Journey to another world in the subway

Chapter 200 Outside
The raindrops fell heavily on the iron helmet, as if directly on Artyom's head.

I trudged through the mud with rain boots, and the rust stains formed streams flowing downward.

The sky was covered with rain clouds, and it was suffocating.

The surrounding buildings were empty, like skeletons eaten away by time, and there was no one in the whole city.

The city has been dead for 20 years.

Two rows of bare, wet, water-soaked trees formed an avenue leading to the gigantic arch of the VDNH.

Once upon a time, in these temple-like halls of ancient Greece, there were hopes for a great future.

A great future seems to be just around the corner, and it is tomorrow.

Unexpectedly, tomorrow has become the end, and the National Economic Achievement Exhibition Hall has become a place of death.

Two years ago, there were some random living things here, but now they are all dead.

There are always people who promise that the radiation on the surface will drop soon, and then it will return one after another. They say that the mutants on the ground are alive and well, and they are also living things, although they are mutants...

The result was the opposite: the polar ice shells melted, the earth became a steamer, and surface radiation surged.

The mutants jumped in panic, and all of them died before they could run away.

Human beings huddle underground and live in subway stations, not daring to venture anywhere.

Humans don't need much, and their survival instincts outshine all rats.

The radiation dosimeter beeped and calculated the dose for Artyom.

"Never take it again, damn it!"

Artyom cursed in his mind, "What if I know the dosage? It's useless! I can't go back even if it explodes before the thing is done."

Let them say go ahead, Anna!Call me crazy or schizophrenic.

They weren't on the TV tower at the time.They didn't even dare to leave the station. Where could they go?
'Crazy'...I blew them all up...didn't I say that!
At the moment Ullman was turning the antenna on the TV tower and adjusting the frequency, there was a sound, and I really heard it!

Damn!

Not fucking hallucinations!
Why don't you believe me!
Overpasses rose above him, and the asphalt undulated.

The cars were shaken off in various postures, some with all four wheels on the ground, some with all four wheels turned upside down, and they froze at the scene in such postures.

Artyom looked around and walked up the rough tongue sticking out of the viaduct.

It's not far, one kilometer, or one and a half kilometers.

On the other tongue stood a tall building called the Tricolor, previously painted festive white, blue, and red, when time had changed them all to grey.

"Why don't you believe it? You just don't believe it, there is no reason."

"Yes, no one heard the call."

"But where are they listening?"

"Under the ground."

"Nobody's going up to the ground to listen...is there?"

"Think for yourself: is this possible?"

"Is there no one in the world who survived except us?"

"Ok?"

"Bullshit!"

"Pure nonsense!"

He didn't want to see the Ostankino TV tower, but no matter how he turned his face away, it stood on the edge like a scratch on the glass of a gas mask.

The dark, wet, broken TV tower at the viewing platform, like someone's hand clenched fist out of the ground, or like some huge thing trying to jump out of the ground, but stuck in the reddish brown of Moscow In the clay, it was firmly pressed to the ground.

"When I was on the tower," Artyom turned his head abruptly in the direction of the TV tower.

"While the Rangers were trying to pick up Melnik's call over the radio, amidst the rustle - I'd swear by any name - I heard someone talking! Really!"

Floating above the naked forest is a gigantic statue of a pair of workers and kolkhoz women, entangled in strange poses, both skating and tango without looking at each other , as if they had no interest in each other.

So what are they looking at?

From their height, could they see anything beyond the horizon?

The Ferris wheel of the National Economic Achievements Exhibition Hall is still preserved on the left. It is so huge that it looks like a gear on a huge device that can turn the earth.

Along with the entire installation, the Ferris wheel has been dead for 20 years and is now covered in rust.

The wind-up is finished.

"857" is written on the Ferris wheel, which is the age of Moscow when it was built.

Artyom thought that there was no point in correcting this number—if no one counted, time would automatically stop.

Ugly and melancholy skyscrapers, the ones that had previously been painted white, blue and red, now loomed half the world before them.

Not counting the broken TV tower, this building is the tallest building in the Moscow region, and that's why Artyom came here.

He raised his head and looked towards the roof, and his knees immediately felt sore.

"Could it be possible today?" Artyom didn't expect to get an answer, he knew that heaven's ears were stuffed with cotton made of clouds and couldn't hear him.

The scene in the entrance hall of the building is no different from other high-rise buildings.

The walkie-talkie is broken, the iron gate is out of power, a dead dog is lying in the gatekeeper's glass booth, the iron letter box rattles in the draft, and there are no letters or small advertisements in it - all the pieces of paper have long been taken away by the stalkers. I collected them all, and lit them to warm my hands.

The three high-quality elevators from country D parked on the first floor are all open to all directions, and the stainless steel interior is dazzlingly bright. It seems that you can jump on any one of them and you can reach the top floor immediately. Artyom hates this kind of misleading.

Next to it is the fire escape door. Artyom is familiar with the situation behind the door. He has already calculated that the 46th floor has to be climbed step by step.

Mount Golgotha ​​always has to be climbed.

"Always... by climbing..."

The backpack weighed a ton, pressing Artyom to the concrete, making him stagger.

But he kept moving forward, as if fully wound up, and muttered out of breath: "Even if there is no... anti-missile... so what? Anyway... there should be ...someone survived...anywhere else...impossible to say, only us...only Moscow...only the subway...you see...the ground is still...unsplit...the sky...is also clearing... ...It's absolutely impossible...it's all over...there is also the beautiful country...the snail country...the eastern country...not to mention the elephant country...who does it get in the way..."

Naturally, in his twenty-six years of life, Artyom had never been to the land of snails or the Orient.

He was born too late and barely caught up with the old world; and the territory of the new world is much poorer - Metro Exhibition Hall Station, Metro Lubyanka Station, Metro Arbat Station... Metro Circle Line.

But every time he saw musty photos of Paris or New York in a rare travel magazine, he felt in his heart that these cities were still standing somewhere on the earth, still alive.

Perhaps they were waiting for him.

"How is it possible... that only Moscow survived? It's illogical, Anna! Do you understand? It doesn't make sense! It must be because we couldn't catch their call...not yet. We just have to keep waiting, not lose hope, absolutely cannot……"

The empty building made noises from time to time, as if someone was there: the wind flew in from the balcony, rattled the door panels, and then whizzed through the elevator shaft, rustling in the kitchen and bedroom, pretending to be the returning owner .

But Artyom had long since ceased to be fooled by it, not to mention walking in as a guest, and he would not even look back.

He knew exactly what lay behind those uneasy knocks on the door: a ransacked house.

All that was left was a few photos scattered about the unmemorable dead, and bulky furniture that had no use either in the subway or in the afterlife.

The windows of other buildings were all blown away by the shock wave, but the double-layer insulating glass of this building was spared.

But after more than 20 years, the window glass has long been covered with dust, like eyes with cataracts.

Early encounters with former owners in a house: Sometimes they stare at a toy, whining through a gas mask, completely oblivious to the presence of anyone behind them.

Now, I can't even touch a single person.

There's a guy with an extra bullet hole in his back lying next to that stupid toy; the others just need to see him and they'll know: there's no tenants up there, nothing.

Concrete, brick, mud, cracked asphalt, yellow bones, all kinds of debris, plus surface radiation.

It was true in Moscow, it was true all over the world, and no one survived anywhere except the Moscow Metro—this is an accepted fact.

Only Artyom did not recognize it.

What if there is still a suitable place for human beings to live on the infinitely vast earth?

A place that can accommodate Artyom, Anna, and all the people on the platform?
A place where you can see the sky without a cast-iron ceiling?

A place where you can rebuild your home, start a new life, bring the scorched land back to life?
"Everyone can live under...to live under the sky..."

46 floors.

Artyom could have stopped on the 40th or even the 30th floor, and no one asked him to climb to the top.

But he was paranoid and firmly believed that if there was a chance to receive a signal, it would only be on the roof of the building.

"Of course the roof...is not as high as the TV tower...but...but..."

The window glass of the gas mask was covered with water vapor, the heart was about to jump out of the chest cavity, and the ribs were throbbing, as if someone was trying to insert a sharpened iron rod.

Through the filter of the gas mask, breathing was very difficult, and the thin oxygen was not enough to support life. When Artyom climbed to the fifth floor of No.40, just like that time on the TV tower, he couldn't hold on any longer. Pulled off the rubber hood.

He breathed in big gulps of the sweet and bitter air, that kind of freshness was unimaginable in the subway.

"The height of the roof should be 300 meters, which is high enough. So, maybe we can receive it."

Finally got to the top floor.

He unloaded his backpack, pushed open the cover of the porthole on the top floor with his stiff back, climbed to the top platform, and collapsed on the ground.

Lying on his back, he stared at the clouds, so low they seemed to be within reach.

He tried his best to calm his heartbeat and breathing, and stood up.

The scenery here is like...

It's like when a human soul is about to fly to heaven, it is suddenly stuck on the glass skylight, hovering there, wandering under the skylight, unable to go up again, but unwilling to fall down again.

How can you possibly take anything on the ground seriously when you see from above how small they are?
There are two such buildings standing next to it, which used to be colored but are now gray.

But Artyom only climbed this one, he felt it was more convenient here.

There is a gap between the clouds, and the sun shines through it.

At this moment, there seemed to be a flash of something in the nearby building, not sure if it came from the roof, or from a dusty window on the upper floors, as if someone was holding a small mirror to catch the light.

But when Artyom took a closer look, the sun hid behind the cover again, and the flash disappeared, never to appear again.

Artyom's eyes always slid to the lush mutant forest -- where the botanical garden used to be.

In the middle of the forest was a bare black wasteland, a land of death, as if God had poured brimstone and fire, but Artyom knew that God did not do it.

Botanical Garden.

The botanical garden in Artyom's memory is different. It is his only memory of the lost pre-war world.

How strange: your whole being is made up of nothing more than tiles, curved panels, ceilings, streams running beside the tracks, granite and marble, sultry heat and electric light.

But suddenly, another small piece of different medium appeared in my life: on a cool morning in May, the tender new green of a baby sprouted from the slender tree trunks, the park paths painted with colored chalk, the long queues in front of the ice cream stand, And the taste of the ice cream in the cup is not so much sweet as heavenly.

And my mother's voice, muffled and distorted by time like a telephone cord.

There is also the warm hand of your mother. You hold it tightly and with all your strength, for fear of being separated from her.

But, can such a young child really remember this?

not necessarily.

Thinking of his mother, Artyom suddenly remembered a piece of news that his stepfather Sukhoi once told him.

Artyom groped around for a moment, and took out a yellowed photo, the film covering it was also warped.

Looking inside, there is a gentle and kind woman holding a child in her right hand, and putting her left hand on the head of a little black-haired boy.

Stepfather Sukhoi told himself at the time that the boy was his brother Alcorn.

He also said that he specifically asked Sukhoi to give this photo to him.

He also told him specifically that he had been looking for me.

But why didn't I have any impression of him before?
I always feel that I have never had this brother, and my impression of him is only from when I was a child, there was a boy who was always with me.

Give me everything to eat and wear.

He also sings nursery rhymes to himself.

But, can I still see him?
Will he believe me?

All these heterogeneous things seem so out of place and unrealistic that it is impossible to tell whether they really happened or if they are just a dream.

But how can you dream these things if you have never seen them, never felt them?

(End of this chapter)