Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) by Dmitry Glukhovsky Page B

the cold, heavy look with his skin, his head, his hair and his back. Now he couldn’t oppose his premonitions anymore.
    Directly under the ceiling, far above their heads, a big head floated in the fog, so big that Homer didn’t realize at what he was looking at in the beginning. The rest of the giant body remained in the darkness of the station. Its huge face was hanging above the tiny humans that tried to defend themselves with their useless weapons. It wasn’t in a hurry – it just gave them a bit of time before it attacked.
    Silent with terror Homer sank to his knees. His rifle fell out of his hands and hit the floor with a rattling sound. Achmed screamed as he was being tortured. Without haste the creature approached and filled the entire room in front of them with its dark body, giant as a mountain. Homer closed his eyes, prepared himself, said farewell. Only one thing went
through his mind, a regretful, bidder thought drilling into his conciseness: He hadn’t made it …
    Hunter’s grenade launcher spit out a flame, the shockwave numbed their ears; it left a continuously thin humming sound while burning parts of shredded flesh was raining down on them.
    Achmed was the first to snap out of it, helped Homer to his feet and dragged him with him.
    They ran, stumbled over the tracks, got back up again without feeling any pain. They held on to each other, because in the milky soup you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. They ran as if they were threatened not just with death, but with something even more terrible: Utter, final, unchangeable embodiment of absolute, physical and mental destruction.
    Invisible and almost inaudible, but only a step behind them, the demons followed, accompanying them but not attacking. They seemed to toy with them by giving them the illusion of a possible rescue.
    Then the two men saw the fragmented marble walls and after that segments of the tunnels. They had made it out of the Nagornaya ! The guardians of the station fell back like
they were chained to the station. But it was too early to stand still.
    Achmed ran ahead, searched with his hands for the pipes on the wall and pushed Homer in front of him, who stumbled and wanted to sit down several times.
    “What’s with the brigadier?” croaked Homer after he had ripped off the sticky gasmask from his face while he was walking.
    “As soon as we pass the fog we’ll stop and wait. It got to be soon, maybe 200 steps … Out of the fog. Everything but to get out of the fog” repeated Achmed, mysterious, “I’ll count the steps …”
    But neither after 200 steps nor after 300 did the fog seemed to disappear. What if it had spread to the Nagatinskaya ? What if had swallowed the Tulskaya and the Nachimovski as well?
    “That can’t be … it has to … only a bit …” Mumbled Achmed for the hundredth time and stopped immediately.
    Homer bumped into him and both fell to the ground.
    “The wall has ended” Achmed stepped over the tracks and the wet concrete floor as if he thought that the ground would vanish as quick under his feet.
    “There she is, what do you mean?” Homer had felt the oblique tunnel segment and hold on to it and stood up carefully.
    “Sorry” Achmed replied silently. “You know back at the station … I thought I would never leave it. How it looked at me … M e , do you understand? It had decided to take me . I thought I would stay there forever. You don’t even get a real burial” he spoke slowly to keep himself from crying.
    He tried to justify the way he was speaking, even thought he didn’t have too.
    Homer shook his head. “It’s alright; I shat my pants as well. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go, it can’t be far now”
    The hunt was over, they could breathe again and even if it wasn’t they couldn’t run anymore. So they kept walking slowly, feeling their way along the wall half blind with their hands. Step by step to salvation. The worst part was behind them and even though the fog