Roadside Picnic Read online

  We pull on our specsuits, I pour some nuts and bolts from a bag into my hip pocket, and we plod across the Institute yard toward the Zone entrance. That’s how they always do it around here, so that everyone can see: There they go, the heroes of science, to lay themselves down on the altar to mankind, knowledge, and the Holy Spirit, amen. And sure enough, sympathetic mugs poke out of every window all the way up to the fifteenth floor; hankies waving good-bye and an orchestra are the only things missing.

  “Keep your head high,” I tell Tender. “Suck in your gut, soldier! A grateful humanity won’t forget you!”

  He gives me a look, and I see that he’s in no mood for jokes. He’s right—this is no joke. But when you’re leaving for the Zone, it’s one of two things: you start bawling, or you crack jokes—and I’m sure as hell not crying. I take a look at Kirill. He’s holding up OK, only mouthing something silently, as if praying.

  “Praying?” I ask. “Pray, pray! The farther into the Zone, the closer to heaven.”

  “What?” he says.

  “Pray!” I yell. “Stalkers cut in line at the gates of heaven!”

  And he suddenly smiles and pats me on the back, as if to say, Nothing will happen as long as you are with me, and if it does, well, we only die once. God, he’s a funny guy.

  We hand our passes over to the last sergeant—this time, for a change of pace, he happens to be a lieutenant; I know him, his pop sells cemetery fencing in Rexopolis—and there’s the hoverboot waiting for us, the guys from PPS have flown it over and left it at the checkpoint. Everyone is gathered already: the ambulance and the firefighters and our valiant guards, the fearless rescuers—a bunch of overfed slackers with their helicopter. I wish to God I’d never set eyes on them!

  We climb into the boot. Kirill takes the controls and looks at me. “Well, Red,” he says, “your orders?”

  I slowly lower the specsuit zipper on my chest, pull out a flask, take a long sip, screw the lid back on, and put the flask back. I can’t do without this. God knows how many times I’ve been in the Zone, but without it—no way, can’t do it. They’re both looking at me and waiting.

  “All right,” I say. “I’m not offering you any, since this is our first time going in together, and I don’t know how the stuff affects you. Here is how we’ll do things. Everything I say will be carried out immediately and unconditionally. If someone hesitates or starts asking questions, I’ll hit whatever is in reach, my apologies in advance. For example, say I order you, Mr. Tender, to walk on your hands. And at that very moment, you, Mr. Tender, must stick your fat ass up in the air and do as you are told. And if you don’t do as you are told, you may never see your sick daughter again. Got it? But I’ll take care that you do see her.”

  “Just don’t forget to give the orders, Red,” croaks Tender, who is completely red, sweating already and smacking his lips. “I’ll walk on my teeth, never mind my hands. I’m no novice.”

  “You are both novices to me,” I say, “and I won’t forget the orders, don’t you worry. Oh, just in case, do you know how to drive a boot?”

  “He knows how,” says Kirill. “He’s good at it.”

  “Glad to hear,” I say. “Then we’re off. Lower your visors! Low speed along the marked route, altitude nine feet! At the twenty-seventh marker, stop.”

  Kirill lifts the boot to nine feet and puts it in low gear while I discreetly turn my head and blow over my left shoulder for luck. Looking back, I see our guards, the rescuers, are clambering into their helicopter, the firefighters are standing up in respect, the lieutenant at the door of the checkpoint is saluting us, the idiot, and above them all—an immense banner, already faded: WELCOME TO EARTH, DEAR ALIENS! Tender made a move to wave them all good-bye, but I gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs to knock the ceremonies out of him. I’ll show you how to bid farewell, you fat-assed fool!

  We’re off.

  To the right of us is the Institute, to the left the Plague Quarter, and we’re gliding from marker to marker down the middle of the street. Lord, it’s been a while since anyone’s walked or driven here. The pavement’s all cracked, grass has grown through the crevices, but here at least it’s still our human grass. On the sidewalk to the left, the black brambles begin, and from this we see how well the Zone sets itself apart: the black thicket along the road looks almost mowed. No, these aliens must have been decent guys. They left a hell of a mess, of course, but at least they put clear bounds on their crap. Even the burning fuzz doesn’t make it over to our side, though you’d think the wind would carry it around all four directions.

  The houses in the Plague Quarter are peeling and lifeless, but the windows are mostly intact, only so dirty that they look opaque. Now at night when you crawl by, you can see the glow inside, as if alcohol were burning in bluish tongues. That’s the hell slime radiating from the basement. But mostly it looks like an ordinary neighborhood, with ordinary houses, nothing special about it except that there are no people around. By the way, in this brick building over here lived our math teacher, the Comma. He was a pain in the ass and a loser, his second wife left him right before the Visit, and his daughter had a cataract in one eye—I remember we used to tease her to tears. During the initial panic, he ran in nothing but underwear all the way to the bridge, like his neighbors—ran for four miles nonstop. After that he got a bad case of the plague, which peeled his skin and nails right off. Almost everyone who lived here got the plague. A few died, but mostly old folks, and not all of them either. I, for one, think it wasn’t the plague that did them in but sheer terror.

  Now in those three neighborhoods over there, people went blind. That’s what people call them nowadays: the First Blind Quarter, the Second Blind Quarter … They didn’t go completely blind but rather got something resembling night blindness. Strangely, they say they weren’t blinded by a flash of light, though it’s said there were some bright flashes, but by an awful noise. It thundered so loudly, they say, that they instantly went blind. Doctors tell them: That’s impossible, you can’t be remembering right! No, they insist, there was loud thunder, from which they went blind. And by the way, no one else heard any thunder at all …

  Yeah, it looks like nothing happened here. That glass kiosk over there doesn’t have a single scratch on it. And look at that stroller near the gates—even the linen in it looks clean. Only the TV antennas give the place away—they’re overgrown with wispy hairs. Our eggheads have long been hankering after these antennas: they’d like to know, you see, what this hair is—we don’t have it anywhere else, only in the Plague Quarter and only on the antennas. But most important, it’s right here, beneath our very own windows. Last year, they got an idea, lowered an anchor from a helicopter, and hooked a clump of hair. They gave it a pull—suddenly, a psssst! We looked down and saw that the antenna was smoking, the anchor was smoking, even the cable itself was smoking, and not just smoking but hissing poisonously, like a rattlesnake. Well, the pilot, never mind that he was a lieutenant, quickly figured out what’s what, dumped the cable, and hightailed it out of there. There it is, their cable, hanging down almost to the ground and covered with hair …

  We glide slowly to the end of the street, at the bend. Kirill looks at me: Should I turn? I wave him on: Go in lowest gear. Our boot turns and drifts in lowest gear over the last few feet of human land. The sidewalk’s getting closer and closer, there’s the shadow of the boot inching over the brambles … Here’s the Zone! And instantly a chill runs down my spine. I feel it every time, but I still don’t know whether it’s the Zone greeting me or a stalker’s nerves acting up. Every time I figure I’ll go back and ask others if they feel it too, and every time I forget.

  All right, so we’re drifting peacefully above the abandoned gardens, the motor under our feet is humming steadily and calmly—it doesn’t care, nothing can hurt it. And here my Tender cracks. We don’t even make it to the first marker before he starts babbling. You know, the way novices babble in the Zone: his teeth are chattering, his heart is galloping, h
e’s out of it, and though embarrassed he can’t get a grip. I think this is like diarrhea for them; they can’t help it, the words just keep pouring out. And the things they’ll talk about! They’ll rave about the scenery, or they’ll philosophize about the aliens, or they might even go on about something totally irrelevant. Like our Tender here: he’s started in on his new suit and now just can’t shut up about it. How much it cost and the fine wool it’s made of and how the tailor changed the buttons for him …

  “Be quiet,” I say.

  He gives me a sad look, smacks his lips, and goes on again, now about the silk he needed for the lining. Meanwhile, the gardens are ending, we’re already above the clay wasteland that used to be the town dump, and I notice a breeze. There was no wind a moment ago, but suddenly there’s a breeze, dust clouds are swirling, and I think I hear something.

  “Quiet, asshole,” I tell Tender.

  No, he just can’t shut up. Now he’s going on about the horsehair. All right, no help for it, then.

  “Stop,” I tell Kirill.

  He stops immediately. Quick reaction—good man. I take Tender by the shoulder, turn him toward me, and smack him hard on his visor. He slams nose first into the glass, poor guy, closes his eyes, and shuts up. And as soon as he quiets down, I hear: crack-crack-crack … crack-crack-crack … Kirill is looking at me, jaws clenched, teeth bared. I hold up my hand. Don’t move, for God’s sake, please don’t move. But he also hears the crackling and, like any novice, feels the need to immediately do something.

  “Go back?” he whispers.

  I desperately shake my head and wave my fist right in his visor—Cut that out. For God’s sake! You never know which way to look with these novices—at the Zone or at them … And here my mind goes blank. Over the pile of ancient trash, over the colorful rags and broken glass, drifts a tremor, a vibration, just like the hot air above a tin roof at noon; it floats over the mound and continues, cuts across our path right beside a marker, lingers over the road, waits for half a second—or am I just imagining that?—and slithers into the field, over the bushes, over the rotten fences, toward the old car graveyard.

  Damn these eggheads, a great job they did: ran their road down here amid the junk! And I’m a smart one myself—what on Earth was I thinking while mooning over their stupid map?

  “Go on at low speed,” I tell Kirill.

  “What was that?”

  “God knows! It came and went, thank God. And shut up, please. Right now, you aren’t a person, got it? Right now, you are a machine, my steering wheel, a lever …”

  At this point I realize that I might be getting a case of verbal diarrhea myself.

  “That’s it,” I say. “Not another word.”

  Damn, I need a drink! What I’d give to take out my flask, unscrew the lid, slowly, deliberately put it to my mouth, and tilt my head back, so it could pour right in … Then swirl the liquor around and take another swig … I tell you, these specsuits are a piece of shit. I’ve lived for years without a specsuit, Lord knows, and plan to live for many more, but not having a drink at a time like this! Ah, well, enough of that.

  The wind seems to have died down and there are no suspicious noises; all we hear is the engine humming steadily and sleepily. Meanwhile the sun is shining, the heat is pressing down … There’s a haze above the garage. Everything seems fine, the markers are floating by us one by one. Tender’s silent, Kirill’s silent—they are learning, the novices. Don’t worry, guys, even in the Zone you can breathe if you know how. Ah, and here’s the twenty-seventh marker—a metal pole with a red “27” on it. Kirill looks at me, I nod at him, and our boot stops.

  The fun and games are over. Now the most important thing is to stay completely calm. We’re in no hurry, there’s no wind, and the visibility is good. Over there’s the ditch where the Slug kicked the bucket—you can make out something colorful in there, maybe some clothes of his. He was a lousy guy, rest his soul, greedy, stupid, and dirty; that’s the only kind that get mixed up with the Vulture, those the Vulture Burbridge spots a mile away and gets his claws into. Although, to be fair, the Zone doesn’t give a damn who the good guys and the bad guys are, and it turns out we gotta thank you, Slug: you were an idiot, and no one even remembers your real name, but you did show us smarter folks where not to go … OK. The best thing, of course, would be to get to the pavement. The pavement’s flat, you can see everything, and I know that crevice in it. Except I don’t like those mounds. If we head straight to the pavement, we have to pass right between them. There they stand, smirking and waiting for us. No, I’m not going between the two of you. That’s the stalker’s second commandment: it has to be clear for a hundred paces either to your left or to your right. Now what we could do is go over the left mound … Although I have no idea what’s behind it. According to the map there’s nothing there, but who trusts maps?

  “Listen, Red,” whispers Kirill. “Let’s jump, eh? Fifty feet up and then right back down, and there we’ll be at the garage, eh?”

  “Quiet, you,” I say. “Just leave me alone right now.”

  Up, he says. And what if something gets you at that height? They won’t even be able to find the pieces. Or maybe there’s a bug trap around here—never mind the pieces, there will be nothing left at all. These risk takers really get me: he doesn’t like waiting, you see, so let’s jump … In any case, it’s clear how to get to the mound, and we’ll figure the rest out from there. I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out a handful of nuts and bolts. I put them on the palm of my hand, show them to Kirill, and say, “Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? Read it in school? Well, here we’ll have that in reverse. Look!”

  And I throw the first nut. It flies a short way, like I intended, and lands about twenty-five feet away. The nut goes fine.

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  “So?” he says.

  “Don’t ‘so’ me. I’m asking you, did you see that?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Now, take our boot over to that nut at low speed and stop six feet in front of it. Got it?”

  “Got it. You looking for graviconcentrates?”

  “Never you mind what I’m looking for. Give me a second, I want to throw another one. Watch where it falls, then don’t take your eyes off it.”

  I throw another nut. Naturally, this one also goes fine and lands just ahead of the first one.

  “Go ahead,” I say.

  He starts the boot. His face has become completely calm; you can see he’s figured everything out. They are all like that, the eggheads. The most important thing for them is to come up with a name. Until he comes up with one, you feel really sorry for him, he looks so lost. But when he finds a label like “graviconcentrate,” he thinks he’s figured it all out and perks right up.

  We pass the first nut, then the second and third. Tender keeps sighing, shifting from one foot to the other and yawning nervously with a slight whimper—he’s suffering, the poor guy. It’s all right, this will probably do him good. He’ll take ten pounds off today, this is better than any diet … I throw the fourth nut. It doesn’t go quite right. I can’t explain it, but I feel it in my gut—something’s off. I immediately grab Kirill’s hand.

  “Stop,” I say. “Don’t move an inch.”

  I take the fifth nut and throw it farther and higher. There it is, the bug trap! The nut goes up all right and starts going down fine, but halfway down it looks like someone tugged it off to the side, pulling it so hard that it goes right into the clay and disappears.

  “Ever see that?” I whisper.

  “Only in the movies,” he says, straining forward so far he almost falls off the boot. “Throw one more, eh?”

  Jesus. One more! As if one would be enough. Lord, these scientists! Anyway, I throw out eight more nuts, until I figure out the shape of the trap. To be honest, I could have managed with seven, but I throw one especially for him, right into the center, so he can properly admire his graviconcentrate. It smashes into the clay as i
f it were a ten-pound weight instead of a nut, then goes right out of sight, leaving only a hole in the ground. He even grunts with pleasure.

  “All right,” I say. “We’ve had our fun, but that’s enough. Look over here. I’m throwing one out to show the way, don’t take your eyes off it.”

  Anyway, we go around the bug trap and climb to the top of the mound. It’s a puny little mound, I’ve never even noticed it until today. Right … OK, so we’re hanging above the mound, the pavement is a stone’s throw away, at most twenty paces from here. Everything’s visible—you can make out every blade of grass, every little crack in the ground. It ought to be smooth sailing from here. Just throw the nut and get on with it. I can’t throw the nut.

  I don’t understand what’s happening to me, but I just can’t force myself to throw it.

  “What is it?” says Kirill. “Why did we stop here?”

  “Wait,” I say. “Just be quiet, for God’s sake.”

  All right, I think, now I’ll throw the nut, nothing to it, we’ll glide right by, won’t disturb a single blade of grass—half a minute, and there’s the pavement … And suddenly I break into an awful sweat! Some even gets into my eyes, and I know right then I won’t be throwing a nut that direction. To our left—sure, as many as you like. That route is longer, and the stones over there look suspicious, but it’ll have to do; I just can’t throw a nut in front of us. And so I throw one to our left. Kirill doesn’t say a thing, just turns the boot, drives it over to the nut, and only then looks at me. I must look pretty bad, since he immediately looks away.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “You can’t always take the straight path.” And I throw the last nut onto the pavement.