Freedom

Chapter 11

Daylight was not kind to the yard. Carcasses festered. Brass glittered. Dried pools of blood lay in our path with alarming regularity. In the light it was easy to see just how many anomalies there were, and how vast the yard really was. You'd need a month if you wanted to see every corner of it.

There were a lot of crows in the air, but nothing approaching the number that had formed the Thin Stalker's halo the day before. I was edgy. Maybe it was the crows, maybe it was my predicament.

My new friend and I made our way through the yard with our weapons at the ready – but it was clearly less active in daylight. We didn't speak. Deteriorating metal creaked and moaned. Crows cawed, and faraway dogs barked. At one point I thought I heard a distant shout, carried by the wind – but nothing came of it.

I thought we were nearing the perimeter, and was looking forward to getting into open country – but I had to hold up when the alley we were following abruptly terminated. There was too much open ground ahead of us. This wasn't the same route through the yard the Americans and I had taken; everything looked different in daylight.

The stalker paused beside me, pulling down his tinted goggles to let them hang around his neck. He looked alert. I didn't trust him, but I wasn't too proud to admit it was good to have someone with a little awareness along.

"What do you think?" he asked quietly.

"I'm not sure." I had a bad feeling. Lowering myself to a crouch, I took out my PDA and called up my map. "We're a little off track." I looked up at the yard ahead. "I don't like it." The stalker knelt beside me, pointing at the PDA screen.

"There's a way out in this corner, past those tracks over there." He indicated the direction with his chin.

"It's a long road in the open."

"Yes." He looked troubled. "Where are the birds?"

He had a point; maybe that was what had alarmed me. It was quieter here. We both squinted at the yard, looking for something, anything to explain the wrongness.

"You feel that?" I said, scanning the rooftops.

Very slowly, he tilted the HK91 to be sure the safety was off. "What do I call you?"

I glanced over at him. I guess I'd put it off long enough. I thought about the name everyone knew me by, then about my given name. Stalkers liked simple names, usually nouns. They named themselves after all sorts of things, from animals to medical conditions. I thought about the characters in my name and their literal readings. I didn't have much to work with. Only one that sounded even vaguely stalkerlike.

"Mist," I said finally. "You can call me Mist."

"Sagaris," he said, pronouncing it 'Sahgriss.'

I guess we were both pretty sure something was about to go horribly wrong. Why it was important to get introduced before it did, I wasn't sure. Maybe in a firefight it would be good to have a way to address each other.

"There." He pointed with one gloved hand, and I looked up at the metal observation tower. It leaned dangerously, and the upper levels were covered in some kind of growth, dark, and clearly anomalous. It took me a moment to see what Sagaris meant; even after I spotted it, I wasn't sure. I took out my binoculars. He was right.

There was a man in a ghillie suit up there, the barrel of his rifle poking out from the blind he'd built around himself.

"Who do you think he is?" I asked, keeping my voice extra low. The man was far off.

"Not Duty."

"Yeah."

"Bandit?"

"Or a loner on the way to becoming one."

"You think he's alone?" I asked. Sagaris had binoculars out, scanning the buildings. "He'd have a spotter if he wasn't, and I don't see one."

"Why set up so close to the Bar?"

"He knows people come through here." Sagaris lowered his binoculars. "And this way he doesn't have to carry his loot as far. It looks like that's a pretty big gun he's got there, and my armor is weak. I don't want to risk it."

"Maybe he's hunting mutants."

"Not at this time of morning." Sagaris turned to me. "We take him down and run."

I sighed. Just like last night. Nothing for it. I took a deep breath. "Okay."

"I'll take the shot."

"Be my guest." Sagaris rose to his feet and readied his rifle. I took out my binoculars and trained them on the tower and its occupant. "If there's wind, it's not enough to matter at this range," I told him.

"Right." He lined up his sights and leaned in, closing his left eye. I zoomed in on the tower, looking more closely at the sniper. He was serious. He wasn't moving at all. He'd done a good job on his camo; he really looked like a part of the tower, but I could see that there was a human form there. A sleeve, a mesh-covered face. I heard Sagaris exhale as I followed the sleeve to the hand holding the rifle's handguard. He wasn't wearing a glove. In fact –

"Don't shoot, it's a trick," I hissed, but it was too late. The shot thundered off the walls of the buildings on either side of us, echoing through the yard. I saw fabric fold, but of course there was no reaction. Corpses don't care if you shoot them. The decomposing hand that was holding the rifle slipped a little as the round punched through the mesh.

It was a lure. Bait. Sagaris swore and pivoted with his rifle at his shoulder. Whoever had set the body up knew where we were now; that was probably the idea. We were corralled in this alley, and they'd have both ways covered. All they had to do was shoot us down as we came out. It was a perfect kill zone. I drew back, keeping my finger off my trigger with a monumental effort.

Sagaris hadn't moved; he expected them to come in after us. I didn't think they needed to, but I wasn't going to tell him that. We both knew exactly what was going on; there was no need to explain. I looked around the alley for an alternative, but there wasn't much to work with. Heavy wooden shutters were bolted over the windows of one building, and the other had no windows at all. I touched Sagaris' shoulder, still watching my end of the alley.

"We go out either way and we're dead. How about through here?"

He glanced at the building. "That's crazy."

"That's why it won't be covered."

"The place is huge. There could be anything in there."

"But we know what's out here," I countered.

He searched my face for a moment, then glanced at the nearest shutter. "See if you can get it open," he bit out, turning to cover my end. I went to the window to check it out. The shutter was essentially a small door. It was old and rotting, but quite thick. I gave it a firm push, but it was definitely bolted on the other side, and probably stuck in place because of the old paint.

Well, there were ways around it – but I didn't want to shoot it open. Our would-be ambushers would wonder what we were shooting at; they might decide to come see. So I slung my rifle and closed my eyes.

"We'll have to blow it open," Sagaris said.

"No." I concentrated.

"What are you doing?"

I drew back, then lunged forward and drove my palm directly through the shutter, splintering it like balsa wood. Sagaris said something in Russian, probably an expletive – but he sounded impressed. What we don't tell people is how much it hurts to do something like that. But it's a lot quieter than a burst of gunfire. I groped blindly for the latch. I found it, hearing Sagaris trying to watch both ends of the alley at once.

We didn't have much time. As expected, the handle was thoroughly rusted, but my glove gave me a good grip, though my sore hand didn't help. I gave it everything I had, and it broke free, grating a grudging ninety degrees. I pulled my arm out and gave the shutter a shove. It gave, but only slightly. I backed up, then hit it with my shoulder. It burst inward, revealing a whole lot of darkness.

I climbed through without a thought, and Sagaris clambered in after me.