The exhilarating smell of freshly boiled coffee comes from the kitchen. Tarasov takes one of his mother’s cigarettes that lie on the table and lights it up. The smoke twists and curls on the window glass. Outside, beyond the grey curtain of rain and the canal, lies a park that stretches into the distance.
This is how it must have been before.
With Pripyat in his mind he feels the Zone creeping back into him. He wishes he could be back there now; he wishes Degtyarev hadn’t come today.
“I love the bracelet you gave me for last Christmas,” he hears his mother saying from the kitchen. “The elevator was out of order last week and I had to climb the stairs, but imagine, my old joints didn’t hurt at all… That amulet seems to really work. Did you really get it from a UN observer from India?”
A smile comes to Tarasov’s face. The bracelet has a piece from a Soul artifact inside.
“I only wish it was a bit lighter, sinok… lead is not very elegant.”
Too bad, mother. The thing emits radiation.
“You better not tamper with it,” he shouts back. “It will lose its healing power if you remove it from the lead bracelet.”
China jangles as his mother arrives from the kitchen, bringing with her the smell of freshly boiled coffee.
“I didn’t make your coffee too strong,” she says. “If you need to leave early tomorrow, you better have a good night’s sleep. I switched on the heater in the bathroom. You’ll have hot water in twenty minutes. The galushki will be ready by then.”
“Thank you. I love your galushki, you know.”
His mother sits down with a satisfied sigh and stirs the sugar in her coffee. “Why do you have to leave so early?”
Returning her glance, Tarasov feels sadness and regret over the lies he has to tell her. But for once, he can tell the truth.
“I have some unfinished business down there… in the south.”
Then he switches on the TV so as to direct his mother’s attention to a Brazilian soap opera with Russian voice-over, before she can ask more questions that could only lead to him telling more lies. He joins her on the sofa and stares at the screen, sipping the hot coffee and trying to switch off his exhausted mind.
Too many melodramatic exclamations sound from the TV. They are made even worse by the male speaker emotionlessly dubbing the actress’ theatrical sighs. Frustrated, Tarasov gets up, takes his suitcase and walks into his room, closing the door.
He steps to the shelves, moving his fingers along the rows of books with a movement that is almost a caress. It occurs to him to take a book for the long flight but a half-empty bottle of vodka draws his attention. It still stands on the table, just as he left it when he was here almost half a year ago. He opens it and takes a swig. Tarasov looks around in the cramped room holding the memories of a life he has almost forgotten by now. In the corner a guitar stands, which he never learned how to play. He moves his fingers across the transparent plastic boxes holding his compact discs. To his surprise, they are not dusty — his mother must keep the room neat and clean, maybe waiting for the day when he comes back for good. Aside the big pile of old, yellowed issues of Guns Magazine, an outdated desktop computer stands on the table. Next to it, another plastic box holds more compact disks.
Dammit, he thinks, I wouldn’t mind playing Doom for old times’ sake, if I wasn’t so tired. Or Baldur’s Gate…Degtyarev doesn’t know but that’s how I learned English — translating all those endless conversations with a dictionary. And Guns Magazine.
A cartridge casing lies besides the keyboard. Tarasov takes and studies it with a sad smile. It is all that remains of the first live cartridge he ever fired.
It’s been a long way, old friend.
Holding the olive-green shell in his hand, the boy’s words come to his mind. What he said about the army was exactly what he had felt when arriving at the Zone, three years ago, as a lieutenant. When he reported for duty, he had been hoping for an exciting and dangerous assignment. Khaletskiy, then still a major, ordered him to gather twenty bottles of vodka instead. When he’d set out to follow this order, bitching and grumbling under his breath, he still hadn’t known that it would take him a week and a trip all the way to the abandoned industrial site of Rostok, fighting off mutants and hostile Stalkers all the way, before eventually sneaking into the Stalker base disguised as a Stalker himself, wearing the light suit taken from a rookie’s corpse after the idiot was crazy enough to open fire on him. He had developed a liking for clandestine missions — there were enough corpses bearing a faction’s characteristic armor, from hand-made Stalker suits to Freedom’s more sophisticated body armor and the old OMON tactical suits worn by mercenaries. It was not the thrill of sneaking he liked but the relief of moving around freely, without unnecessary kills. He realized soon enough that the worst enemy was not the humans who tried to survive in the Zone, but the creatures who had once been human but hadn’t survived as such: zombified civilians, Stalkers and soldiers turned into mindless killing machines by the Brain Scorcher; controllers, like the one who made the weakest-minded member of his squad kill the lieutenant; burers — ugly, fat dwarves, creating anti-gravity fields that repelled bullets; snorks — jumping at their prey like predatory frogs and tearing them to pieces. Animal-like mutants, even if dreadful at first sight, were at least predictable.
Luckily for him, he was away on another intelligence-gathering mission when die-hard Stalkers captured Major Khaletskiy and the Spetsnaz raid to free him turned into a disaster. Khaletskiy eventually escaped and Tarasov’s next mission was to eliminate the Stalker leader responsible for the military’s bloody nose. The assassination brought him a promotion — and the first doubts about who his real enemy was. What he already knew by then about Major Khaletskiy’s shady dealings, achieved through the blood of soldiers and Stalkers alike, caused the first cracks to appear in his hitherto unshakeable sense of duty.
Then the day came when Strelok, the Marked One, opened up the path to the CNPP’s secrets. Friend and foe had rushed to the nuclear power plant to see if the legend of the Wish Granter were true, mercilessly killing each other en route. Freedom ambushing Duty in the Red Forest; Duty storming Freedom’s base at the abandoned military warehouses. And all factions and Loners bogged down in a fight against the Monolith, the mysterious and fanatic protectors of the Wish Granter.
The military wanted to have its share, too. Khaletskiy had bought himself a step up in ranks and was replaced by Major Kuznetsov, but neither of them was in the cramped compartments of the helicopters and BTR personnel carriers that stormed the CNPP. As always, it was the grunts that had to remove the obstacles between the generals and anything that would make them rich — artifacts, information, whatever. And just like always, most of them died. By then, Tarasov had become a squad leader. His men survived the onslaught brought down upon them by the fanatic, but heavily armed and well-organized Monolithians. In the aftermath of the operation, Kuznetsov became rich — soldiers were obliged to hand over any artifacts they found, and there were many artifacts around the CNPP. Tarasov was made captain; an empty pat on the back for services rendered.
For the army, obtaining control over the CNPP was like candle light to a moth. The Holy Grail of the generals. Again, an operation was launched and again it failed. Holed up in Pripyat and prepared to make a last stand against Monolith forces and mercenaries, help came from where the beset Spetsnaz had least expected: Degtyarev had turned up with a rag-tag band of Stalkers, whom he almost opened fire upon when they emerged from a secret tunnel leading to Pripyat. Later Strelok himself showed up, alone, but carrying a treasure trove of information about the best-kept secrets of the Zone. When he was rewarded and promoted to major after Operation Fairway, Tarasov couldn’t care less if that was for bravery under enemy fire or for catching a bullet for Strelok, the keeper of all secrets. All that counted was that he got a week’s leave.