Now Homer had only one hypothesis left: The mysterious guest came from the surface. Of course all known entrances and exits of the station had been carefully barricaded and were guarded at all times, but… he could have opened one of the vents. The inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya didn’t suspect that there was still somebody that had the intelligence to trick their warning system located in the burned concrete ruins. An endless chess board made out of several stories high apartment complexes that had been torn down by the shrapnel of war heads was already deserted and empty. The last players had already given up playing decades ago and left the distorted and scary figures crawling around on the surface. They now played their own game with their own rules. Looking at it from of the view of humanity, a rematch wasn’t possible.
Short expeditions searching for everything useful that hadn’t decayed over the last twenty years, hastily; shameful raids through their own houses were the only things they were still capable of. In rubbers suits that protected the stalkers from radiation they climbed up to search the skeletons of former buildings for the hundredth time, but nobody dared to fight the current inhabitant’s determent enough to wipe them out.
You might shoot a machine-pistol salve at them, retreat into a nearby dirty apartment and run straight back to the rescuing entrance of the metro when the danger had passed.
The old maps of the capitol city had lost every reference to reality. Where back then cars had been stuck in traffic for miles, now there were canyons covered in impenetrable black brushwood. Where once housing areas there were now swamps or just empty burned land.
Only the boldest stalkers dared to venture further than a mile from their entrances to the metro, most were satisfied with less.
The stations past the Nachimovski prospect – the Nagornaya, Nagatinskaya and Tulskaya – had no open entrances and the humans on those two stations didn’t even think about going to the surface.
So from where in this wasteland Hunter was supposed to have emerged from, was an absolute mystery for Homer.
But there was a last possibility where the brigadier could have come from. This possibility made the old atheist unable to breathe and he follow the dark silhouette of Hunter that moved through the darkness as if it didn’t even touch the ground.
He came from underground.
“I have a bad feeling about this” said Achmed hesitantly and so quiet that Homer almost wasn’t able hear him.
“It isn’t the right time to be here. Believe me; I have traveled with many caravans. There is something brewing at the Nagornaya…”
The small groups of bandits that always retreated back as far as possible from the ring line right away after each raid. They took their breaks in dark stations but never dared to attack the caravans of the Sevastopolskaya.
The instant they heard the constant thunder of the studded boots, which announced the arrival of the heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya, they got out of their way immediately.
Not because of the bandits or the corpse eaters at the Nachimovski prospect these caravans were protected so well.
Their bone hard training, absolute fearlessness, their ability to close themselves to a iron fist in seconds and to destroy every possible threat in a hail of bullets, all that could have made the convoys of the Sevastopolskaya the undisputed rulers of the tunnels up to the Serpuchovskaya – if there wasn’t the Nagornaya.
The horrors of the Nachimovski prospect were behind them, but nor Homer or Achmed felt the slightest relief. The seemingly inconspicuous, yes, even ugly Nagornaya had become the end station of many that hadn’t treated her with caution. Those poor schmucks that ended up at the neighboring Nagatinskaya coincidentally tried to stay as far away from the greedy mouth of the Nagornaya. As if that would save them. As if what crawled out of the tunnel, searching for prey, was too sluggish to crawl a little bit further and choose a victim of its taste…
As soon as you entered the Nagornaya you could rely on nothing but your luck, because this station didn’t play by the rules. Sometimes it let you pass silently and the travelers looked horrified at the bloody marks on the walls and pillars where someone had tried to climb upwards hopelessly.
And just a few moments after ushering someone safely through the station could give a group a welcome, so hearty that losing half of the men was considered as a victory.
The station was always hungry. It didn’t favor anybody. It didn’t let anybody explore it. For the inhabitants of the neighboring stations the Nagornaya embodied pure arbitrariness of fate. She was the most difficult challenge for all that embarked on their way from Sevastopolskaya to the ring line and the other way around.
“So many missing people… it couldn’t just have been the Nagornaya alone,” said Achmed with superstition. Like many residents of the Sevastopolskaya, he spoke of the Nagornaya like if it was a creature and not a metro station.
Homer knew what Achmed meant. He had thought about it a lot of times if it couldn’t have been the Nagornaya that was responsible for the missing recon team. He nodded his head and added: “If so I hope it just suffocated them…”
“What did you just say?” hissed Achmed angry. His hand twitched in Homers direction, as if he wanted to strike the old man, but he didn’t.“She is not going to suffocate you to be sure!”
Homer took the insult silently. He didn’t believe that the Nagornaya was able to hear them yet.
Hopefully she wouldn’t get angry. At least not at this distance…
Superstition! Nothing but superstition! It was impossible to count all the idols of the underground – you always stepped one of their foot. Homer didn’t think about them anymore. Achmed on the other hand thought differently.
Achmed took a rosary made out of empty Makarov cartridges out of his jacket’s pocket and started to slide the lead through his dirty fingers. At the same time his lips moved silently in his own language, he probably asked Nagornaya for forgiveness for Home’rs sins.
Hunter had felt something with his supernatural senses. He gave them a signal with his hands, slowed down and got to his knees.
“There is fog,” mumbled Hunter As he breathed in the cold air with his nose. “What is there?”
Homer and Achmed looked at each other. Both knew what that meant: It was open season. Now they needed a lot of luck get to the northern border of the Nagornaya alive.
“How am I supposed to explain that to you?” answered Achmed unwillingly.
“It is the breath…”
“Whose breath?” asked Hunter, unimpressed. He put his bag on the ground so that he could choose the right weapon for this job.
Achmed whispered: “The breath of the Nagornaya.”
“We’ll see.” said Homer contemptuously and made a grimace. Though it seemed like Hunters distorted face came back to life; in reality it was motionless as always – it was only a trick of the light.
They could see it now too, a few hundred meters further than Hunter: A thick, pale white fog crawled at them on the ground, danced around their feet, crawled up their legs and then filled the tunnel up to their waist… it seemed like they were climbing into an ice-cold and hostile ocean. They stepped deeper and in to it, until the murky water-like “breath” would finally go over their heads.
You couldn’t see anything anymore. The beams of their flashlights got stuck in the fog like flies in a net of a spider. After they had finally fought themselves through the emptiness they felt exhausted and defeated. Noise, as if dimmed by a pillow, came through the fog. Every move cost them a lot of strength, as if they weren’t walking on concrete but on thick mud.