"Come on, you used to love this when we were kids!" a man complained to another, hefting his AK-74 onto his shoulder, while his partner groggily crawled out of his sleeping bag with a deep scowl on his face. "Being out in the woods, poking and pointing sticks like they were guns..."

"I'm sorry, Pasha," the second man replied. "But if I remember correctly, the woods outside your mother's house did not have bloodsuckers behind every other tree."

Pasha chuckled to himself, "And she would cook fresh borscht after our little adventures, too."

The remark earned a deep chuckle from his friend as they began their way through the brush. Misha, careful not to trip over a bundle of branches, went around through a clump of dead plants. "And I remember that 'fresh' did not necessarily mean 'good' either, Misha."

"You better watch your mouth, or Mother will climb out of her grave and-"

Pasha's world exploded in pain as the grenade went off, peppering him with small shards of shrapnel, but luckily not enough to kill him. He shakily climbed off the ground and brought his AK to bear, firing wildly into where he thought the user was hiding. Nothing.

He turned around, firing once more. Nothing.

He replaced the spent magazine with a fresh one and calmed himself down. He examined the scenery around him. It was quiet save for the calls of birds and roars of distant mutants, and it smelled of ozone and cheap gunpowder. No one was around. It must have been a booby trap or a mine. But how long has that been there?

Stupid, stupid, he scalded himself. They had neglected to clear the site.

He bent his neck downwards and looked at himself. He was bleeding in a couple of places, but normal movement of his muscles proved nothing a simple bandage and antiseptic couldn't fix. There were screws, nails, and an assortment of other metal scraps stuck in his armor, but they did not penetrate.

He was lucky. He wondered what Misha would-

"Misha?" he called. He ran towards his downed partner. He tried to choke back the tears, but they flowed regardless, cutting clean lines through the grime on his face. He reached Misha, who was motionless face-down on the ground. His right leg was blown off just below the knee, leaving a jagged bone and strips of muscle and vein in its place.

"Misha!"

Pasha knelt down over his friend, grabbing and cradling his blood-covered friend. His own clothes were stained from the growing puddle of fluids, but he didn't care. He grabbed a cloth from his jacket and wiped Misha's face.

"Misha."

He struck the ground once again, his shovel penetrating deeper into the clay that lay in front of him. He scooped a large chunk of it off to the side onto a large pile. It was getting bigger by the minute, but not fast enough for him. He went again, and again, until his back ached from the effort. He gave it a second to settle and went back to his task until the pain was too much.

After a few minutes of rest he grabbed the shovel again and walked back to his work. As he was about to jump into the oblong hole, the world around flashed a bright crimson. He looked up at the sky in horror. Bright clouds were forming, lightning crackling between them. He looked anxiously around him for shelter.

Blowouts were not something one would want to be caught in. Over time, the Zone would build up psychic energy in the noosphere, and would release it at semi-random times. The massive psychic blast would fry the brain of anyone exposed out in the open, and for them, their fate was worth than death.

That was why Pasha was clumsily sprinting towards the nearest gap in the ground he saw. He wasn't paying attention to the sky like he should have been. Blowouts do not develop that quickly. It was going to happen any time now. He dropped something from his belt he didn't have the time to secure, but he could get it later. No one would steal it between then and when the blowout passed.

He reached the edge of the crevice but quickly slipped on the moist, smooth surface and fell into a patch of mud. He hurriedly crawled deeper, trying to get as far away from the mouth as possible. The thunder built up and everything, even in the dank environment he was in, lightened up as though it was cloudless daytime. He pushed himself against the wall, praying for safety to whatever god or gods existed.

After a tense few seconds, it finished. He nervously lifted his head from the ground of the crevice, and poked his head out of the opening. It was all clear. The rain clouds were back up in the sky, the birds were back, Stalkers were shooting themselves somewhere in the distance, the mutants were searching for food...

Dammit! he cursed.

He reached for his machine gun's strap and pulled it from his shoulder. He unfolded the bipod from the barrel and set it on the ground facing the pack of mutants. There were about eight fleshpigs total, and one was nearing his friend. He estimated the distance (about one hundred fifty meters) and set the alignment of his weapon's sights accordingly.

He settled the front sight post on the head of the front fleshpig just like he used to one time with Misha, when they happened upon a group of bandits in a firefight with Duty-aligned Stalkers.

He squeezed the trigger, and his rifle fired true, blasting a gory hole through the mutant. The others were scared, but they didn't run off. They stuck what they had for heads up in the air, trying to sniff him out.

Good luck.

He aimed for the next and fired again, killing another of the beasts. After a few more shots, the last mutant dropped dead. Pasha surveyed for a few more seconds to make sure, but nothing new showed up.

He picked up his rifle and began walking back towards his friend.

He dropped the last bit of displaced earth on the mound and pat it down. He strapped his shovel to his pack and pulled out a large bottle. He took a sip for his friend, and the hard liquid burned its way down to the pit of his stomach. Pasha sighed in appreciation. Vodka, like all alcohol, got better with age, and that particular bottle he found in a mostly destroyed building that had looked no younger than sixty years. THey had been saving it for when they finally decided to leave the Zone, riches on their backs and memories in their heads.

He looked back at the mound and took another sip. Another look, but this time a gulp

Soon, half of the bottle was gone. He took another glance at the dirt beneath him. He held it over his friend and tipped it over. "Here," he muttered, "have your half."

He poked the empty bottle in the ground so it was stuck, and repacked his gear. He began his long, and now lonely, trek back to the Skadovsk.