He talked to himself reassuring until he was the same again. He had to proof himself that he was a grown man that could control his nightmares and didn’t have to act crazy. Hunter didn’t seem to suppress his desire.
But what did he actually desire?
The silent demise of the two corpse eaters brought movement to the rest of the pack: The smell of fresh death chased away the boldest and slowest from the train track.
Slowly, croaking and whining they retreated to the two trains, squeezed themselves against the windows or gathered at the two doors and waited. But they didn’t move.
The creatures didn’t seem to feel anger and you couldn’t recognize any intentions to avenge their killed brethrens or to fend off this attack. As soon as the group would leave the station they would eat the two killed corpse eaters without any hesitation.
Aggression is a trait of Hunters, thought Homer. Who survives on dead bodies doesn’t need it because he doesn’t have to kill. Everything living must die some day and becomes food. They just have to wait.
In the shine of the lamp they could see their monstrous grimaces looking through the dirty-greenish windows, the tilted built bodies, their hands with long claws, it was like they viewed into a satanic aquarium. In absolute silence hundreds pairs of eyes watched every move of the small group, the heads of the creatures turned fully synchronized with the passing humans movement. The small ballsin their formaldehyde glasses must have probably looked at the visitors of Petersburg’s art chamber the same way, if their eyes wouldn’t have been sewed shut as a precaution.
Even though the hour of atonement for his godless view of the world came closer and closer for Homer, he couldn’t overcome himself to believe in god or the devil. If there was a purgatory than he was looking straight at it.
Sisyphus was damned to fight against gravity, Tantalus sentenced to endure torture through eternal thirst. For Homer in his wrinkled train driver uniform there was a dead station waiting for him, with this monstrous ghost train, filled with its inhabitants, that reminded him of medieval gargoyles and the laughter and mocking of all gods that where seeking revenge. And when the train left the station the tunnel would transform itself, just like in the old metro-legends into a moebius band, a dragon eating it’s on tail.
Hunter had lost all interest in the station and its inhabitants. He left the rest of the hall behind him with quick steps. Achmed and Homer had problems keeping up with the hasting brigadier.
The old man had the wish to turn around, to scream and to shoot, to do anything that would scare this bold spawn away just like his heavy thoughts. But instead he followed with his head lowered and tried not to step on any rotting body parts. Achmed did the same as he did. While they fled the Nachimovski prospect nobody thought about looking back.
The ball of light from Hunters lamp flew from one spot to the next as if it followed an invisible acrobatic through a fatal circus but even the brigadier did no longer pay attention to what the light illuminated.
In the light of the lamp you were able to see fresh bones and a definitely human head that had been gnawed on, for a second and then they disappeared into darkness.
Right next to it, like a pointless shell laid a steel helmet and a Kevlar vest.
You could still see the with white color printed word on it: SEVASTOPOLSKAYA.
CHAPTER 4
Ties
“Dad… dad! It’s me, Sasha!” She loosened the straps of her father’s helmet from his swollen chin. Then she reached for the rubber of the gasmask, pulled it from his sweaty hair and threw it away like a wrinkly, deadly-grey scalp.
His chest raised and lowered itself heavily, his fingers scrapped over the concrete and his watery eyes looked at her without blinking. He didn’t answer.
Sasha laid a bag under his head and stormed to the gate. She pushed her thin shoulder against the enormous gate, took a deep breath and crunched her teeth. The ton heavy mountain of iron retreated reluctantly, turned around and fell groaning into its lock. Sasha looked it again and sank to the ground. One minute, all he needed was just one minute for him to catch his breath… soon he would return to her.
Every expedition cost her father more strength. It was almost hopeless in the face of their weak harvest. Every expedition shortened his life not by days, but by weeks, yes even months. But it was their need that forced him to do so. When they no longer had anything to sell, there was only one thing to do, eat Sasha’s pet rat, the only thing in this hostile station and then shoot themselves. If he would have let her, she would have taken his place and would have gone. How often had she asked him for his gasmask so that she could go up on her own, but he remained relentless. He probably knew that this holey piece of rubber with its filled up filters wasn’t any better than a talisman but he would have never admitted that. He lied that he knew how to clean the filters, even after hours of expeditions he acted like he felt fine and when he didn’t want her to see that he was throwing up blood he sent her away to be alone.
It wasn’t in Sasha’s power to change something. They had driven her father and Sasha into this abandoned part of the metro, they had left them alive, not out of mercy, but out of sadistic curiosity.
They must have thought that they wouldn’t even survive a week, but the will and stamina of her father had provided them with what they needed and that they had survived for years. They hated them, despised them, but brought them food regularly. Of course not for free.
In breaks between expeditions, in these rare minutes when the two sat on the sparse lit fire, her father loved to talk about earlier times. Years ago he had realized that he didn’t have to fool himself, but when he no longer had a future, than at least nobody could take away his past.
Back than my eyes had the same color as yours, he had said to her. The color of the sky… And Sasha believed to remember these days, these days when the tumor hadn’t bloated his head and when his eyes hadn’t faded, but when they shined like hers now.
When her father said “the color of the sky” of course he meant azure-blue and not the glowing red clouds of dust that reached over his head when he climbed to the surface.
He hadn’t seen real daylight in over 20 years and Sasha didn’t know it at all. He only saw it in his dreams, but he wasn’t sure if what he saw was real. What experience people that are blind from birth: Dreaming from a world that is similar to ours? To they even see anything in a dream?
When small children close their eyes, they believe that the entire world has sunken into darkness; they believe that everybody around them is as blind as they are. In the tunnels humans are as naive as these children, Homer thought. He imagined that light ruled over darkness every time when he turned on his flashlight and then turned it off again. Even the most impenetrable darkness could be full of seeing eyes.
Since the encounter with the corpse eaters he couldn’t think about anything else. A distraction. He needed a distraction.
Strange that Hunter hadn’t known what waited for them at the Nachimovski prospect. When the brigadier turned up at the Sevastopolskaya two months ago, none of the guards could explain how a man with such extraordinary stature was able to pass every single of the northern guard posts unnoticed.
It was their luck that the commander didn’t want an explanation how Hunter got through without the noticing.
But when he didn’t get to the Sevastopolskaya over the Nachimovski prospect, how did he get there? All other ways to the big metro had already been severed. The abandoned Kachovskaya line, in its tunnels they hadn’t seen a single living being in the last years. Impossible. The Tschertanovskaya? Ridiculous. Not even a skilled and relentless fighter as Hunter would be able to fight himself through this cursed station. Also it was impossible to get there without showing up at the Sevastopolskaya first. So the north, south and east were out of the question.