he whispered silently, almost without any sound.
The fog around them became thicker and thicker, they could almost no longer see each other. Without humans the Nagornaya had been asleep, now she awoke again. To new life: The heavy air reacted to their words with almost unnoticeable fluctuations and vague shadows moved in the deep.
No trace of Hunter… a being of flesh and blood couldn’t win the fight against these phantoms; as soon as the station had played enough with them she would swallow them as a whole.
“Go,” said Achmed. “It wants me. You can’t know it. You haven’t been here as much as I have.”
“Stop it!” yelled Homer, surprised by the volume of his voice. “We got lost in the fog. Let’s go back!”
“We can’t go back. You can run as much as you want, you will return to this place again and again if you stay with me. You will get through on your own. Go, I beg you.”
“Enough!” Homer grabbed Achmed’s hand and dragged him behind him to the tunnel. “In an hour you will thank me!”
“Tell my wife…”
An unbelievable powerful force ripped Achmed out of Homer’s grip, up into the fog, into the void.
He wasn’t even able to scream, he just vanished, as if from one second to the next he had been atomized and ceased to exist.
Homer screamed, turned around and fired his precious bullets, one clip after another.
Suddenly he felt a blow to his back, so strong that it had to have been one of these demons.
The universe imploded.
CHAPTER 5
Memories
Sasha ran to the window and opened it. Fresh air and soft light fell into the room. The window was hanging over an abyss full of soft morning fog. With the first rays of the sun it would disappear and they would be able to see fir covered hills instead of the abyss, green meadows behind them and the matchbox tall buildings and onion-like bell towers.
The early morning was their time. She felt the approaching dawn and stood up half an hour earlier to get on top of the mountains in time. Behind the small, simple, but clean and warm hut a rocky path went up the hill, surrounded by bright yellow flowers and Sasha had slipped several times on her way up and hurt her knee.
In thoughts she wiped the windowsill that was still wet from the breath of the night with her sleeve. She had dreamt about something dark, disastrous that had crossed her happy life, but the rests of this restless vision disappeared immediately when the cold wind started to blow over her skin. Now she no longer wanted to think about what had bothered her in her dream. She had to hurry to get to the mountain top in time to greet the sun and then sliding down the path, returning to the hut, to make breakfast, wake her father and pack his provisions.
Then Sasha would be by herself for the whole day while her father was hunting. She would hunt the slow dragonflies and flying roaches between the flowers that were as yellow as the linkrusta-wallpapers in the trains.
On her toes she crept over the creaking planks, opened the door a bit and laughed silently.
It had been several years since Sasha’s father had last seen a happy smile on his daughters face.
He didn’t want to wake her. His leg was swollen, numb and it didn’t stop bleeding. It was said that the bite of a stray dog never healed…
Should he call her? He hadn’t been home for a entire day because before he had left for the garages, he had entered an apartment complex, a “termite hill”, located two blocks from the station. He remembered passing out on the fifteenth floor. All that time Sasha probably hadn’t closed an eye – his daughter never slept while he was away—she deserved the rest. They all lie, he thought. Nothing is going to happen to me.
He really would have liked to know what she dreamt about. He couldn’t even relax in his dreams.
Only rarely his consciousness let him revisit his sorrow less youth; normally in his dreams he wandered between the familiar dead houses with their empty inners and a good dream was when found an untouched apartment, full of miraculously preserved machines and books.
Every time he fell asleep he hoped to dream about the past. That time when he had just met
Sasha’s mother. When he was only twenty, he became the commander of the garrison of the station.
Back then the inhabitants thought of the metro as a provisional home and not of a glorified barracks for forced labor he surface, where they sat out a life sentence.
Instead he always ended up in the events that happened five years ago. That day that had determined his fate and even worse the fate of his daughter…
Once again he stood there, at the head of his fighters. He held his Kalashnikov so it was ready to fire. His officers’ Makarov could have put a bullet into his head. Apart from his two dozen military police marksmen there wasn’t a single human left in the station that was still loyal to him.
The mob raged, swelled in size and shook the barricade with dozens of hands. The first chaotic voices had transformed themselves into a rhythmic choir controlled by an invisible director. They still demanded that he step down but soon they would demand his head.
This was no spontaneous demonstration. This was the work of provocateurs. He could have tried to identify and liquidate every single one of them, but now it was already too late. When he wanted to stop the rebellion and remain in power there was only one thing left to do: To open fire on the group. It wasn’t too late for that…
His fingers folded around an invisible stock, under his swollen eye lids his pupils twitched restless from one side to the other, his lips moved and formed silent orders. The dark puddle of blood he lay in grew larger as more and more life left his soul.
“Where are they?”
Something ripped Homer out of the dark sea of unconsciousness. He shook himself like a fish on a hook, he gasped, cramped for air, and stared at the brigadier. The dark, cyclopic colossus still towered over him, the guardians of the Nagornaya, and reached with their long fingers; without any struggle they would rip out his legs or crush his ribs. They only disappeared slowly, even unwillingly, when he opened his eyes again.
He tried to jump up again but the stranger’s hand that had held his shoulder with a light grip now held him like the iron hook that had pulled him out of his nightmares.
He started to breathe normally and concentrated himself on the scarred, machine oil covered face with bright eyes… Hunter, he was still alive?
Homer carefully turned his head to the left, than to the right: Where they still in the cursed station?
No, this was an empty and clean tunnel. You could almost no longer see the fog of the Nagornaya that had covered the exits anywhere. Hunter must have carried him over a kilometer. Reassured Homer broke down. He asked him again, just to be sure: “Where are they?”
“Nobody is here. You are safe.”
“These creatures… did they knock me unconscious?”
He wondered as he held the back of his head.
“No that was me. I had to knock you down, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able get you out of there in your panic. You could have hurt me.”
Finally Hunter loosened his iron grip, stood up stiffly and moved his hand to his officer’s belt where the Stetschkin hang. On the other side hang a mysterious leather box. The brigadier opened it and took out a flat mes bottle. He shook it, opened it and took a deep swig without asking Homer if wanted one to.
Homer tried to close his eyes for a second.
His left eye wouldn’t close.
“Where’s Achmed? What happened to him?” Chills ran down Homer’s back.
“He’s dead.” his answer almost sounded indifferent.
“Dead.” Homer echoed mechanically.