Roadside Picnic Read online

  Redrick looked straight ahead and saw nothing. He remembered. It was at night. He woke up from the same sound, sad and long, his heart stopping, like in a dream. Only it hadn’t been a dream. It was Monkey screaming in her bed by the window. Guta woke up, too, and took Redrick’s hand. He could feel the sweat break out on her shoulder against his. They lay there and listened, and when Monkey stopped crying and went back to sleep, he waited a little longer, then got up, went down to the kitchen, and greedily drank a half-bottle of cognac, That was the night he started drinking.

  “It’s the ore,” Arthur said. “You know, it settled with time. The dampness, erosion, all kinds of things like that.”

  Redrick looked at his pale face and sat down again. His cigarette had disappeared somewhere from his fingers, and he lit another one. Arthur stood a little longer, looking around anxiously, then he also sat down.

  “I’ve heard that there’s life in the Zone. People. Not visitors, but people. It seems the Visitation caught them here, and they mutated… they’ve acclimated to the new conditions. Have you heard that, too, Mr. Schuhart?”

  “Yes,” Redrick said. “But not here. In the mountains in the northwest. Some shepherds.”

  That’s what he’s infected me with, he thought. His madness. That’s why I’ve come here. That’s what I want here. A strange and very new feeling overwhelmed him. He was aware that the feeling was really not new at all, that it had been hidden in him for a long time, but that he was acknowledging it only now, and everything was falling into place. And everything that had seemed like nonsense and the delirious ravings of a crazy old man turned out to be his only hope, the only meaning of his life. Because he finally understood: the only thing he had left in the world, the only thing he lived for in the last few months was the hope of a miracle. Fool that he was, he kept pushing hope away, trampling on it, mocking it, trying to drink it away, because that was the way he was used to living. Since childhood he had relied on nothing but himself. And since childhood this self-reliance had been measured in the amount of money he could snatch, grab, or bite away from the indifferent chaos that surrounded him. It had always been that way, and it would have continued, if he had not ended up in a hole that no amount of money could get him out of and in which it was absolutely useless to rely on himself. And now this hope—no longer a hope, but confidence in a miracle—filled him to the brim, and he was amazed at how he could have lived for so long in the impenetrable, exitless gloom. He laughed and gave Arthur a poke in the shoulder.

  “Well, stalker, think we’ll live through this, eh?”

  Arthur looked at him in surprise and smiled uncertainly. Redrick crumpled up the waxed paper from the sandwiches, tossed it under the ore car, and lay down, his elbow on the backpack.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s say that the Golden Ball really—what would you wish?”

  “You mean, you do believe?” Arthur asked quickly.

  “That’s not important whether or not I believe. You answer my question.”

  He really was interested in what such a young boy, a schoolboy just yesterday, could ask of the Golden Ball. He enjoyed watching Arthur frown, tug at his mustache, and look up at him and look away.

  “Well, dad’s legs, of course. And for everything to be all right at home.”

  “You’re lying,” Redrick said pleasantly. “Keep this in mind, brother. The Golden Ball only grants your deepest, innermost wishes, the kind that if they’re not granted, it’s all over for you!”

  Arthur Burbridge blushed, looked up at Redrick once more, and became even redder. His eyes filled with tears. Redrick grinned.

  “I understand,” he said almost gently. “All right, it’s none of my business. Keep your secrets to yourself.” He suddenly remembered the gun and thought that while he had the time he should take care of whatever could be taken care of. “What’s that in your back pocket?” he asked casually.

  “A gun.”

  “What do you need it for?”

  “To shoot!” Arthur said challengingly.

  “Forget it,” Redrick said firmly and sat up. “Give it here. There’s nobody to shoot at in the Zone. Give it to me.”

  Arthur wanted to say something, but kept silent, took the Army Colt from his pocket and handed it to Redrick by the barrel. Redrick took the gun by its warm textured handle, tossed it up in the air, and caught it.

  “Do you have a handkerchief or something? I want to wrap it up.”

  He took Arthur’s handkerchief, clean and smelling of cologne, wrapped the gun in it, and put it on the railroad tie.

  “We’ll leave it here for now. God willing, we’ll come back and pick it up. Maybe we’ll have to shoot it out with the patrol guards. However, shooting it out with them…”

  Arthur decisively shook his head.

  “That’s not what I wanted it for,” he said sadly. “There’s only one bullet. In case of an accident like Father’s.”

  “So, that’s it.” Redrick stared at him. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. If that should happen, I’ll drag you back here. I promise. Look, it’s getting light!”

  The fog was disappearing before their eyes. It was completely gone from the embankment and in the distance it was thinning, melting away and showing the rounded bristly peaks of the hills. Here and there between the hills could be seen the mottled surface of the stagnant swamps, covered with sparse thickets of willows, and the horizon, beyond the hills, was filled with bright yellow explosions of mountain peaks, and the sky above them was clear and blue. Arthur looked back and gasped with awe. Redrick looked too. In the east the mountains looked black, and over them the familiar green wash of color billowed and shone iridescently—the Zone’s green dawn.

  Redrick got up, went behind the ore car, sat on the embankment, and watched as the green wash dimmed and quickly turned to pink. The sun’s orange rim came up over the ridge, and purple shadows stretched from the hills. Everything became harsh and in high relief, he could see things as clearly as if they were in the palm of his hand. Right in front, two hundred yards away, Redrick saw the helicopter. It had fallen, apparently, into the middle of a mosquito mange spot, and its fuselage had been squashed into a metal pancake. Its tail had remained intact, only slightly bent, and it stuck out over the glade like a black hook. The stabilizer was also whole, and it squeaked distinctly, turning in the light breeze. The mange must have been very powerful, for there hadn’t even been a real fire, and the Royal Air Force insignia was very clear on the flattened metal. Redrick had not seen one in many years and had almost forgotten what the insignia looked like.

  Redrick went back to his pack for the map, which he spread out on the hot mound of ore in the car. You couldn’t see the quarry from here—it was blocked by the hill with the burned-out tree on its rise. He had to go around the hill from the right, along the depression between it and the next hill, which he could also see, completely bare, its slope covered with brown rocks.

  All the reference points corresponded, but Redrick felt no satisfaction. His instinct of many years as a stalker protested against the very thought, which was irrational and unnatural, of laying a path between two nearby elevations. All right, Redrick thought, we’ll see about that later. It will be clearer when we get there. The path before the depression led through the swamp, along open flat ground, which seemed safe enough from here. But looking closer, Redrick noted a dark gray spot between the two dry hills. He looked at the map. There was an X there, and it said “Whip” next to it in clumsy letters. The red dotted line of the path went to the right of the X. The name was sort of familiar, but who Whip was exactly, and what he looked like, and what he did, Redrick could not remember. For some reason, Redrick could only remember the smoky room of the Borscht, huge red paws holding glasses, thundering laughter, and open jaws filled with yellow teeth—a fantastic herd of titans and giants gathered at the watering hole, one of his most striking childhood memories—his first visit to the Borscht. What had I brought that time? An e
mpty, I think. Straight from the Zone, wet, hungry, crazy, with a sack over my shoulder, I burst into the bar and clattered the sack on the counter in front of Ernest, looking around angrily, listening to the wisecracks, waiting for Ernest—young then and in a bow tie, as usual—to count the right amount of greenbacks. No, wait, it wasn’t green back then, we still had the square royal bills with some half-naked dame wearing a cape and a wreath. I waited, put away the money, and unexpectedly, even for myself, took a heavy mug from the counter and slammed it into the closest laughing face. Redrick smirked and thought: maybe that was Whip himself?

  “Is it all right to go between the two hills, Mr. Schuhart?” Arthur asked in a low voice near his ear. He was next to him looking at the map, too.

  “We’ll see when we get there.” Redrick kept looking at the map. There were two other X’s, one on the slope of the hill with the tree, the other on the rocks. Poodle and Four-eyes. The path was marked below them. “We’ll see,” he repeated, folding up the map and putting it in his pocket.

  He looked Arthur over.

  “Put the backpack on my back. We’ll go like before,” he said, shifting under the weight of the pack and arranging the straps more comfortably. “You go ahead, so that I can see you every second. Don’t look back and keep your ears open. My order is law. Keep in mind that we’ll have a lot of crawling to do, don’t suddenly be afraid of the dirt. If I tell you to, drop your face into the mud without any backtalk. And button your jacket. Ready?”

  “Ready.” Arthur was very nervous; the rosiness of his cheeks had disappeared.

  “First we go this way.” Redrick waved sharply in the direction of the nearest hill a hundred steps from the rocks. “Got it? Let’s go.”

  Arthur heaved a sigh, stepped over the rails, and started down sideways from the embankment. The pebbles rained after him noisily.

  “Easy, easy,” Redrick said. “There’s no hurry.”

  He started down slowly after him, automatically adjusting his leg muscles to the weight of the heavy backpack. He watched Arthur out of the corner of his eye. He’s scared, he thought. He must sense it. If his sense is like his father’s, he does. If you only knew how things were turning out, Buzzard. If you only knew, Buzzard, that I took your advice this time. “This is one place, Red, that you can’t go to alone. Like it or not, you’ll have to take somebody with you. I can give you one of my people who’s expendable.” You talked me into it.

  It’s the first time in my life that I agreed to something like this. Well, maybe it will turn out all right, he thought. Maybe, somehow, it will work out. After all, I’m not Buzzard Burbridge, maybe I’ll figure something out.

  “Stop!” he told Arthur.

  The boy stopped ankle-deep in rusty water. By the time Redrick got down to him, the quagmire had sucked him in up to his knees.

  “Do you see that rock?” Redrick asked. “There, under the hill? Head for it.”

  Arthur moved on. Redrick let him get ten paces ahead and then followed. The mud slurped underfoot. It was a dead swamp—no bugs, no frogs, even the willows were dry and rotten. Redrick looked around, but for now everything seemed to be in order. The hill slowly got closer, covering the sun, which was still low in the sky, and finally blocking the entire eastern sky. At the rock, Redrick looked back at the embankment. It was brightly lit by the sun. A train of ten ore cars stood on it. Some of the cars had fallen off the tracks and were lying on their sides, and the embankment above them was covered with the rusty red piles of the ore. Further on, in the direction of the quarry, north of the train, the air over the track shimmered and undulated, and tiny rainbows exploded and died in the air. Redrick looked at the shimmer, spat, and turned away.

  “Let’s go,” he said. Arthur turned his tense face to him. “See those rags over there? You’re looking the wrong way! Over there, to the right.”

  “Yes,” said Arthur.

  “Well, that was a guy called Whip. A long time ago. He didn’t listen to his elders and now he lies there in order to show smart people the right way. Look just to the right of Whip. Got it? See the spot? Right where the willows are a little thicker. That’s the way. You’re off!”

  Now they were moving parallel to the embankment. Every step brought them to shallower water, and soon they were walking on dry, springy hillocks. The map still showed this as solid swamp. The map’s old, thought Redrick, Burbridge hasn’t been here in a long time, and it’s gotten out of date. That’s bad. Of course, it’s easier to walk on dry land, but it would have been better for that swamp to be here. Look at Arthur go, he thought. He’s walking like he’s strolling down Central Avenue.

  Arthur seemed to have perked up and was walking full speed. He had one hand in his pocket and he was swinging the other as if out on a stroll. Redrick rummaged in his pocket, took out a bolt weighing an ounce or so, and threw it at his head. The bolt hit Arthur in the back of the head. The boy gasped, grabbed his head, crouched, and fell into the dry grass. Redrick stood over him.

  “That’s how it comes out here, Artie,” he pontificated. “This isn’t an avenue, we’re not on a promenade here, you know.”

  Arthur got up slowly. His face was drained white.

  “Everything clear?” Redrick asked.

  Arthur gulped and nodded.

  “Fine. And next time I’ll let you have it in the teeth. If you’re still alive. Go ahead!”

  The boy could have made a stalker, after all, thought Redrick. They probably would have called him Pretty Boy Artie. We used to have another Pretty Boy, his name was Dixon, but now they called him Hamster. The only stalker to fall into the meatgrinder and live. He was lucky. The fool still thinks that it was Burbridge who pulled him out of it. The hell he did! You don’t get pulled out of the meatgrinder. He did pull him out of the Zone, that’s true enough. Burbridge performed a heroic deed like that. If he hadn’t… ! Everybody was getting fed up with his tricks, and the guys had told him: you better not come back if you come back alone. That was when they began calling him Buzzard, before they used to call him Winner.

  Redrick felt a barely perceptible current of air on his left cheek and immediately, without thinking, he shouted: “Halt!”

  He extended his hand to the left. The current was stronger. Somewhere between them and the embankment there was a mosquito mange, or maybe it extended along the embankment itself: there was a reason why the cars had tilted over. Arthur stood as though he had been planted, he did not even turn around.

  “To the right. Let’s go.”

  Yes, he would have made a good stalker. What the hell, do I feel sorry for him or something? That’s all I need. Did anyone ever feel sorry for me? I guess they did. Kirill felt sorry for me. Dick Noonan feels sorry for me. Of course, he might be more interested in Guta than in feeling sorry for me, but one doesn’t necessarily rule out the other. Only I don’t get to feel pity. My choice is always either/or. He finally understood the choice: either this boy, or my Monkey. There was no real choice, it was clear. If only miracles did happen, some voice said inside, and he repressed the voice with horror.

  They went around the mound of gray rags. There was nothing left of Whip. Some distance away in the dry grass lay a long, completely rusted stick—a minesweeper. In those days many stalkers used minesweepers, buying them up on the quiet from army suppliers, and depended on them like on the Lord God himself, and then two stalkers were killed within a few days, killed by underground explosions. And that put an end to it. Who had this Whip been? Did Buzzard bring him here or had he come on his own? Why were they all drawn to this quarry? Why hadn’t I heard anything about it? Damn it, it’s hot! And this is so early in the morning, I can imagine what it will be like later.

  Arthur, walking five paces ahead, wiped the sweat from his brow. Redrick squinted up at the sun; it was still low. And suddenly he realized that the dry grass was not rustling underfoot but squeaking like cornstarch, and it was no longer stiff and bristly, but soft and crumbly—it was falling apart under their shoes,
like flakes of soot. And he saw Arthur’s clear footprints, and he threw himself down on the ground, shouting: “Hit the dirt!”

  He fell face down into the grass, and it turned into dust under his cheek. He gnashed his teeth in anger over their bad luck. He lay there trying not to move, still hoping that it would blow over, even though he realized that they were trapped. The heat was increasing, overwhelming him, enveloping his body like a sheet soaked in boiling water. Sweat poured into his eyes, and Redrick shouted belatedly to Arthur: “Don’t move! Bear it!” And he started bearing it himself.

  He would have withstood it, and everything would have passed quietly and well, they would have gotten by with a lot of sweat, but Arthur couldn’t take it. Either he had not heard Redrick’s shout, or he became scared out of his wits, or maybe, he had been baked more strongly than Redrick—anyway he lost control and ran off blindly, with a scream deep in his throat, following his instinct—backward. The very direction they couldn’t take. Redrick barely managed to rise and grab his ankle with both hands. Arthur fell down with the full weight of his body, raising a cloud of ashes, squealed in an unnatural voice, kicked Redrick in the face with his other foot, and struggled wildly. Redrick, not thinking clearly any more through the pain, crawled on top of him, touching the leather jacket with his burned face, trying to press the boy into the ground, holding his long hair with both hands and desperately kicking his feet and knees at Arthur’s legs and his rear end and at the dirt. He could barely hear the muffled moans coming from beneath him and his own hoarse shouts: “Lie there, you toad, lie still, or I’ll kill you.” Tons and tons of hot coals were pouring over him, and his clothing was in flames and the leather of his shoes and jacket was blistering and cracking, and Redrick, his head mashed into the gray ash, his chest trying to keep the damn boy’s head down, could not stand it. He yelled his lungs out.

  He did not remember when it all ended. He understood only that he could breathe again, that the air was air again, and not steam that burned his throat, and he realized that they had to hurry and get out from under the devilish heat before it came crashing down on them again. He got off Arthur, who was lying perfectly still, tucked both his legs under one arm, and using his free arm, crawled forward, never taking his eyes off the line where the grass started again. It was dead, prickly, dry, but it was real and it seemed like the greatest source of life in the world. The ashes felt gritty in his teeth, his burnt face gave off heat, and the sweat poured right into his eyes, probably because he no longer had eyebrows or eyelashes. Arthur was stretched out behind, his jacket seeming to catch on to every possible place. Redrick’s parboiled hands ached, and the backpack kept bumping into his burned neck. The pain and lack of air made Redrick think that he was completely burned and that he would not make it. The fear made him work harder with his elbow and his knees. Just get there, just a little more, come on, Red, come on, you can make it, like that, just a little more…