10th of May, 2060
Duty siege of bloodsucker nest was complete, they successfully and carefully closed entrances, any bloodsucker who attempted to kill Dutyers were instantly killed by duty sharpshooters using thermal sights.
It seemed bloodsuckers made a hole inside the wall after day one, and a duty patrol team detected a bloodsucker which in the end it was killed, they used the hole to lure more bloodsuckers and kill them. And now the warehouse is clear they could clean it and expand their base more, and finally claiming the entire Rostok plant.
The leader of the faction, general Dimitryovich Chernyshevsky Is going to hold a speech inside the newly acquired warehouse, as tens of duty members arrived and stood in rank, he was getting ready to do his speech.
"well general, are you ready for this?" said his second in command, Colonel Shturm, another hardened stalker and friend of Leon Dimitryovich.
"yes, you make sure that somebody won't storm the area."
"don't worry, if somebody tried to storm up we will storm them back!"
Seriousness and humor were combined in his voice, the colonel got his reputation by rushing several bandit and mutant lairs and lay down a massive amount of fire using his own modified PKP machine gun, he was credited for killing three chimeras single-handedly, but the freedom counterparts scoffed by hearing that.
He stood upon a makeshift podium inside the recently captured warehouse, he inhaled and exhaled a few times, then started the speech.
"soldiers of duty, you all know why we are gathered here, aren't you?"
"YES SIR!"
"well, it's not enough, I want more."
"YES SIR!"
"Scream that loud SO THE FREEDOMERS COULD HEAR IT INSIDE THEIR BASE."
"YES SIR!"
"good, today we finally purified the Rostok plant, no mutants, no mercenary, no bandits, now this place is nearly secured and we only need to barricade the anomalies and consolidate our location, BUT this is not everything."
General sighed for a second to recover some air to speak, then continued.
"We managed to get Rostok plant and it's time to expand our area of operation, even more, today is not the end of duty's duty. We will never retire and continue protecting the outside world from this nuisance called the zone, and start rebuilding our world so our grandsons are proud of us and what we did."
"URAH!" all the soldiers shouted, Leon, composed himself again then continued.
"now get to your posts, we have a lot to do in this zone!"
"YES SIR!"
All the duty soldiers went to their posts and Leon came down the podium and called his second in command.
"hey Shturm, thanks for that speech you made for me."
"you're welcome, but now you are the leader yourself, you better start your speech writing."
"Nah, I am just good at fighting and tactics, seriously my writing, especially my speech writing sucks!"
"well considering what you've been doing in the zone since you brought that diary of yours and wrote your stuff there, I think your writing should be better by now."
"meh, a diary is different than a speech, now let's get back to work!"
"ok, but sometimes I might not be here to help you write your speeches."
"well, I guess I could find alternatives." He smiled a little bit along with Shturm which responded "ah good luck finding alternatives."
And they went to duty HQ
They went down the stairways, then headed for the main office, guards along with the recently arrived duty recon team and a Loner were in the office.
"did you find the white girl, and who is that stalker, and what he is doing here?" Leon asked the duty recon squad sergeant.
"Sir, you better hear this, hey Stalker, would you tell your story?"
Loner glanced at the dutyers, the face was pale, emotionless, this was normal, but the eyes said something different.
"Who are you, stalker? And what happened?"
"I am Max, I am from the rookie village, and about that accident…"
"What accident?"
Rookie village, Cordon
Max, carl, and john were the new rookies in the zone. Many people in the village at first thought they were from western countries, but they looked no different than them apart from slight facial characteristics.
"hey john, I got a job from Vasily, he said I need to bring him three dog meats."
John glanced to carl as if something was wrong with him. "dog meat?! Who the hell is going to eat radioactive meat?"
Max thought for a moment then said. "he probably wants to test us if we are reliable stalkers, I recently got a gun from Vasily, it's old, but he said this gun is so simple that even a child could use it." Carl was surprised to hear max got a gun.
"hey, john did Vasily give you a gun too?"
"yes, he did." Carl shook his head a little bit then watched his friends holstering their weapons.
"wait, why you guys are getting guns?"
John answered. "maybe we should ask Vasily about it."
The trio went to Vasily in the house in the middle of the village, greeting other fellow rookies, they reach the house and enter it.
"well and that's how I killed a bloodsucker, he spins around you, you spin around and watch your back, then put your dagger right in the creature's throat, and sell the tentacle for some thousand rubles to ecologists and traders."
Vasily was telling rookies about the fight he had with bloodsuckers in the dark valley a long time ago before becoming a rookie guide, which somewhat gave anyone in the room some negative feelings about a bloodsucking monster that could go invisible and attack you from the back.
The trio entered the house, which the attention of Vasily was turned to them.
"oh, hello I think you are the three new rookies in the zone, don't you?
"yes, we are and we came here for something!"
"well, what is it?"
Carl spoke first. "sir, my friends have weapons while I don't have one to do what you said to me."
"ah did I told you that you are the only one that supposed to do that?"
"Sir, you said to me," Carl said in a shy tune
"yes, but I also meant your friends, I assume that you three were friends before you came to the zone, am I right?"
"yes, we are still friends." All three answered.
"so, one thing I have to tell you about hunting dogs is you need to have your friends with you when you want to clear a dog pack in any situation."
"a dog pack?!" all three gave their shocking stares to Vasily.
"I knew that you would come asking these questions so hear me out, the zone is a dangerous place and is no different than the world outside, and dogs in this area have poor eyesight and they always travel in packs, usually with a Pseudodog who leads them."
"what is a Pseudodog?" Max asked.
"imagine a mutated hybrid of wolf and dog, they are hostile and deadly, especially to you guys, but packs here don't have those because they get murdered by more veteran Loners north of here, if you saw one, you better kill the damn thing because it's fast and dangerous to everyone in here."
"ok, and about…" Carl was about to ask for a gun but then a long pistol was thrown at him.
"c'mon, this is your peashooter."
"why it is longer than the ones others have?" Carl asked out of curiosity.
"well, because it has an internal silencer." rookie Stalkers in the room, plus the trio were surprised that such a weapon is in the hand of Carl, while Vasily showed a neutral face.
"why this?" Carl simply asked.
"for many reasons, one the weapon isn't noisy, two the weapon has less recoil than the unsilenced version, third you must know how to operate different weapons because chances of desperately fighting for your survival when you go to the areas closer to the power plant is high and a weapon without ammo means you should escape or accept death, no other alternatives."
"Thanks for the advice sir, now we go hunting dogs," John said while he was about to leave the house, but was stopped because Vasily told him.
"Hey wait a minute, there is a dog pack in the tunnel to the swamps, you can clear that out, and don't go swamps, there is a lot of radioactive sands and swamps that could give a suffering death, and the last thing, none of you are higher than bandits and mutants if you betray your friends, that also includes everyone, no one likes betrayers in the zone." And that was the final sentence.
Trio went out of the house, the mind of all of them was occupied, thinking about the advice and warnings Vasily gave them, the silence was dominant until Carl broke the silence.
"hey, that's the tunnel." Then he pointed the tunnel out. The rest nodded and went there. The tunnel was dark and filled with some debris, Max turned on his flashlight and took the point.
"damn this place is scary as hell, do the dogs make sounds when they discover something." Carl stated, while others wanted to give Carl a "what the fuck" stare, suddenly familiar sounds reached their ears, all of them screamed together "DOGS!", Carl being the first to react, aimed the pistol at the dog, but he couldn't fire.
"FUCK, I CAN'T FIRE IT!"
Max replied, "GODDAMNIT, MAYBE YOU PUT IT ON THE SAFETY!"
In a second all of them cocked their pistols, each one of them had a flashlight in the left and a pistol in the other hand, dogs were getting closer, after some milliseconds, Max screamed. "FIRE!"
several bullets were sent towards the advancing dogs, from the three bullets, only one hit the right leg of the dog, the dog screamed and returned, but the rest ran towards the rookie, another round of bullets were fired, this time uncoordinated.
"Goddamnit, we can't do anything, we should escape!" -Carl
"Just aim and fire."- John
Several rounds still missed while one or two hit the heads. Two dogs were down.
Dogs were closed to the rookies, they started unloading the clip near them, four dogs were down, three of them were killed by Carl who was staying back, claiming them miraculously.
"shit, it's jumping on me," John screamed, Max quickly unleashed his dagger and stabbed the dog before it could reach its food, John was struggling but was winning, with each scratch dog did to john, it received several punches, john beat the dog to death.
Meanwhile another side of the tunnel, swamps
A platoon of strelets commanded by an obelisk was barricading the non-radioactive entrances, one which was the tunnel, strelets thrown anything nearby at the entrance, regardless of it being radioactive or not, and the obelisk was monitoring the Strelets.
Before strelets could finish barricading the entrance, obelisk heard some gunshots from the tunnel which she went to investigate with four Strelets while the others are standing by.
Inside the tunnel, rookies
"ah finally, we got rid of them," Max exclaimed, they had an extreme fight with a dog pack, that might sound laughing to a zone veteran, but they managed to defeat the pack.
"ouch, my arm is injured by those pieces of radioactive shit," John said while trying to bandage his arm, probably the most reckless of all of them, punched four dogs to death, and last, carl came out unscratched.
"I am glad that this is over!"
"where were you Carl, I thought you were dead," John said, confused, angry, and disappointed.
"I was targeting those with this silent killer, didn't you know how many dogs did I killed when you were punching and stabbing them."
"that's enough, let's…" then an explosion happened, everyone docked down, after everything was clear they saw a silhouette, something like a girl with an extremely white and emotionless face, black clothing, and a giant weapon came to their sight.
"oh shit, RUN!" scared Max immediately screamed and ran, others did the same,
Another explosion happened, but max didn't stop till he reached the entrance to the cordon, and ran to the village.
He ran to Vasily, who gave him a surprised look.
"what happened?"
"there is… a ghost… chasing … us," Max said while trying to recover.
"I heard some explosions, can you say what happened, and what happened to your friends?"
He immediately looked back, there was no sign of his friends and then another explosion happened and the tunnel collapsed.
Max sat on the ground the massive amount of pressure caused by this incident made him cry, while Vasily along with some other stalkers went to check the entrance.
Duty base
Leon was shocked to hear what happened to Max's friends, somebody indeed wanted to kill them, whoever is hostile to stalkers, might be hostile to others. He took his hand in his pocket and took out a picture.
"does the ghost, looked like this?" Leon showed his picture to the Stalker, Max upon looking at the picture was angered.
"something like this bitch, she was wearing black clothes, can you help me get my revenge?" Leon stared at Max for a bit looking for a logical answer, which he found.
"hey stalker, we are cannot do it now, we cannot destroy them until we know enough about them, but I promise you that we will kill them, anyone who possesses a threat to stalkers must be destroyed, rest assured."