Darkness Eternal

The world dark and black...My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness from the light of the basement I had just woken up in. Wait...why am I not dead?

Outside Chernobyl

The truck ride with my squad was supposed to only take a few minutes to the inner depths of the Dead Zone. The truck went down the bumpy road as it had for the past five years each time we went it became less and less of a actual mission more of a chore. By this time we all had no hair due to the fact of radiation poisoning. We believe we aren't sterile well the ones that want to continue their blood line anyway, I just want to get away. This place is horrible and being a STALKER is nothing more than a pesky chore. I spend most of my time in the Dead Zone. A social life? Non-existent. Love life? Don't get me started I killed a guy once on that subject. Well he was an insane lunatic at the time I killed him and he was trying to eat my flesh but he still brought it up. That's the past and this is the present focus on what your doing. "Hey Artiom! You ok?" One of the other STALKERs came beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah I'm fine Boris. Just thinking."

"Eh...You think too much...Maybe if you actually drank a little instead of being a little 'babi'. You would be tough!" He flexed his muscles which you could barely see in the darkness and under his suit. The ticking started as they approached the dark buildings. "Alright helmets on!" The squad leader a quiet man by the name of Vladimir told us. We all grabbed our helmets and put them on switching to the filtered air from the filters on either side of the face mask. The suit came to life and two things appeared in my eyesight. My health monitor and my stealth stats. Stealth stats? That's a question many of us are asked. It's two meters one for light and one for sound. How much sound we are currently making and how much light is around us telling us how visible we are.

The truck finally stopped after a painful five minutes of a story from Boris. The stories were all the same but because he was drunk almost twenty four seven they always changed slightly. He finally shut his mouth and we piled out onto the dirt road that led past the final checkpoint and into the city of Chernobyl. "Alright let's go." Vladimir slapped his hand on the side of the truck which backed up and drove off. Two hours till we were due back here for extraction. Everyone was armed with old Soviet AS-Val assault rifles. Everyone had their own special modifications of course everything from a simple laser sight or flashlight to a scope or beyond complex sets of a flashlight a scope and a knife on the side for good measure.

My rifle was simple a PKA scope with a magnification of 3.4 made for mid range combat. Like we ever were in combat of course on occasion there would be a psycho or a mutant out here but nothing warranting any actual threat. We ran towards the objective we were given which was a old apartment building which we were to inspect...In other words, scavenge anything of use, kill anything in their that tried to kill us or if we wanted to kill it for no apparent reason or what not. That was a policy I never went by, "Shoot anything that isn't friendly...and by friendly we mean anything besides you and your fellow STALKERs." That's what they told us back at training. Hell an hour of a lecture and some base weapons training boom you're a STALKER you get paid some money you get to go to the Dead Zone you can kill anyone and get away with it, you get the badass suit which of course just looks badass. Hell the thing would probably fall apart if it wasn't held together by the stitches and duct tape. It's funny they never seem to actually ask us why theirs duct tape on our armor. Probably because they know we might kill them if they do. Nobody smiles anymore...well not around me anyway. Not even my so-called family.

The last of my relatives my uncle even he doesn't smile around me and from what everyone tells me he smiles constantly.

We finally arrived at the apartments the doors were of course wide open suitcases and abandoned items lay strewn across the ground. Some of the squad checked through the cases for anything of use. They all shook their heads. Vladimir rolled his shoulders as we walked into the apartments. The halls were tight and cramped as we filed through them checking every floor ever so slowly. We finally reached the twenty-fourth floor last one of this building it was ten minutes till we had to get back to the pick up point. "Alright let's check these rooms quick." I ran down the hall my gun ready, I went to the last door on the right. I tried the knob and it opened with ease. I stepped inside moon light filtered through the windows. I released my gun letting hand from the strap that was around my shoulder and I reached for my flashlight that was secured on my belt. I clicked it on and the beam illuminated a bed. Cleanly made but dirty. The room itself was actually quite tidy for a place that is now a nuclear wasteland. Well stranger things have happened around here. I saw one last door at the end of the room and he quickly crossed the room and reached for the knob. I turned the knob slowly hoping if anything was inside the room I could catch it unaware. The door creaked and I cringed, waited for a mutant or a psycho to jump out of the room...Nothing...Well my luck seems to be changing. I opened the door more casually and I was surprised to see what I found on the other side. I could feel my entire face just twitch slightly. I was staring at two bodies of...well I don't know how to say it...They were ponies and they were odd colored. One was a hue of purple it's mane a dark violet on two sides and a stripe of purple down the middle. The other was cyan with a rainbow-colored mane. I slightly turned my head and yelled out of the room. "Hey I got something! You guys might wanna see this!" I heard their footsteps as they came running into the room and looked past me. "Fuck are those things?"

"I don't know Forrester." Forrester chuckled.

"How the hell did two mutant ponies get in a fucking apartment building!? And for another matter why are they so small aren't horses even the small ponies about our height?"

"Usually...but as you said mutant." Boris brought his gun up ever so slowly and pushed past me.

"Let's just take care of these fuckers and get out. I want to get back to ma drinkin'" He slurred the last bit. I turned around and he set the barrel of his weapon directly at the purple ones head. "No! Why the hell do we have to kill them!?"

"Those are our orders!" He responded.

"Those aren't orders that's just saying what we can do doesn't mean that we should do it!"

"I don't give a damn I want some action 'babi' so I'm gonna get it!" I brought my gun up and aimed at Boris. The rest of the

squad brought their guns up, "Put the gun down Artiom!"

"Why the fuck do I have to!? Boris ain't a friendly kind of person now is he!?"

"No but he's a STALKER and we don't kill each other that's the code!"

"Fuck the code! He's killing defenseless animals and you say I'm the bad guy!"

"I'm not saying that!"

"Sure you are Vladimir. Sure you are." My finger started to twitch and I depressed the trigger once sending a bullet right into Boris's arm. He yelled in pain and the others fired. I was hit with at least five bullets from the amount of pain I felt. Hell were they that inaccurate? Then I remember we all kept our guns on semi-auto. I lay on the ground my vision darkening, I saw them lead Boris out and leave me for dead. They would come up with a lie. Say they were attacked by mutants or by psychos and Boris got hit and I died. Things like this happen all the time...well I think I might just rest my eyes...