"Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

my head empty, my soul empty. Gulping down the strong stuff like it was water. Alive. The Zone had let
me out. It let me out, the bitch. The damn, treacherous bitch. I was alive. The greenhorns could never
appreciate that. Only a stalker could. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, from the booze or what, I
don't know. I sucked the flask dry. I was wet, and the flask was dry. It didn't have that one last gulp that
I needed, of course. But that could be fixed. Everything could be fixed now. Alive. I lit a cigarette. I sat
there and felt that I was coming round. The bonus pay came into my mind. That was a good deal we had
at the institute. I could go right now and pick up the envelope. Or maybe they'd bring it to me here in the
showers.
I started undressing slowly. I took off my watch, and saw that we had spent five hours in the Zone.
My God! Five hours. I shuddered.
God, there really is no time in the Zone. Five hours. But if you think about it, what's five hours to a
stalker? A snap. How about twelve? Or how about two days? If you don't manage in one night, you
spend the whole day face down on the ground. And you don't even pray, but mutter deliriously, and you
don't know if you're dead or alive. And then you finish up the second night and get to the patrol point
with your swag. The guards are there with their machine guns. And those bastards, those toads really
hate you. There's no great joy in arresting you, they're terrified that you're contaminated. All they want to
do is bump you off and they've got all the acesтАФgo prove that you were killed illegally. So that means
you bury your face in the dirt again and pray until dawn and until dark again. And the swag lies next to
you and you don't know whether it's just lying there or slowly killing you. Or you could end up like
Knuckles Itzak, who got stuck at dawn in an open space. He got off the track and ended up between
two ditches. He couldn't go right or left. They shot at him for two hours, but couldn't hit him. For two
hours he made believe he was dead. Thank God, they finally believed it and left. I saw him after that. I
couldn't even recognize him. He was a broken man, no longer human.
I wiped my tears and turned on the water. I showered for a long time. First hot, then cold, then hot
again. I used up a whole bar of soap. Then I got bored. I turned off the shower. Someone was banging
on the door. Kirill was shouting:
"Hey, you stalker! Come on out of there! There's a scent of the green around here."
Greenbacks, that's always good. I opened the door. He was standing there, half naked, in his shorts.
He was ecstatic, his melancholy gone. He handed me the envelope.
"Here," he said. "From a grateful humanity."
"I spit on your humanity. How much is there?"
"In view of your bravery beyond the call of duty, and as an exception, two months' pay!"
Yes, I could live on that kind of money. If I could get two months' pay for every empty, I could have
sent Ernest packing a long time ago.
"Well, are you pleased?" He was glowing, positively radiant, grinning from ear to ear.
"Not bad. And you?"
He didn't answer. He hugged my neck, pressed me to his sweaty chest, pushed me away, and
disappeared into the next stall.
"Hey!" I shouted after him. "How's Tender? Washing out his underpants, I bet?"
"No way. Tender is surrounded by reporters. You should see him. He's such a big shot. He's telling
them authoritatively тАж "
"How is he telling them?"
"Authoritatively."
"OK, sir. Next time I'll bring my dictionary along, sir." Then it was like an electric shock. "Wait, Kirill.
Come out here."
"I'm naked."
"Come out. I'm not a dame."
He came out. I took him by the shoulders and turned his back toward me. Nope. I must have
imagined it. His back was clean. The rivulets of sweat dried up.
"What's with you and my back?" he asked.