然而幸運(yùn)的是，在薩維奧洛沃有能夠解決此次事件的東西，它不僅僅能讓這個車站獲救，甚至可能是讓整條從季米里亞澤夫直至謝爾普霍夫車站的線路都能夠幸免于難。當(dāng)列車駛?cè)?strong>薩維奧洛沃，車上的人一個個都濕透了，向這里的守衛(wèi)們訴說著自己是如何從死亡的邊緣逃出來的。與此同時(shí)，執(zhí)勤的守衛(wèi)們立刻開始穿戴起某種奇異的裝備。

But luckily, there was something at Savyolovskaya that would save them, the station and perhaps the entire Serpukhovsko - Timiryazevskaya branch. They were nearly at the station, soaked in sweat, shouting at the Savyolovskaya guards about their narrow escape from death. Meanwhile, the guards at the post were quickly pulling the cover off of some kind of impressive-looking piece of kit.

那是一種火焰噴射器，由當(dāng)?shù)氐墓そ秤昧闵⒌牟考M裝而成——雖然是自制的，但其威力不容小覷。當(dāng)?shù)谝慌笕褐饾u進(jìn)入視野，它們緊密地聚集在一起，你能聽見這支由老鼠組成的大軍在黑暗中快速前行的聲音，由無數(shù)利爪摩擦著地面發(fā)出的沙沙響聲，守衛(wèi)們見狀立即啟動了火焰噴射器，除非燃料耗盡，他們絕不會退縮。就在那瞬間一股橘紅色的火焰呼嘯而出，填滿了將近幾十米的隧道，點(diǎn)燃了所有妄圖靠近的鼠群，熊熊烈火持續(xù)了十分鐘，十五分鐘，二十分鐘，絲毫沒有停歇的意思。片刻后，隧道中便充斥著尸體燒焦的難聞氣味，以及茍延殘喘的老鼠發(fā)出的吱吱尖叫。此時(shí)站在薩維奧洛沃車站守衛(wèi)身后的那幾個人，已然成為了英雄，將會在整個地鐵線中聲名鵲起，他們徹底停下了列車，關(guān)閉了引擎。最后，列車上的那五個人成功地從季米里亞澤夫逃出生天，并帶著一個從那里救出來的小男孩兒——阿爾喬姆。

It was a flame-thrower, assembled by the local craftman from spare parts - homemade, but incredibly powerful. When the first ranks of rats became visible, gathering force, and you could hear the rustling and the scratching of a thousand rats' paws from the darkness, the guards fired up the flame-thrower. And they didn't turn it off until the fuel was spent. A howling orange flame filled the tunnel for tens of metres and burned the rats, burned them all, without stopping, for ten, fifteen, twenty miniutes. The tunnel was filled with the repulsive stench of burnt flesh and the wild screeching of rats. And behind the guards of Savyolovskaya, who had become heroes and had earned fame along the entire metro line, the trolley came to a stop, cooling down. On it were the five men who had fled from Timiryazevskaya station, and there was one more - the child they had saved. A boy. Artyom.

鼠群此時(shí)也開始四處逃竄。人類在武器軍備上的天賦擊潰了鼠群盲目進(jìn)攻的策略。在殺戮這方面恐怕沒有其他生物能夠勝過人類。

The rats retreated. Their blind will had been broken by one of the last inventions of human military genius. Humans had always been better at killing than any other living thing.

鼠群如退潮的水流一般迅速地向他們巢穴退去，沒有人知道他們的領(lǐng)地究竟有多大。那些迷宮橫臥在這地鐵深坑中，如樹根般盤根錯節(jié)，神秘莫測，似乎對地鐵的運(yùn)行毫無作用。就在這一問題上，盡管曾有各種權(quán)威人士出面保證，這種結(jié)構(gòu)是出自普通的地鐵建造商之手，可依然讓人懷疑其真實(shí)性。

The rats flowed backwards and returned to their enormous kingdom, whose true dimensions were known to no one. All of these labyrinths, lying at incredible depth, were so mysterious and, it seemed, completed useless for the functioning of the metro. It was hard to believe, despite the assurances of various persons of authority on the the matter, that all of this was bulit by ordinary metro-builders.

而其中的一名權(quán)威人士，在舊時(shí)代曾在一輛列車中擔(dān)任過檢票員。像他這樣的人放在現(xiàn)在屬于極少數(shù)人群，有著極高的地位，因?yàn)樗麄儗Φ罔F線路的了解程度，不是普通人能做到的。而且就算他們脫離了列車和車站的庇護(hù)，深陷在莫斯科那黑暗的隧道，穿梭于大都市下的石間縫隙，也絲毫不懼。車站內(nèi)的每個人和他們的孩子都對檢票員尊敬有加；大概是因?yàn)檫@個原因，阿爾喬姆也記住了他，終生難忘：他瘦弱且憔悴，由于多年在地下工作而顯得弱不禁風(fēng)，他總是穿著一套破舊且褪色的地鐵員工制服，而這身制服早已失去了它原本的樣貌，但當(dāng)他穿上這套制服時(shí)卻帶著一種退伍船長般的自豪。即使當(dāng)時(shí)的阿爾喬姆只是個毛頭小子，也能從這名瘦弱的檢票員身上感受到莊嚴(yán)和力量。

One such person of authority had once worked as a conductor's assistant on an electric train in the old days. There were hardly any of his kind left and they were greatly valued, because at first they had proven to be the only ones who could find their way aroud. And they didn't give in to fear the moment they found themselves outside the comfortable and safe capsules of the train, in the dark tunnels of the Moscow metro, in these stone bowels of the great metropolis. Everyone at the station treated the conductor's assistant with respect, and taught their children to do the same; it was for that reason, probably, that Artyom had remembered him, remembered him all his life: a thin, haggard man, emaciated by the long years of work underground who wore a threadbare and faded metro employee uniform that had long ago lost its chic but that he donned with the same pride a retired admiral would feel when putting on his parade uniform. Even Artyom, still just a kid at that time, had seen a certain dignity and power in the sickly figure of the conductor's assistant...

當(dāng)然，就以現(xiàn)在的處境而言，他確實(shí)能收獲如此這般的信賴。對幸存者來說，這些曾經(jīng)的地下工作者的地位就好比在叢林中幫助外來科考隊(duì)的本地導(dǎo)游一樣。人們無條件地相信他們、依賴他們，而那些沒有得到幫助的幸存者，就需要他們自求多福了。當(dāng)整個政府系統(tǒng)崩潰之后，大部分地鐵工作者成為了車站的領(lǐng)頭人，使得整個地鐵線分裂成了一處處復(fù)雜的民營據(jù)點(diǎn)。原本一個巨大的輻射庇護(hù)所，轉(zhuǎn)變成多個互不相通的獨(dú)立車站，各自揭竿而起，自立門戶。車站做到了自給自足，獨(dú)立自主，就好像矮人王國一般，在各自的律法和制度下運(yùn)行著，甚至還有他們自己的“國王”和軍隊(duì)。車站間時(shí)有戰(zhàn)爭發(fā)生，敗者在戰(zhàn)后會被吞并，勝者在未來的某一天可能會崛起一個帝國，當(dāng)然也有可能會被曾經(jīng)的盟友暗算，被昔日的囚犯推翻。車站間有時(shí)會組成臨時(shí)的聯(lián)盟來對抗共同的威脅，當(dāng)他們的危機(jī)度過之時(shí)，又會再次撲向?qū)Ψ降难屎?。他們?yōu)檫_(dá)目的可以摒棄一切，包括：住所，口糧，蛋白片，無光培養(yǎng)的菌類農(nóng)作物，雞圈和養(yǎng)豬場，盡管這所謂的農(nóng)場也只不過是用一種無色的地下菌類喂養(yǎng)著一群營養(yǎng)不良的雞和豬。他們愿意如此奮不顧身拼殺的原因，就是為了爭奪水源，以及凈水器。這幫野蠻人，就因?yàn)椴恢廊绾涡藓脡牡舻臑V水系統(tǒng)，當(dāng)有人因?yàn)楹攘撕宋廴镜乃欢舅乐?，就如同野獸一般將憤怒向文明的城邦宣泄。而反觀那些文明城邦，他們的電力和水力系統(tǒng)都能正常運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)，濾水系統(tǒng)也能夠得到妥善地維修和清理，在婦女們的精心照料下，暖棚里長滿了白色的可食用蘑菇，肥碩的家豬擠在畜欄里咕噥?zhàn)黜懀黄楹椭啊?/p>

Of course he did. For all those who survived, the employees of the metro were like local guides to scientific expeditions in the jungles. They were religiously believed, they were depended upon completely, and the survival of everyone else depended on their knowledge and skill. Many of them became the heads of stations when the united system of government disintegrated, and the metro was transformed from a complex object of civil defence, a huge fallout shelter, into a multitude of stations unconnected by a single power, and was plunged into chaos and anarchy. The stations became independent and self-sufficient, distinctive dwarf states, with their own ideologies and regimes, their own leaders and armies. They warred against each other, they joined to form federations and confederations.They became metropolitan centres of rising empire one day, only to be subjugated and colonized the next, by their erstwhile friends or slaves. They formed short-term unions against a common threat, only to fall at each other's throats again with renewed energy the moment that threat had passed. They scrapped over everything with total abandon: over living spaces, over food - over the plantings of albuminous yeast, the crops of mushrooms that didn't require any sunlight, the chicken coops and pig-farms, where pale subterranean pigs and emaciated chicks were raised on colourless underground mushrooms. They fought, of course, over water -that is, over filters. Barbarians, who didn't know how to repair filtration systems that had fallen into disuse, and were dying from water that was poisoned by radiation, threw themselves with animal rage upon the bastions of civilized life, at the stations where the dynamo-machines and small home-made hydroelectric stations functioned correctly, where filters were repaired and cleaned regularly, where, tended by the caring female hands, the damp ground was punctuated with the little white caps of champignons, and well-fed pigs grunted in their pens.

他們在求生本能的驅(qū)使下，開展著無窮無盡、令人絕望的侵略和搶奪，這也是為了奉行他們侵略者那永恒不變的鐵律：征服，然后蠶食殆盡。文明城邦的捍衛(wèi)者們，在資深老兵的帶領(lǐng)下，建立了一個個反戰(zhàn)部隊(duì)來對抗這些破壞者的進(jìn)攻，直到他們流干最后一滴血。捍衛(wèi)者們發(fā)起了一波又一波的反攻，在一次次戰(zhàn)斗中逐漸奪回了站臺隧道間的土地。車站間都紛紛開始積蓄他們的軍事力量，以反擊車站外那些四處游蕩的侵略者；當(dāng)相鄰車站之間的和平協(xié)議不再生效時(shí)，也能夠用武力將對方趕出領(lǐng)土；在對抗隧道坑洞中的怪物時(shí)也能提供援助。這些怪異、畸形的危險(xiǎn)生物，他們的存在挑戰(zhàn)著進(jìn)化論學(xué)說，達(dá)爾文本人來了恐怕都會為此大驚失色。這些變異野獸完全不同于以往的動物和人類，他們或許是為了適應(yīng)這灼熱又致命的太陽光而產(chǎn)生了變異，最終就連在城市里無害的小動物都變成了來自地獄的魔獸，也有可能他們本就是長眠于地底深處的原住民，現(xiàn)在只不過是被逃難至此的人類所驚擾，總的來說，他們現(xiàn)在也作為地球生物被載入史冊。盡管難以琢磨，但能夠確定的是，他們?nèi)匀皇腔钌纳铮琅f保持著這個星球上最基本的生命本能。

They were driven forward, in their endless and desperate onslaught, by an instinct for self-preservation, and by that eternal revolutionary principle: conquer and divide. The defenders of successful stations, organized into battle-ready divisions by former military professionals, stood up to the assauIts of vandals, to the very last drop of their blood. They went on to launch counter-attacks and won back every metre of the interstation tunnels with a fight. The stations amassed their military power in order to answer any incursions with punitive expeditions; in order to push their civilized neighbours from territory that was important for sustaining life, if they hadn't managed to attain these agreements by peaceful means; and in order to offer resistance to the crap that was climbing out of every hole and tunnel. These were strange, freakish, and dangerous creatures, the likes of which might well have brought Darwin himself to despair with their obvious lack of conformity to the laws of evolutionary development. As much as these beasts might differ from the animals humans were used to, and whether they had been reborn under the invisible and ruinous rays of sunlight, turned from inoffensive representatives of urban fauna into the spawn of hell, or whether they had always dwelled in the depths, only now to be disturbed by man-still, they were an evident part of life on earth. Disfigured, perverted-but a part of life here all the same. And they remained subject to that very same driving impulse known to every organic thing on this planet.

那就是：活下去，不惜一切代價(jià)。

Survive. Survive at any cost.