The stalker pauses on the hill to see to his needs. Lifts his mask to swill vodka. His eyes are grim, dead. He counts bullets as thunder speaks to thunder and the first rain wets the grenades at his waist. When he is done with the rifle he sets it on his knees and finds a vein to push the needle in, unflinching, deep, as if the arm is not his own meat.
Day on day this place cooks him. All the water and steel of the Zone is hot, gamma hot, baked in the breath of Chernobyl. His flesh is hot now, too. If he goes two days without the injections he bleeds into his ****. So it is.
He draws the mask down over his face and looks to the valley. Blind dogs run the horizon. An anomaly whispers and gouts flame into the dawn and the rain. He judges distance, finds the camp ten minutes away. He goes down.
In the low place where the river once ran, he watches a sentry who watches him and then turns for the camp. The stalker lifts his mask and spits into the mud. The air stinks of ozone and dead dog. He settles his pack and continues.
Mercenary man in a tarnished exoskeleton meets him at the gate. Fly eyes, faceted, watch him over a Kalashnikov.
Mornin', he says. You ain't expected.
Seems I'm not, the stalker says.
You in need?
Stalker touches his gun and the mercenary twitches. Seems you might be the one in need, stalker says.
Camp's ours. No aid for you here. Better head north.
Sounds like maybe you better head north, stalker says.
Mercenary's armor hides his face and body. Maybe he is gaunt beneath all that kevlar, the stalker thinks. Maybe he trembles without the motors.
All right, we're starved out here, mercenary says. We'll trade for food.
Could take it off me, stalker says.
They eye each other, guns low. Rain pools in their bootprints.
Rather trade, the mercenary says. Save bullets for the dogs.
All right.
Stalker follows the mercenary into the camp. Counts men: six. Seventh on a watch tower. Exoskeleton man is the leader and the others dress in naked cloth or kevlar vests and masks. The stalker opens his pouch to them and unspools linked sausages, offers bread sealed in plastic, knifes stacked brown tins.
The men circle him with hungry eyes.
Eat up, the stalker says.
Free? the exo merc asks.
Free, stalker says.
Sun climbs the sky. The men eat. The stalker sits on the wooden sentry tower at the east end of the camp and watches anomalies boom across the valley. A dog goes up in a flicker of heat blur and opens like a meat flower as something invisible crushes it.
A sentry sits beside him, mask down, eating. Kind of you, sir, he says.
Weren't nothing, the stalker says. I find food out there. You needed it. Ain't much human left here to save, so I suspect it may be worth looking after what is.
How's the zone keep you? the sentry asks.
Might die if I leave, I guess. Like to think there's a power in this place that keeps me walking.
Might still die if you stay.
Rather die here.
He considers whether to say more. After a while he decides against it.
All right, sentry says. Rain's letting up.
I gave you food, the stalker says.
So you did. Gave it, asked nothing. Why'd you do that?
Zone never gives.
Some truth to that, the sentry says. Guess we never will belong here, then.
There is a while of silence. The stalker watches lightning arc from rock to rock without cause or charge, as if in mockery of all the made things they have brought to this place.
Rain's letting up, the sentry says. He turns away, towards the opening sky. The stalker takes up his knife and opens the man's throat from behind.
Someone in the camp below cries out. Stalker rolls a grenade down, then another. A man shoots a pistol at him but the stalker's armor takes the bullet.
The grenades do make an almighty ruckus. Loose ammo pings and bounces, makes wet noises in flesh, shreds the linked sausages. The stalker empties a magazine of single aimed shots down into the meat and mud.
Then the stalker climbs down off the sentry tower, down into the dead. A man cries around his spilled intestines. Stalker shoots him in the head, once, like punctuation. The exoskeleton merc sags inside his frame as if mounted there by a taxonomist. His mask was off to eat, and the grenade opened his forehead.
He is still alive. He looks up with clouded eyes.
Why?
Zone gives, stalker says. Sometimes, Zone takes.
You're a man, dying merc says. Ain't no Zone. Ain't no place. A man.
Stalker looks at his gloved hand. Place got inside me, he says.
God help you.
Can't say I ever met the man, stalker says.
He gathers rifles, bullets, grenades, drugs, and money as the man dies. Then he cuts him out of his exoskeleton (thinks of old hands opening shellfish, in a city a world away) and mounts himself inside it. It stinks of ****. He drinks vodka from the bottom of a shattered bottle.
The exo's Geiger clicks and grumbles. He turns it off. Leaves the bodies unburied, for the dogs.
