Descending the steps to the first floor, I look for my team, who are now outside, by one of the bonfires, quietly talking with local stalkers. I approach quietly, listening to the conversation, but it's just meaningless chatter.
"Last year I dug up about twenty artifacts, all at the Garbage and the Cordon," Brick boasts, puffing out his chest. "If you want, I can teach you how to do it right..."
"Maybe you can teach me how to find artifacts too?" I say loudly right into his ear, grabbing him by the shoulder.
"Ooh, mother!" the stalker jumps up, turning around and clutching his heart, then says indignantly. "Commander, you..."
"Enough talking, we have business," I interrupt him and nod towards the mercenary standing a little further away. "We need to discuss it."
To the light chuckles of Orest's vagrants, we walk over to Scar, who is by the open iron gates. The mercenary looks my companions up and down assessingly and snorts condescendingly, which doesn't escape the stalkers. Batut already wants to say something, you can see it from the swollen veins on his neck. But I, raising a clenched fist, don't let this argument start.
"Scar, you'd better apologize to the guys," I say, looking directly into the mercenary's eyes, and then turn to my team. "And you, don't hold a grudge, we'll have to work together."
"Work together?.." Trotyl exclaims, to which I nod and turn my gaze back to the mercenary.
"I apologize, I didn't mean to offend you," Scar says with a slight hesitation, clearly uncomfortable asking for forgiveness from ordinary stalkers. It clearly hurt his pride, but I couldn't just let it go. After all, as commander, I have to take care of and protect my fighters.
"No hard feelings," Batut exhales unhappily, finally calming down. "But only this time."
"So, here's the deal," I begin, pausing slightly and drawing their attention to me. "Orest agrees to help us, but, as usual, we first have to deal with his problems. There are two of them, and both involve bandits. One is on the hill to the west of here, the other is in the railway tunnel to the east, we passed there not long ago. Any questions?"
"What's their number and how will we act?" the hot-tempered stalker asks.
"About five people on the hill, maybe a little more, and in the tunnel – who the hell knows," I shrug. "Here's the proposal, let's start with those to the west. The roof offers a great view of their camp..."
"Can you even hit them from that distance?" Scar immediately understands my thought and snorts incredulously, calculating something in his head. "It's about a kilometer to them, if not more. A serious shooting distance, especially on such a windy day."
"Quite," I reply. "So, I'll start shooting and distract them. The bandits will surely start hiding and running like rats, and you'll catch them and finish off the rest. We'll deal with the tunnel ones later. Questions?"
The camp on the hill by the swamp, an hour later.
Three criminals, relaxed, sat around a campfire, chatting casually, playing twenty-one with oiled cards and roasting juicy slices of local game meat over the fire. Another bandit, sitting a little apart from the campfire on a small stump, played a simple melody on an old guitar. Two more were sleeping in a tent after the night assault on the factory. And the lookout, stretching, turns and heads towards the campfire.
"Boss, maybe a shot?" he rasply drawls, squatting down and lifting a half-empty bottle with a peeling label from an open backpack.
"No," the leader flatly refuses, sighing, throwing his losing cards on the ground, and standing up. "You know what Yoga ordered. And you'd better go back to your post."
"Bah, nothing will happen in a couple of minutes," he waves his hand and spits, carefully putting the vodka back. "Ah, why are they sending us all into battle today? Maybe in a couple more weeks, they'd have run off themselves."
"Heh," another one interjects, putting his guitar aside. "Looks like he's cornered, *cough*, by circumstances. Well, no
matter, the guys will get to us by evening, and then we'll raise these stalkers to the knife..."
Suddenly, a bullet flies from somewhere to the east, cutting off the speaker and tearing a stream of blood and a piece of bone and meat from his skull. The already dead bandit falls face-first into the fire, immediately igniting with bright sparks of scarlet flame. The bandits throw themselves to the ground, frantically drawing their weapons, only their leader tries to see where the attack came from, standing at full height. But he was not destined to see anything, and he falls to the ground with a shot-through head.
"Hey, what's going on over there? You're not letting me sleep," a bandit, woken up after the night's revelry, mutters sleepily, yawning and coming out of the tent.
"They attacked us!" the raspy one shouts, coughing from the tension in his throat. "Get down!"
"Huh?" the other one drawls incomprehensibly, staring stupidly at his comrades lying on the ground.
Another shot, and the dead one falls onto the tent, crushing it beneath him, and preventing the second sleeper from getting out. The raspy bandit, cursing hoarsely into his sweat-soaked sleeve, tries to get up on his elbows and look around, but it was too late. A stalker with a stern face, crossed by a scar, and gray-blue eyes, points the barrel of a Kalashnikov at him.
For them, it was all over.
Agroprom Factory, the same time.
Well, that's it, all that's left is to wait for the guys to return, and we can move towards the tunnel. For the second time, I descend the stairs and immediately run into Burned, in the company of Pale. The burned vagrant stood opposite the passage to the other building, leaning his back against the dusty wall, and his brother sat on his haunches right by the stairs. Both stalkers looked at me intently.
"What?" the first one asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well, how was it?" Pale replies with a question, with a half-smile on his lips.
"The job is done, all that's left is to deal with the tunnel rats," I shrug, but I'm met with surprised looks.
"So easy?" Burned raises his eyebrows, clearly surprised.
"Well... yes," I look at him incomprehensibly. "Life generally becomes much easier if you know how to shoot accurately."
"Hahaha!" Pale laughs heartily, standing up and clapping me on the shoulder. "That's my savior!"
"Why did you come here?"
"Many got worried when they heard shooting from the roof," Burned explains, peeling himself off the wall. "So Orest asked me to check on you. And my little brother tagged along. Ha, I didn't even think it would be so easy to deal with them."
"Yeah, right," his brother remarks sarcastically. "It's 'easy' only if you're a sniper. Which can't be said about you, brother."
"Shut up!"
"By the way, can you help with something?" I ask them, before the brotherly argument escalates into something more.
"However we can, as they say," Burned says, and Pale nods in confirmation.
"I have a little job coming up soon where some rapid-fire weapon wouldn't hurt," I say, taking the sniper rifle off my shoulder. "And I'd like to leave my rifle with you for safekeeping, and in return, buy a good Kalash with a lot of ammo for it."
"No problem," the burned stalker replies. "You go to Drozd for now, and I'll pop in to see Orest..."
Nodding to the stalker who walked ahead, his brother and I head to the local merchant. We walk through the covered passage and find ourselves on the second floor of the central building of the entire factory complex. The technician, briefly tearing himself away from his work, nods to us before diving back into the world of details. Drozd is found in his usual place, where he is again looking at naked beauties on the pages of a glossy magazine.
"And you're up to no good again, Drozd," Pale says as we approach.
"Stop embarrassing me!" the merchant exclaims loudly, quickly hiding the magazine somewhere under the table.
"And don't be embarrassed, little chick," the stalker continues with a smirk, and then the sly smile disappears from his face. "But, we're here on business. We need a good Kalash, six full magazines for it, and another hundred and eighty rounds on top of that."
"I'd also like a headlamp and that axe over there," I add, pointing to an axe lying on the floor by the far wall, slightly covered in rust. It'll do for chopping bones.
"Oh," Pale listens to me with half a turn. "And a headlamp and an axe."
"Thirty thousand," the merchant says grimly after a short pause, during which he clearly calculated the cost of his services. The amount he quoted made my eyebrows shoot up. Even Sidorovich wouldn't charge such prices. "And that's with a big discount, consider it almost at cost."
"Aren't you asking too much?!" the stalker accompanying me asks angrily, hitting the table with both palms loudly.
"I can't do anything about it," Drozd shrugs and looks away, continuing more quietly. "Good weapons and ammo are scarce here. If you lived with us here for a while longer, instead of just resting and drinking, you'd understand yourself. The Duty guys are willing to sell ammo only on the condition that we bring them trophies from local creatures, and even then with a big markup. Weapons are out of the question. And considering the overall exhaustion of the guys and the constant attacks from those scumbags, we're not yet able to buy ammunition on a regular basis..."
"Enough, Drozd," Burned, who has returned from Orest, says to him. "Give him what he asked for, the chief's order. And you, Palach, don't let us down and deal with the brothers. Consider this your reward for the job."
"I promise."
A little later, I go downstairs with new weapons on my shoulders, magazines stuffed into my vest, and a scattering of bullets in my backpack, with an axe hanging behind it. And just in time, my companions have returned to the camp and are already waiting for me by the metal gates. And if the stalkers were clearly tipsy after this small skirmish, only Silent maintained his quiet composure, the mercenary, in contrast, was unusually grim and cast ambiguous glances at me.
"Oh, why did you change your rifle?" Brick asks, noticing my new acquisition and pointing at it.
"Just needed to," I exhale shortly. "Is everyone ready?"
"So we'll go right away, without even resting?" the stalker continues.
"The faster we finish, the faster you'll rest, let's go."
We walk past the dying campfire to a light and painfully familiar guitar melody, heading towards the eastern exit from the former factory territory. Once at the broken barrier, we pass an old bus and continue along the railway tracks. After a couple of minutes, we are already in place.
I peer into the darkness of the wide tunnel, calculating the plan of action in my head, and realize that the mercenary and I will have to visit the bandits. It's unlikely we'll be able to lure them into an open fight, they're not that stupid, and I have serious doubts about our guys' ability to sneak up quietly.
"Scar, how are you with stealth?" I casually throw out, continuing to examine the brick-lined arches.
"I don't complain," he replies curtly.
"Do you think we can sneak up on our targets together?"
"Yes."
"In what sense, together? What about us?" the two stalker brothers say almost in unison.
"You'll wait here, if anything – we'll call you for help," I continue. "Let's go, mercenary."
I take off my backpack from my back, hand it over to the grim Batut, and look at my companions again. The stalkers were clearly not very happy about the prospect of missing a chance to spill more bandit blood, as evidenced by their furrowed brows and pursed lips. But it will be better for all of us this way. I smile encouragingly at them and turn towards the tunnel, immediately taking a few steps in its direction.
I slightly bend my knees, stepping softly on the rotten wooden beams connecting the rails, and take the Kalash in my hands, switching the firing mode to automatic. Scar walks somewhere behind, making almost no noise. And, after walking a few meters into the darkness, I stop to let my eyes adjust to the gloom, and as soon as the outlines of objects become clear, I continue moving.
I go around a discarded fuel tank, keeping to the left wall, and head straight until I reach a small recess in the wall with a sturdy, iron-clad door, locked with a combination lock, clearly attached here much later than the great explosion. Apparently, it's the very door that Hound mentioned, but that can wait.
We continue to go around the abandoned metal debris and train remnants until we are very close to the organized bandit shelter. I signal Scar to stay on the left side, and I, briefly peeking out and making sure the bandits aren't looking in our direction, quickly and quietly run to the opposite side, hiding behind a fence of rusty sheet metal.
"Kissed, you see, two cars in the Zone, from one stalkers climbed out, from the second," one of the bandits sitting by the campfire, lit between the tracks, hoarsely tells a joke. "And, in short, there was a showdown, a real one. And the controller in his hideout is grinning and saying: 'Oh, great, the clearing is about to be covered – it's not shameful to call the guys.'"
"Ah-ha-ha, no, you're pure comedy!" the others laugh heartily, not suspecting that this is their last joke in life.
I peek out again briefly and count only six, and they're sitting so conveniently by the fire. A couple of short bursts, aimed at the criminals, and this camp is no more. I turn my gaze to the mercenary, his shoulder pressed against the car, and nod to him, indicating my readiness. Scar, in turn, shows me three fingers, alternately folding them. Three, two, one...
Eastern Tunnel, the same time.
A small stalker squad, stationed by a discarded train, was not in the best mood, except for one stalker. First, the condescending
snorts from some lousy mercenary, and then the fact that they were left here, forced to wait for the job to be finished. Batut paced nervously on a small embankment, sending another pebble flying into a long flight from time to time. Silent, in turn, sat on the plank floor of a slightly open carriage and looked at the sky, obscured by clouds of various shapes, chewing a small blade of grass with his front teeth. And the brothers, Trotyl and Brick, waited for the leader's return, looking tensely into the darkness of the tunnel and tightly clenching their hands on their weapons.
"Rgh!" growls the stocky stalker, kicking a round copper-colored stone with all his might. "How angry I am that they left us here!"
"Don't make noise, Batut," the usually silent vagrant calmly tells him. "And think a little, they couldn't have taken us with them."
"Why?"
"What do you think our commander was before he joined our clan?" Silent asks, ignoring the question, taking the chewed blade of grass out of his mouth and throwing it on the ground.
"Um, a newbie?" Brick drawls, half-turning to the other stalkers. "He came from the Ante-room, it seems."
"What are you getting at, Silent?" Batut asks, now calmer, approaching and resting his elbow on the wooden covering of the carriage.
"That Palach is probably one of the 'blues', and this Scar is clearly helping us for a reason today," the stalker shrugs, bending down and picking another blade of grass, immediately clenching it between his teeth. "Judge for yourselves. His mannerisms, the way he moves, and his skills. Especially how he took down three with a rifle today? Do you really think any stalker can do that? No-o-o, brothers, you need skill for that. And two years of service clearly won't be enough to learn that."
"You're unusually talkative today," grumbles the disgruntled stalker. "And I still don't understand what you're getting at."
"We would only have gotten in their way there," the other replies, nodding towards the tunnel. "Didn't you see how they literally dissolved into the semi-darkness? So stop it, don't get hot-headed and be glad that everything was resolved so easily here."
"So if Palach is a mercenary, shouldn't we inform Valerian about it?" Trotyl asks cautiously.
"Bah, you cardboard idiot," Brick says, lightly hitting his brother's shoulder with his fist. "Do you think he doesn't know? And besides, what difference does it make to us where Palach is from, if he's ours. And there's no doubt about his loyalty, he's shed enough blood for us."
The small stalker camp falls silent, filled with the thoughts of several vagrants. Each of them thought about their own thing, but they all agreed that their squad leader could absolutely be trusted. How many stories they had already heard about him, and he always steadfastly went to the end, not abandoning his own to fate. And then the hanging silence was broken by the sound of shots, a rumble that reached them from the tunnel.
"Well, shall we go meet the commander?" Batut, now cooled down, says with a slight smile.
Eastern Tunnel, a little later.
Having finished searching the dead and giving everything collected to the team, I send them to Orest's base to report that there are no problems with bandits for now, to sell what's unnecessary and to rest well, letting off steam. However, by the time we returned, my brave warriors had already cooled down. Well, it's for the best. In any case, they clearly wouldn't hurt to gain strength.
"Now I'm at your complete disposal," I say, watching my guys' backs. "Where now?"
"Let's go to the Duty base," the mercenary replies, exhaling loudly, then takes a couple of steps forward, but suddenly stops next to a power line support, and, turning to me, says: "You're an interesting person, Palach. Very."
"What are you getting at?"
"You're too complex a stalker, even though you try to seem ordinary," he says, looking intently into my eyes, as if trying to find some answers to unasked questions, but after a few seconds, he looks away and turns back. "Alright, it's not my business, I have a ton of my own secrets. But... I'm glad you're on my side. Really."
"As you say, mercenary," I reply awkwardly.
Ha-ha, one can only guess what images of me are forming in the minds of other stalkers, since even the game's protagonist notes my unusualness. And I would be lying if I said it didn't flatter me. It does, and how! The desire to live with a clear conscience and help my neighbors to the best of my ability pays off handsomely, giving me an excellent reputation as a reliable and skilled stalker. But from now on, alas, I need to be more cautious and not show off my skills too much. Until now, I've been very lucky with good people in these parts, but it can't go on forever. Sooner or later, I'll run into those who want to get rid of me because of my talents, considering me a great threat to their schemes.
"Hey," Belazov calls out loudly as we reach a fork in the road near the Duty outpost. The sergeant stands right on it, accompanied by his men. "So we meet again, Executioner. Where are you headed? And with a mercenary, no less?"
"It's fate, nothing less," I step forward with a slight smile, approaching the Duty squad at close range. "We're heading to your base, on business, and what brings you here? I thought you were supposed to be at the checkpoint."
"Shift change," the sergeant replies good-naturedly. "Finally, we can get some decent rest. Since your road leads to us, you don't mind walking together? The roads are dangerous these days, it'll be calmer together."
"We're all for it," I reply for both of us.
And so, joining the Duty squad, we continue along the cracked asphalt road to the west. A pleasant wind blows directly into our faces, swaying the branches of the small trees along the road with its gusts. And then, a few dozen meters away, we see an old bus stop, once intended for transporting factory and research institute employees, with a blue bus that will never run again. We were only a few meters away from it when what I had managed to forget happened.
Somewhere to the left, in the thickets of bushes, a loud roar erupted, which could not be confused with any other mutant inhabiting the Zone. A Bloodsucker. The creature leaps directly onto the road, unafraid of our large and well-armed squad, and rushes straight at me, standing in the center. Realizing what's happening, I throw aside my assault rifle, knowing I won't have time to aim properly, and reach for my knife as the creature, like a seasoned American football player, knocks me off my feet. Damn canon.
My right arm and part of my back burn with sharp pain, but by some miracle, I didn't hit my head and lose consciousness. And at that moment, my palm just grips the handle of the blade. The Bloodsucker roars triumphantly, while the hesitant stalkers decide to open fire, not wanting to hit me, and grabs me by the chest, bending down and preparing to leap. Pulling out my knife and bringing it behind my right side, I swing with all my might and cut the mutant's throat along with its tentacles that rained down on me. The triumphant roar turns into a gurgle, the Bloodsucker bewilderedly presses its hand to its throat, trying to stop the blood, but then Shram kicks it away and finishes the mutant with a precise shot to the head, after which he helps me up.
"How are you?" the mercenary asks as soon as I'm on my feet.
"Could be better," I sigh deeply, shaking off the slightly twitching tentacles from my suit, and pick up my dropped assault rifle.
"Did you see how they did him?" Yasensky whispers quietly to his fellow privates, pointing at the killed Bloodsucker. "Executioner with a knife – *chik*, and the mercenary..."
"We all saw that, Yasensky," Belozorov replies sternly, and the privates immediately fall silent, after which he carefully examines me. "Did it hurt you badly? I can provide first aid."
"No, everything's fine, thank you," I reply with a smile. "But I have no desire to linger here any longer."
After that, we hurried on and reached the Duty base without incident.