"Hello, brothers," I greet my detachment as the other stalkers, led by Valerian, move towards the Flea Market, leaving us alone among the corpses. "How are things at the Cordon?"
"Nothing new, everything's the same," Batut says, approaching and shaking my hand firmly, the others follow his example. "As soon as one of the main troublemakers left, everything settled down."
"Hey, when was I a troublemaker?" I exclaim, observing Trotyl and Kirpich grinning out of the corner of my eye.
"And this is coming from the most outrageous stalker in our entire group, did you hear that, guys?" Batut continues, patting me on the shoulder.
"Look at the smart words you know."
"Of course!" the stocky stalker exclaims loudly, puffing out his chest, and our entire detachment starts laughing at this awkward and not very funny joke. This is exactly what I missed while being here surrounded by people I don't know.
"By the way, how's Mulatto?" after laughing, I ask.
"He's fine," Kirpich replies this time, clasping his hands behind his head. "The wound has already healed and isn't even bleeding, but Valerian insisted that he stay at the base."
"I've never seen him so offended," Trotyl supports his brother.
"It's understandable," Batut interjects. "For once, most of the free stalkers have gathered together to fight the bandits, who have managed to bleed us stalkers quite a bit. I would also be upset if I didn't have the opportunity to participate in all this. Although, maybe he'll manage to get completely stronger before the final battle."
"And how are you guys yourselves? Mute?" after getting a unanimous answer from everyone that they were fine, I move on to the main point. "Did you all hear Valerian?"
"About us needing to go to Agroprom and talk to Orest there?" Kirpich asks.
"Yes, exactly that," I nod. "Maybe one of you is familiar with that area? I wouldn't want to go there without any information."
"I've been there a couple of times with Berkut when we went to the scientists at Yantar," replies Mute, who had been silent until now, approaching me almost closely. "It's a quiet place, but dangerous, so it's better not to stray from the road."
"And what's there?" asks Trotyl.
"Lots of Snorks and Bloodsuckers there," Mute shrugs. "I don't know for sure, we never stayed there."
"Well, thanks for that," I reply with a smile, patting Mute on the shoulder. "Let's go."
Next, we set off towards Agroprom. Not wanting to engage in pointless confrontations, I led them along the right side of the vehicle graveyard. After all, it would be better if the bandits thought it was a single attack on the checkpoint rather than a full-scale offensive on all fronts. We walked slowly and cautiously, stopping from time to time to look around. And, judging by the stalkers' faces, they were very tense, although they tried to put on a brave front.
After walking around the parking lot of abandoned equipment, we passed between a huge pile of garbage that hid the depot behind it and a steep hill, and emerged at the very bandit base. Taking as far left as possible and hiding behind the vegetation, we headed west until we found ourselves in front of abandoned concrete slabs, where a small detachment of mutants was usually located in the game. Not noticing anyone, we walked further.
"Whoa, who showed up here?" a hoarse voice said behind our backs as soon as we rounded the slabs. "Turn around slo-o-owly and drop your guns on the ground. And keep your hands where I can see them!"
"Commander?" Brick whispers quietly, but I shake my head and follow the unknown bandit's instructions.
Slowly,
as instructed, I turn around and see three bandits in front of me. Leather jackets, torn sweatpants, and chevrons with a broken skull on their shoulders. Armed with three AKS-74s, a formidable weapon at such a short distance. Apparently, they hid behind the slabs or sat in the bushes, and we didn't see them. A big mistake, how many times have I sworn to be more vigilant? And yet, here I am again... I adjust the rifle strap and drop it to the ground, followed by the holster with the pistol, and the other members of the squad repeat after me.
"You don't look like diggers," the central bandit says suspiciously, examining us from head to toe, lowering his assault rifle. "Who are you?"
"Just wanderers," I shrug, trying to appear as harmless as possible. "We wanted to go to Agroprom..."
"They wanted to, ha!" he smiles, baring his crooked, long-yellowed teeth from smoking. "Well, no problem, guys. We'll search you now, and you can go your separate ways. Only your guns will have to stay."
The bandits approach us until they stop a few steps away, and two, the right and the left, step forward. Leaving their weapons dangling on their straps, they approach us, intending to start the search. One of them comes almost close to me, the second, a little quicker, has already started rummaging through the pockets of Batut, who was standing to my left. The bandit, who reeked of something sour and stale, reaches for my pockets, but I grab him by his jacket around the chest and push him back with force, immediately drawing the Colt I had prepared from my belt and shooting him in the skull.
The dead man stumbles back a few steps by inertia and falls directly onto the central bandit, who hadn't managed to understand anything, knocking him to the ground. The left one tries to grab his weapon, but Batut has him in a death grip.
"Let go, you so-o-on of a bitch!" he yells frantically, spitting saliva, trying to snatch the assault rifle from the stalker's hands, but he collapses to the ground like a sack of shit after my second shot.
Somehow throwing off the corpse of his comrade, the central one tries to get up, but immediately catches a bullet in the forehead. I put the Colt back in place and pick up my weapon from the ground, as do the other stalkers.
"Nice job, Executioner," Batut says with a smile, quickly unlatching the magazines from the bandits' weapons.
"You did well too," I reply. "But we need to get out of here as soon as possible. It wasn't my plan to start fighting with the brotherhood on the doorstep of their base."
A few hours later, Agroprom.
Although Agroprom was not far from the Garbage Dump, the road there was not easy. Abandoned cars, involved in minor accidents, destroyed asphalt in places, and in a couple of spots, fallen trees lay, not to mention the clusters of craters and ramps. Therefore, in some sections of the path, we had to reduce our already low speed to a minimum to get through.
"Are we there yet, this research institute?" Trotyl, walking at the end of the chain, asks gloomily. "I'm tired of wandering through this forest."
"Ha, and I thought that boar entertained you well," his brother replies cheerfully, remembering how about an hour ago a small boar, by local, Zone standards, jumped out at Trotyl from the undergrowth, which scared him and he accidentally dropped his weapon, running away.
"Oh, go away!" he grumbled indignantly.
"Well, come on," Brick continues. "Don't be offended, it happens to everyone? And remember how I..."
So, under casual chatter, we continue our journey until we stumble upon an iron mesh gate, the leaves of which were slightly ajar. We overcome them and come out to an old, rusted ZIL with deflated tires and a broken wooden partition on one side of the cargo bed. The tent that once covered it had been stolen long ago. A little further behind it were two large green boxes, and behind them stood a white Moskvich with large orange spots all over its body.
We walk a little further along the cracked asphalt and come out to a Duty checkpoint, where there were now five people. Stern stalkers in dark red overalls, armed with Kalashnikovs of the seventy-fourth year of manufacture, and masks hiding the lower half of their faces. Seeing us, the first pair, standing behind barricades of sandbags, clearly perked up and grabbed their weapons tighter, and one of them, turning around, called the Duty leader.
"Senior Sergeant Belazov," a tall stalker introduces himself, approaching one of the barricades, and frowns, looking us over. "Who are you and for what purpose have you come here?"
"Executioner, commander of this group. We are free-lancers," I reply, stepping forward a bit and slinging my weapon over my back. "We came here on business."
"Free-lancers have been coming to Agroprom quite often lately," one of the sentries grumbles quietly, addressing me. "In other months, only a couple of individuals enter our territory, and here, not even two weeks have passed, and another large detachment..."
"Enough, Private Yasensky!" the sergeant sharply turns to the private and reacts loudly to his subordinate's outburst, then turns back. "And for what business have you come here?"
"We want to meet Orest, he's..." I reply, starting to explain, but Belazov interrupts me.
"I know him," he says, and his face smooths out. "You are free."
After that, he turns and walks back to the tent stretched over a couple of mattresses with boxes, squatting down and taking a worn PDA from his wide chest pocket. Our squad calmly passes through the checkpoint, and at some point, I wonder why not try to talk to the checkpoint commander.
"Excuse me, Sergeant," I cautiously call out to the Duty man, standing right in front of him. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"Sit down, and you can use 'you'," he replies, after which I squat down. "Well?"
"Can you tell me more about Agroprom? It's my first time here, I wouldn't want to get into trouble out of foolishness."
"Comrade Senior Sergeant!" Yasensky turns and addresses his superior indignantly. "So, you can talk at the post, but we can't?"
"Hush!" Belazov replies weightily, showing the private a clenched fist. "Oh, this young stalker crowd, they haven't even served in the army..."
"So, are you tired?"
"Not really... They just don't want to follow discipline very well," he replies with a smile in his voice. "But as fighters, they are excellent. Do you want to know something specific or in general?"
"First, in general terms," I smile back at the sergeant, and then turn towards my squad. "Guys, come closer, let's listen to the lecture."
"Well, I don't even know where to start," Belazov scratches the back of his head and coughs before continuing. "Somewhere around the year two thousand, I don't know exactly, the authorities set up a research facility here. What the eggheads were doing here is a mystery; most of the documents were evacuated after the first emission, and what remained is completely classified by our leadership. If I knew, I wouldn't say, but it's definitely related to the military industry."
"Why do you think so?"
"You don't even have to think about it," the Duty man chuckles, waving his hand. "The name 'Agroprom' is just a cover for more serious matters. If you visit the institute's territory, you'll understand everything yourself. A high fence with barbed wire, sniper towers, hangars, barracks, and even a helipad on the roof. All this was there before we arrived; we only had to patch up a couple of walls, and voilà, a ready-made fortified base. A bit too much security for a agricultural institution, don't you think?"
"Very interesting..."
"That's an understatement," Belazov snorts, then beckons me to lean closer and continues in a barely audible whisper. "I don't want to spread rumors among my soldiers, but some of our guys have heard from your kind that not long ago some stalker managed to find underground communications on the territory of the abandoned factory. A couple of brave souls even went down there. They escaped, though, almost immediately from mutants, but what they saw there makes blood run cold. A bunch of pipes, tanks with something strange, and wide corridors. Not much like a regular sewer. And only the Zone knows how many kilometers these catacombs stretch."
"You're suspiciously frank with me, don't you think?" I ask just as quietly.
"Well, you're a newcomer, a stalker at that," he shrugs. "Here today, gone tomorrow. For such talk with your own, you can be punished, but you want to scratch your tongue. Any other questions?"
"Where shouldn't we go?"
"Well, there are many such places," Belazov thinks for a moment. "In the northeast, there's a hollow where a lot of mutants have been gathering lately, in the south, snorks are running rampant, and between the institute and the factory, on a hill, a pseudogiant lives. It's good that it doesn't care about us."
"Really?" I raise an eyebrow questioningly in surprise. "I thought you were supposed to deal with mutants."
"That's how it is, but we have few people, and too many problems, sigh," the sergeant replies, looking at the blue sky obscured by clouds. "In general, keep your eyes peeled here and don't stray from the path. The entrance to our base, if anything, is open to all stalkers, just don't wave your guns around right and left."
"Well, thanks for that too," I get up from my squat. "Farewell."
Then we leave the Duty checkpoint and head towards the factory where the local stalkers are located. We walk along the tree-lined road, turning right at the fork, until, after about ten minutes, we reach a railway track with an abandoned car. To the right is a tunnel where, as I recall, a detachment of bandits is holed up, and to the left, the entrance to the factory is visible with a rusty bus crashed into the fence.
"Whoa, greetings, brother stalkers," says the stalker
guarding the passage to the factory territory as our squad approaches. "What brings you here?"
"From Valerian, we have business with Orest," I say. "Can you tell me where to find him?"
"From Valerian, you say?" he draws out thoughtfully. "Well, you don't look like bandits anyway, so come in. Turn left, and when you get to the courtyard, head for the central building with open large gates, you can't miss it. Just don't go into the adjacent building, it's full of electric anomalies and some crap that affects the brain."
"We'll keep that in mind," I nod to him, and we enter the territory of the stalker base, slinging our weapons over our backs.
Now we can breathe a little, finding ourselves surrounded by free stalkers. Although we shouldn't relax too much, which I whisper to my companions. As far as I remember, the locals were constantly besieged by bandits. However, we'll deal with that too.
We walk through the territory of the abandoned factory, and memories involuntarily surface of how I used to climb around various abandoned places in my hometown as a child. Very authentic. Cracked asphalt and walls, graffiti left by someone, and an innumerable amount of garbage, dilapidated window frames with missing glass, and vegetation overgrown everywhere.
Before reaching the concrete pipes opposite the entrance, I turn left, as instructed. Under the rumble of electrical anomalies, I pass an old truck and a yellow construction trailer, finding myself in a small courtyard where, in the first part, the military had cornered Krot's group. And before these events, if you think about it, there's not more than a year left. Imagine that...
In the center of the courtyard, not far from an old dumpster, stalkers are gathered around a small campfire. They are cheerfully discussing something to the light guitar melody, preparing lunch on the fire, when one of them, not noticing our approach, jumps up and runs to me. In the past week and a half, he has transformed so much that it was impossible to even imagine what he had gone through in the bandit concentration camp.
"Hey, brother!" Pale exclaims loudly, hugging me tightly and patting me on the back. "For those who don't know, this is the stalker who saved our group from the yogi's clutches! If it weren't for him, Tolya wouldn't have made it here. Well, brother, what brings you here? Come to the campfire, sit down. Make yourself at home, we'll give you something to drink and eat, whatever we have."
"I'm glad to see you're okay," I reply with joy to his warm greeting. "But that can wait. I'm here on business, I need to see Orest."
"To Orest? Come with me, I'll show you and help out however I can," the stalker releases me, then turns to those sitting by the fire. "And you guys, don't start without us!"
"Then you'll have to hurry, the food is almost ready!" one of them replies with a smirk, the others support him with laughter, while Pale leads our squad to the leader of the local stalkers.