I approached the fallen bear, examining it. I don't know what chances this beast had, but if this emaciated creature had managed to get fat, many newcomers could have ended their stalker careers without even properly starting, in the claws and fangs of this bear. Killing such a monster would have been an impossible task for pistols and shotguns.
"And what can we cut off from it?" Scar's voice came from behind me.
"Claws, maybe. The hide is too damaged, there's almost no meat on it either, although," I paused for a moment and drew my hunting blade from its sheath, plunging it under the base of the animal's skull. "We'll take the head too."
"And how are you going to separate the head from the neck with that knife?" the mercenary asked, coming closer and squatting to my left.
"You'll do that," I exhaled briefly with a small smile, completely exposing the neck from skin and muscles. "Your Kalash has a metal stock, right? Get it?"
"Why should I do it?" the man exclaimed, raising his eyebrows.
"And who was pointing a gun at me recently?" I answered a question with a question and nodded towards the corpse. "Come on, break its neck and that's it. I'll carry the head, though. And in the meantime, I'll pull out the claws."
The whole way to the base, I had to listen to Scar grumbling about how I had dirtied and even slightly bent the stock of his assault rifle. I never thought the mercenary could be so grumpy. Apparently, he was able to relax a bit.
Upon arriving at the camp, we first went to Shilov, who was still sitting in his chair, tapping his fingers to the rhythm of the music coming from the tape recorder. Noticing us, he immediately turned down the volume and moved the devices from the table to the floor so as not to stain them with blood. First, the dog tails went onto the tabletop, then the single wolf tail, and as the cherry on top, the bear's claws and head.
"What the hell is this?" the merchant couldn't help but exclaim, seeing the trophies before him. "Where did you find a bear?"
"At the ATP," the mercenary replied. "And two hundred rubles for it is too little, you'll have to add more."
"You say that as if you killed it."
"I participated," Scar replied calmly, crossing his arms and giving me, as it seemed, a sly glance.
"How much can I sell the head for?" I asked the merchant, who, putting on gloves, turned the head in different directions.
"Well, I don't even know," Shilov replied after a moment's thought, placing the head back on the table. "Bear brains, like claws, have no scientific value, so you can only go to collectors. And I don't have connections with them. Although... Valerian, it seems, once said that he wouldn't mind hanging a couple of trophies in his office. I just don't know how much he'll pay for it. And, fine, here. A thousand for the dogs, a thousand for the
bear. You can split it yourselves."
"Thank you," we replied in unison, taking a thousand each.
I didn't want to argue or haggle over money, especially since Scar had indeed helped with obtaining the bear's head. So let my rightful two hundred rubles be a modest contribution to the hunt for the Shooter. Hiding the money, we immediately went to Valerian, whom, surprisingly, we found on the street.
The stalker leader was standing right by a crackling fire with an now empty spit, which was a bit strange, because there were always a couple of stalkers here cooking some zone creature, and he was talking to a stalker I didn't know. He looked experienced, with a stalker's dawn on his back and a worn-out Kalash. In general, unremarkable equipment.
"So you'll tell him, understood?" Valerian said.
"Yes," his interlocutor nodded.
"Well, good job," the stalker leader clapped him on the shoulder, and, waiting for the stalker to head for the exit, turned to us. "Just imagine. All stalkers are stalkers, and their commander is quite an idiot. In the spring, he drowned his PDA in a puddle and didn't get a new one. And his group is the same, they prefer, ugh, natural communication."
"We have business with you, Valerian," I began, lifting the bloody bag.
The stalker took it from my hands and opened it, peering into the contents. Hmphing, he carefully, so as not to get stained by the dripping blood, took the head by the fur and pulled it out of the bag. Twisting it a bit, he hmph'd again and put the head back.
"Come on, the money is in my office," he said, turning and heading for the building. And, when we were in his office, he took out several bills from the safe and handed them to us. "A couple of thousand each. Will that do?"
"Quite," Scar replied, taking his money, and I just nodded.
"I'm glad you're satisfied," Valerian replied with a slight smile and smoothed his mustache with his fingers. "And I still need to find a craftsman before the head rots."
"I can clean it," I said, remembering that my hunting skills included working with trophies.
"You're quite a treasure trove of talents," the stalker leader chuckled, handing the bag back to me. "Here, but keep in mind that you have five days at most for the work. And you'll be more needed on the front lines than this head in my office."
On the morning of the fifth day, as soon as the work on preparing the skull was finished, I immediately went to Valerian's office. Knocking and waiting for the stalker leader to invite me in, I entered and crossed the office in a few wide strides. The stalker himself was sitting at the table, rummaging through documents.
"Brought it?" he asked, raising his right eyebrow and setting aside a stack of documents.
"Here," I replied, placing the cleaned and snow-white bear skull on the table.
There was a lot of work involved, and I was also very lucky that Shilov had the necessary supplies, otherwise it would have been tough. Valerian took the skull in his hands, turned it, and hmph'd with satisfaction, returning it. Then he stood up, walked around the table, and went to a small safe on the shelf by the bed. Opening it and taking out the money, he handed it to me. Five thousand, not bad at all.
"You'll have something to brag about to your fellow stalkers at the meeting," Valerian said, smiling broadly and clapping me on the shoulder. "You're invited too, by the way."
"The meeting?"
"Yes," he nodded. "Before we all go to the Dump together, we need to discuss a lot. All the squad commanders who responded to the call for help in this matter will gather. Therefore, your presence is mandatory, Executioner."
"Understood, and at what time?"
"At seven, but there are a couple of people who like to be late, so I'll write to you on the PDA when you're needed."
For the next few hours, I literally didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't go far from the camp, hunt nearby, or find a couple of artifacts. What could be found had already been found in the first days after the emission, when I was too busy with our clan's affairs. So I just went for a walk around the camp and listened to stalker conversations.
"Hey," said a young stalker with a scattering of freckles on his face, sitting by one of the campfires. "Gloomy, you're an experienced stalker, you've seen a lot, tell us something, huh?"
"We-e-ell," the other, older and with noticeable gray hair at his temples, drawled in a hoarse voice. "I'm not that experienced. Valerian can beat me in that regard, but I can tell you something. But before I tell you, heh, I need to wet my throat, otherwise my voice will fail at the most interesting part."
A third stalker handed the storyteller a small metal flask, apparently filled with vodka. He was a newcomer, just like the first, having joined us a few days ago and was now the youngest in our group. I walked closer and leaned against a large wooden crate with long-peeled green paint, preparing to listen.
"So, it happened a couple of years ago. My partners and I had already spent a lot of time excavating the Dump by then," the experienced one began to narrate after several greedy sips from the flask.
"And why were you excavating?" asked Red, involuntarily leaning forward. "It's just piles of scrap metal!"
"Scrap or not, we found clients," Gloomy replied with a slight smirk. "Mostly we sold copper, sometimes we managed to get a couple of artifacts, but one time we were very lucky. We found a couple of well-preserved and uncontaminated helicopters. We took everything valuable from them and sold it to a client through Sidor. Ah, those were the days."
"You didn't want to tell us about that, did you?" the second newcomer asked excitedly.
"You're right, not about that," the experienced one smiled, taking another sip from the flask. "So. There wasn't much to catch there anymore. We thought that everything that could be dug up there, we had already found and dug up. And my team and I decided to go north, to the Rostok factory. There, we thought, something valuable must have remained."
"And what?"
"We gathered everyone we could and went. We were scared, after all, it's an unexplored area and all that, but we managed to get there. We had a very experienced traveler as a guide, he could get you out of any mess, you can't even imagine," Gloomy continued, handing the empty flask back. "We got there fine, only got scared. We shot some blind moles on the approaches to the factory and moved on. We wandered around the courtyards a bit, and then it started to get dark, so we had to find a place to stay for the night. We got into an administrative building, found a room on the second floor with a more reliable, metal door. I don't even know what kind of place it was, and barricaded ourselves in. Just in case."
At this point, Gloomy shivered and flinched slightly, as if a cold had seeped into him, which did not escape the attentive gaze of the listeners. Then, with a slightly trembling hand, he reached for his backpack and pulled out a half-empty bottle of vodka, uncorked it, and pressed it to his lips. After a few large gulps, he continued:
"And we suffered with the guys then, it was terrible," he said, placing the bottle next to his right boot and clasping his hands. "At first, everything was fine. We spread out our sleeping bags, made a fire, drank, ate, and joked. We anticipated future success, of course. One of the first, if not the only ones, to get into Rostok. At least, we hadn't heard of other lucky ones. It's clear why..."
"What happened?" Red asked after a short pause.
"As soon as the Sun completely set," the experienced stalker swallowed and clenched his fingers until his knuckles turned white. "It all began. Loud, guttural roars came from everywhere. From the street, from somewhere deep inside the building where we had taken shelter, from the next room. And then they came. Bloodsuckers, a whole horde of bloodsuckers. I wouldn't mistake them for anyone else, even blindfolded. They smelled us and started trying to break into the room. These mutants, no matter what you say, they are smart creatures. They tried to open the door this way and that. They scratched at it with their claws, tried to break it down, just pulled on the handle, but it just wouldn't budge. We had already exhaled. We'd spend one night in this stuffy little room, and at the first rays of dawn, we'd leave. That's what we thought. And then everything went quiet. A moment ago, the gates of hell had opened behind the door, and hordes of monsters poured out, and then – poof, and it was silent. As if nothing had happened."
"And then?" both newcomers said in unison, holding their breath.
"And then He came," Gloomy said a little quieter and raised his head to the reddening sky. "He scared away the other bloodsuckers and simply ripped the door out by the roots. This creature was so huge that it had to bend almost in half to enter the room. Almost black skin, thick tentacles the size of my arm, long arms with bulging muscles touched the floor, and bloodshot eyes looked at us intently. We froze, unable to do anything, and Petro, who was standing closest, finally broke out of his stupor and opened fire on him. At point-blank range. One swipe of a clawed paw, and my friend's head flew past me, shattering the glass. Somehow coming to our senses, we jumped out of the second floor. I don't know how we didn't break our legs. And we ran. I only came to my senses in the morning, already at the Dump. Except... no one but me survived. Some were caught by other bloodsuckers, some ran headlong into an anomaly, some turned the wrong way. So, take it to heart, greenhorns, there are places in the Zone where it's better not to go at all."
"I wonder if that beast is still there?" I said barely audibly, pulling away from the crate, but Gloomy heard me.
"As far as I know," he replied, turning halfway
towards me. "Duty has tried to clear Rostok several times, but all in vain, they only lost people. So, anything is possible, Executioner."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation," I apologized with a slight smile on my lips.
"It's okay," the experienced stalker nodded slightly.
"You didn't bother us," Red said, rubbing his neck, and the second newcomer just nodded.
"Well, good, I'll go then," I replied, noticing how the camp was gradually filling with unfamiliar stalkers. "The meeting is soon, I need to get ready. Goodbye, guys."