第一章：世界末日（4）
他已经完全不记得自己的父亲了，而他的母亲也在他五岁时离开了。他们原本在季米里亚泽夫车站相依为命，物资充足，日子过得还算和平安宁，却因为一场鼠灾陷入了混乱。
He didn't remember his father at all. His mother had been with him until he was five years old. They lived Timiryazevskaya. Things had been good, and life had gone smoothly and peacefully, until Timiryazevskaya fell victim to a rat infestation.
就在某一天，一群湿漉漉的大灰耗子从车站某个阴暗处的管道毫无征兆地涌了进来。季米里亚泽夫车站正处于直通边境的隧道当中，是早已被人遗忘的古老的北部支线，它直直地连接着北面深处，人们很容易迷失在上百条错综复杂的通道网中，简直就是个冰冷又恶心的恐怖迷宫。这条隧道连着老鼠的巢穴，连无可救药的冒险家也不敢涉足。即便是依靠地图依然在这迷宫中找不着北的拾荒者，也不敢在这块儿地域作过多停留，论谁都会本能地感觉这里环绕着黑暗和不详的危险气息，然后连滚带爬地沿着墙边的缝隙，钻出这个瘟疫之地。
One day, huge grey, wet rats poured from one of the tunnels on the dark side of the station without any warning. It was a tunnel that plunged off to the side, a disregarded branch of the primary northern leg, which descended to great depths, only to become lost in the complex network of hundreds of corridors - freezing, stinking labyrinths of horror. The tunnel stretched into the kingdom of rats, where even the most hopeless adventurer wouldn't dare to go. Even a wanderer who was lost and couldn't find his way using underground maps and paths, would stop at this threshold, sensing instinctively the black and sinister danger emerging from it, and would have rushed away from the gaping crevasse of that entrance as though from the gates of a plague-infested city.
原本没人会去打扰那些老鼠，没人会侵扰它们的边界，更没人会闯入它们的领地。
No one bothered that rats. No one descended into their dominions. No one dared to violate their borders.
然而，它们自己找上门来了。
They came to the people.
许多人在那天死去了，被一只在其他车站未曾见过的巨大老鼠给吞噬了。它如洪水猛兽一般冲过外部警戒线，穿过车站内部，屠杀着所有的抵抗者和平民，它那巨大的体型甚至盖住了那些受害者死前的哀嚎。它带领着鼠群，不论是生是死，是敌是友，所及之处，皆为口中食，腹中物。鼠群毫无目的地向前，向着更远的方向，撕碎着一切，仿佛有一股超出人类理解的力量驱使着它们。
Many people perished that day, when a living torrent of gigantic rats - bigger than had ever been seen at either the stations or in the tunnels - had flooded through the cordons and the station, burying all of its defenders and its population, muffling their dying screams with the mass of its bodies. Consuming everything in their path - the living, the dead, and their own fallen comrades - the rats tore ahead, further and further, blindly, inexorably, propelled by a force beyond human comprehension.
袭击过后，仅有极少数的男人幸存下来了。没有妇女，没有老人，也没有孩子，没有任何一个人能够直面死亡，直面这正在肆虐的狂潮。他们能够从这次袭击中逃出来的唯一原因，是因为这些人碰巧待在一辆列车附近，值守着南面的隧道。当听见车站内的哭喊声时，其中一个跑去查看发生了什么。当他才进入车站看了一眼，季米里亚泽夫车站就已经沦陷了。当他站在这车站入口处，看见第一股鼠群如溪流般成群结队地涌入站台的时候，他就明白发生了什么，转身就想逃跑，他深切地明白想要救出那些拼死抵抗的人是不可能的，而就在他转身离开的那一瞬间，有人从身后抓住了他的衣袖。是一名女子，脸部因恐惧而扭曲成一团，使劲地晃动着衣袖，张着嘴，企图通过大声嚎叫盖过身后那绝望的旋律，“救救他吧！当兵的！求求你了！”
Only a few men remained alive. No women, no old men or children - none of the people who had managed to keep ahead of the death - wreaking torrent. And the only reason they'd outrun it was because they'd happened to be standing near a trolley, on watch in the southern tunnel. Hearing the shouts from the station, one of them sprinted to see what had happened. Timiryazevskaya was already perishing when he caught sight of it as he entered the station. At the station's entrance, he understood what had happened from the first rivulets of rats seeping onto the platform and he was about to turn back, knowing that he couldn't possibly help those who were defending the station, when suddenly his hand was seized from behind. He turned around and a woman, her face contorted with horror, pulling insistently at his sleeve, shouted, in an effort to overcome the many-voiced choir of despair, 'Save him, soldier! Have mercy!'
那女人说着就把一个孩子胖乎乎的小手递了过来，而这位大兵也本能地接过手，完全没有想过此刻乃至将来，他会是这孩子的救命恩人。他从身后将孩子拉起，顺势将孩子用手臂圈住，快速奔跑了起来，想趁杀疯了的鼠群先头部队还没注意到这里赶紧离开，此刻在隧道的前方，他的巡逻队队友们正在列车那儿守候着。这位的士兵从五十米开外就向他的队友们大喊，让他们赶紧发动列车。不幸之幸的是，他们所处的车站（季米里亚泽夫车站），是周围十个车站中唯一一个还能够启动列车的车站，这也是他们能够从这次鼠群的袭击中逃脱的主要原因。这帮巡逻兵拼了命地想要逃离，他们全速驾驶着列车，穿过了封锁中的德米特罗夫车站，当他们碰巧路过车站中的几个流浪汉营地的时候，就大声呼喊：“快跑！鼠群来了！”（可他们根本没有意识到，列车现在不可能停下来去营救这些人，否则全都得玩儿完。）当他们迫近萨维奥洛沃车站的警戒线时(幸运的是，那里被整治得很好，是一处和平的文明车站)，列车缓缓地减速以免遭到守卫们的攻击。毕竟看到高速行驶过来的列车时，谁都会认为这是恐怖袭击。他们用尽吃奶的力气嚎叫着：“有老鼠！后面有鼠群在靠近！”他们本想着赶紧穿过萨维奥洛沃，沿着轨道驶向更远处，恳求一路上的幸存者逃离，趁着列车还能继续工作，趁着鼠群还没有吞噬整个地铁线。
He saw that she was handing him a child's hand, a small, chubby hand, and he grabbed the hand without even thinking that he was saving someone's life. And, pulling the child behind him and then picking him up and tucking him under his arm, he raced off with the frontrunner rats in a race with death - forward through the tunnel, where the trolley was waiting with his fellow patrolmen. He started to shout at them from afar, from a distance of fifty metres or so, telling them to start up the trolley. Their trolley was motorized, the only one of its kind in the sourrounding ten stations, and it was only because of it that they were able to outrun the rats. The patrolmen raced forward, and flew through the abandoned station of Dmitrovskaya at full speed, where a few hermits had sought shelter, just managing to shout to them: 'Run! Rats!' (Without realizing that there was no chance of the hermits saving themselves.) As they approached the cordons of Savyolovskaya (with whom, thank God, they had peaceful arrangements), they slowed down so they wouldn't be fired at. They would have been taken for raiders at such high speed. And they shouted at the top of their lungs to the guards, 'Rats! The rats are coming!' They were prepared to keep running right through Savyolovskaya, and further along the line, prepared to beg to be let through, as long as there was somewhere further to go, as long as the grey lava hadn't inundated the entire metro.
