Nooria bows her head. “You have a good heart. I like you.”
The Stalker takes his binoculars to survey the area ahead.
“Look, that building at eleven o’clock was a school. Now it’s little snorks being educated there. I don’t see anything suspicious but one can never now… We must be very cautious here.”
Strelok moves on but after a few steps turns back to Nooria. “Do you really like me?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep watching my back.”
They make their way through a gate in the fence to their right and then, across the space between the wings of a two-story, U-shaped building, around a low structure that might have been a greenhouse once. Nooria treads as cautiously as she can, yet a piece of glass that lies unseen in the grass breaks as she steps on it. Strelok signals her to freeze.
A long growl echoes in the school building. Before they realize that the echo is actually several mutants answering each other, the first snork already appears on the roof. It looks around and leaps down in a long arch, followed by several more. They roll on the ground as they touch down and start moving around the courtyard, apparently without a clue. But when Nooria peeks over the low wall of the greenhouse, she sees them sniffing the air in search of prey.
Finding nothing, they move back to their lair one by one. Their growl sounds hungry and disappointed.
Strelok jerks his head as a sign to move on. He only dares to talk when they have crossed another set of climbing bars and slipped through the fence, leaving the mutant-infested ruin behind them.
“Phew,” sighs Strelok. “Thanks God for November rain… in summer, when one’s soaked in sweat and smells like a dog after spending days in these suits, those beasts can smell a man from a hundred meters!”
“Is it still far?”
“We’ve arrived,” Strelok says. “Guide is living in one of those tall buildings over there with the Vine anomaly in between. Feel like climbing?”
Nooria looks in the direction where Strelok is pointing. Growing from a crater between two towering apartment blocks, twisted vines stretch out and run up the grey concrete walls like long strands of wet hair sticking to the skin. If the horribly mutated tree—if it had ever been a tree—wasn’t foreboding enough, the bright cloud of green, almost solid gas travelling along the vines certainly is.
“Climbing?” Nooria skeptically asks. “Even if it supports our weight, anomaly would kill us! Do we really need to climb?”
“Just kidding,” Strelok replies and gives Nooria a mischievous smile. “We’re not in a video game, are we? No, no… come, we’re almost there.”
They reach a wide open area that might have been a town square once, but now more resembling a sparse forest between the apartment towers from where they are approaching and a large building with a mural on its corner. Wrecked cars litter the overgrown square, as if an immense power had lifted a rusty bus and a truck and smashed them to the ground, separating the driver’s cabin from the chassis. A white Zaporozhets is buried axle-deep into the ground.
In front of the building with the mural and in the middle of a low pool that might have been a fountain once, a blackened statue towers. It resembles an immensely strong man holding something in his arms, delicately formed yet appearing so heavy that the muscles on his massive limbs bulge as he tries to hold it upwards.
“See the River Port? Yes, that ruined, long building with the small tower on the roof. That’s where we’re going.”
Strelok moves on. Then he slows his steps, looks at the statue and sighs.
“Yes, it happened right here… I left my lucky shooter behind for a friend,” he pensively says and pats his rifle, “and was only armed with a shitty carbine. Monolith had us under crossfire, there, from that port building and their snipers from over there, that tall house with the large iron letters on its roof… We were running like hell to the choppers sent in to evacuate us, and then out of those bushes came a huge Monolith fighter, shouting his glory to the Monolith! nonsense. My carbine jammed, he was already aiming his rifle at me and for a moment I thought, ’oh God, will his gorilla-face gas mask be the last thing I see in my life?’ but then couldn’t see anything because Mikhailo jumped in and took the bullets for me. Next moment the Monolithian was dead, I think Alex Degtyarev was who finished him off when he came running up our right flank, there, after knocking sense into a shell-shocked Spetsnaz medic… He and Colonel Kovalsky dragged Mikhailo to the nearest Mi-24 and I remember, they hit the hatch with his head in the process and he was cursing at them like a sailor, even with his chest covered with blood—” Strelok chuckles. “Yes, it happened right here, at the Prometheus statue.”
“It was Operation Fairway,” Nooria says. “He told me about it.”
“Yes. Luckily for us, the Monolith was already weakened at that time. We killed scores of them, then Duty and Freedom patrols foraying into Pripyat did the rest. Guide told me he once saw them fighting a Monolith squad together. Hard to believe, eh?”
“Why is Guide hiding in such a dreadful place?”
“He’s obsessed with all things Monolith. The river port had been their stronghold before we kicked their asses. Guide is looking for anything that can help him to understand them better. If you ask me, he’s compensating for not reaching the Wish Granter… All right, it’s time to tell him we’re coming.”
Strelok takes out his PDA. “Guide, do you copy?”
He waits a few heartbeats before repeating the call but no reply comes. Nooria is already thinking about coming so far in vain when Strelok’s PDA beeps.
“I’m busy. Leave me alone.”
“Guide, it’s me,” Strelok speaks into the device. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it. I’m moving in with a friend. Do us a favor and don’t shoot at us, all right?”
“Marked One? What the hell?”
“We’re inbound from the cinema. Watch over our approach.”
“Prinyal,” comes the Russian roger-that.
Strelok moves out. The square between their position and the river port is covered with dense bush and the odd pine tree, their roots having forced the stone plates that had once covered the square to bulge and turn up from the ground. They are about to walk through a hole in the barbed wire fencing the port building when the Stalker’s PDA beeps again.
“Stay put. Small squad approaching from your nine. Hundred meters.”
“Monolith?” Strelok asks under his breath.
“Negative. Bandits. Keep low.”
Strelok puts his finger to his lips, signaling Nooria to duck. Now they can hear the faint chatter of the approaching Bandits.
“—so I was kicking his head till he was dead, mwaha!”
“And what was in his stash?”
“Closer,” they hear Guide’s whisper in the PDA, “slow down, guys, please slow down.”
“I had hoped for a dirty magazine but a can of rotten meat was all I found!”
“That sucks, tipa, that really sucks!”
“Hey, what’s that?”
“Yes… stop and check out that crate, you scum. It’s there for a reason…”
Though Nooria doesn’t understand Guide’s muted words, his slow breathing indicates that he is deeply concentrating.
“It’s empty.”
“Blyad! I was hoping for a Gauss rifle!”
“You think those just lie around here? In your wet dreams maybe!”
“Let’s—”
The bang of a rifle shot prevents the Bandit from finishing his sentence, followed almost immediately by a second shot. The muzzle echoes among the tall buildings but Nooria’s ears detect their source: up in the tower of the port building, a rifle barrel protrudes between two boards covering the window.
Kneeling behind a bush, Strelok fires his rifle too. A cry of pain follows his bursts.
“Patsani!”
“Bullseye, Strelok. Three down. One on the run… Damn! Lost sight of him. Moved behind the statue. Still armed.”
&
nbsp; Strelok stays. He works the mode selection switch on his rifle, aims and fires a single shot.
“He’s down. Still alive. Be careful.”
Strelok acknowledges the warning. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Prinyal.”
With his weapon at ready, Strelok walks up to the wounded Bandit. He had left a trail of blood as he crawled behind the low platform that had once contained the fountain around the Prometheus statue, where he apparently hoped to be safe from the sniper in the tower and the rifleman in the bushes.
“Nu privet, patsan,” Strelok says for a greeting. “Any more of you cocksuckers around?”
“Net, net! Please, don’t kill me!”
Nooria studies the wounded man’s brown jacket that looks almost identical to the one she got from Sultan.
“He works for Sultan?” she asks.
“Ti s Sultanom, khuyesos?” translates Strelok so that the Bandit can understand the question.
“Da” is the man’s response. “Jack and Sultan will give you a reward if you help me!”
“Want to earn some money, Nooria?” Strelok asks. “Because—”
Nooria brusquely interrupts him. “I asked, is he with Sultan?”
“Yes, and he said that—”
Strelok’s mouth stays open in the middle of his sentence as he sees Nooria drawing her blade, stepping to the agonized Bandit and slashing his throat. He stares at her with utter astonishment, his lips still moving.
“—that Sultan will… oh, forget about it.”
“Others are dead?”
Strelok looks at the three bodies which lie nearby in still extending pools of blood.
“They look dead enough to me.”
Nooria steps over to the bodies and stabs each in the heart. Then she gracefully shakes the blood off her blade and sheaths it. “Now they look dead enough to me too.”
“Jopta,” Strelok mutters a word for surprise in Russian.
Nooria shrugs. “Easily amused, huh?”
“Guide,” Strelok says into his PDA, ”if you have seen what I’ve just seen, you better put on a gas mask with a polite and nice face painted on it. You wouldn’t want to offend her.”
“It’s a woman? Okhuyoshka!”
“She doesn’t speak Russian but you better watch your tongue anyway, lest you want her to cut it off.”
“I heard you. Come, I’m opening the trapdoor.”
The ruined pavilion of the river port might have once housed a café or restaurant, yet with the narrow windows facing the square, the two buttresses flanking the entrance and the slim tower above makes the adjacent building resemble a tiny fortress. At the end of a debris-covered corridor, a steep set of corroded metal stairs leads to an open platform overlooking the square and the brown, lifeless river behind the building. Through a ladder fixed to the wall, Strelok and Nooria climb up to a smaller platform where another ladder awaits. It leads to a hatch in the ceiling from where a round an jovial face looks down at them. To Nooria’s eyes, Guide—if this balding man in a Stalker suit is him—appears very different from Strelok with his cunning eyes and lean face.
“I am Guide. Nix English,” their host says with an apologizing smile as he helps Nooria up and into the chamber above. “Bye-bye!”
“Cut the crap, man,” Strelok tells him as he makes his way up. “Bye-bye is for poka anyway.”
“I know—I’m just embarrassed over seeing a woman here, that’s why I got confused!”
“Yeah, yeah. Glad you didn’t confuse us with the Bandits when firing that Dragunov,” Strelok says pointing to the sniper rifle standing in the corner. “Good to see you, brother!”
“It’s been a while, eh?”
While the two men embrace each other and exchange a kiss in very Russian fashion, Nooria looks around in Guide’s hideout. It is small for even a single occupant, and now with the three of them inside she can barely move without stepping on the bedroll on the ground or hitting against the wooden crate serving both as cupboard and table. Maps and documents cover it all over, flattened by several PDAs that look more sophisticated than those she has seen before. The windows are carefully boarded up, each having only a narrow hole through which the surrounding area can be observed and kept under fire if needed. She can’t imagine of any hideout in Pripyat having much to do with comfort, but even if there were, this tower was definitely chosen over comfort for its strategic location and suitability for defense.
As she tries to leave enough room for the two men, she accidentally kicks the rifle over. With a quick reflex she didn’t think the jovial Stalker capable of, Guide catches the Dragunov before it could fall on the concrete floor.
“Budte ostorozhna!”
“Careful with that,” Strelok translates and adds, “It’s the Lynx. A very special rifle.”
“I am sorry,” she replies curling her lips.
“Nichego, nichego,” Guide quickly replies with a reassuring smile. “Khotchite strelat?”
“No time for shooting lessons, brother,” Strelok says. “We must get her to Cordon. Now.”
“She’s got any cash?”
“It’s me who’s asking you.”
“Strelok, you damn freeloader. I should have picked a hideout where not even you could find and pester me for a free trip!”
“That’s not even all. I need a way that runs close enough to Dark Valley. There’s something I must get from one of my stashes. Won’t take too long, I promise.”
“I don’t know.” Guide scratches the stubble on his chin. “Presuming that I’m willing to take you there, bad business as it is for me, there are paths in the Zone I don’t want others to know. Can she be trusted?”
“Yes. So, you mean there’s a shorter way than through the Radar, Warehouses, Rostok and the Garbage?”
“Tell me first why I’m supposed to help her. Hope she’s not pretending to love you while squeezing you for secrets… like my hideout for example?”
Strelok sighs with impatience. “Could you stop being paranoid? Please? Listen: the man who caught a bullet for me once is in trouble. He’s being held at Cordon Base. The SBU might be taking him to Kiev right as we speak. I must get him out. This is his wife, lover, girlfriend or whoever from the New Zone. She healed me out of my nightmares and now I’m doubly indebted to them. You get it now?”
“From the New Zone? Bozhe moi!”
“Yes, yes, she’s also a witch or something and survived a blow-out in the open.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Bottom line—I don’t want to let her down. Will you help or not?”
“A witch and killer?” Guide looks at Nooria with sheer respect. “If that’s how women are in the New Zone, maybe I should take a trip there!”
“Glad I could impress you. So?”
“It wasn’t you but her, Marked One.”
Guide bows his head to Nooria. Although she doesn’t understand a word from their conversation, she returns the Stalker’s gesture with a smile. Guide turns back to Strelok and rubs his gloved hands together.
“I do know a way to get you there quickly. Not short, but safe. It’s the road used by grozovikami smerti.”
Strelok’s face turns suddenly pale. “Grozovikami smerti?”
Nooria frowns upon seeing the shadow of fear over the hardened Stalker’s face.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Death Trucks,” Strelok translates, swallowing hard. “Monolith used them to transport dead and brainwashed Stalkers.”
“Brings back fond memories, huh?” Guide smiles. “Don’t worry, we won’t need to ride one. I’m talking about the road they used.“
“A road for Death Trucks?” Strelok asks taken aback.
“That’s correct. Mostly a dirt track in good overall condition. The Monolithians marked all anomalies and regularly cleared off the mutants roaming along it. Now that they’re cornered to the north, the road is no longer maintained and we might run into a few obstacles.”
“What ob
stacles?”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle. It’s still much safer than any other way to southern Cordon and a safer way means quicker process.”
“Incredible,” Strelok murmurs.
“Why? If you were Monolith, would you drive those trucks first through Freedom, then Duty and Army territory? They aren’t that stupid, you should know that very well!”
Guide takes two PDAs from the crate and holds them over to Strelok.
“Monolith PDAs. See? You think I’m here to shoot zombies? Come on, bratan! Their stashes and PDAs are a treasure trove for learning more about the Zone. For example, did you know that there is a Space anomaly in the CNPP that can teleport you right next to Sidorovich’s bunker?”
“I do. Have been through it, too.”
“Oh, stop bragging about your big raid at last!”
“A secret Monolithian path…” Strelok frowns, wagering their chances. “You sure about this?”
“You’re funny. First you beg me to show you a fast way to Cordon, then don’t believe me when I tell you!”
“Sorry. It was just… never mind. Uhodim!”
“Yes, let’s go. Wait for me downstairs until I lock up my place.”
While Guide closes the trapdoor with several number-coded, unbreakable padlocks, Strelok explains Guide’s plan to Nooria.
“But why not to Swamps?” she asks.
“We better go directly to Cordon Base. There’s no time to waste. If they take him to Kiev he’ll be out of anyone’s reach.”
“Ready?” Guide asks heading down the ladder. His Dragunov is slung over his shoulder.
“How is your ankle?” Nooria asks Strelok.
“Hurts, but I’ll survive,” he replies with a grimace. “It’s okay with the bandage and the last two painkillers I had.”
“What happened to you?” Guide asks.
“Uhm… fell out of a tree,” Strelok says looking elsewhere.
“Welcome to the man-made hell,” Guide replies, grinning. “Move! Keep up with me or become bloodsucker food!”
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