S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Northern Passage s-2

by Balazs Pataki

  “Why didn’t anyone just cut through the fence elsewhere?” the Top asks.

  “At least this passage through the reeds is safe, but who knows what lies a few meters away from here!”

  Not seeing further than two or three meters in the splashing rain, Tarasov hopes that the headlamps will not fail. They would betray their presence to any hostiles lurking behind the reeds but at least he as leader can see if everyone’s still following him.

  Sawyer, having switched from his hat to the hood of his Gore-Tex jacket, looks around wearily.

  Nooria, right in the middle with two armed men walking ahead and behind her, carefully watching her steps, jumps gracefully over a piece of corroded metal standing out from the mud.

  Pete, cursing as he almost stumbles over the same object but having the common sense of swiftly turning his rifle sideways, lest it might accidentally go off and hit those walking before him.

  Above all other lights but still barely over the high reeds, Hartman’s headlamp shines. Tarasov can’t see his face, even though the distance between them is not more than a few steps. Yet the presence of the hardened old Marine is reassuring. Whatever should come at them from behind, it will find itself taking on the hardened warrior and his immense strength.

  All of a sudden, Tarasov begins to laugh.

  “What’s so bloody funny?” Finn Sawyer asks behind him.

  “A rogue leading a ranger, a fighter, a cleric and a thief!”

  “Is that so, you rogue?” Sawyer gives him an allowing smile. ”You just made me wish for a cozy inn where I can have a pint of ale…”

  A smile appears on Tarasov’s rain-soaked face as he pushes the reed aside to find another piece of wooden plank, leading from one piece of solid earth to another over a stretch of water. It comes to his mind that ever since they left the Tribe’s stronghold, he hasn’t seen Hartman in battle. But his guts tell him that he’ll have that opportunity soon enough.

  I hope it’s not the Military. I’d hate to shoot at my former comrades.

  Lightning flashes in the black sky.

  At least we don’t need to use night vision. These damned flashes would render them useless.

  Where the path leads through a wider water surface, he can see a searchlight in the night.

  The Pump Station. I wonder who is occupying it now, with Clear Sky’s troops obliterated.

  He has almost reached the next patch of solid ground when two bright dots appear in the darkness. Immediately, he raises his fist to signal a halt.

  “Stop!” Finn Sawyer shouts behind him.

  That’s great. Yes, make sure even blind dogs know we’re here, if they can’t see the headlamps and smell us in the rain.

  Ignoring the rainwater flowing down his forehead and making his eyes itch, he kneels and aims the TOZ shotgun to where the two dots appeared. It could be a boar. Any other mutant. Or his tired eyes playing a trick on him.

  “Nothing. Move on.”

  They reach a flat area that stands out from the murky swamp like a little island. Fragments of concrete protrude from the earth here and there. He stops behind one, where he would be covered at least from one side, and waits for the others. To Tarasov’s reassurance, his companions follow him closely.

  Good. After all none of us is a rookie.

  He leads on, wiping off water from the PDA display. The faint light from the screen casts an eerie light upon his face.

  Now, from the island with the concrete circles, to the east. Deeper into the Swamp. Damn! I hope my memory doesn’t fail.

  The growl from behind them is louder than the storm.

  “What?”

  He hears the Top shout and fire his rifle. Sawyer, guided by the instinct of a real hunter, steps aside to give him a free line of sight. The two dots glowing in the darkness are now not just a reflection. Neither are the other four or six approaching them.

  Hartman’s rifle fires ones more, then Pete’s.

  “Watch out for Nooria!” Tarasov yells.

  “Don’t panic, mate! Uncle Finn is here!”

  Sawyer’s yell is followed by a thundering shot from his heavy bolt-action rifle.

  Tarasov himself doesn’t dare fire his TOZ. It is loaded with buckshot and if fired, the pellets could hit any of his companions.

  Sawyer fires once more while the two other rifles are being reloaded. Realizing that they are covered at their back, Tarasov turns forward, just in time to for his headlamp to fall on the biggest boar he ever saw charging at him.

  His first shot is fired by instinct and misses. The second one is aimed. The mutant growls louder. It shakes its head, as if trying to shake the pain off. Tarasov takes two steps back and frantically reloads the two barrels, but not fast enough to raise the gun once more and effectively fire it.

  Nooria’s blade flashes. Growling, the boar turns to charge through its new enemy that has cut a long wound into its hide. Tarasov fires both shells into the black hulk of the mutant that now appears in his headlamp’s light at point-blank range. The boar raises its head once more when another shot thunders.

  About twenty meters behind them, the Top stands like a statue, still aiming his rifle at the dead boar.

  “Ace, mate! Shot that bloody hogzilla right in the head!”

  “I was aiming at you, actually,” comes the Top’s reply. “Say mate once more and I’ll fire my second shell. It fucking nerves me.”

  “Sorry, mate!”

  Pete quickly steps between the Top and Sawyer. Tarasov sees a grin on his face.

  “Nooria, you all right?” he shouts.

  “Yes.”

  “Next time, don’t do that! I could have shot you!”

  “You didn’t.”

  “All right, fall back into line, everyone!”

  “Wait! What about the fangs? It was my first Zone boar! And one bloody difficult to kill!”

  “Everyone includes you, mate!” Tarasov shouts back angrily.

  Damn. They seem to be on the edge. Except Nooria and that indestructible Australian.

  Tarasov wipes the water from his face. “Step up! Let’s go!”

  Hours pass. The process becomes a toil and their boots heavy from mud. As Tarasov’s body tires, the straps of the rucksack seem to cut deeper into his shoulders. His mind weakens also, having half of his attention on the anomaly detector, the other half on the Geiger counter, and whatever strength is left in his mind above that put into his eyes and sense of perception.

  The PDA map shows him only brown patches of isolated land among darker areas of swamp water where they could sink at the first wrong step. There is no marker for the place he is looking for. The known landmarks are too far to give him any idea about the way to take. He decides to continue eastwards.

  Heavy rain continues to pound relentlessly. By now there’s barely a difference between solid soil and yielding swamp beneath their steps.

  Tarasov stops for a moment to recollect himself. He is about to reach for his canteen when, seemingly out of nowhere a pseudodog appears in the weakening light of his headlamp. He gasps and raises his rifle but his index finger remains motionless on the trigger.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  Maybe it is the shape of the mutant’s head, or one of its pointed ears bending downwards that makes it appear familiar. Maybe just the fact that it doesn’t attack them. But it’s the dog-like bark that makes this one differ most from similar beasts. Tarasov repeats the order. “Don’t shoot at this one!”

  The pseudodog barks once more and darts off to the west, in the opposite direction Tarasov was about to take. After a moment, it barks at them and disappears to the west again.

  This cannot be. No. But then…

  He waves to the others and turns westwards where the pseudodog went. Loud barks help him keep on the mutant’s track. The ground gradually becomes more solid and the reed sparser as they walk.

  Then they reach an open area. The eyes of their unlikely guide light up once more in the darkness before it runs off
toward a light that gleams in the distance like a firefly.

  A big smile comes over Tarasov’s tired face.

  The Zone. This is only possible by the Zone’s will. We are saved.

  Soon, the dark silhouette of a wrecked helicopter appears in the light of flashing thunder. Not far behind it there is a wooden cabin, its dark features wreathed in fog. The light they have seen comes from a window.

  As they approach the cabin, the thatched roof and white window frames make it appear similar to the decaying homes in the abandoned villages found all over the Exclusion Zone. This appears intact though.

  “Who the hell lives here?” Pete asks, sniffling and wiping his nose from where rainwater is dripping. “A mutated Tom Bombadil?”

  Tarasov walks up to the door and knocks. Seeing the polite gesture that appears to be completely out of place here, his companions share puzzled looks.

  The door opens and light falls outside. It makes Tarasov twinkle, yet he immediately recognizes the old man standing in front of him. He is unarmed, either because he expects nothing and nobody hostile or has nothing and nobody to fear.

  The old man strokes the white stubble on his cheek as he looks his unexpected visitors up and down. Then a smile appears on his wrinkled face. The pseudodog who guided them to the house sits at his feet, panting and dropping saliva from its formidable snout.

  “Glad to have found you at last,” Tarasov says for a greeting with a beaming smile on his muddy and rain-soaked face. “Long time no see, Doctor!”

  39

  SBU headquarters, Kiev

  Staring out of the window in a locked room, Strelok can’t tell what looks gloomier—the heavy rain outside or his reflection on the glass.

  He realized soon enough that Maksimenko knows a thing or two about psychological torture; at least to him, being kept in a locked room where a small TV set was the only means of comfort already equaled to torture. Maksimenko didn’t even provide him with a bottle of vodka. Deprived of freedom and alcohol, all he can do now is zap between mind-numbing late-night TV shows and wait for the captain.

  On Inter — a cheesy soap.

  On 1+1 — football.

  “What? Shakhtar Donets trashing Real Madrid 5 to nil by half-time?” he murmurs to himself watching the football match for a minute. “What are our peg-legged boys on? Oh yes… at least now I know where all the Moonlight artifacts go… probably that’s what makes them run like that.”

  Bored, he changes to the midnight news on Ukraina ICTV. What he sees makes him jump from his seat.

  The town of Termez, close to the northern fringes of the New Zone, is in ruins. An agitated voice-over speaks of a radioactive dust storm hitting the southern areas of Uzbekistan. A shaky video, probably taken with a mobile phone, shows ruined buildings, people in despair and, for a second, a pack of mutants that appear to Strelok like blind dogs the size of wolves and good eyesight as well. Then an egghead tries to explain that it was just a natural disaster, nothing more nothing less, and the alleged mutants were merely stray dogs. However, he has obviously no idea why the so-called dust storm has only hit the areas north of the New Zone while nothing similar was reported from elsewhere — even though anyone who knows even a little bit about the Zone knows that emissions are spreading in concentric circles.

  “Idiot,” Strelok says slapping himself on the forehead, “you’re all idiots! It wants to come here, it is reaching out for our Zone!”

  Damn it! I must get out. I must, before the darkness comes!

  He bangs on the firmly locked door.

  “I must go! Let me go, you bastards!”

  No answer comes.

  40

  The Doctor’s house, Swamps, Exclusion Zone

  Small flames crackle and snap in the Doctor’s fireplace while slow rain raps on the windows. The travelers’ soaked suits and rucksacks are placed close to it to dry. Sitting around a rustic table lit by a petroleum lamp, Tarasov and his companions enjoy the cozy safety of the Doctor’s home. The warm light of the fireplace and the lamp almost make them forget about the darkness outside. The aroma of oak wood smoke mixes with the vapors of warm food rising from a soup bowl and their plates.

  “At last someone who knows how to prepare a narodnaya solyanka,” Tarasov says stirring the thick soup in his aluminum plate. “Many people just mix everything together they find in the trash. But this, Doctor, is delicious. Your tummy is happy, Top?”

  “Outstanding. What did you just call it?”

  “Translates as ’people’s soup’.”

  “Too bad I have no sour cream to add,” the Doctor replies in a Russian-accented but almost impeccable English, speaking softly and sophisticatedly as it befits a well-educated man. He puts a second petroleum lamp on the table and adjusts it to burn brighter. “And especially, real vegetables. Cabbage is fine, sometimes Barkeep gets some from the Big Land and once boiled, it stays edible for weeks. Fresh vegetables are a different matter. Carrots and peas from cans are just… not the real thing.”

  “What to do? Zone soil is contaminated,” Tarasov says serving himself one more from the soup bowl. “Vegetables grown here would make one’s teeth fall out even before finishing the meal.”

  “Or they would mutate like the animals did,” Pete says.

  “And then we’d have an attack of the killer tomatoes!” Sawyer adds, followed by laughter around the table. “Laugh if you want but I mean it. Those pseudodogs, boars, fleshes… imagine what happened if veggies mutated?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m working on the vegetables,” the Doctor says. ”I’ll show you something when you’re finished.”

  “Your English is impressive, Doc,” says Hartman.

  “One has to learn it. In the beginning, we only had Ukrainians here. Then Stalkers came from all over the former USSR, and eventually Westerners. Everyone prefers to tell about pains and aches in their own language. I couldn’t heal them if I don’t understand them, could I?”

  “Do those foreigners get along well with the Russian Stalkers?” Pete asks.

  “In fact it’s the Russians who still have a grunt towards the foreigners, especially the pindos… Americans. Some still think that it was you who stole our empire from us and now want to snatch the Zone too. They also think that non-Russians could never understand what the Zone is about. But that’s… pizdabolstvo. How do you say that in English, Misha?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Bullshit. What an expressive word.”

  “Why wouldn’t Westerners understand the Zone?” Pete asks.

  “Have you seen those rusty cars, usually white and with the engine and air intake in the rear?”

  “Yes. Funny little cars, I gotta say.”

  “See? For you, a wrecked Zaporozhets is just a funny little car but to me it’s a reminder of my childhood. My father used to have one. Whenever I see those wrecks I see the remains of a world that had once appeared safe and sound. One day we ruled half of the planet, the next day we were orphans, lectured by those who feared us for decades. Many of us still need to learn how to forgive.”

  The Doctor stays and puts more wood into the fire.

  “Yes, the Soviet empire collapsed, but our desire for being respected did not. For many Stalkers from the ex-USSR the Zone is as much a source of nationalist pride like the first Sputnik was. For the more sensible, the Zone is a place where everything is a reminder of those days — the wrecked Soviet cars, the murals on the houses in Pripyat, the heroes’ statues, and they try to carve out their new world from the ruins of the old. This is something only few Westerners can understand. Half of our heart is still back in the USSR. For many newcomers this time capsule is merely exotic, like the Cyrillic alphabet.”

  “Not all western Stalkers are that superficial, Doc,” Tarasov says.

  “Of course not. After all, being a Stalker is not just about wandering around, drinking vodka and admiring this Soviet time capsule. Being a Stalker is a matter of heart. Those lucky enough to
become a real Stalker have the same heart beating in their chest. Regardless of where they’ve spent their previous life, here they are all children of the Zone, and as such — brothers.”

  “So one would like to hope,” Tarasov says thinking about the warring factions and greedy artifact-hunters who would betray anyone for the coordinates of a precious stash. It appears to him that seclusion has made the Doctor a bit forgiving toward the downsides of a Stalker’s life, or perhaps even human nature in general.

  “Interesting,” the Top says eyeing the US-made rifle on the wall. “You know, Doc, I always thought that Stalkers were merely scavengers.”

  “Some of them are.” Tarasov’s words are accompanied by the Doctor’s allowing nod.

  “More than likely, sure, but what the Doc just said is… yeah, it makes me think. After all we’re doing the same with the Tribe. Carving out a new world from the ruins of the old. Whatever…“ Hartman shrugs. “Never mind. Just thinking loudly.”

  “Wow, we live in an effed-up world,” Pete sighs.

  Tarasov shakes his head. “No. We just live in a world where some effed-up things happen. The world as a whole ain’t broken—just some individuals living in it.”

  “Your story sounds rather sad to me, Doc,” Pete observes.

  “Not for you, my friends. There’s no reason to deny that you won the Cold War, or more accurately: that we lost it. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “I could tell you a thing or two about the lucky US of A,” the Top bitterly says. “I’m sure a lot of Westerners come here because they are fed up and disappointed by how things are going in their quarter of the world.”

  “Touché,” the Doctor says raising his glass to the former Marine. “And this makes them brothers to the Stalkers flocking here from all over the former USSR. But now it’s your turn to talk. What brings you here, Misha? I still can’t believe that you made it to the New Zone and then out of nowhere, you pop up at my doorstep!”

  “Well, Doc… it’s a long story.”