The Devil in the Darkscape
"So tell me, what's up?" Nimble asked, waiting idly when Tiger arrived at the campfire.
"Just some questions." Questions Tiger couldn't ask right then and there, of course. "Come over here, let's not bore the others."
Nimble didn't suspect his secret was out, or else he had a great poker face. Either way, he followed Tiger to the derelict house at the far end of the right-hand row without comment. "That's better," said the loner in the long coat, settling himself on a dilapidated mattress in the former living room. "First of all, I heard you had quite the adventure with the bandits."
"Wasn't really my adventure," the scout replied modestly. "I just got mixed up in it."
"So you met the Marked One?"
"Just briefly... Nice guy, he was." Nimble patted the front of his new chain-mail apparel. "He bailed me out, then he went and got this for me. I gave him a Stone Flower for it."
"That was kind of him." Tiger took Suslov's note out of his pocket and held it up for the other stalker to see. "Now, let's talk about your Clear Sky days."
It wasn't a poker face after all. "...Where did you get that?"
"From the body of another bandit victim."
Nimble's lean face seemed to retract into the hood of his jacket. "What do you know?"
"Enough to get you in trouble," Tiger pronounced ominously, "though I'd rather not do that."
"I... Why should I trust you?" Nimble swallowed. "You weren't one of us."
"But I did work for you." Tiger adopted a more imposing posture. "I know that during the faction wars Clear Sky was hunting a group of stalkers who reached the center of the Zone. I know Lebedev hired mercenaries to assassinate those stalkers, with partial success. I know some portion of Clear Sky's members tried to reach the center themselves... Your real problem is that I've only got part of what was in your stash: bandits took the rest, and you know perfectly well that Borov will exploit anything he can." He folded his arms. "You can help me get a head start on him, or you can keep silent and let your comrades' work turn a profit for criminals. It's your call."
Nimble glared at the floor. "What's in it for you if I talk?"
"I don't know," Tiger admitted. "But if this information stays in the wrong hands, it could restart the faction wars or worse... I prefer the Zone we have now."
Nimble weighed his choices for three or four minutes. "I can't tell you much," the fake rookie said at last. "It's the truth, honest. Lebedev compartmentalized everything, 'cause he was paranoid about deserters."
"I'll take what I can get," Tiger responded gamely. "Why didn't you clean out the stash as you were ordered?"
"The courier got wasted before I could meet him. Where was the stuff?"
"In a buried pipe near the tracks, apparently."
Nimble slouched against the wall. "Should have known."
"This happened while Clear Sky was breaking up," Tiger extrapolated. "How many actually went north?"
"Almost everybody, except a few guards and some of us scouts. When they didn't come back, Cold and Suslov tried to hold things together... Then people started dying."
"In the fighting?"
"That's what we thought at first." Nimble shook his head. "We were being hunted. Somebody knew all our meeting points, all our passwords, even most of our faces. One of our own guys must have sold us out... After that courier was killed, I figured I'd be next. Getting cozy with Sidorovich probably saved my butt, even if it emptied my pockets." There was a rueful chuckle. "Right here with him and Wolf was the safest place I could find without joining one of the big factions."
"I see." Tiger stretched his legs out. "Do you think it's safe now?"
"I did until you came." The fugitive smirked self-mockingly. "I haven't tried to find any of the others or checked any of the old places. I'd just be a target, right?"
"Maybe... Can you tell me anything more about the route Lebedev took?"
"I only knew it ran through Limansk and then some kind of buried hospital. I wasn't involved in any of that."
"So what were you doing?"
"Trying to cover the other scouts' backs, finding safe paths, making sure nobody got killed by crossfire." Nimble grimaced. "The worst part was right at the beginning, when renegades invaded the marshes... We were almost bottled up in the base before a couple of the fellas brought in a freelance merc they found out on the border."
"A mercenary?"
"Yeah. Never got his name, but he had this scar on his face... Anyway, Lebedev made a deal with him and he became our brute force in the field."
That piqued Tiger's interest. "I was near the Army Warehouses when Freedom took over," he mused, recalling those stressful days with great distaste. "A mercenary with a scar helped them clear out the military."
"That was him," Nimble confirmed. "After Limansk was opened up, he went in with Lebedev and the rest. Never heard anything else about him."
"I would expect not," said Tiger gravely. "The fallback point in Suslov's note, where was that?"
"In the Dead City. We didn't actually have anything there, but the other factions mostly ignored the place. The plan was that if our base were overrun, we'd retreat to the city and recover... I never tried to go, though, so I don't know who made it."
The stripe-haired stalker frowned. "If the courier's load was meant to go to the Dead City, why pass it to you? Where was he going, if not north?"
"He was going to the Darkscape." Nimble wiggled his fingers under his hood and scratched. "Suslov bought some guns from Chekhov, cash up front, but Freedom wouldn't deliver 'em to the marshes."
"There aren't many good hiding places in the Darkscape, are there?"
"That's what I thought," Nimble agreed. "We had one place where we would store rations when we went on long patrols – maybe they just put the goods in there."
"Where was that?"
"In the village... We hid things under the junk in the cellars, but it's probably all gone by now."
"Hm." Tiger cocked his head. "I visited your old base and it's been gutted. Do you know of any other stashes or meeting points?"
"Nope... Some of the guys had personal stashes for spare weapons and stuff, but that was private info."
"And you know nothing else?"
"Nothing useful. It's all out of date now."
"All right." Tiger pushed himself onto his feet. "I think that's enough."
Nimble looked pretty relieved to hear it. "Hey, uh... If you do find any of the others, don't tell them about me, okay?"
Tiger shrugged. "If that's what you want."
"Thanks... You can have whatever's in the stash, too. Just don't let it lead back to me."
The loner nodded, and led the way back to the campfire. "All done," he said to Wolf. "I'll be leaving now."
Wolf blinked. "Just like that? You still look like shit."
"I know," Tiger replied with a shade of wry humor, "but I have urgent business and time doesn't owe me any favors."
"Gotcha." The camp leader nodded. "See you around."
The sun was beginning to sink in the sky as Tiger departed, a raft of clouds massing to the north. He crossed the main road, passed through the garage – noticing as he went that Petruha still hadn't posted a proper sentry – and followed the eastbound dirt track until it vanished into the tunnel mouth at the top of the hill overlooking the recently occupied ruins.
The Darkscape's name was apt: it was a sinister place, unpopular among the free stalkers. Its sparse anomalies offered no better artifact hunting than the Cordon, and it lacked the convenience of that region's proximity to both the porous perimeter and the more lucrative prospecting grounds of the Garbage. If Tiger kept following the road as it passed due east through a shallow, wooded canyon, he would eventually come to a crossroads. The road past there had been blocked by avalanches during the early Zone's violent expansion, as had the southbound road. Were he to turn north at the junction, his path would take him near a derelict village and into a narrow ravine. The railroad track which ran along the north fringe of the marshes and bisected the Cordon also crossed through here, briefly emerging from long tunnels where the ravine was spanned by a badly damaged bridge. The road below curved back towards the west beyond the bridge, after which it ran straight up to the Dark Valley.
Tiger had been here not long ago, when he joined Fanatic and Clumsy in checking out the scene of a government helicopter crash. That trip brought him no great profit, but the knowledge update saved him time now. He left the road, weaving among the trees on its north side to conceal himself from whatever bandits were in the place now. Borov's ambition for the Darkscape was to use it as a base for raiders preying on the Cordon's residents. It was fortunate for Tiger that he didn't yet have enough thugs to pull that off.
Just a minute – where were the thugs? For that matter, where were the blind dogs, the misshapen pigs and the rest of the mutant fauna? Whatever its other features, the Darkscape was never short of animals. Tiger listened, but heard nothing save the wind in the trees. He sniffed, but smelled nothing save the same. His sixth sense detected only a couple of crows high above. This wasn't normal: he wondered if Borov was trying to improve his gang's discipline by organizing hunting trips, or perhaps the Ministry of Internal Affairs had sent out a gunship to strafe a few herds for the entertainment of some dignitary. It wasn't a good expenditure of hryvni by any stretch, but it did happen. The cause remaining undetermined, Tiger's wariness increased with every step as he traversed the woods.
Boom!
A shotgun blast ahead sent the stalker diving behind the nearest rock. So it's Peculiarities of the Gangster Hunt after all? he thought, easing the Lee-Enfield's safety forwards with his thumb. A second report let him get a fix on the shooter.
Then he heard a panicked shout: "Eaaargh! Get away, you freak!" Tiger rolled out of cover, scrambled back onto his feet and hustled towards the village. That was no bandit, and he didn't sound like a military man either. The hustle became a sprint as the loner took a shortcut through a leafy thicket, exploding out of the far side in a shower of dislodged twigs.
In front of him was the village, with the only intact house directly ahead. There was a figure in a green stalker suit perched atop the roof, who turned at the noise of the other's arrival. It was his old friend Southpaw. "Tiger!?" he yelled. "Look out, there's a huge monster down there!"
Tiger could feel only one major source of vital energy beside Southpaw's own. It seemed to lie within a jumbled pile of rotted timbers which marked the former site of another cottage away on his left. "Are you alone?"
"Yeah!"
"Got it!" Tiger aimed, but the heap of flotsam flew asunder almost at the instant he pulled the trigger. He glimpsed a flash of bloodstained brown hide as he chambered another round, then the beast was gone. Running around the side of the house, the stalker caught a brief sight of the fleeing predator's haunches as it escaped up the path to the northward road. There was no chance of landing a shot, so he cautiously withdrew to the house.
"It got away." The left-handed loner sounded relieved and disappointed at the same time.
"Yes," Tiger agreed. "Are you all right?"
"Mostly... There's nothing else around, is there?"
"Nothing. We're alone."
"I hope so." Southpaw gingerly climbed down to the roof's edge, then dropped to the ground. "Aw shit," he groaned, seeing the condition of his suit. "I just bought this thing..."
Tiger didn't think the damage was severe enough to merit such despair. "What were you doing here?" he asked, topping off his rifle's magazine in the meantime.
"I met a Duty team up in the Dark Valley, thought I could go prospecting while they kept the crooks busy... But then I found a bunch of dead bandits on the road coming down, all ripped apart. I was trying to figure out what happened and..." Southpaw shuddered. "That thing was behind me the whole time."
"It chased you all the way here?"
"Yeah... I knew it was close, but I couldn't see it. Used up all my buckshot trying to keep it away." He looked around nervously. "At first I thought it was a bloodsucker, but it didn't fit what I've heard of them."
"I didn't get a clear view of it," said Tiger. "Did you?"
"A little. It moved on four legs and had two heads... The faces on them – ugh!"
That was enough detail. "A chimera." Tiger's voice was solemn. "This is bad."
"You know about them?"
"I've never seen a live one before," the stalker confessed, "or heard of one coming so close to the perimeter."
Southpaw's mood wasn't improved by the elucidation. "What should we do?"
"Duty needs to know about this," Tiger answered. "A chimera isn't like the mutants we normally see here: it's strong, fast and cunning. It has two brains and two hearts, so even a sniper can't easily kill it. Do you have a radio?"
"I did, but I dropped it while I was running."
"Then we'll have to go back for it, or else warn Duty in person. How many of them are in the Valley?"
Southpaw thought for a moment. "I saw five or six, but none of them had big guns... There were some free stalkers at the pig farm, too." His alarmed expression was renewed. "If that thing goes up there – "
"They would be dead before we ever arrived," Tiger finished bluntly.
"Or it might hide along the road and wait for us instead," Southpaw went on. "But that's fine if you're here," he declared brightly, "because you're a... I mean... You have a special power, right?"
"I don't know what you've heard," Tiger sighed, "but I'm not a wizard. More importantly, I don't have the firepower to take out a chimera."
Southpaw was plainly upset at his reluctance. "You wanna just let those guys fend for themselves, man?"
"Not if I can help it." The more experienced stalker walked over to the skeleton of a half-fallen house, weighing his options. He didn't really want to get involved, not when he had his own quest to follow, but as usual his altruistic streak won out. "Do you remember where you lost your radio?"
"I think so."
"All right, then listen – I heard an extinct faction had an arms cache somewhere in these ruins. I was coming to check it out when I found you... If it exists, we might find what we need in it."
"A cache?" Southpaw looked around expectantly. "Where?"
"Under junk in the cellars, that's what I was told." Tiger slung his rifle. "Let's search quickly. If the chimera returns, we won't stand a chance."
