Diary Entry — 6/9/2011

…Every night I lay awake, my mind in  deep thought. I wonder how such a tragedy could happen and why I am here. Why I am here hunting the one thing we should be trying to preserve, life?

Ever since I lost everything back home, I’ve searched for something more, hoping that one day I might just find myself, and who I use to  be, in this barren land. The zone is a disease, infecting everything it  touches; I myself have been infected, never to be the same again, a victim of  this catastrophe. Its presence runs through my veins every aching minute of  the day, and I can’t help but feel like I’m not in control of anything. Your only trusted friends in here are not even living, they are your weapons, and equipment; your savour. This place has a habit of making things go from bad to  worse, no notice or prior warning, just utter chaos.

It has been almost a year in here, cut off from the world, all I’ve ever known was left behind, just the grim facts of reality to keep you company…. I’ve killed yet again today. I took the lives of a fellow stalker, after a minor disagreement, and several inhabitants, as I like to  call them, since I don’t like the idea of thinking of them as something that was living and had a right to live there, even though they are not natural. The kills I have made only mask what I yearn for, for this life to be over, but this is my life now, I have to try and correct the wrong… We have a saying out here „The power to give life is only destroyed by life that was given“. The same thing that gives everything life out her life is destroying it; I  found this saying quite ironic.

But I still can’t help but feel like a broken record, everything I do repeated day after day. My very survival depends on it. I’m  not sure if I should go into detail of what happens everyday, but I suppose one day we might learn from the mistakes we have made and work out what the consequences of those mistakes were and try to prevent them the best we can. But I guess ill save the whole story for another day.

As  I walk around this former town, which was a home to many, a home that was destroyed by a former triumph of human greatness; nuclear power, I search for soulless bodies that wonder the earth, ones that were created by my own kind on that ill fated morning, slowly cleaning up the mess…