Chapter 2: Tsvetnoy Bulvar
Alexandr – Day 1 – 13:21
Ilia and I sat in the darkened room for ages. Even after we'd composed ourselves and split the fifty-four bullets that I'd found on the Nazi soldier, neither of us wanted to be the first to volunteer to move forward again. Ilia idly opened up the chamber on his revolver and pretended to check his ammo a few times as I tightened one of the loose screws in my rifle that always seemed to need tightening. We couldn't be sure how long we waited for, but I could tell that Ilia started to get bored.
"We should move on soon," he eventually said.
I was still happy to sit in safety. "It's comfortable here, though. Let's just stay here until the horde's gone."
"It's probably gone now; nosalises don't stick where there's no food for long." He stood up, turned his light on and shined it at me. The light was piss-weak so it didn't bother me too much. "Come on, get up."
He enjoyed being in control of things. It was starting to get frustrating so I had started to stand up for myself a bit more lately. "Just a few hours. There's no harm in it."
"We don't have enough food. This was only supposed to take a few hours. We have to go, Alex."
"Fine. Have it your way." I slowly raised to my feet, being sure to exaggerate my groans to voice my displeasure. "Can we at least see if there's an exit that doesn't lead to certain death?"
"I'm more than happy to do that." He turned around as I turned my rifle's flashlight on. He lifted the latch and slowly pulled the door open. It was a painfully long process but I wasn't about to offer to go first. The door creaked open and Ilia quickly darted out to shine his flashlight in both directions of the narrow passage. When he saw nothing, he simply said, "Let's go." I stayed silent and followed him out and to the right, checking behind us with my light as I did.
Ilia led us down the passage for a few minutes before abruptly stopping.
"I think we just found who stayed here," he said, his eyes fixed forwards.
I glanced past him and saw a body pushed up against the wall. His tattered clothes were covered in blood, his stomach had been ripped completely open and its crimson insides had been clawed out and were spread across the area. One of his legs had also been torn off and was embedded in the wall on the other side and his face had been damaged so severely that it was unrecognisable as a human's face. He'd been thrown against the wall with so much force that it had cracked the concrete and knocked off a section of dormant pipe that ran across the wall. "Gross," I said, itching to get a move on away from this place. "Can we go?"
"Alex," Ilia began with another of his life lessons. "The creature that did this could still be around, we have to be careful."
"It was probably just another snout."
"It probably was, and we should be careful. Nosalises are deadly."
"Yeah, whatever." I barged past him and approached the body. I could feel Ilia's mild disdain but I ignored it and began to search through the corpse's few pockets that hadn't been destroyed by the attack. I found nothing more than a crumpled-up picture of a man and a woman. The people were presumably him and his wife, but his corpse's face was so messed up that I couldn't compare it to the picture. I chucked it aside and continued to rifle through the pockets.
"Show some respect, man," Ilia said derisively. I just shrugged him off and continued; It wasn't like the corpse was using the picture. I found a single large calibre bullet and nothing else of note on the body so I stood up and began to lead the way forward with my rifle raised, its torch lighting the way ahead. We rounded a corner and came across an open doorway to a large train tunnel.
"Turn your light off," Ilia quietly ordered. "Those things might still be out there; I think it's the same tunnel." I rolled my eyes, invisible to him, and obliged as he also turned his off. We waited for our natural night vision before advancing further. As we waited, I started idly fiddling with the bullet I'd found. I couldn't see it very well in the darkness but I noted its surprising size relative to a standard bullet. Plus, it seemed to have another metal stick welded to the side. As I felt around it, I noticed a rough cylindrical turning part to it. I quickly flicked it down and it created a spark that briefly lit up the corridor.
Ilia jumped back. "What the fuck was that?!"
I looked at him with glee as I flicked the cap of the bullet off on its apparent hinge. "Dude! It's a lighter!" I sparked it again which set the wick under the cap on fire and lit up the corridor in a low orange glow. "This is so cool!"
"Yeah, really cool," Ilia replied sarcastically. "Now put it out. We don't want to get spotted." Begrudgingly, I flicked the cap back on and pocketed the lighter as we continued to wait in silence.
We finally approached the door which revealed that this was, in fact, the tunnel that we were once in. We listened for any sign of the nosalises but the air was perfectly still and calm. I turned my light on, sparking a small gasp of surprise from an Ilia on high alert. A quick glance around showed that we were right outside Tsvetnoy Bulvar. The tracks in the tunnel split apart from each other and into their own separate tunnels for a small distance before running either side of the small station.
"Dude, we made it!" I excitedly whispered.
"Keep your voice down," Ilia snapped, despite me being extremely quiet. "Let's not celebrate just yet. We'll have to see if there's anything worth scavenging."
"Don't be such a downer. Everyone knows this place is unexplored. There's going to be loads of pre-war shit."
"Right, sure," he replied sarcastically. "We've already found enough bullets to eat for a month, let's just take it easy."
Disappointed by Ilia's lack of enthusiasm, I moved into the leftmost tunnel and encouraged him to follow. This was the most exciting thing we'd done. We were used to scavenging, but it usually took place in the tunnels north of our home of Novoslobodskaya where most of the good stuff had been taken.
The station was in complete darkness, as was most of our journey so far. The once-beautiful marble walls were tarnished and blackened and some of the tiles had fallen out of their places and broken on the floor. The curved concrete roofs were relatively undamaged, simply blackened and old. As we moved into the centre, we noticed a few moderately sized semi-circles of stained glass designs placed at the top of each wall in between the gaps that led to the tracks. Most remained but my flashlight's beam didn't shine much through the dirt that had gathered on them and a few had fallen off and smashed, spreading multi-coloured glass all over the floor. The stairs up to the surface at the end led to a huge stained-glass design that remained in a decent, if tarnished, condition. We didn't go up to it, but it seemed to depict a lot of greenery on the surface, something I'd only heard about in stories from the older residents of our station. The whole station was a similar design to our home station but was completely unmaintained and generally less pretty. Disappointingly, the area looked devoid of anything other than a few piles of rubble.
"You check this side, I'll check around the stairs," I told Ilia, not letting him take the lead again.
"Shouldn't we stick together? What if something happens?"
I began to walk towards my side of the station. "Yeah, whatif something happens in this completely empty station?" I sarcastically replied. I heard him mutter something in response but I ignored it and carried on.
The side sections of the track continued on a little way beyond where the stairs started. I decided to move down the platform to the left of the stairs despite not seeing anything of note when I was further away. A closer inspection was just as disappointing since I found absolutely nothing.
"Are you sure the station's empty?" I heard a voice from within the tunnel I was next to. I panicked, turned my light off and rushed up to the wall to hide.
"For the last time, Leonid. Yes," a second voice began. "We checked it a couple of days ago."
"What happened to Oleg, then?" A third person asked.
"He wandered off and got himself lost in the tunnels," the second voice answered. "The stupid bastard probably got killed by nosalises."
The three figures shined their lights out of the tunnel and moved through it and into the station. I kept my breathing and movement to a minimum and sincerely hoped that Ilia had noticed them. I could only see their silhouettes in the darkness, but I could tell that they were Reich soldiers. They dressed identically in the same high-quality armour as we had seen on the corpse earlier. Two of them held AK-74Ms while the other casually carried a revolver. Few groups in the Metro were as well equipped as the Nazis.
"What are we doing here again?" The first person, apparently Leonid, asked.
"How do you forget everything I tell you?" The second responded; it seemed as though he was in charge of the group. "We're doing a final sweep of the station and nearby tunnels to clear it so that we can occupy it and expand our power. We can use it as a staging ground to attack Hansa at Mendeleevskaya if things heat up between us. They'd never expect it."
I heard this and panicked. Mendeleevskaya was joined with Novoslobodskaya, they wanted to attack my home and were going to try and break Hansa's ring line. Absorbed in these thoughts, I briefly forgot myself and shuffled slightly in place. The group stopped and I froze in response.
"Did you guys hear that?" The leader asked.
"Yeah, you're sure this place is empty?" One of the others asked.
"It was last time." They hopped up onto the platform and began to search the area. Planning to take cover behind the raised platform, I moved to jump down onto the tracks. As I quietly put one hand on the platform to slow my jump down, I misplaced my foot on one of the tracks and slipped, causing me to loudly slide my foot against the rubble on the floor. I froze in place to listen if they found me. They were in the central part of the station now so I couldn't see them, but I heard their boots moving towards me. I quickly hid behind the platform and kept still. I could feel each breath quiver as I tried to keep myself as quiet as possible. Their lights skipped around the platform's walls as they approached.
"Come out, whoever you are. We won't hurt you," the leader sarcastically called as they approached. I held my gun close but I didn't want to use it, there was no way that I'd win. Their heavy footsteps split off a little as they searched the area but they still came towards me. It was tough to keep my breathing quiet as I felt myself shaking with nerves. The lights inched towards me until I was suddenly completely illuminated. A hand grabbed my hair and violently pulled me up to the platform as the group's leader said, "Found you."
I dropped my weapon and cried, "Please, no, no, no!" as I was pulled up. They turned me around and put me on my knees to look up at them. The two underlings aimed their AKs at me as the leader put his hands on his sides and looked incredibly proud. My body shook with fright as they sized me up.
"What's a pathetic little shit like you doing away from your mama?" The leader said.
I stuttered and fumbled through my words. "Nothing! Just scavenging."
He looked at one of his men. "Think he's a Hansa spy?"
"I'm not, I swear!" I yelled before he drew back his revolver and hit me across the face with the handle. I cried out and almost collapsed to the floor, but he grabbed my hair again and painfully kept me upright.
He lowered himself to my head height and calmly said, "You will speak when you are spoken to. Understand?" I quickly and frantically nodded. He stood back up and spoke to his men again. "We will take him back. We can figure out an appropriate punishment for this scum later." One of his men nodded, pulled back his AK and struck me across the face as hard as he could with its stock. The darkness quickly enveloped me before I had even hit the floor.
