The weeks between that campfire and our arrival in Belarus are not something I remember with much clarity. Suffice to say that they were jam packed with working for money to support our expenses, organizing and purchasing all the gear we would be requiring and lots and lots of physical exercise.
The blurriness stops with a jolt when we touched down in Belarus, the thrill of having done something rebellious, seriously rebellious for the first time in my young life. The feeling was quite obviously coursing through the others as well, we were alternating between wide eyes and grinning for the entire time it took us to clear airport security and pickup the car I had purchased online.
As we wandered around the airport, the other S-STALKER's were obvious. Almost all dressed up in camping and camo gear, with backpacks, vests and pouches covering them. The rich ones were the easiest to spot, almost all being small groups of boys our age, somehow managing to be obviously excited yet bored at the same time. They were almost without fail, accompanied by at least one ex-military looking man or woman who was handling their baggage and documents for them.
The walking dead were also easy to spot. People who either hadn't thought though their decision to come, or simply didn't commit the money to it, treated it like a holiday. There were only a few of them, but they would be dressed in brightly colored cold weather clothes (Because Russia is always cold...isn't it? Was legitimately a reason given to me at a later date) and they would have either hiking packs that weighed them down, or packs that could never have carried the supplies they would need to survive.
There was a mish mash of levels of preparedness between. But we didn't see any groups as pre-meditated as us; in fact, we were definitely the exception rather than the norm; which we had not expected. The other difference that we noticed was that most others were either alone or in groups of two to three. There was a group we spotted as we drove out from the airport that looked to be about ten or twelve people, but that was it.
Our first stop on the way to the Zone was a currency exchange, where we were going to trade in our Australian dollars for Rubles, however, for a small fee the man behind the cashier let us know that in the zone, the Euro reigned king of all currencies. The American dollar was too easily lost to wear and tear, being paper; and the Ruble was too weak a currency and was also made of paper. The Euro however, was durable and too hard to counterfeit to be worth doing so. Almost all the universities and research institutes with representatives around the Zone paid in Euro's as well. So with our cash exchanged, we climbed back into our Toyota Landcruiser Troopy and set off.
It was a few hours' drive to our selected entry village, a place called Ніжнія Жары ("Lower Heat" in Belarusian) and we chatted away excitedly most of the way there. As we approached the village however, the tension set in. The feeling of "Holy shit we're actually doing this, holy shit" was foremost on my mind and I would guess on the others as well.
We drove down the main street and parked the Troopy in a spot outside a large warehouse looking store which was labeled in several languages as "Armory". We all hopped out and I locked the car. As I did so, one of the guards outside chuckled as said in heavily accented English.
"No bozzer locking zat car, STALKER's are not let to be stealing in ze village."
"No stealing in the village?" I enquired, "sounds pretty out of character with the surroundings no?"
The guard simply shook his head and repeated: "Not let to be stealing"
I nodded my understanding and we continued into the store, which turned out to be a gun nerds wet dream.
Beyond a small foyer style opening, complete with chairs and lounges, was a metal counter surrounded by bulletproof glass, behind the counter was a bear of a man. Tall and broad, with the manliest looking beard I'd ever fucking seen and a bald head to boot. Behind this gentleman were rows of cases and crates lining both the walls and the floor underneath. After a few meters there was a door that I thought at the time led to a small room. Looking left or right around the counter however, showed that the counter ran down the center of the entire building, splitting the building effectively into two large aisles.
On the walls of these aisles...were guns.
Every sort of gun I could have imagined (at the time), sat in racks along the walls of the building. There was no order to the guns placement, no sections to make for easy purchasing. This forced any potential customer...or thief I guess, to roam before finding what he or she was looking for.
AKM's sat next to old western style revolvers, SVD Druganovs hanging above AA-12's. A beautiful mish mash of destructive hardware.
We were not the only people in the store of course. There were quite a few other fresh looking people browsing the wares. Even as we stood gawking, a stunning blonde woman and a block of muscle wearing a biker jacket pushed past us and engaged the man behind the counter in a heated debate in Russian.
I looked at the rest of the boys:
"Alrighty, you've got your own money, find what you want and we'll meet back here to talk over purchases, make sure what we get works as a team."
They all nodded and we began browsing. On the trip here, we had decided that we would split up the six of us into pairs, those pairs would have different combat roles.
Thomas and I were up the front, close range power, anything we couldn't immediately kill or disable, we would fall back to Josh, Ben and James, who would wait until the target/s came into a killzone, and mow them down with heavy fire, watching over us from a perch would be Kunan and Jao, a sniper and his spotter, to prevent any unwanted surprises sneaking up on us.
Me and Tom were the first one's back, both of us already had a pretty good idea of what we were going to take anyway. Tom had gone for a VSS which had a foregrip and side mounted red dot sight and a Silenced Makarov, while I had gone for the AKM and a Browning Hi-Power for close range stopping power.
Next in came Kunan and Jao. Kunan had gone with a pimped out Kriss vector, silencer, red dot, laser sight and a reliable Glock 17.
Jao meanwhile was lugging around a giant tube with a stock and sight on it.
"What the shit is that?" I wondered aloud.
"SV-98 bro," was Jao's grinning reply "The 2013 version, chambered with the .338 Lapua Magnum as well"
Me and Tom looked at each other incredulously, and turned back to Jao.
"Dude, that thing must weigh almost ten kilos, and it's a sporting rifle. Neither of which are really prime characteristics for a weapon to have around here do you think?"
Kunan rounded on Jao and said with a vindicated grin, "See? I told you it was a bad choice. Should just go with that Russian sniper those other people were talking about."
Jao looked a bit let down, so I stepped up.
"Ok if you really want it that much, how much is it? Should be scrawled on the stock somewhere."
Jao examines the stock and his eyes widen, "Two and a half thousand fucking Euros!? Fuck that."
"Yea and ammo would be a mint as well." Thomas supplied helpfully
"Yea nah, fuck that, getting the SVD" Jao decided and went back the way he had come.
As he left, Kunan lets out a gawf and exclaims "What the hell is that James?!"
I turn and see the last three members of our party arrive.
Josh has dug up something from the world wars themselves, a frickin B.A.R, obviously restored, but still. He also had a Smith and Wesson revolver at his hip by the looks of it.
Ben had gone with something a bit more sensible. An AK74 of modern make, fully kitted out with a holographic sight, laser pointer, foregrip and bayonet. He also had a Glock 17 on his hip opposite a decent sized machete.
And then there was James. He was carrying an honest to god machine gun. By the looks of it, it was a PKM, the Russian equivalent of the M60. Three months previously, James barely would've been able to 'carry' the damn thing, let alone consider using it. Then, to top it off, he had a crossbow hanging from his side. Nothing too modern, but deadly looking none the less.
"This...is a mans weapon" was James's max macho mode response. He was a different man from the one that I had invited on a camping trip three months ago. He was still mostly silent and somewhat withdrawn, but he hadn't had a truly black mood since we began this adventure.
As we all compared purchase choices and ribbed James's 'man's weapon' in equal measure. Jao returned and we went up to the counter to pay for the hardware.
As we came up, the man behind the counter noticed us and shooed the Blonde and the Biker out of the way, and they walked out in a huff.
"Unhappy customers?" I asked in English, wondering if he would be able to understand me, which was stupid.
"No, simply old comrades wanting my help in an endeavour I'm too old for now." he sighed, "Aside from that, my name's Bear. You boys new to the Zone." it was a statement rather than a question. I would later learn that Bear helped out all the new blood that came through his store, something about not helping a Stranger enough in the past.
"You boys got a good selection of weapons here. But you'll need a few other things which are essential in the zone. Gas masks, Rad Tickers, and Detectors." he watched our confused faces and sighed again.
"Gas masks are what keeps the nasty stuff out of your lungs, disease, radiation, flies, everything. So you need 'em. Rad tickers are the slang for Geiger Counters, if you don't have 'em, you'll walk smack dab into a hotspot and you'll never know it 'till the tumors are growing out of your skin. Which I've seen happen by the way, it ain't pretty. Detectors, these babies will let you know if anomalies or some types of artifacts are nearby. Some artifacts aren't so easy to detect though, and you'll probably stumble across them without ever really realizing it. I'm guessing by your faces that you don't have any of those, so I'll cut you a deal. I'll throw in all that stuff for you, if you can do a job for me. You have a bigger group, so you should be able to handle it."
We all look around at each other with much shrugging and a general air of 'well fuck, why not'.
"For sure, what's the job?" I ask a tad apprehensive.
"It's pretty simple, you have to kill a bunch of mutants and bring them back to me. The only catch is the heads need to be left intact as they're going on someone's wall."
"Yours?"
"No obviously not mine, a client who's now too old to make it out to places like this."
"Alrighty, is there any time constraints or mutants in particular we should be hunting?"
"Well, before the century is out would be good. He hasn't specified a time he wants them, and he isn't really paying enough for me to be in a rush or else I'd just hire a professional team. As for types of muties, again he hasn't specified so just whatever would look good on a wall I guess."
I nod in acknowledgement and we pay for the weapons and ammo we need. Bear also hands each of us a gas mask, some filter replacements and two little boxes which have various knobs and dials on them.
We return outside and the guards search us for any possibly stolen merchandise. When they're happy we get back in the Troopy and head to the nearest accommodation; a nearby long, hall looking structure with neon signs of a beer stein and a bed.
We get out of the Troopy; I don't bother locking it as there are more guards outside this place as well. We walk into the building and it looks clean but worn. Designed for a market of people who just want to pay for a bed and collapse into it after having a good amount of drink from the bar.
Most of the boys head straight for said bar, while Thomas and I go to pay for rooms. The lady behind the counter is a rather attractive woman in the twilight years of her prime, mid thirties or so, with long black hair and sharp Slavic features.
"Hi." she says in lightly accented English, "Rooms for all? Or sharing?"
"Just two rooms please." I say, taking the offered cash from Thomas, "Pretty sure we'll manage."
She nods and types it up on a little laptop I hadn't noticed behind the large counter.
"In that case, you might wish to stop your friends drinking too hard. The working girls will be in soon, and I would rather your friends weren't a problem."
Me and Thomas look at each other and promptly burst out laughing, obviously catching the receptionist off guard.
"I very much doubt my friends would know how to start a conversation with any woman my dear. Even...working girls, as you put it." I say, wiping a tear of laughter, "What you see over there is the biggest dry spell ever to hit Eastern Europe." This causes Thomas to fall into renewed chuckles.
The receptionist smiles and hands us the keys to the rooms, "Very well, it would be nice to have some quiet patrons for a change. Enjoy your stay."
We take the keys and walk back to the bar, joining in the drinking for the evening. Sure enough, about ten minutes after we sit down at a table the 'working girls' start to trickle in and begin mingling with the other patrons of the bar. These girls were certainly not what I had imagined whores on such a dangerous frontier would look like. Sure a few were obviously drug addicts in need of quick cash. But the majority of them looked like women you would find frequenting bars and clubs back in the west.
Even as hyped up as we were, there was no chance of ignoring the ladies walking around. Even James, who had lost the love of his life not too long ago, was almost drooling looking at some of these women. What didn't click in our minds however, was how we now looked after three months of intense exercise and weight loss. The reason the receptionist had had worries to begin with, was because we looked like trouble. Most of us being tall and solid, hair obviously cut to not cause issues in the zone and beards to match; we most certainly did not appear approachable.
None of this clicked in our minds however, and we simply continued with the view which we always had: we were a bunch of nerds who attracted women as much magnets did water. We soon stopped looking at the women out of self preservation of our libidos; but also due to the larger issue that we realized after Joshua brought it up: we didn't have the money for them, bit of a sad thing to say I guess but it was true at the time.
So as evening fell, we took out a map which I had purchased on my way in and spread it out on the table.
"Okay, so this is the village we're at." I explained, pointing at a green dot on the eastern side of the Zone which was marked as an outline in red on the map. Lower Heat, was located next to a river which fed down to a lake next to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
The river itself was blocked off a bit further down from the village. Giant metal and concrete grills, riddled with spikes and other primitive defenses under the water, prevented any possible travel by the Zone's aquatic monstrosities.
"And this is the safest stretch to enter into the zone from this side." I continued, pointing out a natural feature which looked like a river running next to a forest. "Now the forest is an option, but mutant spiders are a recorded fact in there. And I for one am not too keen for that shit. Plus our gear isn't the best for forest fighting. So I reckon we go in where pretty much everyone else does. Follow that giant field all the way to the river, and curve around west and north to avoid the forest."
"Now in saying that. These red dots all around here?" I point out the masses of dots that littered field I had just mentioned. "Those are rough locations of anomaly fields, so we need to be very careful. No rushing around, always pay attention to your rad counters and detectors."
The guys all nod and Kunan leans forward, "So can we take the car or no?"
"I've read that most cars don't even make it this close to the zone. Anyone else notice how all the cars in the village are all old four-by-fours and military trucks? It's coz the zone messes with the computers in the modern cars. The Troopy which we have is only ten years old, so I'm honestly surprised it got this far. I think taking it in with us would be a bad idea."
"So we're slogging it?" asked Thomas
"Indeed"
They all groan, "Fun times" says Thomas with a Cheshire grin, "This is why I did the running and walking with backpacks and shit, rather than the gym like you idiots"
Only Benjamin and I grin along with him, the others all groan and suggest various places he could shove his backpacks. As the fuss dies down, Josh leans forward,
"So what are we gunna call ourselves?"
The question immediately grabs everyone's attention as it isn't something we had really discussed.
"That's easy, we just use our gaming aliases," says Thomas easily, "So I'm Zephyr, Old Josh is Psiko, Ben is Sathes, James is Jampth, and Jao is...Xpert? And Kunan is…."
Everyone looked at Kunan, who looks back.
"I don't know," he says exasperated, "none of my game names really work, so I think I'll just stay as Kunan. It sounds different anyway."
Everyone nods, "So Kunan is just Kunan," Thomas continues, "and young Josh is Viking, I guess."
"Oath it is" Josh confirms.
"Well that was easy." I chuckled as everyone agreed.
By the time we retired to our rooms, it was nearly midnight and only just turning dark outside. I took a room with Kunan, Ja...Xpert, and Sathes. While Zephyr bunked with Jampth and Viking.
We woke up at six, with the sun already above the horizon. We all stumbled out into the bar area, looked at the food prices and remembered that we were pretty much broke already, so we simply ordered a pot of Chifir in shot glasses to override the partial hangovers.
(Not the type of Chifir that has psychoactive effects...but basically just really really strong tea which had a caffeine equivalent of 4 cups of coffee per cup of Chifir, hence the shot glasses)
As the caffeine high set in from the Chifir, we looked around at each other and after a few minutes ponderous silence, I finally realized what the matter was.
We. Were. Scared. Shitless.
Sure we'd been planning this for months, changed our whole lifestyles for this, but now that it came to leaving the safety of civilization, we were choking. And it wasn't like it was them choking while I sat there calmly sipping my tea, waiting for them to band-aid their balls back together. No way, I was sitting there wondering if I'd be the first to get my head blown off by a sniper, or worse, dragged down to some filthy den of a monster that would eat me as I screamed, knowing that my friends would not be able to save me.
Thought like this ran rampant through all our minds I'm sure. But it was Young Josh, Viking, who snapped us out of it.
"The first STALKER's who came here; they were guys with nothing left for them. That's why they're called STALKERS no? Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers. They came here because they needed to, but we don't need to be here. We could all just decide that, hell yea, we did something out of the norm, we changed it up and did something really rebellious, so let's just call home, our parents will cry and be angry and happy all at the same time. Pay for our tickets home, and it'll make a great story to tell the girls at the bar.
But that's what makes us so much stronger than the first STALKER's. We could bitch out, we should bitch out, society has taught us too. Just back away from the dangerous and the unknown, go back to your parents, do what you're told and live the same lives they did.
But if we stay, we are more than those that came here first, we have things to lose, other options. And yea, if we die then we die. So what? We were gunna do that anyway.
But if we do this, if we charge into danger and possible death with only our friends behind us, then we...we will change the world if we so wish it."
That speech, given by a young man on a caffeine high, was one of the more fateful things I've ever heard. Many would die because of that speech, and none of us knew it before it was too late.
After Vikings rousing philosophical speech, we ordered another pot of Chifir and drank it down in shots. Making toasts as we went:
"To Fame and Glory", was Vikings toast
"To Surviving" was Xpert
"To bitches and stitches, may they always make a good story afterwards." Zephyr proclaimed
"To never running into something we cannot overcome." Sathes declared
"To our future" Kunan said simply
"To never having to say 'To friends absent'" Jampth muttered
Everyone looked to me, the person who started them on this adventure and I looked back, etching this moment into my memory forever, a perfect moment, a calm before a storm.
"To friendship, may it always be our trump card in dire situations."
At that, we finished the last of the strong tea, and got to setting out.