"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

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 aces-go 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 lime.
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... ."
"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