S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort (31 page)

“Peace, brothers! It’s me, Squirrel!”

“Hey Squirrel,” a Stalker says, lowering his weapon. “What’s wrong with you? We’re just sitting here, telling jokes and all, and you sneak up on us like this? You scared the shit out of us!”

“We mean no harm,” Tarasov says. He switches his rifle’s safety to ‘on’ and shoulders the weapon. “Do you mind if we spend the night here?”

“Haha! The military is looking for protection from Stalkers,” another Stalker says as he sits down by the fire and goes back to tuning his battered guitar. “Come, you’ll be safe with us.”

“That’s very reassuring,” Ilchenko says, looking around.

“What’s up, Squirrel?” The third Stalker turns to the guide. He is cleaning an old L85 Enfield rifle. “Got lost as usual, my old mate?”

“I’m guiding my soldier guests through the local zoo, Snorky,” the guide says, sitting down next to the campfire. “They’ve already met the bears and dushmans. All that must have prepared for them for the worst attraction. Major, Ilch, I have the displeasure to give you Mishka Beekeeper. He pretends to play guitar but he can’t. The jumpy one is Sashka SWAT Officer, and the brother with a taste for antique weapons is Snorkbait.”

“Beekeeper? SWAT Officer?” Ilchenko gives Tarasov a puzzled glance. “How did these guys chose their call signs? Plucking them out of a hat?”

Tarasov shrugs the question off. He has already noticed something far more interesting.

“I don’t give a shit about crazy call signs if the name on that label is for real,” he says, eyeing the bottle of vodka that the Stalkers are sharing among themselves. “Is that really what the label says?” He takes off his heavy rucksack with a satisfied sigh and joins the Stalkers sitting around the fire.

“Sure! It’s Stolichnaya
,
what else?”

Mishka Beekeeper offers him the bottle. Tarasov takes a long swig, then hands it over to Ilchenko who has taken the place next to him.

“What brought you here then, lads?” Snorkbait asks.

“We’re on our way to the Factory.”

“That’s where we wanted to go a few nights back. Forget about it.”

“Come again?”

“The last storm moved the anomalies. Looks as if it’s swept all the damned Geysers, Mines and Burners into the archway. You could waste a million bolts but still wouldn’t find a way through.”

“Shit,” Tarasov swears. “Have you at least seen Mac? You know, Uncle Yar’s apprentice?”

The Stalkers exchange a baffled look.

“Nope. Sorry, mate,” Snorkbait says.

“How far is it if we go the other route, through that abandoned village you mentioned, Squirrel?”

“Two days.”

Tarasov glances at Ilchenko who returns the concern in his look. The major removes his helmet and rubs his temples.

 
“Damn it… we haven’t got that much time. We must find a way through tomorrow.”

“Let’s keep tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow,” Squirrel cheerfully replies, “and now tell me buddies, you got any new stories?”

“We were talking about women.”

“What women, Sashka?”

“That’s the point. There aren’t any around.”

“Why would there be? Prada produces no Stalker boots, Mango has no protective suits, Louis Vuitton offers no artifact containers, and jackal puppies aren’t cute. That’s why they don’t come here.”

“Which sucks,” the Stalker called SWAT Officer sighs with resignation.

“How would you recognize one anyway?” Tarasov asks. “All Stalkers wear gas masks, helmets or at least balaclavas.”

“By her voice?”

“Come on, Mishka. Speaking through a gas mask makes anyone sound like a mutant.”

“True enough, Squirrel. By her tits then.”

“Under the body armor she could have tits like a cow’s udders and nobody would notice them.”

“Okay, not the tits. Maybe a pink rifle.”

“Or an armored suit with a ‘Hello, Kitty’ sticker on it?”

“Or just by being a pain in the ass,” Snorkbait grumbles.

“By dumping you for a Stalker with a bigger rifle,” Ilchenko smirks.

“You talking about your own experiences, Ilch? Anyway, one wouldn’t have to guess,” Squirrel says laughing. “Just find out which Stalker the bloodsuckers are after on certain days!”

“Shit! Now that was way below the belt. One would only need to know her call sign, anyway.”

“Why, Sashka, what would that be?”

“Fucked One.”

The Stalkers all laugh, except for Snorkbait who seems more intent on maintaining his weapon. Tarasov likes this attitude, all the more because Snorkbait handles the disassembled weapon with a routine that can only come from a military background. However, for once he finds the Stalkers’ conversation more interesting than speculating in which army Snorkbait had acquired his skills.

“I wonder where the Tribe got their women from?” He says, taking another swig from the bottle.

Suddenly, silence falls upon the camp.

“Hey Major,” a Stalker eventually says, “don’t ruin the party by mentioning those animals!”

“Sorry, Beekeeper. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

The Stalker called SWAT Officer picks up the thread of conversation. “
Kruto
, fellows,” he says, clearing his throat. “So, assuming that a female Stalker was here, what would you do?”

“I’m a polite guy,” Squirrel says. “I’d open the door to any underground area and let her enter before me. Ladies first!”

“I would give her a flower.”

“Just a flower? You’re a cheapskate, Sashka.”

“I mean, a Stone Flower artifact.”

“Before or after?”

“Whatever. Eh, this makes no sense… let’s talk about women in the Big Land. Hey, newcomers, tell us a juicy story!”

“Hell yeah! Tell us something naughty. I guess you army officers get the most pussy out there.”

“Only on paydays,” Tarasov jokes. “Women are expensive in Kiev, you know?”

“Who’s talking about whores?”

“
All
women are expensive,” Tarasov sighs.

“Or all women are whores.”

“I wouldn’t subscribe to that, Ilchenko.”

“No argument about women being expensive,” Snorkbait says. “But back in Bagram I heard a little bird twittering that you’ve been the commander of the base at Cordon. If that’s true, and you didn’t get rich from all the artifact trade, then, Major – with all due respect, you missed the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Maybe I did,” Tarasov dryly replies, staring into the fire.

Ilchenko takes a long swig from the vodka bottle. “Everyone, listen up! Yoshkar Ola is the place to go. It’s an ugly little
bydlostan
in
Russia
, but there’s a big university and out of every ten students, nine are girls.”

“Then what the hell are we doing here?” Snorkbait muses.

“Wasting ourselves, Snorky,” a Stalker replies.

“I’m not talking about you, Mishka, you old wanker.”

“You’ve studied there?” Tarasov asks Ilchenko.

“No, I studied in
Odessa
, but she was from Yoshkar Ola. I got to know her during a student exchange, which ended up in an intense exchange of body fluids...”

“A story at last! That’s what we need!”

“Right you are, Sashka! Come on, Ilch, get right to the juicy details!”

“It’s a sad story, Squirrel. So, I am from
Odessa
and she was from Yoshkar Ola.” Ilchenko suppresses a hiccup and takes another swig. Tarasov can only admire his drinking abilities – the soldier seems to knock back the vodka like water. “During a summer break, we met again in
St. Petersburg
. She and some other girls had a party organized. It sucked – there were several Western guys there too, and they were looking at our girls as if they were nothing but pussy.”

“Which is actually true,” Mishka Beekeeper cuts in.

Ilchenko gives him a disapproving look and drinks once more. “So, I speak a little German, you know, because I studied Goethe and Rilke and helped them translate. When the suckers told a girl:
was möchtest Du trinken
, I just said: ‘he wants to know if you’ll lay for a Schengen visa’.”

“Now that’s what I call party-pooping,” Squirrel says.

“Whatever… The worst thing was that some girls – not all, but some, you know what I’m meaning – just said ‘yes’. But that was not the only thing that ruined the party for me. Imagine, there was a fucking negro too. Can you believe that? He was on some fucking fellowship to study fucking sociology or whatever. Officially. Unofficially, he was selling drugs. The girls let him come to the party because he had some pretty good stuff, I’ll give him that.”

Mishka Beekeeper chuckles. “I don’t even dare think what else might have interested the girls.”
 

“Shut your mouth, Stalker. Anyway, I bought a few grams of dope to cheer myself up. And while I was getting high, that
kurvenok
fucked my girl!”

“Shame on you, man. You should have stuck to Coca-Cola.”

“That bastard gave me stronger stuff than what I wanted, Squirrel. It totally knocked me out. Yeah, okay, I admit I had too much vodka too but you’re missing my point. My point is that my girl was fucked by a fucking negro!”

“I always knew you were compensating with that machine gun,” Squirrel jokes. Ilchenko gives him a scornful glance, and now appears to be genuinely angry. Tarasov watches him, ready to intervene should a fight break out, but his soldier seems to be too drunk already to raise a hand.

“Anyway, next morning I find my girl in the next room and the negro all over her. I told her to get out of my sight and go back to Yoshkar-fucking-Ola. Then I had a… conversation… with the negro.”

“About the dope?”

“About why I shouldn’t throw him out off the balcony, Stalker. He wasn’t very… Major, how do you call it when an argument doesn’t work?”

“In your case, it’s called being totally pissed. You better go, brush your teeth and prepare your bivouac, son.”

“Is this an order?”

“Finish the story first, if you still can,” Tarasov says, softened up by the drink himself, and also curious about the end of Ilchenko’s story, even though the soldier’s words occasionally turn into drunken blabber.

“I go,
komandir
, I go, but let me tell you this – I found out something very interesting about negros. Their skin might be black but their brains are white. Don’t look at me like that! I saw it with my own eyes when he hit the pavement one, two, three, four – five floors below the balcony!”

Squirrel chokes on the loaf of bread he is eating.

“That was the most interesting thing I learned during my student years. There was no more
 
studying for me anyway, because who the hell wants to study once he’s got a drug dealer’s stash in his hands? So one thing led to the other and a year after I even had my own
bummer
, a nice black X6. Guess how many teachers drive one. So, in the end I couldn’t care less about my degree, and all went well until one day a sucker scratched my car. I was a little too rough on him… anyway, while waiting for my turn at the
militsia
, along came a recruiting officer and told me that I could either go to jail or join the army.”