S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort

by John Mason

  “Wait a minute,” the Dutier says. “What the hell puts you in charge anyway?”

  “Three rifles and one machine gun pointing at you.”

  From the corner of his eye, Tarasov sees an ear to ear grin appear on Ilchenko’s face. The Stalker reluctantly shoulders his weapon.

  “That’s what I call an argument,” he grumbles. “All right, let’s work together… for now. My name is Skinner. I had a different name back at Yanov, during Commander Shulga’s times, but that’s of no importance anymore.”

  Tarasov doesn’t show it but feels great relief over the Dutier’s decision to cooperate. “I am Major Tarasov from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and glad to see a Duty soldier here. It’s good to have at least one Stalker around who has ever heard of discipline.”

  Skinner gives him a grin. “Sorry to disappoint you, Major, but I’m a deserter. I was fed up delivering the artifacts I earned with my blood to the damned scientists.”

  “That’s understandable, after all.”

  “This is the land of plenty here. But I can’t hunt for artifacts if I’m dead, can I? So, if you grunts will help me to survive, I don’t give a damn how many Stalkers you’ve had mowed down at Cordon. I might even listen to your orders.”

  “That machine gun is now pointed elsewhere. And neither do I give a damn if you’ll survive, Skinner. But I do care about you trying and killing as many dushmans in the process as possible.”

  “You could hardly ask for less, Major.”

  Tarasov now turns to Zlenko. “Set up defensive position with the riflemen along the perimeter. Concentrate fire towards the south and that mountain. Makes sure there’s one of us with every three or four Stalkers.”

  The sergeant nods and hurries off with the soldiers, leaving Tarasov to turn back to the cocky Stalker.

  “Bone told me the attack is imminent. Tell me more about what we’ll have to face.”

  “I didn’t tell him it was imminent,” Skinner replies. Under the hood, surprise flashes in his dark eyes. “I only told Bone that we saw a group of dushmans approaching from the plain. We fired a few shots at them and they disappeared.”

  “That’s odd. Bone seemed to be sure that you’d need reinforcements, and soon.”

  It dawns now on Tarasov that the Captain might have just wanted to get rid of them – sending them into a hopeless battle and let the Stalkers’ enemies do the dirty job. One more reason to make it through alive, he thinks.

  “That son of a bitch could be right after all,” replies Skinner pointing towards the south. “It might have been an advance party to check if they can catch us with our pants down. Maybe they will come back in full force after nightfall. To spice up the soup we’re boiling in… did you see those clouds on the horizon?”

  “It looks gloomy, yes.”

  “Smells like a dust storm gathering.”

  “That should keep the dushmans away.”

  “You think so? Major, you might have been a big shot in the Zone but you’re still a rookie here,” Skinner grimly replies.

  Tarasov frowns but can’t find any mockery in the Stalker’s words. Swallowing his pride, he even admits to himself that Skinner has a point: not even two days have passed since he arrived.

  “Back in the Zone, Monolithians were bad,” Skinner continues. “Zombies were bad too. Now add them together and you have the dushmans.”

  “Sounds like charming company. But why do they want to take this godforsaken place?”

  “It’s not the Outpost they are after. It’s Bagram. When the nukes went off, the mountains north of Kabul got the worst of the fallout. The devastation is also pretty bad there. That’s why they want to break through to the north. Anyway, when the storm will hit, we’ll lock ourselves in that bunker – because we stick to our life. The dushmans don’t. Unless we beat them before the storm arrives, they will crawl up to the bunker, blow down the door and fry us inside, no matter how many of them get martyred in the process.”

  “Oh Gospodi,” sighs Tarasov.

  “I agree. Praying never harms.” Skinner takes a necklace with a small silver cross from under his armored suit and kisses it. “You still eager to make a gallant stand?”

  “I am.”

  “I didn’t take you for such a badass. Maybe Bone was right in sending you here… we’re a bunch of thieves and murderers, but we won’t give up without a fight.”

  “And which of those things are you?”

  “Not a thief, that’s for sure,” the Stalker says, turning away and raising his binoculars to scan the dusty plains. But Tarasov has one more question for him.

  “How come Bone put you up with Freedomers and ordinary Stalkers? Duty prefers formal court-martials, as far as I know.”

  Without removing the binoculars from his eyes, Skinner spits to the ground. “Do you play cards, Major?”

  “Occasionally. Why?”

  “Because the old deck of cards has been reshuffled. Here, none of us belongs to where he used to. Bone is not with Duty anymore, neither are his henchmen. Sometimes I wonder if they ever were. The one I killed certainly was not.”

  “How do you know?” Tarasov curiously asks.

  “No self-respecting Duty fighter would try taking a free Stalker’s artifacts by aiming a rifle at him. And neither would one beg for his life, not even with a free Stalker’s combat knife at his throat.”

  Tarasov leaves him alone and looks back at Ilchenko who is positioning his machine gun among the sand bags. He notices with satisfaction that the soldier has picked a perfect position – protected, but still covering a wide angle towards the slope.

  “Good position. Mow them down when they come, Ilchenko.”

  The soldier grins back at him, flashing impeccable teeth in his round face. “I will, sir. You know how it goes… On Kazbek the clouds are meeting, like the mountain eagle-flock, Up to them, along the rock, dash the wild Uzdens retreating,/ Onward faster, faster fleeting, routed by the Russian brood,/ Foameth all their track with blood.”

  Tarasov’s jaw almost drops in surprise. Reciting a poem was the last thing he expected from the tattooed machine gunner. “That’s by Bestuzhev!”

  “That’s correct, sir.” Ilchenko almost bursts with self-satisfaction. “I have a degree in literature, but signed up with the army to see the world and all.”

  “You are a man of many talents, Ilchenko.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  “Let’s see if digging is one of them. Grab that shovel and dig in deeper, if you don’t want this shithole to be the last you see of the world!”

  “As ordered, sir, but –”

  “And make it deep enough!” Tarasov shouts. “It will save us time when we have to bury you if you got shot because you were thinking about poetry instead of mowing down those baystrukhi. They don’t give a damn about Shevchenko and Bestuzhev, but they know Kalashnikov’s name very well!”

  Still shaking his head, Tarasov makes his way back to the bunker where Vasilyev is giving Squirrel a crash course in how to handle the grenade launcher.

  “It handles like a dream if the blowback mechanism doesn’t jam. But that’s not your concern. Get those ammunition boxes closer. There’s a belt with thirty high-explosive grenades in each of them. The box marked red contains VOG-30 grenades. They take more punch and have a longer range than regular rounds. Those are our life insurance. Do not feed them until I tell you to do so. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call me ‘sir’ again and I put a grenade up your ass! Now, let’s take two belts and load them into the metal drum magazines. We have two of them. As soon as one is empty, you remove and replace it with the reserve drum. While I keep firing, you load the next belt into the empty drum. Then you change it again if needed.”

  “Keep your eyes on what Vasilyev is showing you, Squirrel,” Tarasov remarks when he sees the Stalker sending concerned glances to the south. “Rest assured, the dushmans will come without you watching out for them.”

 
Under his watch, the Outpost slowly gains the shape of a well-organized fire base. But from the top position he can also see how thinly stretched their defenses are. Defending such positions was among the basics in officer training but Tarasov has never faced such a task before. Clearing the underground labs. Patrolling the Red Forest. Saving a lost recon squad from mutants. That was my job, not pitched battles. I am a military Stalker, not infantry. Skinner was right about praying. But I don’t believe in God. Not one that would help if asked nicely, anyway.

  Vasilyev curses when Squirrel fails to properly fix the ammunition drum on his third attempt.

  “Don’t be too hard on the Stalker, Private,” Tarasov advises as he helps Zlenko off the ladder.

  “We’re set, sir,” the sergeant reports, still catching his breath. “We are stretched very thin, but we’ve got the southern and western slopes covered with the PKM and the AK’s we have. The Stalker’s shotguns might come in handy if the enemy gets too close.”

  “I also saw a couple of them with MP-5s and AKSUs. We need to tell those guys to hold their fire until the enemy gets into range.”

  “I already gave that order.”

  “Good initiative. Now all we can do is to wait.” Tarasov sits down and opens an army ration pack.

  “May I join you, sir?”

  He motions to the sergeant to sit down. “I hope we make it through.” Tarasov lets the ration’s wrapper fly off in the wind. “It would be a shame if these miserable biscuits were my last supper.”

  The sergeant smiles. “Yeah. The Stalkers told me there’s a bar in Bagram, set up in an old airplane.”

  “They have a special skill when it comes to turning every piece of junk into a bar… bunkers, shipwrecks, construction sites. You name it. Stalkers would probably find a cozy place on the North Pole too, should a Zone pop up there.”

  “I guess so… but actually, what’s on my mind is that this place seems strangely familiar to me.”

  “To me as well. It’s Soviet-built.”

  “Not only that… the whole situation.” The sergeant seems to be lost in his thoughts as he looks out to the plains where the mountains cast long shadows in the setting sun.

  “Did you lose someone during that war?” Tarasov asks.

  “What, me?” Zlenko exclaims, startled. “No, fortunately. My father was posted to Eastern Germany. He cried when they had to leave… and was quite upset when I signed up to join the army. He relaxed a little when I first sent money home from what we got with the UN in Kosovo. And what about…”

  Zlenko bites his tongue but Tarasov knows what he wanted to ask. His father’s photograph is hidden in his wallet, beneath the armored west, but he touches the place as if he could reach it. “I did.”

  “I understand… is that what motivates you? Apologies if I’m asking too many questions.”

  “We have orders and no one cares about our motivations to follow them. We will make it through tonight, trust me. Then we continue with our mission.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “No, it’s not even remotely fair.” Tarasov gives the sergeant a bitter smile. “The scientists were sent here to find out how all these mutants and anomalies were created.”

  “I thought it’s from radiation. The fall-out and all.”

  Tarasov sighs. “That only plays a minor role, if at all… the first Zone was created by an entity powerful enough to bend the laws of physics. If that happened here too – that’s bad enough, but things here are… meaner… than in the Zone. Kiev wants to know how this happened. That’s why securing the scientists’ research results is our priority. And as I know the SBU agent who briefed me about Operation Haystack, he would expect us to do the scientists’ homework if they have failed.”

  “We can worry about that once we survive this night, I guess.”

  “Agreed. And to finally answer your question: yes, for me this battle, or whenever we meet those brain-scorched half-mutant sons of bitches – it will be personal.”

  “Brain-scorched? A fitting description for the dushmans.”

  The phrase had slipped from Tarasov’s lips unconsciously. There’s too much to be explained to someone like Zlenko who has never experienced the Zone where otherworldly equipment was once used to rob Stalkers of their own willpower, turning them into miserable shadows of human beings and manipulated by a superhuman consciousness.

  “You see… I have explored every square meter of the Zone. I have been to every secret laboratory, every dark defile. I fought every faction and mutant. Being here is like a new beginning, just like for the Stalkers around here. It’s like… How can I say it? When I was home, I wanted to be back to the Zone, and when I was there, all I could think of was getting back home. Being here after the Zone – it’s like a divorce from a woman I still love but who has nothing new to say, after living together so long that I partly became her, in the way I function, think and speak. I’m here now, waiting for what will happen, like a recently divorced man waits for his first new date. Yes, Sergeant, I am happy.”

  “I wish I could see the Zone one day.”

  “You have too many wishes, even for a young man… for now it’s enough to wish to see the next morning. By the way, I just witnessed something miraculous.” Tarasov tries to enjoy the bland taste of the rations before he continues. “A tattooed machine gunner reciting poetry.”

  To his disappointment, Zlenko does not look surprised.

  “I guess Ilchenko was bragging again about his teacher’s degree,” he replies with a yawn.

  “Are there any more such smartasses in the squad?”

  “Lobov had to quit medical school because of drug problems, but he is reliable. The rest… it’s just normal boys from the neighborhood who couldn’t find a better way out of unemployment.”

  “And you?”

  The sergeant sadly smiles. “I wanted to become a famous guitar player but my band flopped.”

  “That’s not a disaster big enough to chase one into the army’s arms, son.”

  “Yes, but having purchased a six-string Fender American Standard Stratocaster on rates and not being able to repay it to a loan shark definitely is.”

  He has barely finished the sentence when a rifle fires a burst. Jumping to his feet, Tarasov peers over the sand bags. All seems quiet.

  “Just a bloody jackal,” Skinner shouts in the trenches.

  “Shit!” Tarasov swears nervously. “We better go and buck those trigger-happy Stalkers.”

  “I’ll do that, sir… I wanted to check the perimeter anyway.”

  Tarasov is eager to rest for a few minutes and close his eyes, which are already burning from exhaustion and fine dust that has dribbled through under his eye protectors. Night is about to fall and he knows neither he nor his men will be able to get any rest during the coming hours.

  “I would appreciate that,” he smiles, leaning against the stone-hard sandbags and trying to relax his overstrained nerves without falling asleep. He jerks upright again and looks around his men. “Kravchuk, keep your eyes on the ridge to the west. And switch off that headlamp. You are supposed to dish out the headshots, not get one yourself.”

  21:30:41 AFT

  A bright flash. The major opens his eyes. For a second, he thinks he has slept until morning and it is the rising sun casting light onto his face. Then he realizes the true cause: a flare is hovering over the Outpost. He can hear the Stalkers shouting as he jumps to his feet.

  “They’re coming!”

  “Major!” Zlenko shouts, excitement and fear mingling in his voice. “This is it! They’re moving up from the south!”

  Tarasov doesn’t need the sergeant’s directions to know where the attack is coming from. A long howl sounds through the chilly night, barely distinguishable from that of a blood-thirsty animal, but a hundred human – or at least human-like – voices join in. Then a hail of bullets hits the defenders. To Tarasov’s horror, it comes from all around their position.

  “Fire!” Squirrel screams. �
��Fire that shit!”

  “I’ll open fire when I’m ordered to!” Vasilyev shouts back, his eyes fixed upon his officer.

  “Zlenko, into the trenches, now! Don’t fire until you’re sure to hit them!”

  “On my way, sir!”

  Keeping his head low, Tarasov estimates the range of their attackers. “Vasilyev! Adjust range to four hundred! Cover the area wide, from ten to one o’clock! Steady!”

  Now Ilchenko’s machine gun opens up in the trenches, followed by the rapid fire of submachine guns. The howls get louder and closer.

  “Three-fifty… steady!”

  “Why don’t you just fire, man?”

  “Stay cool, Stalker… three-hundred.”

  “Adjusted!”

  “Fry them.”

  Vasilyev pulls the release cord of the grenade launcher, grabs the holders and fires short bursts from the AGS, unleashing fast grenade fire into the mass of dark silhouettes running up the slopes. The dushmans’ battle cry disintegrates into cries of pain amidst the detonations. Squirrel jumps back.

  “Damn! I didn’t take this shit for a machine gun!”

  “Shut up and prepare the spare drum,” Vasilyev shouts.

  “They weren’t prepared for that!” Tarasov tells them triumphantly. “Good job.”

  Looking down to the dushmans’ broken wave and hearing Zlenko’s and Skinner’s voice directing their comrades’ fire towards the retreating enemy, a stoic feeling of might empowers him. He watches the dushmans hastily retreat into the darkness, but what he views to the south makes him shudder. A gigantic shadow rises, darker than night itself, making the stars disappear. Lightning flashes on the horizon.

  “Vasilyev, keep the settings. As soon as the second wave gets into range, open fire. Try to save ammo.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  “So far, so good,” Squirrel says. “Time to relax.”

  He rises from the ground and lights up a cigarette. At the same moment as Vasilyev drags him back into cover, a muffled noise comes from the closest mountain. A bullet hits the spot where the Stalker’s head had been less than a second before.