Roadside Picnic Read Online Free PDF Page A

the huge, faded banner: “Welcome, Visitors.” Tender looked like he was about to wave to them, but I gave him such a jab in the ribs that he immediately dropped all ideas of such ceremonious bye-byes. I’ll show you how to say good-bye. You’ll be saying good-bye yet!
    We were off.
    The institute was on our right and the Plague Quarter on our left. We were traveling from pylon to pylon right down the middle of the street. It had been ages since the last time someone had walked or driven down this street. The asphalt was all cracked, and grass had grown in the cracks. But that was still our human grass. On the sidewalk on our left there was black bramble growing, and you could tell the boundaries of the Zone: the black growth ended at the curb as if it had been mown. Yeah, those visitors were well-behaved. They messed up a lot of things but at least they set themselves clear limits. Even the burning fluff never came to our side of the Zone – and you would think that a stiff wind would do it.
    The houses in the Plague Quarter were chipped and dead. However, the windows weren’t broken. Only they were so dirty that they looked blind. At night, when you crawl past, you can see the glow inside, like alcohol burning with blue tongues. That’s the witches’ jelly breathing in the cellars. Just a quick glance gives you the impression that it’s a neighborhood like any other, the houses are like any others, only in need of repair, but there’s nothing particularly strange about them. Except that there are no people around. That brick house, by the way, was the home of our math teacher. We used to call him The Comma. He was a bore and a failure. His second wife had left him just before the Visitation, and his daughter had a cataract on one eye, and we used to tease her to tears, I remember. When the panic began he and all his neighbors ran to the bridge in their underwear, three miles nonstop. Then he was sick with the plague for a long time. He lost all his skin and his nails. Almost everyone who had lived in the neighborhood was hit, that’s why we call it the Plague Quarter. Some died, mostly the old people, and not too many of them. I, for one, think that they died from fright and not from the plague. It was terrifying. Everyone who lived here got sick. And people in three neighborhoods went blind. Now we call those areas: First Blind Quarter, Second Blind, and so on. They didn’t go completely blind, but got sort of night blindness. By the way, they said that it wasn’t any explosion that caused it, even though there were plenty of explosions; they said they were blinded from a loud noise. They said it got so loud that they immediately lost their vision. The doctors told them that that was impossible and they should try to remember. But they insisted that it was a powerful thunderbolt that blinded them. By the way, no one else heard the thunder at all.
    Yes, it was as though nothing had happened here. There was a glass kiosk, unharmed. A baby carriage in a driveway – even the blankets in it looked clean. The antennas screwed up the effect though – they were overgrown with some hairy stuff that looked like cotton. The eggheads had been cutting their teeth on this cotton problem for some time. You see, they were interested in looking it over. There wasn’t any other like it anywhere. Only in the Plague Quarter and only on the antennas. And most important, it was right there, under their very windows. Finally they had a bright idea: they lowered an anchor on a steel cable from a helicopter and hooked a piece of cotton. As soon as the helicopter pulled at it, there was a pssst! We looked and saw smoke coming from the antenna, from the anchor, and from the cable. The cable wasn’t just smoking – it was hissing poisonously, like a rattler. Well, the pilot was no fool – there was a reason why he was a lieutenant – he quickly figured what was what and dropped the cable and made a quick getaway. There it was, the