Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. The characters and likenesses used in this work are the property of author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Used here without permission.
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This work contains spoilers for the novels Metro 2033 and Metro 2035.
[Blood and Senses]
The soldiers slurped their vodka, rivulets of overrun slipping from the corners of their mouths and trailing into their beards, and glistening like silvery snail trails. Finishing first, Bourbon belched loudly from his belly. The three soldiers standing around him sputtered laughter in the glow from their bin-fire, but Artyom shook his head.
Bourbon turned his wily gaze on him.
"What's wrong, Tyoma?" he said, with the taunting pitilessness of an older brother. Artyom had no brothers, of course, but having grown up in the Metro tunnels under old Moscow, sharing living space, food, and often clothes with boys around his age, he was familiar with the sort; he'd spent three-quarters of his twenty years being the suffering little brother to many in the Metro. He'd been the overbearing big brother to just as many, too. But Bourbon pressed his role a bit too much, sometimes.
"Can't handle the sounds of men?" He needled Artyom in the ribs, causing Artyom to cringe, and the trio of mercenaries laughed again.
Artyom bristled. "It's just rude. You're perpetuating a stereotype."
Bourbon joined in the laughter. "Listen to this one! Perpetuating stereotypes." He spat a quick, disgusted pfah from between the distended gap in his two front teeth. "Just because you prefer books over booze doesn't make you any better than the rest of us, you know."
"I never said that."
"Squishy pussy willow," Bourbon went on. "We'll make a man of you, yet."
Artyom hefted his Kalashnikov. "I'm a man!" The loose bits of the well-worn rifle clattered against his shoulder, but he managed to keep his face stoic.
Bourbon wasn't fooled. "You're soft as a baby's ass." He grabbed his belt and, before Artyom could stop him, he dropped his trousers and turned around in a show-off bend. "This is manly!" he said, slapping one hairy cheek just as he let fly a noisy fart.
All three mercenaries jostled into a guffawing huddle. One of them – a burly bruiser with a crooked septum – sobered and curled his lip when he saw Artyom roll his eyes.
"Why don't you move to Polis," the mercenary whistled through his nose, "with the rest of the faggots?"
The muscles in Artyom's back clenched tight. He'd never been to Polis, but his stepfather, Sukhoi, had told him such stories of the cultural center of the Metro: where one could wander for hours through long, towering hallways filled with books and prizes from the old Moscow that existed before the war; where the lights glowed bright, illuminating the contrast of colors on people's clothes, and the shape of each clean, individual face; where generals and historians and other learned men discussed literature and philosophy at clean, polished tables, over sips of sweet mushroom wine. Not at trash bins lit with fires that smelled of kerosene and rags, over gulps of gritty vodka.
Artyom rattled his Kalashnikov when Bourbon waved him down with a hum meant to mollify.
"No need for any of that. I was just teasing."
Hustling his pants up around his waist again, Bourbon shifted a step, close enough to put a comradely arm around Artyom's shoulders, and bent his head. "This life is hard enough. You know that. Between the rads, and the Reds, and the tuber, and fascists…all that if the fucking mutants don't get you first!" He pushed his flask of vodka under Artyom's nose; the heady liquor itched at his nostril hairs.
"That's why we drink," Bourbon said, with a sloshy shake of the metal container. "Dulls the despair."
This time, Artyom's mouth twitched in a lenient, sympathetic smile. Bourbon didn't miss that, either.
"Ah-ha!" He needled again, once more jocular. "I knew you were one of us. Drink up!"
Artyom accepted the angling of the flask, being careful not to let the vodka dribble. He'd managed to grow only an uneven smattering of whiskers, even after three weeks spent hustling for escort jobs in these tunnels around Riga Station, but he hated the way liquor residue felt among them.
They hadn't had a job in three days, which meant they hadn't had anything substantial to eat in two, so the vodka took a fast track to Artyom's blood and senses. He coughed; his eyes watered; the delicate skin of his throat burned. But the drink warmed him, too, and he smiled around another light swig.
"That's a boy," Bourbon commended him. He flung out his arms. "Soon, you'll be dancing."
"No." Artyom stopped him with a hand.
Bourbon spat another pfah. Undeterred, he broke into a squat and kicked out one leg, then another. "Then I'll dance by myself! I'm the best of you, anyway." He gave a sharp yell in time to two more kicks, when he unbalanced himself and landed on his ass against the hard metal rail, prompting a harsher yelp.
The mercenaries howled as they tumbled over themselves. Even Artyom started to laugh.
"Come on," Artyom said, offering Bourbon his hand.
The other man brushed it away and got to his feet again. "That's a Cossack dance, anyway."
"Shitting Cossacks!" one of the mercenaries said, and his mates doubled over in more drunken hitching.
Bourbon spread his arms again. "Tchaikovsky would have adored me," he said, and turned on his toes in a surprisingly talented spin.
Artyom clapped for his success. Bourbon didn't stop for the applause. He kept turning, one after the other, while the soldiers hooted. Faster and faster, round and round.
Artyom felt sick.
"Stop," he said, trying to look away. His eyes wouldn't let him do it, though. Or his head. They forced him to watch Bourbon's blurring whirl of arms and legs as he danced in ceaseless spins, to the jackal-like merriment of the mercenaries. They devolved into a heap, formless and black, and Artyom's heart began to pound.
"Stop," he tried again. "Bourbon! Stop spinning!"
Bourbon chuckled in a faraway voice, and looked at Artyom. His head stayed still, but his body kept spinning, and he said, "Silly Tyoma. I'm not spinning. I've died, and there is no more me." Abruptly, he crumpled, like a marionette cut from its strings, just a flail of deadweight arms and legs.
His head was still turned backwards.
#
Artyom woke from the dream. Not with a start, but with a weary sigh.
No matter how exhausted his body, no matter how punch-drunk his mind, no matter how many miles he put between himself and the tunnels under Moscow, when he lay back in his seat or along the cushion in the rear and fell to sleep, he always dreamed. Dreamed of the dead.
He glanced to the seat reclined next to his. Anya still slept. Her eyes were still closed, anyway, and her chest rose and fell in steady, quiet rhythm. She never seemed to dream. Or, if she did, he couldn't tell. He envied her that.
He turned his gaze out the streaked windshield, his focus stuttering over the line of tape down the center that marked where they'd smashed into one of the giant, dog-like mutants during a supply run's hasty escape. Daylight streamed down around them, unbroken save for the occasional drifting shadow of a winged creature searching for food. They would stay safe in the car, though: just another mechanical heap resting among queues of the same. When night fell, they'd move, leaving their rusting cousins behind.
His throat itched, and he shifted onto his right hip, to fish his carry-flask from his pocket. The seat squealed under him as he shifted back and unscrewed the top. There wasn't much liquor left in the canister, so he sipped carefully, letting the whisky only tickle his tongue before swallowing it down. The sharp taste of fermented mushrooms reminded him of living in the Metro. And of Bourbon.
Artyom had been only twenty, fresh-faced and full of ideas about adventure, when he'd left his home station of VDNKh on a mission to save it from the Dark Ones, those strange, almost-human mutants from the surface. He'd met Bourbon along the way, in Alekseyevskaya, where the drunk mercenary had offered Artyom a valuable rifle and supplies to accompany him through the dark tunnels that some men called cursed. Artyom hadn't exactly trusted Bourbon, but any journey through the Metro on foot was a long one, and safer with someone watching his back. Bourbon never made it even so far as the next station, though. He'd died in the dark tunnels outside Sukharevskaya, just like in the dream: with his head twisted round and those cryptic words on his lips – "there is no more me."
But what if they'd met under different circumstances? Would Artyom have stayed with him, become a mercenary and a drunkard like Bourbon? He doubted it…but who knew what could have happened, in another version of his life?
"Drinking already?"
Anya's murmur stirred him from his thoughts, and he looked at her: eyes still closed but thin lips pulled tight.
"I thought you were asleep," he said.
She let out a short sigh. "My father used to hide his drinking, too."
"I'm not hiding."
Now, she turned her head, her black hair curling under her cheek, and looked at him with a smirk. "Then give me some."
He held the flask close. "Is that a good idea?"
"Oh. So, you can drink, but I can't?"
"What if you're pregnant?"
She snorted, a gruff, guttural sound that made her sound like her old man. "I'm not pregnant."
"How do you know?"
"I know." She put out her hand for the flask. Artyom held his ground, until she told him in a low voice, "I'm still bleeding."
He passed her the metal container. She took it, tipped it to her mouth, and muttered:
"And, we haven't had sex in forever."
Artyom pursed his lips into a frown. "Not forever."
Anya drank, hissed, and shrugged. "It's just as well, I guess." She didn't seem to want to argue about the topic right now, either. "Wouldn't want to have a baby out here, in this car."
"It won't take that long to get to Vladivostok—"
"Long enough." She turned to look out her window and sighed again. "Maybe we should have gone to St. Petersburg. Looked for more comm towers, to spread the truth, like you wanted."
His chest felt heavy of a sudden. The truth was a dead thing, just like Bourbon.
"The overseers are probably in power there, too. East is better," he muttered, leaving the rest unspoken; she knew as well as he did that the farther they got from Moscow, the more likely their chances for survival. There were still mutants to contend with, and possibly bandits, but at least they'd left behind the high radiation levels that necessitated rubber suits and gas masks. This wasteland was even kind of pretty, in its way. "You said you've always wanted to see the sea."
Anya's voice became almost lilting. "And the Tsesarevich's Arch." She turned his way, shooting him a look from beneath her lush, dark lashes. "I read books, too."
Artyom cracked a smile for her cheek. "The colonel's only, lonely, learned daughter," he teased. "The Rose of the Ranger Order. You could have had anyone, but you picked me." He knew the answer but asked anyway: "Why?"
She smiled thinly, too. "I liked your stupid hair," she said, gazing at him as if he were once more that youth with the floppy black fringe trying to stand out from and look cool next to his stalker friends.
Artyom snickered, of a moment forgetting who and where they were. Until he rubbed his head, and no strands tickled his fingers; the doctors had successfully pulled his body back from the dead, but his hair would likely remain a permanent casualty of too many radiation doses.
"Yet, you're still here," he said, in mild amazement of both her and him. "Lucky me." He reached for her hand, but she gave him the flask.
"You think it's luck?" she said, holding her smile.
He didn't answer, preferring to keep their interaction light. She didn't talk any more than that, either. But she did extend her hand across the gearshift, and laid it on his leg.
Artyom decided to stay where they were a while longer. When twilight fell, they would start up the car again and press on, to Vladivostok and the sea. Maybe there, he could finally leave the Metro and its ghosts behind him. At least until he dreamed again.
Next: Wishing for Daylight