Sayan, Modern Sailor
Sayan, who was Bezukladnikov's step-brother, got straight to business swiping the tea, cigs, and boar chops. Through the heavy fog, he saw with almost unhuman senses a half-dozen abercrzombies shuffling about the driveway. He dropped to the ground with the graceful feet of an up-to-date seaman, sprinting through the gate, trusting the heavy fog to cloak him. He circled the base of the hill, coming up the far side to the barn. He clambered awkwardly up the tractor, like his first time on the recently-furnished ropes of a boat, to grab the loot atop it,
He sprinted blindly into the fog, falling down a hill and into the light of the campfire where three Duty stalkers idled. The two sitting ones refused to talk to him, citing his white sailor's cap and newfangled rope techniques, so he took a leap over the fire to impress him, earning some toasty thighs and some sack charring. This only proved his idiocy, so he winced over to the commander, Private Sedykh
Sayan asked about seeking paid work, cause he was all about making those cash moneyzz$z, and was pointed to Yanov, He asked about crashed helicopters, because they were like futuristic sealiners, but got only a blank stare. Faltering for conversation, he asked him what was new.
Private Sedykh said: "Making money costs money. You just calculate how much your 'investement' costs, and determine the risk and the return. What the hell did you think? This shit is all business and math. Nothing else to it. These sorry ass bitches walking around, looking like tough bastards, brandishing heavy weaponry, they are all mathematicians and businessmen. Some with PHDs and university diplomas. It's a hard place to live, and it's even a harder place to run a business. See, what I do is I calculate the price of the bullet, the price of repair and how much I have to spend if I wanna survive that specific 'adventure.' And if the return is big enough, I know what I'm doing next. Calculations like that you've got to make all the time. Do I shoot the boar that is chasing me, or keep my ammo for that raid on that bandit camp? Making money sure does cost money, sometimes more than you actually make. You make bad mistakes, you end up in the swamps. And that's all the philosophy there is to it."
Facinated by someone able to string together more than three sentences, Sayan asked him what his business was. He answered laughingly that what he really wanted is to relax at the Izumrudnoye resort.
Their idle chatter was interrupted by the stinging sensation of something biting Sayan's ankles. The stalkers opened fire, as Sayan heroically climbed atop a stack of crates. When the excitement ended, Sayan jumped down, frantic with adrenaline, and cut into the two dead psuedodogs with his soviet combat knife, collecting three chunks of dripping bloody meat (which went right into his lint-fileld pockets) and a fistful of hair.
Three unaffiliated stalkers arrived at the campfire, and after a brief exchange between commanders, took over the loitering spot as the Dutyers moved on with a wave goodbye. The leader, Alex Trump, didn't want to talk with the strange guy nursing a bleeding ankle. Sayan figured he had better things to do, important things, being the son of Alex Supertramp and Donald Trump.
Sayan took his cue to leave, feeling right at home as he set out across a marshy river to the metal-cover slope of a slanted roof to an exposed stage. It began to rain. A small collection of ruined houses faced the stage, and Sayan spotted a few dangerous looking boars running about. They did not look like the delicious chops sitting in his pocket. He waited for them to move away, and finally they did, far enough away for comfort but close enough for caution. Moving down off the slope, he heard a few gunshots coming from across the river where he came from, and spotted a slinking pseudodog nearby, but disregarded both to search the HAMLET (get it?).
He looked in the decapitated houses and beneath their slightly raised foundations, and eventually found some supplies under a desk in a room with a sweet painting of a happy upright lion on the wall outside. He found 350 mL of sparking water an open can (which he carefully sealed with a rock just large enough), another .5L of Stolichnaya vodka (which he gleefully squirreled away in the bloody meat pocket), two cigs (crumpled but still cancer-filled) and a chocolate protein bar (which he sniffed to make sure it wasn't poop). The last treasure was a sheaf of paper with writing scrawled across it. Being half-illiterate, and also in possible danger of boar mauling, he pocketed it for later. Continuing his search, he found a few more lion paintings (two young lions on turtles, a lion riding a bicycle, and a mischevious looking lion) and a crowbar and empty plastic jar under another house. Looking towards the stage, Sayan spotted a few wary-looking stalkers.
The stalkers popped a squat on the stage. Sayan approached, to be hailed by Private Sedykh. He brushed off any more conversation, saying that Sayan should get to business, and that 'Time is money, friend.' Sayan may have imagined the last word.
The rain escalated, punctuated by brilliant lightning arcs in the clouded morning skys, as Sayan walked the road away from the hamlet. Approaching a burnt village, Sayan looked down the hill to the right and saw a glorious sight (hey I rhymed) – a boat!
Sayan took off at a sprint down the hill towards his new home, almost falling into a treachourous-looking cavern. He came across three carcasses of fleshy-looking pig monsters, little more than orbs of flesh with spindly legs and squashed faces. They were badly decayed, but despite this he almost considered taking their meat until the rotting sickly-sweet smell reminded him too much of that time on the life raft with those guys who soon became those corpses that were smelly, oh so smelly. . .
Sayan suppressed the memory as he waded through the marshy mire to the beached boat. He passed by some stalkers moving out of the boat, saying "Early bird gets the worm, ey?" to them, with no reply other than cold and slightly confused looks. He entered through the heavy portal door, coming into a cozy room comfortably occupied by tables with chatting stalkers, some cleaning weapons or handling food. He was greeted by a bearded fellow across a bar with a "Welcome, Stalker!" He strolled across to the bar, swaying back in forth, pantomiming the movement of a ship at sea but coming across as just being drunk. The man introduced himself, saying "Ah, a new face! How pleasant among this ugly lot! My name is Beard." Sayan started, and took out the canister of tea, asking "Is this your tea?" Beard laughed, and pushed it back into Sayan's hands.
Sayan asked for work, and was told of a weird glow at the dredge station to the northeast. He gave a half-hearted attempt at quest acceptance, then moved on to a pleasant conversation about the kind of person who becomes a stalker, and what their motivations might be. Asking about trade, Beard showed him a comprehensive list of his wares, slipping in a strange backhand reference to a batch of 'magic' mushrooms he was growing, "cause you seem the type who likes to have a good, spacey time. Sayan didn't know what he meant, and didn't believe in magic ever since he learned at sea that there was no edge of the earth to make an endless waterfall off of, so he moved on to hawking some of his wares, acutely aware of his 100-ruble wallet. He sold two chunks of psuedodog meat, the fur, three of the five cigs, the broken radio (which he thought before was a camera that couldn't take selfies), the sparkling water, .5L of vodka, the welding goggles, and the empty plastic jar. He walked away from the deal with 4023 rubles in his wallet – his favorite number! He remembered to check the price for a universal power device for his hand-me-down PDA, but it cost 4462 rubles – he was 439 short!
He sipped the .25 L of vodka, savoring its bite, as he walked the boat and introduced himself. He met a shifty medic by the unfortunate name of Tremor, a terse merchant Owl, a mechanic named Cardan nursing a hangover that seemed much more massive than Sayan's own, and a friendly stalker named Nimble, who told him he could take the cot and storage box in an unused corner of the sleeping quarters. He sat down on his cot and took the time to attempt to parse the sheaf of papers he found. They seemed to be a log of drug deals with various names, locations, and goods sold. From it he learned that Freedom supplies most of the natural drugs like marijuana, with bandits supplying harder drugs like cocaine and salicylic acid. Apparently even Monolith traded in the stuff, offering expensive gear and ammo for large amounts of drugs. It made for an interesting read, but most of the drugs he had never heard of (he swore off drugs after trying to get fucked up off of the heated and fermented remains of cow feces) and the reading made his head hurt, so he tossed the log, plus the crowbar, hammer, tea, battery, protein bar, hunk of dog meat, battery, and two cigs into his storage box. He felt hungry, so he sat listening to the soothing waves of music coming out of the radio on the bar while munching on the boar chops, which were a bit stiff with age.
He introduced himself to some of the stalkers in the mess hall, and was waived over by a stalker in a trench coat sitting on a crate, attended by an armed and masked guard. He called himself Sultan, and seemed annoyed and a bit embarrassed when Sayan prostrated before him on his knees, praising him as the Sultan of the Seven Seas. He offered Sayan a job breaking up a stalker arms deal, to kill the stalkers and steal the goods. It seemed lucrative, but Lucrative was Sayan's middle name. Another stalker offered him a job securing a crate from a car at the bottom of a canyon, and a third spoke of some asshole named Magpie who was being a prick. He gave both his vague and easily retracted agreement to help. He also swiped a loaf of bread from the table when they weren't looking. You know, magnanimously.
He found a stalker named Grouse who told him about a few stalkers who had gone missing and showed up drained of blood. The story made Sayan queasy, and the queasiness made him feel guilty about the bandit raid, so he tattle-taled the details of the operation. Grouse told him to play along, but double cross the bandits with the help of the forewarned stalkers. This was his kind of job! Skirt along the sidelines, being able to call yourself part of the group, before waiting for the infighting to cease and swooping up the refuse. Like the dolphin: the vulture of the sea. He had some time to kill before dark, so he idled around the ship before setting out again into the wild yonder.