Master wanted to say that he was surprised, but at this point he simply couldn't. Perhaps that's just a sign of the times. There was a time when this would have been almost inconceivable. Gone are the days when stalkers were crawling around every bush with only a rusty Army knife and dim flashlight in hand. Maybe a compass, if they were prepared.
No more.
He cradled the L85 rifle closer to his chest and slowly made his way down the stream. His boots – with soles wrapped in cotton cloth – gently stepped over each stone with muffled noises. The flowing stream helped mask his footsteps.
Overhead, the battle quietly raged on.
In a different time, he wouldn't have paid any attention to it. But of course, in a different time it would have been different as well: it would have been the loud crack of double barreled shotguns and the incessant yapping of Makarov pistols. But this was not it.
Those times were gone.
Instead, what echoed through the air was a different beast. It was the soft whisper of suppressed rifles. It was the sharp bursts of subsonic ammunition whipping through the air. And they were not firing blindly like rookies or trigger-happy bandits. Instead, each burst was directed and each round carefully rationed.
Master shook his head.
No longer can they say that the Zone is willing to be explored, as long as you were patient, smart and careful. No longer can they say that it would only become dangerous if you reached deeper into the center. No more. Times are changing.
As Master checked the chamber of his rifle, the old adage floated back in his mind.
Perhaps it was true.
Maybe the Zone is expanding after all.
By all metrics, here he was, at the outer edges of perimeter. It was as 'safe' an area could ever be in the Zone. And yet there was nothing but the song of killers and spetstnaz to greet him. Gone are the days of sawed-off shotguns and revolvers. It's a real war now – and nobody is giving away an inch of ground for free. Even if it is nothing but a pile of radiated dirt.
The old stalker shook his head sadly.
And they say that the Cordon is good for rookies!
Too little, too late.
The branches above her burst into little clouds of dust. The dirt beneath her feet rumbled with each impact of their rifle grenades. Her ears heard nothing but the painful split of muzzles flashing. They were everywhere.
And they were getting closer.
If she closed her eyes, then maybe she could simply focus on her own ragged breathing. Perhaps that will erase the gravity of the situation and the weight on her shoulders. But she couldn't. It was too late to pretend.
The weight on her shoulders was real.
She lifted her pistol and pointed it at the mist of green shrubbery. Her finger jerked. Again and again her pistol barked, but it felt futile against the empty fog slowly closing in around her. And hidden behind the white sheen, she could almost see the grey ghosts in artic fatigues moving forwards, ever closer to her position.
Too little…
She bit her lips.
No.
She slapped a new magazine into the SIG pistol.
It's not too late.
It's never too late.
Something welled up inside her chest. Perhaps it was nothing more than a desperate act of navel gazing. Or worse, a pathetic attempt of assuaging her own guilt. But it didn't matter. Not anymore.
She was here.
Here.
If only a few meters from the border, if only a few inches from civilization, if only so close to freedom…
If only…
She stopped and get down on one knee. The weight on her should felt crushing. But for the first time in her life, her heart was free. Her conscience was no longer laden with regret. Right then and there, as she was crouching on one knee breathing in ragged breaths, she made her choice – a choice that she should have made a long time ago, if only she hadn't been such a coward.
The SIG P226 pistol in her hand felt light as a feather.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I couldn't do more.
She closed her eyes.
Forgive me.
And please…
The weight from her shoulders fell onto the grass.
Live.
It was over.
Master had been waiting all morning, crouching behind the embankment of the stream, listening to the sound of battle overhead. But eventually it started to die down. Unfortunately, the fog hanging overhead remained, rendering his vision quite limited. Still, the facts remained the same.
The fight was over.
Whomever or whichever faction that had been fighting was done. The sound of gunfire had slowed down until they faded away completely, giving way to the midday song of the birds chirping. Master wanted to say that it was a battle between the Army spetsnaz and Loners – Valerian's crew, perhaps – but his instincts insisted otherwise. They told him that he was wrong.
And indeed, he was wrong.
Master came across a Monolith.
Of all places, here in the Cordon, Master found himself staring down at a Monolith lying dead on the grass. And it was no just some lightly armed scout – not that Master's ever heard of such a thing – but the real deal.
A real Monolith.
He wore the distinctive grey camouflage fatigues, complete with a flak vest and a tactical vest laden with ammunition. To his side laid a M16 rifle painted over with black and white stripes for camouflage. And all around the grass were empty casings.
Many other Monolith bodies littered the surrounding meadows.
With the morning fog still hanging over the sky, Master couldn't help but smile sardonically. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought that he was right outside CNPP, in the very center of the Zone. And yet he was, at the very periphery of the Zone, scavenging from dead Monolith bodies.
How long before they push out even more?
How long before they take over Cordon?
As Master's calloused hands patted over the deceased Monolith's vest pouches, his fingers began to quiver.
How long before the Zone expands?
Still, there was some comfort to be hand: whomever the Monolith had run up against, they did not go down easily. As foggy as it was, Master could see that the whole field was littered with empty casings and shells. Their opponents had given the Monolith a run for their money.
As the Master surgically scoured the battlefield, his eyes picked on strange details:
Blood, but no bodies, except the Monoliths'.
Empty casings, but no weapons.
Battle, but no winners.
As curious as everything seemed, Master knew that he was acting on borrowed time. Soon, the morning fog will lift. And after that, he will be easy game for the military Mi-24 Hinds flying overhead and the prying eyes of opportunistic bandits. Of course, these were not deadly – but he preferred not to waste his ammunition.
The old stalker gave the field of battle one last glance, checking to see if he had missed anything. His backpack was already laden with whatever valuable equipment he scourged from the Monolith bodies – and there were only Monolith bodies, it would seem.
And then he saw the flower.
At first he thought it was an illusion – a trick of the light. Perhaps some sort of a Heaty anomaly. Or even a vision from the controller. But once his eyes caught sight of it, he realized that that was not the case. No, it couldn't be.
It was too normal to be any of those. It couldn't be anything else but real. It was simply too…simple. Too simple to be an illusion.
Master saw a sunflower.
It's leaves gently floated in the air as a slight wind brushed against it. His eyes widened at the bright, yellow petals dancing in the wind. Indeed, it was a sunflower.
A sunflower in the Zone.
His L85 rifle immediately rose to his shoulder. His eyes found themselves staring down the long obelisk reticle of the SUSAT scope. But the x4 magnification did not dispel the illusion: instead, it only brought the flower to life even more.
It was a real, living sunflower floating in the wind.
Here, within in the Exclusion Zone.
His feet began moving without Master having remembered to walk. As he advanced closer and closer to it, his index finger's weight grew heavier and heavier on the trigger. At only moment now, he expected a pesudogiant to leap from the fog. Or a controller's scream to pierce his ears. Or a bullet to explode into his chest.
Instead, only a faint, gentle breeze greeted his cheeks.
Finally, Master came face to face with it. And right in front of his eyes, the old stalker could see the bright yellow petals turning to greet his grizzled gaze. How long has it been since…
The obelisk reticle of his scope slowly scanned the innocent bulb of the plant, tracing over every petal. Then it slowly followed the stem downwards, creeping towards the black earth below.
After all, he knew that it was impossible for such a plant to grow in the Zone.
To his surprise – or disappointment – the stem did not end at the ground. So he wasn't wrong after all. It was not a wild sunflower sprouting from the ground.
Instead, the sunflower's stem ended in the grip of a pair of delicate hands.
Damned scoundrels!
An unadulterated, profane curse rolled off Sidrovich's tongue as his fist came crashing onto the table. Again! How is it that those fuckers have the gall to raise their prices again? Truly, they are nothing more than highway robbers!
The grizzled merchant couldn't help but sigh. Such were the rules of the game – scam or be scammed. If only the world was filled with honest tradesmen like himself! If only!
The merchant leaned back into his chair, resigned at the petty and indomitable nature of human greed. The true constant of time is not change, but human greed. There was nothing he could do against such force of nature. He should know – he was in the Zone, after all.
Sidrovich shook his head again and took another bite from the chicken drum in his chubby hands. His eyes went over the ledge again. Losses and profits. Profits and losses. Numbers, numbers, numbers.
Just as he was biting down on another leg of chicken drum, the sealed metal door began to ring. A series of rude, inconsiderate knocks rang out across the entirety of his secured chamber. The merchant grunted.
Has Wolf gotten too drunk again?
The merchant first thought to ignore it, thinking that his guard outside would eventually pull the rude intruder away, But that did not happen – the loud banging continued. So it seems like the guard just did not care.
Or he could not…
Sidrovich's hand reached under his desk, checking the drawer beneath. Yes, his SPAS-12 shotgun was still there, and it was locked and loaded.
Luckily for the trader, his fears were unrealized. Before he could do anything, a voice echoed from the other side of the sealed doorway:
"OPEN UP, DIMA!"
Sidrovich recognized that voice.
Instead of reaching for his shotgun, his hands instead went to the red button on his desk. With a clumsy smash of the button, the wiring and hydraulic press of the sealed door began whirring to life. It took a moment for everything to work, but eventually, it did work indeed.
The sealed chamber door of the bunker swung open.
And just as Sidrovich expected, on the other side stood his old friend and Loner contact: Master.
But what the trader did not expect was the body wrapped in a sleeping bag, cradled in his arms.
Sidrovich's eyes carefully traced the outline of the thing in Master's arms. It was too small to be a body. And yet it was also too big to be something like the corpse of a pseudodog. The list of possibilities slowly went through the trader's head.
Finally, he settled on the most lucrative possibility.
"So…" he muttered, "…a newborn bloodsucker? I'm no Ecologist, but I'm sure that fetch a good price. Hopefully it's still alive. If not, then we will need to preserve it so that it can be mounted as a stuffing in someone's collection…"
Master did not care for his comments.
Instead the stalker looked around his back, stealing looks behind his in quick, fugitive glances. Once he was sure of the privacy between him and trader, Master stepped into the bunker chamber and laid the body out onto the table.
Sidrovich's grubby hand was already reaching out from under the metal teller windows. But Master slapped them away.
"Keep your hands off, you fucker."
The trader frowned at his choice of words. Why so defensive?
"Well fine then! What is it that you've got here, you old fuck, that you're so protective about? Got some sort of an angel here? I'll tell you upfront now that I won't pay much of nonsense if that's what you're after. Even for an old-timer like you!"
Master didn't say anything. Instead, all he did was shake his head frantically and make vague motions with his hands. He didn't have the words to describe what he wanted to say.
By now Sidrovich was a bit spooked.
"What the fuck's the matter with you, Sasha? Did a controller run laps around your head? First you show up with some dead loot, and now cat's got your tongue! What have you got here?!"
Master finally found the right words.
"A body. I found it near the Cordon..."
Sidrovich scoffed and leaned back into his chair. His hands were already reaching for the roasted chicken again.
"So? I've got enough bodies around these parts to start a fertilizer plant!"
"This one…is a girl."
It took a moment.
But in the end, Sidrovich'e eyes rolled into the back of his head. The chicken drum was already in his greasy fingers.
"Bah! What of it? Probably some enthusiastic university student from Kyiv. Those young 'uns these days, too much Hollywood movies, I tell you. All nonsense in their heads, romance of the Zone any everything. Anyways, if you're such a bleeding heart, you can dump it outside the military checkpoint. What's this got to do with me?"
Master's face darkened.
"She…has the mark."
Sidrovich's eyes widened.
"I see…but still, that's not –"
"She is alive."
Sidrovich's fists came banging onto the table.
"BULLSHIT! That's impossible! You're lying –"
Master's lips pressed together with a deadly, grim expression.
"Let the Zone take me if I am…"
Sidrovch stood up unsteadily. Both of the men were now staring at the covered body between them. The body was wrapped in a layer of sleeping bag – no doubt something Master had improvised as a spur-of-the-moment solution.
Sidrovich stared down at the shape of hidden beneath the sleeping bag. Indeed, it was too small in size and stature to be an adult man.
He looked up at Master and nodded.
Slowly, delicately, and gently, Master's hands peeled off the sleeping bag.
She was young.
The girl was barely a teenager, no older than sixteen. She had short brunette hair that came down the shoulders at its longest, with a narrow face and a hooked nose. Despite the fresh mud and splots of dirt on her face, her smooth skin glowed under the dim lamp of the bunker. Her skin seemed crystalline, marble. Like a spotless doll only been dipped into the mud recently.
As the sleep bag slowly peeled off, they saw that she wasn't even wearing any real clothes. Other than a blue urban camouflage jacket covering her torso, the girl only wore a hospital gown that came down to her knees. Her feet were naked; freshly smeared the Zone's black dirt.
Furthermore, there was a stray sunflower lying on top of the jacket.
And next to it, there laid a P226 pistol.
"I found it next to her," Master explained, "I don't know how they came to be there."
Sidrovich was unsettled but somewhat unconvinced.
After all, anybody who's been the Zone long enough knew that there was always more than meet the eyes. The sight of such a girl was certainly unusual…but within the realm of possibility. In theory, anyway.
Sidrovch took a moment to take everything in. But once he had digested everything in front of him, his trader instincts kicked in.
His chubby fingers reached for the sunflower and the P226 pistol lying on the girl's chest.
The experienced trader brought them to his eyes and closely examined the object. Indeed, it was very rare to see a sunflower in the Zone. It's not that flowers did not grow – quite the opposite, the Zone was flourishing with wildlife.
It's just that there existed no normal flowers in the Zone.
They are always disfigured or mutated. Wrong colors. Wrong proportions. Strange bulbs. Some even mutated to become poisonous. Others evolved to become almost unrecognizable from their native counterparts out in the World.
And yet here was a perfectly normal sunflower in his hands.
"Incredible, isn't it?" muttered Master.
Sidrovich was inclined to agree.
Now, as for the SIG pistol –
His hand was suddenly assaulted by an iron grip wrapping around his fingers. Sidrovich's chubby fingers immediately crumbled under the strength of the assault, despite how thin the fingers seemed they exerted an unimaginable strength. He could not believe his eyes.
Sidrovich found a pair of unblinking hazel eyes staring at him. The ground disappeared beneath the trader's feet as his strength wilted away. She did not hesitate.
The girl's grabbed the pistol and sunflower from his hands.
As she secured the objects in her hands once more, the girl's head fell to the side of the table in a quiet thud again. Her eyelids closed just as abruptly as they had shot open. As her arm fell to rest onto the blue jacket covering her chest, Sidrovich realized what Master had meant.
He saw the 'mark' on her forearm:
M - 10032.
Author's Notes:
I've always wanted to write this, but never got around to it. Always told myself that I either wanted to do it properly or not at all. Unfortunately, I realized recently that if I don't publish now there's a real chance I won't' ever be able to do so.
"Live everyday as if it's your…" I guess?
I'm sorry, but I cannot promise that I will be able to finish this story. But trust me, I definitely would if I could. I will continue it as long as I can.
(PS: No comments on contemporary events, please. Fanfiction is escapism after all. Thanks.)
