Visiting Sid's All Night Eating and Rip-Off Emporium isn't nearly as much fun nor as time killing as I'd like. Plus there's that blowout coming in the "morning". Maybe it'll pass soon and I'll get the daylight all to myself. Yeah right. For now I hover around the edges of camp and twiddle my thumbs.
It's a really moonless night. The kind that makes the headlamp range seem just that much more pathetic somehow. I think if I wandered out there I'd prefer to turn it off. If sudden charging death is a split second away I'm not sure I want to know.
Stalker Nights (artists impression)
So instead I hang around with the gate guard listening to the trilling of some anomaly in the distance, the odd howl from some horror of the wildlife, the guy on the PA down at the army post berrating his men all night long. I wait for the light. Patience; that's the key.
