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

“No, this is not a fairy tale,” Strelok replies. He looks down to his boots. “This is the most confusing situation I have ever faced.”

“Why so?” asks Nooria.

“Because now I have to make a choice of going back to the Big Land,” Strelok says very seriously, “or stay in the Zone — forever.”

“Stay, Marked One!” Noah says, grinning. “I also stayed here and look how fine I’m doing! If I only had bullets…”

“Do you have a PDA?” Strelok asks from Nooria, ignoring Noah.

“Here.”

Strelok scrolls the map with a concerned face. “Have a look, Nooria. Cordon is at the other end of the Zone… damn far away. Especially with me in this condition.”

“We must get there quickly,” Nooria insists.

“You will need lots of bullets for that trip! There are—”

Strelok interrupts the half-crazy Stalker. “I know, I know, mutants everywhere. Give me a break, huh? It’s not just bullets we need.”

“What else would one need?”

“Not what but who. We need Guide.”

The sewers remain pitch dark beyond the cones of light emitted by their headlamps, but when Nooria grabs Strelok’s hand and at last emerges from the manhole and looks around in the daylight, what she sees hardly offers relief.

The Stalker had first led her to the south, an area he called Jupiter ehich is full of odd metal structures and derelict buildings. There they followed a railway track eastwards and to an abandoned, tower-like building raising high over the misty landscape. Cautiously entering the cellar through a low, tunnel-like entrance from the nearby waterway, he dug out a container from under the debris which turned out to hold an assault rifle and some ammo for it. A hand-written note on the back of an old document was also there. When Strelok read it, he bowed his head and whispered something about a man called Fang who had apparently been supposed to find this stash; the sadness coming over him was such that Nooria felt compelled to give him a comforting stroke. Pulling himself together, Strelok quickly led her on, crossing the canal and descending into a manhole leading beneath the concrete walls running along the water.

Though Nooria didn’t recognize the rifle’s type, it appeared serious enough to make a reckless man overconfident; but Strelok proved as composed as lurid his earlier behavior had been. They sneaked through claustrophobically narrow tunnels that seemed to run endlessly in the darkness. Nooria, after all a child of the New Zone’s boundless wastelands, followed Strelok with growing discomfort and hoped at every turn to reach an exit and leave the underground passage behind.

It is to her great relief when Strelok at last climbs up a metal ladder, works the iron lid of the manhole aside and cautiously peers outside.

Nooria’s heart sinks when she emerges from the underground and looks around.

Under an overcast sky, derelict apartment blocks loom among alleys overgrown with dry bushes. The wind moving the branches of dead trees makes them appear like ghosts waving a welcome through the gloomy drizzle. The tiles that had once covered the facades have fallen off, revealing spots of drab concrete. Odd saplings grow from the broken windows and broken masonry. On the top floor of a house across the next alley, a tree has grown from a seed apparently blown there by the wind. It appears like a symbol of nature’s victory over this man-made stone desert.

Fear creeps under Nooria’s skin like chill from drizzle. Her fear is mixed with sadness, however. A ragged curtain still hanging in a broken window; the rusted lid of the manhole with Cyrillic letters and the number 1972 on it; a street sign over an entrance filled almost knee-deep with rubble; the decaying blue and white tile work on a façade nearby that was supposed to soften the drab appearance of the building—the few still visible signs of ordinary human life that had thrived here stir compassion in her heart as she feels the dead city’s haunting memories descending on her.

It is the sight of a playground with rusty climbing bars where the traces of red and blue paint are still visible, that makes her eventually sigh with deep sorrow.

“I have never seen a sadder place.”

Lost in her thoughts, she moves toward the playground but Strelok grabs her hand and pulls her back.

“Okay, listen to me carefully. Here’s a few rules. First, do not touch or even go close to anything metallic here. It’s still radioactive and you aren’t much protected in that rookie suit. Stay on the paved road. If we have to leave it, do not lay down. Earth is contaminated. If you have to take cover, crouch but try not to kneel. Avoid touching the ground. Last but not least, watch out for any movement in the windows, on the roofs—everywhere. If the radioactivity doesn’t kill you, a Monolith ambush or sneaky mutant will. Stick to me and keep your eyes peeled.”

The Stalker checks his rifle, rocks the safety from off to on and gives her a wink, though his eyes appear sad as well.

“Welcome to Pripyat,” he adds. “If it appears haunted now, imagine how it is at night.”

Holding his rifle ready to shoot, Strelok peeks through the bushes on the corner of the house and signals Nooria to follow. Their process is more sneaking than watchful walking as they move ahead for a hundred meters, cross a street and leave behind the shell of a one-story building to their right and a huge, fallen tree to their left. There is the rusted wreck of an UAZ at the intersection. Strelok stays away from it but his Geiger counter emits a low crackle of warning nonetheless.

“Look,” Strelok breathes pointing at two buildings connected by a gangway. “This was a hospital.”

“Are people living there?”

Strelok shakes his head.

“But someone is walking there, talking to himself.”

Strelok immediately ducks. He aims his weapon to the source of the voice he must be hearing now too—it is coming from a human because only humans speak in words. But no human would emit words of barely discernible, deep moaning while slowly staggering ahead, one arm outstretched as if in sleepwalk. Neither would any human have the long extremities of the figure appearing in the gangway or the ragged overall darkened by gore.

“Move to the left,” he whispers, ”through that passage.”

“What was it?”

“Move!”

Nooria does as commanded while Strelok slowly follows her, backwards in a crouched walk and ready to fire. He relaxes his stance only when joining her on the other side of the building.

“Izlom,” he says, ”that’s what it was. A kind of undead… wouldn’t call it a zombie. Zombies are brainless too but carry weapons and shoot at you, growling strange words—”

“Then they are like kuchis .”

“What? Kuchis?”

“In my language. Tribe calls them ragheads and Stalkers call them dushmans.”

“Dushmans?” Strelok snorts. ”Oh, I see… fitting parallel between them and the zombies.”

“And what’s that?” Nooria asks and points to a spot where between two high buildings a round, tall metal structure is partly visible.

“The Ferris wheel,” Strelok indifferently observes.

“It looks like a big iron flower.”

“You know, it’s a—a big wheel that turns around,” Strelok adds, noticing that Nooria doesn’t get it. ”Those yellow things looking like petals to you are gondolas where people could sit and adore the beauty of their beloved city.”

He wants to move on but Nooria holds him back.