The POTENTIALLY SHIT fourth part.
Yanov Station, Yanov
[My translator and I wait out the Emission within the safe confines of Yanov Station. Here, Stalkers meet and greet each other, as well as eat and generally survive the Zone’s harsh environment. Despite the tensions between Duty and Freedom, none of the Stalkers seem troubled by the combative nature of Duty, nor the flippant manner of Freedom - despite the probable combustive chemistry between the two.
My subject is one of the guards assigned by Duty Commander Pavelevsky to the tower outside the station, “Rain.”]
This emission is nothing, you know.
You’ve seen worse?
All kinds… or rather, all kinds of results.
I take you’ve never been outside only seconds after an emission has passed?
[I shake my head.]
We Stalkers have a name for that period of time. “Fucking crazy.” I’ve looked out over the horizon, trying to see through the fog. All I can ever make out are phantoms, staggering through the fields, fading away like dust in the sunshine when I look at them directly. I’ve seen those same phantoms lunge out of the darkness and drag my friends into the walls, leaving behind a dark coffee stain of blood.
The scientists aren’t entirely sure what causes it, though, like the Zone’s something that you’re meant to understand anyway…
[He drinks from a bottle of Cossack’s Vodka and spits on the tiled floor.]
Nah, the Zone isn’t meant to be understood. If you understand something, you know how it works, how it ticks… but the Zone doesn’t work or tick, so how are we meant to know?
What do you mean?
Well, think about it. What works one day might not work the next, something that made sense to you yesterday looks crazy tomorrow. There is absolutely no constant the Zone isn’t willing to pull out from under you; thought a bullet couldn’t round a corner? Now it can. Thought Kevlar would hold up to a bullet where leather wouldn’t? Now both have the consistency of porridge.
That’s why we Stalkers say that someone is “blessed by the Zone.” Every day that you wake up, there is a one in six chance this sunrise, this gas-choked, sickly sunrise, will be the last that you see. We get quite a few suicides here in the Zone because of that pressure, just people looking at this sunrise and saying “I have plunged into countless anomalies and faced dangers no man should ever awaken believing are possible. Yet here I stand, watching the sun through this filter of smog and death, and I feel the world is about to end.”
So that’s actually a two in six chance that you’ll die – the Zone may cave in around you, breaking from below and plunging you into a valley of death and darkness from which you feel there is no escape. And there really isn’t, when you think about it; we’re all just stuck here until we finally catch on that the money isn’t worth it, the people are vile, and nothing is to be gained unless you’re willing to be even more a villain than the last guy.
Is this why you joined Duty?
Yes. I, unlike my brothers, do not believe that the Zone is evil. If a factory makes psychopaths, are the machines themselves evil? No, the product is what defines the machines that make them. And the Zone is very much the same; defined by the scum it produces and continues to churn out in earnest.
You have a very pessimistic viewpoint.
[He looks out the window and points to the sunrise as the emission begins to taper off.]
You’d be pessimistic too if you had to look that fuck ugly thing in the face each day.
I am disappointed with this one but I never trust my judgement. Should I?