Chapter CXXXII: The Faction Wars Reborn

 The pattering of rain on the thick metal roof of a railway carriage soothed the battle-worn mind of Boris. Air outside the traincar looked miserable, with deep emerald clouds spewing irradiated and chemical-filled droplets downwards. Even mutants stayed inside their holes during this rain. Tomorrow morning the flora of Zone would look brown and wilted, but it would recover. Boris used his bayonet to open a can of tushonka and his beer bottle. He grimaced as the mixture of stale beef, lard and ground-up unrecognizable pieces of meat hit his tongue.

• Still better than tushkano shaslik... But not by much, Boris groaned, taking a sip from his green bottle.

• Still better than MREs, at least you don't become a human firehose after eating one of those, Dima replied, looking at his American-made MRE package with disgust.

• Yeah, when we ran out of actual food in the space bubble and had to resort to eating MREs... I still have nightmares, Sanyok shuddered.

• To ease our minds a bit on that subject, Yurka, could you explain to me what the hell is going in the Zone? You said things are going full-on Faction Wars again?, Boris asked, and the hunter, munching on his boar fillet, nodded.

• There's so much that has happened that I'll try to be brief. So, it all started after the mega-emission. That was the most horrifying experience of my life honestly. Artem, me and Gosha, another hunter, we were hunting this particularly nasty boar. I had just caught its trail when the air froze. It felt like a blanket of some sort of invisible water had landed around us, the air was as heavy as during a heat wave. We immediately dropped everything and ran, and then the crack of thunder that happens before emissions came. But it was no ordinary emission sound, the like that already makes you wet your pants. No, this one was something else, Yurka recounted, taking a small break to chew on a particularly hard piece, allowing Artem to take over for a second.

• Yes, it felt like the whole world had exploded in sound. A bright flash appeared in the north, shooting upwards. My ears were still ringing from the original blast when we dived inside a cellar in one of the Bloodsucker Village's houses. And then the shockwave came. I've survived a dozen or so emissions, but it did not feel like one. For a few hours it kept pummeling our minds, making us throw up everything we ate the day before. It felt like Armageddon, like the world was truly ending in a storm of radiation and fire. We all lost our conciousness four hours into the thing, and that may have been our saving grace. I heard stories of people shooting themselves, having their heads explode or die screaming their lungs out while everyone else in the shelter was fine. Of brain aneyrysms and heart attacks, to murderous rage, Artem explained, and in his eyes Boris saw sheer terror.

Artem became silent and took a big gulp of moonshine from his faded metal bottle. The stench did not do much for Boris' appetite, and he put down the can of tushonka in disgust. Yurka grinned and continued from where his comrade had left off.

• We returned to a changed world. It wasn't apparent at first, more like a week later. People shared stories of mutated beasts never before seen in the Zone, massive boars the size of BTRs, zombies that could cause your brain to boil as they got close, long-coated grey stalkers who would try to control your mind like controllers and more. And new anomalies too, odd electric clusters, patches of sheer darkness and tears in the fabric of reality screaming ethereal rage at you if you passed through them. But most importantly, some of the old anomaly fields had shifted, Yurka said, and through his balaclava mask Boris could see his eyes sparkle.

• What new areas? We've heard of Outpost, Chernobyl-1 and North Hills. What more is there?, Boris asked.

• Oh... Plenty, plenty. We'll get there. So anyway, when the dust settled, people realized that you could get to new areas. It was new Klondike, or better yet, 2011 again. Diggers and the remains of Livid's gang, Black Slugs as they're now called, discovered an area over Truck Cemetery known as the Forest Highway. They've been quarreling over it. Freedom found a way into a lost part of Rostok, and now they and Duty are in turn fighting over that. I passed by it not long ago when we were coming here. It's a maze of industrial buildings, half-finished constructions and administrative buildings. And both Duty and Freedom are battling over it like it's World War 1 again, dug into their positions.

• Why did you pass through it?, Sanyok asked, sharpening his knife as he listened to give his hands something to do.

• Oh, they have a massive bloodsucker problem there and hunters were asked to help. But most of us left, fighting those suckers is bad enough, but getting a stray bullet from those ideological fanatics doesn't sound like a fun time.

Sanyok nodded approvingly and continued honing the edge of his boot knife. Boris looked outside while finishing his beer, the dark-green droplets had grown more sparse. It was still too thick to reliably get out and into safety without severe radiation exposure and chemical burns, but soon they could leave this rusty old train cabin. Still, it was nice for once to sit down on old cushions and simply relax. Yurka coughed, spat out a piece of bone from his boar steak and continued:

• Blyat, Gosha managed to leave bone shards into the boar again! Third time this month, the damn suka. But anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the new areas! The Outpost is mostly unexplored yet, and same with the Old Road. Gosha is heading there right now, he sent me a picture using the PDA network of this massive tree probably a 50 metres tall in the horizon. Felt more like it was from some forest moon with furry little fucks than the Zone. Mercenaries has set up shop there, and so did the damn renegade survivors so things look a bit tough for actually getting there now. But enough with the boring parts, lemme tell you about something me and Artem found, Yurka said with a grin and a wink, his scarred face lighting up as he spoke.

• I was actually part of was finding Chernobyl-1. Yes, original Chernobyl! Artem and me got lost in Red Forest, wandered for days on end and then stumbled upon the village. We explored it for a while, but getting to the village itself was impossible due to a minefield. We wanted to see it a bit more, but our food supplies were so meager that staying back there would have been foolish. We did see this large factory area, a church between the village and some strange, ball-like things on top of a hill.

Dima's eyes immediately shot towards Boris', but it took a second for Boris to understand what it meant. The lab Orlov had spoken to them about in the spatial anomaly! One so powerful it had driven a platoon of army elites to madness and paranoia. Boris frowned and Dima nodded to him, a look of concern on his face.

• Didn't you say Freedom was moving forces there?, Sanyok asked, having understood the place's significance as well.

• Yeah, they sent at least a platoon's worth not long ago. And Stepanych, one of Sid's old competitors, set up shop there like a week ago. Why? Does it mean something to you?, Artem asked, raising his brow under the hunter jacket's hood.

• Chyort, they're heading straight into a trap!, Boris exclaimed.

• Wha-what?, Yurka questioned, confused, as Boris got up, the whirring of his suit's servos and powerpack filling the room with noise that even drowned out the rain for a second.

• Long story, we've heard of the place anyway. Ever heard of Interception? It destroyed them entirely, they entered a bunker there, one guy got out madder than Noah on shrooms. Only a few survivors got out, Captain Orlov chief among them, Sanyok said in a grave tone.

Yurka had heard of them. He grew pale, the legendary reputation of the Speznaz faction had painted them as demigods and even though their legend had faded from its highdays of 2012, it seemed that Yurka as a long-time hunter still remembered. If they had been so easily destroyed, what hope did the local stalkers and Freedom detachment have.

• If our prediction is correct, we need to get a move on towards Chernobyl-1 or our allies will get brain-molested bad time, Sanyok commented.

• But we're waiting for Degtyarev. If we miss this chance, he might be coming for us next since we posess far too much information now, Dima replied, and both Artem and Yurka looked at them, even more baffled now.

• Can't we contact them in anyway though?, Sanyok asked.

• Nope, they're only using short-range radios for this mission. Since so few people know of the place, Freedom wants to make it as hard as possible to learn where it is until they've taken it over. I overheard our dead friend over there speak of it earlier to Ashot. It's comically easy to hear them when they're high and think they're whispering instead of shouting. Their need-to-know-only program is as watertight as the submarine Kursk, Artem chimed in.

• So we either have a potential foreign infiltration force running rampant here, with a special forces agent hunting us down, or alternatively whatever horrors that that lab spews out. Suka blyat, is there any end to this?, Dima asked angrily.

• And I guess it's my duty to choose what we do next?, Boris asked as a rhetoric question.

• Well, you appointed yourself the leader, so yes indeed, Dima said, and Boris could sense a tinge of amusement in his tone.

• Pizdec, here we go again, Boris sighed.