“Said I remember when we used to sit
In the scientist’s lab in Yantar
Oba, ob-serving ecologists
As they would mingle with the good people we meet
Good friends we have had, oh good friends we’ve lost along the way
In this bright New Zone you can’t forget the Old
So dry your tears I say…
No dushman, no cry
Said, said, said I remember when we used to sit
In the flea market yard in Garbage
And then Duty would open fire all right
Tracers flashin’ through the night
Then we would cook boar hoof porridge
Of which I’ll share with you…
No dushman no cry.”
“Don’t cry, dushmans? Are you kidding?” Zlenko asks, who has already made himself comfortable in one of the airplane seats together with Ilchenko. “Even Bob Marley would shoot you for that!”
“Nah, I mean that in a different way. If there’s no dushman, there’s no reason to cry!”
“Very funny. What happened here?” Tarasov asks looking up to the hull, where an explosion had burrowed a huge hole into the rusty metal. Someone has placed a fuel drum under the opening and a few Stalkers are warming themselves around the fire inside it.
“A mortar round,” explains Ilchenko. “Blasted a hole big enough into it for us to see all the stars of the southern Zone!”
“As you say, bro, right as you say! The good old Antonov is no longer five but… eh, I forgot how many stars!” Ashot says.
“Too bad the fire makes so much smoke that one can’t see any stars,” Zlenko says as he opens a can and dips a slice of dry bread into the meat inside. “But at least it’s cozier here.”
“Did you go dushman, Ashot?” Tarasov asks, pointing at the barkeep’s new headwear.
“It’s cool, bro, ain’t it? I found it after the battle. The previous owner’s head was still inside but I had it disinfected, don’t worry! And now, tell me… when I saw them tribals coming I didn’t believe me own eyes! How did you manage that?”
“Ilchenko will tell you, and many things too that are not even remotely true. But for now, I could use a drink.”
“For you, I always have one. Actually, I can’t wait to get rich from selling all me vodka reserve to them thirsty tribals.”
“Forget your high hopes… they don’t drink.”
“Can’t comply, bro. Me hopes are always high.”
“Neither do they use drugs.”
“I knew they weren’t human! All the better, I’m low on bottled vodka anyway.”
“How come?”
“I’ve been serving nothing but Molotov cocktails the past few days, if you follow me meaning. Our visitors couldn’t get enough of them!”
“At least business seems to be back to normal. But what is that guy doing over here?” Tarasov jerks his thumb towards a Stalker drawing on the metal plates of the fuselage.
“Oh, I decided that this was a good time to make the Antonov even nicer, and asked Zenmaster to paint the walls.”
“I see, but what is he painting?”
“Portraits,” the Stalker called Zenmaster shouts back, obviously possessed of very sharp hearing. “That of the first Stalkers: Arkady, Boris and Andrei. They were awesome, dude!”
“Never heard about them,” Tarasov shrugs.
“It’s your loss, dude… your loss. It all started with them going for a roadside picnic into the Zone…”
“A picnic? In the Zone?”
“Yep. If you don’t know their story – you don’t know what you’re missing, man!”
A Stalker interrupts their conversation. “Hey Ashot, turn off that Jamaican shit. Could I borrow your guitar?”
“Sure, Vitka. Here you go. Watch gonna play?”
“Something that suits the mood better,” the Stalker replies. Sitting close to the fire, he starts to strum a melancholic melody.
“It seems sometimes that soldiers
who didn’t return from the bloody fields of war,
weren’t buried under the ground,
But turned into white cranes.
That always happened since the dawn of time,
They always fly and call us,
Maybe that’s why we so often sadly
and silently, look up into the sky.
They fly and fly up in the sky,
They fly from dawn until night falls,
Keeping an empty place in their high line,
And I think that will be mine.
My day to fly will come for me,
To join these cranes in the same blue sky,
I’ll be one of them, and calling
the names of loved ones I have left behind.”
A Stalker bows his head. “Good one.”
“You better sing about those black ravens circling in the sky,” another one adds. His head is wrapped in a bloody bandage. “They will feed on the bodies of many good Stalkers tonight.”
“I came here for artifacts,” the Stalker with the guitar says, “but it turned into a really bad raid.”
“Hey Ashot,” another Stalker shouts, “give us another pollitra… to Kolya Pimp, brothers. He was a good Stalker – let’s drink to him once more!”
“How many Stalkers died?” Tarasov asks Zlenko.
“I don’t know exactly, but what the guy with the bandage said is true… too many.”
“You’re cool with the guitar, Sarge,” Ilchenko says. “Maybe you should try to cheer them up?”
“Good idea,” Tarasov agrees.
Zlenko pats the Stalker on the shoulder and takes the guitar. “Give that to me… and let’s put mourning behind us.”
“Hello Mama, here I’m writing you again,
Hello, Mama, all is well just like before
The sun is shining, everything is fine
But there’s still fog in the hills.
Mother doesn’t know how hard it is for us
Mother doesn’t know how we walk in the mountains
How our youth is passing here
In Afghanistan, where there’s war.”
Tarasov is familiar with the old song. He’d heard it sung before about Dagestan, the Caucasus and other blood-soaked places. Now Zlenko is eloquently adapting the lyrics to Afghanistan. His swift play and strong voice, filled with the zest of a young man who just survived a horrible fight, give it intoxicating energy.
“You kick ass, dude,” Zenmaster says, clasping. “Back in Canada I used to have my own band. Did you ever think of playing in a band?”
“Here! I switch on the loudspeakers! The radio too!” Ashot says. “All Stalkers must hear this!”
The Stalkers in the bar follow the rhythm with their heads nodding, and by the time he gets to sing the refrain, more and more join in the chorus:
“Among exploding grenades our unit walks
There is shooting in the mountains far
Among grenades exploding and tracers flying by
We march forward, with the trembling earth beneath,
The helicopter’s taking off and we go forward
And some of us will not make it back.
We were so young on the day when we arrived
To Afghanistan, where there’s war
I’ll not forget those warm days in May
And the face of friends who died…”
Slightly under the influence of vodka and carried away by the song, Tarasov imagines Bonesetter tending to the wounded and looking up, wiping blood and sweat from his face; the Stalkers in the compound fixing the blasted URAL truck while Captain Bone’s bodyguards halt their steps around his command post; the men in the Outpost’s bunker gathering around their radio; Uncle Yar listening in while fixing a hopelessly jammed machine gun; the Stalkers on the container ramparts watching the herds of jackals feeding on the corpses outside; and even Crow, the hard-boiled sniper, smiling as he cleans his new Gepard rifle, looking down at the Tribe?
??s Marines who don’t understand the words and just shake their heads while removing dismembered Talib’s hands and fragmented skulls from the chassis of their gruesome trucks.
Zlenko’s voice flies over Bagram like the sound of victory, relieved and joyful but without trying to hide the grief. As soon as he finishes the song, the responses start pouring in through Ashot’s radio.
“This is the Outpost. Play it again or we join the dushmans.”
“Guards here. Stop that. We can’t concentrate on the gate if you play such songs.”
“Yo Ashot! Switch that shit off. It made me fix a Dragoon’s barrel to a PKM… wait a minute, it works perfectly! Play it again, I give you twenty dollars!”
“This is Bonesetter. The wounded want to hear that again. It’s good for their recovery.”
And finally, Bone’s voice comes. “Major… once this fucking Woodstock is over, come and see me.”