“Actually, I was asking what you will do next? Because you could join me on a good old-fashioned Stalker raid.”
“What do you mean by that, Misha?”
“Crossing the whole New Zone for the sake of a foul-smelling, moldering, underground science facility and find all kinds of weird stuff and creatures inside who want to eat your face.”
“Where?” Mac curiously asks.
“Some old Soviet lab in Panjir valley.”
She smiles. “Always wanted to go there. But, but, but — promise me that we’ll search for Ahuizotl on our way. What happened was not his fault!”
“Sounds like a deal.”
“As for me, I’m ready right now!”
“Still bitten by the travel bug, I see… Ne boysa, Mac. We’ll leave soon enough but I need a little rest.”
“I too would love to see an underground I haven’t been to yet,” Degtyarev says.
Tarasov gives him a grin. “Alex, I still don’t know what to do about you — kick your butt for Operation Haystack or be excited about a chance to kick ass together with you!”
“I was actually afraid that once I told you who I am, you’d just punch me for Haystack,” Degtyarev replies.
“You have that still coming, but for now your punishment is to see how the New Zone is. You will deeply regret not having come here earlier.”
“Matter of fact, I could use a change from the Exclusion Zone. Winter is not a good time for exploring it—and there’s not much left for me to explore there anyway.”
“It will be for ever, Alex.”
Degtyarev has no time to reply. When they enter the cargo bay, they expect to find gloomy prisoners but instead they see the Loners-turned-Bandits-turned-Loners celebrating.
“What the hell is going on here?” Tarasov asks.
“Five crates of vodka, and they ain’t going anywhere!” a red-nosed Ferret yells cheerily. “All belongs to us now, all!”
Buryat stumbles forward and puts his arm around Ferret’s neck. “Cossacks vodka! Makes me love everyone. Even this bastard of a Freedomer!”
“Glad to see you two didn’t kill each other in the end.”
“You see, I decided to spare his life… for now,” the already drunk Dutyer says.
“Nay, man. You tried to shu-shu… shoot me but missed from two meters,” Ferret says, as drunk as Buryat. “Or was it by two meters? Ah, never mind. Duty rifle skills are crap, either way…”
“I didn’t shoot you. I just showed you the muzzle of my gun and told you, this side of it there ain’t no gomiks!”
“Come on, handsome, didn’t you just say you love me?” Ferret says and gives the Dutyer a kiss on his cheek who is too intoxicated to push him away — at least that’s how it appears.
“So that’s your team,” Degtyarev says grinning and takes a bottle of vodka from an open crate.
“A real challenge, yes.”
“I guess it makes no sense to count odd and even now,” Mac says. “Let’s just drink!”
But with most of the Stalkers being Russians or Ukrainians, everyone is demanding a toast — even if they already had more than they could count.
“Let’s drink to a steady hand!”
“To work progressing!”
“To a good raid!”
“May we suffer as much sorrow in the New Zone as drops of vodka we’re about to leave in our bottles,” Tarasov says raising his vodka bottle. ”May we remember forever all friends we lost on our way here. But first of all — let’s drink to the living. God bless you, Stalkers — we have arrived!”
84
Cold wind blows and swirls up brown sand that tastes like defeat on Skinner’s tongue.
He has been marching for days without any apparent aim. All he knows is that Bagram is no longer a refuge to him; not even the greenest Stalker would believe him anymore.
The dushmans are scattered; the few who made it back to the deadly areas to the south could still count themselves lucky while the Tribe, the cursed, yet once more triumphant Tribe mercilessly hunts down the rest.
His mutant brothers are gone, too; those who had not perished in the inferno beneath the Alamo’s walls were scattered, each of them trying to survive on his own.
During sleepless nights, when the cold forced him to seek shelter in caves or ruins and the howls of jackals were his only company, he kept asking himself the same question again and again: where did he fail? His plan was so perfect and all going so well until that damned airplane came. Who was aboard? It didn’t matter — Skinner was certain about one thing only: should he ever find out who it was, and should fate ever give him a chance to get to that man, he would deal him a thousand deaths.
If he was fully mutant, he could just exist on; hunting, feeding, maybe even finding a way to breed. He grins at the thought of a naïve female Stalker trying her luck in the New Zone and what he would do to her. Still half human, he has the ability to hope, even though he curses hope; he would find it so much better to live the stupid, single-minded life of a mutant and let go of thinking of his future. Because thinking of this leads to despair — alone, having even discharged his now-useless rifle and clad in rags, he has nothing left to hope for.
Such gloomy thoughts keep occupying Skinner’s mind when he navigates his way to the Panjir valley. He has no particular destination there; he will lead no more greedy Stalkers into the depths of the secret facility to turn them into smiters, and never again will he have at least a pack of mutants to help him fulfill any plan he still might have. For the time being, though, it is dusk and with temperatures soon falling below zero, he’d better seeks a shelter for the night.
He sees a ruined farmstead on a hill not far and makes his way towards it with exhausted, slow steps. The wind becomes stronger as he approaches and he pulls his gas mask on to protect his face from the biting cold.
“Stoi!”
Obeying the command barked by an unseen sentry, Skinner stops and holds his hands up.
“Stalker coming through!” he shouts. “Don’t shoot, brother!”
“Stay where you are!”
Two armed men appear out of nowhere. Skinner notices with surprise that they are neither Stalkers nor Bandits but well-equipped Spetsnaz commandos. The only thing more surprising than their appearance is that they hadn't already shot him.
“He’s unarmed,” a Spetsnaz reports.
“Bring him up, Vlasov,” the sentry responds.
Skinner can see him now. He appears to be an officer, armed with — yet another surprise — a US-made sniper rifle.
He is led to the nearest ruin. A campfire burns inside and several commandos are warming themselves at it. They appear tired and beaten.
“You come from Bagram?” the marksman asks. He takes off his helmet and sits down at the fire. A black eye patch covers his left eye.
“I’ve been everywhere,” Skinner replies. He forces himself to be calm. Talking is not easy with the barrel of an AKM assault rifle pointed against his ribs.
“You know this area?”
For a moment, Skinner thinks about just unleashing his wrath on them. He doesn’t need their weapons and ammunition, but there is a smell around the men that makes his stomach rumble.
The Spetsnaz behind him bashes Skinner in the back.
“Answer Captain Maksimenko’s question, Stalker!”
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” the half-eyed Spetsnaz replies. “Come, sit down. You look like you could use food, Stalker. Answer us a few questions and we’ll give you some. Be stubborn, and we kill you.”
“Why don’t we kill him right now?” another commando asks. “Look at how big he is. He’ll eat for two!”