It was a little past four-thirty in the morning when Stone woke me up. The stalker gently shook my shoulder, whispering quietly that it was time to get up. Well, there was nothing to do, so I had to get up. I shivered a little from the morning chill when I got out of my sleeping bag and started putting on my boots. Then I pack up the sleeping bag and leave it in Triton's house, where there was no one but a boorish guard.
I go outside and immediately my gaze falls on Stone, who is building a fire. The rest of the camp, except for the sentries, is still asleep. When I approached the stalker, he had already placed a pot over the fire and was starting to cook something. I sit down by the fire on an overturned crate and am about to get my food when Stone stops me.
"No need, kid," he begins, stirring the contents of the pot with a tablespoon. "Eat at my expense."
"I won't refuse," I reply with a slight smile. "Good morning. Why get up so early anyway?"
"Good, indeed," he chuckles, sitting down on a grimy wooden pallet, and explains. "Many stalkers believe that bloodsuckers are exclusively nocturnal predators, and at other times of the day, they only defend themselves. This is partly true, but bloodsuckers hunt twice a day – during the day and at night, and they sleep in the morning and evening. In the evening, as you understand, going on a mission is a futile endeavor. So..."
"I understand," I reply briefly, then continue. "I'll remember."
"That's right," Stone says, leaning forward towards the pot, and stirs the stew a few more times. "Get a plate ready."
After breakfasting on stew heated over the fire and army crackers, we began to prepare for the hunt. I check the pistol magazines, the belt ammo pouch, and how easily the knife comes out of its sheath. Then I inspect the weapon and, just in case, disassemble it to check if any dirt has gotten inside. A sudden misfire could bury us. While I'm doing all this, the stalker tells me where the bloodsucker has made its lair.
"Did you see the watchtower when you came here?" he asks me, performing the same manipulations with his weapon. The stalker is armed with a pump-action shotgun and a pistol of a brand unknown to me.
"Yes," I nod, thinking for a moment, and look around, trying to spot the watchtower directly from the camp, but the spread-out trees behind the house blocked the view.
"So," he continues. "About two hundred meters to the northwest, there's an island with a small hill, hidden by a bunch of bushes and other vegetation."
"And it's in those bushes that the bloodsucker is hiding?"
"You get it,
kid," he chuckles. "A very inconvenient place for us."
"Why is that?"
"We've tried to lure it out of there before, but it noticed us much earlier than we noticed it," the stalker spits. "It's not visible in those thickets, but we're like an open book to it. As soon as it sees us, it'll immediately bolt. You can't throw a grenade from a distance, it might hit us if it rolls back down the hill, you can't cut down the bushes yourself, it'll definitely go somewhere else, but at least we know where it lives."
"Why didn't you go with anyone in the morning before?" I ask the question that interests me.
"With whom?" he asks back. "Experienced stalkers are busy with other things, they don't have time for this, and taking rookies... Either they'll scare the bloodsucker away, or they'll run away themselves. I don't need that kind of luck."
"As if I'm very experienced," I chuckle. "Aren't you afraid?"
"I am afraid, of course. It's useful in the Zone to be afraid," Stone replies. "It's just that Proton put in a good word for you, saying you shoot well, you're decisive, you move quietly. I don't know about your shooting, but I appreciated how you move yesterday myself. If I hadn't known you were following me, I would have definitely gotten scared."
"You flatter me."
"We'll check that in practice, it's time," the stalker says, getting up from the ground.
We didn't put out the fire; let it burn, or someone else will use it. We leave the camp, nodding goodbye to a couple of sentries standing by the dilapidated fence, peering into the distance. One of them, the younger one, was about to ask where we were going, but his partner shushed the guy, and he stopped.
We pass the dilapidated wooden bridge, creaking under the weight of our steps. As soon as Stone steps off the bridge, a rustling sound comes from the nearby bushes; we raise our weapons, preparing for a mutant attack, but it was just a large rat with brown fur and a long, thick, gray tail. Looking at us with small black eyes, it quickly turned and ran back into the bushes, and a second later, a watery "plop" was heard.
We lower our weapons and move forward, towards the metal watchtower. It's high, about ten meters tall, with two flights of stairs and two platforms, covered with sandbags. Wooden crates are placed around its perimeter, sheltering possible guards. As we approach it, we discover that there is no one near the watchtower, only an old campfire with the remains of smoldering embers. I survey the area and notice a flask lying in the grass. I pick it up and meet Stone's tense gaze.
"What?" I ask him, but he takes two wide steps and snatches the flask from my hands, looking at it intently.
"Damn," he whispers quietly, then looks up at me. "Something serious happened, our guys disappeared somewhere..."
"Yours?" I raise an eyebrow in surprise. "Yesterday, when I was passing by here, I didn't see anyone."
"What?" Stone's eyes widen, and then he spits. "What is Triton thinking? I'll have to report this to Lebedev. An outpost has disappeared right in front of us, and we don't even know because there's no radio communication."
"Any guesses where they might have gone?" maybe renegades under the cover of...
"Definitely not renegades," he immediately dismisses my thought. "If it were them, we would have heard shooting, and they wouldn't have approached here so easily. The area is well-covered from above, you can't get close so easily, you can't take this place without a fight."
"Are we returning to base?"
"We should," Stone replies, scratching his short hedgehog of dark hair. "But let's walk around here for about five minutes, maybe we'll figure out where they went. And we still need to deal with the bloodsucker, and I can report to our guys by radio. You go up the tower, look around there, and I'll search here."
I shrug, gripping my rifle tighter and looking around for any possible tracks, then head towards the watchtower. I climb the first flight of stairs, reaching the lower platform, but there's nothing interesting here besides cigarette butts and a couple of empty cans. I cast a fleeting glance at Stone, who is carefully examining the campfire, and continue climbing.
After going through the second flight of stairs, I immediately stumble upon a duffel bag lying by some empty military crates. I open the top and start examining its contents. A couple of boxes of ammunition, some small items like food and matches, and a PDA. I pull it out of my backpack, turning it on immediately, but it turns out to be password-protected. This is getting more interesting.
"Find anything?" Stone's voice calls out to me.
"Yeah," I reply, picking up the duffel bag I found. "I'll be down in a bit."
"So, what have you got?" the stalker asks as soon as I step off the stairs.
"Here," I hand him the backpack. "It was at the very top. Inside, I found a PDA, but it's password-protected."
"Give it here," Stone takes the device from my hands and starts entering the password. "All our PDAs are password-protected, just in case, so no one else can read the info."
"And do all of you have the same password?"
"Yeah, it's more convenient, and we won't have to hack it if something happens to the PDA's owner," he finally enters the password. "Let's see, this PDA belongs to Ondatra, the flask, by the way, is his too. So, what do we have here..."
"Find anything?" I ask him a couple of minutes later.
"Only that they were all too nervous," Stone says. "Nothing strange, it was a night shift."
"Maybe they wanted to defect to another camp?" I voice the most obvious thought that comes to mind.
"Our guys and renegades?" the stalker replies. "Ha! Don't make me laugh, kid, our guys would never stoop so low. Alright, I'll contact our guys on the radio, and then we'll head to the bloodsucker."
Stone reached for the radio attached to his leg, took it out, and turned it on. But all his attempts to connect were met with only static, which disappeared completely after he angrily tapped the radio against his palm. I look at him with a raised eyebrow, as if expecting him to say something about it.
"Don't look at me like that," he grumbles. "But we'll have to go back, you understand, it's an emergency situation. What about you, will you wait here or come with me?"
"I'll wait here, sit on the tower and chew on something."
"I'll be quick, kid," the stalker turned and headed towards the camp.
I watch his back until he disappears behind the bushes. Then I turn around and scan the area again. Staying here alone isn't the best idea, but dragging myself back and getting involved in their clan disputes isn't something I want to do either. I'll stay here, wait, maybe I can spot something from the tower.
Just as I'm about to start climbing the stairs, I notice, out of the corner of my eye, flattened reeds and cattails behind the crates. Maybe the wind or some mutants left them? But the Clear Sky squad usually sits here, mutants are unlikely to visit such places often. Still, I'll go check. I walk straight there, keeping my weapon ready. If something jumps out at me, it's definitely not going to end well for it.
As I get closer, I notice a pistol lying in a mud puddle. How did Stone even survey the area? I hook it with two fingers so as not to get dirty and place it on the dry grass. Then I push aside the reeds with my rifle and take a few short steps forward on the wet ground, my boots sinking a bit into the mud. And I notice legs sticking out from under the water. Here's the owner of the pistol, I should pull him out. I tuck the double-barreled shotgun behind my back, grab the stalker's legs with my hands, and start pulling him towards me.
When the corpse is on the ground, I sit beside him and start examining the body. The skin is slightly swollen, yellowish-pale, everything is wet and muddy. I turn his head to the right, exposing his neck, on which was a familiar bite mark from a bloodsucker. It's strange that the creature dared to attack the squad. But, according to Stone, there were no screams or shots. Did they just abandon their comrade to be eaten by a mutant? I need to examine the corpse more closely.
I take out my knife and rip open his jacket and the sweater underneath, exposing the dead man's torso. I pull off the remnants of his clothes, stripping the Clear Sky soldier to the waist, and throw away the dirty rags. No marks, except for the bloodsucker's bite and a few large bruises, presumably left by the mutant. What if I turn him over? Oops, a picture-perfect situation, as they say. On his back, on the right, just below the ribs, was a small, even knife mark.
So, it turns out his own people stabbed the poor guy and left him to die, and then a bloodsucker drained him after the rest of the squad left. But why didn't he scream? The camp is nearby, they would have heard him. Maybe they hit him on the head, and he lost consciousness? It's impossible to tell now, the corpse is too swollen, and his hair covers his scalp. Yeah. The Clear Sky guys are just going to have more problems.
Hurried footsteps are heard from the direction of the road, beyond the watchtower. Just in case, I draw my pistol and cock it, but the precaution turns out to be unnecessary; it was Stone. Glancing around, he spots me and covers the distance from the tower to the bushes in about ten strides. He has a very puzzled expression on his face.
"Damn," the stalker exclaims in surprise, seeing the corpse, which was previously hidden by my body. "Where did you get him?"
"I fished him out," I reply, turning the corpse back onto its back. "Do you recognize him?"
"Ondatra," Stone says, squatting to the left of the corpse. "What happened to you?"
"Apparently, he was stabbed in the back and left here," I shrug. "And then a bloodsucker found him barely alive. And, apparently, to keep him from screaming, they hit him on the head
with something heavy, but why use a knife then? I don't know. What about you?"
"Some kind of nightmare is happening," the stalker says. "Triton isn't in the camp or at our base. They say he left somewhere last night, and a couple of other stalkers went with him. I don't know what to think, considering what happened here..."
"What's there to think about?" I ask him. "This is clearly a conspiracy. Everything fits together too perfectly. They killed their own, left, and no one would have known for some time if it weren't for us. Triton also conveniently disappeared at a very opportune moment, taking his accomplices with him."
"Lebedev said to take him..." he begins, but I interrupt him.
"I'm not interested in your clan disputes," I say. "If you need my help? Please, I'll consider the offer and give you my answer. But I'm not joining you."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," I continue. "We'll kill the mutant, you'll pay me, and I'll leave the Swamps immediately. If you need me, contact me through Sidorovich. Shall we go?"