DEJA VU (A STALKER tale)

Sunset… it is getting dark over the Zone.

A group of lonely Stalkers, veterans by now, cuddle in the maternal shelter around one of the many campfires in the region near the Red Forest.

It is now that the differences of the day give way to the tolerance and at times even camaraderie that the night brings.

Even when a couple of members of the Duty faction approach the campfire site, the 5 members of the Freedom faction lower their weapons. Their leaders order a truce.

And it is that the Zone, in all its presence, achieves this type of things: that the soldiers of two enemy factions, leave aside their differences for the mere night survival.

This is how these 11 people begin to relax a little more.

Some sing, others tell anecdotes and jokes.

As the night deepens, some darker and more serious stories begin to be told.

There is a lot of discussion about the origin of the area.

Between Duty, Freedom and free Stalkers, there is much debate, much talk of evidence about its origin.

It is not the first time this has happened.

Already many campfires in the Zone, have heard men talk about rumors and talking about the origin of the Zone evidence in general.

Is it human?

Is it extraterrestrial?

Is it a revenge of nature?

Is it God’s punishment?

Nikolai, used to be one of those talkative and cheerful Stalkers.

Next to him was his friend Pyort, who was calmer.

However, for the past week or so, Nikolai had seen something that frightened him, after the death of another mutual friend, Pavel.

It was something he kept to himself….

So Pyort, half annoyed by this, and half-drunk already, took advantage of the moment and the complicity of the group, to get him to tell his part:

—My friend Nikolai saw something he doesn’t want to tell… No matter how many times I asked him, he doesn’t want to tell. And since our friend Roman left the Zone without mentioning it.

And let me tell you Nikolai, he was the fastest slack mouth in the Zone!

I’m sure he’ll have a lot to say…

Nikolai, looked sideways at his comrade Pyort.

He was annoyed that he was being sent to the front with these strangers of the night.

But what else mattered…

—You want to know, Pyort? Do you want me to tell you what I saw?

You’ll find out today… and everyone will lose their heads in fear.

Everyone paid attention to Nikolai’s strong voice echoing in the night.

—It was almost a week ago….

We were fulfilling a couple of orders from fat fuck Sidorovich, when we had to go to this place.

It was that day when you were sleeping off your hangover, drinking those 3 bottles trying to cure yourself of your adventure in the swamp.

—Oh, yes, I remember very well…

—We left early that day, with Roman and Pavel.

It took us all damn day, to get the artifact Sidorovich asked us for and we were on our way to the Darkscape to accomplish the other mission.

Roman suggested this shortcut, with a map he had been sold.

It would save us a lot more time and danger, since we knew it was a long mission.

And at least I think it must have been worth the 2,000 Rubles Roman paid for the map.

It was detailed, and even specified which paths not to take once inside the forest, since it was full of anomalies.

So instead of going into the Dark Valley and then walking a long way south, we would take this shortcut that started very close to the military Cordon.

And so, it was…

We reached our destination in only half a day!

We accomplished the mission we were given, and returned through the same place.

We managed to save more ammunition, food and medicine, and time, of course.

But an emission caught up with us.

Don’t ask me how, but we were forced into one of the caves out there.

And the Zone has these surprises.

We came out the other side of the cave… and ended up in the Red Forest!

Yep, a space anomaly ended up taking us to the Red Forest.

We couldn’t go back the way we came, of course.

There was no portal or anything similar to indicate a return the same way.

In the end, the trip would be longer than we thought.

And here comes the strange part.

This forest is a living nightmare.

Not only is it full of mutants that we have never imagined, but it is also full of fantastic and terrifying anomalies.

In one of them, we lost Pavel.

We never saw him alive again.

By the time we found him, he was dead.

—Well, it’s a fantastic story, but that doesn’t scare us at all, my friend—replied a Freedom fighter—it’s the bread and butter of the Zone. We have heard worse rumors.

—I’m not finished, green budy.

Now comes the spooky part: next to Pavel’s body, dried up like a mummy, perhaps from the attack of some bloodsucker, we saw other bodies… some I didn’t recognize until tonight, including my own.

—Wowowowow… wait… are you threatening us? — the Duty leader became defensive.

—No, I’m just telling what I saw… what I experienced.

In the end, after two or three days of walking and some unforeseen events, we returned to the 100 Rads bar.

Roman couldn’t handle what he saw, and that’s what led him to leave the Zone.

And I… well, here I am.

—Shit, made-up garbage. You have no proof. — Spit it out with some vodka as he spoke, one of the lone Stalkers.

—I don’t know if it’s one of the Zone’s many traps, but it was real.

I was able to take this…it was held in his hand by one of Duty’s armored corpses.

In fact, the corpse looked a lot like you.

The member of Duty that Nikolai pointed out, took with some suspicion, that thin piece of cloth.

It looked like some kind of handkerchief…

—Ha! The joke has gone wrong! I don’t recognize this, it’s not mine. It looks more like the kind of thing a filthy rat bandit would wear. They love the whole Moscow underworld thug cheeky breeki thing.

The whole group was suddenly theorizing about what it could be or mean when the darkness in the Zone gave way to a spectral glow on the horizon.

The cold night turned into a very bright and warm day….

You could almost feel how in the distance, that «sun» threw its warm rays to the uncovered faces of some of the members.

—Blooooowoooout!!!!!—Cried out almost in slow motion, one of the men from Freedom.

They all stood up and began to run away from the magnificent and frightening light.

As an alarm sounded and was lost in the distance, the sky literally cracked into two or three pieces.

The animals howled in despair, the hundreds of crows were upset flying in all directions and crashing into each other.

Thunder, lightning, the wrath of God… or the Zone in this case.

Multicolored clouds stretched across the sky like aurora borealis from hell.

The earth trembled beneath their feet, making it difficult to run rampant.

A low frequency resonating in their heads caused a sharp pain that made them scream, but their cries of pain and despair were lost in the din of the night and of such a mammoth event.

They had no specific place to run… not until the Duty leader there opened his PDA and searched the map for references to the nearest possible shelter.

A cave, in the vicinity of the Red Forest.

They arrived in time, not without feeling devastated by the desperate race and the consequences of the emission.

But it could have been even worse: it is said that staying outside a shelter, during a emission, is not only certain death, but also the worst of deaths, a hellish pain. A death totally out of this world.

10 minutes that felt like the end of the world.

Once the blowout was over, the group of 11 people rested, and sighed in relief that they had survived.

As they walked out of the cave, back to the fire pit a few hundred meters beyond the Red Forest, Nikolai interrupted:

—I recognize this place.

—Nikolai…? —shouted a familiar voice to his right.

—Pavel?

The rumble of a few roars echoed through the cave where they were, interrupted their meeting. 

Bloodsuckers.

End