METRO 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

supplies, light and fire. To bring life.
    Artyom, his friend Zhenya, and Vitalik the Splinter, all wanted to become stalkers. And, compelling themselves to climb upwards along the horrifying, screeching escalator with its collapsing steps, they imagined themselves in protective suits, with radiation damage monitors, with hulking machine guns at the ready, just as one would expect of real stalkers. But they had neither radiation monitors, nor protection, and instead of imposing army-issue machine guns, they had only the ancient double-barrelled rifle, which, perhaps, didn’t even shoot at all . . .
    Before long, their ascent was complete, and they found themselves almost on the surface. Fortunately, it was night; otherwise, they would have been blinded. Eyes accustomed to darkness and to the crimson light of bonfires and emergency lamps in their many years of life underground wouldn’t have withstood the glare. Blinded and helpless, they would have been unlikely to make it back home again.
    The vestibule of the Botanical Garden station was almost destroyed; half of the roof had collapsed, and through it one could see the radioactive dust of the dark-blue summer sky, already cleansed of clouds, and strewn with myriad stars. But what was a starry sky for a child who wasn’t even capable of imagining that a ceiling might not be above his head? When you lift your gaze, and it doesn’t run up against concrete coverings and rotten networks of wires and pipes, but is lost instead in a dark-blue abyss, gaping suddenly above your head - what an impression! And the stars! Could anyone who had never seen stars possibly imagine what infinity is, when, most likely, the very concept of infinity first appeared among humans inspired, once upon a time, by the nocturnal vault of the heavens? Millions of shining lights, silver nails driven into a dome of dark blue velvet . . .
    The boys stood for three, five, then ten minutes, unable to utter a word. They wouldn’t even have moved, and by morning would certainly have been cooked alive, if they hadn’t heard a bloodcurdling howl ring out nearby. Coming to their senses, they rushed headlong back to the escalator, and raced down it as fast as their legs could carry them, having thrown all caution to the wind, and several times nearly plunging downwards, into the teeth of the gears. Supporting each other, and pulling each other out, they made the journey back in a matter of seconds.
    Spinning down the final ten steps like a top, having lost the double-barrelled rifle along the way, they immediately lunged for the control panel of the barrier. But, damn it, the rusted old iron had become wedged, and it didn’t want to return to its place. Scared half to death that the monsters would pursue them from the surface, they raced off homewards, to the northern cordon.
    But, remembering that they’d probably done something very bad, having left the hermetic gates open, and had possibly left the path downward, into the metro, and to people, open for the mutants, they found the time to agree to keep their lips sealed, and not to tell any of the adults where they’d been. At the cordon, they said that they’d gone to a side tunnel to hunt for rats, but had lost their gun, become frightened, and returned.
    Artyom, of course, caught hell from his stepfather. His rear end smarted for a long time from that officer’s belt, but Artyom held up like a captive partisan, and didn’t blurt out his military secret. And his comrades kept silent as well.
    Everyone believed them.
    But now, when he thought of their escapade, Artyom fell, more and more often, into reflection. Was this journey, and, more importantly, the barrier they’d opened, connected somehow to the scum that had been assaulting their cordons for the last several years?
    Greeting passers-by, stopping now and then to hear some news, to shake hands with a friend, to land a kiss on the cheek of a familiar girl, to tell the older generations about