Then it is all over. He opens his eyes and glances at his watch. Only a minute has passed.
The Stalker gets on his feet, groaning, praising his good fate for leading no hungry mutant to his body while he had been passed out.
The door is open. The power that held it shut apparently vanished with the glittering apparition he had eliminated.
Cautiously, he climbs the metal staircase leading to the observation platform.
Even more control panels are fitted to the tiled walls. Their broken instruments and rusty panels have suffered more than the grey plastic of the stone-age personal computers lined up on two long wooden tables, though the opaque glass on the monitors has long been scattered.
Next to one of them, right at the window overlooking the laboratory below, there lies a waterproof case full of papers that look like documents.
After all the perils the Stalker had to overcome to find these documents, they appear easy to take — almost too easy. He looks closer to make sure they are not booby-trapped. Cautiously, perhaps fearing that touching the dossier would release another monster or some other apparition, he reaches out for it. He has almost touched it when the monitor rises up to the ceiling and smashes at him.
Damn thing, I’ll give you such a beating once I see you!
He grabs the documents and descends the stairs. For a moment, he believes that the blurry shape emitting a bluish, fuzzy tint in front of him is caused by his exhausted eyes. It moves, though, and the Stalker fires his last two shotgun shells into it. A painful moan comes out of nowhere. Shouting and cussing, he unholsters his Beretta pistol and empties a full magazine of JHP parabellum rounds inside. Something red splashes as the bullets home, then a growling moan is heard and the blurry entity takes shape of a leg-less mutant that now helplessly falls to the ground, the long arms protruding from the humanoid torso still shaking.
Sorry for not fighting you by throwing things at you, but if the Zone’s not fair, why should I be?
To make sure the mutant is dead, he reloads the pistol and shoots two more rounds into the mutant’s head.
No more objects start to levitate. With no imminent danger around, he hides in a corner and fishes an energy drink from his rucksack. The vicious mix of taurin, guarana extract and caffeine would not satisfy his hunger but should at least allow him to keep his edge through the way out of the vaults. The beverage tastes of very artificial strawberry flavor.
Disgusting… but if all goes well, maybe tonight I can flush it down with something better.
The Stalker allows himself for a little curiosity and starts reading the documents. Lit by his headlamp, the yellowed pages tell the story of secret experiments carried out to study the effects of psychic radiation on living cells, set up in the wake of the 1986 disaster. It’s nothing entirely new to him. The scientific descriptions are beyond his understanding, but the first few pages, describing how and when the secret facility had been set up, make him cuss loudly.
“Bastards—so that’s what you’ve been doing there all the time!”
He thinks of all that he has seen here in the Zone — the abominations and mutants in the undergrounds, friends killing each other over a precious artifact and factions over ideologies they have by now almost forgotten over ground, the crows circling in the sky and looking for a new corpse to feast on, the emissions from the Zone’s far-away center when it erupts with waves of supernatural evil and devastates earth and sky alike.
How I wish this all would come to an end, or if I had power over the world to end this.
Hearing a noise, he reaches for his rifle and shoves the documents into his map container. Suddenly, a transmission crackles in his radio set.
“Base, this is Zero Three-Four, we are right above the target.”
“Roger, Zero-Three-Four. Start the action. Teams One and Two: check the first floor. Team Three: main hall. Teams Four and Five: second floor!”
He pats the earphone connected to his radio set, as if the transmission could have been caused by a malfunction.
I can’t believe this, what the hell is the army doing here? All right… let’s sneak out while I can.
He holsters the shotgun and unslings the assault rifle. Having fished a magazine from his ammo web, loaded with armor-piercing rounds, he reloads his main weapon. Another message comes. This one is addressed directly to him.
“Marked One! The military has attacked the Bandit base. The entrance to the Garbage is blocked but there is an old road to the south. You can use it, but you want to be careful. Good luck.”
The Stalker curses in frustration.
Damn you, Sidorovich! All this shitstorm right when I thought I was already through! Such is life in the damn Zone…
Hoping that the Spetsnaz commandos, who would surely outgun him, have not made their way down yet into the vaults and block his only exit, he hurries back to the staircase leading back to the abandoned factory. His caution displayed on the way down is paying off — all mutants appear to be eliminated and the positions of anomalies are well-known enough to him to avoid their dangers.
Once back at the entrance to the laboratory, he stops for a minute and checks his weapon. Its touch is reassuring. The sawn-off shotgun had been barely passable for fighting off the mutants. Now that he is about to be facing hostile humans, his perfectly maintained Swiss assault rifle, loaded with armor-piercing FMJ rounds capable of tearing through the Bulat and Berill armors worn by the Spetsnaz, should be a more than adequate weapon.
Timing is strange, though… probably that rascal Sidorovich or perhaps that fat trader at the Bar has sold me out to the military. No matter if I complete this mission or the military catches me on his hint: they will profit… damn traders! They always have a life insurance.
The thought of the trader double-crossing him gives him a sudden idea. Carefully, he removes the first few dozen pages from the document he had found in the lab. The thin pages are easy to take out without tearing into the text typed on them. He puts them into an empty first aid box and hides it under a pile of rubble beneath the stairs. Nobody except for one knowing exactly where it is would ever find this stash, and the waterproof box should protect the yellowed pages from further decay.
One always needs to think forward, way forward.
The Stalker hears the faint sound of several heavy boots moving down the staircase. He pats his assault rifle with an almost affectionate touch.
I’ll need a bigger stock for all the notches I’ll have to carve tonight—if I make it out of here alive.
He takes a deep breath and, holding his weapon ready, cautiously begins to sneak up the stairs.
November 2014
The most fearsome weapon of mass destruction mankind has ever known are not nuclear arms. It was the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan.
Those to decide about employing nuclear weapons are more or less reasonable minds, and their nuclear arsenal had always been maintained rather for deterrence than actual use. The Mongols however did bring devastation on every land they had conquered and the terror preceding their hordes was just a side effect. From Bamyan to Baghdad, no stronghold withstood their rage and no inhabitants were spared. The victims of atomic bombs still haunt those in possession of such weapons; Genghis Khan’s warriors built pyramids from their victims’ skulls for pleasure.
The small kingdoms of ancient Afghanistan made a fatal mistake when they decided to resist the Mongol invaders. After the Mongols were gone, their mighty fortresses had been reduced to rubble and the once fertile, now blood-soaked realm was a land of desolation. Moreover, legend has it that it was at the fateful stronghold of Shahr-i-Gholghola where Genghis Khan turned into the monster that history considered him to be; though why exactly this happened is only told by tribal lore, hazier and darker than any legend.