STALKER Southern Comfort — Balazs Pataki

In 2011, another Zone is apparently created after Al-Qaeda detonated nukes in Afghanistan. Ukrainian authorities send a research team to verify the claims. The scientists go missing and a search and rescue operation is launched.For Mikhailo Tarasov, officer in the armed forces who desperately try to contain the Exclusion Zone, this mutant-infested wilderness 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. Tarasov is aided by unlikely allies - 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.Whatever power had created the Zone, it has outsmarted us and it has happened again. You will look at the New Zone with fresh eyes... like Strelok did here when everything began.Major Alexander Degtyarev, 2014STALKER: Southern Comfort, the highly acclaimed first English novel from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe, is now available as a free to download e-book on Smashwords.