Dirge Danorum

Chapter 21

Ah yes, the open road. To everyone's amazement, we really did get out of Kevorich at dawn. I hadn't slept, but I'd replenished my gear and eaten, so compared to the state I'd been in the evening before, I felt pretty good. Grigor wasn't thrilled with sallying forth so promptly, but he knew that at the end of the road he'd be able to rest in relative security.

Besides, it's really not that stressful traveling with such a large group. Heck, as long as you're not walking out front, you don't even have to watch for anomalies. Very, very rarely did this many people move together in the Zone, and when they did, even the herds of carnivorous mutants steered clear. We had the Biker with us, the Merc, and several other stalkers that I had been told were also heavy hitters.

It really wasn't an unpleasant way to spend the day. I'd have liked to sort of mingle with some of the new Freedom stalkers, but Russet and Tyrian were attached to me. That didn't cut me off completely, because it will come to no surprise to anyone that almost all of these men found the time to stop by and introduce themselves to the ladies. There was a Scottish guy that I really liked; he called himself Jester, and he told a lot of jokes, but he was carrying an RPK on his back, so he meant business.

We were all wearing Freedom patches; I don't know where Velvet had been keeping them, and she was actually having people take off their fatigue jackets so she could sew them on while we walked, something that many of the men watched with interest. A beautiful woman enacting a uniquely domestic scene on the move, in the Zone. It wasn't something you saw every day.

This was what being in a faction was supposed to be like. Suddenly surviving a year in the Zone didn't seem so far-fetched. This was how people did it – they banded together. They looked out for each other.

Despite our numbers, we couldn't let down our guard. We had to pause and hide when there was dust on the horizon: three big supply trucks traveling on the dirt road. Trucks like that could only be going one place: Duty HQ. Velvet watched, looking grim. She wasn't pleased; the Incursion had left Duty in decent shape, in spite of the disastrous battle for Chernobyl, which had left no winners.

Duty was organized and growing fast. They were changing, adapting to new needs in a new Zone. It only got worse when a combat helicopter appeared, this time coming from the south. It stayed high, but through my binoculars I could clearly see a masked sniper in open the hatch. He wasn't shooting, just watching us. Slayer and Dixon had dutifully reported their findings, though I doubted either one of them understood the implications. Duty knew we were out here.

I'd talked about this at length with Velvet. There was a lot of ambiguity; no one was sure exactly what they'd do. The worst case scenario was that they would simply attack outright, and crush Freedom for good before it had time to gain strength. That happening was unlikely for a variety of reasons. Public relations, and differing ideologies within Duty itself being the most important ones. If Duty attacked unprovoked, they would never live it down. Even now, neutral stalkers that had once been friendly to Duty were alienated because of the stance they had taken beside the Military. If Duty ever wanted to put that behind them, they had to take the high road here and now. But anything could happen, and Velvet just had to do her best to be ready for as many outcomes as possible. Commanders get to boss people around, but at the end of the day, they really do have the worst job. I already understood why Velvet was only willing to stay a year, but this added new color to it.

It was a tense moment as we watched the chopper fly overhead. Velvet gave the order not to fire, and not even to take aim. She believed Duty would ultimately find a way to make her their enemy – but she didn't want to just hand it to them.

We walked on. The road from Kevorich to Yantar was long, though at least our group was able to move a good pace. We had to leave the Channel, go around the north faces of the Plateau, cross the gap, then go south around Rostov. It would've been faster to cut through the plains between the Trainyard and the old Army Compound, but Velvet didn't want to risk getting too close to Duty's forward outpost there, which now occupied real estate that had previously been Freedom HQ. Taking that route would inevitably expose us to Duty scouts, and she was afraid an impulsive officer would make a bad decision.

So instead we went south, a much longer road that would take us near the northern borders of the Garbage, then down through the steep hills that would allow us to approach Yantar from the east. Of course the plant there was uninhabitable because of the radiation, but the laboratory base camp in the valley was our real destination. It wasn't the best base in the Zone, but Velvet was only setting up there for Grigor's benefit – it had been one of the conditions of his joining her. He wanted the laboratory facilities for his research. I had a feeling that once Yantar was secure, Velvet would quickly establish another base if Freedom's numbers justified it, and that one would be more tactically sound.

The Biker explained to me some of the pros and cons of the Yantar Valley as a defensible position. He was convinced we would have to fight Duty there – maybe next week, maybe next year – but it was going to happen. I hoped it was next year, because I didn't really feel like doing that.

We walked over ground littered with casings, and underneath ancient power lines infested with plantlike anomalies that made the air above a hazy miasma that smelled strongly of ozone. We heard the moaning of the Zone, and we could see the distant flashes of lightning in the dark on the horizon that marked Chernobyl NPP.

Crows lined the roofs of old wooden houses in the deserted villages we passed through, listening to the echoes of scratching and movement in the deep, dry wells. The stalkers sang songs and told jokes, playing practical jokes over the open channel with their PDAs, and boasting about what they would do if Duty tried anything.

We might have made the journey in a full day's march, though it would have been very, very dark by the time we reached Yantar – but Velvet wasn't interested in getting us there fast. She swerved our course here and there, taking us to places I didn't know existed. Encampments I'd never heard of. She was recruiting, of course – but that wasn't all she was doing.

Remember, this wasn't just about starting a faction to rival Duty. It was about starting a new kind of faction altogether.

Velvet's business plan was in full effect. With the venture capital she'd gotten from the sisters, things were already taking shape. Money and artifacts were changing hands at a dizzying pace. It got to the point where we couldn't even go near the chest of artifacts because the radiation was too high; we had to drag it ten meters behind us with a rope. Grigor assured me there was a lead vault at the Yantar laboratory we could use to store them safely until they could be collected by Velvet's buyers.

Yes, the Zone's first entrepreneur – who just happened to be a woman – was making a powerful start.

We stumbled on a small band of rookies who were beset by bandits. Velvet scored four new recruits right there; that was all it took. It was a good day.

We set up camp on the outskirts of the Garbage, where we were protected by tall trees, and taller hills. The stalkers built fires and set up tents. There were two with guitars, and another actually carried around a snare drum on his back. You wouldn't expect to find such talented musicians in a place like this, but tonight I wanted quiet. I saw Velvet slip away, and that was a good excuse to do so myself – someone had to keep an eye on her.

She was climbing one of the hills, and I went after her.

"Don't you ever sleep?" She settled down where there was a good view. The moon was bright, and the valley to the west stretched out in front of us.

"No," I replied honestly. I couldn't tell her that every time I closed my eyes all I could see was Velvets being slaughtered by the dozen, but I couldn't lie to her either. "No, I don't. Who could sleep down there anyway?" We could hear them in the distance; it was a Beatles song. I didn't know the title.

She looked over at me with a raised eyebrow, then smiled. "You're strange," she said.

"I wasn't always." It's true. In fact, before I'd come to the Zone, I'd been pretty boring. Video games, martial arts, girls. School. Pretty much in that order, too.

Grigor cleared his throat, and we both jumped. He was perched on a boulder a short distance up the slope.

"Hey, what if we'd come up here to make out?"

Velvet put her face in her hand. "Does that seem likely to you?"

I sighed. "I guess not." After all, I knew. I noticed that Grigor's gaze was fixed on something.

"What is it?" I asked, and he pointed. Velvet and I both followed his finger. There was a soft glow down in the valley. I hadn't noticed it before; it was far off, and subtle. I'd left my pack in camp; my binoculars were in it. Velvet was thinking the same thing; I could see her squinting in the moonlight.

"One of the Wandering Anomalies," Grigor said, reading our minds. "The Twilight Shower."