第一章：世界末日（5）
然而幸运的是，在萨维奥洛沃有能够解决此次事件的东西，它不仅仅能让这个车站获救，甚至可能是让整条从季米里亚泽夫直至谢尔普霍夫车站的线路都能够幸免于难。当列车驶入萨维奥洛沃，车上的人一个个都湿透了，向这里的守卫们诉说着自己是如何从死亡的边缘逃出来的。与此同时，执勤的守卫们立刻开始穿戴起某种奇异的装备。
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.
那是一种火焰喷射器，由当地的工匠用零散的部件组装而成——虽然是自制的，但其威力不容小觑。当第一批鼠群逐渐进入视野，它们紧密地聚集在一起，你能听见这支由老鼠组成的大军在黑暗中快速前行的声音，由无数利爪摩擦着地面发出的沙沙响声，守卫们见状立即启动了火焰喷射器，除非燃料耗尽，他们绝不会退缩。就在那瞬间一股橘红色的火焰呼啸而出，填满了将近几十米的隧道，点燃了所有妄图靠近的鼠群，熊熊烈火持续了十分钟，十五分钟，二十分钟，丝毫没有停歇的意思。片刻后，隧道中便充斥着尸体烧焦的难闻气味，以及苟延残喘的老鼠发出的吱吱尖叫。此时站在萨维奥洛沃车站守卫身后的那几个人，已然成为了英雄，将会在整个地铁线中声名鹊起，他们彻底停下了列车，关闭了引擎。最后，列车上的那五个人成功地从季米里亚泽夫逃出生天，并带着一个从那里救出来的小男孩儿——阿尔乔姆。
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.
鼠群此时也开始四处逃窜。人类在武器军备上的天赋击溃了鼠群盲目进攻的策略。在杀戮这方面恐怕没有其他生物能够胜过人类。
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们巢穴退去，没有人知道他们的领地究竟有多大。那些迷宫横卧在这地铁深坑中，如树根般盘根错节，神秘莫测，似乎对地铁的运行毫无作用。就在这一问题上，尽管曾有各种权威人士出面保证，这种结构是出自普通的地铁建造商之手，可依然让人怀疑其真实性。
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.
而其中的一名权威人士，在旧时代曾在一辆列车中担任过检票员。像他这样的人放在现在属于极少数人群，有着极高的地位，因为他们对地铁线路的了解程度，不是普通人能做到的。而且就算他们脱离了列车和车站的庇护，深陷在莫斯科那黑暗的隧道，穿梭于大都市下的石间缝隙，也丝毫不惧。车站内的每个人和他们的孩子都对检票员尊敬有加；大概是因为这个原因，阿尔乔姆也记住了他，终生难忘：他瘦弱且憔悴，由于多年在地下工作而显得弱不禁风，他总是穿着一套破旧且褪色的地铁员工制服，而这身制服早已失去了它原本的样貌，但当他穿上这套制服时却带着一种退伍船长般的自豪。即使当时的阿尔乔姆只是个毛头小子，也能从这名瘦弱的检票员身上感受到庄严和力量。
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...
当然，就以现在的处境而言，他确实能收获如此这般的信赖。对幸存者来说，这些曾经的地下工作者的地位就好比在丛林中帮助外来科考队的本地导游一样。人们无条件地相信他们、依赖他们，而那些没有得到帮助的幸存者，就需要他们自求多福了。当整个政府系统崩溃之后，大部分地铁工作者成为了车站的领头人，使得整个地铁线分裂成了一处处复杂的民营据点。原本一个巨大的辐射庇护所，转变成多个互不相通的独立车站，各自揭竿而起，自立门户。车站做到了自给自足，独立自主，就好像矮人王国一般，在各自的律法和制度下运行着，甚至还有他们自己的“国王”和军队。车站间时有战争发生，败者在战后会被吞并，胜者在未来的某一天可能会崛起一个帝国，当然也有可能会被曾经的盟友暗算，被昔日的囚犯推翻。车站间有时会组成临时的联盟来对抗共同的威胁，当他们的危机度过之时，又会再次扑向对方的咽喉。他们为达目的可以摒弃一切，包括：住所，口粮，蛋白片，无光培养的菌类农作物，鸡圈和养猪场，尽管这所谓的农场也只不过是用一种无色的地下菌类喂养着一群营养不良的鸡和猪。他们愿意如此奋不顾身拼杀的原因，就是为了争夺水源，以及净水器。这帮野蛮人，就因为不知道如何修好坏掉的滤水系统，当有人因为喝了核污染的水被毒死之后，就如同野兽一般将愤怒向文明的城邦宣泄。而反观那些文明城邦，他们的电力和水力系统都能正常运转，滤水系统也能够得到妥善地维修和清理，在妇女们的精心照料下，暖棚里长满了白色的可食用蘑菇，肥硕的家猪挤在畜栏里咕哝作响，一片祥和之景。
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.
他们在求生本能的驱使下，开展着无穷无尽、令人绝望的侵略和抢夺，这也是为了奉行他们侵略者那永恒不变的铁律：征服，然后蚕食殆尽。文明城邦的捍卫者们，在资深老兵的带领下，建立了一个个反战部队来对抗这些破坏者的进攻，直到他们流干最后一滴血。捍卫者们发起了一波又一波的反攻，在一次次战斗中逐渐夺回了站台隧道间的土地。车站间都纷纷开始积蓄他们的军事力量，以反击车站外那些四处游荡的侵略者；当相邻车站之间的和平协议不再生效时，也能够用武力将对方赶出领土；在对抗隧道坑洞中的怪物时也能提供援助。这些怪异、畸形的危险生物，他们的存在挑战着进化论学说，达尔文本人来了恐怕都会为此大惊失色。这些变异野兽完全不同于以往的动物和人类，他们或许是为了适应这灼热又致命的太阳光而产生了变异，最终就连在城市里无害的小动物都变成了来自地狱的魔兽，也有可能他们本就是长眠于地底深处的原住民，现在只不过是被逃难至此的人类所惊扰，总的来说，他们现在也作为地球生物被载入史册。尽管难以琢磨，但能够确定的是，他们仍然是活生生的生物，依旧保持着这个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，不惜一切代价。
Survive. Survive at any cost.
