Balázs Pataki - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Northern Passage

“To the south,” the Stalker replies jerking his thumb behind his back. He looks up into the sky and sniffs at the air, as if detecting a strange smell. “But… I suggest you to come with me to Noah’s. Believe me — another emission will hit soon.”

“Who is Noah?”

“Paranoid old Stalker obsessed with the idea of the ultimate emission coming, after which mutants will kill everyone who isn’t prepared. This is why he built his so-called ark in the first place.”

“Is he crazy?”

“Troubled and pissed off by rookies asking him about artifacts and shortcuts. He’s a good man, but his helpfulness was abused more than once. One can still deal with him if he knows how to approach Noah properly.”

“Does he know a shortcut to Swamps?”

“Maybe,” the Stalker sighs. “Now let me see if your treatment worked.” He takes a few steps and nods, satisfied with his condition. “I’ll be limping for a while but it is much easier to walk now. Damn, wish I still had my old exoskeleton…”

Together, they begin walking along the riverbed. Nooria lets him walk in front of her, partly to keep an eye on him and partly because the Stalker, despite his limp, appears to know exactly where to step without walking into an anomaly or making nearby mutants aware of their presence. To her unease, he leads her toward the shipwreck she had avoided last night. It looks as foreboding in early daylight as it did at dusk. The Skadovsk had a bonfire burning on its deck to signal human presence; here it’s a crude wind wheel on the mast from where scraps of a camouflage net hangs proving that the derelict barge is actually a human hovel.

A wooden door covers a hole in the rusty hull. Nooria reaches to open it but the Stalker pulls her away.

“Wait,” he whispers. “Told you he’s a bit… eccentric.”

Nooria frowns as she watches the Stalker open the door and step aside.

“Noah?”

The growl of a pseudodog comes from inside. The Stalker steps in and waves to Nooria to follow.

“Mutant assholes! Piss off,” shouts a man aiming his shotgun at them. A huge pseudodog is growling at his side.

“We are no mutants, Noah!” the Stalker shouts back. “Don’t shoot!”

“Stalkers? Worse! I hate asshole Stalkers coming here, opening the door without knocking and pestering me for a Compass!”

“I’m glad you don’t start shooting at everyone who approaches your place, Noah.”

“I ran out of bullets! Did you bring me bullets? Can’t shoot mutants without bullets!”

The pseudodog keeps growling but the Stalker boldly steps closer.

“Lassie! Hey old girl, how’s it going? You don’t recognize me? Lassie, come to uncle Strelok!”

“Strelok?” Nooria asks surprised. “Are you Strelok?”

“I am. Why are you staring at me?” the Stalker says petting the ugly predator that is now sniffing his hands. “You want my autograph on your jacket or what?

“Don’t be rude. I heard a lot about you.”

“Don’t believe half of it. I do not kill pseudogiants with bare hands, neither eat artifacts for breakfast.”

“I heard other things. Like you being disturbed, unpredictable and not who you once were.”

Noah lets out a snorting laugh. “Hah! Someone seems to know you well, Marked One!”

Nooria studies their strange host. He is a middle-aged man with a short, unkempt beard and blue eyes clouded by insanity, wearing a long brown coat that could use some mending. Whoever Noah is, he doesn’t appear to value comfort much — a makeshift bed, an equally crude table and a few shelves fastened to the cabin’s rusty metal walls are the only furniture. Strangely though, there's also a large trunk in a corner with a woodcutter’s axe in it. The only light inside comes from a petroleum lamp.

“Disturbed? Disturbed, you say? Now that hurts,” Strelok says wiping off pseudodog saliva from his hands with a grimace. “Who told you that?”

“A man called Mikhailo Tarasov.”

“You know him?”

“I am his woman from the New Zone. My name is Nooria.”

“ Presvyataya Bogoroditsa! His—woman?” Strelok cries out loud. “Misha Tarasov’s woman? All the way from the New Zone? And I thought I’d seen everything and everything’s opposite as well! What the hell are you doing here without him… Nooria? Did I get your name right?”

“Yes. We were betrayed. Soldiers took me to Kiev and Mikhailo is held prisoner at Cordon Base.”

“And how did you end up here in Zaton?”

Nooria turns her face away. “Bad people in Kiev helped me getting here.”

“Bad people, really? There’s too many of them around here for me to guess who it was.”

“A man called Sultan.”

“Uh-oh. This sounds like trouble.” Strelok shares a dark glance with Noah.

“Yes, I am in trouble. Can you bring me to my friends at Doc’s house? We must help Mikhailo!”

“Oh shit, they bagged him after all! Shit!”

“Will you help me?”

“Sorry, but I can’t.”

“But he saved your life in Pripyat!”

Strelok heaves a long sigh. “That’s why I didn’t want to be part of this… Listen, I’m on the run from the military. Okay, that happens from time to time. Nothing I couldn’t make up by delivering some trinket that makes them forgive me. Freeing Tarasov from that outpost would be a different matter, though.”

“Since when are you afraid of the grunts?” Noah asks.

“It’s not about the grunts but… this.” Strelok fishes a small vial from his pocket. “I can’t function without this shit anymore. Only the SBU can provide it. They get it from India or I don’t know where.”

“Strelok, what happened to you? You became a junkie?”

“It’s not a drug, Noah. It’s painkillers.”

“For what pain?” Nooria asks.

“Phantom pains,” Strelok says with a dark smile. “Literally.”

“I don’t understand. You have all your hands and legs.”

“I—I can’t explain. It is as if the Brain Scorcher would still affect me. When it gets dark—the ghosts come.”

The pseudodog sniffs into the air and suddenly begins to yowl. Noah signals Strelok to hold his tongue.

After a few heartbeats of silence, it appears as if the sky would fall on Earth with a shattering thunder.

“Emission approaching!” Noah shouts.

“I felt it coming, but so soon again?”

“Do you think emissions are trains with a schedule, Strelok? Get into the aft room before the mutants are on us!”

Somewhere far a siren begins to wail but is soon suppressed by the rumbling sky.

“The Skadovsk calls,” yells Noah. “God have mercy on anyone caught in the open!”

A thunder shakes the barge, making its hull tremble. The rusty metal plates screech and shriek as if they could disintegrate any moment. Through a crack in the hull, Nooria sees the sky turning red and a huge dark cloud engulfing the sky. Lightning crackles amidst the thunder. The Stalker appears to be incapacitated by the emission. He falls to his knees, pressing his hands on his ears and screams. “Darkness! The darkness!”

With hands trembling, he opens his vial and is about to pour several pills into his mouth when a strong hand grasps his arm and shakes the pills to the barge’s metal floor.

“My medicine!” screams Strelok desperately. He looks up to see who has taken the painkillers from him.

A forceful wave of energy hits the barge. Before it becomes pitch dark, Strelok sees the reflection of a flash in Nooria’s green eyes.

Then darkness falls and the first ghost appears, its arms outstretched as it levitates towards him with squirming tentacles in its face. He fires his rifle at the apparition. It diminishes from his sight.