S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort (68 page)

“That’s enough. Enough!”

Feeling
Zef’s
strength wane, the major slowly loosens the grip around his neck. Ilchenko has also run out of steam, and is now on his hands and knees, coughing heavily.

Tarasov takes the doll from the dirty floor and gives it to the Stalker, though now
Zef
is nothing more to him than a carrier for the Stalker’s Striker shotgun: an ugly but lethal tool needed to help him survive. He reaches into his backpack.

“Take a shot of vodka. Calm down. Once we’re back on the surface you can kill each other, I don’t care. But while we’re down here, you keep killing mutants. Is that clear?”

Tarasov knows his hoarse voice fails to hold the power to impress the two men.

The big man was right… I’m about to fail. I can’t control my men anymore. Maybe I should have just let them kill each other.

He glances at Zlenko, afraid of him drawing the same conclusion. The sergeant doesn’t return his glance. Tarasov too draws a gulp from the bottle, taking a swig during a mission for the first time in his life. The warmth of the spirit relaxes his guts, which feel like they have turned into painful knots during the past few minutes.

“Let’s move on.”

The fighters pick up their weapons, avoiding each other’s eyes. Zlenko watches carefully over them. Tarasov removes the magazine from his rifle and replaces it with armor-piercing bullets.

I hope it will not come down to me shooting my own men.

The sound of the magazine sliding into place sounds like a warning.

“Ilchenko, take point. I’ll follow you.
Zef
, fall in line. Sergeant Zlenko, you watch our six.”

They enter the room where the djinn’s corpse lays, riddled and burnt by the grenade’s countless metal fragments.

“Good riddance,” Tarasov says, stepping over it. Another tunnel opens to their left. From the emergency lights glows a warm orange light that is a relief after the eerie blue haze of the computer room.

Driscoll, the Brothers, the Colonel… damn, how I hated them in the beginning. How I wish they were here with me now. But if they could make it through here, we can make it too.

The tunnel descends for a few meters and leads to yet another steel door, this one standing wide open. Ilchenko quickly looks around before entering the room beyond, and then moves on with the precision of a machine between a row of cages and desks loaded with computers, stopping at a corpse that lies on the ground.

One lamp is turning around on the ceiling with a whining noise that reminds Tarasov of a knife scratching a plate. The noise makes him shudder.

“Another Chinese bit the dust here.”

“And a scientist too,” Tarasov says, checking the body but finding nothing. He looks around, hoping to see something that provides him with a clue.

What were these cages for?

There is an opening in the wall at the other end of the corridor, covered by a gritty plastic curtain.

“Maybe this room was a zoo where they kept monkeys like that son of a…” Turning back to look at the major, Ilchenko finds himself facing the barrel of the major’s rifle. “Okay, okay… just guessing.”

The walls of the long, narrow room are dark and shiny. Tarasov sees the reflection of himself and his men moving along the row of cages, all fastened to the ceiling with heavy chains. One place is empty, the chains leading through two holes in a mechanical trapdoor.
They must have lowered that one into the abyss beneath,
Tarasov thinks
.
Then the light of his headlamp falls on another body, poised on his knees and still clinging to the lever of a device fastened to the wall.

“Major… Mikhailo, you are bleeding.”

He looks down at his armor where blood has soaked through all the protective layers. Zlenko’s words making him aware of the pain. Tarasov feels an unsettling sensation, as if the stone sewn into his flesh by Nooria had become animated, but it is not his body rejecting it; the stone seems to move of its own accord. Two seams of cord fixing the neat cut have already burst. He closes the armor.

“Looks like an old wound,” the sergeant says.

“Not the first if its kind,” he replies without any intention of telling more. “And now… let’s see what this switch does.”

He moves the lever upwards. The device clicks to his reassurance. Suddenly a bright light beams up.

“What the hell? Where are we?”

Tarasov is dumbstruck as he sees a huge cavern just an arm’s length from him. The walls reflecting their images are windows through which he now looks down into an abyss. He wants to reply to Zlenko but only manages to utter a surprised gasp as he sees a human form taking shape at the other end of the room. Its mouth arches into a cruel sneer. In the next second the same terrifying laugh booms that they had heard in the level above.

“Screw you, motherfok!”

Zef
steps forward, his shotgun spitting lead into the apparition while Ilchenko’s machine gun joins in. The bullets’ impact shakes the humanoid, but it keeps moving closer with each step. It strikes Zlenko in the head, sending him to the floor with a scream, then grabs Ilchenko’s machine gun and, ignoring the pain from the hot barrel, tears it from the soldier’s hands and turns the weapon towards Tarasov. He tries to dodge it but a long, brawny arm arrests him and slings him against the glass wall. Horror overwhelms him as he slams into the glass between himself and the dark abyss outside. Fortunately, the glass does not break, leaving Tarasov merely winded.
Zef
watches the major slowly slump to the ground, his eyes glowing with rage as he turns towards the mutant.

“You are one ugly motherfok. Come to me, get some!”

Lying on the ground and wheezing from pain, Tarasov watches the Stalker wrestling with the mutant.
Zef’s
face is distorted from pain and his brutal effort to match the monster’s power as they grapple face to face, the dreadful arms in the Stalker’s hold, a desperate human aided by an obsolete exoskeleton fighting something that was once human, but is now two hundred pounds of muscle obeying the sole instinct to kill.

Tarasov’s rifle has been kicked away, so he reaches for his Glock and switches to automatic mode, dragging himself closer until he is able to fire the full magazine of lethal Hydra-Shock bullets into the mutant’s skull.

Wounded, it gradually falls to its knees with
Zef
towering over it, still holding its arms, then the Stalker raises his foot and kicks the mutant in the head, breaking its neck.

“
Fuck!
” Tarasov grunts, panting heavily and spitting out sour saliva.

“That’s my thank-you for giving me back my baby, boss –”

Zef’s
mouth gapes open but only a hoarse rattle leaves his lips as the tip of a knife appears in his mouth. He coughs, then blood starts streaming from his throat. Ilchenko’s grinning face emerges behind him.

“The Moor has done his duty… the Moor can go. It’s an urban legend that Shakespeare wrote, but now it’s a perfect time to quote it!”

In trepidation, Tarasov watches Ilchenko pulling his bayonet from the Stalker’s head. Ilchenko licks the blood from the blade.

“I hate racists. All the blood in the world tastes the same. Like… salty oil and metal.”

Tarasov is helpless with his handgun empty and Ilchenko now aiming his weapon at him. “What have you done?” the major moans.

“I have finished the mission. No more
yes, sir
to idiots like you. I am smarter than you, better educated than you, and aiming a fully loaded machine gun at you. I am free now. In other words, I am the king of this fucking universe!”

“You are pathetic.”

“If so, why are you the one on his knees? An officer, a fucking major, falls to a private!” Ilchenko leans so close that he can feel the spit the private ejects with every word he scowls. “This is the moment of truth,
komandir
.”

A shadow falls on Ilchenko from behind.

“Indeed it is, Private… could you take a step back?”

“Last wish granted,” Ilchenko laughs as he retreats, “and what’s in that for you?”

“Not much… only that I’ll have less of your educated brains on my face when Zlenko fires his shotgun.”

Surprise is the last expression on Ilchenko’s face before his head is blown to pieces and his massive body collapses. Smoke still trickles from the barrel of Zlenko’s Benelli as he quickly reloads it.

“I couldn’t make it earlier,” the sergeant says, pointing to his badly wounded face. “The punch was one thing… but that beast threw me against something sharp.”

“Thanks, Viktor… I won’t forget this.”

“I never liked him,” Zlenko replies with an indifferent shrug.

The light is stabbing into the major’s eyes as he stretches out on the metal floor. He carefully touches the wound on his chest. When he removes his hand from under the armor, it is covered with blood.

Which drop will be the last one?

The sergeant sits at his side, his eyes like two black holes. Slowly, Tarasov sits up.

“Now there’s only you and I left, son.”

Tarasov is glad that his visor hides his eyes from the sergeant. He realizes how fond he has become of him and now, in this moment, how he would gladly give his own life if that would help Zlenko survive. He takes some bandages and a medikit from his pack and tends to the sergeant’s wound.

“Do you think I’m a coward, Mikhailo?”

“On the contrary… I will turn every damned stone upside down to get you a promotion to lieutenant.”

“Being a lieutenant… that’s much better than being a sergeant, yes.”

Tarasov realizes how shallow his words sound. “You are right… I should have just said that no, I do not think you are a coward.”

“So you won’t take it for cowardice if I say: let’s turn back. I am actually begging you to turn back. It will only get worse if we cross this bridge!”

Tarasov seeks the words to explain all the pieces of the puzzle that just keep falling into place within his own perception, things he feels rather than knows.

“Have you seen Ilchenko’s madness?” He asks, having finished bandaging the sergeant’s wound. “How Skinner ran to help an already dead friend? How
Zef’s
wits fell apart?”

“I do.”

“Did you have a close look at the sand and rocks in this land, the ruins, the wrecks of tanks once driven by our father’s generation? Have you seen the killing machines that people turned into, people who once had more freedom and earned more money than we could ever dream about?”

“I did.”

“Then listen… all this shit comes from that damned thing.” Tarasov beats the floor with his fist. “Or so I read the clues… but it clearly radiates evil – look how it had turned us against each other. It creeps into our mind at our weakest point… We have to destroy it if we can.
Kiev
wanted to have it. Our enemies tried to snatch it from our scientists. Who knows what powers are still queuing up to take it? At least we should try to end this madness. This is our mission now, son!”

Tarasov is almost begging. Zlenko gives his hands a thousand-yard stare. He is opening and closing his fist, as if checking that his hands still obey his will.

“All the things we saw… it’s beyond human influence, Mikhailo. I don’t think we can change anything here, or anywhere in this screwed up world for that matter. Frankly, I think we should leave and let this cursed place keep its secrets.” He stretches his back, like a man preparing for heavy work. “But if you go, I’ll follow you.”