II.
It all came down to a mistake, really. A simple mistake. A rookie mistake.
They told him he was born for the Zone, that he could smell artifacts and anomalies, that bandits and Mercs and soldiers looked at him and saw right through him. They tried to call him Bloodhound, but he never answered to it, had no truck with posturing or superstition. He was never short on money . . . usually; but a few days ago he'd mailed off most of his wad to Olesya and the kids in Kiev. Most of his children were healthy—the Zone allow—but his two oldest were defectives, and taking care of them wasn't cheap, to say nothing of keeping food in the house, keeping the heat on in winter, and buying Olesya all the tacky gold jewelry and American clothes she loved so much. So he was broke; he'd barely had enough left over for a few boxes of ammunition and tins of food. The eggheads in Yantar always paid top dollar for anything they could get their hands on, mutant parts especially; so when he saw a bloodsuckers shining red eyes in the darkness as he moved that way through Rostock, it was like the Zone's own gift. The bloodsucker didn't notice him, and was apparently travelling toward Yantar itself; low on ammunition as he was, the stalker needed to follow and wait for a good, clean shot, not easy in the dark; but the mutant remained oblivious and, not wanting to prey upon groups of stalkers, led him around the Mercs and bandits as if he were following a tour guide. It was all too easy. He should've known that the Zone doesn't make things easy.
His big mistake was in being so eager for the kill that he forgot bloodusckers always—always—travel in a mating pair. If he hadn't been so excited, he might've noticed the female's red eyes when he turned around to check his six. But he didn't, and it cost.
He almost had his shot in the tunnel at the edge of the Wild Territory, but the monster set off one of the burners—he'd swear for the rest of his life that he saw its shimmering silhouette trip over its own feet—and the game of walking and waiting began again. The bloodsucker loped down the road into the Yantar area, stood upon the rim of the lake's basin, threw its arms up to the night sky, and howled. The stalker could've taken his shot then, but his instincts stopped him; he'd never seen a bloodsucker act this way before, and a bloodsucker only made its presence obvious the instant before a kill. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew something bad was on the wind.
And then the earth shook, and the sky turned red as blood. A loud, warbling claxton sounded from the mobile laboratory far below them. Blowout.
The bloodsucker darted down into the bushes out of sight, still howling. The stalker looked left, hopefully, toward the mobile lab; the eggheads were decent joes and would be happy to let him shelter in their bunker, maybe even gift him a meal and a shower. The basin was swarming with men—loners, soldiers, Freedom, Duty, Mercs, all mixed together—and they were all shambling toward the bunker, guns limp in their hands. That way was death. The research center over the hill had never looked less menacing; that, also, was death.
The stalker scurried into the bushes, on the trail of the bloodsucker, down the hill and into the culvert at its base. Not the best shelter, not the shelter he wanted, but it would keep him alive . . . the Zone allow. And he could hear the bloodsucker running about and howling, its cries echoing up and down the tunnel, so he would get his kill if nothing else. He leveled his Kalashnikov, crouched behind a bend in the culvert, and waited. Sure enough, the poor panicking monster scurried right by, desperately hoping the other end of the tunnel would be different this time—Just like a cat, the stalker reflected—and didn't notice him. He put a hammered pair into the back of its head, cut the jawbone out of its face, and kicked back for a nap; the blowout would take care of any wayward monsters.
He woke to a sharp pain in his left arm and a horrible sucking sound in his ear. He felt weak. Turning his head, he found himself staring into the red eyes of a female bloodsucker . . . the second half of the mating pair. He screamed.
"Bozhe miy!" he heard someone cry as his strength left him, "that idiot is alive!"
He passed out to the tattoo of rifle fire.
