The difference between you and me Part 3

By- Ian Clements

 

‘Shoot him’.

I swallowed, my hand flexing on the pistol’s grip, the wind around us whipping up into a frenzy as though anticipating what was to come. Clouds boiled overhead, threatening rain, we were the only life in a dull, industrial landscape, and I knew I was observing all these things to stop from focusing on the person whose head met the barrel of my Makarov.

The man on his knees, hands bound behind his back with cable ties, who was quickly and quietly praying, eyes squeezed tightly shut in anticipation of my bullet.

Four hours ago he was a Stalker, we didn’t know how long before that he had been hiding the growth on his lower neck, or how he thought he could ever have got away with it for that matter.

Desperation can do strange things, the hot, sickening rush of blunt realities piling up around you will unravel a rational mind with frightening speed. Every move you make plays into it, every intended correction just adds energy to the destruction, and before you know it you’re in quicksand; nothing you can do and no-one you know is going to help you now.

We tested the growth, Bloch declared it malignant, cancerous, and I’m sure that Pravec wondered at the sickening double-standards that could allow the man he bribed to keep this illness quiet, to be the man that was allowed to diagnose him for a second time and seal his fate.

Silence could be bought, but only a fool would keep to that silence when confronted with the undeniable truth. Bloch was not knelt beside Pravec because of the unspoken rules that ran through this place, counters and half-measures which were little more than feeble dressings on festering sores, but enough to soothe cynical consciences.

Pravec was D.N.R, yet he had pretended otherwise, that much was a death sentence in any faction.

Sovereign was no exception.

I looked round and saw the five other men standing watching me, their expressions bored and distant, one urinating noisily against the side of a building. Their listless contempt for this execution triggered a hot surge of anger inside me, and my fist tightened around the Makarov in response ‘do you not think this pointless bloodlust? To take the life of a dying man?’.

This objection ceased the splash of urine, and the man looked nervously over his shoulder, first at David and then at myself. The others took a sudden and obviously forced interest in their weapons, one lit a cigarette and drew on it nervously as his eyes flicked between me and the group commander.

David was not a natural leader, he did not fill empty rooms with a tremendous presence, but what he did possess was an uncanny understanding of his fellow man. He was one of those rare few who took part in this play but could see the controlling influences surrounding everyone and everything, and while I was certain such knowledge troubled him deeply it also gave him an unquestionable power.

‘You believe we should set him free?’ David asked evenly, ‘that his disease is punishment enough?’.

I became suddenly aware that the prayers beneath me had ceased, and I knew without looking that Pravec was now staring at me.

There were eight rounds in the pistol, and I was trapped in an argument I could not possibly win, with an innocent man’s life as forfeit. I studied Sovereign as one; calculating how long it would take Hassan to jam that clip back into his AN-94, of how quickly Ladimir could drop that cigarette and draw a bead on me with his Glock, of whether Vlichko would risk unloading his RG-6 at such close quarters.

No way a 9x18 round could ever threaten Kevlar, so I needed five headshots, with a three bullet margin of error.

Impossible.

I know Pravec was praying now not to a Deity about to welcome him into the afterlife, but rather that I really was that good, that I could wipe out an entire Stalker faction and escort him to freedom.

‘I do’ I replied, ‘you are judging him for mistakes he has not even committed, how can such a judgment be called justice?’.

‘So….’ David mused, considering the evidence with a vaguely amused smile, ‘you stand there now, telling me that this man, with cancer gnawing at his bones, would not have failed us in the future? That his body would still be strong, his judgment clear, until the day he died?’.

‘I risked my life for you, for all of you!’ Pravec blurted, his tone wavering, ‘I only needed enough money for my family, so they at lea-…’.

David was on his feet, striding purposefully forward, ‘be silent! This….sickness has affected more than your body if you see yourself as a victim! Every man here placed their lives in your hands, you who knew you were not fit for the task! Nothing occurs here today that you have not forced us toward!’.

Pravec sobbed, his arms writhing endlessly against the bonds, ‘I……I would have left before the worst of it, I swear. There….there was no other way!’.

He was right, of course. The terminally ill Stalkers, the D.N.Rs, were not allowed to join any existing faction, or even to form their own. Even if you are of sound body and mind, with a disease which won’t extinguish your life for another six months, you will not earn the amount you seek in that time by seeking it alone.

We allowed the D.N.Rs to become Stalkers, but it would have been kinder to turn them away at the outset, rather than pump them full of false hope and send them out into this place, to die away from their families chasing worthless trinkets.

I saw myself in Pravec, so much so that perhaps he should have been pressing this gun to my head, he symbolized everything that Stalkers didn’t want to admit about themselves.

Fear, desperation, despair, betrayal.

By slaying him were we trying to convince ourselves that we had murdered those weaknesses, and in turn gain a few priceless hours as indestructible men, warriors, before the infection crept back in?

I wish I could tell you.

David, adrenaline and perceived righteousness spilling through him, ignored the traitor and turned on me ‘and you, Abram! Have you learnt nothing during your time here? What do you think will happen if we release this man without punishment? Word will spread, others will take the same path, believing that the worst they might receive is mere banishment’.

He stood so both I and the rest of Sovereign could see his face, it was a well-measured performance. ‘I never desired that it might come to this’ he sighed, voice heavy with regret, ‘and I know that some of you may not wish to see Pravec killed. But this place does not repay acts of kindness, of consideration’.

David spoke the next words with great conviction, driving the pommel of his fist into a cupped hand to add weight to the most important of them. ‘All we have is the solidarity, the strength, of our group. We must defend these at all costs. Because the zone will allow us nothing else. One act of kindness, of mercy, now could unravel any trust we have left in each other’.

‘Please, David’ I said quietly, only for him to hear, ‘I……cannot do this’.

Now staring only at me, he continued speaking as though nothing had been said, loud enough for the entire group to hear. ‘Would you entrust your lives to a sniper with a brain tumor? Or a medic with AIDS? Once the links that bind us together are weakened, unstable, then we are no longer a faction, no longer a group, just a bunch of hopeless men who know it is safer to be alone’.

‘Enough!’ I snapped, frustration that I couldn’t match such eloquence, that it was impossible to win that way, overwhelming me ‘no matter how you glorify it this is murder, David! And I will not be the one with this man’s blood on my hands!’.

The group leader observed me carefully, as though he had just spotted a new species deep in the zone and was trying to figure it out, ‘if you will not do what is best for the group’ he said slowly, ‘then it falls to me’.

David popped the catch on his holster and drew the Browning, keeping it by his side, ‘I will give you one last chance to do the right thing’.

‘Or what?’ I spluttered in nervous disbelief, the Makarov trembling in my grip, ‘you’ll shoot me? Kill me, like you would kill Pravec?’.

I locked eyes with David and his stare told me that was exactly what he wanted to do, there was an anger burning in him with such intensity that I marveled at his ability to control it. I knew his kind, they were not so special, brick by brick a logical face was cemented over the rage, keeping it prisoner, but this logic, this intensely black and white view of the world was only another form of fury, it was far too rigid and restricting to be anything else.

A laugh, flat and artificial, broke the silence.

‘don't be so melodramatic, Abram’ he chided, smirking, ‘I don't need to shoot you, why would I? It would be far easier to destroy your reputation, to evict you from Sovereign and spread the reasons of your disgrace. Do you think anyone else will take a D.N.R sympathizer on board? How long do you think you’d survive outside of the factions? A week, two, a month?’.

‘How long?’ he asked aloud, and was met with a chorus of answers;

‘Five days!’

‘One and a ha-…no, two weeks!’.

‘A week!’.

‘Six hours!’.

Laughter.

David chuckled, ‘you see, Abram? I don't need to kill you. The zone will do that for me. All I need to do is…..cast you adrift’.

‘Abram’ a voice beneath me croaked, forcing my gaze down to Pravec’s tear-stained face, ‘shoot me, Abram. It is not worth both of us dying over this, and I……I would rather have this done by a friend, than by any of those animals’.

Some form of quiet dignity had stolen over him, so much so that in a single moment I respected this one man, knelt before me, bruised and beaten, more than anyone else I had ever known.

‘Pravec’ I murmured, the words sticking in my throat as though they were dry and tacky, ‘I would sooner shoot myself. I cannot admit this as a crime, I cannot punish you for it’.

His brow furrowed, and all at once realization flooded his face, animating it, he regarded me with a sudden and desperate hunger – as though I were a commodity, something to be traded. ‘you! You’re..’.

I fired once, a self-preservation reflex, and Pravec’s head snapped to the right as the bullet punched through his skull. His body crumpled quietly to the grass, no more words to come from those lips, and with that one sacrifice I knew it was too late to ever go back.


***

Where am I?
Events struggled to piece themselves together as my body slowly awoke to a series of prickling agonies; I was in the fog, they took me down, tore into my mask, did Lukin pull me out? Where is he?

It hurt to breathe, my lungs felt seared, there was a lingering coolness on my face and covering my eyes, but underneath the skin remained taut and raw, pin-pricks traveling up and down my scalp, writhing.

Moving.

Something was moving.

The message reached my brain before my ears even sampled the sound, I caught the tail-end of it, a quick patter of footsteps. As I concentrated on listening for another noise, my sense of smell returned, it was a cold, rancid air that filled my nostrils, the lingering odor of something animal, human?

I slowly coiled my arm upwards, muscles crying out a protest, and searched for the butt of my pistol with trembling fingers.

I gripped a handful of damp material, the Browning was gone.

Panic swelled through me, I thought that would drown out the pain but the two formed a horrible orchestra; one dipping and tugging at my heart while the other stabbed the muscles around it.

The footsteps came again, tump-tump-tump, they sounded closer this time, or maybe they belonged to somebody…something (?) else.

Sliding my hand down my right leg, I felt relief coast through me as it touched cold steel. Snapping the catch open, I slowly drew the hunting knife from it’s sheath, keeping the weapon by my side and, I hoped, out of sight.

Instinct told me not to speak, not to move, so I only screamed inwardly when an invisible claw tightened around my boot. There was a low, grumbled murmuring, somewhere between the senile rantings of an old man and the sulking disapproval of a child, but the thing’s hold was like a vice.

Adrenaline pumped through my body, unwelcome fuel which forced my teeth into a nervous chatter, I grit down on them and gripped the knife so tightly that it felt like my bones would fuse with the steel.

Dwarves, dwarves, dwarves.

Suddenly I was five years old again, only this time there was no-one stronger and more capable to chase away the monsters for me, no split-second where I would wake just before the talons tore my windpipe open, no neat and packaged conclusions.

It shifted the leg, jerking it roughly from side to side, as though trying to force my body to power into motion.

Tump-tump-tump.

Another one was by my left side, the slow, ragged breathing placing it at chest-level. Clumsy, fisted hands gouged at the pockets of my suit, ripping open a pocket which spilled Krasnaya Shapochka candies across the floor. There was a complicated mutter, one which raised the hackles across my skin, and a short moment later the sounds of crackling paper and crunching teeth.

Fear was trying to pull me out of my mind, to draw me away to a safe and warm place, but I had to stay focused. I fought it all; the jittering pulses traveling up and down my body, the choking hysteria which felt like something vital trying to claw it’s way out of mind, the tears brimming up in my red-raw eyes like water on hot coals.

Lukin, I know you made it out, I know you can hear me, you can resist the Controllers, you must be…psychic, telepathic, I don't know, why can’t you hear me? Why don't you help me? Please…please..

‘No, no. Stay together, you won’t get out of here alive if you don't’ a voice in my consciousness whispered harshly, ‘you’re a man, a man, you may be blind, you may have no gun, but you are a man. They are less than you, they are animals’.

Animals.

Scavenging my body, harvesting me in the darkness, animals.

Anger rose in me, barely a flicker of it at first, but with every push, every new probe of my uniform by these things, it grew. Not just this violation, the anger of being here, of waking every morning with only functional thoughts, practical things, because thinking of the others was just too painful now. Of the fact that I had allowed myself to become a Stalker, and in doing so had allowed myself to become nothing at all.

The noise rose without me willing it, and I knew the Dwarves heard it too, their scuffling, constant actions were abruptly silenced, but I simply didn’t care anymore. It was primal, unknown, a low snarl of warning which quickly built to a steady rumbling rising from my chest.

I sensed movement, a limb stretching towards my face, no caution, just arrogant curiosity, wanting to find the source, the cause, of that sound.

Waiting until a long, malformed finger had brushed my lips, I shot an arm up and clamped my hand closed around the thing’s wrist. There was a shriek of alarm, blocked out as I released the boiling energy in my chest; a long, throat-stripping ‘urrrraaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!’, rebounding off the walls of the basement and unleashing a fury I had never felt before.

My knife struck down as the cry continued to pour out of me, I felt the resistance of heavy, knotted muscle beneath the blade, blood spraying across my face. The unearthly scream of the dwarf ripped through my eardrums like it was razor-tipped, the creature struggled and struck out at me, smashing it’s unrestrained limb into my body with the force of a steam piston, but that just made me angrier.

Something had snapped inside, I wasn’t in control anymore, I just needed to pass on the hurt, the pain, pass it onto to some other bastard, because I had carried it for long enough, I had carried it for long enough.

The other one seized a hold on my right leg, trying to tug me away, but I whipped my boot around and felt it smash into the side of the dwarf’s head, toppling him.

Giving one last, deep slash with the knife, I released my hold on the other dwarf’s wrist and clambered to a stand, kicking viciously at it and feeling a low, murky satisfaction as the blow connected. Stretching out my free hand, fingers extended, I stumbled into the pregnant darkness, trying desperately to get a grip on these new sensations.

There was a strange, tight weightlessness in my stomach, the kind that you feel just before you jump from a high peak, or almost fall from one. Without the use of my eyes it was an assumption that my mind seemed to be making constantly, that the floor beneath me would suddenly give way, that I would step into nothing, and because my body believed it I did too.

It was the worst fear I had ever felt, the fear of the utterly unknown, it made me want to tear the brain from my skull and throttle it; to scream at it that just because it couldn’t see the world it didn’t mean that things had ceased to exist, that I was charging into an endless, shapeless void, that it was going to get me killed if that idea didn’t start to take root soon.

With a whish of air, something thin and hard struck me on the back of the neck, as sharp and powerful as a chop from a steel hand. I cried out, thunder-bursts detonating across my eyes, and slammed against the wall as a heavy cylinder crashed into my spine.

Soft material broke my fall, at first I thought it was a pile of rags thrown over some debris, but then my hand found the nose, lips, eyes, and the wet, caved in hollow of the head wound. Revulsion overwhelmed me, as though spiders had erupted from my skin and were swarming all over it, then my rational mind clamped it down; just the way I had trained it to after those endless nightmares of my father.

Weapons.

I ran my hands up and down, over and across the body, drawing in a sharp breath whenever my fingers brushed deathly cold flesh, concentrating on finding something metal, metal, gun, flashlight, gre-…

In an instant I knew I had been injured, I felt the brick collide with my right temple, shattering into two halves. It must have been the adrenaline, I felt no pain, nothing, just the sensation of blood pouring down my face and the flat, coppery taste of it in my mouth. Strength flowed out of my muscles like water, and I fell limply to the damp concrete, the hard moistness of it numbing my cheek.

I knew this was enough, that I would be one of the Stalkers who perished out of sight, like so many others, and I found myself accepting that. What made me force my arm into motion was the darkness, I didn’t want to die seeing only darkness, I feared that more than dying alone because death would have nothing to steal from me when it came.

Hooking two fingers behind the dressings on my eyes, I jerked them forward and tore the medical gel-packs away, allowing them to fall to the ground with a soft slap.

The world was a blurred kaleidoscope, like seeing through countless pieces of dirty, broken glass all jammed together to form a picture. Squat, muscled figures shuffled out of the darkness, there was just enough light entering the basement to grant me vague impressions of them.

‘It was difficult to believe. The thickset body before us was still, blood slowly weeping from a peppery spray of bullet holes across it’s huge, barrel chest. Little details, twisted into the grotesque thing lying at my feet, reminded me of my fellow man; torn by rage, disgust at what he had become and disgust at all that surrounded him, so much so that this creature that had almost killed both me and Hleb mere minutes ago became an object of pity’.

I choked out a laugh, despite myself, that my mind would decide to torment me with extracts from Two weeks with a Stalker. No profound and moving pre-death collage here, no moments that I could almost taste with a sweet remembrance, just bland and useless nonsense regurgitated from a dozen scientific text books, history, biology.

All I ever did was read the words of dead men , surrounding myself with dusty, academic tomes while all the other children fought and played, it was an isolation intended to secure me a more lucrative, prestigious isolation later in life. The zone is the last place my father would have wanted me to end up, but after I witnessed the quiet pain of those in Kiev, the billboards of Calvin Klein and BMW offering us items, lifestyles, which were as fantastic and impossible as a distant, cruel dream, it became inevitable.

I wanted clarity, I wanted those years back that I never spent exploring and knowing, not a hundred different degrees of unhappiness. Just rich or poor, intelligent or dense, handsome or ugly, talented or inept.

Dead, or alive.

I twisted my head to look at the Stalker, a knowledge of outlines and items detailing what my eyes couldn’t. He stared sightlessly at the concrete floor, mouth gaping in an expression of perpetual surprise, jagged shard of metal protruding from his skull in a steel fin. I recognized the patch on his right arm, the symbol, a word which even now sounded like a command, compelling him to rise from the grave and continue the fight.

Duty.

It felt like an accusation, as though this corpse had been forever destined to end up here, just waiting for me to stumble onto it and the silent rebuke to be delivered. I didn’t mind dying, I wasn’t fuelled by the same religious zeal that this Stalker had bought into, I just didn’t feel anything anymore; I recognized if something was beautiful, or horrible, but there was no emotion.

It would be right to fall here, yet…

Duty.

The Dwarves drew closer, lumbering towards me with a smug idleness, I was no longer a threat to them, they were taking their time. One staggered slightly, I saw it as a cumbersome yellow-white blob, crimson streaks were whip-lashed across the pale skin, the creature looked like it had been assaulted not by a knife but rather an energetic painter. Blood pattered to the ground with a barely audible plip-plip, leaving kopeck sized droplets, and I could sense the hatred burning in this abomination as it snarled a mouthful of fangs at me.

I looked away, resigned, when my eyes settled on the Duty Stalker’s right hand.

On the fragmentation grenade secured in his death-grip.

You have a duty, Abram.

Maybe I did, at that.

Gathering the last of my strength, I reached for the weapon.





***







Time is elastic, I don't think anyone can argue with that.

Every second, minute, and hour has the capacity to stretch and ensnare us, to rebel from their allocated spaces, and when they do it is rarely pleasant.

I had a friend in Cheventski, one of the few who would rather visit me then be out with the others, so it immediately followed that he was a little strange. Preferring to spend time in a dark, bland room, filled with little more than stacks of books and a mattress, was not something any sixteen year old should have favored over papirossy and Stolichnaya.

When I spoke of my boredom, of minutes transforming themselves into hours, he would simply chuckle and shake his head. He put it to me that I was the creator of this world; that everyone around me, everything, was there because I wished it to be. I felt immensely uncomfortable with this at first, it sounded too much like a self-imposed Godhood, and if it really was true then how could I have created a world like this?

I would rather have distanced myself from this boy, denied him and his bizarre theories, but Kuian was the only one who ever chose to see me. At first I tried to deflect his sermons with smalltalk, nervous chatter, but the only response was that same chuckle, and he steered us back towards my creation of the world each and every time.

Was I punishing myself, he reasoned. Why else would I maintain an existence which swallowed it’s maker in isolation whilst, granting everyone else, some measure of happiness? It all seemed like an endless cruelty, and I struck back with anger and accusation, attacking him and his words, but Kuian was adamant.

I came to resent him, yet could not bring myself to force him out of my life, perhaps I craved human company so much that even moments spent in suspicion and mistrust were better than nothing.

I fought Kuian with all my collected knowledge; science, physics, biology, mathematics, I constructed towering arguments for each new meeting, but it was never enough, he defused them all with simple, absurd truths. It was only a matter of time before I lost control, and, as he came to visit the next day, I confronted him on the street outside.

Filled with a fury I had never felt before, I slammed into him, smashing my fist across his face until he was incapable of speech. Not once did he attempt to fight back, even after I had broken his nose and knocked out two of his teeth, he just waited until exhaustion ground me to a halt.

Kneeling over his body, flat on the grass and lashed with mud and blood, I gasped for air, fist still drawn back and wavering.

Kuian’s face was a mess, but his eyes gleamed with triumph, the chuckle coming out this time as a gurgled rasp. ‘All I said before….not true. Not until now. You’ve made this your world now, not just accepted it, now you have power. Power to change’.

I didn’t understand, but part of me knew he was right, I had never felt this way before. It wasn’t the violence, but the movement, the action, something had been given back to me. I came to realize, over time, that Kuian’s taunts and infuriating words were nothing more than a slow and steady cleansing. Easing up the rage inside me where there had been nothing but dust and cobwebs before, then allowing it explode onto himself as the target, thanks to him I knew I wasn’t hopeless and I never had to feel that way again.

I took control, I changed my world, and, in turn, those changes led me here.

If what Kuian said was true then the zone was part of me, a nightmare I had created, a piece of my psyche so dark and dangerous that it had the power to kill any part of my world, to kill me.

These creatures; dwarves, controllers, zombies, they were my sickness.

I would just have to slay them one at a time.