PONYSHKA

by Reviewfilly

1. Soup

Gray clouds roiled above in the night sky as a thunderstorm began ravaging the Zone. Thick droplets of rain pattered on the dusty, abandoned buildings, darkening their decrepit walls even further in a fruitless attempt to wash away the decades-old grime.

The fickle gusts of wind guided a few of these drops through the half-collapsed roof of a small home, where they hit the lid of a small red pot hanging above a makeshift campfire on a rickety tripod, evaporating immediately with quiet hisses.

A young man squatted next to the fire. He wore a dirty jacket and baggy jeans, the ends of which he stuffed into a pair of worn military boots. He threw his head to the side to move a few locks of his long black hair out of his face and raised his eyes towards the sky. A lucky drop of water hit one of them, causing him to blink in pain and curse. He scoffed as his vision slowly returned to normal. Not only was he stuck on cooking duty, he also had to endure the rain because his comrades had the brilliant idea to stay in a house like that.

”The hole’s gonna solve the issue of smoke, Aleksei!” he mockingly replayed their words in his head. Yeah, great fucking idea.

He pinched the handle of the pot’s lid with his coat’s sleeve and carefully raised it. Slowly, as to not burn himself, he moved it to the side and stirred the food a few times with a dirty wooden spoon, before fishing out a bit of soup. He leaned closer to get a better look at the pale seeds swimming in the opaque water. They didn’t seem particularly appealing, so he took a sniff at the salty broth, hoping perhaps at least the smell would prove to be a bit more encouraging. But as nothing more than the completely neutral scent of hot, salty steam entered his nostrils, he merely sighed in disappointment and poured the rest of the soup back, covering the pot once more.

The pot’s contents had already been boiling for almost an hour by now, yet they still staunchly refused to become any softer. Nor did they magically become any more appetizing either.

“If anyone ever asks me to buy and cook buckwheat again, I swear I’ll just strangle them on the spot,” Aleksei muttered to himself in frustration. He leaned away from the pot and slowly stood up. While keeping the spoon in one hand, he placed the other on his back and straightened it, groaning in pain and relief as his joints popped. As he stretched he looked to the side, towards a dark corner of the house that still had its part of the roof above it.

“Let me guess, you’ve got nothing to add as usual?” he asked the figure sitting on a large flat piece of concrete. He was even younger than Aleksei, hardly in his twenties. His back was arched to an unhealthy degree as he stared at a small screen perched up between his legs. The quiet sounds of two characters conversing cheerfully to soft, upbeat music could faintly be heard from the pair of cheap headphones sitting between the locks of his short, curly brown hair.

“Christ, Maxim, you really never get bored of that stupid crap, do you?”

His mockery received no reply.

Aleksei shook his head and spat into the fire, but the hints of an understanding smile played on the corners of his mouth. Deep down he wasn’t truly angry. The kid might have been a weirdo, but then who wasn’t of all the people who dared their fate here? Regardless of who you were or why you came here, the Zone ground everyone down. The anomalies, the loneliness, the fear of meeting another group of looters and not making it back... Anyone who couldn’t find their own method to cope was bound to end up insane or dead by their own hands.

For instance Sergei, the last member of the group, who was currently making sure no one else was nearby, was a deeply respected stalker known for being as no-nonsense as they come and yet even he carried with himself a small portable tape player containing several crackling recordings of Soviet folk songs from his childhood.

Aleksei himself brought along images of his adoptive mother. A vile hag who kept her distance and never showed too much love to him. Yet whenever he glanced at the faded black-and-white picture of her paper-thin smile and tired dark eyes as she gave him one of her rare, stiff hugs, it gave him the push to survive from one day to another.

And Maxim? He was easily the one who stuck out the most. Whenever they weren’t on a mission he spent almost all of his waking hours watching some old children’s cartoon. The others knew or cared little about it, especially after learning that the show was apparently meant for little girls, featuring small colorful ponies engaging in simple adventures about friendship and being nice to each other. Its cloyingly sweet messages made Maxim the target of an endless tide of jokes and less-than-polite banter, but he couldn’t care less. As they kept asking him again and again why he was so insistent on wasting his time on such juvenile things, he always just replied that it reminded him of the fact that, despite everything, the world still wasn’t only about cruelty and violence. Somewhere deep down Aleksei respected him for this, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to make fun of his eccentricity.

Suddenly the door opened with a loud slam as Sergei burst into the room, screeching Aleksei’s train of thought to a sudden halt. He was a middle-aged man, at least forty, though the others never found it quite prudent to ask the exact number. In a profession where people die young, someone of his expertise and knowledge was invaluable. His usually faded-brown coat seemed almost black from being drenched in rain as it hung rigidly on his broad shoulders. Most of his head and face were hidden under his coat’s dripping hood, leaving little more than his glasses and the ash-stricken goatee on his tanned-brown chin poking out, the former of which fogged up from his rapid, short breaths. His rugged boots and worn, oil-green jeans were covered in mud, but he cared little about any of this.

“Hurry up and get your shit together,” he panted. “I’ve heard something weird nearby.”

Aleksei didn’t need to be told twice. He threw down his spoon and grabbed his AK leaning against a nearby wall. Maxim too fell out of his trance and quickly closed the lid on his device. He carefully stuffed it along with his earphones in his coat’s pockets, before jumping up and taking his own weapon.

A moment later the trio snuck out into the darkness. The faint moonlight made it hard to see anything through the rain, but they couldn’t risk revealing themselves using flashlights. Instead they opted to move as silently as they could, hoping the downpour would mask them from others just as much as any hidden threats lurking in the night were masked from the stalkers.

The air was permeated by the earthy musk of the soil stirred up by the storm, while the haunting glow of distant lightning strikes illuminated the silhouettes of faraway ruins. Sergei pointed with two of his fingers towards a direction and they began moving.

They passed building after building, carefully avoiding any windows or other large openings that could expose them to anything that might be lurking in the darkness. Very soon a quiet sound mixed into the loud drumming of the rainfall. As they crept closer it slowly began to resemble pained crying.

The men exchanged a knowing look and gripped their weapons tighter. The Zone had a cruel sense of humor. Just because something was capable of crying didn’t mean it couldn’t also be deadly. They continued to walk in the darkness, though a bit slower than before.

After a few minutes of enduring the elements, they found themselves up against the half-collapsed remains of what used to be a house’s wall. By the loudness of the wails, it was clear that whatever was waiting for them was on the other side. Sergei motioned with his head towards the sound. The others silently nodded and switched off their weapons’ safeties.

He held up three fingers. Then two. Then one. The three men rushed to the other side of the wall, guns raised to shoot anything that made the wrong move.

None of them were prepared to deal with the sight that met them.

Comments

[Symphony_in_152mm]

as a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fan, I am obligated to give this a read when I've got the time.

added to my [read later]

[Reviewfilly]

11372588
I hope you will like it.

[Gnarlwood]

Finally got around to playing the first game and am loving it so far, so I'll have to wait until I finish to read the whole thing if there's spoilers, but I like your style.

[The White devil]

Pretty good, I hope to see more.

[Barney]

I am intrigued. Nice to see this one finally being posted!

[Cheshirek4t]

Oh man, a stalker crossover
Already loving the characterizarion
Gotta wonder how Max is gonna react
Prolly something along the lines of "eh, the zone's weird"

[FLX071]

Oh hello fellow S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s in the comment section, anyone got an artifact for sale?