“If you insist.”
Satisfied, Tarasov takes the artifact that looks like a dull pebble with a pale green core. The one who named it ‘Emerald’ must have had a vivid imagination, but as he lets it slide into the artifact container on his belt he feels as if the ugly little thing has sucked all fatigue from his limbs.
“I hope you haven’t depleted your stocks of gratitude yet. We were on our way to Bagram. Could you lead us there?” Seeing the Stalkers’ concerned faces, he tries to calm them. “We are up to no trouble. Our chopper crashed and we need a safe place where we can pull ourselves together. We’ll leave again in two or three days. That’s a promise.”
The Stalkers look at each other. “It’s not up to us, actually,” the rookie says, “it will be up to Captain Bone to decide if you can stay.”
“That might be so, but first we have to get there so that he can make up his mind.”
The Stalker who gave him the artifact looks at Tarasov and the grim-looking, battered soldiers approaching behind him. “It’s your lucky day, man. Call me Squirrel — I am a guide and a very good one too! ”
“This guy is looking like a pot-head to me,” Zlenko says under his breath. Tarasov nods in agreement. Oh God, he thinks, am I really to trust a junkie from Freedom, even if he’s obviously a Loner now? It can’t get lower than that.
“Come, on, man! Don’t look at me like that. Believe me, I can lead you there straight as the crow flies, avoiding zombies and all that shit,” he says licking his lips. “Our raid is blown anyway with Misha and Vitka dead.”
He was directing his last words more to his fellow Stalker than to Tarasov. But his mate resists.
“Are you out of your mind, Squirrel? Guiding the military to Bagram? For free? You charged me eight hundred rubles for the trip to Hellgate!”
“See, Danya, first you didn’t save my life. Second, they have half a dozen weapons pointed at us which puts them into a pretty good bargaining position. Why not be friendly with them? Chill out, man!”
“I have a bad feeling about this. My stomach turns at the thought of getting involved with the army’s business!”
“Ask Lobov for something that helps you with your nausea,” Tarasov jerks his thumb in the medic’s direction. “And don’t worry about guiding us. You will only assist us carrying the stretchers.”
Then the Major remembers Degtyarev’s words about making friends on their way. He pats the rookie on the back. “It’s all right,” he tells him with a wide smile. “We are here to protect you from this place, not this place from you.”
The Stalker returns his friendly look with a scowl. “Damned boyevoychik… you have the smile of a jackal. I’d prefer you shouting at me.” But Tarasov doesn’t have to comply with his wish as the young Stalker reluctantly falls in line.
With him giving the stretcher-bearers a helping hand, they proceed much quicker through barely trodden paths and shortcuts through the forest. Either because the intensive fighting scared them away or because they are less active during daytime, no mutants harass them. But Tarasov is still worried about the enemy who ambushed them.
“Those were zombies, you said?” he asks the guide called Squirrel, who is marching beside him.
“Nah, just a manner of speaking. I call them zombies because they’ve got no brains. Imagine, you are peacefully enjoying the scenery or looking for artifacts, and then they come at you out of nowhere, shouting allaaaaah and stuff like that. One can shut them up with bullets only.”
“They are Taliban then?”
“Call them whatever you want… we just call them dushmans, for old times’ sake, if you follow my meaning.”
“I do,” Tarasov nods.
“For us, they are just another kind of mutant. And they look like mutants too. You’ve seen their faces?”
“I did and they weren’t pretty. They looked like they had a serious case of radiation sickness. No surprise, with the pajamas they wore for armor.”
“Well seen, man. They don’t value their own lives too much. The problem is, neither do they value our lives.”
“Are there many of them around here?”
“One can never know… their den seems to be somewhere to the south, down the road to Kabul.”
“So Kabul still exists?”
“In a way. See, instead of Kabul I should have said Kaboom, because that’s what happened there. Anyway, sometimes they make it up to Bagram but we have an Outpost to keep an eye on the road. It’s a funny place.”
“How come?”
“Well, Captain Bone is an asshole but he values discipline. If a Stalker is caught stealing or something like that, he is sent to the Outpost for a few days. If he survives, he can come back and stay with us. If not — good riddance.”
“This Captain Bone… I heard he is from Duty.”
“Dunno, maybe he was. But with all the former Freedom guys around, he won’t turn the place into a barracks. No way we will be doing morning drills man!”
“Why are there so many Freedomers here?”
The Stalker laughs. “Bhango, man.”
“What’s that?”
“Try to think harder. What has always been the Afghan delight?”
“Weed and opium, or so I’ve heard.”
“You’re super-duper smart for a boyevoychik. Now, tell me what happened to plants in the Zone after the CNPP accident?”
“Polyploidy… some plants grew to unbelievable proportions.”
“And you still don’t get it? Oh, you guys really miss all the fun in life…”
Despite the pain in his chapped lips, Tarasov has to smile as he imagines drug-addicted Freedom soldiers flocking to the New Zone to smoke weed made from marijuana buds as big as a fist.
“Now you got my meaning, man. Give it a try in Bagram because you need to get high. You’re as pale as a vampire!”
“Thanks, but no thanks. You know, in the army we stick to bum-bum,” Tarasov replies, adding an explanation when the Stalker gives him a curious look. “You take brake fluid, add some raisins and sugar, then let it ferment for a few days in the sun. Gives a pretty good kick.”
“That explains why there were no usable vehicles in the Old Zone… Hey, wait a minute! Where are you going? I’ll need to upload this recipe to my PDA!”
Tarasov, who was about to check the column’s rear, turns back to the guide.
“Listen… after your comrades died I guess you stripped them naked?”
Squirrel shrugs the question off.
“Once dead, a Stalker doesn’t need his kit anymore, does he?”
“I could use their PDAs.”
“Difficult, man,” Squirrel replies scratching his head, “difficult. Ashot pays a good price for used PDAs. They’re always in demand by rookies.”
“Give one of them to me and the other to Sergeant Zlenko. Tell him to provide you with one of our rifles and a few mags in exchange.”
“That’s robbery!”
“No. It’s charity. Think about it: you get a mint condition Kalash for two lousy PDAs.”
The guide sighs and looks at his battered submachine gun. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind a weapon with more punch… all right.” Squirrel draws the devices from a pouch on his ammunition vest. “Which one you want?”
Switching on the devices, Tarasov finds that all data has been deleted from the memory units. It could have been done out of respect for a dead man’s privacy, but the major rather suspects that Squirrel wanted to keep the location of any personal stash for himself. However, Tarasov only cares about the map mode. The PDA is not as tough and sophisticated as his own army-issue device had been but the digital map seems accurate enough. To his surprise, there are no indicators on the screen to show the position of fellow Stalkers and important locations.