A voice on my radio warns me to take shelter because there was an Emission storm coming. As the voice crackled and beeped off, I saw the thick black clouds rolling in to choke the afternoon sky.

I was too far away from the region’s base, as I had been following a long abandoned train track to my next objective, but I remembered what looked to be an old train service building not too far back. When I had first found it, it was the resting place to a hand full of undead soldiers, Stalkers like me who had succumbed to the Zone, doomed to walk its radiated hills forever, or at least until they met my 12 gauge.

That would be a good a place as any for shelter right now.

I doubled back the way I came and found the delupitatted building exactly as I had left it; a bloody mess of bullet casings and shredded bodies. Just as I entered, the sick orange glow of the Emission storm split through the clouds and the sky was set on fire.

I huddled into a back room as far away from the open door and windows as I could get. I kept a watchful eye on that open door, with my 12 gauge a right click away from finding it’s mark on whatever might decide to venture in. I had a FN2000 by my side as well, but I thought the 12 gauge would serve me better in such tight quarters.

The place was pitch black, save for whatever was lit by my flashlight and the splashes of light from the lightening that accompanied the storm. As I watched the shadows jump at me along the walls, I noticed something I had totally missed my first time there.

At the back of the room was a door that had been blocked off. First with boards nailed every which way across it and then with piles of wooden crates.

So weird that I didn’t notice this before. It didn’t matter though, because I figured while I wait for the storm to subside, I would see where this door takes me.

As I began to clear the wooden boards and crates, it occurred to me that whoever sealed this door off, did so for a reason. But my curiosity was stronger then any sense of self preservation, so I continued.

When I had finally cleared the door way, I saw that it led to a series of more doors and what looked like a passage heading down. Fear began to brew in me when I thought of what horrible thing might be waiting for me down in that darkness, but soon a sense of anxiousness took hold as well and I wondered what treasures I might find.

With my shotgun raised, I quietly made my way in and was immediately greeted by four or five mutated rats. I would have left them alone had they not insisted on being a nuisance, but it was nothing my side arm couldn’t fix. The side rooms proved to be dead ends and all that was left to was explore the passage leading down.

After giving each room a second sweep, incase I missed anything, I then made my decent.

I had run into terrible things in dark places like this before. Blood suckers who can vanish right before your eyes, to hunt you unseen. Burers, who lure in you by mimicking the cry of infants. And Snorks; don’t get me started on Snorks.

So my trigger finger was perched delicately on my left mouse button, ready to blast whatever was to pounce at me. As I turned that last corner, I entered a room …

…with nothing in it.

I let out a laugh at the anti-climax. So much tension and care to get down here, only to find a few knocked over shelves and a metal door that was sealed shut with dirt and rubble. I eased my gun to the side and turned to make my way back up to the top.

That’s when I heard it:

Cheeki Breeki!

I heard the yell before I saw the Bandit. He came barging at me with his Automatic riffle lighting the dark. I ducked quickly to one side and watched two more bandits shuffle in. Quickly I made my way out of the room. The shock of the bandits had thrown me off and such loose wits will only get you killed in the Zone.

As I ran up, I thought of funneling them at the top of the stairs. Between the tight walls and my 12 gauge, they would be sitting ducks. But as I made my way back up to the first room, I was met with the flash of another Bandit’s gun. His bullets missed, but my buck shots found their mark right in his face. As he went down I heard two more bandits outside, while the other three made their way up the stares behind me. Their signatures blinking red on my hud.

Thinking quickly, I ruffled through my inventory and reached for a butterfly mine, and placed it at the top of the stares, then I looked for a vantage point to take out the two cutthroats outside. One of them carelessly popped up at a window to become an easy head-shot. The other tried to sneak in, but I found him and after two shots to the chest, he was dead too.

Just then I heard the mine go off. I hurried to the back of the room and saw that two of the three bandits were down. The last one shot desperately at me in the dark. I let him fire a few more rounds before shooting him dead.

Outside the storm had ceased and under my heavy breathing, I could hear the rain pattering on the roof. I scavenged from the bandits whatever I could carry and made my way back to base.

You can not script this stuff. And that is why I freaking love Stalker: Call of Chernobyl