“Tora dost daram,” Nooria replies.
“What does that mean?”
“I think you know already,” she says and turns her gaze away from Tarasov’s eyes.
The Ghosts and the Traitors
“You are one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?” the Tribe warrior shouts to Tarasov as he drives the Humvee along the bumpy, curving road at reckless speed. When they’d set out on their way to the pass in the vehicle bearing the name MULLAH MOWER, the driver had introduced himself as Lance Corporal Bockman. His face is red from the strong sun. “I’ve only seen this once — it was a rag-head with long blond hair. He came all the way from Germany to join the Taliban. The women admired his looks for a while, but then tore him to pieces anyway. But you… not only did she save your ass, defying the big man’s will, but she even picked you for Nooria!”
“The Beghum must be a very important woman.”
“You can say that about the Colonel’s ex, yes!”
“What?”
“What what? I thought you got that already, partner. She was the Colonel’s woman. Still is, to some extent. The Bhegum’s the only one among us who can take him on. Okay, the Top too, but in different matters…”
“But this makes me—”
“Yes, you can consider yourself the chosen man of the big man’s stepdaughter, whatever degree of kinship that is!” The warrior shakes his head as if he were talking about something that’s hard to believe.
“Now I understand her attitude,” Tarasov shouts back, grinning. Yes, she is used to having things done her way, he thinks. All my bones are aching. “But I can’t complain. She can be cute if she wants to.”
“That’s none of my business, partner… and that’s not what makes her special anyway.”
“She does like doing strange things… But what do you mean?”
“Well, it’s been a while ago… One day we went on a rag-head hunt with Lieutenant Ramirez. Now, Lieutenants are cocky sorts and Ramirez wandered off to check out a cave on his own. Turned out it was crawling with jackals. The beasts tore his armor off in seconds. By the time we dragged him out, he had more poisonous bites on his body than hair on his ass. But the healer fixed him up in less than a day… Tellin’ ya, that girl ain’t natural.”
“Then how come she couldn’t heal her own face?”
“Once you have acid sprayed on your skin there’s no skin left to restore, is there?”
“I guess not. Anyway… it was strange too that she only told me her name this morning.”
“That’s good for you. Because if she hadn’t told you her name, it would have meant that you failed to impress her. You’d have ended up back in the Pit by midday… and no woman would have saved your ass then!”
“Do you have many such weird customs?”
“More than you could ever imagine.”
For several minutes, Tarasov watches the barren mountains, remembering the previous night and that same dawn, when Nooria had explored every inch of his body in the candlelight. “How did you get this big scar on your chest?” “That was a snork.” “What is a snork?” Something very bad and smelly.” “And this?” “That was a boar.” “You are very ugly, you know? We make a nice couple, soldier.” He remembers her giggles when she called him as ugly as herself. He tried to convince her about how wrong she was about herself by kissing her scar, only to be pushed back to the mattress for another round of pleasuring her.
Oh dear. Will I ever see her again?
“Can I ask you something? The two prison guards, Hillbilly and Polak… why do they refer to each other as ‘brother’?”
“They go way back, ages. The ‘brothers’ were among the first retainers of the big man, way before the nukes went off. Originally they’d been military police. Guess who they were after… Anyway, for one reason or another, they’d hated each other’s guts in the beginning. Then, during a patrol, they got themselves into a really bad clusterfuck. Those who made it out alive started to call each other ‘brother’, and the two of them have been best buddies ever since… especially nowadays, when they are the last ones still alive from that band of brothers.”
“I see… And what about you? You are not one of the Lieutenants, nor a Hazara boy,” Tarasov casually remarks to the Lance Corporal. “You must also be a newcomer, or how to say. What brought you here?”
“California ain’t what it used to be no more,” Bockman replies. The grin leaves his face. “Life is safer here… Anyhow, when I heard about the Tribe, I heeded the call.”
Tarasov is taken by surprise. Not even Degtyarev and the SBU, and even more so, not even the Stalkers in the New Zone, had heard much about the Tribe.
“Heard about the Tribe? How? Where?”
“Now listen up, partner… just because the Beghum asked me to take you to the Pass, you shouldn’t think we’re friends. Clear enough?”
“Enough.”
“We’re cool then. Yippee!”
“Hey, what are you doing? You are driving straight into an anomaly!”
“Oh yeah!” Electrical emissions crackle outwards and explode under the Humvee with a row of sharp, crashing thunder, but to Tarasov’s astonishment nothing happens to the vehicle.
Lance Corporal Bockman gives him a triumphant smirk. “State of the badass art… pimped by yours truly!”
Tarasov watches the dust cloud disappearing behind a hill as the Humvee returns to the Tribe’s stronghold, far away beyond the canyons and mountains to the west, and opens his PDA.
The map shows a valley to the south of his position where the ruins of Bhegum Madar’s village supposedly lie hidden amongst the overgrown vegetation. The valley appears mostly green, just like on the display, but the digital map fails to reveal the red and blue, pulsating areas that look to Tarasov like dense anomaly fields. The path marked on the PDA tells him to find the village first, and from there guides him to a trail leading up to a plateau overlooking the valley.
He unslings the Vintorez from his shoulder. When he was reunited with his gear that morning, he’d found that someone had cleaned and applied a strange, antistatic substance to the gun metal that repelled even the finest particles of dust. Now, switching the safety catch off, Tarasov starts walking towards the valley, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the surroundings.
Jackals yelp from a short distance. Hiding behind a rock, he observes them fighting over something that looks like a body. Indeed, it had to be some kind of food: the mutants were so intent upon it that they remained unaware of his presence. The major cautiously raises the rifle. Two jackals become startled as he hits the first, and even the last one runs away after the second victim falls too. He fires again. The yelp abruptly ends.
A bumpy, broken tarmac road leads into the forest. On the roadside, a blue sign stands with white Pashtu and Latin letters. The latter have all but disappeared, blasted away by many bullet holes, but the number 2 is still visible.
I hope that is the correct distance to the village.
Keeping close to the low mud walls lining the road, he cautiously moves on. The trees have grown so high that their foliage intertwines above the road, forming a kind of tunnel. Rays of light seep through and illuminate the dense vegetation.
Tarasov sees a vibrant spot ahead, as if the cracks in the tarmac emanate steam. Approaching within a couple of feet, he notices that it’s not the only occurrence: the whole road looks like a landscape of miniature volcanoes.
Small but lethal, Tarasov thinks as he tosses an empty pistol shell into the closest anomaly and watches it evaporate with a fizzing sparkle. He switches on his detector and bright lights appear on the green display, indicating many anomalies. It also indicates one green dot deep inside the anomaly field.