Homer wanted to reply upset, but Achmed’s last sentence took the wind out of his sails. Of course it was easier for him to risk his old and childless hide. That boy on the other hand had his entire life in front of him and didn’t need to think about achieving his immortality yet.
They had passed the last lamp; a glass can with a weak light bulb and a grit out of steel, full of burned flies and winged roaches. The chitin-mass moved almost unnoticeably: Some insects were still alive, trying to crawl out of a pit – like wounded death candidates trying to crawl out of a mass grave.
For a second Homer got stuck at the trembling, reaching, weakly-yellowish light, looking like it swelled out of graveyard’s lamp. Then he took a deep breath and dove into the deep-black darkness that reached from the Sevastopolskaja to the Tulskaya – if the station still existed.
It seemed like the sad woman and her children had grown together with the granite plate. They weren’t the only ones: A little bit next to them a one-eyed man with shoulders like a wrestler looked after the group that was vanishing into the darkness. Behind him a thin old man in a military jacket was silently talking with the adjutant.
“No, we can only wait.” said Istomin, while he crushed the self-made cigarette.
“You can wait.” answered the colonel edgily, “I will do what I have to do.”
“It was Andrej. The leading officer of the railcar that we sent.” Vladimir Ivanovitsch could hear the voice out of the receiver once again – he couldn’t get it out of his head.
“And?” The colonel raised his brow. “Maybe he talked under torture. There are specialists that new certain methods.”
“Unlikely. You didn’t hear his voice. There is something different going on. Something unexplainable. A surprise attack won’t matter…”
“I can explain it to you.” assured Denis Michailovitsch.
“At the Tulskaya there are bandits. They overpowered the station, killed some of our guys and took the others hostage. They didn’t cut the power of course, because they need power as well and they didn’t want to make Hanza nervous. They probably just turned off the telephone. How else would you explain that the telephone works some times and then it doesn’t?”
“But his voice was so…” mumbled Istomin as if he didn’t even listen to the colonel.
“Well how?” exploded the colonel. The adjutant carefully took a few steps back. “When I drive a nail under your fingernail then you will scream differently! And with pliers I could turn a bass into a soprano for life!” He knew what he had to, he had made his choice. Now after he had defeated his doubts he was on a new high and his fingers twitched to his sword. Istomin can complain as much as he wants.
Istomin didn’t answer immediately. He wanted to give the colonel time to blow off steam. “We are going to wait.” he finally said. It sounded assuring, but relentless.
Denis Michailovitsch crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Two days.”
“Two days.” Istomin nodded his head.
The colonel turned around on the spot and returned to the barracks. He had no intention to lose valuable hours. The commanding officers of the strike teams already waited for about an hour at the long table. Only two chairs were empty: His and Istomin’s. But this time they would have to start without their leaders.
The commander of the station hadn’t realized that the colonel had already left. “It’s strange how our roles have been swapped isn’t it?” said Istomin sunken in thoughts.
When he got no answer he turned around and saw the helpless look of the adjutant. He made a hand gesture that he could go. He didn’t recognize the colonel anymore, he thought. Normally he always refused to give up even a single fighter. He felt something, that old wolf. But could he rely on his nose this time?
Istomin’s instincts said something completely different: Remain calm. Wait. The heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya would find some kind of mysterious and invincible enemy at the Tulskaya.
Vladimir Ivanovitsch searched his pockets, found his lighter and lit it. Smoke rings rose over him and he was looking directly into the mouth of the tunnel. Hypnotized – like a rabbit looking into the tempting mouth of a snake.
When he finished his smoke, he shook his head again and strolled back to his office. The adjutant broke free from the shadow of one of the pillars and followed him, but he kept his distance.
A damp rattling sound – a beam of light illuminated the first 50 meters of the ribbed tunnel; Hunters lamp was big and high-powered like a search light. Homer exhaled silently.
In the last few minutes he thought that the brigadier would never turn on the light.
Since they had dived into the darkness the brigadier had nothing in common with a normal human being anymore. His movement was fluently and fast like an animal. It seemed that he had only turned on the light for his followers, the Hunter trusted only his senses. He had put down his helmet and was listening to the sounds of the tunnel. Again and again. From time to time he inhaled the rusted air as if he could smell something, which only made his suspicions stronger.
Hunter stepped through the tunnel without making any sounds and he didn’t look back. It seemed that he had forgotten their existence. Achmed who only accusingly had guard duty at the southern guard post and because of that didn’t know the habits of the brigadier poked the old man in his side: What was going on with him? Homer spread his arms. How was he supposed to explain it to him in two words?
Why did he even need them? Hunter seemed to feel considerably securer in these tunnels than Homer. At the same time he would have thought himself to be the guide of the group. If he would have asked the old man he could have told him much about this region. Legends, but also true stories that were mostly more terrible and bizarre than the unlikely stories that the guards told themselves at the lonely guard fire when they were bored.
Homer had a different metro plan in his head – Istomin’s map was nothing compared to it. He could have filled all the white parts with his own markings and notes.
Vertical shafts, open ones, even some operational service rooms and connecting lines like spider webs.
As an example of his plan there was a junction between the Sevastopolskaya and the Juschnaya, so one station to the south, it ended like a gigantic hose at the gigantic train depot, the Warschavskoye that had gathered dozens of sidings like small veins.
Homer, who had a holy awe for trains, saw this depot as a dark but also mysterious place, like some kind of elephant graveyard, he could talk about it for hours, provided that there were listeners.
Homer thought that the section between the Sevastopolskaya and the Nachimovski prospect was especially difficult. Preclusions and a healthy human mind demanded that they stayed together, moved forwards slowly, carefully, kept watching the walls and the floor at all times.
You couldn’t even keep the tunnel, where all vents and cracks had been bricked up and sealed by the construction teams of the Sevastopolskaya, behind you, out of your sight.
The darkness had only been ripped open by their light for a short time and had already grown together in to a large fog. The echo of their footsteps was thrown back from the rips of the tunnel segments and somewhere in the distance a lonely wind howled through the vents. Big, heavy drops gathered in the cracks on the ceiling and fell down. Maybe they were only made out of water, but Homer preferred to move out of their way. Just to make sure.
In old times when the bloated monster city lived its life and the metro was nothing but a soulless traffic system for the restless people of the city, a young Homer that everybody just called Kolya, walked with his flashlight and iron toolbox through the tunnels.