“Private!”
“Sir!”
“You’ve just been promoted to corporal. Having his PDA is as good as having with us that bastard himself!”
“What about Strelok?” Vlasov asks. “We just let him go?”
“Couldn’t care less. Without a rifle, mutants will eat him. Even if he makes it, in a few days he’ll return to beg for more painkillers.” He smiles with satisfaction. “Strelok is a dog, but we have the means to keep him on a tight leash.”
42
The fresh morning air drives a chill over Pete when he steps out of the cabin. The Doctor is cutting wood nearby and greets him with a smile.
“Good morning, young man!”
“Name’s still Pete, and good morning indeed… rain seems to be over.”
“It is. I love autumn aurora.”
“Autumn—what?”
“Oh, I mean we had a lovely sunrise.”
“Where are the others?”
“Tarasov and the lady are away to do a little errand for me. The two others went to hunt down a boar for tonight’s dinner. Druzhok is playing in the bushes.”
“Sounds almost like a scout camp.”
“You want to be a good scout, Pete?”
“Guess so.”
“Then come and help me chopping wood.”
“I could use the exercise,” Pete says and takes the axe.
“I love the smell of autumn,” the Doctor pensively replies and takes a deep breath. “It reminds me how good it is to be alive.”
“Come on, Doc. What’s so good about being alive anyway? Everyone just keeps repeating this like parrots on speed but no one actually knows why.”
“One doesn’t need a new thrill every minute to sustain the pleasure of being alive,” the Doctor says with a shrug.
“I wish I could think the way you do.”
“Why?” the Doctor asks with a wise smile. “You are young, healthy, have friends who would go through hell for you… That’s more than most people could ask for.”
“Honestly, Doc?” Pete halts chopping the wood for a moment and wipes sweat from his forehead. “I don’t care much about my life. Not that I wanted to die. I just don’t want to live. My life is nothing but toiling on and on, following a path that I don’t know where it leads because—I don’t know. It’s not fear from going to hell and bullshit like that… clinging to my life is a bad habit I can’t get rid of.”
“Spend some more time here and you will see what life is about.”
Pete looks around. “Right now, it’s about being stuck in a cottage in the middle of nowhere with a renegade army officer, an adrenaline-junkie survivalist, one of my father’s brainwashed retainers and a strange girl who’s supposed to be my stepsister. Sometimes she acts like a retard but she is also a pint sized ball of radness.” Pete makes a gesture as if describing something more awesome than words could express. “There’s nothing around here but an irradiated marsh full of anomalies and mutated boars. Not even a socket where I can charge my iPod. Frankly, Doc, I see nothing around I could be enthusiastic about.”
“If that were be true, the Zone wouldn’t be a home and refuge for many. So much even that wherever they go, they still walk its paths.”
“Is that so?” Pete shrugs once more before continuing to chop wood. “Sorry but I can’t see much of the Zone’s wonders, Doc.”
“I’m afraid you can’t see the Zone from the Zone, young man.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you don’t see the real meaning of the Zone.”
“And what’s the real meaning of the Zone?”
“Experiencing what it means to be alive.”
“This place is all about death and decay, Doc. Why would anyone have that experience here?”
The Doctor smiles and hits Pete’s cardia with a quick punch. Pete almost doubles over and desperately gasps for air.
“Because once you have to fight for your life, you value it much more. Like you’re fighting now for a breath of air that appeared the most natural thing until a second ago.” He offers his hand to help Pete back to his feet. “Everything smells better all of a sudden, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll give you that,” Pete replies still breathing heavily.
“If you feel just for a moment that life could be over, and then comes the relief of still being alive, what would you do?”
“Be happy about it, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because… it would mean that I can still do something with it.”
“Correct. If you start valuing your life, you won’t want to waste it anymore.”
“So, if I get your meaning, the Zone teaches me to value my life?”
“By making you aware of how fragile you are. Hence life in the Zone can help you discover your true self. This is the most precious treasure one can find in the Zone, but only if you don't let yourself be fooled by its riches. That would make you a scavenger, not what you are really supposed to be.”
To prove to the Doctor that his punch wasn’t as painful as it really had been, Pete takes a particularly big piece of wood from the pile. It is from the trunk of a birch and the axe stays stuck in it when he smashes it into the wood.
“How am I supposed to know what I’m supposed to be?”
He swings the axe up together with the trunk, but as he smashes it, it still doesn’t split.
“What is my dog doing over there?”
“It’s sniffing around in the bushes.”
“And those ravens in the sky?”
“Circling,” Pete says and swings the axe once more. This time the trunk begins to split.
“He’s sniffing at the bushes because he’s a dog—more or less, that is. The ravens are circling in the sky because they are ravens. And what does Pete do?”
“I am chopping wood.”
“See? That’s you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why, aren’t you chopping wood?”
“Do you suggest the meaning of my life is about chopping wood?”
“Your life is about what you are doing. Do bad, and you will be bad. Do good, and you will be good.”
Pete at last manages to split the trunk. He stares at the axe that has just cut through the hard wood.
“Do nothing, and you will be nothing,” he murmurs.
“Exactly. Whatever you do, be aware of it and of the consequences as well. Just like you are aware of yourself cutting wood, knowing that it will make for a cozy fire tonight.”
“Is this some kind of Zone wisdom?”
“No. It’s Japanese. They call it Zen.”
“I heard of it, but Zen doesn’t say anything about chopping wood.”
“No. It says, if you are hungry—eat. I am hungry now and don’t mind being The Man Who Eats for the next ten minutes.” The Doctor glances at his watch. “Strange… by now, Tarasov and Nooria should have been back.”
43
“Alamo to Tango Foxtrot Anaconda, do you copy? Over.”
“Driscoll here. Loud and clear, sir, over.”
Hearing the big man heaving a sigh, First Lieutenant Driscoll furrows his brows. Silence between the Colonel’s lines means nothing good. Instinctively, he braces for bad news but what his commander has to say is worse than anything he would have expected.
“Driscoll, I have dire news. Our southern outpost has been overrun. We lost a full squad. Lieutenant Ramirez was taken alive and sent to the Alamo with a call to surrender. Needless to say, it was rejected without consideration. Ramirez… we could recover his body. Over.”