The Zone

by Rostok

2: Release

Yar woke under a pile of detritus, barely able to move from exhaustion.

He lay there for a second, quietly stunned as his brain slowly gained enough function to realise he was actually alive and mostly unharmed. It could hardly process not getting fried by the storm that all the rest of the day's events were completely ignored.

Something rattled on top of him.

With all the speed and predatory fluidity of a pensioner on their death bed he scrambled out of the pile of assorted crap and reached for his torch, not even able to make it to his feet from soreness. A soft ball of distorted space and light lazily drifted near the floor a few meters down the corridor, and a decrepit wooden crate was slowly being nudged towards him by thin air.

The poor poltergeist was even weaker than him. He couldn't stop himself falling back to the floor laughing and crying in despair in equal measure.

=

"You're really not from the Zone?"

"No!"

"So let me get this straight: you're from a magical world called 'Equestria', ruled by two princesses, and were sent here to learn about humans."

"Yes, in short."

Degtayrev looked across at Strelok. His face was cryptic at the best of times but he was pretty clearly way out of his depth too. He gave a non-committal shrug, but didn't seem like he was rejecting the story. Hard to given purple horn.

"And one is now dead?"

Twilight let out a sob

"Ok, we'll leave that for now. Have any of us humans been to this Equestria?"

Twilight was clearly distraught by this princess' death, but after a moment trying to compose herself, managed to choke back the tears to answer,

"We didn't know you existed until one burst through Zecora's door!"

Degtayrev's head swung around. He'd assumed they'd come here through the zone's neverending capacity to warp what seemed physically possible and create all sorts of hellish beasts, but flipping it on his head it made more sense. There'd always been tales of stalkers vanishing into Space anomalies, huge swirling balls that would simply trap you in a near-inescapable twisted spacetime loop, not entirely dissimilar to what he'd discovered in the Oasis bunker south of Yanov station. But plenty of men were never seen again. Ending up in some alternate reality or alien world didn't seem so great of a stretch.

"And where is he now?"

"In Equestria. When we first met him, there was..." she paused, trying to collect herself and work out how to tell the story, "There was a misunderstanding, and once we'd learned a little about each other's species and worlds our princesses tasked me and my friend Applejack to return with him to this place. He was against the idea, and we didn't take his warnings seriously. Maybe he was lying, or trying to hide something, but it proved far worse than we could have imagined."

"Then how did he end up back in this Equestria?"

"Well, I admit I panicked and transported myself back home not long after we arrived, I was just in shock. It's so different here. More brutal than a lot of our most grisly and terrifying tales. My friend Applejack persevered, and a group of us including the princess went back to rescue her. We took refuge in a building, and ended up taking a small group of humans back with us. This man, Hiker, was part of that group.

Upon seeing how serious your world was, and how different, Princess Celestia decided to send a small group back here led by the most experienced of the humans, Garry, with her sister Princess Luna along with me, Zecora and my friend Rainbow Dash. Both the princesses are astoundingly powerful magic users, and with Princess Luna with us we thought we'd be far safer..."

What tears she'd been holding in erupted from her uncontrollably,

"and now they're dead! Rainbow is DEAD! And Luna is dead too! And it's all my fauuughgllt!"

She'd completely broken down now, weeping into her hands, her breath coming out in rough, choking sobs. Degtayrev had no idea what to do, or even if he should do something. Consoling a woman was something stalkers left behind out there, in the Big World as they'd call it, let alone an alien woman. He looked at Zecora, her dark-skinned friend for help.

"I'd just let her be, my friend. Let her grieve those who met their end. Of this Garry she hath spake, he will never wake. O'er time in this land her magic diminished, because of this I fear we're finished."

The rhyming he didn't even want to consider right now but at least she was straight to the point. If this Garry had died, there presumably wasn't a single human soul that'd been to their magical world, nor the means for Twilight to take them back with her magic. How on earth he was seriously entertaining this story was beyond him, even if the facts lined up with the fantastical story.

=

Battleborn strode through the doors of Celestia's personal office chambers, not a little nervous despite his years of service and numerous reports directly to the particularly hooves-on Princess. He didn't seriously expect her to rage, or find him wanting, but the times were dire. Piles of paperwork littered the ornate mahogany desk as usual, and the scene seemed interchangeable with any other morning of her going about her business if not for the noticeable bags under her eyes and lack of sheen on her coat. He'd never seen her looking any less than impeccable, a 1000 years under her belt of acclimating to all but the gravest times of peril to her ponies.

"How goes it, Commander?"

"We've been forced to pull out our forces entirely for the time being, Princess. Our human settlement chosen as the primary observation point has collapsed completely under attacks from the monsters and the surrounding area has become untenable as a base of operations. We had been scouting for a safer location, but nothing but casualties have come of it."

"So the situation in this human realm we've been able to access is now reaching catastrophic levels?"

"That's correct Princess. What little other bastions of order we scouted in the chaotic landscape of monsters look to have all fallen. Of your sister and the ponies that have accompanied her, we have still no sign."

The Princess blinked a few times, wiping her eyes with her hooves while staring into the middle-distance through her desk. He thought he could see a few teardrops catch on her golden shoes. It was no great gesture but starkly Celestia at her least alicorn and most pony.

"Focus all your efforts now on locating the exploration party with my sister, all other concerns are secondary and incidental. We need her first-hoof perspective of what is possible for us to do in this place with her strength and experience to rely on, if anything at all. There's still colossal amouts we clearly don't yet know, despite your valiant work. Once they're confirmed safe and accounted for we can make a final decision on how to proceed with wider efforts."

She gave him a look of longing, like a being trapped in cage, making the furs on the nape of his neck stand on end. Her presence and gaze was legendary, able to help calm and reassure almost anypony like a true mother of the nation. He'd experienced that spark of leadership, certainty and reassurance deep in her eyes diminished at times of crisis, but never so lacking as to fail to give him that surety of purpose she had always instilled in her guardsponies from the hallways to the battlefield.

"Understood Princess."

He stood to attention and gave her a salute before turning and trotting out the doors again, that gnawing feeling in his gut worse than when he went in.

=

A lone figure stood out on the grassy plains overlooking the concrete colossus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, advancing towards it step by ponderous step. Old, mangled bodies could be picked out on the cracked forecourts and roadways, both human and misshapen animals, but none other remained standing on their feet. The figure didn't look so different to them, so covered in small wear and tear and muddy dirt and blood that any vestige of insignia or allegiance were long gone, not that the once clean black and brown fabrics and kevlar plates stood much chance.

As the man stood there it felt perversely like he was staring into a mirror, a monolith worn into a hollow shell and overrun detritus and decay; the hammer and sickle motifs of a bygone era matching the tools he held loosely in each of his hands that would never reach the comfort of that distant shadow of the modern world. Like the reflection of a face worn beyond all recognition of youth, but still somehow the only constant in a life of turmoil he couldn't bear to look away, to walk away from the harrowing sight.

These fields of grass would never be set foot in by any who valued their life when such people could be found anywhere remotely nearby, like he himself in the times when he'd worshipped the Monolith. He'd had complete faith in it's power then, but now cut off completely from whatever it was that ensorcelled him in it's grip it seemed to clasp him to it's bosom even tighter, letting him pass through the deathtrap of rippling air pockets and radiation like a rookie with bolts stumbling through their first anomaly. Just thinking about the power that thing wielded over every aspect of him was painful, but it numbed the damage all over his body from fighting his way out of the Zaton swamps in lieu of the now empty automatic painkiller-injectors installed in his exoskeleton. He'd patched whatever damage he could on his suit and been avoiding the radiation pockets on autopilot more than anything, that click of the geiger counter was a sixth sense to any old stalker, but caring about how strong a dose was building in his body was something he'd managed to let go of.

The sun gently tracked it's way across the sky, glistening through the patchy clouds to heat him with the occasional warm ray. The on and off days fighting in the stormclouds and rain had filled him with the dark heat of adrenaline and blood-pumping blood-letting combat, but as they ended the clammy cold of old sweat and exhaustion fell in, halted only by the crackle of a fire and charred meat from slain beast to propel him through it again the next day. Now though standing here in the open, watching it's warm caress pass over the serene fields of grass and woodland that belied the danger was like being transported back to childhood; simpler, happier, carefree days of laughter, painting with his friends in school, frolicking in the streams and bathing in the sun. So much pain had followed, but now for the first time it didn't feel important. He could feel those happy times with that childlike innocence one again, even if it was that relaxation at seeing the end of the pain in sight.

At some point, he ended up on the far side of the large clearing before the tattered walls of the plant, suddenly faced a solid barrier. Finding an entry was trivial, and he pushed himself in a last effort up the banks of one of the big cooling pits to kneel upon the rise in the soft afternoon sun, the two halves of his life sitting all around him on either side in harmony. He'd meditated during those lost times under the thrall of the Monolith but now he was able to finally do it no longer as Sickle, or even Evgeniy, but as a free man, free of obligation to family or friends or comrades or magic rock, free from the past and free from the future, free to let his mind clear and let the scars that had built up on his mind start to heal for the first time.

Comments

[Russian Bank Teller]

its....

ALIVE?

ITS ALIVE

[snowblind]

A most glorious of days to see an update.

[Beeooow]

REREADING COMMENCES NOW