//------------------------------// // 2: Lost and Found // Story: The Zone // by Rostok //------------------------------// Atop the ridge South of Yantar Strelok and Degtayrev stood on the slopes looking out over the perfect example of decay that is the area around Yantar. The long shadows of the afternoon barely obscured the ruins of the bunker next to the swamp. It was a sorry sight. The doors and tiny windows were all ripped off, strewn around in the grass, caved in. One of the walls had something not unlike modern art painted on it by numerous blood trails. The main walls were all pushed over, lying bent and torn against the stumpy trees and rusted military crap round the bunker's perimeter. Corpses dotted the ruins too, one highly visible in the striking orange bodysuit of a scientist. The fog rising off of the valley floor obscured the main facility itself, but it was in no better shape by the look of it. Piles of metal scrap blocked newly formed holes in the brick perimeter walls. More corpses surrounded the piles. Strelok sighed. "Let's hope Kulgrov's body isn't the one in neon orange. I'm not gonna lie, it looks pretty bad. You recon the facility, I'll check the corpses, see if your guys are among them." Strelok wandered through the ruined bunker, ignoring the derelict equiptment and scientific kit, and carefully moving around the corpses, crouched and deliberate in his motions ike a hunter waiting to strike. Using his expert's eye, he observed the directions of the bodies, the positions of the bloodstains. It looked like it had been a massacre. The number of shell casings he saw were alarmingly low, and there wasn't even signs of a clear assailant. All the corpses were loners, save two. Not one mutant. One of the notables was Semenov, the research assistant, pockets full of flash drives and PDAs. Strelok carefully extracted them, zipping them in a pouch. The other was a Monolithian, without a PDA on his person, but a name tag reading 'Foma'. There was little of interest on him, only the fact it was a clue to Strider's whereabouts. He left the dead to their rest and headed up the hill, now fully bathed in shadow, towards Alexander and the Yantar research facility. Present Day Hog sat on the hillside overlooking the iron bridge over the irradiated river between him and the Red Forest. Below him, Zecora, Twilight and Cardan prepared a small campfire in the entrance to the blocked tunnel. Nitro was busy fiddling with a radio he'd put together, trying fruitlessly to get a friendly signal. Pilot was visible in the watchtower on the far side. He'd said he was leaving once they reached the crossing point, his only thanks to keep watch on the far side that night before he left. Owl had paid him a princely sum to go with him. Unfortunately for Owl, Pilot was friends with many of the now dead stalkers of the Skadovsk that Owl had stiffed time and time again. Pilot had put a bullet through the back of his bald head and dumped him in the river as he was halfway across the bridge. Hog couldn't bring himself to care. If anything he was surprised Pilot had the guts. At least he had two less people to look after. He wandered down the path to the campsite they'd set up in the tunnel next to the ruined buildings by the bridge. He saw Twilight looking over at the far bank, eyes glazed without focus, staring at the tunnel on the far side. Sitting next to her, asked, "What's up?" Twilight looked balefully back at him, her face etched with sorrow. "I've been here before." "Pardon me? When?" "When we, me and my friend Applejack, first arrived here. We were sent here by the Princesses after one of your 'stalkers' ended up in our land through some strange means and caused havoc. We were just meant to investigate..." She sniffled a bit and wiped away a few tears. "With him we met an old human in a tower deep in the forest, and he sent us to this place to meet up with Garry. And now he's dead..." She started crying in earnest now. Hog put an arm around her and pondered. It was, as he suspected, the infamous bridge to Limansk and sealed off area of the Red Forest he'd accidentally led them into. Even if it had happened months ago, the rumours that the Forester still tended to the woods were true as well. Finding him was as good a plan as he had at the moment. The sun was setting below the horizon when Strelok and Alexander finally reached a point in the facility wall that they could scale. Truth be told, it looked more like a continuous mountain of junk than a wall of any kind, obviously piled up as defenses. Hoisting his gear into his back, Strelok turned to his companion. "Whatever's inside that place, however bad, this is the only shelter we have for the night. We're going hole up here no matter what, it's too dangerous outside." He planted his foot on a long metal girder protruding, hoisting himself up from there onto the remains of what looked like a pylon. Moving along that, he clambered up further, over the end of a rusted pipe, stained a nasty shade of green at the bottom, ignoring the loud protests of his Geiger counter. Carefully pulling himself along, sliding over the majority of the debris, he got his first look inside the compound. It was deserted. Turning and waving Alex up, he looked down for somewhere to jump down to, revealing a large grassy patch bubbling gently with chemical anomalies. The only thing in the anomaly field was a large tractor, tyres obviously melted away, rusted and torn open for parts. Turning back, he clambered back onto the wall, shimmying along the scrap until a clear spot to land opened up on the Tarmac road behind the large hangar that covered most of his side of the central courtyard. Leaping down, he pulled out his rifle and stared out at the decrepit place. Memories came flooding back. It hadn't changed that much since he'd been here last, except for the lack of zombies. Once he heard Degtayrev jump down after him, he set off into the place, illuminated by the fading twilight. He headed for the central brick building that looked unimportant compared to the heavy machinery and towering office-like buildings surrounding them, but he knew better. Pulling off his hooded visor, he took a deep breath of the air. It was the same as it was then, thick, musty, full of decay and sorrow. Heading back to Degtayrev, he lead him to small shed in the far corner of the facility. After a few attempts to break past the rusted door, it revealed a moth eaten blanket and a couple of tinned pies sitting on top of a box of shotgun shells. "I stashed this stuff here way back, just in case. Get some rest, I need to go pay my respects to someone." Degtayrev dumped his stuff, dutifully sitting and pulling out a cleaning kit for his weapons. Strelok left him, and head back for the brick building, switching on his night vision goggles and strapping a flashlight to the barrel of his handgun. The VSS was in too bad condition to be reliable for where he was going. Ducking through a window, he shone his light around, looking for the stairs. As he took a step forward, his boot squelched in something. Looking down, a pool of semi-congealed blood and rotting remains, grunting in disgust, he stepped past it, following a trail of blood that headed for the basement. Heading down the stairs into the small, metal plated antechamber of Lab X16 below, a mangled skeleton in a bloodstained and shredded Monolith suit sat against the wall. This was definitely not a good sign. He pulled through the corpse's pockets, finding no identity card or PDA. After he finished he approached the gap in the floor in the corner, looking down it. His torch wasn't powerful enough to reveal the bottom of the shaft, but it did reveal that the ladders that were there previously were missing, replaced only by a thick, coiled rope tied sturdily to a large pipe in one corner. Throwing it down, he tore strips from the suit of the dead Monolithian, wrapping them round his hands. Testing his weight on the rope, he pulled himself onto it, dangling above empty space. Releasing his grip slightly, he slid in bursts down to the floor at the bottom. Untangling himself, he stared into the blackness, even with night vision goggles barely able to make out the tall, irregular shapes that stood in front of him. Pulling out a couple of glowsticks, he snapped them and tossed them at the shapes. As they lit up the room in a green glow he screamed and fell back against the wall behind him. Far North Yar was no closer to finding the remnants of the Monolithians. The NPP was deserted as far as he could see from here, the only humans visible were the corpses of soldiers, decaying and bloody, strewn in rough piles around the wasteland of scrap outside the front. Various helicopters and BTRs were burnt out on the road leading over the bridge before him and into the plaza in front of the NPP. No doubt the site of countless casualties. It was eerie in a way. He'd always expected it to be like Pripyat, with trouble lying in wait in every building and an almost tangible aura of malevolence and danger. Instead all he felt was sorrow. It was the icon of the Zone, the symbol of all that it represented. A shattered place, a death chamber encased to protect the outside world. In vain, probably. Against everything he'd told himself, the desire to get closer, to walk around it's legendary walls was overpowering. It would be his only opportunity. Heading across the bridge at the end of the seemingly endless northern road through the Zone. It felt like all stalker's paths lead here. He was just glad to have survived the whole way. Avoiding the huge gravitational anomalies that dotted the wide open concrete spaces, he pottered around the rubble, drawn unconsciously towards the small door in the massive facade of the concrete sarcophagus. Poking his torch inside, of looked like a sealed off entrance for vehicles, given the hinges and wheels of the section of wall in which the wall was, letting it open wide pre-disaster. The Monolithians must be gone, leaving their front door wide open and undefended. Inside was largely bland, only a small alcove stood out, illuminated by a flickering yellow sodium lamp clearly on the point of failure. Clutching an anti rad artifact close, he headed for it, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. On the floor a round porthole with a worn ladder lead down into murky depths. Definitely one place not to explore. The only other feature was a small table with a steaming mug sitting on it. The mug itself was clean, white and decorated with a thick black band almost up to the edges broken by a blood red heart shape. The liquid inside simmering gently he didn't want to guess at. He looked behind him suddenly as a sharp groan broke the silence. A vaguely humanoid figure shambled round the corner, barely even wearing rags, it's whole body deformed by the radiation. Almost of it's own accord his hand snatched up the mug, violently spraying the mutant with the liquid inside. It burned through it's face like acid, peeling back skin, then flesh, then bone, all the way into the grey matter. He turned and ran, handgun out, sprinting back for the cover of the bridge leading back across the canal away from the NPP. He didn't want to think about what that was, or the figure in a trenchcoat and peaked officer's cap he saw far in the distance with ominous purple eyes as he ran. If they'd left even the NPP, where were they? Strelok for the first time for as long as he could remember (not very long given his amnesia) was truly overcome with terror. Scrambling for his handgun he pointed it frantically at the shapes, the light revealing them in greater detail. They were fully flayed bodies, strung up like animal carcasses from the feet, dripping blood from their outstretched fingers. Most were missing limbs or other parts of their anatomy, but none had a scrap of skin between them. Blood-filled, semi ruptured eyeballs stared into him. Breathing heavier than a marathon runner, he lay there, aiming at the gruesome abattoir. Nothing moved, except for the drip-drip-drip of blood forming a lake underneath them. Still nothing came out of the dark to confront him. He slowly got to his feet, carefully moving round the edge of the room as silently as possible. As he reached the other side, he exhaled a sigh of relief. The next room along held a pile of assorted protective suits, mostly Sunrise and Monolithian, and weaponry. Getting out another few glowsticks he spread out all the bits and pieces. Looking through it, and remembering the contents of the room before, there weren't actually that many bodies, a dozen or so at most. From a cursory glance he couldn't see Strider's signature SVU, though he noticed a scientific suit named Sakharov. Poor fellow. After pulling out a few PDAs and a pair of mags for his VSS, he left it all where it was and continued, avoiding the odd anomaly. By the look of the sporadic bloodstains and bullet casings on the floor, the fight had moved through all of X16, maybe a rearguard as the group obviously holed up here had tried to escape. Finally he reached the Lab's main chamber, the artificial brain. It still stood smashed in the centre of the roughly spherical room. Climbing up through the different levels, he noted the toppled barricades and ever increasing numbers of shell casings. Oddly though, the only bloodstains were huge pools, indicating that whatever killed them did it messily, which he already knew well enough, but that whatever did it hadn't taken any hits. Very strange. The control room at the top was just as he saw it last, the same as most of the lab. He was nearly there. "Oh Ghost, what happened to you, eh?" Amazingly his skeleton was still here, wearing his signature grey sunrise suit that healed wounds after he'd doused it in a broth he'd made after boiling a Kolobok. Looking through his gear he knew he would find little, he vaguely remembered checking him after coming through here the first time. What he didn't check the previous time however was his boot. All three of them had hollowed out a small compartment in their left sole, with the locations of their stashes and hideouts, just in case. Carefully pulling off his boot off the bones of his foot, he felt around, and pulled out a few worn little sheets. One was a photo of him, Strelok and Fang climbing through the wreckage of the sarcophagus. A second was what he expected, a list of areas and specific locations. The third was similar, yet it bore a Monolith eye and wasn't written in Ghost's handwriting. Interesting. "Time to lay you to rest, old friend. He dragged the body into a sleeping position, and pulled out his spray can. As neatly as possible, he sprayed "Ghost, who went where stalkers had never been before. RIP" Surveying his handiwork, he could hear a sound out of place. A slow tapping. Following it to it's souce, a large concrete locker, he heard more, voice, quieter than the wind, groaning "Help... Me....". A pile of broken pipes blocked the door. Pulling them away, he yanked it open, slowly revealing a short, emaciated figure in loose green overalls. His lips were bone dry and flaking, leaking droplets of blood. "Wa.. water" Strelok pulled out a canteen and slowly poured it into the man's mouth. All around him lay empty tins and a pair of empty bottles. After he'd drunk it all in small sips, Strelok gently pulled him out, retrieving the curtain helmet and backpack to the scientific suit. The man sat there for a few minutes, breathing heavily and stretching his limbs before speaking up in a quiet voice: "Thank you Marked One, I... I guess I owe you again." "It's good to see you too Kulgrov. I'll get you out, don't worry." "That smell, it's...." The weak scientist retched, coughing up water. Strelok quickly pulled the backpack onto him, and attached the curtain visor, hearing the filtered air hiss as it flushed out the suit. "What is that smell, my word it was horrible." "I'll tell you later, ok? There's a few things up ahead you don't want to see." Strelok put his arm around Kulgrov's back supporting his weight as they shambled along together through the passageways back the way he'd came in. "OK, Kulgrov, close your eyes, don't open them whatever you hear or feel? Promise me." "Uh, of course Strelok. I don't get what's so bad, but, lead on." Guiding him around the edge of the grisly maze of strung up bodies, he found his rope, tying the end around kulgrov's waist and legs. Climbing up past him and shimmying up for what seemed an eternity, he reached the top. Thank heavens that he was so undernourished, how Strelok would lift a fully grown man up a deep shaft like that was something he didn't like to think about. "You can open your eyes now, man. Danger's past." The scientist lay weakly in the chsamber below the factory building, listening to Strelok pant from the exertion. "What was it you didn't want me to see?" "Oh, well, a sizeable portion of your group died, and then the beast flayed them, dismembered them, and strung what was left from the ceiling." Kulgrov retched violently, coughing and spluttering through what little liquid he could vomit. Strelok put his arm around him and led up and out into the night. The next morning, Hog gathered up his small band, rousing them from sleep as the first rays of sun broke onto the red trees on the far bank. As he got up himself, he'd seen Pilot head off down the road, into the unknown.