Freedom
Chapter 40
Okay, now the excitement was officially over. The canteen would be buzzing with the news of the fight for another half hour, but the day was really wrapping up this time. Turns out there are two places for lodgings in Kevorich: the bordello, and the more affordable barracks. The bordello offered actual beds. The barracks had cots, which were, after roughing it out in the Zone and concrete floors, probably pretty darn comfortable.
I actually went with the Bordello, where they welcomed me with, literally, open arms. The lady who ran the place was older than I was, and apparently a business partner of the merc who ran Kevorich. Maybe she'd been a working girl once, but she wasn't anymore. That said, she was pretty gracious for a woman with a machete on her belt. She offered me the services of a variety of surprisingly attractive girls, all at the champion-rate discount, which I turned down. It wasn't an easy decision – after all, there is something about fighting that can get one's libido all up in a dander – but paying for sex just isn't my style.
I'd chosen the bordello because there I could stay in a room, and I wouldn't have to worry about being attacked in my sleep. In the barracks, anybody would've been able to walk up and stick a knife in me during the night. After some of the looks I'd gotten just after that fight, that seemed like a real issue. That, and the bordello had showers. Besides, I could afford it.
So there ended Day Six. I spent the night in relative comfort, and maybe I shouldn't have – every time I had to sleep on the floor in the future, I'd be thinking of this bed. Every time I was out in the Zone and night was coming on, I'd be wondering how easily I could make it back to Kevorich. And then I'd be wrestling with temptation, because there was one girl who'd really caught my eye. Her price was staggering, and yet it didn't strike me as unreasonable. I could see why ambitious working girls came to the Zone. High-risk, yes – but it was also the land of opportunity.
Anyway, I was sleeping in a brothel; of course those are the sorts of things I was thinking about.
Day Seven came on at leisurely pace. There was no one to wake me up; Velvet was off in her little bunker, Merc was gone, and Biker was in the infirmary. I slept late because I could, and because you just can't understand how comfortable that bed was.
When I finally emerged, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. But instead of nice birdsong, it was just crows making noise. Still, that wasn't enough to ruin the illusion. It was late in the morning, so most stalkers had headed out for the day. I didn't quite have Kevorich to myself, but it seemed quiet and empty.
I was hungry, but I started by checking in on the Biker. He was, once again, sitting up in his bed, fiddling with his PDA. I wondered what he was doing, but didn't ask.
"Everything okay?" he asked without looking up.
"More or less."
"You hear? Somebody beat Big McLargeHuge."
"I did hear about that," I said.
"Go check on Velvet today, will you?"
"Sure." I took out some money and put it on the table by his bed, paying him back for what he'd loaned me earlier.
"Thanks," he said. He didn't ask where it had come from, and I didn't say anything. Cool guys don't brag. Don't ask me why, but I kind of looked up to the Biker. I was doing okay in the Zone, but he'd been here for a while. I was pretending to be a cool guy, but he was the real thing. So I just left it at that and asked the doctor about Sagaris. He told me things looked good.
So I headed out and dropped off my upper armor with one of the tinkerers to patch up, and went to the canteen to get breakfast. At Rostov you can get a hot sandwich. At Kevorich you can get a hot meal. With real eggs, and real bacon, if you want it. I did.
From there I went to see about getting myself a weapon. To put it mildly, the traders at Kevorich had a lot to offer. There were interesting things on the transient tables, but it was clear the best items were being sold by official Kevorich guy.
I needed a lot of stuff. Mundane things, like a canteen. And a lot of knives – that was the part that raised eyebrows from everyone in the big tent. I piled my purchases in the middle of his table. Medical supplies. Traveling rations. Anti-rads. Gun oil. All the items I'd taken for granted when I still had my pack.
I'm not really a gun person. I respect them, and I knew I needed one, but I wasn't the type to drool over the armory on display. I wanted something practical, and I settled on a Sig SG 553. It looked brand new, the action was clean, and I knew it would be pretty reliable. It was also on the small side, which was good, because I'd be traveling with it. I'd be able to rig up a harness to connect it to my armor easily enough, and it looked like a winner all around. It was, regrettably, a 5.56 rather than 5.45 – but that's life. I didn't want an AK-74, of which there were plenty. It would just make me miss my 105.
The AKS-74U was a solid candidate – but the deal breaker was the top rail. The Sig had one, the AK didn't.
I needed a sidearm too, but there wasn't a single Glock in the whole place. I'd never fired anything that wasn't a Glock. There were a lot of pistols being offered by the various traders, many of which I'd never even seen before – and I'd done research. One table had a lot of guns that were even more unusual than the others, and I found myself loitering there.
Really unusual – like a big, silver, top-break revolver in .45 Long Colt. It had a huge barrel weight, and looked pretty scary. My right hand was drawn toward it, and I picked it up.
"Pulls left," the vendor warned. His English was broken at best. I put the big gun down. Where was I going to find .45 Long Colt in the Zone anyway? There was a USP that looked suspiciously like the Merc's. It probably was; he'd sold it to help pay for the team's medical expenses. He really was a decent guy. That was why the Biker had lent him his Pernach.
An innocuous-looking two-toned FNP was hidden underneath some netting. I took it out and looked it over. It had seen its share of action. A 9mm seemed like a safe bet – but it didn't feel right. I put it down.
There was a bizarre, lumpy-looking pistol with lights on it. I picked it up and raised an eyebrow. "Why would you put LEDs on a gun?" I asked.
"Aim for eyes," the trader said.
I put it down in a hurry. There was a Colt King Cobra that looked pretty sweet, but low capacity plus the rare .357 cartridge made it less than practical. I left it alone. A pair of Beretta 92SBs stood out to me, but if I bought one or both, I'd just get myself killed trying to be Chow Yun Fat. It was inevitable.
"What about that?" I pointed at a gun in a case.
"Lunch Box," the Vendor said.
"What?"
He got out the gun and handed it over. "Is Lunch Box," he repeated. Feeling a little dubious about the reputability of this seller, I took the gun and looked it over. My real-world research hadn't covered this one, but Call of Duty had. Behold, the majestic Desert Eagle. About seventy pounds of pure doom. This one was black, with nice wooden grips. It was a .44 magnum, and I felt lucky. Okay, I'll stop. I turned it over. Scratched into the grip were the words: LUNCH BOX
I looked questioningly at the vendor.
"Belong to famous stalker," he said.
"Yeah," I replied. "And I'll bet he wore a green coat and smoked a lot of weed."
"How you know?"
I didn't hear that part, though – I was too busy looking over the gun. Or rather, my right hand wouldn't let go of it. I got the feeling that I didn't have much say in this. So much for all my talk of practicality.
"I'll take it," I said.