Southern Comfort — Balazs Pataki

Somewhere in the former USSR lies a place called the Zone of Alienation: a secret area where physical laws are outright broken and mysterious phenomena manifest. In 2011, Al Qaeda detonates nuclear warheads in Kabul. In the wake of devastation another Zone is apparently created. A scientific expedition tries to find out if the new phenomena could be connected to the first Zone of Alienation. When the researchers disappear, a search and rescue operation is launched. For Mikhail Lazarov, commander of the Russian special forces trying to contain the Zone of Alienation, this land of lush decay is his home turf. But when he sets out on his mission into the New Zone, he soon finds himself facing perils he has never encountered before. His mission becomes a struggle against evil permeating the wastelands, confronted with the shadows of the country's troubled history at each step. Lazarov encounters unlikely friends and foes alike: outcasts, adventurers, renegade US Marines and a mysterious woman who appears to be the keeper of dark secrets. But beyond all the perils, the ultimate danger awaits: betrayal. The noir, post-apocalyptic narrative of Southern Comfort takes the reader on a contemporary voyage into the heart of darkness, where not only the laws of physics are bent but the rules of the outside world as well. This is an alternative reality where outcasts prevail, the oppressed take revenge and the most faithful revolt.