"The Fast" by Dmitry Glukhovsky, summary Automatic translate

This book is a dark post-apocalyptic thriller from 2019, transporting the reader to a Russia torn apart by a long-ago catastrophe. The story was first published in an innovative audio series format, narrated by the author himself, before being translated into print. The action unfolds on the eastern border of surviving Muscovy, where a garrison guards a railway bridge over the poisoned Volga River from the terrifying unknown. From the very first lines, the author immerses the audience in the thick atmosphere of impending catastrophe.

Life on the brink of destruction

The events unfold at Yaroslavsky Post, the last outpost of Muscovy. A former tire factory has been converted into a fortified citadel. The local garrison, commanded by the gruff Colonel Pirogov, known to everyone as Polkan, stands guard at the bridge over the poisonous green Volga. The river emits acidic fumes that kill all life. There has been no news from the opposite bank for many years.

The commandant’s stepson, seventeen-year-old Yegor, refuses to accept his stepfather’s harsh rules. He loves playing his father’s old guitar and is secretly in love with a young Muscovite named Michelle. She lives with her grandfather Nikita and grandmother Marusya, treats the locals with contempt, and dreams more than anything of returning to the capital. To impress her, Yegor periodically makes dangerous forays into ruined Yaroslavl. During one of these expeditions, he finds a broken iPhone in an empty apartment and takes it home as a treasure.

The established routine is interrupted when a man in a tattered cassock suddenly emerges from the toxic fog from the direction of the bridge toward the outpost. Border guards shoot at him, but he, as if enchanted, remains unaffected by the bullets and reaches the outpost. The stranger calls himself Father Daniel. He claims to be completely deaf, reads lips, and tells how his monastery near Nerekhta was destroyed by wicked men, forcing him to seek protection in Moscow.

Soon, a motorized detachment of Cossacks from the capital, led by the young centurion Alexander Krigov, arrives at Post. They bring weapons and provisions to the garrison. Their main task is to cross the bridge and scout out the eastern territories for the upcoming unification of the lands and the expansion of Muscovy’s borders. The dashing and handsome Krigov instantly captivates Michelle. That night, the girl gives herself to the centurion, hoping he will take her with him to a normal life. In the morning, the Cossacks line up by their handcars and prepare for the expedition.

Yegor’s mother, the gypsy Tamara, renowned in Post for her prophetic dreams and tarot cards, blocks their path. She prophesies a terrible death for the detachment, screams of torn bodies, and begs them not to awaken the evil slumbering beyond the river. Kriegov arrogantly mocks her, and the Cossacks confidently ride off into the greenish fog.

Premonition of trouble

Yegor himself, wanting to prove his courage to himself and Michelle, decides to sneak onto the bridge as well. Donning an old gas mask, he steps into the toxic fog and soon discovers dozens of fresh corpses. Men, women, and children lie right on the tracks. The young man realizes they clearly weren’t leaving the Post, but were running toward it, fleeing something unspeakably terrible. Panicking, Yegor takes the phone from one of the dead women and finds her passport. The boy returns home, but is afraid to tell his stepfather the truth and warn the residents of the impending threat.

After the Cossacks’ departure, a severe famine sets in. Moscow withholds food supplies under false pretexts. Polkan secretly eats hidden stew, washing it down with moonshine. Tamara, outraged by her husband’s cowardice, refuses to speak to him. Meanwhile, a deaf monk, locked in solitary confinement by order of the commandant, begins delivering lengthy sermons from a barred window. He claims that God has long since abandoned the sin-infested earth, and that Satan now rules the world. The locals, suffering from hunger and uncertainty, gather in the courtyard and listen for hours to his words on the need for humility and strict fasting.

A group of scouts goes to the neighboring Chinese agricultural settlement of Shanghai for food, but finds it completely deserted. Crazed, crippled dogs howl in their cages, devouring each other, and the people have simply vanished without a trace, leaving all their belongings behind. Another inexplicable tragedy occurs at Post: local repairmen Koltsov and Tsigal brutally murder each other in a locked garage. It was to them that Yegor had previously given the phone he had found for repair. Father Daniil declares to his flock that the dead have succumbed to Satan.

Yegor secretly knocks open the lock of the sealed garage, finds a hidden page from someone else’s passport, and reconstructs the events. He himself had removed the phone’s password on the bridge, holding the screen to the dead owner’s face. The code was her young son’s birthdate. But someone had stolen the phone from his pocket, and then the recording with the demonic verses played and infected his friends.

Awakening of Evil

At night, a huge armored train rushes onto the bridge from the dark Trans-Volga region. Polkan and his sentries block its path, threatening them with weapons. A gray-haired man in a protective respirator emerges from the locomotive and asks to be allowed to proceed to Moscow. He explains that the sealed carriages contain people seriously ill with tuberculosis who need urgent treatment. The commandant flatly refuses and orders the tracks to be dismantled in front of the train. Polkan tries to contact the capital’s leadership, but the generals simply ignore him.

Yegor infiltrates Father Daniil’s isolation ward. The monk mockingly admits that the people locked in the darkened train cars aren’t sick at all, but rather possessed by demons. A terrifying truth about the previous civil war is revealed: Moscow deployed a terrifying acoustic weapon — a special verbal contagion that drives people mad. Those who hear this meaningless, rhythmic text fall into a bloody rage and kill everyone around them, incessantly repeating the viral words.

This is how the plague wiped out entire cities across the Volga. Now the surviving avengers are sending the infected train back to the capital to cruelly punish it for its hubris. The monk admits that he pierced his own eardrums with a hot wire to keep from going mad, and calmly advises Yegor to do the same.

A deaf preacher calls on the residents of Post to show mercy and repair the tracks for those in need. The exhausted people, hating the commandant, rebel against Polkan, repair the tracks, and demand that the train pass. Yegor’s mother realizes that the black train brings absolute death. Tamara runs onto the tracks with a can of gasoline. Trying to stop the locomotive, she sets herself on fire in front of the crowd. To save his burning wife, Polkan, with superhuman effort, flips the switch.

Train crash

The train barrels into the Post’s territory at full speed and suffers a devastating crash. The mangled carriages burst open, releasing a crowd of mutilated, naked people.

The possessed, including infected Cossacks, begin muttering their verbal plague. Local residents who come to their aid hear these voices and instantly go mad. The infected attack their neighbors and loved ones, beating them to death with their bare hands and crushing their skulls. Michelle’s grandfather, Nikita, dies in this horrific massacre.

The girl herself, horrified to see the infected Cossack Krigov among the emerging monsters, suffers a severe concussion from a nearby shot and goes deaf. This saves her from certain death: unable to hear words, she cannot become infected.

Egor, fleeing from a crazed guard nicknamed "Shpal," hides in a metal garage. Realizing that the words of others will inevitably lead to death, he finds a hammer and drives long nails into his ears. This desperate act permanently deprives the young man of his hearing and his greatest dream — to compose and play music.

Deaf Yegor and Michel gather the few surviving children, including Sonya and Vanya, and lead them away from the bloody massacre, locking themselves in an underground factory bomb shelter. In complete darkness, one of the boys, little Rondik, accidentally finds a switched-on phone with a video recording of demonic mutterings and instantly becomes infected, attacking his rescuers. To protect the other children from being torn apart, Yegor, terrified, strangles the distraught child with his jacket.

Leaving Michelle with the crying children, the young man goes upstairs. The entire courtyard is strewn with mangled bodies. The surviving possessed wander aimlessly among the ruins. Polkan, also insane and locked in the isolation cell, screams out the infection from behind the bars. Yegor finds an abandoned machine gun and realizes the terrible task. He will have to methodically shoot every single infected person in the wrecked train cars. Only then can he guarantee that none of them escape beyond the Post and the acoustic virus will not spread further into the world.

Realizing the incredible weight of his new burden, Yegor descends back into the dark bunker. Deafened, his soul scorched, he takes a piece of chalk and writes a short phrase on the cold concrete wall: "Everything’s OK. Let’s get out of here." The children and two deafened teenagers are left alone with their ruined world, preparing to leave the blood-soaked factory grounds.