Read Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) for Free Online Page A

determent, sometimes gentle and pleading.
    On the doorstep of his apartment he went over everything again. It seemed a scene wouldn’t be avoidable, but he wouldn’t back down. He made a dark look and opened the door ready for a fight.
    From the nine and a half square meters apartment – very luxurious, he had waited for one for four years in some tent – was occupied by a two-story military bunk bed, a small neat dining table and another three big stacks of newspapers that reached to the ceiling. Would he have been an old
bachelor that mountain would have already buried him. But fifteen years ago he had met Yelena, who tolerated the dusty old paper in their small apartment, kept them in order and away from the stove; otherwise this mountain would have transformed itself into to a papery Pompeii long ago.
    She also tolerated so many other things. The endless alarming parts from newspapers with titles like “The arms race goes on”, “Americans test anti-rocket system”, “Our rocket shield grows”, “Farewell to peace” and “The time for patience is over” that covered all of the walls like wallpaper; him staying all night hovering over a stack of notebooks, a gnawed on pen in his hand – using electrical light instead of candles, no option with all the newspaper around; his jesting nickname, that he carried with pride, but that evoked a joking smile by everyone else who said it.
    She tolerated so much, but not everything. Nor his juvenile eagerness, that brought him into the middle of a storm every time only to see what it was like there – and that with almost 60 years! Nor the ease with what he accepts all the orders from above, without thinking about the last expedition that had almost cost his life.
    If he had died … he didn’t want to think about it.
    When Homer left for guard’s duty once a week she never stayed in the house. She fled with her troubled thoughts to the neighbors or went to work even if she didn’t had to – it didn’t matter where, everywhere was fine if it distracted her from thinking that her husband had already died, laying on the ground, dead and cold. She thought that his typical male composure regarding death was stupid, egoistic, yes even criminal.
    Fate had wanted it that she had already returned from work to change her clothes. She had put her arms through the sleeves of her patched jacket when he entered. Her dark, slightly grayed hair – she hadn’t even turned 50 – was tousled and you could see fear in her brown eyes. “Kolya … did something happen? I thought you had guard duty till late in the night?”
    His courage to start his argumentation dissolved immediately. Of course this time others were responsible, he could have said that they forced him, with clean consciences.
    But now he hesitated. Maybe he should calm her down first and mention it later – casually – during dinner?
    “I am asking just one thing from you: Don’t lie to me.”
    She warned him, after she had seen his wandering eyes.
    “Lena.” He started. “I have to tell you something …”
    “Did somebody …“She asked the most important, most feared question right away. Did somebody die, but she didn’t speak it out loud, like if she feared that her words would make it happen.
    “No! No …” Homer shook his head and added: “The freed me from guard duty. They are sending me to the Serpuchov skay a . Don’t think it will be dangerous”
    “But …” Yelena didn’t know what to say. “But that is … Did they already return, the …”
    “It is all nonsense.” He interrupted her hastily. “There is nothing”. The conversation turned into an unexpected direction. Instead dealing with curses that he is trying to play a hero and wait for a good moment of reconciliation, he now had to face a far harder test.
    Yelena turned away, stepped to the table, put the salt from the table somewhere else and smoothed a wrinkle in the tablecloth. “I had a dream …” She stopped and