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

by John Mason

  “There’s another thing, Crow. A few days ago I found a Ukrainian military chopper. All the soldiers inside were dead. Executed. And I can’t think of anyone else doing that except for Bone and his guards. They probably did it to get to the equipment.”

  Crow scowls. “I told you that Bagram is a messy place… But we’re Stalkers, not assassins. And even if we were assassins, we have no proof that it was him. Let’s see what happens – probably now that the Tribe has taken you under its wing, he will be less eager to fuck with you.”

  “Yes, the Tribe. They trust me now, but this trust was earned in blood... especially Squirrel’s blood.”

  “That’s the local currency here,” Crow shrugs. “So, what about that rifle?”

  “It was a wedding gift. Kind of, so to say.”

  Crow laughs. “I didn’t take you for such a funny one. Anyway, would you be interested in trading it for an artifact? Come on, you are not really the sniper type, but I could make good use of it.”

  “I don’t know… why do you want it so much?”

  “That’s the best anti-material rifle in the world – at least of those I have tried. With that, I could take down an elephant wearing an exoskeleton. Or a chopper. Even a chopper carrying elephants in exoskeletons.”

  “Even so… Did you outgrow your Dragunov?”

  “This would be for different purposes… a waste on mutants and dushmans, but those are Dragunov-prey anyway.”

  “You told me we were quits after you took that exo. If I agree now, you’ll owe me another favor.”

  “Sounds like a deal. And to sweeten it up, I’ll throw in a Jumpy. With that artifact, you’ll be able to walk through any acid anomaly as if it was sweet green grass… just keep it away from fires and impacts. It’s explosive.”

  “I am not really convinced… a bullet could hit it. I tend to get shot at from time to time, you know?”

  “Don’t break my heart, bratan. I’ve been carrying a box of 12.7 millimeter rounds for ages, hoping to find a rifle that fits them.”

  “All right, I’d hate to make you cry. I probably won’t be needing sniper gear in the catacombs anyway.”

  “Thanks! I really do owe you one more!”

  Tarasov can’t suppress a smile when seeing the almost childish happiness in the sniper’s eyes. Crow cradles the heavy rifle in the same fashion a little girl would with her doll.

  “So my gut feeling was right,” he says, adoring his new weapon. “You still want to finish your mission?”

  “Yes,” Tarasov replies as he carefully puts the artifact into one of his containers, “and I could use a fighter like you to command the Stalkers outside, while I deal with whatever lies beneath.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll be there with my buddies… just don’t ask me to join a bunch of trigger-happy Stalkers. That’s just not my style.”

  “I got it… but don’t let us down. I’m a little tired of you always popping up when I least expect you, and missing you when I need you most.”

  “Sorry, brother, but predictability is a sniper’s worst enemy. Have a good one ‘til we meet again!” Crow aims the rifle towards the mountains. “Damn… why are there never any dushmans around when I need them for target practice?”

  The Antonov bar, 18:17:46 AFT

  “Hey bro! It’s mighty good to see you again,” Ashot shouts when he sees Tarasov entering the airplane. “Come in, don’t stand there!”

  The barkeeper wears a brown Pashtu cap and listens to the tunes of his music player, humming a slightly altered version of a reggae song that even Tarasov recognizes.

  “Said I remember when we used to sit

  In the scientist’s lab in Yantar

  Oba, ob-serving ecologists

  As they would mingle with the good people we meet

  Good friends we have had, oh good friends we’ve lost along the way

  In this bright New Zone you can’t forget the Old

  So dry your tears I say…

  No dushman, no cry

  Said, said, said I remember when we used to sit

  In the flea market yard in Garbage

  And then Duty would open fire all right

  Tracers flashin’ through the night

  Then we would cook boar hoof porridge

  Of which I’ll share with you…

  No dushman no cry.”

  “Don’t cry, dushmans? Are you kidding?” Zlenko asks, who has already made himself comfortable in one of the airplane seats together with Ilchenko. “Even Bob Marley would shoot you for that!”

  “Nah, I mean that in a different way. If there’s no dushman, there’s no reason to cry!”

  “Very funny. What happened here?” Tarasov asks looking up to the hull, where an explosion had burrowed a huge hole into the rusty metal. Someone has placed a fuel drum under the opening and a few Stalkers are warming themselves around the fire inside it.

  “A mortar round,” explains Ilchenko. “Blasted a hole big enough into it for us to see all the stars of the southern Zone!”

  “As you say, bro, right as you say! The good old Antonov is no longer five but… eh, I forgot how many stars!” Ashot says.

  “Too bad the fire makes so much smoke that one can’t see any stars,” Zlenko says as he opens a can and dips a slice of dry bread into the meat inside. “But at least it’s cozier here.”

  “Did you go dushman, Ashot?” Tarasov asks, pointing at the barkeep’s new headwear.

  “It’s cool, bro, ain’t it? I found it after the battle. The previous owner’s head was still inside but I had it disinfected, don’t worry! And now, tell me… when I saw them tribals coming I didn’t believe me own eyes! How did you manage that?”

  “Ilchenko will tell you, and many things too that are not even remotely true. But for now, I could use a drink.”

  “For you, I always have one. Actually, I can’t wait to get rich from selling all me vodka reserve to them thirsty tribals.”

  “Forget your high hopes… they don’t drink.”

  “Can’t comply, bro. Me hopes are always high.”

  “Neither do they use drugs.”

  “I knew they weren’t human! All the better, I’m low on bottled vodka anyway.”

  “How come?”

  “I’ve been serving nothing but Molotov cocktails the past few days, if you follow me meaning. Our visitors couldn’t get enough of them!”

  “At least business seems to be back to normal. But what is that guy doing over here?” Tarasov jerks his thumb towards a Stalker drawing on the metal plates of the fuselage.

  “Oh, I decided that this was a good time to make the Antonov even nicer, and asked Zenmaster to paint the walls.”

  “I see, but what is he painting?”

  “Portraits,” the Stalker called Zenmaster shouts back, obviously possessed of very sharp hearing. “That of the first Stalkers: Arkady, Boris and Andrei. They were awesome, dude!”

  “Never heard about them,” Tarasov shrugs.

  “It’s your loss, dude… your loss. It all started with them going for a roadside picnic into the Zone…”

  “A picnic? In the Zone?”

  “Yep. If you don’t know their story – you don’t know what you’re missing, man!”

  A Stalker interrupts their conversation. “Hey Ashot, turn off that Jamaican shit. Could I borrow your guitar?”

  “Sure, Vitka. Here you go. Watch gonna play?”

  “Something that suits the mood better,” the Stalker replies. Sitting close to the fire, he starts to strum a melancholic melody.

  “It seems sometimes that soldiers

  who didn’t return from the bloody fields of war,

  weren’t buried under the ground,

  But turned into white cranes.

  That always happened since the dawn of time,

  They always fly and call us,

  Maybe that’s why we so often sadly

  and silently, look up into the sky.

  They fly
and fly up in the sky,

  They fly from dawn until night falls,

  Keeping an empty place in their high line,

  And I think that will be mine.

  My day to fly will come for me,

  To join these cranes in the same blue sky,

  I’ll be one of them, and calling

  the names of loved ones I have left behind.”

  A Stalker bows his head. “Good one.”

  “You better sing about those black ravens circling in the sky,” another one adds. His head is wrapped in a bloody bandage. “They will feed on the bodies of many good Stalkers tonight.”

  “I came here for artifacts,” the Stalker with the guitar says, “but it turned into a really bad raid.”

  “Hey Ashot,” another Stalker shouts, “give us another pollitra… to Kolya Pimp, brothers. He was a good Stalker – let’s drink to him once more!”

  “How many Stalkers died?” Tarasov asks Zlenko.

  “I don’t know exactly, but what the guy with the bandage said is true… too many.”

  “You’re cool with the guitar, Sarge,” Ilchenko says. “Maybe you should try to cheer them up?”

  “Good idea,” Tarasov agrees.

  Zlenko pats the Stalker on the shoulder and takes the guitar. “Give that to me… and let’s put mourning behind us.”

  “Hello Mama, here I’m writing you again,

  Hello, Mama, all is well just like before

  The sun is shining, everything is fine

  But there’s still fog in the hills.

  Mother doesn’t know how hard it is for us

  Mother doesn’t know how we walk in the mountains

  How our youth is passing here

  In Afghanistan, where there’s war.”

  Tarasov is familiar with the old song. He’d heard it sung before about Dagestan, the Caucasus and other blood-soaked places. Now Zlenko is eloquently adapting the lyrics to Afghanistan. His swift play and strong voice, filled with the zest of a young man who just survived a horrible fight, give it intoxicating energy.

  “You kick ass, dude,” Zenmaster says, clasping. “Back in Canada I used to have my own band. Did you ever think of playing in a band?”

  “Here! I switch on the loudspeakers! The radio too!” Ashot says. “All Stalkers must hear this!”

  The Stalkers in the bar follow the rhythm with their heads nodding, and by the time he gets to sing the refrain, more and more join in the chorus:

  “Among exploding grenades our unit walks

  There is shooting in the mountains far

  Among grenades exploding and tracers flying by

  We march forward, with the trembling earth beneath,

  The helicopter’s taking off and we go forward

  And some of us will not make it back.

  We were so young on the day when we arrived

  To Afghanistan, where there’s war

  I’ll not forget those warm days in May

  And the face of friends who died…”

  Slightly under the influence of vodka and carried away by the song, Tarasov imagines Bonesetter tending to the wounded and looking up, wiping blood and sweat from his face; the Stalkers in the compound fixing the blasted URAL truck while Captain Bone’s bodyguards halt their steps around his command post; the men in the Outpost’s bunker gathering around their radio; Uncle Yar listening in while fixing a hopelessly jammed machine gun; the Stalkers on the container ramparts watching the herds of jackals feeding on the corpses outside; and even Crow, the hard-boiled sniper, smiling as he cleans his new Gepard rifle, looking down at the Tribe’s Marines who don’t understand the words and just shake their heads while removing dismembered Talib’s hands and fragmented skulls from the chassis of their gruesome trucks.

  Zlenko’s voice flies over Bagram like the sound of victory, relieved and joyful but without trying to hide the grief. As soon as he finishes the song, the responses start pouring in through Ashot’s radio.

  “This is the Outpost. Play it again or we join the dushmans.”

  “Guards here. Stop that. We can’t concentrate on the gate if you play such songs.”

  “Yo Ashot! Switch that shit off. It made me fix a Dragoon’s barrel to a PKM… wait a minute, it works perfectly! Play it again, I give you twenty dollars!”

  “This is Bonesetter. The wounded want to hear that again. It’s good for their recovery.”

  And finally, Bone’s voice comes. “Major… once this fucking Woodstock is over, come and see me.”

  Captain Bone’s quarters, 22:02:14 AFT

  Tarasov is under the assumption that it was either their training or superior equipment that kept most of Captain Bone’s guards alive, because they are in far better shape than the Stalkers. The Captain himself, who is wearing his usual full armored suit and helmet, is unscathed, making Tarasov wonder if he and his men took part in the battle at all.

  “While you were promenading around, we found some intel on one of the attackers,” Bone says. “We know where the rest of the mercs are hiding. They’re in the ruins of the City of Screams.”

  “We expected that.”

  “Well, now it’s confirmed. Why, would you have preferred to have tracked them down in dushman country? No? I thought not. Anyway, our goals are the same now. We’re going to smoke that place out. But first I’ll take my guards and see to it that the Outpost is reinforced. Those zombified freaks might strike again.”

  “I presume they won’t be back anytime soon, knowing that they are also messing with the Tribe now.”

  “You can afford to presume things, but I have the responsibility to keep this place safe. Take a few capable Stalkers and move to the west. I will meet you there in two days – at the City of Screams.”

  “You will not return to Bagram first?”

  “Why, for fuck’s sake, would I do that? To drink that junkie’s watered-down vodka in the Antonov? We have no time for that now.”

  “You better make it there in time. We will need the firepower of your guards.”

  “We will be there, don’t worry about that. Do you think those savages could give us a helping hand?”

  “First, Captain Bone, they are anything but savages. Second, they won’t help us, but at least they will let us pass us through.”

  “All the better. Maybe now we can show them that Stalkers can also fight.”

  Tarasov finds Bone’s words strange. He can’t shake off a feeling that the foul-mouthed commander is actually relieved about the Tribe staying out of the operation, even if their help would shift the odds tremendously in their favor. He wishes he could look into Bone’s eyes.

  “Good. We’re set then,” he finally confirms.

  “Then why are you still standing here? Move!”

  Road to the Tribe stronghold, 9 October 2014, 14:37:51 AFT

  “I liked that song, Viktor,” Tarasov shouts, trying to make himself heard on the back of the truck taking them westwards, “and it was probably a good idea to omit the last part.”

  “About being demobilized and going home?” the sergeant shouts back.

  “Exactly.”

  “Do Stalkers ever get demobilized?”

  “That’s my point!”

  “What?”

  He shakes his head and waves to Zlenko, meaning: we’ll talk later. The truck is roaring along the bumpy road and the dust dredged up by the other truck in front of them covers them from toes to teeth. Not the best time to talk.

  Passing by the intersection leading to the abandoned village, Tarasov wishes he could tell Zlenko more about the unit of framed US Marines who had turned into a tribe of proud and free men against all odds, but it will have to wait. For now, he can only watch the scenery pass by, but the sight of the wrecked Soviet tanks and trucks that still litter the roadside makes him sad.

  Does this land never have enough of death? The sand absorbs blood like a dry sponge absorbs water.

  The more he thinks about the Colonel’s philosophy of strength, the
more he finds himself able to understand him.

  Maybe, of all the conquerors that have passed along the very same road that we now drive upon, he was the first who truly understood this land. But where is all this evil coming from? Is the only way to be victorious over evil to become evil ourselves, no matter how respectable evil can be?

  A quote comes to his mind: For what can war, but endless war still breed? though no matter how hard Tarasov tries to remember, the name of the writer who wrote it escapes him. Even so, the quote seems to fit perfectly with this barren and inhospitable land, where the rules of life had been those of war since time beyond memory, and where the appearance of the New Zone undermined even the laws of nature in an evil and deadly way.

  For Tarasov, Nooria’s home was now the only place where he found true shelter for his life and comfort for his soul. Thinking about her, he realizes how fond he had grown of the girl: his feelings, which had been initially a mixture of gratitude, desire and maybe even a little pity, had turned into a deep affection that he, who had always been rough and skeptical towards his own feelings, did not dare to define yet.

  The truck slows down, awakening him from his daydreams. They are approaching the entrance of a narrow canyon. Tribe warriors appear from out of nowhere. A Lieutenant raises his hand, signaling them to stop.

  “We have the Colonel’s permission to pass through,” Tarasov shouts.

  “So we heard,” the warrior replies. “Speed up! A storm is expected before nightfall.”

  Tarasov returns his salute as they drive on. “We’re entering Tribe territory now,” he shouts to Zlenko. “We’ll stop before we arrive at their stronghold. I need to tell the Stalkers a few things, lest they get themselves in trouble.”

  “It’s weird,” Zlenko shouts back. “The tribals saved our skin all right, but I have an uneasy feeling about spending the night in their lair!”

  “I do not. Actually, I feel like I’m going home.”

  Tribe stronghold, 16:53:06 AFT