by John Mason
“It’s good to have one who knows about weapons watching my back,” Crow remarks.
“And you’re one hell of a marksman. That jackal was dead before I even heard the shot, and all this from a distance of five hundred meters!”
“It’s a good rifle. Uncle Yar knows his trade, I give him that.”
“Hunting must be easy with such an upgraded SVD.”
“Not exactly… better cartridges like the 7N14 are hard to come by, so I don’t waste them. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair sport. If it’s game I’m after, the Abakan is good enough. But tell me, have you been to the Zone?”
Crow sounds curious. Tarasov hesitates before answering. He already knows that being a soldier is not the best pedigree here, especially coming from the Zone where Stalkers and military had hated each other’s guts for a long time.
“I’ve been there once in a while, delivering supplies.”
“Oh yes…” replies Crow grinning. “I thought so. But what’s it like? I’ve never been there, you know.”
“Similar to this place, except there are no mountains and it’s not so barren. And the mutants are a little dumber,” Tarasov explains. He almost added, ‘at home’.
“There’s a wide plain east of Bagram. It was all orchards and potato fields before the nukes, but it’s become a forest now. You’ll have your share of trees there. And of anomalies too.”
Tarasov nods, considering. “And what’s your story, Stalker?”
“I was a wildlife photographer and was sent by National Geographic to shoot photos of mutants. But I soon realized that shooting them with a sniper rifle is much more fun.”
Tarasov smiles as if he believed him. “That’s the most pathetic thing I ever heard,” he says sarcastically.
Crow bursts out in muted laughter. “Whatever, bro… maybe later we’ll have time for proper introduction. The only thing that matters now is getting through that damned tunnel. The question is how do we get through a tunnel full of anomalies and hostiles and stay alive in the process?”
“Bound and overwatch,” Tarasov says after a minute of quick thinking. He is eager to function again as an officer. “You take a protected position. I move forward, let’s say fifty meters. You watch over my advance with the Dragunov. Once I have reached the forward position, I’ll cover you until you join up. Then we play the same game until we get through the tunnel.”
Crow gives him a skeptical grin. “Is that a grunt from the supply train talking? Let’s go…. And put your gas mask on. It’s horribly dusty inside.”
They proceed along a narrow dirt track beneath the steep mountainside, keeping an eye on the tarmac road to their right and the ruins beyond. Before getting close to the entrance, the Stalker signals him to halt. He takes an army-issue box from his backpack. With careful hands, he removes a night scope from inside and fixes it to his rifle. “I hope the battery will last until we get through,” he says removing the scope’s lens cover. “What’s that unhappy look on your face, Condor?”
Tarasov almost says something about the state-of-the-art equipment that was at his disposal just twenty-four hours ago. The pilot suit, not designed for the rigors of combat, barely offers him any protection and his helmet has no night vision. He bites his tongue. “Hope this battered AKSU will not let me down,” he says cocking the rifle.
“We better be more concerned about the two pillboxes at the entrance. Check them out.”
Peering over the corner, Tarasov sees two small concrete shelters, more like guards posts than pillboxes. They seem empty. He gives a signal to the Stalker to move up and switches on the torch taped to the rifle barrel.
“Climb up there, Stalker, and keep your eyes peeled.” He waits until Crow assumes a firing position on the bed of a pick-up, resting his rifle on the cabin’s roof.
“You’re good to go, Condor.”
Cautiously, Tarasov moves forward. It is pitch dark inside and full of wrecked vehicles – trucks, jeeps, pick-ups, buses, as if a huge traffic jam had blocked the cavernous tunnel. He has barely covered a few dozen meters when he sees the first anomaly. A net of thin blue lightning swipes the ground, emitting a buzz that can rapidly grow into a deafening discharge of electricity. Signaling Crow to follow up, he reaches into his pocket. Damn it – no bolts, no nuts, no nothing.
“Do you have bolts?” Tarasov ask as Crow arrives.
The Stalker gives him three rusty bolts. “That’s all I have.”
Tarasov aims cautiously before throwing the bolt into the anomaly. The blue lightning flashes into a burst of energy as the bolt falls into it, casting dire blue light into the tunnel for a second. Then it disappears from the ground for two seconds. Tarasov tosses the second bolt and dashes through. Hoping that the Stalker will not mess up his timing, he lets the anomaly discharge with the last bolt. Crow leaps through dexterously. As soon as he arrives at Tarasov’s side, the anomaly again starts its deadly dance over the ground.
“I hate anomalies,” Crow whispers, “but at least one can see these damned Electros.”
Upon seeing the Stalker take a detector out to search for any artifacts in the anomaly, Tarasov fails to hide his impatience.
“We don’t have time for that. Let’s move on.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming… wait! Did you hear that?” They freeze for a moment. Crow shrugs. “Must be hearing things.”
“Stick to the wall. Cover me.”
As he moves forward in the narrow space between the wrecks and the tunnel’s wall, blackened from the exhaust fumes that the concrete had absorbed for decades, an uneasy feeling passes over Tarasov. There’s something sinister about the Stalker that makes him concerned about being shot in his back. But the forbidding darkness that is absorbing the weak light of his torchlight gives him more concerns. The tunnel runs straight over a long distance and a truck occasionally blocks their way, making them climb over it. Their steps on the metal echo in the darkness and his Geiger counter’s signal speeds up every time they get close to a vehicle. Tarasov detects the nauseating taste of metal in his mouth.
“Crow, do you have an antirad to spare?” he says turning to the Stalker behind him. “These wrecks are a radiation trap.”
“Here,” Crow says and tosses him a packet with two red and blue pills. Tarasov gets clumsy for a moment and drops the medicine. Bending to pick it up saves his life as a bullet hits the wall where he was standing just a second ago. Crow’s Dragunov fires in response, its echo rolling through the caverns like thunder.
“Hostiles at twelve o’clock,” the Stalker shouts, “fifty meters!”
By now the muzzle flash of their rifles has betrayed the enemies’ position. Tarasov quickly skirts the old truck behind which Crow’s sniper fire keeps their opponents pinned down. The AKSU’s hard-hitting bullets get the black-clad gunmen in their flank. One falls, three more swiftly move back behind the nearest wreck with well-trained movements. Crow hits one more as they retreat.
“I can’t see them!”
Tarasov leaps to the truck, jumps up to the flat-bed and opens fire at the enemy ducking below. The echo of his last shot is still rolling up the tunnel when the last hostile falls, cursing in a language he can’t understand.
“Clear!”
He is not surprised when he sees the corpses wearing the same black body armor as the squad at the crash site. Eager to find any useful information about them, he goes through their pockets, but his search is in vain.
“They were good,” he tells Crow when the sniper catches up with him. “Any idea who they might be?”
The Stalker shakes his head and Tarasov checks the weapon lying beside one of the bodies. Back in the Zone, he was shot at by all kinds of weapons and with almost every caliber, from the hunting shotguns of rookie Stalkers to Freedom’s US-made LR-300’s, ultimately test-firing the weapon that had been used in an attempt on his life shortly before. But he never laid his hands on this mule of an assault rifle: the handle reminds him of an M-16, the barrel of a German G-36, t
he trigger mechanism of a Kastor grenade launcher and the overall design of something between a bullpup SVU or FN2000.
“I admit the Chinese know a thing or two about weapons,” he says shaking his head in disdain, “they managed to produce something that’s even uglier than a Groza rifle.”
“Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the design of the rifle that’s being fired at me.”
“That’s a good point… but anyway, here’s a joke. Do you know why the Chinese call this scrap Qing Buqiang Zidong?”
“Please do tell.”
“They can’t spell the ‘r’ in Groza.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Crow clasps his hands in mock amusement, “as if you wouldn’t give one arm to have one with you now. Why don’t you just take that Chinese rifle? It’s way better than that AKSU.”
“At least I know where this one fires the bullets.” Tarasov bitterly grins looking at his rifle. Seeing at what Crow is up to, he frowns. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see that bastard’s face.”
“I wouldn’t do that. It brings bad luck.”
Crow leaves the tactical helmet on the corpse. “It’s just because I rarely come that close to the baddies I shoot.”
“I know. That’s what I could never understand about snipers… I mean, you lay hidden, see a head close in the reticule from hundreds of meters and then blow it to pieces. Do you at least feel something when you see them dying?”
“Yes,” Crow says as he reloads his Dragunov, listening to the bolt clicking back to position as if it was a sophisticated musical instrument. “I do feel something.”
“And what would that be?”
“Recoil.”
Tarasov shrugs and turns back to the bodies. He’s never liked scavenging from dead enemies but, being low on resources, the hand grenades and bandages he finds will come in useful. After a moment of hesitation, he removes the bullet-proof tactical vest from the corpse and puts it over the light pilot suit.
It didn’t save its previous owner… but still could save me.
“I’ll move on. Stay here and wait for my sign to proceed.”
“Roger, Condor,” comes the Stalker’s reply.
Suspecting that the small party they have run into was only a vanguard, Tarasov remains cautious as he sneaks from cover to cover. After a few minutes, he is relieved to see light appearing in the distance. “Looks like we’re almost through!”
“That’s a stretch covered by a concrete roof, with openings to the side. It was an open road once but got covered after the traffic was regularly hit by avalanches.”
“Shit. And I was hoping it’s the other end.”
“Keep moving, Condor. Only two more kilometers to go.”
The light falling in from the opening in the concrete wall takes a toll on his eyes, already accustomed to the darkness. Tarasov closes his right eye to keep it accustomed to the darkness. He passes the stretch concerned about their flanks open to any danger coming from outside. His instincts prove right when the thud-thud of rotor blades sounds above them.
“Run!”
Tarasov doesn’t need Crow’s warning to dash forward as quickly as he can, hoping that no enemies lie in wait where the row of casements end and darkness continues. Arriving at the first wreck offering cover, he looks around for Crow but the Stalker has disappeared. Hiding behind the burnt-out frame of a bus, he can hear the helicopter hovering directly above.
He proceeds only a few meters further into the darkness to a car that might once have been a Humvee when a voice makes him freeze.
“Stoi! Lay down your weapon!” The words echoing in the tunnel ahead are Russian, but spoken with a strangely soft accent. “You are surrounded!”
His memories from last night’s encounter with the snake-like mutant still alive, Tarasov recoils as he sees a thick cable descend from one of the wall openings behind him. His distress gives way to fear as three commandos slide down the rope and take cover behind the wrecked bus, moving swiftly like cats without even giving him a chance to aim his rifle.
“Surrender!”
Tarasov takes his chance and leaps into cover behind the wrecked Humvee. Automatic rifle fire starts ringing out from behind the bus. He throws himself to the ground. A hail of bullets hit the Humvee’s massive steel frame.
Where in the hell is that fucking sniper?
Even betrayal comes to his mind when a familiar rifle barks up. Crow runs up to him, panting but with a victorious grin on his face.
“At last! We’re sitting ducks here,” shouts Tarasov amid the rifle fire. “They’ve blocked the tunnel ahead!”
“Sorry bro! I had to switch the scope to the Abakan.”
“Give suppressing fire from the left!”
Crow stays in cover while firing a long burst, holding his rifle over his head and what was once the vehicle’s engine compartment. At the same time, Tarasov rolls to his right, jumps up and rushes forward, firing his AKSU into the enemies appearing in the beam of the torchlight.
“Forward,” he screams, “forward!”
His limb hits against something hard as he moves in to finish the ambushers. He can hear someone barking commands but the crossfire coming from left and right cuts them short. One enemy tries to drag himself away. Tarasov grabs and turns him onto his back.
“Who are you?” he asks him in a commanding voice. All he gets in reply is a scornful grin that doesn’t vanish even as he points his rifle at the enemy’s face. It turns into a grimace when Tarasov fires his weapon. Stepping closer, the Stalker looks down at the body.
“Damned mercenaries… I tried to loosen up their tongue more than once. But they wouldn’t talk.”
“Check him for loot if you want,” Tarasov curtly replies. There is something about their adversaries’ trained movements and uniform equipment that makes him feel uneasy. While the Stalker busies himself with checking the bodies, Tarasov keeps his weapon aiming towards the tunnel stretch where the mercenaries descended, though the helicopter’s noise has now receded into the distance.
“I found a pack of smokes,” Crow joyfully reports. “Do you want one?”
Thick dust swirls in the light of Tarasov’s headlight but the temptation to remove his gas mask is too strong. “Quadruples the dose of daily radiation,” he grumbles, “and fills your lungs with polonium…”
“Correct, but that was not my question.”
“All right... give me one.”
The Stalker removes his gas mask and sits down on the body of a dead mercenary as if it was a cushion. He lights up his cigarette, then offers the pack and his lighter to Tarasov. “I’m trying to quit, you know. But there are moments when I could kill for a smoke.”
“You just did,” Tarasov replies removing a cigarette from the box.
“Yeah… You know, bad habits die hard. Maybe if I stick to my bad habits, I’ll also die hard.”
Through the smoke of his cigarette, Tarasov carefully studies the Stalker. Crow’s combat skills seem too good for a Loner Stalker, for whom battle was more about satisfying trigger-happy fingers and surpassing each other with cocky battle cries than following coordinated tactics.
“You’ve got a good sense for teamwork, you know?”
“Heard that before. Take it, buddy… don’t let anyone say that Crow didn’t share his smokes.” The Stalker puts the still burning cigarette butt into the mouth of the corpse he was sitting on and gently pats its face. “Molodets. You no longer need to care about lung cancer, do you?”
As they move on with Tarasov taking the lead, he soon halts in his tracks when his torchlight illuminates a huge bulk of fangs and muscles, its fur scorched by fire. The air surrounding it still smells of burnt flesh.
“At least the mercs took care of this one,” Crow remarks as they pass by the dead mutant.
“What the hell was that?”
“I’d have thought you have bears in the Zone. Don’t you?”
“Bears? No. Especially not like this, with claws longer tha
n a hand’s span and a row of spiky bones along its spine.”
“If I ever have kids, I’ll take them to the Zone one day. It must be like a petting zoo.”
After hours in the darkness and suffocating dust, Tarasov feels relief wash over him when, at last, daylight glimmers at the far end of the tunnel. He has to force patience and caution on himself as he moves from the wrecks to wall niches, still concerned about more gunmen waiting to ambush them. When they reach the exit, Tarasov exchanges a glance with the Stalker. Crow nods and they exit the tunnel at the same moment, Tarasov aiming his weapon and scanning the area for any hostiles, while Crow does the same to his left.
“Clear,” Tarasov says lowering his AKSU.
“Looks like we made it, bratan,” Crow replies with a sigh.
The Geiger counter clicks steadily at normal level, meaning that Tarasov can at last remove his gas mask and take a deep breath, enjoying the fresh and cool air streaming into his lungs. After the dark and narrow tunnel, his senses struggle to perceive the awe-inspiring scenery.
He raises his binoculars. Flanked by snow-capped peaks, the valley descends steeply towards the south where a wide plain opens up, covered by lush forest. Clouds of mist drift over the dark green foliage that stretches towards the horizon. Low clouds cover the view beyond the far hills that bite into the steel-blue sky like giant teeth. Deep in the forest, the hugest anomaly he has ever seen looms, having carved a gigantic archway leading into the hills beyond it. The glint of purple fire flashes in its middle. An exhilarating sense of freedom overcomes Tarasov.
“Welcome to the New Zone,” Crow says behind him.
Tarasov turns to share his excitement but freezes at the sight of the silenced Glock that Crow is holding in a steady aim, his eyes narrowed and not promising anything good.
“Ruki ver,” the Stalker coldly says, “drop that weapon, boyevoychik. “
Tarasov lets go off his rifle and raises his hands as commanded.
“Lock your fingers behind your head. Get down on your knees... molodets. And now, it’s time for you to properly introduce yourself. Who are you and what was in that chopper?”
