The Life of a Stalker II
Somewhere in the Zone
Tabitha had quickly discerned that it had been evening time when she had woken up since the sun had quickly dipped beneath the horizon to leave her in darkness. The temperature had dropped, and the Academy uniform Tabitha still worse did little to keep her warm. Other than the worrying fact that she would be travelling at night in a place she'd never been before, something even more worrying had come to light.
The singular, white moon hanging gracefully in the darkening sky.
For what felt like hours, Tabitha simply stared up at the moon in a state of disbelief. How exactly was this possible? What happened to the two moons she had become accustomed to? Where was she?
The catwalk surrounding the radio tower was triangular in shape, with a ladder in the center that extended a little upwards and all the way down to the ground. The tower itself extended about fifteen feet above the catwalk, and aside from the sets of antenna and blinking lights that had long ago burned out, there was something very interesting adorning the uppermost part of the tower's structure.
The source of the rather annoying noise, Tabitha's staff.
Hanging precariously from the steel structure by its crook, the staff moved with every gust of wind, coming back down to hit against the tower periodically.
Tabitha looked to the staff as it rapped against the tower once again, mentally chastising herself for standing around staring at the sky for so long. Then again, wouldn't anybody? The moons had been replaced by only one, the constellations were all gone, and she had never seen a structure like this before in her life. Deciding that she should get things on track, Tabitha's first objective was to get her staff, and to do that she would use her spare wand. She reached for her side, to where her spare wand was usually kept holstered in the waistband of her skirt.
It wasn't there.
Confused, Tabitha pulled the waistband of her skirt away from her body, finding the small cylindrical holster still in place minus the wand it was meant to carry.
So she was off to a bad start. No matter. She'd just have to climb up and get it.
Circling the tower, Tabitha found that her staff was unfortunately not hanging from the same side as the ladder, but being that the tower only had three sides, the ladder and staff had no choice but to be adjacent from each other.
As Tabitha confidently ascended the ladder, she tried to remember events previous to waking up on this tower, but was only able to draw a big blank. Something had to have been going on for her spare wand to be missing, but she had no idea what.
She hoped that Sylphid was alright, where ever she was now. She felt no connection to her familiar, which was worrying.
At the top of the ladder a rusted panel box was bolted to the side of the tower, its door having detached itself long ago. Uninterested in the guts of the panel, Tabitha turned her attention to her staff. She was at the perfect height to grab at it, but upon testing her reach she found that her arm wasn't long enough to wrap around the tower.
Tentatively, Tabitha left the security of the ladder and stepped sideways out onto the tower's structure. Edging towards the tower's edge, it was only a matter of time before she would reach the staff.
A particularly heavy gust of wind decided now to make its presence known. The tower groaning against its support cables, Tabitha clutched at the steel as she felt herself almost torn away. Through a squinting set of eyes, she saw her staff sticking almost straight out from the tower just as the wind suddenly died down. As the staff swung downward, the wind suddenly picked up again in a different direction.
Tabitha could only watch as her staff rolled out from the section of support it hung from, hit the catwalk's railing, and then went end over end as it dropped to the ground below. She stared at the spot her staff had been moments before, her expression flat and even.
If Tabitha were the kind of person to swear when frustrated or annoyed, she would have done it now.
Looking suspiciously like a messy-haired caterpillar, Kirche sprung up to a sitting position in her sleeping bag covered in sweat. After a few moments of heavy breathing and staring straight ahead, she brought her hands out of her cocoon to rub at her face.
"Nightmares?"
Kirche nearly leapt out of the sleeping bag as she used both of her hands to quickly suppress a scream of surprise. As it turned out, Louise wasn't in her usual sleeping spot in the bunk above Siesta. Instead, she was sitting in the desk chair hugging her knees to her chest, barely visible in the dark room. From her nearby spot on the floor, Kirche glanced up in pinkette's direction.
"God, Louise! Why don't you just give me a heart attack?" Kirche exclaimed in the most hush voice her excitement would allow. Louise simply stayed in her position and eyed Kirche over her knees.
"Everyone gets them, you know."
Kirche hesitated before responding. "Nightmares?"
Louise nodded.
"Well obviously," Kirche said slowly, narrowing her eyes at the pinkette as if she had said something remarkably dumb. "Of course everybody has nightmares. You don't have to talk to me like I'm five."
In the dark room, Kirche somehow knew Louise was rolling her eyes at her.
"No, you cretin!" Louise hissed, sounding more than exasperated. "I mean here in the Zone, everybody in the Zone has the nightmares. You've been having them almost every night since you've come here, right?"
Realization clicked in Kirche's head. "I have... so that's normal? I thought that it was just me."
"It's normal," Louise confirmed. "Well, normal for the Zone at least."
Frowning, Kirche eyed the sprawled out form of Siesta on the lower bunk. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully. "What about her?"
"What about Siesta?" Louise asked, confused. "What makes her any different from us?"
"She doesn't seem to be bothered by it."
"After four years, she's probably gotten used to it," Louise suggested, although she had no real proof. She and Siesta had only skimmed the topic of the nightmares.
Sighing, Kirche felt Louise's reasoning was sound. "So is that why you're awake? The nightmares?" She asked.
"No," Louise simply responded.
Kirche opened her mouth to inquire further, but decided against it at the last second. The previous day's events would make anybody lose a little sleep, especially if they were the one who had pulled the trigger. Kirche couldn't shake the image of the bandit briefly begging for his life, before Louise blew a hole through his head without a second thought.
She could only imagine how Louise felt about the subject.
Returning her head to the bunched up coat she was using as a pillow, Kirche turned away from the Tristainian. "I'm going back to sleep."
The chair creaked as Louise stood. "I think I'll try to get some as well."
Kirche listened as Louise padded across the floor and scaled to the top of the bunk bed. She exhaled deeply once she was sure the pinkette was in place, thinking one thing as she closed her eyes.
Why did all of this have to happen?
Resigned to climbing down the massively long ladder, Tabitha had run into a bit of an issue. The last ten feet or so of the ladder seemed to be missing. In fact, she could only just see it lying in the tall grass nearby.
So far, things weren't going as well as she had hoped.
Hanging from the ladder by only her right arm and leg, Tabitha pushed off, rolling as she hit the ground to negate the impact. Fortunately for the blue-haired girl, that part had actually gone well. Rising to her feet, she brushed herself off and took in her surroundings.
The small clearing that housed the radio tower was bordered by an aging chain-link fence with a dense forest all around. A small white building sat near the tower itself, and a gate was situated on one section of fence with a narrow dirt road beyond.
Now all she had to do was find her staff. Circling the tower, Tabitha was confident that it hadn't gotten far. She easily found it hiding in the grass.
Feeling like things were getting on track, Tabitha approached the gated section of the fence. It was made of two sections of the same chain-link material as the rest of the fence, only hinged on either end with a heavy padlock in the middle keeping them together.
Judging from how rusted the padlock had become, she doubted that a simple 'unlock' spell would let it open. In her mind, there were about a dozen ways she could move past this gate.
She opted to use a vertical blade of wind to bisect the lock, freeing the two sections of the gate. The rusted metal crying in anguish, Tabitha pushed open one side of the gate far enough for her to pass through and swiftly began moving down the road.
Her eyes occasionally drifted to the moon as she walked, a tell-tale sign that something was definitely wrong. She had almost made it home, having crossed the border into Gallia just the day before. Guiche and the others would have been happy to have her stay in Tristain, and she wouldn't have minded it either, but they understood her need to return home. She hadn't seen them since they had parted at the gates of Tristania.
She had a feeling that she wasn't going to get to see home for quite a while now.
Continuing along the road, Tabitha had no idea what to expect ahead of her.
Hearing a series of loud, muffled noises, Louise groaned in displeasure as she was roused. She buried her head in her pillow as the noises continued, mentally willing them away. She desperately wanted more sleep, and had fully planned on sleeping in today.
The noises almost sounded like gunfire for a moment.
Louise sprung up in the bed, her head coming within inches of hitting the ceiling. Now that she was paying attention, the noises were definitely gunfire. Throwing the covers off, she swung her legs out over the bed and dropped to the floor.
Flicking on the light switch, she searched around desperately for her pants. Standing in the middle of the room in only shorts and a t-shirt, Louise prayed that nobody would pass through the curtain and into the room. She had initially slipped under the covers with the pants on like she usually did, but she had become unbearably warm during the night and had shed them to throw them across the room.
Finding them sitting atop the shelf behind Tremor's desk, Louise pulled down on a hanging leg and caught her pants in her arms. She swiftly threw them on and grabbed her belt which hung from one of the bunk bed's posts. Hastily throwing the belt that housed her holstered Makarov around her waist, Louise noticed that Siesta seemed to finally be waking up.
The dark-haired girl sat up in her bed with a yawn, eyeing Louise tiredly. "What're yuh doin', Louise?"
"Don't you hear it?" Louise hissed, going for her coat.
Siesta was silent for a few moments before her eyes went wide. "Shit! What's going on?"
"I don't know!" Louise responded, throwing her coat over her shoulders.
Still cocooned in her sleeping bag, Kirche sat up with her hair a complete rats nest. "Whas happenin'?" She slurred,
wiping the sleep from her eyes.
"No idea, Kirche!" Siesta replied, leaping out of bed despite her injured leg. "But get up and grab some guns!" Kirche's eyes shone in realization as she sprung up from the floor.
Siesta grunted as she grabbed up her ammo pouches and her Mosin rifle, and then limped out the door without another word in only her t-shirt and shorts.
"Siesta!" Louise called after the stalker. "You haven't put on any bloody clothes! Siesta!"
Knowing that Siesta wasn't coming back, Louise heaved a ragged sigh of frustration and grabbed up her Kalashnikov just in time to see Kirche throwing on her own coat.
"Louise!" Kirche called as the pinkette locked in a magazine and chambered her weapon. "Oh hell, Louise I can't find my shoes!"
"Oh for the love of the Founder, forget it!" Louise replied, slipping her feet into her own boots and leaving the laces undone.
"I'm not going outside without any shoes!"
"Oh my God, Kirche!" Louise urged, standing next the door. "Just come on!"
Kirche quickly found her boots underneath the desk, and got to work at putting them on. "I have them!"
"Come on, come on!" Louise quickly motioned for Kirche to come, practically bouncing on her heels in anxiety.
Kirche didn't bother with the laces, sweeping up the AKM from the desk and following the pinkette out the door. It immediately became apparent that they were not the only ones roused by the sounds of gunfire. The narrow hallways of the Skadovsk were packed with armed stalkers making for the upper decks. Kirche and Louise both joined the other stalkers, heading for the stairs to venture further up into the Skadovsk's superstructure.
At the top of the stairs, Louise followed closely behind the stalker in front of her. The gunfire became clearer and louder as she neared an open door, reaching a crescendo when she finally barreled out through the door with Kirche on her heels. Using a hand to shield her eyes against the early morning light, Louise found herself on a small area of deck on the Skadovsk's stern.
Following the other stalkers, Louise and Kirche rounded the superstructure and entered a narrow walkway that connected the bow and stern sections of the ship. Louise gawked, seeing the reason why the gunfire had started in the first place. Dozens of zombies had come wandering down from the north, shambling through the marshes straight towards the Skadovsk.
Siesta was easily found, standing out like a sore thumb as she took cover and loaded her rifle behind the thick metal railing that protected anyone in the walkway from falling overboard. Most stalkers seemed intent on moving down to the main deck, where there was much more space to move around, and many more sections of railing to take cover behind. Only a sparse few took cover in the walkway, and there seemed to be more stalkers above on higher levels of the superstructure taking shots at the advancing hoard.
Sliding to a halt on Siesta's right side along with Kirche, Louise prayed that the steel was thick enough to stop a bullet.
"Siesta!" Louise yelled over the gunfire, glaring at the ex-maid as she finished loading her Mosin. "Look at what you're wearing for God's sake!"
"I know!" Siesta shouted back, flinching along with the two girls as bullets slammed into the ship's hull below them. "There was no time!"
Louise was about to retort, but Siesta didn't seem inclined to have a conversation as she peeked above the railing and fired her rifle. Timidly poking her head over the lip of the railing, Louise further examined the situation. Zombies were dropping left and right from the combined fire of the Skadovsk's residents, but the mindless beings had already gotten dangerously close. Most of the zombie's fire was concentrated towards the main deck, but a steady amount of lead sailed towards those taking cover in the walkway and above.
Both Louise and Kirche shrieked as projectiles snapped over their heads and burrowed themselves into the metal behind them. Siesta quickly ducked into cover as she cycled a new round into the Mosin's chamber, and nearby stalkers cursed and swore in surprise.
Leaping up from cover with her Kalashnikov, Louise found the offending zombified stalker shambling out from around the nearby tugboat with a rifle she didn't recognize. She quickly let off four rounds in semi-automatic towards the zombie's torso, satisfied to see it fall face first into the mud before she returned to cover. Kirche peeked over the railing, hastily firing on another nearby zombie that clutched at a pump-action shotgun. A single bullet from the AKM found a target, smashing through the zombie's knee and thoroughly destroying the joint. Kirche kept firing, five, and then ten times until she was absolutely sure the zombie wouldn't be getting back up.
She ducked back into cover, her back to the railing and her breathing heavy. During her brief time as a stalker, Kirche had shot plenty of things, one bloodsucker, numerous blind dogs and angry boars, and a heavily pitted section of steel that sat against a tree up in the hills, but she had never shot at anything human until now. Flinching as more bullets landed nearby, she realized that it hadn't really hit her hard at all. Perhaps it was because she was in a fight or die scenario, or maybe it was just because they were zombies.
Siesta saw another zombie at the end of her sights fall, working the bolt and ejecting the final cartridge, she kneeled down behind the railing to reload. Her left thigh throbbed in absolute agony, and it would soon become completely unbearable. She hoped that the zombies would be dealt with soon, for once longing to be back in the bed. She shifted to sit with her back against the railing, relieving the pressure from her leg as she fished a five round stripper clip from the pouch beside her on the deck. She swiftly fed the rounds into her rifle, batting the clip away before slamming the bolt forward and down.
As she heaved herself off of her bottom to resume firing, she idly noticed that the metal deck was rather cold on her bare feet.
Just as Siesta had risen and fired off her first round, Louise ducked back behind the railing to remove a spent magazine from her weapon. Returning the empty magazine to her coat, she brought out a new one and made to shakily lock it into her AKS-74U. Bullets landed frighteningly close by, causing Kirche to squawk and fall over onto her bottom.
"Kirche!" Louise cried, her eyes darting over the Germanian's body in a search for any wounds.
"Bloody hell that was close!" Kirche breathed, quickly scrambling to a crouched position when she noticed a pair of stalkers coming through the walkway and heading towards the main deck.
Siesta eyed Cardan as he swiftly moved past with the PKM machine gun she had seen him working on the day before. Behind him, a stalker she wasn't familiar with was weighed down with multiple jingling belts of ammunition. "You're not hit?" She called out to the redhead, who shook her head.
"N-no! I'm sure I would have noticed if I was!"
Siesta let another shot off at a zombie firing its submachine gun towards the main deck. It wasn't really the time to say it, but she wanted to tell Kirche that she'd be surprised at the few seconds it may take to realize you've actually been shot. Another projectile from Siesta's rifle found its target just as the steady braying of Cardan's machine gun joined the hectic pops and cracks around them.
Louise and Kirche both observed with interest as bright green tracers spat out of the PKM, streaking across the marshes every fifth round. They quickly resumed fire, rifles thumping at their shoulders. As Siesta ejected the last cartridge on yet another spent magazine, she noticed something rather encouraging.
"Hey!" The dark-haired girl called out to her pink-haired companion. When it became apparent Louise couldn't hear her over the noise of her carbine, Siesta delivered a quick series of taps to her shoulder to gain her attention. "They're thinning out."
Ceasing fire for a moment, Louise nodded in agreement. "I've noticed."
Pausing to reload the AKM, Kirche prayed that this would be over soon. She closely eyed the weapon in her hands as she pulled the charging handle to the rear, letting it fly forward to chamber a new round. Even if she were rather used to having these kinds of guns around her, she couldn't help but still be amazed at how far ahead of smoothbore muzzleloaders these weapons had come.
Kirche let off another few rounds next to Louise, but paused when she noticed how far off the remaining zombies were. Louise paused as well.
"I don't think my gun shoots that far," Louise commented, finding that the level of gunfire coming from the Skadovsk had drastically fallen. Most of the stalkers still shooting were Cardan with his machine gun and others using long range rifles.
Siesta eyed the short-barreled AK for a moment before commenting. "Not accurately, at least. Your barrel is too short."
Louise sighed, slumping down to the deck with her back against the railing. Kirche still watched the remaining zombies slowly thin out, while Siesta sat down next to the pinkette.
"You alright?" Siesta asked, eyeing the pinkette out of the corner of her eye.
"I'm fine," Louise quietly responded. Siesta turned to eye her fully, her eyes flicking to the three scars along the right side of her face as she considered bringing up yesterday's events. Kirche had explained the entire situation, while Louise had simply left to be alone for a while. Siesta decided against bringing it up as Louise continued speaking. "What about you? Are you okay?"
Siesta scoffed, collecting the stripper clips she had dropped during the fight. "It feels like somebody stuck a hot fire poker in my leg, and my feet are freezing." The ex-maid emphasized the latter by wriggling her toes. Siesta and Louise both glanced at Kirche when she slumped down against the railing as well.
"Perhaps we should get you inside then," Louise suggested, eyeing the ex-maid's bandages. She mentally reminded herself that they needed changing.
Siesta opened her mouth to respond, stopping when the gunfire suddenly died off. She used her rifle to help herself to her feet, and peered out across the marshes. Zombified corpses absolutely littered the area from as close as ten feet from the Skadovsk's hull, to over four-hundred meters away.
"Hell of a way to start a morning, huh?" Siesta commented, turning to the two girls at her side. Louise simply stared out into the marsh, while Kirche scoffed.
"I can't say I've had a worse wake up call."
Siesta chuckled, her laughter dying off when she tested her weight on her injured leg.
A final shot came from above, and as a result of the absence of any other gunfire Siesta could clearly hear a bolt being worked and a spent casing hitting a metal surface. The shot was followed by some mumbling, until the call went out.
"Stalkers! Looks like we're clear for now!"
Many of the stalkers around them immediately seemed inclined to head back inside, a few of them to return to sleeping, while most were now up for the day. Siesta moved to bend to retrieve her ammunition pouches from the deck, groaning in pain as she did so.
"Inside," Louise ordered, poking the ex-maid in the back. "Now. Go."
Siesta scoffed. "Yeah, okay Mom." She turned to face the pinkette. "You want to go see if we won anything good? My leg is freaking killing me right now, and too many people are staring at my ass."
Louise nodded after a moment's contemplation. "I can do that."
Siesta departed, hobbling towards the door along with many others. It seemed her initial adrenaline had quickly worn off. Louise turned to Kirche, who still remained.
"Aren't you going back inside?"
Kirche jumped like she had been broken out of a daze, moving to the side when a stalker brushed past. "Oh! Yes... um, yes I am."
"You're rattled," Louise observed, finding that the AKM was shaking in Kirche's grasp.
The Germanian frowned. "And how are you not? After that?"
"I am, Kirche," Louise stated, raising a hand to show Kirche that it was visibly shaking. "I'm like a bloody leaf right now. It's been like that ever since yesterday, actually."
Kirche was silent for a moment before her frown deepened. She decided she didn't even want to talk about the issue that was the entirety of yesterday. She sighed, deciding to change the subject. "I just feel so fragile without my wand. It's honestly like the slightest thing could come by and kill me. I feel naked."
"Oh come off it," Louise scoffed, rolling her eyes. "You're honestly tougher than that, you're a Zerbst! There's a good
reason our families have been at odds since the beginning of time."
Kirche didn't look entirely convinced. Knowing that Kirche and Siesta tended to get along most of the time, Louise decided to inject some of the ex-maid's logic into the conversation.
"When I first came to the Zone I was the same way because I didn't have my wand, but Siesta gave me some fairly useful advice," Louise paused. "'Who needs magic, when all of your problems can be solved with guns?'"
Kirche looked at Louise like she had just said the stupidest thing imaginable, before she promptly let out a bout of laughter. "Siesta honestly said that to you?"
"Yes," Louise nodded, smirking at the memory, although she hadn't been the least bit amused at the time. "While I obviously don't fully agree with it, there's definitely some merit there somewhere."
Kirche cast her gaze down at the weapon in her hands for a few moments, before she looked to Louise. "I suppose there's – waah!" The Germanian had moved to take a step and had nearly tripped on her own shoe laces.
Louise covered her mouth, suppressing giggles to the best of her ability. "You... y-you idiot!"
Kirche gaped at the pinkette for a moment, before her mouth sprang into action. "Oh shut up, you!"
The two girls left the mostly deserted deck and ventured back into the ship, closing the door behind them. They swiftly headed downstairs, both consciously taking care not to trip on their untied laces. They reached Tremors office, where Kirche cleared her weapon and laid it on the desk before flopping down on top of her sleeping bag. Louise quickly entered the room, grabbed the satchel they normally used for artifact collecting, and made for the door.
"Do you want anything in particular?" Louise asked half-seriously, stopping in the doorway to eye Siesta, who had already gotten to work at changing her bandages.
"Something badass!" Siesta chirped, without even looking up.
Louise scoffed, disappearing from the door with the satchel hanging from her shoulder.
Sure that the pinkette was well out of earshot, Kirche craned her head upward to look at Siesta. "Do you think she's really okay?"
Siesta still didn't look up from her task, eyeing her healing wound with a wince as the final bandage came off. "You mean about yesterday? Give her some time, Kirche. It's only been a day. She'll talk about it when she wants to."
Kirche sighed, resting her head back. "Are you sure about that?"
Siesta stopped, eyeing the Germanian. "I know how she feels right now. She just needs a little time, trust me."
Not knowing how to word what she wanted to say, Kirche simply let it out. "Siesta, how... many people have you killed?"
Laughing bitterly, Siesta sighed. She stared off into space for a moment, memories of the past four years flicking through her head. "I lost count ages ago."
Silence filled the room for a few moments, before Kirche spoke again.
"Have you ever seen her laugh?"
"Louise? No," Siesta replied. "Louise doesn't laugh. She might smile from time to time, but I've never seen her laugh."
"She laughed up on the deck, after you left."
Siesta's attention caught, she gave Kirche a confused glance. "Any... uh, particular reason why?"
Kirche exhaled. "I tripped on my shoe laces."
Chuckling, Siesta shook her head. "I would have laughed at you too. Actually, I guess I just did."
"Pillock," Kirche muttered, further exciting the ex-maid's laughter.
Exiting through the bar door, Louise immediately took a left and ventured into the zombie filled marshes. Stalkers had already gotten to work at stripping the corpses of any useful equipment, so Louise hoped she hadn't wasted too much
time. The mud sucked at her boots as she made straight for the tugboat, intent on seeing if that rifle she hadn't recognized was still there.
Finding the corpse in question, the rifle was indeed still present. Slinging her Kalashnikov onto her back, Louise extracted the rifle from the mud, knowing that it would need a thorough cleaning for it to function reliably. Louise hunted around the G3A3's magazine well, finding the paddle type release easily. She removed the magazine from the rifle to find that it was still topped with live cartridges. Magazine still in hand, she pulled rearward on what she thought was the charging handle, and was satisfied to find a round ejected from the chamber.
She felt Siesta would like the rifle, being that the rounds in its magazine seemed rather large. Siesta's philosophy seemed to be along the lines of 'more is better', so after returning the magazine to the weapon, she placed the rifle on the ground and rolled the corpse onto its back. The zombie had almost no magazines on its person, the only few being empty, likely placed there before the stalker had entered their zombified state.
Despite being void of ammunition, the magazines would be useful if Siesta planned on keeping the weapon instead of selling it, so in the satchel they went. Holding the G3A3 by its foregrip, Louise moved on.
As she walked through the marsh, she came across loads of Makarov's, MP5's, break-action shotguns and many other weapons she didn't take any interest in. Most corpses seemed to be already stripped down for the most part.
Louise jumped slightly as a gunshot rolled through the air. Somebody simply finishing off a zombie, she hoped. After a few moments of silence, she continued her search.
She had hoped she wouldn't come across any half-alive zombies, but that hope was dashed away when she noticed a zombie crawling over another corpse, ignorant of her presence. Looking ahead of the zombie, Louise realized that it was actually crawling towards a gun lying on the ground. Strolling over, Louise stopped in front of the mindless human and nudged the pistol away with her foot.
The zombie stopped, and looked up at her with a vacant gaze. Louise stared back at the zombie's face, eyeing over all the signs that a stalker had indeed become zombified: pale and gaunt face, slack-jawed expression, bleeding from the eyes, ears, or nose, and glazed over and unfocused eyes. Deciding on the zombie's fate, Louise reached into her coat instead of going for her Makarov, and extracted a different gun. The revolver she had used in the ranger station.
She let the Ruger GP100 hang in her hand for a moment before she cocked the hammer with her thumb and leveled it down at the face below her.
For a moment, they just simply stared at each other.
Suddenly, the zombie let out a vicious gurgle, an arm cocking back to swipe at Louise's legs. Her eyes widening slightly, Louise's finger suddenly snapped down on the trigger to give the mindless human a merciful end. She sighed through her nose as the echo rolled through the hills.
A pair of stalkers came out of the reeds nearby, the rustling alerting Louise to their presence. She turned and eyed Cardan, who carried an arm full of unloaded rifles along with another stalker who carried just as many, if not more. Cardan offered a slight nod in greeting, and Louise returned a small one of her own as she stared at the pair.
She returned the revolver to her coat, making a mental reminder to get some sort of back holster or something for it later, and turned her attention to the pistol she had moved with her foot. Placing the H&K rifle on the ground nearby, she retrieved the Sig Sauer P226 and was pleased to see that it was in favourable condition. She released the magazine, dropped it in the satchel, and pulled the slide rearward with a hand over the ejection port. Cantering the weapon, she let the chambered round fall out into her hand and then let the slide snap forward.
All of it went in the satchel, with Louse unsure if she was going to use it to replace her Makarov, or sell it off to Owl.
Louise rolled the corpse off of the other corpse and onto its back, unhappy to find no magazines of any kind. Thinking for a moment, she decided that it was entirely likely that the P226 wasn't the zombie's gun, and had just been nearby. She thought that perhaps the corpse the zombie had been crawling over might have been the owner of the gun, so she made to roll it over. Doing so, something under the body caught her eye, making her pause for a moment.
There seemed to be a rifle underneath this corpse, lying almost lengthways to the body. Louise grunted, having had about enough of rolling bodies over as she moved the corpse onto its back. She lifted the AK-74 from the mud, eyeing over its dark synthetic stock, and most notably, the bracket mounted to the side of the receiver that supported an optic over the dust cover. Clearing the weapon, Louise peered through the PK-AS sight and placed the reticule in the sky.
Louise was no expert on guns, but she felt it was reasonable to think that this was a nice weapon. Kalashnikov in one hand and H&K in the other, Louise decided to head back to the Skadovsk, feeling thoroughly weighed down.
As she trudged through the mud, she idly realized that most of the AK-74 magazines she had were tan in color, and would clash with black stock of the Kalashnikov hanging her in hand.
She scoffed at the thought.
"And that's how I got this," Siesta was saying, her sleeved rolled up to reveal a long scar along her upper arm. "I'm pretty sure if I hadn't moved when I did he would have got me right in the neck."
"Did you kill him afterward?" Kirche asked.
Siesta shook her head. "No, I didn't get the chance. Petruha plugged him full of holes before I could do anything."
"I see," Kirche began, having moved to the desk chair. She folded her arms behind her head. "Sounds like you were lucky."
"I think luck is the only reason I'm not dead," Siesta scoffed, crossing her arms. As she finished saying that, Louise appeared in the doorway. Siesta's attention was immediately drawn to the guns in her hands. Louise approached her, holding out the G3A3 for her to take.
"Do you want this one?"
"Hell yes I do!" Siesta said excitedly, accepting the dirty rifle into her hands. "Where did you get a freakin' G3? This is awesome!"
Louise shrugged as Siesta promptly got to work at disassembling the weapon. "It was in the mud."
The pinkette placed the satchel on the desk, along with the two Kalashnikovs that were on her person. Unlocking the magazine and clearing the AKS-74U, she then decided that she was going to keep the synthetic AK instead.
"Do either of you want this?" Louise asked, holding up the short barreled rifle. Kirche simply shook her head, satisfied with her own AKM, while Siesta raised an eyebrow.
"You're gonna get rid of it?"
Louise nodded, switching to the AK-74 and aiming the sight at the wall. "I like this one better."
Siesta stared for a moment before she shrugged. "It does look cool next to your scars. Sell the other one to Owl."
The pinkette rolled her eyes, her hand diving into the satchel and extracting the steel colored P226. She locked the slide reward, observing the innards for a moment before letting it snap forward. She placed it on the desk, and then did the same with her Makarov, being sure the weapons were empty and the barrels were not pointed towards Kirche. She extracted the Ruger, releasing the swing out cylinder and ejected the live and unfired rounds.
Louise heard Kirche scoff from across the desk. "Do you have any more hidden somewhere?"
"I'm only keeping these," Louise stated, pointing to the Ruger and the Sig Sauer. She removed the Makarov's holster from her belt, and placed its magazines on the table. "Keep the Makarov. You don't have a pistol, right?"
Kirche shrugged, taking the Makarov up in her hands and examining it. "I think it's kind of cute."
Siesta snorted as she removed the trigger pack from the G3, while Louise just eyed the Germanian weirdly. Forgetting Kirche's comment, Louise lifted the pistols from the table and made for the door.
"Where are you going?" Siesta asked curiously.
Louise held up the guns. "I need somewhere to put these, and I need magazines. I'm going to see what Owl has."
"Cool," Siesta nodded. "Pick up a bunch of three-oh-eight while you're there. Oh! And don't forget that the nine-millimeter that Sig uses is different than the nine-millimeter in the Makarov."
"Yes, yes," Louise replied, turning and walking across the hall.
"Kirche, could you bring me the gun cleaning kit?" Siesta asked, peering through the receiver and down the G3's bore.
Nodding, Kirche reached underneath the desk where Louise's backpack currently resided and produced a compact cleaning kit.
"Is it dirty?" Kirche asked, moving over to the bed and dropping the kit on its surface.
Siesta nodded. "Lots of mud in the bore."
Louise re-entered the room, the Sig clearly holstered on her thigh while the revolver was nowhere to be seen. She cradled boxes of ammunition in her arms, dropping a fair amount on Siesta's bed.
"I'm absolutely starving," Louise commented, placing boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition and newly acquired P226 magazines on the desk. She opened the first box and got to work at loading her magazines.
Siesta nodded in agreement. "I think it's just about breakfast time. There's probably some flesh left over from yesterday, Kirche you should check with Beard."
The Germanian shuddered, the mutant clearly pictured in her mind.
"I haven't told you all about my vegetarianism yet, have I?"
Siesta laughed in response, while Louise playfully rolled her eyes.
A/N: Not much to say about this one. Louise upgrades her arsenal, Siesta gets a battle rifle, and Kirche's hair remains the color red. We'll be visiting Montmorency, Tabitha, and even Alexander in the next few chapters. I also know some of you are wondering about Guiche and the others, and don't worry, they'll make their appearances as well.
Anyway, until next time.