After the Second Chernobyl disaster, the area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant became the Zone—filled with deadly anomalies and predatory mutants. UN forces cordoned it off along the perimeter to keep the horror and madness from spilling into the outside world.
However, sometimes a person’s life turns out so that he has to look for salvation in this cursed land. A fighter of the Russian peacekeeping battalion, Nikita Nefedov—broken by the torment of “demobbed” soldiers and thrust into a hopeless situation—goes into the Zone and joins the wild life of stalkers, members of local smuggling groups.
To survive there, he has to become a completely different person and master many useful skills—the main of which are the ability to shoot and to live through any situation. From a timid “spirit,” he turns into a ruthless killer with the call sign Deserter…