Balázs Pataki - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Northern Passage

Seen from an airliner flying at the safe altitude of ten thousand meters, the Exclusion Zone doesnt differ much from the lush fields and forests of the vast Ukrainian plains. Only a closer look out of the windows reveals the signs of abnormal features on the ground: forest roads leading nowhere, clearings where none should be, brown patches in the green fields.

Patrolling over the Zone at a much lower altitude, the pilots of the Mi-24 attack helicopters can make out small buildings at the end of the paths. Weirdly gnarled, leafless trees in the clearings. Clusters of vehicle wrecks.

Soldiers in the gunships know that the small buildings are abandoned villages and factories, the weird trees the only natural objects remaining amidst fields of physical anomalies, the wrecked vehicles helicopters, trucks and armored personnel carriers massed together to contain the radioactivity their rusty shells emit, even though they were contaminated back in 1986.

All avoid the center of the Zone: commercial airplanes, helicopters and military patrols alike. It is not to enshrine the memory of the thousands to have lost their lives in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, neither to leave the ghosts of the Dead City of Pripyat in peace, but for the fear of being hit by another emission of destructive energy that has turned the Exclusion Zone into a lethal wasteland of decay.

The Dark Valley has been named in a way reflecting the creepy nature of the Exclusion Zone. The irradiated marsh to its southern reaches would make good for its name alone and the sinister industrial buildings in the north even more so. Nothing reveals the true heart of darkness hidden beneath the abandoned factory on its eastern edge. Not even the crane standing in its courtyard covered with moss and vines that hang down like curtains from its rusty structure, slowly moving in the chilly wind, making it appear like ghosts in the mist. The dark factory hall holding ominous containers is nothing particular in the Zone. Neither are the bodies strewn around on the floor beyond, or the eerie glow of the emergency light over the staircase leading down to the factory vaults. Although still seeping from the gunshot wounds of one more body in the passageway where stairs lead, blood on debris-littered concrete floor is also a sight as common in the Zone as are mutants and anomalies.

It is the fear in the face of the man sitting on the floor at the dead end of the passageway that tells all about the darkness ruling over the Valley, even though he is a fearful appearance himself in his fatigue half hazmat suit, half body-armor, tailored in a way that resembles the pressure suits of fighter pilots. Close to the hood to be within easy reach, a gas mask is fastened to his shoulders. His martial appearance is reinforced by the Beretta pistol holstered on his right limb and the shotgun fastened to his belt pushed to the side. Fear and determination blend on his face as he carves a small notch into the stock of his SGI-5k assault rifle with his combat knife, adding one more to the fifteen notches already there.

In the Exclusion Zone, anyone wearing such armor is called Stalker and a Stalker with fear on his face when approaching one of the Zones underground vaults would be called a sane man. Sane men do fear, but have the willpower to overcome their terror and turn it into a state of constant alertness.

The dark eyes of this Stalker, set in a pale face under a receding headline and a sharp nose between them, reflect this kind of determination. Controlled fear is written all over his face as he finishes carving and reflects over the Bandits he has killed while penetrating their base in this abandoned factory. Of all his victims, now only remembered by a notch in his rifle stock, he knows only one by name: Borov.

Peeking over to the door that is the source of all his fears, the Stalker takes a deep breath. Killing more than a dozen Bandits had been a roadside picnic compared to what is waiting for him beyond the steel door, the key of which he had taken a few minutes ago from Borovs dead body.

The door has a warning sign on it.

Oh well, the Stalker says to himself. High voltage is probably not the only thing thats dangerous to life here.

Using the combination written on Borovs key card, he opens the code-locked door.

He peeks inside the vault, holding the assault rifle at aim and ready to shoot. He himself wouldnt know what memory or instinct makes him move like a battle-hardened commando. Right now, his failing memory is no concern. All the Stalker cares about is that no imminent danger appears in the dark corridors behind the door.

The damp vault smells like rotten earth. His Geiger counter crackles lowly.

He checks out the corridor to his right. Barely visible in the dim, orange glow of an emergency light, a dead Stalker lies between two green metal lockers. The moldy corpse is still held together by an armored suit of the same variety he is wearing, but the face under the hood betrays that this man had been dead for months.

This doesnt bid well, he thinks.

Turning back, he enters a chamber with a control board and a skeleton with its skull missing.

See, old buddy? This happens to people coming to the vaults and losing their head.

With a bitter smile on his face, he moves to the staircase leading below. As soon as he takes the first flight of steps, an echo bellows beneath like someone or something, hitting a huge metal object. A wave of ice runs down his spine. He freezes, and for a moment holds his weapon at aim, ready to shoot. Nothing moves. With cautious steps, he moves down the staircase.

His anomaly detector emits a single beep. Then his Geiger counter starts crackling. It is not the radiation warning that makes him freeze once more, but the sight of two wooden crates in the hall opening from the staircase.

Normally, no Stalker would be scared of two musty wooden boxes. But these are moving, as if lifted by an invisible hand.

Suddenly, two crates come hurtling towards him. One box hits the door frame and scatters but the other one flies directly to his head. If it werent be for his quick reflexes causing him to bend over at the last second, his head would be in shambles now.

Damned poltergeist playing its gravity tricks. Ill give you such hell if I see you!

But poltergeists are invisible and it is with extreme caution that he enters the room. To his right, he sees a toiletprobably this must have been a resting or changing room for the scientists who had once pursued their shadowy business here. He steps inside, guided more by the subconscious desire of hiding than the hope of finding anything useful there. Water is trickling down the walls covered with green ceramic plates into the rotting toilet caps built into the floor.

How old is this place? Even in the USSR, people were using sitting toilet caps from the Nineties on.

A mirror is still hanging over the broken sink, too opaque to reflect much else than the light of his headlamp.

Its left to my imagination to judge if I look cool in this armored suit probably I do.

A massive rectangular column is standing in the middle of the room. Judging by the brown sliding doors on one side, it must hold an elevator shaft inside. The Stalker peeks out from behind its corner and can barely pull his head back to cover when he sees another box rising from the floor. It is smashed against the elevator shaft. He glances around. The floor is empty, save for a few fragments of concrete that have loosened themselves from the wall.