The major stops and shakes his head, as if to rid himself of a headache. A glimpse at the Geiger counter tells him that radiation levels are slightly above normal, but still below the dangerous level.
Tarasov removes his gas mask to allow him to breath with more ease. The sickening odor of rotting earth immediately assails his nostrils, making him grimace with disgust.
Whenever he pauses the forest seems to want to suck him in, to make him part of it. Trees, bushes, stones, water — all around is dead.
As he sneaks from cover to cover, his weapon held ready, the brown mass of an abandoned armored vehicle looms ahead of him. Moving closer, Tarasov sees it is the first of three. It might have been a convoy, but he doesn’t recognize the type of vehicles. The only thing he is sure of is that they are not from the Soviet war. Looking at the holes in their hulls, it is also clear to him that they were ambushed.
Curious, he opens the hatch of the first one and peers inside. His heart almost stops beating when he hears a hiss and senses rather than sees the movement inside. He just manages to duck aside as a snake’s mouth darts towards his face. But now he has better options than in the cave. He throws a grenade inside before frantically slamming the hatch closed. Jumping off the vehicle, his feet have barely touched the ground before a muted explosion shakes the wreck. The smell of burnt flesh and putrid decay rises from inside when he opens the hatch again.
Inside, among bloody shreds of snake flesh and the rotting remains of a small mutant that looks like a jackal pup to Tarasov, he sees hundreds of cartridge casings.
Whoever was inside here must have put up a desperate fight, he thinks, unaware of the grimace on his face.
He picks up a pocketful of shells, thinking that they’ll come in handy if or when he encounters another anomaly, and has almost closed the hatch again when he notices something among the shells. Picking it up and wiping off the grime reveals it to be an old-fashioned mobile phone. Unsure of whether it can be of any use or if it might at least offer a clue about the convoy’s fate, the major puts it into his pocket.
Here and there the gloomy undergrowth is pierced by a ray of light, making the dust visible. But the shadows deepen as the sunlight fades. Tarasov anxiously sees that, judging by the distance to the mountains, he has barely covered one third of the distance to Bagram.
I hope I don’t get lost. Spending the night here would not be pleasant at all.
His thoughts are interrupted by a howl, followed by a deep, aggressive growling. More howls join in, forming a chorus. He takes a few steps in the direction of the sound. Cautiously peering through a bush, he sees a clearing in the woods and a pack of jackals running toward him. He raises his rifle but by the time he takes aim, the jackals have reached his position — and to his surprise run on, ignoring him. Tarasov has no time for relief because after a few moments, a huge, lumbering shadow emerges from the undergrowth. It is the biggest mutant he has ever seen — its furry head resembling that of a bear but the mouth open stretching down to its neck, showing a double row of bloodied teeth. Its side is covered with deep wounds, but the mutant seems to ignore them as it turns toward Tarasov with a blood-curdling growl. He is not sure if he can kill this beast with the ammo he has loaded, or if he had time at all to change the magazine once it is empty, so he does the only thing he can. He runs.
He would have no chance in the open, but here among the dense woods he moves with more agility than his lumbering adversary and jumps over a low mud wall into what might have been an orchard in the past. After a few meters, he looks back, thinking that the bear-like mutant had been unable to follow him. Then a brick crumbles, then more, and Tarasov sees with horror that the mutant simply broke through the wall. He runs on, out of breath, with a stinging pain in his kidneys. The growling behind him draws closer with every step. Suddenly he sees a large pool of mud, with stains of reddish water oozing a fiery vapor. He can’t dodge it and besides, even with the meager protection his suit offers, he has more chance of surviving an anomaly than the assault of the raging mutant.
Tarasov holds his breath and jumps. Rolling on the ground, burning pain bites into his sizzling skin. Moaning, he manages to raise himself into a kneeling position, ready to fire, knowing he’s no longer able to run.
The old Stalker trick of running towards an anomaly, evading it at the last moment and then watching the mutants running headlong into the trap had saved him many times back in the Zone. But now, to his horror Tarasov sees that the mutant stops and walks up and down in front of the anomalies, as if debating whether if it could jump over to finish the hunt. Then, to Tarasov’s even greater shock, it stretches its dreadful head forward and starts sniffing around the anomalies, until it finds a path through the sizzling, muddy substance.
Damn! This wretched beast is smart, Tarasov thinks as he desperately crawls backwards.
Halfway through the anomalies, the mutant rears up on its legs, unleashing a deafening roar. It is probably intended to paralyze its prey, leaving them wide-eyed and defenseless with horror, but Tarasov still has enough control over his body to raise his weapon and empty the magazine into the mutant’s torso. But as he fires his last cartridge, the shooting doesn’t stop. Perplexed, Tarasov sees heavy bullets still pouring into the mutant’s flesh until it emits a pain-filled yelp and falls right into the anomaly. Its fur catches fire immediately and Tarasov, gasping for air, watches it being consumed by acidic flames.
I’m getting tired of others saving me, he thinks. In the Zone, it was the other way around.
Still oblivious of where the shots came from, he looks around.
“Don’t move,” a voice commands. “Stay right where you are.”
“I couldn’t move even if I wanted to,” Tarasov shouts back.
Then, to his unspeakable relief, two soldiers emerge from the woods. One of them is wearing Berill body armor, though both also sport bandages. Wounded men, even if only lightly. The other one, a stout, blond soldier with blue eyes thick set in his round face, is holding a PKM machine gun. To Tarasov’s astonishment, he wears no armor, only the standard issue white and blue striped tee-shirt and a green bandana. This guy must be either a tough bastard or totally crazy, Tarasov thinks.
“Sparrow Two?” he cries out.
“Major?” one of the soldiers asks incredulously.
Tarasov nods and the two soldiers quickly pull him away from the anomaly. For a moment, Tarasov’s joy over finding the lost squad makes him forget about his badly burnt legs.
“Thanks to that damned mutant,” he groans, “it chased me right into your arms!”
“It’s great to see you alive, komandir,” the machine gunner says. “Where are the others?”
“It’s just me. Give me a medikit and bandages… my legs are burnt.”
With quick, well-trained hands, the other soldier cuts through the burnt rags of Tarasov’s leggings and pours water from his canteen over the wounds.
“Lucky for us, our medic made it through,” the soldier says as he applies antiseptics and fixes a silicone bandage. “He’ll take care of the rest. This should do till we get back to the chopper.”
“Tell me what happened to you, while I brace myself up.”
“Yes, Major,” the machine gunner says. “We were hit… or whatever, because it was no projectile… Suddenly all the electrical systems went dead, at least almost all, though the pilot managed to keep the chopper in the air for a few minutes. We were incredibly lucky not to smash into the mountains, but then the engine died and the chopper started to spin, and we crash-landed into this forest. Eight of us survived, with three others badly wounded.”