Hellgate
Shamali Plains, 26 September 2014, 11:25:47 AFT
“I didn’t hide! I swear it on my mother’s life – may she rest in peace,” Squirrel says trying to blow the dust from a battered harmonica. “When the soldier manning the grenade launcher was shot, I got really, really angry. Had the sergeant not ordered us to charge them, I would have run down the dushmans on my own, I swear it!”
“I’m sure they were spared a dreadful fate, Squirrel.” Ilchenko gives the guide a skeptical look while he finishes cleaning his machine gun. “Am I not right, Major?”
“I’m with Squirrel on this… he’s a killer, he’s just hiding it.”
“Exactly my thought, sir,” Ilchenko sarcastically replies and takes a bite of the canned meat he’s having for breakfast. His face contorts in disgust. “Do you think I could use this shit as gun grease? It tastes like that anyway. Jesus, how can you Stalkers live on this?”
Squirrel blows the harmonica but a discordant shriek is the only sound the instrument makes. Grimacing, he puts it back to his pocket. “I wish I had an MP3-player, so that I don’t have to listen to your moaning all the time,” he says. “You know what? Don’t have any food for two days and then you will love it. You could lose a few kilograms.”
“Come on, Squirrel. I am from the Ukraine. I have a big soul. And a big soul has big appetite. But why do you have such a shitty call sign, anyway?”
“My political views are Red, I’m lightning-quick at picking up any artifact and have a long, big tail – if you know what I mean.”
“Is it bushy too?”
“Nah, man. But why so interested? I didn’t take you for a gomik…”
Tarasov yawns. He is tired after their night’s march through the forest. Now the first light of dawn casts beams through the high trees, making the woods appear less threatening. Sitting against the wall of the derelict farm where they halted for a short break, he enjoys the simple pleasure of feeling the cool morning breeze blowing between his toes as he cleans his boots with a damp tissue. He knows they will be dusty again after two paces, but the motion relaxes him.
“Did you hear that, Major? This rodent just called me a gomik!”
“And what do you expect me to do about it, Private? Killing him?”
“Oh no, komandir! Just looking the other way when I shoot him myself!”
“Now listen up, guys… On my last mission in the Old Zone, I had a technician with a welding torch with me. I wish he were here now to weld your mouths shut!” Tarasov says shaking his head. “You two are worse than Yar and Ashot. So, Squirrel, instead of fucking with someone who is three times your size, you better tell me about that place called Hellgate we’re heading to.”
“It’s a shortcut to the plateau where the factory is,” Squirrel says. “There’s a road leading directly up, but it goes through an abandoned village infested with mutants. Sometimes dushmans also show up to say hello. Compared to that, this shortcut is a stroll in the park. In three or four hours, we should reach a perfectly nice Stalker camp at Hellgate.”
“If it’s such a perfectly nice place, why is it called Hellgate?”
“Oh… nothing, really. Just a few Burner and Geyser anomalies here and there, you know.”
“Hey, rodent,” Ilchenko butts in. “Why didn’t you leave that RPG at Bagram? It was good loot but my back’s aching just from looking at it.”
“Was I supposed to leave it on that dead dushman at the Outpost? He won’t need it anymore. And what if we run into a tank?”
“A tank? Here?” Ilchenko laughs. “You can’t be serious.”
“Okay… maybe a bear then, would that be better? I want to tell all my buddies how Squirrel the Brave saved the asses of two military guys with one single RPG shot.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing that.”
“If you want to know, back in the Zone – when I was still with Freedom – we did it the other way round. The process was the same, except it was not about saving.”
“Go ahead and make my day, rodent…”
“Peace, man! Don’t point that shooter at me. What are you compensating for with that machine gun, anyway?”
Meanwhile, Tarasov has finished cleaning his boots. “Rebyata… if you’re done teasing each other, let’s move on.”
“Let’s,” Ilchenko says standing to his feet. “Damn, how I miss those choppers… I hate walking.” He kicks the half-empty can, still holding the remains of his breakfast, into a bush.
“Don’t do that,” Squirrel says, looking around nervously. “The woods have ears.”
“And the fields have eyes,” Ilchenko murmurs. “Heard that before.”
“Stop! Squirrel is right. Get down!”
Maybe it is Tarasov’s tired eyes playing tricks on him, but for a moment he was sure he’d spotted a pair of eyes watching them from the bushes. They’d disappeared, but the movement of the branches and a barely audible crackle on the ground tells him that someone, or something, was definitely watching them.
“What was that, komandir?”
Crouching, Ilchenko aims his PKM and slowly scans the ruins.
“Squirrel! Are there any… bloodsuckers here?”
The guide pales. “Oh shit! Did you see one?”
“How could I? They can make themselves invisible!”
“We were not supposed to run into them before Hellgate!”
“Holy Mother of Jesus Christ,” Ilchenko exclaims. “It’s just a few anomalies there, you said!”
“Form an echelon. Ilchenko, take point. Squirrel, stay on my side and keep an eye on our rear. Let’s move!”
The woods become sparse as they slowly approach the steep descent to the plateau. They proceed cautiously, moving from cover to cover. After fifty meters, Tarasov signals a halt.
“Can’t see any contacts,” he murmurs, scanning the area through his binoculars. “Wait… I see a huge pack of jackals.”
“Are they moving in our direction?” Squirrel whispers.
“I don’t think they’ve detected us yet.” Tarasov zooms in the optics to have a closer look at the mutants. “Look at that… they’re fighting over something.”
“That’s good. Let’s move on quietly and avoid them.”
Tarasov glances over the mutants one last time, but just as he’s about to lower the binoculars he spots something sinister.
“What the hell?” he whispers, adjusting the zoom.
“What is it, boss?”
“I’m not sure.”
Something long and thin reaches out from behind a group of dried-out, lifeless trees. Switching to the highest magnification, he realizes that what he took for a long, straight branch of a tree is actually the rotor blade of a helicopter. Behind it, a dozen jackals fight each other. The biggest mutant chases down a smaller one and delivers a vicious bite. The small jackal drops something and scurries away. Tarasov focuses on the pack leader as it grabs the small mutant’s prize from the ground and scowls when he recognizes it as a human arm.
“I’ll be damned… they’re fighting over a body. But that’s not all.”
The major gives the binoculars to Squirrel and points to the rotor blades. Immediately, a greedy smile widens on the Stalker guide’s face.
“Rotor blades! And where there’s rotor blades, there’s a chopper wreck, and where there’s a chopper wreck, there’s loot!”
“Give me that RPG, Squirrel.”
“Let me blast them, man! Please!”
“I said, give me that RPG, Squirrel.”
“Please, please, please let me fire the RPG!”
“All right, all right, but you better remove that protective cap from the warhead before you shoot… Ilchenko, show him how to do that. And now, Rambo – you don’t want to miss the mutants. Wait until they are bunched up. Ilchenko, get your machine gun ready. After the grenade hits them, open fire and try to hit as many of them as you can. If we screw it and they come running at us… that won’t be nice. Are we set?” His
companions nod. “Don’t screw this up, Stalker. Wait for my command.”
Now Tarasov sees the jackals gather around a corpse, half dug out from a shallow grave.
“Gospodi,” he mutters when he sees what’s left of the body.
“What is it?”
“I saw a… but no. That cannot be. I refuse to believe it.”
At the moment when the most jackals gather over the grave, Tarasov gives Squirrel a signal. The projectile leaves the launcher with a deafening whoosh. The pack leader tosses its head but by the time it realizes the danger it is too late; the grenade hits the pack and explodes in a sheet of orange flame. In the same second, Ilchenko’s machine gun starts barking as he fires a long salvo into the strewn mass of wounded and half-dead mutants.
The pack leader, still alive, emits a vengeful howl and starts running toward them at speed despite having had one of its legs torn off by the explosion and the huge wound gouged into its side. Even so, the distance is so great that Tarasov can take a steady aim with his Vintorez. He fires a short burst and the mutant falls, its momentum still carrying it a meter closer to the three men, as if its predatory instinct drove it on even after life had departed.
Wish I had this rifle on the Shalang Pass when I needed it most, Tarasov thinks with a bitter smile.
“Good job,” he tells his companions. “Let’s have a look at that wreck. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Getting closer, Tarasov recognizes the wreck by its tail – a Mi-24. With Afghanistan full of war debris, the sight does not surprise him – at least not at first. As they get close enough to see more of the wreck between the sparse bushes, the major gives a short, ghastly cry.
“Damn! This was one of ours!”
Ilchenko and Squirrel turn their heads to look. The Ukraine’s blue and yellow ensign is clearly visible on the bullet-riddled fuselage.
“Where’s that rotten stench coming from?”
The enthusiasm has disappeared from Squirrel’s face. Indeed, the smell is so foul, it forces him to put his gas mask on.
Tarasov follows suit before carefully studying the wreck. It looks to him as if the helicopter was intact when it landed and had been attacked on the ground. Tarasov and Ilchenko step to the hatch.
“Looks like the hatch was blown open, sir.”
“And judging by the mess inside, someone tossed grenades into the compartment.”
Hundreds of cartridge cases lie in blackened pools of dry blood and Tarasov finds a few bloody bandages and empty medikits, but there’s no sign of any bodies. Stepping out, he finds the pilots’ hatches open.
“Maybe the crew made it through?”
Ilchenko looks around as if expecting surviving troopers to appear from the bushes, but Squirrel shatters any optimism.
“Major… Ilch… you better come and have a look at what I found.”
A few steps away from the chopper’s wreck, close to where the mutants were fighting, the grenade has blasted a shallow crater into the ground and unearthed two bodies. By the missing parts and advanced state of decay, Tarasov recognizes the corpse dug up by the jackals. Of the other, only the back and legs are visible – but the sight of the half-decomposed flesh is enough to make Squirrel retch. The bodies are clad in nothing but cotton leggings and the army-issue tee-shirts with blue and white stripes.
“Where is their armor?” Tarasov inquires, combating his nausea. “And who buried them?”
“Maybe surviving comrades.”
“Ilchenko, give me your shovel.”
“Are you sure about this, sir?”
“I’m sure that you want to put your gas mask on, soldier.”
Tarasov opens the foldable shovel and starts digging. Ilchenko and Squirrel watch in horror as he soon unearths more bodies, most of them stripped almost naked like the two on top. Only one is different, and he still wears his pilot’s suit. The major has seen enough corpses to know: they must have been buried several weeks ago. When he finds the seventh corpse, Tarasov stops digging.
“No need to dig any deeper… looks like the whole squad and crew were buried here.” He leans closer to the bodies. The stench of decay and rot is so strong that it even penetrates Tarasov’s gas mask. A sweetish, sickening taste develops in his mouth as he studies the bodies from a closer range. He points at a skull, barely connected by rotting sinew to the rest of the corpse. “Look… this might have started as a firefight, but ended in an execution.”
Speechless, they look at the open grave, then at each other.
Ilchenko scowls. “Who did this?” he finally says.
Tarasov shakes his head. His first thought is of the sinister commandos from the Salang Range. But they use different means to clean up their mess, he thinks. The burial also means that the dushmans are no option either – he can’t imagine any reason why they would bother with digging a mass grave for their enemies.
“I don’t know, but probably not the dushmans, and definitely not the Stalkers.”
“I agree,” Squirrel says. “One needs more firepower than a few Stalkers’ Kalashnikovs to storm a downed chopper with a whole squad of paratroopers inside. No brother would be foolish enough to do that.”
“Squirrel, can you read tracks?”
“Wouldn’t be much of a guide if I couldn’t, man.”
“Let’s check the area. Ilchenko, here’s your shovel. Fill that back in.”
“As ordered… damn this shit. I just can’t believe it.”
Looking for any traces the attackers might have left behind, Tarasov and the guide comb the perimeter around the wreck.
“I’m not a big tactician, man, and the whole place looks as if God had created it for an ambush… but if I had to take that chopper on, that position would have been as good as any. Look!” He waves Tarasov over to a tree stump, where the Stalker kneels and takes a handful of cartridge casings from the ground.
“9x39 millimeters… Russian-made. Lots of them. Here… and look, two more firing positions over there.”
Tarasov examines a casing. Even a quick glance proves that the guide was right. He frowns. “Squirrel… do you know anyone who has a Val or a Vintorez?”
“Yeah, man. You.”
“I assure you I didn’t do this. Now tell me – here in the new Zone, which other rifle uses this caliber?”
“The Groza.”
“And who is armed with Groza assault rifles?”
Squirrel removes his gas mask. It is the first time that Tarasov sees horror in his eyes.
“Exactly,” the major murmurs and bows his head.
For a long minute, they look at each other.
“Listen Squirrel… I already know that you were with Freedom once. I suppose there’s not much love lost between you and Captain Bone’s Dutiers.”
“That’s not the correct way to put it. I’d rather say: please, let me cut their bellies open, tear out their intestines, trample on them, and suffocate the suckers with their own guts.”
“If you want to see that day, you must keep your mouth shut for now. Do not talk about this to anyone. Especially not to Ilchenko.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so. Or do you want my six remaining men to charge down Bone while there are a hundred Stalkers around who don’t know who they hate more – us or the guards?”
“They don’t hate soldiers anymore after you helped us out at the Outpost. At least not you and your guys.”
“Be that as it may, we are not ready to take the Dutiers – or whoever they really are – on yet. Is that clear?”
“Yes sir, Major, sir.”
“Spare me your jokes, I’m not in the mood for fun. Let’s go back to that chopper and give Ilchenko a hand.”
Stalker camp at Hellgate, 20:25:47 AFT
Night has fallen by the time they climb up through a valley to Hellgate. Tarasov scans the area through his binoculars. Beyond an empty area encircled by jagged, rocky hills, dozens of small fires dance under a huge archway leading to
a cave entrance. The place looks like a ruined cathedral built to worship some evil entity, but it was the tortured earth itself that produced this wicked rock formation. Now he also realizes that what had looked like one single anomaly from far, is actually many – sizzling and pulsating purple flames dance among columns of steam. A dilapidated log hut stands a safe distance from the anomalies, most of its timbers having been taken away to feed the campfire that burns in the middle of the stone circle, further away from the anomalies but still close enough for the flames to lit up three human figures huddled around the campfire.
“I see Stalkers there.”
“That must be Snorkbait and his buddies,” Squirrel replies. “Snorky is a pretty good guide himself.”
“How could anyone set up a camp there? There are anomalies around, and the place itself looks creepy.”
“Because they aren’t stupid, you know?”
“And what makes them smart?”
“Mutants don’t go too close to anomalies, and smart Stalkers make camp where no mutants go.”
“Sounds reasonable. Let’s join them at their fire, then.”
As the three of them walk up to the fire, the Stalkers jump up, pointing their weapons at the newcomers.
“Peace, brothers! It’s me, Squirrel!”
“Hey Squirrel,” a Stalker says, lowering his weapon. “What’s wrong with you? We’re just sitting here, telling jokes and all, and you sneak up on us like this? You scared the shit out of us!”
“We mean no harm,” Tarasov says. He switches his rifle’s safety to ‘on’ and shoulders the weapon. “Do you mind if we spend the night here?”
“Haha! The military is looking for protection from Stalkers,” another Stalker says as he sits down by the fire and goes back to tuning his battered guitar. “Come, you’ll be safe with us.”
“That’s very reassuring,” Ilchenko says, looking around.
“What’s up, Squirrel?” The third Stalker turns to the guide. He is cleaning an old L85 Enfield rifle. “Got lost as usual, my old mate?”
“I’m guiding my soldier guests through the local zoo, Snorky,” the guide says, sitting down next to the campfire. “They’ve already met the bears and dushmans. All that must have prepared for them for the worst attraction. Major, Ilch, I have the displeasure to give you Mishka Beekeeper. He pretends to play guitar but he can’t. The jumpy one is Sashka SWAT Officer, and the brother with a taste for antique weapons is Snorkbait.”
“Beekeeper? SWAT Officer?” Ilchenko gives Tarasov a puzzled glance. “How did these guys chose their call signs? Plucking them out of a hat?”
Tarasov shrugs the question off. He has already noticed something far more interesting.
“I don’t give a shit about crazy call signs if the name on that label is for real,” he says, eyeing the bottle of vodka that the Stalkers are sharing among themselves. “Is that really what the label says?” He takes off his heavy rucksack with a satisfied sigh and joins the Stalkers sitting around the fire.
“Sure! It’s Stolichnaya, what else?”
Mishka Beekeeper offers him the bottle. Tarasov takes a long swig, then hands it over to Ilchenko who has taken the place next to him.
“What brought you here then, lads?” Snorkbait asks.
“We’re on our way to the Factory.”
“That’s where we wanted to go a few nights back. Forget about it.”
“Come again?”
“The last storm moved the anomalies. Looks as if it’s swept all the damned Geysers, Mines and Burners into the archway. You could waste a million bolts but still wouldn’t find a way through.”
“Shit,” Tarasov swears. “Have you at least seen Mac? You know, Uncle Yar’s apprentice?”
The Stalkers exchange a baffled look.
“Nope. Sorry, mate,” Snorkbait says.
“How far is it if we go the other route, through that abandoned village you mentioned, Squirrel?”
“Two days.”
Tarasov glances at Ilchenko who returns the concern in his look. The major removes his helmet and rubs his temples.
“Damn it… we haven’t got that much time. We must find a way through tomorrow.”
“Let’s keep tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow,” Squirrel cheerfully replies, “and now tell me buddies, you got any new stories?”
“We were talking about women.”
“What women, Sashka?”
“That’s the point. There aren’t any around.”
“Why would there be? Prada produces no Stalker boots, Mango has no protective suits, Louis Vuitton offers no artifact containers, and jackal puppies aren’t cute. That’s why they don’t come here.”
“Which sucks,” the Stalker called SWAT Officer sighs with resignation.
“How would you recognize one anyway?” Tarasov asks. “All Stalkers wear gas masks, helmets or at least balaclavas.”
“By her voice?”
“Come on, Mishka. Speaking through a gas mask makes anyone sound like a mutant.”
“True enough, Squirrel. By her tits then.”
“Under the body armor she could have tits like a cow’s udders and nobody would notice them.”
“Okay, not the tits. Maybe a pink rifle.”
“Or an armored suit with a ‘Hello, Kitty’ sticker on it?”
“Or just by being a pain in the ass,” Snorkbait grumbles.
“By dumping you for a Stalker with a bigger rifle,” Ilchenko smirks.
“You talking about your own experiences, Ilch? Anyway, one wouldn’t have to guess,” Squirrel says laughing. “Just find out which Stalker the bloodsuckers are after on certain days!”
“Shit! Now that was way below the belt. One would only need to know her call sign, anyway.”
“Why, Sashka, what would that be?”
“Fucked One.”
The Stalkers all laugh, except for Snorkbait who seems more intent on maintaining his weapon. Tarasov likes this attitude, all the more because Snorkbait handles the disassembled weapon with a routine that can only come from a military background. However, for once he finds the Stalkers’ conversation more interesting than speculating in which army Snorkbait had acquired his skills.
“I wonder where the Tribe got their women from?” He says, taking another swig from the bottle.
Suddenly, silence falls upon the camp.
“Hey Major,” a Stalker eventually says, “don’t ruin the party by mentioning those animals!”
“Sorry, Beekeeper. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
The Stalker called SWAT Officer picks up the thread of conversation. “Kruto, fellows,” he says, clearing his throat. “So, assuming that a female Stalker was here, what would you do?”
“I’m a polite guy,” Squirrel says. “I’d open the door to any underground area and let her enter before me. Ladies first!”
“I would give her a flower.”
“Just a flower? You’re a cheapskate, Sashka.”
“I mean, a Stone Flower artifact.”
“Before or after?”
“Whatever. Eh, this makes no sense… let’s talk about women in the Big Land. Hey, newcomers, tell us a juicy story!”
“Hell yeah! Tell us something naughty. I guess you army officers get the most pussy out there.”
“Only on paydays,” Tarasov jokes. “Women are expensive in Kiev, you know?”
“Who’s talking about whores?”
“All women are expensive,” Tarasov sighs.
“Or all women are whores.”
“I wouldn’t subscribe to that, Ilchenko.”
“No argument about women being expensive,” Snorkbait says. “But back in Bagram I heard a little bird twittering that you’ve been the commander of the base at Cordon. If that’s true, and you didn’t get rich from all the artifact trade, then, Major – with all due respect, you missed the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Maybe I did,” Tarasov dryly replies, staring into the fire.
Ilchenko
takes a long swig from the vodka bottle. “Everyone, listen up! Yoshkar Ola is the place to go. It’s an ugly little bydlostan in Russia, but there’s a big university and out of every ten students, nine are girls.”
“Then what the hell are we doing here?” Snorkbait muses.
“Wasting ourselves, Snorky,” a Stalker replies.
“I’m not talking about you, Mishka, you old wanker.”
“You’ve studied there?” Tarasov asks Ilchenko.
“No, I studied in Odessa, but she was from Yoshkar Ola. I got to know her during a student exchange, which ended up in an intense exchange of body fluids...”
“A story at last! That’s what we need!”
“Right you are, Sashka! Come on, Ilch, get right to the juicy details!”
“It’s a sad story, Squirrel. So, I am from Odessa and she was from Yoshkar Ola.” Ilchenko suppresses a hiccup and takes another swig. Tarasov can only admire his drinking abilities – the soldier seems to knock back the vodka like water. “During a summer break, we met again in St. Petersburg. She and some other girls had a party organized. It sucked – there were several Western guys there too, and they were looking at our girls as if they were nothing but pussy.”
“Which is actually true,” Mishka Beekeeper cuts in.
Ilchenko gives him a disapproving look and drinks once more. “So, I speak a little German, you know, because I studied Goethe and Rilke and helped them translate. When the suckers told a girl: was möchtest Du trinken, I just said: ‘he wants to know if you’ll lay for a Schengen visa’.”
“Now that’s what I call party-pooping,” Squirrel says.
“Whatever… The worst thing was that some girls – not all, but some, you know what I’m meaning – just said ‘yes’. But that was not the only thing that ruined the party for me. Imagine, there was a fucking negro too. Can you believe that? He was on some fucking fellowship to study fucking sociology or whatever. Officially. Unofficially, he was selling drugs. The girls let him come to the party because he had some pretty good stuff, I’ll give him that.”
Mishka Beekeeper chuckles. “I don’t even dare think what else might have interested the girls.”
“Shut your mouth, Stalker. Anyway, I bought a few grams of dope to cheer myself up. And while I was getting high, that kurvenok fucked my girl!”
“Shame on you, man. You should have stuck to Coca-Cola.”
“That bastard gave me stronger stuff than what I wanted, Squirrel. It totally knocked me out. Yeah, okay, I admit I had too much vodka too but you’re missing my point. My point is that my girl was fucked by a fucking negro!”
“I always knew you were compensating with that machine gun,” Squirrel jokes. Ilchenko gives him a scornful glance, and now appears to be genuinely angry. Tarasov watches him, ready to intervene should a fight break out, but his soldier seems to be too drunk already to raise a hand.
“Anyway, next morning I find my girl in the next room and the negro all over her. I told her to get out of my sight and go back to Yoshkar-fucking-Ola. Then I had a… conversation… with the negro.”
“About the dope?”
“About why I shouldn’t throw him out off the balcony, Stalker. He wasn’t very… Major, how do you call it when an argument doesn’t work?”
“In your case, it’s called being totally pissed. You better go, brush your teeth and prepare your bivouac, son.”
“Is this an order?”
“Finish the story first, if you still can,” Tarasov says, softened up by the drink himself, and also curious about the end of Ilchenko’s story, even though the soldier’s words occasionally turn into drunken blabber.
“I go, komandir, I go, but let me tell you this – I found out something very interesting about negros. Their skin might be black but their brains are white. Don’t look at me like that! I saw it with my own eyes when he hit the pavement one, two, three, four – five floors below the balcony!”
Squirrel chokes on the loaf of bread he is eating.
“That was the most interesting thing I learned during my student years. There was no more studying for me anyway, because who the hell wants to study once he’s got a drug dealer’s stash in his hands? So one thing led to the other and a year after I even had my own bummer, a nice black X6. Guess how many teachers drive one. So, in the end I couldn’t care less about my degree, and all went well until one day a sucker scratched my car. I was a little too rough on him… anyway, while waiting for my turn at the militsia, along came a recruiting officer and told me that I could either go to jail or join the army.”
“With a past like that, one day you’ll make it to general,” Tarasov says.
“Major, I love you. You are a badass, but I love you! Please, Major, don’t tell the others that I didn’t finish university. You know, we’re all supposed to be badasses but being a badass with a university degree makes me a special badass. Am I not right?”
Tarasov softly pushes Ilchenko’s arm away as the soldier attempts to embrace him. “That’s your only concern after you’ve killed a man?”
“Come on, it was in St. Petersburg! Someone would have killed him anyway. Some guys on the street called me a hohol when they heard me talking. Me, who is of their blood! Damn it, didn’t we all fight the Nazis together? And then the dushmans? It’s all screwed up in the Big Land. All…”
Finally wasted, Ilchenko stretches out on the ground and starts snoring immediately. The Stalkers are quiet.
“Why does someone drink too much vodka if he can’t handle it?” Snorkbait eventually says. “Let’s go to sleep. Mishka, it’s your turn to keep the first watch.”
“That was a very touching story, but we still don’t know where to find women,” Mishka Beekeeper says, stretching his back. “Oh God – artifacts, guns, freedom, adventures... What good is there in all of this if there’s no pussy around?”
Snorkbait, the only one who has kept his mind more or less sober, gives Tarasov a questioning look. “One doesn’t just need to mention the Tribe to poop a party, I see.”
“He’s proved to be a capable and reliable soldier to me,” the major replies with a shrug. “I don’t care about what he did before.”
“That’s the kind of soldiers you have in your army? And I thought the Stalkers were a rough enough bunch.”
Tarasov looks at the snoring machine gunner. “My job is to command them, not to judge them,” he tells the Stalker. “And besides… if you are in battle, you need men like Ilchenko at your side.”
“You have a point. As a matter of fact, sometimes I’m glad we have no women around.”
“Agreed, Snorkbait.” Tarasov takes Ilchenko’s sleeping bag from the soldier’s rucksack and opens it. Before covering the snoring soldier, he looks him down for a minute. “It’s probably better for the women too.”
“Do you think it was true, or was he just bragging?”
“I don’t care. But to be honest, I guess you’re not from the Ukraine or Russia and have no idea of what some women, like Ilchenko’s girl, are willing to do to get away… to London, for example.”
“What an irony,” Snorkbait says with a smirk. “Because you have no idea of what men like me are willing to do to get out of there, mate.”
STALKER Southern Comfort Page 11
