“I see it!” He called as his flashlight illuminated the yellow box beside the iron barricade.
Marco took a knee at the very edge of the tunnel from the concrete platform area, her eyes watching down her sights into the abyss. Sergio slung his own rifle over his shoulder as he realized he would need two hands to pry open the cover to the control panel.
“Sergio!” Marco called with fright laced through her voice, indicating that they didn’t have much time left before the horde reached them. “I’ll try to slow them down!”
Reaching over her shoulder, she pulled a small object from a pocket on her rucksack; Sergio recognized it as some sort of homemade grenade. She pulled off the pin and cast it out onto the open tracks, immediately ducking her head down under both her arms. Sergio was not as quick to react and found himself wanting to watch the effect; he was only able to tear his eyes away at the last moment to pull the lever down to open the door for them. A flash of fiery light exploded from the center of the area, momentarily illuminating the station and all its disparaging details. The noise of the explosion became nothingness, and after a moment of confused silence Sergio blinked his eyes several times, the blur finally subsiding but his ears still ringing from the constant noise; the noise of Sara’s automatic. She was firing burst after burst into the empty space, yelling obscenities over the echoes. Peering into the darkness peppered with her muzzle fire he could see the reflections of their eyes, the twenty or more pairs glaring back at them both hungrily. He lunged to the other side of the door for the mechanism and pulled the lever down.
The heavy metal barrier began to scrape closed again as the motor whirred and coughed. Marco had just emptied her magazine and begun to push herself backwards across the floor with her feet. Without a thought, his arm was around her waist and he was pulling her back through the barrier. Her weapon skidded along the rough concrete and she looked as if she might pass out, giving in to his strength as if she was exhausted. The door was closing quickly now, Sergio kicked his feet hard against the metal frame and freed them both from its path. It slammed shut with a creak and only then did his muscles relax. He lay back and stared at the angled ceiling, breathing heavily from all the adrenaline pulsing through his veins. He could hear Marco panting now, and felt her breathing against him, he looked her over for signs of injury and, finding nothing notable, started to look over his own body to make sure he still had everything.
“That was close.” Marco almost laughed, drawing her weapon up and cradling it to her chest like a treasured toy or a precious child. “I got at least ten of them.”
“Yeah… good.” Sergio breathed. He wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say; he was so overwhelmed by the day’s turn of events so far that he’d barely had time to process the misfortune they had been subject to since leaving Avtozavodskaya a few hours ago.
They lay at the bottom of a spiraling stair column, the morning haze came down in streams from the ruined ceiling above them, cracked and discolored concrete showed through between the patches of moss and vines. Water dripped from one corner of the stairway down to the floor and into a small room beside them, making a pleasant sound.
“Thanks, for pulling me out.” Marco said quietly, looking down at her weapon. She seemed disappointed, or sad. He couldn’t tell which.
He was about to tell her it wasn’t a problem but as he looked over the light on her face and the red tone in her hair caught his eye and he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t think of anything else but her, that she was safe, and he was somehow relieved.
“Hey, are you okay?” Her expression changed to worry and one eyebrow raised quizzically.
“Y-you need… a mask.” He stammered, coming back to reality and helping to pull her gas mask from her bag.
She put it on without a word and then sighed gently, looking up the column of the stair tower. Sergio gathered himself up and straightened his clothing and rucksack, checking that his weapon was still loaded and functional. Marco had begun to ascend the creaky metal steps cautiously and he hurried to catch up with her. He deeply hoped that she knew where to go next but decided not to voice his concerns at the moment. He simply looked ahead, bringing his mind back to that calm image of her peaceful pale face. The concerns of the hostile underground melted away behind the iron door.
Chapter 9: The Two Musketeers
Marco stood still at the top of the stairway where the opening led out to the bottom floor of a building at street level. Looking apprehensively around the enclosure for signs of movement, she pulled one strap of her gas mask tighter and loaded a fresh magazine into her rifle, double checking that the safety was on. She fumbled in a pocket for a small compass and turned it a few times in her hand, periodically looking out into the distance through the shattered windows. Sergio assumed she was looking for landmarks or street signs that she recognized.
“Have you ever been to the surface before?” Sergio asked. He wanted to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder but restrained himself at the last minute. She seemed anxious, but that could have been because of their encounter with the mutants, not necessarily because they had come into a new hostile environment.
“Only a few times.” She revealed in a somber tone that suggested that she didn’t exactly enjoy the sight. “I was with Sacco.”
Her revelation calmed her agitated movements, but put Sergio’s senses on edge. He tilted his head slightly to the side, wanting to hear more about it. This time, he was concerned with both her history with Sacco and also what her impression of the ruined city was.
“I was furious the first time I saw it.” She hung her head and sighed, clenching her compass in a fist. Her words had an increased effect as they stepped to the edges of the crumbling building and looked out over the desecrated remains of the over world. “How could we have done all this?”
“What do you mean?” Sergio scanned his eyes over the dead structures as he always had, not seeing anything more than the obliterated shells of concrete and marble dwellings.
“Humanity, us, people! How could our forefathers have blasted everything we had into oblivion? And even now, we divide ourselves into factions; we wage war against each other in the Subway. We use the very last of our precious resources to continue killing and destroying each other! Look at it! Don’t you think we should have learned something from this?” Marco held out her arm as she ventured to the outer wall of the building they were in, the palm of her hand flattened to the endless gray sky.
Sergio gazed out upon the landscape with a new perspective. Although understandably saddened by the visage during his other excursions to the surface, he had never fully contemplated the previous chapter of human life and what it had actually been like to live in a world untouched by the fires of war. He understood that he would never truly know what it had been, but now that she had spoken of her bitterness about the subject, he also found himself becoming angry that he had been deprived of that other life that the older residents in the Subway spoke of so fondly.
“You’re right.” He said simply, trying to compress the enormity of world events and the disaster to fit within the remaining expanse of their underground universe. What was the difference between the countries who had laid waste to Rome and the factions down in the Subway shooting each other over ideology and territory? Having learned what he could from old textbooks and his stepfather’s lessons about the previous world, he recognized that the factions and stations in the Subway represented different countries. Making this connection burned him up inside more than any small conflict he had encountered. He felt stupid, believing his role in life was so important, especially once his mission with Vera and the Dark Ones had become clear. He had marched endlessly forward without question at the time, but all of that seemed so insignificant now in comparison to the vast expanse of ruined lives laid out before them.