now. And yet I still know that somewhere deep inside, beneath all those layers, that three-year-old boy is hiding. Hiding and hoping.

I told the guys we're going to play stalkers, and that was enough to get them to follow me.

The Botanical Gardens station was dark and
empty;
the floor was littered with fragments of somebody's lives: torn tents, broken dolls, smashed dishes… Rats were all around, gnawing on whatever they could hope to digest. Suffocating dust hung thick in the air, dulling all the sounds and smelling of hopelessness. If hell – I mean, real hell – exists, it probably looks not unlike the Botanical Gardens station that day.

It was me again who'd proposed opening the airlock. Vitali was scared speechless of the damned station, and even Eugene said he was not sure we should do that when I put my hands on the levers. I was too close to my goal, to that day, to that world, to listen to them and stop.

Sure thing, now I always tell people it was Eugene's idea to go up there. Ask him yourselves if you don't believe me.

The door actuator was in a bad state but it still worked.

–
       
Follow me! – I was carrying the shotgun while Eugene had the flashlight.

Everybody had enough courage to climb the unsteady steps into the top pavilion of the station, overgrown with thick moss that was stirring gently, as if breathing. Then our team broke down. Vitali couldn't make himself go outside. Eugene made a few steps and froze still. But my legs were moving by themselves.

The night sky was clear and shone with thousands of stars – but I didn't come there for the sky.

What did I come for?

At first I'd just look around irresolutely, comparing the half-decomposed, horribly disfigured Earth with the beautiful yet so vague memories and dreams of mine, as if trying to identify a corpse of a really close relative fallen victim to a horrible accident. Finally, noticing a faint resemblance, I went faster...

…and turned around a corner…

Up the street the multieyed mutant skulls of the abandoned residential buildings were baring their teeth at me. Down the street half of the world was occupied by the dense forest the Botanical Gardens, apparently the only place in the city that's actually profited form the radiation, turned into. Several white plastic bags were floating around in the wind. They say such bags may take up to five hundred years to decompose...  Heartrending howling cries could be heard from nearby, as if something was being eaten alive – but I didn't pay any attention to those.

–
       
Artyom! Where are you going?! Artyom!

I didn't even look back, and Eugene, my best friend, was too scared to follow me.

…a hundred meters further…

And then I saw that ice-cream stand. The rainbow colors it was once sporting were long since washed away with the rains and
was
further discolored by the night. Its windows were broken, contents overturned and sullied. It somehow shrunk and withered, and looked almost nothing like the magic gourmet palace of my past, just as a man struck with cancer looks nothing like his former self.

I touched the stand and shut my eyes tightly, trying to imagine my mom telling me to choose one of the two ice-creams. I even whispered “pretty please!”.

And then I knew I won't ever be able to recall her. Even if I were to enter the menacing thicket of the Gardens and find those very alleys, that very pond and that very bridge, staying alive all along... I would amount to exactly nothing.

I felt loneliness, such as I'd never felt before.

But there I was, still touching the abandoned stand as if waiting for my queue to arrive. Not that I didn't know perfectly well that it was never going to.

I was an orphan. I was alone in the whole world.

That was probably the moment when the reprieve I was given ran out. I didn't hear a thing
–
the beasts moved almost completely silently. Some kind of an animal sixth sense, which usually gets extremely keen when you live in the Metro, prompted me of their presence, so I opened my eyes.

A pack of wild dogs, filthy and covered with ulcerations... I was encircled and had my back to the stand's wall, there was nowhere to run, and I would never be able to outrun them anyway. Looking in their eyes I knew that there was no hope of scaring them away or taming them. The surface at the time was not yet brimming with all the sick and distorted life that's so abundant there now. The dogs got lucky – they'd found me, and they had to devour me as soon as possible, before hunger made them go for each others throats.

–
       
Shoot them! – Eugene cried out from somewhere – You do have the gun!

I came to and pointed the shotgun at the largest beast, pulling the trigger. All I heard was a dry click. I pulled the second trigger, and the shotgun didn't fire again. The shells must have gone bad due to all the humidity, and I had no reloads.

One of the dogs turned towards Eugene.

–
       
Go! – I said. – Just don't try to run, they'll jump you first if you do…

Eugene started backing down
slowly
, keeping his face turned toward the beasts. I was just standing there, looking at him.

–
       
Just a moment… I'll be back! With help! – mumbled Eugene.

It was apparent that no help would make it in time. He knew that, and I knew that. When I told him to leave there was still a shade of hope in me: what if he does not run? What if he thinks something up? When he followed my advice I couldn't help feeling betrayed.

             
The dog I was going to shoot before, made a step forward,
raised
its head and sent a hoarse howl towards the stars. The packs started crawling towards me, closing in for the final
leap
.

             
And then the jet-black forest, the dilapidated houses, the whole freezing planet shook from a howl so awful it didn't even make you want to run – just dropping face down and silently praying for mercy was more like it. I never heard anything like it before.

One of the dogs jumped at me.

*
             
*
             
*

They were standing down there at the airlock and quarreling. They didn't have
the courage
to check if the dogs had dismembered me already, and they weren't cowardly enough to run crying to their mommies at the Exhibition. At least they had where to run.

–
       
How? – Eugene stared at me.

I shrugged my shoulders.

–
       
How long was I there?

–
       
About fifteen minutes... How... How did you escape? Artyom...

–
       
I've no idea, – I tucked my head and shoulders again. – Just fifteen minutes?

It seemed to me that everything – our trip, the rusty discolored stand, the dogs – everything was yesterday. As if I'd slept a night.

–
       
Artyom! – insisted Eugine. – Why are you smiling?! What happened?!

I gave him no answer. I remembered nothing.

I recalled everything years after.

*
             
*
             
*

Sure as hell I hated the Dark Ones. Everyone does.

Walking through my home station with floor splattered with blood, madmen tied hand and foot writhing about in their delirium, revenge was the only thing on my mind. When I heard Eugene was killed I shed the last doubt. I wanted to burn their nest to cinders, along with the Botanical Gardens which I'd never be able to return to anyways.

The legends that gossip lovers tell each other today depict the Dark Ones as having incredible power and being terribly ferocious. They say they dismembered the guards with bare hands, writhing their necks – I won't be surprised if the mutants from these tales start actually drinking human blood. This is all complete and utter nonsense. Truth is a hundred times scarier.

The fact is, the Dark Ones didn't kill a single man. They didn't even touch anyone. Everyone died at the hands of their own comrades who were driven raving mad by the Dark Ones. Nobody is able to retain self control when
the Dark
Ones approach. And nobody remembers what he turned into while they were around. Sure thing, when the feat subsides and you see your friend with his throat ripped out it's easier than anything to think that a beast had done it. Think it and believe it.

True enough, by the way – the only catch being that the beast had crawled out
your own self
and hid right back after finishing its business. That is something anyone's better with not knowing, for anyone who met that beast within even for a moment would always be in dire need of a straight jacket.

There's only one person I know who tried to make do without one. He thought combat armor was a better restraint for a body housing the monster trying to take its actual owner's place. He believed that a titanium helmet would stop something alien from entering his head…

But we're not talking about this man now.

There was nobody who did not feel fear and disgust at the mere sight of the Dark Ones. They were our complete opposite. Seeing a Dark One was not unlike seeing a man turned inside out, with meat and intestines pulsing outside with obscene frankness. Not because of their body structure – one could poke a Dark One's corpse with a stick or kick it with no fear of losing the latest meal; it was something completely different. Their
living presence
was to be blamed. The closer they approached, the stronger the disgust and fear grew. It seemed that if this hell spawn touched you, your soul, not brain but the very soul, would be infected with some kind of a parasite or fungus, be covered with pus-spouting ulcers, wither and die but still remain there, serving as food for the parasite for as long as it deems necessary… Though the actual impressions varied from person to person.