Chapter CXV: Tales From the Void

 Not so long time since in a spatial anomaly far, far away, a group of men sat in a circle. The almost blinding whiteness surrounded them completely, but they tried to divert their thoughts away from the rather lacklustre situation by sharing stories. Boris kept clicking his wrist blade in and out, which drove Dima absolutely nuts (a thing that encouraged Boris to continue doing it). Vityukha was finishing up a story about how Toha and he had terrorized the Redemption recruits by imitating poltergeists during night time guard duty.

• So Toha was absolutely ace at that, one of the recruits, Dimon something if I remember correct, even went damn ballistic and fired at the nearby Electros in the dark. You should've seen him when Dimuha had a talk about trigger discipline and he tried to explain that it had been poltergeists. Eventually Dimuha found out and we had potato peeling duty for a week, but it was worth it, Vityukha finished with grin.

• Damn rascals, so that's why some of the new guys kept going on about poltergeist preventation equipment when we had those eco-commandos with us, Boris said, laughing at the image in his head.

• Yeah, I did wonder why that one guy threw salt at the guard post and burned some incense inside it. Not the weirdest behaviour I've seen in the Zone, but I doubt it makes any difference in keeping polties at bay, Dima joked.

As Vityukha finished his tale, everyone fell back into their thoughts for a moment. Their situation wasn't critical in the sense that they still had plenty of food and drink left, but this place was starting to rattle their sanity. There is only so much one can do at a place like this, and tales were beginning to run out, same old jokes being told a million times. Boris, sensing everyone thinking the same thing, tried to divert the attention away.

• So, Orlov. Why'd you join Duty by the way? You know why we're all in Redemption, but you never told how you ended up joining Voronin's men, he asked of the lone Dutyer stuck here with them.

• Oh man, that is a long story. But I guess we have time for it. I would normally not tell it to anyone, but I doubt this gets further than this space anomaly. Okay, here goes, the Duty captain said and started telling his tale:

• So this one is rather creepy, be warned. You may have heard of my former unit, I was a soldier once you see. I was assigned into the Interception unit after the whole 2011 Second Emission. Interception was the military's finest, elite Speznaz troops with dozens of hard missions under their belt. I was one of them, only a sergeant back then. Interception's mission was simple. Strike north, find a place for a potential military outpost, prepare it for further troops and continue on towards Pripyat. This was before Strelok turned off the big pain in the ass at Radar, so we went through Red Forest to get to the north, Orlov explained, raised his face towards the sky and sighed heavily before continuing:

• Red Forest was even deadlier than today. I saw things I will never forget, not even in my sleep. Men being sucked into the ground, anomalies appearing out of thin air mere seconds after a bolt had safely landed there and tearing apart veterans. Mutants being so aggressive that literal machine gun fire from a BTR could not stop some of them. But we never gave up, we pushed through against all odds. And we made it out of that cursed forest.

Everyone was sucked into the story. The Duty veteran was one of the very select few individuals to have spent years in the Zone, and thus the four other men were sitting and waiting enthusiastically as Orlov took a swig from his canteen before continuing once more.

• We found some sort of old complex on a hill, I think very close to Chornobyl or some other town as I could see blocky buildings in the distance. And a church, I remember a church in between the complex and the town. Our commander, Colonel Vlasov, decided after inspection that this place would do. It was some sort of a mining or industrial complex, with an abandoned bar or mess hall, garages and large hangars full of old equipment. We spent a few days there, it was relatively safe from mutants. But then a recon squad found the nearby lab.

• A lab? Undiscovered to this day by anyone else?, Sanyok asked and Orlov nodded.

• Yes. It was inside a large hill, going around the entire large L-shaped hill. There were generators, similar to the ones we found in the, well, Generators area, on top of the hill, but they appeared inactive. The lab was protected by walls and inside them were more garages and barracks. Monolith had occupied the area and we attacked them at night, Vlasov underestimating the ferocity of the fanatics. Out of the 30 or so men we had, ten died at that attack. The fanatic sukas had a machine gun that tore us to shreds as they launched flares. If we had been less experienced, we would've all died then and there, Orlov told them, shaking his head at the memory before moving on.

• Anyway, we took the base eventually. Vlasov was furious but calmed down once he realized that there was indeed a lab there. We didn't go in right away, but spent the night there. Vlasov got hammered while I was on guard duty, and I could hear him go on to himself about how this would get him the promotion to general for sure. Next morning, suffering from hangover, he got up, gather 14 of the remaining men and left me in charge of a five-man guard contingent with strict orders to not leave the place or explore the lab unless they came back. And before he went, he gave me orders to not contact HQ about this unless they all lost their lives in there, the gloryhound that he was. I protested, but he threatened me with court-martial if I refused to follow the order, and being a young man that I was back then, I backed down.

Orlov looked around him and the others could see something they had not seen yet in the Dutyer. Fear. Terror, even. Recalling these events was not healthy for the poor man, but he seemed to be determined to relive them. But what could've created such horror in a grizzled Zone veteran such as Orlov, Boris thought to himself, and it seemed that Orlov was willing to answer.

• So we waited four days. Four days, sitting anxiously watching the perimeter, finger twitching on the trigger for any and every little sound or movement that felt out of place. Then suddenly a single guy emerged from, completely naked, screaming like a boar shot in the ass. He ran past everyone trying to stop him, didn't seem to even register us being there. We tried to stop him, tackle him, hold him down, but he had surprised us and we were encumbered by our armour and guns. He wasn't. He bolted down the road, into the woods and disappeared. I took one soldier with me and we ran after him as quickly as we could, but it was already getting dark and we lost the trail in the dark.

Orlov massaged his brows and took another swig from his canteen, putting it down on the floor as he returned to the tale:

• Me and the soldier, Kirill, looked all around the woods for an hour or so. At one point Kirill thought he saw a flash of the runner and went there, and I didn't see him leave even though he yelled at me that he was doing so. When I noticed he was gone too I panicked a little despite my training and went looking, only to find Kirill, face first in the decayed leaf floor, a figure crouched over him. I thought the runner had attacked him out of fear, but as the figure stretched out, revealing a face of tentacles and teeth and a pair of amber-yellow eyes. I opened fire instantly and killed the thing, and after I managed to lower my heart's pumping to normal I realized that Kirill had indeed found the runner...

• He was a bloodsucker now?, Dima asked.

• No, urod, he was next to the bloodsucker, dead as a stone, blood drained from him. Kirill was dead too. I returned to camp to find the three remaining soldiers absolutely terrified, and managed to calm them only a little. I tried to contact the HQ and arrange a pickup for us, but heard only static. None of the unit radios worked. We decided to wait one day more, then we'd drive the BTR to safety. And then that plan went to shitter. An emission came and blocked us in there after anomalies filled the road ahead. We couldn't leave, I tried to get around them but it was hopeless as anywhere I threw a bolt it triggered an anomaly. And I threw probably close to five hundred of those. But that was not the worst thing. Weird stuff started going on. The base televisions would turn on and start displaying odd recordings from experiments performed here. The loudspeakers would go online and there could be an hour of hysterical laughing or screaming coming from them, Orlov explained, and the look on his face grew more grim by the second as he went on.

• Some shit started going on with our equipment too. RF receivers would periodically let out some sort of a whispering, night-vision and flashlights would turn on and off at random, headset microphone volume would shot up or down. Detectors would start to rapidly beep at maximum volume and intensity only to die down a mere second later. The guys became paranoid of everything, and so did I. We sealed the lab door and hunkered down in one of the barracks, only leaving it once a day to check on the anomalies. Somebody, could've been me too, smashed the television. The loudspeakers would periodically even play this sort of strange music-esque screaming. I did not know it at the time, but it's a classical music piece called Apotheosis of this Earth, and it represents nuclear apocalypse. Eventually someone snapped, and a soldier named Gorov ran out during guard duty while we slept, took the BTR and tried to get past the anomalies.

• Didn't work out for him?, Sanyok asked quietly.

• No. He ran into a Whirligig which made his ride into a pile of rubble in seconds. All that was left of him in the morning was a big bloodstain on its turret. The anomalies stayed for two more days. Another of the guys, Kirigan, disappeared during the last night while on guard duty, me and the last soldier, Cherkov, woke up to embers and open door. We found that the anomalies had shifted during the night, not sure how or why. I wasn't sure what to do. We left the base and went back to the complex we had arrived to at first, but it was now overrun with mutants and Zombified. The bastards got Cherkov as we fled, a snork caught up to him and got hold of his leg, ripping it apart mid-run. I tried to help but Cherkov told me to run in his dying breath. So I did. I ran all the way to Red Forest, dropping my gun along the way. Foolish, I know, but at that point I wasn't thinking rationally anymore. I was beyond exhausted, my ears still rang with that ethereal laughing, I could still see the amber-yellow eyes of the bloodsucker every time I closed my eyes.

• What happened then? How'd you survive Red Forest?, Boris asked.

• I ran into a Duty patrol who were retreating from the place. They took me to newly-freed Rostok and I joined Duty. I would not go back to the army, I could not. My first years were a blur, I mostly stuck to Rostok and drank myself to oblivion whenever I could, earning a bad rep for it among the more strict Duty officers. Until one day I managed to sober up and started earning a reputation back.

• What caused that?, Sanyok questioned further.

• Kirigan. I was on guard duty one night when bandits attacked. Leading them was Kirigan, now going by the name of Poker. He led them into one of the most devastating losses we've had inside Rostok, with everyone except me and Shaggy Sergei dying to the thugs at the gate. They captured Shaggy while I lay there, wounded, until Gavrilenko led a squad against them and drove them away finally. I had recognized my old comrade-at-arms, and then I swore that I would kill him myself. Strelok got to him before me, but the experience did sober me up good enough. I knew that Interception was gone, and the experience could have turned me into a complete psychopath like it did with Kirigan. The fact that it did not, meant that I had to make use of it. I had to be a soldier again, to fight the Zone's evils so it would not claim more of the likes of Kirigan. And so I did, for years. Until I ended up here, Orlov finished, downing his canteen now and letting out a very long and heavy sigh.

• That was... A lot to take in, Boris replied, dumbfounded by all the new information about his companion.

• Truly. We have been through a lot, Boris and I, even Sanyok has, but nothing like this. I can't imagine how it feels, Dima said slowly.

• It weighs on me. I still don't know what that place was and what happened to Vlasov and the guys. Voronin made some inquiries to his Speznaz connections but apparently we had been marked most likely dead. I still see dreams of the place, but all roads there have been cut off by anomalies. Trust me, I tried to get there once, just for some closure.

• I see. Perhaps it is best for us all that the place remains buried in time, Boris commented.

• Perhaps. Perhaps indeed, Orlov replied, deep in thought.

Outside the spatial anomaly, many kilometres from the Generators, just north of Red Forest, two free stalkers had just survived the dreaded woods. And now they observed a road that had not been there mere weeks ago. They had come here to find artefacts near a massive wall of anomaly clusters, and were quite disappointed. But guessing that the shift could be due to the massive emission that had happened recently, they continued further down the road, a road which seemed to have been years without human interference. And in the horizon, just outside of their vision, a church tower glimmered in the afternoon sun.