"Igor, where are you going?" Daman asks while rubbing his tiny fist to remove the sleep from his eyes. Nelly nods her head in sleepy confirmation of our brother's question.
"Well, I am going on a business trip. I won't be back for a few days, so Auntie Edna will come over and watch you two." I said with a warm smile, both on my lips and eyes.
"If this trip goes as well as I think it will, we can get out of this crappy apartment and into a better part of town so that you don't have to hear so much yelling and gunshots," I said while fixing the buttons on Daman's nightshirt. He was young and still learning. I only had to fix two that time. “And if you are good, I’ll bring some new toys home,” I said in an upbeat tone.
Their faces lit up at this, and they gave me another hug. I glanced at my watch while hugging them. It was 6:17 a.m. Pushing them both back and standing up, I pulled the duffle up and gave them one last smile as I walked out the door.
The truck stopped at a degraded military gate. Signs in Ukrainian threatened death and other criminal charges. The driver turned to me and gave me a stern look, "This is where you continue on your own…." The man said seriously. He examined my lackluster kit and grabbed something from his door, which he handed to me,
"This is a Geiger counter. You'll need it. From what I have heard, there are tons of hot spots all over the Zone. Consider this an investment in a rookie stalker."
I gave a curt nod and stepped out of the truck. He waved and pulled away. Turning back to the gate, it stood imposingly tall above me. Dread washed over me like a cold shower. I thought about the stories of this place. All that went on inside it. Shaking those thoughts from my mind, I walked through the fence hole and began my journey for these so-called "artifacts."
It had been two days since I entered, and I'd regretted every step I’d taken. Mud splashed me as I stomped through calf-deep water. My sealed boots and pants kept my legs dry. Walking two more steps, I stopped and stared straight ahead. A yellow pool of undulating sludge covered the entirety of the ground before me. Taking heed that I shouldn't step in it, I tried to remove my foot, but the mud held it. I started to yank my boot with increasing intensity, and when it finally came free, I fell face-first toward the yellow sludge. I jerked my body to the left and missed it, but the Geiger counter in my left hand was ejected from my grasp and landed squarely in the sludge. My heart dropped when it dissolved in the murk in seconds.
I crawled away and made my way to land; a tree stood tall among the mire in stark defiance of the hellish surroundings. I moved to lean against it to catch my breath when a massive jolt of electricity bolted up my left arm. I screamed in agony and fell to the ground, scrambling away from the tree, my left arm dangling limply from its socket.
I focused my gaze on the air around the tree, trying to see what had happened. Faint dances of arcing lightning littered the air around the tree. Moving my right arm to pick myself up, I tried to do the same with my left, but it was limp and numb. I tried to move it again, but it gave no response.
"Wha-what? Hey, my arm… why isn't it moving?!" I screamed aloud, panic encroaching. I could feel my heart rate elevating.
Above, a crack of thunder sounded over the mire, followed by a lightning strike only a couple of hundred meters from me. I scrambled to my feet and began running without heed to my surroundings. Partially sunken buildings lined the horizon in front of me as I spotted something blue out of the corner of my eye as I ran past a flooded intersection. An orb slowly rolled across the ground, almost on its own power. I watched it roll into a wall and stop. Warily, I walked forward to it, removing one of the bolts from my bag and tossing it at the orb. The bolts bounced off with no reaction. I leaned down and retrieved the orb, immediately feeling energized and hyper-aware, like I was just injected with pure caffeine.
I stopped bouncing around when a very light, almost imperceptible scuffle sounded from behind me. My eyes widened, and my heart raced. Slowly, I turned, my hand gripping the strangely spongy object like an overworked stress ball. A creature on all fours watched me. It sat about twenty feet from me, grey clouded eyes boring holes through me as its lipless maw filled with yellow rotted teeth clicked together. The most striking part of it was that it had a torn gas mask on its head, almost like it had chewed through it to inhale whatever fumes it needed protecting from. We both stood there for an infinite moment, staring each other down and trying to guess what the other would do. Suddenly it sprang to the left in an evasive motion. At the same time, I drew my pistol.. It shot forward like a missile, raking the front of my chest as it tumbled to the ground next to me as my first shot went wild. I spun to track its landing. however, it was already in the air again when I found it. I leaned back, like that Neo guy from the Matrix, as it sailed over me, claws passing by that would have trisected my head. I recovered fast and predicted its landing. Five rapid bangs sounded as five shots landed center mass. The creature released a shriek of pain and collapsed into a bloody heap.
I looked at it for a second, putting one more shot into its head. After it didn’t move for a minute, I started to hyperventilate, unable to feel anything, as I crumpled to the ground. The pain I felt a moment later was blinding. The adrenaline from the confrontation left me, and I let out a cry of pain as my hand touched the seeping wound on my chest. My breathing became ragged as I fell onto my back, trying to stem the flow of blood from the three long gashes. My vision began to blur as I fumbled for a bandage when footsteps reverberated in the ground somewhere around me. A figure appeared above; something was held in his hand. Two more appeared from next to him. One started to go through my pockets. That one found the blue orb.. I instantly felt drained of energy when the man pulled away with it, but not enough that I couldn't lift my gun and shoot him. The shot pierced his shoulder as he screamed and looked wildly at me. A foot reared back, and everything went black.
I awoke, groaning in pain. My vision came back slowly; color formed into shapes that took on the dim life of the room. I was not on the street anymore, but in some small room instead. I looked to my left, and a man sat there, stoking a fire.
"You survived your first day in the Zone, good. Rest up. Your wounds will be healed soon. Then you can go take back what is yours." The man mumbles more than he speaks. I move into a sitting position.
"Why did you save me, and who are you?" I asked sincerely.
"Who I am is not important; long since being so, what matters is who you are and who you will be." The words left his mouth, and I could almost see the crypticizim of them.
I remembered my wounds. Looking down, I saw a thorny object attached to my chest. My eyes grew wide with wonder as my chest wounds resealed themselves, leaving no scar tissue visible. He reached over and removed it. I looked at him and fell back, and the last words of a man I would not meet again until the end echoed in my mind as I drifted off.
“The Zone is alive. Respect it, and it will treat you with respect. It is a harsh god that demands supplication. Appease it, and you…” The last words of his statement are lost to me.
Steely resolve burned in me when I set out the next day, sure to track down those who stole what was mine and take it back. The man in the hut was gone when I awoke. Anomalies littered the area. I exhausted my bolt supply in an hour and resorted to using rocks instead. I stopped at a drowned intersection and watched some horrible monster gallop into a field that sucked it in and squeezed it like a wet rag. I vomited after that, then kept moving. The entire Zone is a death trap.
I arrived back at the place I had been mugged and left for dead the previous day. Many buildings sat half consumed by the swamp, but one was taller than the rest. It looked to be a former office building, not it sat tilted at a 45-degree angle. I climbed up to the roof and sat down. The vantage point I had overlooked was the place where I was mugged the previous day. I decided to bet on human nature and waited, hoping that this was a common hunting ground for them. Lo and behold, three figures walked out of a church across the street from me about four hours later. One held my bag, and I spotted the one which I shot. Blood-soaked bandages covered his right side. Then the other walked out. I stabilized my arm on the crate I positioned earlier. I took a deep breath and took three shots, my last three bullets. Three corpses hit the mud-caked ground with muddy claps. A boring end, sure, but I was in no position for showmanship.
I walked up to the bodies and inspected them. I found the rest of my things, the artifact, and some weapons with spare ammo; a bolt action rifle and an SMG in very poor condition. I stuffed what I could in my bag and looked around. I pulled a note I found on my person when I awoke this morning. Apparently, there was a village up north where I could sell trinkets for American USD. With thoughts of Daman and Nelly, I soldiered on deeper into the Zone, new horrors and monsters waiting around every corner. I was ready for them; just try to stop me.