S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort (12 page)

#We’ll send a team to the first crash site. We know its location. But we need the whole shipment.#

#Then go and get your damned delivery from the transport chopper’s carcass.#

#Negative. That’s your area. We must keep a low profile.#

#So what do you expect me to do?#

#If you want to stay in business, get those other suits like you did last time. Out.#

Eyes in the Darkness

Hindu Kush range, New Zone, 17:04:56 AFT

I’m in hell.

Tarasov’s nose and lungs are filled with the reek of burning flesh. Blinding light pierces into his brain with weird reflections. He doesn’t dare to open his eyes.

I must be in hell.

Slowly his brain starts working again. He realizes his eyes are open. The light comes from above. It’s the empty sky, with the sunrays refracted by his helmet’s broken visor. He wants to sit up but cannot move.

Oh God, my spine is broken.

He tries to move his fingers and toes. To his relief, none of his bones feel as though they are broken. He can even raise his left hand now.

But why can’t I move my body?

Then he grasps it – the exoskeleton is holding him. It must have saved his life but now, shattered and deformed by the impact, it keeps him down as if he’s tied by its metal tubes. Groaning, he reaches for the combat knife fastened to his belt and cuts through the straps attaching his backpack to the metal frame. With his shoulders free, he leans forward to release his legs. Finally he rises to his knees and, after gathering his strength for a long moment, he stands up. He checks his rugged, military-issue PDA. It’s still in one piece but doesn’t function.

Damn it… where in the hell am I?

The gunship’s smoking wreck lies a few steps away. The impact threw the crew compartment hatch open. The noxious stench comes from inside. His helmet’s integrated breathing system should keep it out, but when he checks the filter he finds it hanging loose of its casing, rendered completely useless.

I can’t believe this is happening to me.

Checking his exoskeleton’s built-in instruments, he finds that only the Geiger counter remains operational. It ticks dangerously close to the yellow zone. He removes his helmet. It won’t help him anymore.

He limps to the wreck. Initially, he manages to fight his nausea but as he peeks inside the compartment and sees the burnt corpses of his comrades, Tarasov turns around and retches. He needs several minutes to pull himself together. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, he climbs inside.
Sparks
still sizzle among the broken instruments and torn cables. Most of the corpses sit where they were during the flight, fastened to their bench with their safety straps, still in their very last posture as they tried to protect themselves from the impact. They look like grey, smoke-blackened statues. Among them, with his neck broken beneath his half-burnt skull, lies the
praporshchik.
Zotkin’s remaining steel-blue eye is staring at him and Tarasov turns his head away. It’s not the sight that disturbs him so much as the feeling that the dead man is looking at him reproachfully – a reproach made more terrible because Tarasov knows that it is just.

His weapon lies in the compartment, but with the butt stock broken the rifle is now nothing more than a piece of junk. It could probably be repaired, if only he had the tools. Tarasov throws it away in frustration. Checking his backpack he despairs to see it is burnt and ripped open. Apart from the grenades, only a few anti-radiation drugs and bandages, three packs of army rations and a medikit is all that he can still use. Neither has he any use of the spare
9 mm
ammunition now that his rifle is beyond repair. His frantic search still yields a few pairs of spare socks, always a blessing for soldiers in the field, and – his toothbrush. Holding it in his hand, he bursts out in hysterical laughter.

Oh God! A short time ago, I was a high-tech warrior riding in an assault chopper. Now I’m standing here with a damned toothbrush as my only weapon!

It seems to the major as if the New Zone had wanted to show its power, outwitting and forcing him to make his first steps here alone, even more poorly equipped than the greenest of rookies.

The paratroopers’ rifles didn’t fare much better than his own but eventually he finds an AKSU that looks more or less intact. Tarasov fires a few shots to check if it works properly. Satisfied, he slings it over his shoulder.

The pilots were spared electrocution in their heavily protected cockpit, but as Tarasov judges by the splashes of blood inside the plexiglass, the impact killed them in a perhaps even crueler way. They wear light armored suits, designed to keep them protected from the worst only until rescue comes. But even if hardly suitable for combat, the light, olive-green suits would still be more protective than his ruined exoskeleton.

“Sorry comrade, but you don’t need this any longer,” Tarasov murmurs as he cuts the straps that fasten one of the bodies into its seat before dragging it out of the cockpit. He changes the exoskeleton for the dead pilot’s protective suit. Inside it he finds a torchlight and a small survival kit: a ration pack, one more medikit, a compass, a field flask filled with water and two flares.

Now that he can act like a soldier again, duty to the squad comes to Tarasov’s mind.

I could at least bury them,
he thinks
.
But the ground is hard and rocky, so instead he takes the pilot’s body and moves it into the trooper’s compartment, where it will be safe from animals and worse.

Had that bastard let them wear their protective suits they’d be still alive. I should have insisted, damn it. It was my fault after all
.

Tarasov doesn’t let himself look for excuses. He cannot deny himself that it was his recklessness that led them into disaster. Properly protected, especially the squad leader in his exoskeleton, they would have had a better chance. But this is irrelevant. He was not supposed to change the flight path.

I will be court-martialed for that alone… if I ever get out of here at all.

Tarasov finds it strange that he does not see any entry point on the helicopter.
If Dragonfly One was brought down by hostile fire, which those gleams
must
have surely been, it must have hit us somewhere.
But pondering through the few impressions he remembers from the crash, and finding no hole or explosion trace on the wreck, it all looks to him as if the helicopter had been hit by an enormously strong electrical impulse that had instantly electrocuted almost everyone inside and fried the on-board systems.

Suddenly he detects the faint noise of a helicopter.

Could it be the rescue?

Listening more carefully to the approaching noise, his feeling of relief proves short-lived.

It doesn’t sound like one of ours
.

Something inside tells him to hide, but he couldn’t make it up the hills quickly enough and the barren valley does not offer any hide-outs. Finally he dashes up a knoll and hides behind the sparse bushes.

Soon, a double-engine helicopter appears over the valley and lands at the crash site, swirling up a huge cloud of dust. Tarasov sees five or six figures jumping off, all wearing thick body armor with tactical helmets and holding modern-looking weapons. They start inspecting the wreck. One of them, wearing a bulky backpack, looks inside. To Tarasov’s horror he steps away and sends a stream of liquid fire into the compartment. Immediately, the wreck goes up in orange and white flames.

Oh Gospodi, they have a flamethrower. They came to make sure everyone is dead.

One of them stumbles upon his exoskeleton. The others gather round. Tarasov cannot hear anything they say but it seems to him as if the men are arguing. The first, apparently the leader among them, orders two others to recover the remains of the armor and load it into their helicopter.

What the hell is happening there?

He wishes he still had his binoculars. There are no marks or call signs on the helicopter. It is painted entirely black. The visitors look around, scanning the area. One of them starts walking up the knoll on which he is hiding. Cautiously, Tarasov prepares his AKSU.

He is lucky, however. The leader orders his men back to the helicopter and in a few moments only the wild fire in the wreck is left as a reminder of their visit. After a few minutes, the helicopter’s noise fades away.

Tarasov sighs in relief but waits a few moments before leaving cover. Then, safe at last, he reconsiders his options.

First, I have to establish contact with Whiskey. Probably Kuznetsov would want me to check out Dragonfly Two’s fate first, and now I have no means of communication anyway.

Allowing himself a little wishful thinking, he hopes that the transport helicopter fared better than the gunship.

He looks at his watch. Dusk will soon fall, and with the sun already low it is getting dark in the narrow valley. Tarasov knows the drill: he should stay close to the crash site if he wants any rescuers to find him. But if there was going to be a rescue, it should have arrived long ago. Three hours have passed since they got shot down and Termez is just forty minutes away.

Maybe they’ll come later, perhaps tomorrow morning.

But the mysterious visitors could also soon be back in greater numbers. Not even darkness could hide him if they brought thermal imaging equipment with them, and as he had observed from their gear, they certainly wouldn’t lack for state-of-the-art equipment if it was needed.

Tarasov decides to climb up the ridge to get an overview of the area, hoping to see rising smoke or anything that could give him an idea of Dragonfly Two’s whereabouts. As he toils up the steep hillside, the thought that the visitors might have also found the other helicopter occurs to him. He finds the prospect frightening.

That would leave me completely alone
.

But then, as he arrives on top of the ridge after a rigorous climb, what he sees shatters all his false hopes.

What looked from below like a high ridge is all but a small hill compared to the ragged peaks beyond. He removes the tiny compass from the survival kit and takes a bearing.

To the west lies a circle-shaped valley with a tarn in its middle, its dark blue hue reflecting the brown mountains and the patches of grey snow on their fells. But as Tarasov strains his eyes he sees the water itself is swelling with mounds of water, slowly moving up and down, as if a sudden chill had frozen its waves in a storm.

It’s a damned Cone anomaly
.

Looking at the far, snowy peaks on the red horizon, he feels lonelier than anywhere in the Zone.

If this is the New Zone, it will take a hundred years to explore just the half of it.

All of a sudden he understands why the black chopper left in such a hurry. To the south, where his original destination lies, a curtain of darkness falls, lit up for split seconds by flashes of thunderbolts. Even from far away, Tarasov can see it moving closer as it engulfs the lower hills.

I don’t care if this is just a storm or a new kind of emission. I must find shelter, and I must find it right now!