S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort (52 page)

“Now I understand her attitude,”
Tarasov shouts back, grinning.
Yes, she is used to having things done her way,
he thinks
. All my bones are aching.
“But I can’t complain. She can be cute if she wants to.”

“That’s none of my business, partner… and that’s not what makes her special anyway.”

“She does like doing strange things… But what do you mean?”

“Well, it’s been a while ago… One day we went on a rag-head hunt with Lieutenant Ramirez. Now, Lieutenants are cocky sorts and Ramirez wandered off to check out a cave on his own. Turned out it was crawling with jackals. The beasts tore his armor off in seconds. By the time we dragged him out, he had more poisonous bites on his body than hair on his ass. But the healer fixed him up in less than a day… Tellin’ ya, that girl ain’t natural.”

“Then how come she couldn’t heal her own face?”

“Once you have acid sprayed on your skin there’s no skin left to restore, is there?”

“I guess not. Anyway… it was strange too that she only told me her name this morning.”

“That’s good for you. Because if she hadn’t told you her name, it would have meant that you failed to impress her. You’d have ended up back in the Pit by midday… and no woman would have saved your ass then!”

“Do you have many such weird customs?”

“More than you could ever imagine.”

For several minutes, Tarasov watches the barren mountains, remembering the previous night and that same dawn, when Nooria had explored every inch of his body in the candlelight.
“How did you get this big scar on your chest?” “That was a snork.” “What is a snork?” Something very bad and smelly.” “And this?” “That was a boar.” “You are very ugly, you know? We make a nice couple, soldier.”
He remembers her giggles when she called him as ugly as herself. He tried to convince her about how wrong she was about herself by kissing her scar, only to be pushed back to the mattress for another round of pleasuring her.

Oh dear. Will I ever see her again?

“Can I ask you something? The two prison guards, Hillbilly and Polak… why do they refer to each other as ‘brother’?”

“They go
way
back, ages. The ‘brothers’ were among the first retainers of the big man, way before the nukes went off. Originally they’d been military police. Guess who they were after…
 
Anyway, for one reason or another, they’d hated each other’s guts in the beginning. Then, during a patrol, they got themselves into a really bad clusterfuck. Those who made it out alive started to call each other ‘brother’, and the two of them have been best buddies ever since… especially nowadays, when they are the last ones still alive from that band of brothers.”
 

“I see… And what about you? You are not one of the Lieutenants, nor a Hazara boy,” Tarasov casually remarks to the Lance Corporal. “You must also be a newcomer, or how to say. What brought you here?”

“
California
ain’t what it used to be no more,” Bockman replies. The grin leaves his face. “Life is safer here… Anyhow, when I heard about the Tribe, I heeded the call.”

Tarasov is taken by surprise. Not even Degtyarev and the SBU, and even more so, not even the Stalkers in the New Zone, had heard much about the Tribe.

“Heard about the Tribe? How? Where?”

“Now listen up, partner… just because the Beghum asked me to take you to the Pass, you shouldn’t think we’re friends. Clear enough?”

“Enough.”

“We’re cool then. Yippee!”

“Hey, what are you doing? You are driving straight into an anomaly!”

“Oh yeah!” Electrical emissions crackle outwards and explode under the Humvee with a row of sharp, crashing thunder, but to Tarasov’s astonishment nothing happens to the vehicle.

Lance Corporal Bockman gives him a triumphant smirk. “State of the badass art… pimped by yours truly!”

Shibar
Pass
, 11:10:39 AFT

Tarasov watches the dust cloud disappearing behind a hill as the Humvee returns to the Tribe’s stronghold, far away beyond the canyons and mountains to the west, and opens his PDA.

The map shows a valley to the south of his position where the ruins of Bhegum Madar’s village supposedly lie hidden amongst the overgrown vegetation. The valley appears mostly green, just like on the display, but the digital map fails to reveal the red and blue, pulsating areas that look to Tarasov like dense anomaly fields. The path marked on the PDA tells him to find the village first, and from there guides him to a trail leading up to a plateau overlooking the valley.

He unslings the Vintorez from his shoulder. When he was reunited with his gear that morning, he’d found that someone had cleaned and applied a strange, antistatic substance to the gun metal that repelled even the finest particles of dust. Now, switching the safety catch off, Tarasov starts walking towards the valley, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the surroundings.

Jackals yelp from a short distance. Hiding behind a rock, he observes them fighting over something that looks like a body. Indeed, it had to be some kind of food: the mutants were so intent upon it that they remained unaware of his presence. The major cautiously raises the rifle. Two jackals become startled as he hits the first, and even the last one runs away after the second victim falls too. He fires again. The yelp abruptly ends.

A bumpy, broken tarmac road leads into the forest. On the roadside, a blue sign stands with white Pashtu and Latin letters. The latter have all but disappeared, blasted away by many bullet holes, but the number 2 is still visible.

I hope that is the correct distance to the village.

Keeping close to the low mud walls lining the road, he cautiously moves on. The trees have grown so high that their foliage intertwines above the road, forming a kind of tunnel. Rays of light seep through and illuminate the dense vegetation.

Tarasov sees a vibrant spot ahead, as if the cracks in the tarmac emanate steam. Approaching within a couple of feet, he notices that it’s not the only occurrence: the whole road looks like a landscape of miniature volcanoes.

Small but lethal
, Tarasov thinks as he tosses an empty pistol shell into the closest anomaly and watches it evaporate with a fizzing sparkle. He switches on his detector and bright lights appear on the green display, indicating many anomalies. It also indicates one green dot deep inside the anomaly field.

Too far. Damn it, I could use another artifact
.

He sees a single whole mud brick lying on the ground near to a wall and, guided by sudden inspiration, kicks more bricks from the dilapidated wall before throwing them in the direction of the indicated artifact to form a path. Cautiously stepping on it, he makes his way through the anomaly field and finally reaches the spot where a small spherical object gleams in one of the cracks. The Geiger counter’s ticking gets faster as he crouches down to pick the artifact up, the indicator
  
reaching almost into the yellow area.

I’ll need to ask Nooria if she knows more about this one.

The Geiger counter’s indicator drops back to a safer level when Tarasov puts the artifact into the container on his belt and, after a few leaps, he is out of the anomaly field and free to move on.

The undergrowth becomes more dens as he proceeds until the road narrows into a path. Tarasov ducks as something moves not far from him and he raises his weapon, waiting. The bushes rattle again, as if something large and heavy has moved behind them. A little distance away, a mutant appears, and for a moment Tarasov and the hind look into each other’s eyes. Spooked, the creature gracefully leaps back into the forest, leaving Tarasov to sigh with relief before pushing on once more.

After a protracted period of more watchful sneaking, an ochre ruin appears. Once it must have stood directly on the road, but now high bushes hide most of it from view. Looking around, Tarasov sees the ruins.

The village at last.

Ruined Village, 13:46:02 AFT

Tarasov is creeping deeper into the ruined village when he hears a noise so strange that at first he doesn’t believe his ears. All the same, he stands still, listening, but hears only the beat of his heart and the Geiger counter’s slow ticking. But then the sound comes again.

No way. It cannot be.

But when the sound arrives a third time, there seems to be no doubt: it is the faint noise of someone crying.

Damn, this place is creepy.

A glance at his radiation meter assures him that the area would be too dangerous for anyone to enter without a protective suit and helmet. But the crying is there, somewhere deep among the overgrown ruins.

I better check it out instead of turning my back on it. This place reeks of danger.

Following the cry, he reaches an opening in the forest that must have once been the central square of the village. The wreck of an American truck stands in the middle of the area, its tires having rotted away long ago, the bullet-riddled windows opaque with dust and age. The absence of Tribe-like decoration tells Tarasov that it must have been destroyed during the Bush wars.

I can probably skip checking this one out
.

His compass tells him that the trail to the plateau should be close. Turning to face that direction, Tarasov hears the crying getting stronger. A human figure suddenly appears in a dark hole that was once a window, passing by so quickly that he wishes he could rub his eyes under the helmet’s visor. The crying is louder, clearer, and Tarasov realizes it is a child sobbing. Unable to bear the sound of the disconsolate voice, he takes one step closer… and sees a man standing by the next ruin. He is about to call out, but then notices details other than the long white gown that the silent stranger is wearing and his grey beard. The major falls back a step as he realizes that the man’s eyes are missing, together with the top of his skull. The beard grows red from the blood that now pours out from his wounds. Gasping, Tarasov ducks and raises his gun, as if he could hit an apparition with a translucent body.

There are no ghosts. But this is one
.
But there are no ghosts.

Undeterred by the fear crawling under his skin, he steps closer. Now he sees the crying child, sitting on the ground, sobbing, tugging on the dress of a dead woman with a still fresh wound on her chest. The child looks up at him and Tarasov sees a hole in its head. The apparition raises its hand as if showing a way and, as the major involuntarily looks in the direction shown, a group of people appear, shuffling ever closer, with the row of ruins faintly visible when their bullet-riddled and mutilated bodies should be blocking them from view.

Instinctively, he grabs a grenade from his armor and throws it towards the group. It falls through them and detonates without having any effect on them. The crying becomes so loud that Tarasov feels as if he could touch its source. Turning his head to locate where the sound is coming from, he switches on his headlight and steps to the door of the house where the child
 
first appeared. The fresh body of a woman lies in front of it. There is no visible wound on her body, but blood streams from between her legs.

Pulling all his courage together, Tarasov kicks the door in.

The blood-curdling howl is almost a relief after the sobbing. A human-like mutant stands in the headlight’s beam, its unnaturally long arms scything towards him as if throwing something, but it is no weapon or projectile that hits him, only more images of dead people, their wounds heavier and their bodies more horrifically mutilated with each step he takes.