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

by John Mason

  “Was it difficult to kill?”

  “No.”

  “I know its kind… we call it djinn. It is very weak and hides in caves and ruins. It tries to scare its enemies away. If jackals come, it makes them see snake. If snake comes, it shows him bear. And to men, it shows dreadful things. You are brave.”

  “Curious would be a better word… and now I feel miserable for killing a weak mutant that only wanted to scare me away.”

  “You have good heart.”

  “Now this is something no one has told me for a long, long time.” A feeling of compassion comes over Tarasov as he looks down at the fragile girl, who returns his look with a smile on her scarred face. “About those ghosts… were they for real?”

  “My village has seen many sad things,” Nooria replies, getting up from the ground and taking the empty plate from the table. “Let us not talk about such things tonight. We have something more important to do.”

  All Tarasov wants to do is to relax after the hearty soup. I wish I could have a beer now.

  “Nooria, you are good with all kinds of powders and potions… do you know how to brew beer?”

  “A bear? You did not like deer stew?” She asks, disappointedly, going back to cleaning the rifle. “Because a bear tastes very bad.”

  “Never mind…” Suddenly, Tarasov’s eye falls on a large pot and a pile of stale, dark bread next to the hearth. “Is that made of rye?”

  “Yes. But it is old bread.”

  “All the better. Do you have… you know, that thing used for making bread…”

  “Yeast? I think so.”

  “Raisins and sugar?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “All right… now it’s my turn to teach you a secret recipe. Cut and dry the bread. Boil water in that big pot. When boiling, take it from the fire and stir. Cover the pot and let it rest in a dark, cool place. After half a day, filter the liquid. Mix yeast with warm water and a pinch of sugar. Wait until the yeast gets foamy. Stir it into the filtered liquid with a little sugar… can you still follow?”

  Nooria nods while removing the magazine from the carbine. She wraps the cloth around her finger and starts cleaning the breech. Her finger moves slowly and gently inside the rifle, as if caressing it. Tarasov stares at her eyes, still fixed on him, and suddenly finds it hard to concentrate on the recipe.

  “Okay… anyway… after a day, filter it into a pitcher and add the raisins. Wait for a couple of days, then serve it cold. The warriors will love it.”

  Nooria gives him a suspicious look. “Hm… is that sarab?”

  “What? Oh no, it’s not alcoholic. My mother prepared it for me when I was a child… it’s a very good drink… but why don’t you drink alcohol, anyway?”

  “Long time ago, Colonel found two drunk fighters during their watch. He killed them. Since then, no sarab for fighters.”

  “Gospodi… But don’t worry, nobody will be shot for having my kind of drink.”

  “He didn’t shoot them. And as you wish, I can give it a try…”

  “Please do, but don’t add any stone powders, swags or artifacts to it, all right?”

  “All right. But I will not prepare it now. Now I have something else in mind.”

  “And, uhm, what do you have in mind?”

  Nooria now moves the cleaning cloth up and down the rifle barrel, softly, gently and very slowly. She gives him a broad smile, flashing her white teeth.

  “What do you think I have in mind?”

  Nooria’s home, 8 October 2014, 05:48:59 AFT

  Knowing that it could be the last time he sees her, Tarasov leaves no inch of Nooria’s body untouched. While kissing and caressing her scars as if tenderness could heal them, Mac’s – or better, Elisabeth’s – words come his mind: “To find another human being who has everything about him what the Zone means – a new reason for staying alive.”

  Staying alive… I wouldn’t mind if I died right now, with her as my last sight.

  Her body stretches out like a landscape, undulating female curves that smell of sweat and the scent from the body oil, prepared from an artifact that seems to have the powers of an aphrodisiac – not as if he would need any such help tonight. He fondles her breasts and lets his hand glide up to her scarred neck and face, fondling her loose hair, and rests his head on her belly with her taste still on his tongue. Tarasov wants to fall asleep there, feeling the warmth emanating from Nooria’s body against his face.

  He closes his ears to the commotion outside, not willing to get up even when Nooria gets to her feet and, quickly covering her nakedness with her long gown, leaves their sleeping place.

  From somewhere in the distance, the noise of heavy engines being started sounds through the night.

  Doors open and Tarasov hears an agitated male voice outside, but ignores it still.

  “Wake up!” Nooria sounds anxious.

  “What’s happened?” Tarasov mumbles, half asleep. “Why are you so upset?”

  Through his half-open eyelids, heavy with tiredness, Tarasov sees his rifle in Nooria’s hands. Its impeccably clean gun metal shines in the candlelight.

  “Take it and use it with honor,” Nooria says with a hint of sadness in her voice, “because you must leave me now. Lance Corporal Bockman is here for you.”

  “But… why?” Tarasov asks. A frightening thought agitates him. I hope it’s not the Colonel ordering me away from her after I pissed him off last night. “What is this about?”

  Nooria gives him the weapon. “Our Tribe is going into battle. Be brave and strong, warrior... and return to me with victory.”

  Ghorband, 11:34:26 AFT

  Hidden behind a BTR wreck, Tarasov studies the Stalkers guarding the roadblock at Ghorband through his binoculars. They seem nervous, keeping their rifles ready to shoot and barely moving out from the cover of the sand bags.

  “Don’t shoot! Friendly coming through!” Concerned that he might be shot on sight, the major slowly steps out of cover and starts walking towards the Stalkers with his hands held high. “Don’t shoot, brothers!”

  “Lower your weapons,” he hears the Shrink shouting, “it’s the boyevoychik! Hey, come quickly! I hope you’re here to help us!”

  “Indeed, Borys. We’re going to Bagram to kick ass!”

  The Shrink looks at him with utter disbelief. “No way. We’ll be lucky if we stay alive here. We heard vehicles approaching… We are really screwed. Bagram is under siege and soon the Tribe will be at our throats too… This will be our last stand. Here, brother! Come, have some vodka while you still can!”

  “No vodka today, thanks, nor will there be a last stand. I brought men with me... a few good men.”

  “This is no time for jokes. Where are they?”

  “Behind me. You better holster your weapons.” The major presses the button on his intercom. “Bockman, the road is clear. Proceed. Have a truck take a few hitchhikers aboard.”

  The Stalkers become startled as they hear the noise of heavy engines approaching.

  “This can’t be real,” Borys murmurs. “But if it isn’t real, it does sound real… and then it’s me who needs a shrink because I’m hallucinating.”

  “No, you aren’t, and you won’t have to walk today. Look!”

  From beyond the next bend in the road, a Humvee appears. Then a dozen more follow and after them a long column of a hundred heavily armored vehicles, decorated with decomposing Taliban and mutant skulls, the Tribe’s red banner proudly blazing on the antennae.

  Bagram area, 13:07:51 AFT

  The Humvee, driven by the Lance Corporal and now carrying the Colonel and Tarasov, turns up a trail leading to a high hill overlooking Bagram. The main convoy halts, still covered by the forest between the road and the sandy, open plain to the east. Two trucks leave the convoy and follow the Colonel to the hilltop where they stop, covering the flanks of their leader’s vehicle.

  “You won’t need your gear,” the Colonel says upon observing that Tarasov is about to take his n
ew M4 carbine with him. “Take the scope from the Gepard only. It’s longer than your toy binocs.”

  A dozen Lieutenants jump down from the trucks and assume a protective position around the Colonel. They are led by a warrior wearing an exoskeleton that is entirely different to the others, since it has been painted entirely black – even his helmet, held under his arm, on which the red SEMPER FI inscription blazes out even brighter. Out of all the warriors around, except the Colonel, he is the only one without his helmet on. Blue eyes stare out from a sun-baked, wrinkled face topped by gray hair cut to stubble, radiating the composure of a senior fighter who has already seen many battles like the one unfolding in front of them. Although taller and leaner, there is something confidence-inspiring in his presence that reminds Tarasov of praporshchik Zotkin.

  More trucks and Humvees arrive on the hill, carrying mortars and heavy machine guns. Their crews quickly start preparing them, but obviously not quickly enough for the senior warrior.

  “Don’t be scared of breaking your fingernails, ladies! You are not just a fire support team, you are my fire support team! Anderson, do you want the big man to think that my fire support team is made up of pussies? Do you want to let me fucking down, gunny?”

  “No, Sergeant Major Hartman, sir!”

  “Then speed up! That also includes you, Corporal Hendricks! You’re not in the Belgian army anymore! Haul those ammo boxes!”

  “Oorah, sir!”

  “That’s the spirit! Move, move, move, warriors! Maybe the gunny told you that we’re here for a lazy pussies convention. That’s damn wrong! What are we here for today?”

  “For the kill!” the warriors’ chorus replies.

  “And what am I here for?”

  “For the thrill!”

  “I want that kill! I want that thrill!” the Sergeant Major roars. “Move, you lame pussies!”

  Standing in front of his command vehicle and studying the besieged base through his binoculars, the Colonel orders a command into his radio.

  “Assault team, proceed towards Phase Line Akron.”

  “Affirmative. Assault team is Oscar Mike,” comes the reply.

  “Keep it steady, Ramirez.”

  “Fire support team is prepared, sir,” the Sergeant Major reports to the Colonel, who glances at his watch.

  “It took them three seconds longer than I expect, Top.”

  “Apologies, sir. I’ll talk to Anderson about it once the show is over.”

  At that moment, a volley of RPG projectiles hit the gates of the Stalker base, blasting a machine gun post and sending half a dozen defenders to their deaths.

  “Looks pretty hairy down there,” the Colonel calmly remarks.

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle, sir.”

  “Top, have the fire team stand by.” The Colonel raises his radio set. “Driscoll, proceed with the security team to grid Zulu Bravo Seven Niner.”

  Through his binoculars, Tarasov watches a few lighter armored vehicles leaving the main column, and cannot shake off a steady flow of bad memories when he hears the cruel First Lieutenant’s voice reply through the radio.

  “Affirmative. Security team moving out.”

  The vehicles speed up, driving around the hill the Colonel has chosen for his command post so as to stay out of the sight of the enemy, and quickly move towards the road leading to the south.

  “Driscoll is closing the kill zone,” the Sergeant Major tells Tarasov with a grin. “No rag-head will get out of here alive, not even if they’re disguised as Minnie the Mouse!”

  Two small, light trucks arrive on the hill.

  What are they doing here? Tarasov asks himself. No armor, no nothing…unless that thing under the cover is some piece of artillery.

  “Looks bad for the scavengers,” the Sergeant Major tells him, pointing towards the besieged Stalker base. “They’re in deep shit. A real clusterfuck.”

  Tarasov raises his binoculars. The container wall around the Antonov is shattered, while here and there tracer bullets still fizz towards the waves of enemies who swarm around the Stalker base like a sea of ants.

  “Major,” he hears the Colonel calling, “you will not take part in this battle. You will only have the pleasure of watching it. But before it begins, I give you a mission.”

  Tarasov turns to him with a bad feeling festering in his guts.

  “You were right, Major, we have no friends here. But I don’t think that Stalkers and the Tribe will ever be friends. I ordered my men into this battle because I want you to be in my debt.”

  This doesn’t sound good, the major thinks.

  “I want you to be in my debt because I will task you to do something that is almost impossible,” the Colonel says. “I give you the task of staying alive until you have done what you came here for. Afterwards, I want you to find my son and give him what you have found in that village. Tell him what you have seen here – everything. Are you willing to do this for me, in exchange for the miserable lives of a few scavengers?”

  “What if I die, no matter how hard I try to stay alive?”

  Another huge explosion rocks the Stalkers’ defenses.

  “Would you dare to disappoint me?” A grim smile appears on the Colonel’s face. “You better make up your mind now, because your friends seem to have only minutes left to live.”

  “Yes, I will do that for you. If I can stay alive.”

  “Consider that a direct order from me. Take this damned pen drive and guard it with your life. I have saved everything on it that you’ll need to know to find my son. When you find him, you will understand what I said about heroin, and why we littered the poppy fields with corpses. And now… now you will see me unleashing the greatest warriors the earth has ever seen.”

  “Assault team has reached Phase Line Akron. Sierra Bravo,” Tarasov hears a voice crackling in the radio.

  “Security team is in position,” comes another report.

  The Colonel looks up to the endless grey sky and takes a deep breath. His trembling nostrils tell of excitement barely withheld. “I love battles at dawn… let the sky crumble. Top – send the assault team in!”

  “Assault team, proceed through Phase Line Boston to Phase Line Charleston,” the Sergeant Major commands through his radio. “When you reach Charleston, wait for the big man’s command before you strike.”

  “Assault team. Affirmative.”

  Tarasov raises his binoculars to his eyes. The column starts moving, turning eastwards on a narrow road through the forest.

  The vehicles keep precisely the same distance from each other, as if they were railway carriages pulled by the same locomotive, even upon reaching the plain where they accelerate and swirl up a huge plume of dust and sand.

  “Assault team crossing Phase Line Boston.”

  So far, all the call signs, orders and destination codes sounded to Tarasov like a normal military operation, but now the Colonel barks an unexpected command.

  “Top! Sound the bell.”

  “Oorah, sir!” The Sergeant Major waves his hand to the light trucks. Their crews remove the canvas from the tops but, to Tarasov’s surprise, it is not a weapon that they are carrying but a massive set of loudspeakers.

  Suddenly, Tarasov hears the toll of a huge bell, its sound so deep and menacing as if it heralds the Apocalypse itself, and so loud that it feels as if it is crushing his eardrums. The dreadful toll rolls through the plains and echoes back from the hills far away.

  “Our way of letting them know that doom is coming,” the Sergeant Major shouts over with a wide smile, putting his helmet on.

  “Assault team has reached Phase Line Charleston,” comes through the radio.

  “Assume assault formation, Ramirez,” the Colonel commands. “Fire support team, the kill zone is yours.”

  “Fire for effect! Give’m hell!”

  On the Sergeant Major’s orders, the mortars fire a salvo and the heavy machine guns on the Humvees start barking.

  The column has reached the plain
and deploys into a semi-circle, outflanking the enemy like a gigantic snake raising its head to strike its prey. The Humvees slow down for a minute and turn towards the enemy who are already being hammered by the Tribe’s mortars and heavy machine guns.

  “Assault team in position.”

  “Assault team – go!” the Colonel commands. “Fire support, shift your fire!”

  The sound of guitars now screams from the loudspeakers at skull-crushing volume, playing a symphony of pure rage. A desire for destruction overwhelms him and Tarasov feels the urge to run down from the hill with all guns blazing, unleashing a scream to join the singer’s brutal cry. He feels like a puppet moved by the toll of the bell, blending with the merciless rhythm coming from the loudspeakers.

  A glance from the Colonel stops him dead. In the gray glow of dawn, the massive roar of battle blends with the music rolling over the plain below.

  Tarasov believed that the Tribe had earned its notoriety by pure cruelty. But what he sees now unfolding is the most impressive deployment of mobile firepower he has ever witnessed.

  The line of vehicles accelerates, the mounted machine guns and grenade launchers spitting bullets and explosives into the enemy ranks. They don’t slow down as they smash into the dushmans, throwing bodies and shattered limbs into the sky. Now the warriors jump off and charge forward while the machine guns on the vehicles cover the area ahead of them with a deadly rain of fire. Tarasov sees a warrior blasting the heads of two enemies with his machine gun while devil pups charge forward, their fixed bayonets red from the glowing alloy and blood.

  A Humvee gets separated from the line and is soon surrounded by the enemy, only to unleash a massive streak of fire from a mounted flamethrower and clear a circle filled with burning corpses around it. He sees a devil pup dying, then another one who had tried to protect his fallen comrade. For a moment the line falters, but a few senior warriors fill their loosened ranks and mow the enemy down with rifle fire. The Tribe’s iron gauntlet closes around the enemy, mercilessly and irresistibly pushing them forward to the container wall, where the defenders’ bullets rain down into their massed ranks.