Dmitry Glukhovsky
METRO 2034
Translated from the German version by Metro2033Artjom, Lieutenant Shwa, and cardboardtheory
Metro2033Artjom’s annotations:
This is the translation of the German version of Metro 2034 into English. English is not my first language. This translation is as closest to the German Version is it gets. Some sentences had to be changed so that the grammar would make sense. They still incorporate the message of the sentence.
I didn’t get paid translating this book and neither did I want to earn money with this translation.
Dmitry Glukhovsky is the author of Metro 2034 and all rights are reserved to him. No copyright abuse/infringement were intended.
Have fun reading.
(Please report any mistakes to me, by chapter-page-line, to my YouTube channel Metro2033Artjom)
Oh and before I forget, if something is written in brackets and is underlined than it is one of my notes.)
LieutenantShwa (youtube channel) has volunteered to edit the translated text.
Give him your thanks for taking time out of his day to ensure the quality of this translation.
cardboardtheory’s annotations:
I started this project at the beginning of this year I believe, and haven’t had the time to finish it. I have attempted to refine the quality of the translation past Lieutenant Shwa and Metro2033Artjom’s work.
My work is evident in a little more than half of it (Chapter 10 maybe), where I dropped off. For the past week I have also managed to revise the last few pages for reading pleasure.
For reference, the original work Metro 2033 was written by Dmitry Glukhovsky, translated in to German, translated in to English by Metro2033Artjom and LieutenantShwa, and I hope I (cardboardtheory) have better improved the quality in to a more standard English.
In short, this translation was the combined work of both Metro2033Artjom and Lieutenant Shwa, and cardboardtheory. Enjoy reading.
Prologue
It is the year 2034. The world lies in ruins. Humanity is almost destroyed. Radiation has made the destroyed cities uninhabitable. Outside their borders, some say, endless burnt wastelands and impenetrable mutated forests extend forever.
But nobody knows exactly what there is. Civilization fades away. And the memories of man’s former greatness slowly retreat fairy tales and legends.
It has been over twenty years since the last airplane started. Rusted train tracks lead into emptiness. And when the radio operator listens for the millionth time to the frequencies where once New York, Paris, Tokyo and Buenos Aires broadcasted, he hears nothing but lonely howling.
It has been twenty years since then. But mankind has already left up its reign over the earth to other species. Creatures of radiation, that are far better adapted to the life in this new world.
The era of man is over.
But the survivors don’t want to admit that. Some ten thousand humans are left, and they don’t know, if except for them any are still alive – or if they are the last in this world.
They inhabit the Moscow metro, the biggest atomic bunker that was ever built by human hands.
The last sanctuary for humanity.
Almost all of the survivors now alive were in the metro on that day. And that saved their lives. The hermetic security gates of the stations protected them against the radiation and the terrible creatures from the surface. Old filters purify air and water. Resourceful tinkerers constructed dynamo machines to generate electricity. In underground farms humans farm champignons and breed pigs. The poor don’t fear the taste of rat meat.
A central administration doesn’t exist anymore. The stations have transformed themselves into small states, where humans gather around ideology, religion and water filters. Or just unite against enemy attacks.
It is a world without tomorrow. Dreams, plans, hopes – for all that there is no more place. Feelings made place for instincts, and the most important of all – to survive. At all costs.
The story before the events of this book is told in the book “Metro 2033”.
CHAPTER 1
The Defense of the Sevastopolskaya
They didn’t return, neither on Tuesday, nor Wednesday, nor Thursday – the last appointed date. The outer guard post was manned around the clock, and if the guards would have just heard the faint echo of a cry for help or seen the weak reflection of a lamp on the wet, dark tunnel walls, there, where it goes to the Nachimovski prospect, they would have sent a strike team immediately.
Tensions grew with every hour. The guards – excellently armed soldiers and especially trained for missions like that – didn’t close their eyes for a second. The stack of playing cards, with which they usually killed time through the missions, collected dust for about two days in the drawer of the guardhouse. Their casual conversations gave away to short, nervous talks and now fatal silence reigned. Everyone hoped to be the first to hear the echoing steps of the returning caravan. Too much depended on it.
All inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, whether five year old boy or old man knew how to handle weapons. They had transformed their station into an impenetrable fortress. Even though they barricaded themselves behind machinegun-nests, barbed wire, yes even tank-stoppers made out of tracks, this impenetrable fortress was threatening to fall in a blink of an eye. Their Achilles’ heel was the shortage of ammunition.
Had the inhabitants of other stations experienced what the Sevastopolskaja had to endure on a daily basis, they wouldn’t have wasted a thought about defending themselves, but fled like rats in flooded tunnel. Even the powerful Hanza, the federation of the stations in the ring line, wouldn’t have ordered additional forces in case of an emergency – due to costs. Sure, the strategic importance of the Sevastopolskaya was enormous. But the price was too big.
So was the price for electricity. So high that the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, that had created one of the biggest hydroelectric power stations in the metro, let themselves be supplied by the Hanza with ammunition and were sometimes even able to turn a profit. But many of them didn’t just pay with bullets, but with a crippled, short life.
The groundwater was a blessing and a curse for the Sevastopolskaya. Like the waters of the river Styx flew around the rotten boat of Charon, so was the station surrounded by water. The groundwater gave a third of the ring line light and warmth, because it sets the shovels of dozens of water mills in motion. These had been created by skillful engineers of the station using their own plans, in tunnels, caves, underwater creeks, to put it blandly: where one could be made.
At the same time the water gnawed incessantly on the pillars, gradually loosened the cement out of the cracks, passing by very close behind the walls of the station like if it was trying to lull the inhabitants to sleep. The groundwater prevented them from blowing up unnecessary parts of the tunnels. And exactly through these tunnels, hordes of nightmarish creatures move towards Sevastopolskaya, like an endless poisonous centipede crawling into a grinder.
The residents of the station felt like the crew of a ghost ship on its way through hell. They were damned to fill the holes constantly, because the frigate has been leaking for a long time. And a harbor, where they could find protection and silence, wasn’t in sight.
At the same time they had to fend off one attack after another, because from the Tschertanovskaya in the south and from the Nachimovski prospect to the north of the station, monsters crawled through the vents, appeared from the murky sewers or stormed out of the tunnels. The whole world seemed to be against Sevastopolskaya, trying to erase their home station from the metro’s map. But they defended their station with tooth and nail, like it was the last fortress in the entire universe.