by Arkady
“Hey, stalker,” he said. “Soil your underpants? Get used to it, buddy, don’t be embarrassed, they’ll wash them out at home.”
Arthur looked at him in surprise, smiling uncertainly. Meanwhile, Redrick crumpled the oily sandwich paper, flung it under the railcar, and reclined on his backpack, leaning on his elbows.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s say we assume that this Golden Sphere really can … What would you wish for?”
“So you do believe in it?” Arthur asked quickly.
“It doesn’t matter if I believe in it or not. Answer the question.”
He suddenly became truly interested in what a kid like this could ask the Golden Sphere—still a pipsqueak, yesterday’s schoolboy—and he watched with a lively curiosity as Arthur frowned, fiddled with his mustache, glanced up at him, and lowered his eyes again. “Well, of course, legs for Father,” Arthur said finally. “For things to be good at home …”
“Liar, liar,” said Redrick good-naturedly. “Keep in mind, buddy: the Golden Sphere will only grant your innermost wishes, the kind that, if they don’t come true, you’d be ready to jump off a bridge!”
Arthur Burbridge blushed, sneaked another peak at Redrick, and instantly lowered his eyes, then turned beet red—tears even came into his eyes.
Redrick smirked, looking at him. “I see,” he said almost tenderly. “All right, it’s none of my business. You can keep it to yourself.” And then he remembered the gun and thought that while there was time, he should deal with everything he could. “What’s that in your back pocket?” he asked casually.
“A gun,” grumbled Arthur, and bit his lip.
“What’s it for?”
“Shooting!” Arthur replied defiantly.
“That’s enough of that,” Redrick said strictly and sat up. “Give it to me. There’s no one to shoot in the Zone. Hand it over.”
Arthur wanted to say something, but he kept his mouth shut, reached behind his back, took out a Colt revolver, and handed it to Redrick, holding it by the barrel.
Redrick took the gun by the warm ribbed handle, tossed it up in the air, caught it, and asked, “Do you have a handkerchief or something? Give it to me, I’ll wrap it.”
He took Arthur’s handkerchief, spotless and smelling of cologne, wrapped the gun in it, and placed the bundle on the railroad tie.
“We’ll leave it here for now,” he explained. “God willing, we’ll come back here and pick it up. Maybe we really will have to fight the patrols. Although fighting the patrols, buddy …”
Arthur adamantly shook his head. “That’s not what it’s for,” he said with vexation. “It only has one bullet. In case it happens like with my father.”
“Ohh, I see …” Redrick said slowly, steadily examining him. “Well, you don’t need to worry about that. If it happens like with your father, I’ll manage to drag you here. I promise. Look, dawn is breaking!”
The fog was evaporating before their eyes. It had already vanished from the embankment, while everywhere else around them the milky haze was eroding and melting, and the bristly domes of the hilltops were sprouting through the vapor. Here and there between the hills he could already make out the speckled surface of the soured swamp, covered with sparse malnourished willow bushes, while on the horizon, beyond the hills, the mountain summits blazed bright yellow, and the sky over the mountains was clear and blue. Arthur looked over his shoulder and cried out in admiration. Redrick also turned around. The mountains to the east looked pitch black, while the sky above them shimmered and blazed in a familiar emerald glow—the green dawn of the Zone. Redrick got up and, unbuckling his belt, said, “Aren’t you going to relieve yourself? Keep in mind, we might not have another chance.”
He walked behind the railcar, squatted on the embankment, and, grunting, watched as the green glow quickly faded, the sky flooded with pink, the orange rim of the sun crawled out from behind the mountain range, and the hills immediately began casting lilac shadows. Then everything became sharp, vivid, and clear, and directly in front of him, about two hundred yards away, Redrick saw the helicopter. It looked as if it had fallen right into the center of a bug trap and its entire hull had been squashed into a metal pancake—the only things left intact were the tail, slightly bent, its black hook jutting out over the gap between the hills, and the stabilizing rotor, which noticeably squeaked as it rocked in the breeze. The bug trap must have been powerful: there hadn’t even been a real fire, and the squashed metal clearly displayed the red-and-blue emblem of the Royal Air Force—a symbol Redrick hadn’t seen in so long he thought he might have forgotten what it looked like.
Having done his business, Redrick came back to the backpack, took out his map, and spread it on top of the pile of fused ore in the railcar. The actual quarry wasn’t visible from here—it was hidden by a hill with a blackened, charred tree on top. They were supposed to go around this hill on the right, through the valley lying between it and another hill—also visible, completely barren and with reddish-brown rock scree covering its entire slope.
All the landmarks agreed with the map, but Redrick didn’t feel satisfied. The instinct of a seasoned stalker protested against the very idea—absurd and unnatural—of laying a path between two nearby hills. All right, thought Redrick. We’ll see about that. I’ll figure it out on the spot. The trail to the valley went through the swamp, through a flat open space that looked safe from here, but taking a closer look, Redrick noticed a dark gray patch between the hummocks. Redrick glanced at the map. It had an X and the scrawled label SMARTASS. The dotted red line of the trail passed to the right of the X. The nickname sounded familiar, but Redrick couldn’t remember who this Smartass was, or what he looked like, or when he’d been around. For some reason, the only thing that came to mind was this: a smoky room at the Borscht, unfamiliar ferocious mugs, huge red paws squeezing their glasses, thunderous laughter, gaping yellow-toothed mouths—a fantastic herd of titans and giants gathered at the watering hole, one of his most vivid memories of youth, his first time at the Borscht. What did I bring? An empty, I think. Came straight from the Zone, wet, hungry, and wild, a bag slung over my shoulder, barged inside, and dumped the bag on the bar in front of Ernest, angrily glowering and looking around; endured the deafening burst of taunts, waited until Ernest, still young, never without a bow tie, counted out some green ones—no, they weren’t green yet, they were square, with a picture of some half-naked lady in a cloak and wreath—finished waiting, put the money in his pocket, and, surprising himself, grabbed a heavy beer stein from the bar and smashed it with all his might into the nearest roaring mug. Redrick smirked and thought, Maybe that was Smartass himself?
“Is it really OK to go between the hills, Mr. Schuhart?” Arthur softly asked near his ear. He was standing close by and was also examining the map.
“We’ll see,” said Redrick. He was still looking at the map. The map had two other Xs—one on the slope of the hill with the tree and the other on top of the rock scree. Poodle and Four-Eyes. The trail went between them. “We’ll see,” he repeated, folded the map, and stuffed it into his pocket.
He looked Arthur over and asked, “Are you shitting yourself yet?” and, not waiting for an answer, ordered, “Help me put the backpack on … We’ll keep going like before.” He jerked the backpack up and adjusted the straps. “You’ll walk in front, so I can always see you. Don’t look around, but keep your ears open. My orders are law. Keep in mind, we’ll have to crawl a lot, don’t you dare be afraid of dirt; if I order you to, you drop facedown in the dirt, no questions asked. And zip your jacket. Ready?”
“Ready,” Arthur said hollowly. He was obviously nervous. The color in his cheeks had vanished without a trace.
“We will first head this direction.” Redrick gestured curtly toward the nearest hill, which was a hundred steps away from the embankment. “Got it? Go ahead.”
Arthur took a ragged breath, stepped over the rail, and began to descend sideways down the embankment. The gravel cascaded
noisily behind him.
“Take it easy,” said Redrick. “No rush.”
He carefully descended behind him, balancing the inertia of the heavy backpack with his leg muscles by force of habit. The entire time he watched Arthur out of the corner of his eye. The kid is scared, he thought. And he’s right to be scared. Probably has a premonition. If he has an instinct, like his dad, then he must have a premonition. If you only knew, Vulture, how things would turn out. If you only knew, Vulture, that this time I’d listen to you. “And here, Red, you won’t manage alone. Like it or not, you’ll have to take someone else. You can have one of my pipsqueaks, I don’t need them all …” He convinced me. For the first time in my life I had agreed to such a thing. Well, never mind, he thought. Maybe we’ll figure something out, after all, I’m not the Vulture, maybe we’ll find a way.
“Stop!” he ordered Arthur.
The boy stopped ankle-deep in rusty water. By the time Redrick came up to him, the quagmire had sucked him in up to his knees.
“See that rock?” asked Redrick. “There, under the hill. Head toward it.”
Arthur moved forward; Redrick let him go for ten steps and followed. The bog under their feet slurped and stank. It was a dead bog—no bugs, no frogs, even the willow bush here had dried up and rotted. As usual, Redrick kept his eyes peeled, but for now everything seemed all right. The hill slowly got closer, crept over the low-lying sun, then blocked the entire eastern half of the sky.
When they got to the rock, Redrick turned back to look at the embankment. The sun shone on it brightly, a ten-car train was standing on top of it, a few cars had fallen off the rails and lay on their sides, and the ground beneath them was dotted with reddish-brown patches of spilled ore. And farther away, in the direction of the quarry, to the north of the train, the air above the rails was hazily vibrating and shimmering, and from time to time tiny rainbows would instantly blaze up and go out. Redrick took a look at this shimmering, spat drily, and looked away.
“Go on,” he said, and Arthur turned a tense face toward him. “See those rags? You aren’t looking the right way! Over there, to the right …”
“Yeah,” said Arthur.
“That used to be a certain Smartass. A long time ago. He didn’t listen to his elders and now lies there for the express purpose of showing smart people the way. Let’s aim two yards to his right. Got it? Marked the place? See, it’s roughly there, where the willow bush is a bit thicker … Head in that direction. Go ahead!”
Now they walked parallel to the embankment. With each step, there was less and less water beneath their feet, and soon they walked over dry springy hummocks. And the map only shows swamp, thought Redrick. The map is out of date. The Vulture hasn’t been here for a while, so it’s out of date. That’s not good. Of course, it’s easier to walk over dry ground, but I wish that swamp were here … Just look at him march, he thought about Arthur. Like he’s on Central Avenue.
Arthur had apparently cheered up and was now walking at full pace. He stuck one hand in his pocket and was swinging the other arm merrily, as if on a stroll. Redrick felt in his pocket, picked out a nut that weighed about an ounce, and, taking aim, flung it at Arthur. It hit him right in the back of the head. The boy gasped, wrapped his arms around his head, and, writhing, collapsed onto the dry grass. Redrick stopped beside him.
“That’s how it is around here, Archie,” he said didactically. “This is no boulevard, and we aren’t here on a stroll.”
Arthur slowly got up. His face was completely white.
“You got it?” asked Redrick.
Arthur swallowed and nodded.
“That’s good. Next time I’ll knock a couple of teeth out. If you’re still alive. Go on!”
The boy might make a real stalker, thought Redrick. They’d probably call him Pretty Boy. Pretty Boy Archie. We’ve already had one Pretty Boy, his name was Dixon, and now they call him the Gopher. He’s the only stalker that’s ever been through the grinder and survived. Got lucky. He, strange man, still believes that it was Burbridge who pulled him out of the grinder. As if! There’s no pulling someone out of a grinder. Burbridge did drag him out of the Zone, that’s true. He really did perform that feat of heroism! But if he hadn’t … Those tricks of his had already pissed everyone off, and the boys had told Burbridge flat out: Don’t bother coming back alone this time. That was right when he had gotten nicknamed the Vulture; previously he’d gone by Strongman …
Redrick suddenly became aware of a barely noticeable air current on his left cheek and immediately, without even thinking, yelled, “Stop!”
He stretched his arm to the left. The air current was more noticeable there. Somewhere between them and the embankment was a bug trap, or maybe it even followed the embankment—those railcars hadn’t fallen over for nothing. Arthur stood as if rooted to the ground; he hadn’t even turned around.
“Head farther to the right,” ordered Redrick. “Go ahead.”
Yeah, he’d make a fine stalker … What the hell, am I feeling sorry for him? That’s just what I need. Did anyone ever feel sorry for me? Actually, yes, they did. Kirill felt sorry for me. Dick Noonan feels sorry for me. To be honest, maybe he doesn’t feel sorry for me as much as he’s making eyes at Guta, but maybe he feels sorry for me, too, one doesn’t get in the way of the other in decent company. Except that I don’t have the chance to feel sorry for anyone. I have a choice: him or her. And for the first time he became consciously aware of this choice: either this kid or my Monkey. There’s nothing to decide here, it’s a no-brainer. But only if a miracle is possible, said some skeptical voice in his head, and, feeling horrified, he suppressed it with frantic zeal.
They passed the pile of gray rags. There was nothing left of Smartass, only a long, rusted-through stick lying in the dry grass some distance away—a mine detector. At one point, mine detectors were in heavy use; people would buy them from army quartermasters on the sly and trusted in them as if they were God himself. Then two stalkers in a row died using them in the course of a few days, killed by underground electrical discharges. And that was it for the detectors …
Really, who was this Smartass? Did the Vulture bring him here, or did he come by himself? And why were they all drawn to this quarry? Why had I never heard of it? Damn, is it hot! And it’s only morning—what’s it going to be like later?
Arthur, who walked about five steps ahead, lifted his hand and wiped the sweat from his brow. Redrick looked suspiciously at the sun. The sun was still low. And at that moment it struck him that the dry grass beneath their feet was no longer rustling but seemed to squeak, like potato starch, and it was no longer stiff and prickly but felt soft and squishy—it fell apart under their boots, like flakes of soot. Then he saw the clear impressions of Arthur’s footprints and threw himself to the ground, calling out, “Get down!”
He fell face-first into the grass, and it burst into dust underneath his cheek, and he gritted his teeth, furious about their luck. He lay there, trying not to move, still hoping that it might pass, although he knew that they were in trouble. The heat intensified, pressed down, enveloped his whole body like a sheet soaked in scalding water, his eyes flooded with sweat, and Redrick belatedly yelled to Arthur, “Don’t move! Wait it out!”—and started waiting it out himself.
And he would have waited it out, and everything would have been just fine, they’d have only sweated a bit, but Arthur lost his head. Either he didn’t hear what was being shouted to him, or he got scared out of his wits, or maybe he got even more scalded than Redrick—one way or another, he stopped controlling himself and, letting out some sort of guttural howl, blindly darted, hunching over, back to where they came from, the very place they had to avoid at all costs. Redrick barely had time to sit up and grab Arthur’s leg with both hands, and Arthur crashed heavily to the ground, squealed in an unnaturally high voice, kicked Redrick in the face with his free leg, and wriggled and flopped around. But Redrick, also no longer thinking straight from the pain, crawled on top of him, p
ressing his face into Arthur’s leather jacket, and tried to crush him, to grind him into the ground; he held the twitching head by the long hair with both hands, and furiously used his knees and the toes of his shoes to pound Arthur’s legs and ass and the ground. He dimly heard the moans and groans coming from underneath him and his own hoarse roar, “Stay down, asshole, stay down, or I’ll kill you,” while heaps of burning hot coal kept pouring on top of him, and his clothes already blazed, and the skin on his legs and sides, crackling, blistered and burst. And Redrick, burying his forehead in the gray ash, convulsively kneading the head of this damned kid with his chest, couldn’t take it anymore and screamed as hard as he could …
He didn’t remember when the whole thing ended. He just noticed that he could breathe again, that the air was once again air instead of a burning steam scorching his throat, and he realized that they had to hurry, that they had to immediately get away from this hellish oven before it descended on them again. He climbed off Arthur, who lay completely motionless, squeezed both of the boy’s legs under his arm, and using his free hand to help pull himself along, crawled forward. He never took his eyes off the boundary where the grass began again—dead, dry, prickly, but real. Right now, it seemed to be the most magnificent place on Earth. The ashes crunched between his teeth, waves of residual heat kept hitting his face, sweat poured right into his eyes—probably because he no longer had eyebrows or eyelashes. Arthur dragged behind him, his stupid jacket caught on things, as if on purpose; Redrick’s scalded ass burned, and each movement caused his backpack to slam into the back of his scalded head. The pain and oppressive heat made Redrick think with horror that he’d gotten thoroughly cooked and wouldn’t be able to make it. This fear made him work harder with his free elbow and his knees, forcing the vilest epithets he could think of through his parched throat; then he suddenly remembered, with some kind of insane joy, that he still had an almost-full flask inside his jacket. My dear, my darling, it won’t let me down, I just need to keep crawling, a little more, come on, Redrick, come on, Red, a little more, damn the Zone, damn this waterless swamp, damn the Lord and the whole host of angels, damn the aliens, and damn that fucking Vulture …
