Freedom

Chapter 28

Well, I was ready for a break. We hadn't done anything that day but walk. There had been the thing with Duty – and of course the shooting that had woken us all up, but otherwise it had been, for the most part, peaceful. Just a quiet stroll through the Zone. Okay, a quiet slog through some truly unpleasant wetlands, but it still beat getting shot at. No mutants, no anomaly disasters – it really hadn't been so bad.

And now we were out in the middle of the channel on this ship. I didn't know what to think of all this channel monster business, but I wasn't too worried. The ship seemed like a pretty safe place to be. The others ate, cleaned weapons, and chatted about stuff that was totally alien to me. It was getting late, and we were all tired, so a rotation was agreed on, and most everyone tried to sleep.

My hand was bothering me, so I went out onto the deck with my pack. To my surprise, the older sister was already outside, though it was bitterly cold. She had the bandit coat wrapped tight, and the hood up.

"You all right?"

"Yeah. Just not tired."

I sank down against the railing and turned on my light. "Was your old man with Wainwright?" I asked.

"No," she replied, turning to me. "No, he's Paricia."

"Was he involved in the infection?"

"I don't know. I really don't."

"But someone thinks he knows something. That's why they sent you away."

She nodded. "Yeah."

Well, it finally made sense. I still couldn't quite remember meeting her, or her name, if she'd ever given it. She probably hadn't. "For how long?"

"A couple of months at least."

"What about now?"

"I don't know. I don't know if we're any safer out there than we are in here."

"If someone thinks they can use you to get to your dad, the whole world's going to be looking for you."

"Yeah."

"Does he actually have the formula?"

"No."

"You would say that."

"I would."

"You can trust me."

"I have to trust you. What are you doing?" She came over and sat down beside me.

"Just taking inventory. I've been using stuff as needed, and I want to know what I need and what I've got." I rummaged through the pack. "I'm doing okay for food, but I need drinking water. I have medical supplies. I need bullets. I might want to get some batteries for my lights."

"You could get all that in about five minutes at Wal Mart."

"And this is the one place in the world that hasn't got one. But there are places to trade."

"Like where?"

I thought it over. "There's a trader in the rookie village to the south, and there's a small freelance settlement in the forest. There should be someone at Kevorich, and there's always the Bar. The settlement on the frontier is gone now, and there's no Freedom base, so that just leaves Duty, and they're out."

"You people keep talking about Kevorich."

"It's just a place where people gather, kind of a base camp. Similar to the Bar. It got bigger during the incursion, because the Bar was being occupied, and there was nowhere else to go." She stared at me blankly. "Take my word for it," I said. "Anyway, people assume you two are here to go to Kevorich, because – well, let's talk about that some other time."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I thought you said you hadn't been here long."

"I did research before I came."

"What the hell are we doing on this ship, anyway?" She shivered. This was the situation where you take off your jacket and put it around her shoulders, but I didn't have one. And she was already wearing one. But it was that situation exactly.

"I don't know. They were looking for someone. He's not here. They never tell me anything."

"So what will we do next?"

"My guess? Kevorich is closest – it's up north along the channel. Maybe halfway to Pripyat. Maybe they'll want to go there and see if they can find out where he's gone," I said.

"That's not good for us."

"What do you mean?"

"I agreed we could pay you – the blonde. You know?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I can only do it from a secure uplink, and she said we could find one at this Kevorich place."

I held up a hand. "Relax. She's not going to just waste you after you pay."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Cooperating's our only chance in either case."

"That's pragmatic."

"Yeah."

There was a pause.

"Was it true?"

"What?" I asked, checking my carbine.

"What you said about why you came here."

"It was."

"No makeup, no showers. No bathrooms. Everybody trying to kill everybody. I don't think we're cut out for this. And those infected. I'd only heard about them."

I thought that if she could sum it up that coolly, she was cut out for the Zone. But I didn't say anything for a minute. "You can try getting out and going to ground somewhere else. If you pay her, Velvet would be happy to escort you to a way out."

She frowned. "One thing at a time."

"Yeah."

"Seems like you're taking to it. What you did to all those infected – that was inhuman. And you threw that guy off that cliff."

"I didn't want trouble with that guy," I pointed out.

"Well, he got it, didn't he? Does everything in this place have to be so old and broken down? This ship gives me the creeps."

"It's been cut off for decades."

"It feels like it's about to fall apart."

"Maybe it is."

"So you're just going to bum around with these people for a year? That's your plan?"

"I've been thinking about it. Perspective can change."

She cocked her head slightly. "You're thinking that doing something crazy and risky seemed a lot more important before you actually got here."

I raised an eyebrow. "Something like that. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Just because you fit in here doesn't mean you should be here."

It had already crossed my mind. Nothing makes you reflect on the fragility of life more than killing somebody. Especially when it's easy. Anything you can do to somebody else, somebody can do to you. It wasn't the massacre I'd inflicted on the infected, and it wasn't the guy I'd thrown off the cliff. It wasn't even the old stalker I'd killed when traveling with the Americans. It was the bandit I'd shot after the girls had gotten off the chopper. He'd never known what hit him. He'd just been standing there – then he was done. It makes you think. Death is very final.

I really did have something to prove, but did I need a whole year to prove it? I don't like breaking promises I've made with myself, but what good will a promise do me if I'm dead? Not to be immodest, but I hadn't even been here a week, and there had already been more brushes with death than I could easily recall. One wrong step, and that was it.

But we were on a ship in the middle of the Pripyat Channel. More than that, we were in the middle of job – a pretty big job. It wasn't like I could just up and leave, and neither could the girls. Any decisions to do with my future beyond this week were going to have to wait until Velvet got what she was out here to get.

"How's your sister handling it?"

"Better than I am. She's got kind of a bleak outlook on things in general. It's not much of an adjustment for her."

I smiled. "Not very expressive, is she?"

"She's got some growing up to do."

"You're going to need a name."

"What?"

"If you don't want to give your real one – and you don't – you'll need a name. So will she. I call her Purple."

"If she's Purple, then I'm Grey."

"That doesn't make sense – you'd be Brown."

"But I don't like brown. At least make it… Hazelnut. Or something."

"Hmm. Coffee. Khaki. You're not khaki, though. Taupe."

"No taupe."

"Umber?"

"What the hell is umber?"

"It's a shade of brown."

"I don't want one I haven't heard of."

"What about sepia?"

That got me a chuckle. "We can do better than that."

"Chestnut."

"I'm darker than chestnut, though."

"Yeah. Copper?"

"I like that, but I wouldn't be able to hear it without thinking, like, you'll never catch me, coppers."

"True," I admitted. "Russet? Like russet apples."

"That's kind of cute. Not my first choice, but I could live with it."

"Let's go with it."

"You should be Russet, I could be Mist. Mist is girly. Russet sounds like a guy."

"That's the point. And the hell it is."

"Keep telling yourself that. And she won't go for Purple, by the way. We'll have to do better than that. It's too plain."

"Give her a shade too?"

"We should."

"Violet."

"But it's not violet, and that's too feminine – we don't want people know we're girls, right?"

"I don't know any purples."

"You sure knew a lot of browns."

"It's because I once needed a brown suit, and the tailor had all these little cards. I never needed a purple suit."

"Ah. I know purples. Magenta, mauve. Plum."

I shook my head. "I like plum, but something tells me she wouldn't. And it's a dead giveaway."

"Yeah. Um, amethyst."

"Too goth Dungeons and Dragons wannabe."

"That's what she is, though."

"Yeah, but don't encourage it."

She thought it over. I finished re-packing my bag and leaned back against the railing. My hand had started to itch.

"Wisteria?"

"Is that even a color?"

"It's purple."

"No, no, no. Death first. She'd sound like a wiccan witch person or something."

"Yeah. She's not one of those, thank God."

"Lilac?"

"No. Lavender?"

"No. Those are fragrances anyway. And they're feminine. No stalker would call himself lavender."

We sat in silence. This was a lot harder than I would have thought. "Fuchia?"

"No, she'd rather die. Royal?"

"Royal works. I kind of like it."

"I don't know." She frowned. "Tyrian."

"What the heck is that?"

"It's the exact color of her hair, it's what it said on the box when she dyed it."

"I don't know – sounds like the lead guitarist of some Finnish fantasy speed metal."

"She'd like that, though. Nightwish is like her favorite band."

"They're Finnish?"

"I think so."

"Then let's go with that. Russet and Tyrian. Those are proper stalker names."

"Yeah, and Mist. What were you thinking?"

"I was trying to be low key. Stalkers name themselves after innocuous things. Hell, the Biker is the Biker. The Merc is the Merc. These are not creative people."

"Where's his bike, anyway?"

"I don't know. He left it somewhere out west."

"What's a biker without his bike?"