“Let’s get to the chopper!”
When Tarasov finally emerges from the shaft, his knees tremble to such an extent that he has to sit down in the grass. He is the kind of soldier who doesn’t worry too much before a mission and keeps a cool head throughout, but once the danger is over, all the fear and excitement his mind kept at bay under duress unloads in a heavy, almost nauseating wave. Lieutenant Nabokov offers him a cigarette. Tarasov cannot refuse it.
“Was it bad?”
The major doesn’t reply immediately. He removes his blood-smeared gloves and watches his fingers tremble.
“We met a controller," he says. "I’ll need a new rifle. He’ll need a new head.”
Nabokov does not bother him with any more questions.
Before climbing into the helicopter, Tarasov and his remaining two military Stalkers form a circle, holding each other’s shoulder like they usually do after a successful mission. They emit a loud shout to release the adrenaline still circulating in their blood, but with the lieutenant’s body inside the helicopter their shout falls short of victorious. Then the gunship pulls up and passing over the ruins, flies off towards the south east. Tarasov glances at his watch. He can barely believe that only one hour has passed since they descended into the underground.
Probably he will spend the rest of the day doing paperwork, including the drafting of a letter to Ivanchuk’s next of kin. The thought depresses him.
Flying over along the tree-lined road where the wrecks of Zaporozhets cars and Kamaz trucks rust away since the times of the first Chernobyl incident, the helicopter slowly gains altitude. To distract his thoughts from the body travelling with them, Tarasov keeps looking out of the window, wishing he could clean the rotten smell of the underground and stinging gunpowder residue off his nostrils with the fresh air outside.
He looks back to the forking road and the Garbage area where the highly radioactive debris from Chernobyl lies buried. It would still be beautiful for a wilderness, if one disregarded the abandoned vehicles and tanks, the dilapidated farms and ruined industrial buildings. He wishes he could exchange the helicopter’s deafening noise for the Zone’s silence. In the Zone, no songbirds ever sing, only ravens croak. No critter moves in the bushes, only mutants roam. Whatever noise the wind is bringing from afar, it’s about a sound of death: a rifle burst; a mutant’s growl; a human scream. And occasionally the roaring thunder of an emission approaching from the center of the Zone, painting the sky in deep purple, flashing lightning engulfing everything with darkness before bursting out in a gigantic display of flame-like rifts in the sky that resemble the Northern Lights. It would be a spectacular, dreadful sight if it weren’t lethal to stay in the open and watch. During the years he had spent here, Tarasov not only learned how to survive in the Zone, he also learned how to love it — although he loved it more when there had still been secrets to explore. Sometimes he wished the Zone was even bigger, but wasn’t sure anymore if this was his own desire or that of the Zone. No protective suit, no armor could prevent the power of the Zone from creeping into his consciousness. The daily fear, the short moments of joy over a mission well done, the grief over fallen comrades, the mysteries he witnessed formed an ever-growing layer around his mind. With each beat of his heart, there was more and more of the Zone in his blood.
Weather changes quickly in the Zone and when the helicopter reaches the train station with the abandoned engines on the rusting railway tracks, a slow rain has set in.
“Condor One, this is Cordon Base,” comes through the radio. “Do you copy? Over.”
“Loud and clear, Cordon Base. Over.”
“Major Degtyarev is here. He wants to see you. Over.”
“We’ll be there in ten. Over and out.”
“Roger. Cordon Base out.”
Tarasov suddenly feels as if a stone is weighing down his stomach. If he wanted to see me right away, he thinks, it must be official business. Otherwise he’d have told me to hook up with him at the 100 Rads or the Skadovsk.
Ever since they met in Pripyat during the aftermath of a mission that went awfully wrong, he’d known Degtyarev as one of the few officers not tainted by corruption. They’d become friends, as far as an agent of the SBU and a Spetsnaz officer could be friends among the rivalry between the security service and the army. He often joined Tarasov on patrols deep into the Zone. Nothing ties men together than the memory of nights spent side by side in lonely look-out posts, fighting off mutants until daybreak.
Tarasov also knew that the SBU considered Degtyarev more of a Stalker than an agent, just like his own fellow officers took him for an oddball because he didn’t partake of their pleasures: bullying the lower ranks and shooting Stalkers for sport. For a moment it occurs to him that Degtyarev might have arrived for another foray, but he doubts his own optimism. His friend appeared less and less frequently at the Cordon. There was not much left to explore in the Zone. They had been to every territory, explored every cave, bunker and catacomb, and Tarasov couldn’t blame Degtyarev for finding the Zone around the CNPP smaller and smaller after each raid.
The abandoned dairy farm appears below, once a Stalker base before most of the Loners moved to Zaton or Yanov from where Pripyat could be more safely accessed. Major Khaletskiy comes to his mind. It was in these ramshackle buildings that the Stalkers had held him captive. He can’t shake off a certain feeling of regret. Tarasov often thought about how much better it would have been if the Stalkers had just finished Khaletskiy off instead of letting him escape. Probably Khaletskiy had bribed them too, just like he bribed his way out of the Zone and up the career ladder right to the rank of major-general. Once in a while, Tarasov also makes a little money from selling artifacts. Staying alive is a matter of skills and weapons in the Zone, but outside it’s about money and surviving on a major’s salary, equaling 350 dollars, is even more challenging. But he would never use army patrols to hunt down Stalkers for loot or hiring bandits to do such dirty work, like Khaletskiy did.
Flying over the last hill before reaching the base, Tarasov tries to make out the entrance to Sidorovich’s bunker behind a ruined village. It’s the place here where most Stalkers arrive after sneaking past the army patrols into the Zone. Tarasov and his men have taken it a dozen times before, but being as stretched thin as they are they’ve had to abandon it every time, and in a few days the Stalkers were always back.
Now, however, their orders to shoot Stalkers on sight no longer applied here. In exchange the army kept a much tighter grip around the once-secret laboratories in Yantar, the Dark Valley and beyond. Tarasov approved of this measure. It was one of the few things Degtyarev achieved to make life in the Zone just a little more peaceful, although Tarasov always suspected that Sidorovich had also put in a word with the generals. After all, he made a good living from the artifacts that Stalkers collected. For good money, he equipped them with weapons and protective suits so that they could return alive, selling them the artifacts and other loot collected, which Sidorovich turned into even better money outside in the Big Land.
The base is close now. He hears the pilot reporting in.
“Cordon Base, this is Osprey One. We are inbound.”
“We have a visual on you, Osprey One. Welcome home.”