Freedom

Chapter 3

It takes more self-control than you think to keep your hand off your weapon in the Zone, but that's what I did, and I made sure the Americans did likewise. The rain wasn't falling on us anymore, just dripping its way down through the tangled branches overhead.

My light fell on pale, chalky bricks. The cracked remnants of an ancient well stood not far away, a length of cord and a bucket nearby. There was a collapsed shed, and a pair of wide, one-story buildings. The firelight came through the cracked windows of the more intact of the two. I decided it was better to call out from here than to startle the occupants by barging in.

There was something on the air – something more than the rain. I listened intently.

"Is that Zeppelin?" Dixon hissed.

Slayer nodded. "Stairway," he whispered back. "What?" he asked, seeing me raise my arms.

Face set, I turned slowly. The Americans weren't listening, but I was. I hadn't missed the telltale clicks behind us. I'll confess, what I saw took me aback. I'd come to the Zone expecting the unexpected, but that hadn't prepared me for this. It's not like there's a formal rule that women can't be stalkers, but it's just not done. This one hadn't gotten the memo.

I heard Slayer swallow. The Americans had their hands up now. The light on my shoulder showed our assailant clearly. My first impulse was to ogle, but I'm supposed to be smarter than that, so I focused. She had a pair of Makarovs on us. One for me, one for both Americans. It was like these people could somehow sense how worthless those two were. The guns kept the Americans in line; their kevlar would stop a slug from a Makarov, but at this distance she could aim wherever she liked, and they knew it. What the Americans probably didn't notice was the way the hammers of the pistols were quivering. This woman had the triggers of both guns pulled all the way to the break. One twitch and our stay in the Zone became permanent.

I didn't let myself tense. This was not a stable, balanced person. My light gave me a good view of her eyes. The guns didn't waver, but the hammers never stopped moving. I'm not afraid to take my chances, but it would have been folly in this scenario. I opened my mouth to speak, but realized I didn't know the name of the stalker who had referred us here. "The guy with the bike sent us," I said finally, in awkward Russian.

A flicker of recognition. She seemed to relax slightly, and lowered the guns. That wasn't as comforting as it sounds – they were still pointed at us.

"Dude, what did you just say?"

The woman's eyes flicked to Slayer, then back to me. She motioned vaguely at her face with one of the Makarovs. She was holding the guns, so I reluctantly – and slowly – reached up to pull down my black facemask. Her eyebrow twitched at the sight of me – you don't see Asians every day in the Zone, I guess.

"Rookies?" she said finally, in English. I couldn't place her accent, but it was thick and heavy.

"Like you can't tell." I switched to English.

She tiredly wiped rainwater from her eyes, then stowed one pistol in the back of her waistband, letting the other hang in her hand. This wasn't someone who let her guard down easily. I wasn't surprised; if I were a woman in the Zone, I'd be wary too. "Yes," she sighed, motioning.

We followed her into the building, which felt comfortingly warm, despite having no insulation to speak of, plenty of drafts, and about a dozen leaks. A PDA sat on a board beside the merry little fire. Now Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird' was playing. The woman sat down on the far side of the fire, gun still in hand. She pressed something on the screen of the PDA with the muzzle, and the music stopped. She waved at us to sit, but shifted to keep the fire between herself and us when we did so.

Finally I felt like I could look at her without getting a bullet in the face. There are women, and then there are women. This one had seen better days. She'd had a lip busted recently, and her face showed several brutal-looking bruises. More than that, she had truly terrible dark circles under both eyes, and of course, no makeup. That said, she was probably the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Her blonde hair was unruly, but clean. She had the brightest blue eyes in the world, made brighter by the firelight, and the vague insanity lurking behind them. I had a feeling we weren't coming to her on her best day.

Her physique was indeterminate; she wore a set of brown fatigues that were obviously meant for a man twice her size. Even with the cuffs rolled up and the tunic belted at the waist, she looked like a child wrapped in a quilt. A child with two guns, and a knife fixed to her shoulder in a decidedly businesslike fashion. She looked younger than I was, but I didn't think she really was.

I looked at her hands; her fingers were all wrapped in bandages. An AK-47, or maybe a Chinese or Romanian knockoff, lay disassembled beside her. She must have been in the middle of cleaning it when she detected us. How she'd done that, I still wasn't sure – we hadn't been approaching in clear view of the windows, and I didn't see how she could have heard us over the rain – but it didn't seem like the sort of thing to ask about.

"Wow, lady – what happened to you?"

I raised my eyebrow, giving Slayer a sidelong glance. I wondered if he could even spell the word tact.

The woman gazed across the fire at us, giving him a flat look that cut off any questions that might have followed. "When did you get in?" Her English sounded like she used it a lot, but she hadn't learned it from Americans. Or even Englishmen. She strung words together naturally, without hesitation or stumbling – but her pronunciation was all over the place. I wasn't complaining; there was something very endearing about the accent.

"Thirty or forty minutes ago. Our pilots gave our location to some bandits – your friend with the bike intervened on our behalf," I told her.

She nodded. "He does that. Helps rookies," she added.

"Has he got a name? I owe him one." I didn't feel like talking, but better me than the Americans.

"People call him the Biker."

"Suits him," I murmured. That was right – stalkers don't go by their real names. I'd known that, of course, but I'd had other things on my mind. Somebody was going to want to know what to call me, someday. If I lived long enough, I'd have to think of something to tell them.

"Where will you go?"

The question wasn't just addressed to me, and I had to think for a moment. She meant in the morning, once the weather cleared up. I opened my mouth, but Slayer cut me off.

"Duty," he said firmly.

That got a peculiar look from the blonde. Wry amusement? I couldn't be sure. She was a tough read, made more so by the state of her face and the ruddy firelight. I wasn't surprised by the answer, though. In fact, it was what I'd assumed. A lot of people are seduced by Duty's claims to organization and formality. They think that they have a better chance in the Zone if they're affiliated with an institution. They want someone looking out for them. It must be true – to a degree. And of course these Americans would want someone watching their backs while they wrote their little blog, or whatever. I wondered if Duty would tolerate something like that. Had they already pledged? Was there some kind of Duty propaganda arrangement in place here? No, if there was something official like that, Duty would have brought these two into the Zone themselves, and made sure they weren't accosted on the way.

Someone didn't have all the facts. Between Duty and the Americans, I was going to guess it was the Americans. Maybe they thought Duty would welcome them with open arms. Maybe they would; I didn't know different.

"You?"

I blinked. "No plans," I told her. That was mostly true.

"So we can stay here tonight?"

Her eyes flicked back to Slayer, and there was a flash of hostility that the American didn't appear to notice. "Of course."

I wasn't sure what to make of this. Did I need to sleep with one eye open if I shared a roof with this woman? No – why would the Biker send me to a hostile? Why not kill us himself? It would have been easy.

Because then he'd have had to transport our equipment, his loot, by himself. By sending us here alive, he got free shipping on his goods. So that was their game. No, wait a minute – the blonde had us dead to rights. And she'd invited us in after hearing that the Biker had sent us; if she had predatory intentions, she'd have gunned us down at her first opportunity. I had no doubt she was up to the job. Stalkers are nothing if not practical; if they aren't, they don't last long. And like I said, I was pretty sure this woman was right in the middle of a genuine psychotic episode. The Biker'd had his chance to kill me, and so had this woman – neither one had taken it. If that didn't prove their trustworthiness, I didn't know what could.

"Fancy armor." The woman's eyes were back on me. I couldn't help but notice she didn't look too well equipped herself. The AK-47 was flecked with rust. She had no armor at all. In fact, her face looked sunken, as though she wasn't eating.

"I thought it'd be hard for anything to bite through it," I replied, discreetly scanning the interior of the building. There were a couple of bedrolls, and two packs, both of which looked pretty full. In fact, I could clearly see that there were rations in one of them. So she wasn't starving – but she was obviously on hard times.

Wait – the Biker had told me I might find a job here. I wasn't looking for one, but he'd definitely said that – so if this woman was in a position to offer people work, she couldn't be too badly off, right?

It was just like they said – things are strange in the Zone.

"Can it stop a bullet?"

"What?"

"A bullet." She was still staring at me. I'd gotten mentally hung up on how cute her pronunciation of 'bullet' was. I'd never heard such a winsomely sultry voice in my life.

"I don't know. I haven't tried."

"You'll get your chance."