However, it soon seemed to him that the distance they had been maintaining was becoming shorter. Moreover, remaining in a group before this, now the beasts started to fan out, as if trying to outflank him. Artyom never had to deal with a pack of hunting predators before, but for some reason he had no doubts that the creatures were preparing to attack. It was time to act. Turning sharply around, he shouldered his machine gun and caught one of the dark figures in its sight.
Their behaviour really had changed. This time they didn’t stop to wait until he moved further away. They continued to approach him almost imperceptibly, gradually creating a semi-circle. He had to try to frighten them away before they succeeded in shortening the distance to the range at which an attack would follow.
Artyom lifted the barrel a little and fired into the air. The clatter reverberated from the walls of the high-rises and echoed to the other end of the avenue. The empty clip fell to the asphalt with a clanking sound. And then a deafening roar full of fury was heard and the beasts dashed forward. They were able to cover the dozens of metres separating them from Artyom in several seconds, but he too was ready. As soon as the beast closest to him was in his sight, he gave it a short burst and started running toward the houses.
Judging by the fit of screaming the creature emitted, he had managed to hit it. It was impossible to guess whether it delayed the remaining beasts or, conversely, it had infuriated them.
And then a new cry was heard, not the threatening roar of the beasts hunting him, but a long, piercing squawk, which made his blood curdle. It reached him from above and Artyom understood that a new participant had joined the game. Obviously, the noise of the shots had attracted the attention of a flying monster similar to the one that had spun its nest on the cathedral’s dome.
A huge shadow swept over his head like a shot. Turning back for a moment, Artyom saw that the beasts had scattered, and only one of them, apparently the one he had wounded, was left in the middle of the street. Continuing to scream, it clumsily lurched towards the building, also hoping to conceal itself there. But it had no chance of being saved: describing another circle several dozen metres high, the monster folded its enormous leathery wings and fell upon the victim. It dived down so swiftly that Artyom wasn’t even able to see what happened next. Having gripped the beast screeching its final agony, the gigantic hulk lifted its quarry aloft without any visible effort and leisurely carried it to the roof of one of the high-rises.
His pursuers didn’t immediately break cover, concerned that the monster may return, and Artyom had no time to lose. Pressing himself to the walls of the houses, he ran forward, where, according to his calculations, Sadovoye Koltso should be located. He was able to cover about half a kilometre before he was out of breath and he looked back to check whether the beasts hunting him had gathered their wits. The avenue was empty. But going several more dozen metres and looking into one of the alleys leading away from New Arbat, Artyom, to his horror, noticed familiar still shadows in it. Now he was beginning to understand why these creatures were in no hurry to come out into the open and preferred to track their victims from the narrow side streets. While hunting for him, they feared attracting the attention of the larger monsters and becoming their prey.
Now Artyom had to turn around to look every minute: he remembered that the beasts were able to move extremely quickly, and at the same time practically silently, and he feared that they could catch him unawares. The end of the avenue was already visible when they again raced from the alleys and began to surround him. Taught by experience, Artyom at once shot into the air, hoping that that would attract the winged monster as before and frighten off the beasts. They actually froze for a while, standing up on their hind legs and craning their necks. But the sky remained empty - the monster, apparently, still had not been able to deal with its first victim. Artyom understood sooner than his pursuers and rushed to the right, skirted one of the houses and dived into the nearest entrance. Though Melnik also had warned him against it, saying that the houses were inhabited, running into such a powerful and mobile enemy as the beasts chasing him in the open would have been insane. They would have torn Artyom to pieces before he was able to pull back the bolt of his machine gun.
It was dark in the entrance, and he had to turn on his flashlight. In the round spot of light rose shabby walls covered with obscenities scrawled several decades before, a foul staircase, and the broken doors of ruined and burnt out apartments. Bold rats scampering around like they owned the place, adding to the picture of desolation.
He had chosen the entry wisely, the staircase windows looked out onto the avenue, and, climbing to the next floor, he was able to ascertain that the beasts had not decided to follow him. They were stealing up to the front doors but, instead of going into one, surrounded it, squatting on their haunches and again turning into stone statues. Artyom didn’t believe that they would back off and allow their prey to elude them. Sooner or later they would try to reach him from outside, if, of course, nothing was hiding in the entrance which Artyom himself would be forced to flee.
He climbed a storey higher, illuminated the doors and discovered that one of them was closed. He put his shoulder to it and was convinced that it was locked. Without thinking twice, he put the muzzle of the machine gun up to the keyhole, fired and flung the door open with a kick. When it came down to it, it was all the same to him in which of the apartments he put up a defence, but he was unable to miss his chance to look at an untouched dwelling of the people of a bygone era.
First he slammed shut the door and blocked it with a cabinet standing in the hallway. This barricade would not sustain a serious attack, but at least they couldn’t get past it unnoticed. After that, Artyom approached the window and carefully looked outside. It was practically an ideal firing position - from the height of the fourth floor he was able to see perfectly the approaches to the entrance. There were about ten beasts sitting in a semi-circle around it. Now the advantage was his and he wasted no time in using it. Switching on the laser gunsight, he put the red dot on the head of the largest of the beasts and, taking a breath, pulled the trigger. A short burst sounded and the creature soundlessly fell onto its side. The others dashed off in different directions at lightning speed, and a moment later the street was empty. But there was no doubt they didn’t intend to go far. Artyom decided to wait it out and be certain that the death of their colleague really had frightened off the remaining beasts.
In the meantime, he had a little time in which to study the apartment.
Though the glass here, as in the whole house, had been broken long ago, the furniture and all the fittings had been preserved surprisingly well. Small pads had been spread around the floor resembling the rat poison they used at VDNKh. Perhaps that was why Artyom had not noticed one rat in the rooms. The longer he walked around the apartment, the more he was convinced that the residents had not abandoned it in a hurry, but had preserved it, hoping sometime to return. No food had been left in the kitchen to attract rodents or insects, and much of the furniture was carefully wrapped in cellophane.
Moving from room to room, Artyom tried to imagine what the everyday life of the people who had lived here had been. How many of them lived here? What time did they get up, arrive home from work, have dinner? Who sat at the head of the table? He knew about many of the jobs, rituals and things only through books, and now, seeing a real dwelling, was convinced that much of what he had imagined earlier was totally wrong.
Artyom carefully lifted the semi-transparent polyethylene film and examined the book shelves. Several colourful children’s books stood among the detective stories he knew from the bookstalls in the metro. He grasped one of them at the spine and gently pulled it out. While he paged through the decorative depictions of happy animals, a sheet of cardboard fell from the book. Bending over, Artyom lifted it off the floor: it turned out to be a fading photograph of a smiling woman with a small child in her arms.
He was petrified.
His heart went into
palpitations. Having just been dispersing the blood through his body in measured beats, it suddenly had sped up, beating inappropriately. Artyom terribly wanted to remove his tight gas mask to get a jolt of fresh air, if it had not been poisonous. Carefully, as if concerned that the picture turn to dust from his touch, he took it from the shelf and lifted it to his eyes.
The woman in the picture was about thirty years old, and the little one in her arms not more than two, and it was difficult to determine if it was a boy or girl from the funny cap on its head. The child was looking straight at the camera, and its expression was surprisingly grown up and serious. Artyom turned over the photograph and the glass of his gas mask became clouded. On the other side was written in a blue ballpoint pen: ‘Little Artyom is 2 years and 5 months old.’
It was as if they had pulled a rod out of him. His legs went weak and he slid down to the floor, placing the picture in the moonlight falling from the window. Why did the smile of the woman in the photograph seem so familiar to him, so like his own? Why had he begun to feel suffocated as soon as he saw her?
More than ten million people had been living in it before this city perished. Artyom is not the most widely used name, but there had to have been several tens of thousands of children with such a name in a megapolis of many millions. It was as if they called all the present inhabitants of the metro the same. The chance was so small that it simply made no sense to consider it. But why then did the smile of the woman in the photograph seem so familiar to him?
He tried to recall scraps of memories about his childhood that sometimes flashed before his mind’s eye. A comfortable small room, soft lighting, a woman reading a book . . . A wide ottoman. He leapt up, passing through the rooms like a whirlwind, trying to find in one of them furniture similar to that of which he had dreamed. It seemed to him in an instant that the furniture in one of the rooms was arranged the same as in his memories. The couch looked a bit different, and a window was not there, but this picture may have left something of a distorted imprint on the consciousness of a three-year-old child . . .
Three years old? The age on the photograph was different, but this too meant nothing. There was no date with the inscription. It could have been taken at any time, it didn’t have to be several days before the residents of the apartment had to leave it forever. The photo may have been taken half a year, even a year before this, he convinced himself. Then the age of the boy in the hat in the picture would coincide with his own . . . Then the probability that he himself was portrayed in the picture. . . . and his mother . . . would be much greater. ‘But the photograph could have been taken three or five years before this,’ an alien voice coldly stated inside him. Could have.
Suddenly another thought entered his head. Flinging open the door to the bathroom, he glanced around and almost missed what he was looking for: the mirror was covered with such a layer of dust that it didn’t even reflect the light from his flashlight. Artyom removed a towel left by the apartment’s owners from its hook and wiped off the mirror. The area he cleared revealed his reflection in gas mask and helmet. He illuminated himself with the flashlight and looked into the mirror.
His drawn, emaciated face was not entirely visible beneath the plastic visor of the gas mask, but the look of the deeply sunken dark eyes barely making its way back from the mirror suddenly seemed to him similar to the look of the boy in the photograph. Artyom brought the photograph to his face, looked intently at the boy’s tiny face, and then looked at the mirror. Again he held the light on the picture and again he looked at his own face beneath the gas mask, trying to recall how it looked the last time he saw his reflection. When was that? Not long before he had left VDNKh, but it was impossible to say how much time had passed since then. Judging by the man he saw in the mirror now, several years . . . If only he could pull off this damned mask and compare himself with the child in the photo! Of course, people now and then become unrecognizable while growing up, but something remains in the face of everyone that reminds one of their distant childhood.
There was one possibility: when he returned to VDNKh, he could ask Sukhoi if the woman smiling at him now from the piece of paper looked like the woman, condemned to be devoured by the rats, who had handed the child’s life over to him at the station. Looked like his mother. Though her face was then distorted in a grimace of despair and supplication, Sukhoi would recognize her. He had a fine memory, he would be able to say precisely who was in the photo. Was it her or not?
Artyom examined the picture again, then with an unaccustomed tenderness, he stroked the woman’s image, carefully put the photograph into the little book out of which it had fallen and put it away into his rucksack. It was strange, he thought, only several hours ago he was in the largest storehouse of knowledge on the continent, where he could take for himself any of the millions of very different volumes, many of which were simply invaluable. But he had left them gathering dust on the shelves, and the thought never even crossed him mind to profit from the riches of the Library. Instead, he was taking a cheap children’s book with unpretentious drawings and yet he felt as if he had gained the greatest of the world’s treasures.
Artyom returned to the hall, intending to leaf through the remaining books from the shelf, and perhaps even look into the cupboards in search of photograph albums. But, lifting his eyes towards the window, he felt the almost imperceptible changes there. An uneasiness seized him: something wasn’t right. Approaching nearer, he understood what was wrong: the night’s colour was changing, and yellowish-rose tints had appeared in it. It was getting light.
The beasts were sitting next to the entrance, hesitating to go inside. The dead body of their companion was nowhere to be seen, but whether the winged giant had carried it away or they had torn it to pieces themselves was unclear. Artyom didn’t understand what kept them from taking the apartment by storm, but for the time being it suited him.
Would he manage to reach Smolenskaya before sunrise? More importantly, would he be able to get away from his pursuers? It was possible to remain in the barricaded apartment, hide from the rays of the sun in the bathroom, wait until they chased away these predatory creatures, and set out when darkness fell. But how long would the protective suit last? How long was his gas-mask filter estimated to last? What would Melnik undertake, not finding him in the agreed place at the agreed time?
Artyom approached the door leading to the stairwell and listened. Silence. He carefully moved the cabinet away and slowly opened the door a little. There was no one there, but, having illuminated the staircase with his flashlight, Artyom noticed something he had not seen earlier.
A thick, transparent slime coated the steps. It looked as if someing had just crawled down them, leaving a trail behind. The trail had not approached the apartment door where he had spent all this time, but this didn’t console Artyom. Did it mean the abandoned houses were not as empty as they had seemed?
Now he no longer wanted to stay in the apartment, let alone sleep here. There was only one possibility: to drive away the beasts and to try to run to Smolenskaya. And to do it before the sun burnt his eyes and the unseen monsters awoke.
This time he aimed not as carefully, but tried to damage the predatory beasts as much as possible. Two of them roared and tumbled to the ground and the others disappeared into the alleys. It seemed the road was clear.
Artyom ran down, carefully, concerned about an ambush, looked out of the entrance and rushed with all his strength toward Sadovoye Koltso. What a nightmarish thicket must be there, in the gardens on this ring, he thought, if even the thin strips of trees on the boulevards had, after all these years, been converted to dark labyrinths . . . Not to mention the Botanical Gardens and what must be growing there.
His pursuers had given him a head start while gathering into a pack and he was able to reach almost the very end of the avenue. It was becoming ever more light, but the sun’s rays, apparently, did not daunt these beasts at all: breaking into two groups, they rushed along, shortening with every
passing second the distance separating them from Artyom. Here, in the open space, the advantage was with them: Artyom was unable to stop to fire. At the same time, they were shifting to all fours, and their silhouettes did not rise more than a metre above the ground. They almost merged with the road. No matter how fast Artyom tried to run, the protective suit, rucksack, two machine guns and fatigue, accumulated during the seemingly endless night, were making themselves felt.
Soon these hellhounds would overtake him and take their toll, he thought with despair. He recalled the deformed but powerful bodies of the monsters lying in pools of blood at the entrance where his burst of machine-gun fire had toppled them. Artyom had no time to examine them, but even one look was enough to engrave them on his memory for a long time: glossy brown hair, huge round heads, and mouths studded with dozens of small sharp teeth that, it seemed, grew in several rows. Going over in his mind all the animals known to him, Artyom was unable to recall one that would have been able to produce such beasts even after the effects of radiation.
Fortunately, there were no trees growing at Sadovoye Koltso. It was simply one more broad street, extending right and left from the intersection as far as the eye could see. Before breaking into a run again, Artyom let off a short burst at the beasts without looking. They were already less than fifty metres from him and again had broken up into a semi-circle so that some were moving almost level with him.
At Sadovoye he had to look for the road among several huge craters five to six metres deep, and make a detour in one place in order to skirt a deep crevice that split the road surface in two. The structures standing close by looked strange: rather than being burnt, they appeared more to have been melted. It created the impression that something peculiar had happened here, that this region had endured much more than Kalininskiy Prospekt. And something like several hundred metres in the distance arose a building of inconceivable size. It looked like a medieval castle, and was a majestic and sombre background to this troubled landscape, untouched by time or fire. Artyom glanced up for a split second, and he let go a sigh of relief: a scary winged shadow soared over the castle and that could become his salvation. He only had to attract its attention so that it busied itself with his pursuers. Lifting the machine gun in one hand and aiming the barrel at the flying monster, he squeezed the trigger.