On the wall opposite to the elevator’s doors he finds a steel door with a combination lock. It is tightly shut, with no chance to open it unless with the correct code—if it is still working after decades of decay.
He perks his ears as he hears a thumping noise coming from a far corner of the dark maze of corridors and laboratory rooms. It sounds as if an extremely heavy creature is walking in circles, and faintly but recognizable, the noise of intense fire burning. After a second, the sound of fire recedes. He is about to give a relieved sigh when his ears detect the flames again.
Oh no—Burner anomalies. I didn’t expect a bed of roses here but Burners blocking my way is just not damn fair.
His only comfort is that where there’s an alive pseudogiant, and the thumping noise must come from the heaviest mutant in the Zone, there are usually no humans around. Mutants are another thing. Some attack each other, mostly those who still have a trace of the original animal instincts inside their distorted brains — blind dogs hunting fleshes, boars smashing blind dogs. The more sinister abominations are a different matter. Only a chimera would mercilessly kill any other mutant, but chimeras are as silent as they are deadly.
No. This must be a lonely pseudogiant.
He mentally curses the trader at the 100 Rads, the Stalker bar where he received this mission, for not having a better close-range weapon in his stock than a TOZ-66 with barrels sawn off and the stock removed. Slinging his assault rifle on his shoulder, he takes the shotgun. It is a woefully inaccurate weapon and reloading it takes time, but in the confined spaces of the undergrounds it is an adequate weapon against mutants.
Let’s hope I don’t run into a squad of Spetsnaz like I did in the Agroprom tunnels… I’d do more damage by looking angrily at them than shooting with this crap.
The Stalker knows that on the body of a dead scientist, hidden somewhere in an obscure corner where he hid from whatever had put an end to the experiments, there is the card with the code needed to open the metal door. Looking up the corridors opening from the elevator room, he chooses the one which has at least an orange emergency light still on.
Cautiously, he peeks ahead. His headlight is too weak to reveal any danger that might lie in the dark space.
Taking one more cautious step, he enters the room ahead. To his right, a container holds something that looks like a green, boiling liquid. He puts on the gas mask hanging on his shoulder. The green liquid emits a weird glow and thick bubbles are rising from its surface. His anomaly detector remains quiet. He scans the walls, here also covered by green tiles and long, rusty pipes running along them. Reaching the light sphere of the next emergency light, he finds a few cylindrical containers with the hazmat sign painted on them. His Geiger counter starts crackling more intensely. Stepping back, he looks around but sees nothing of interest apart from an anomalous apparition in front of the containers. It looks like heat emanated by an unseen, flameless source, blurring the dark corner behind.
Okay… Nothing here.
Once back to the elevator room, he decides to try the next room to his right. The blue painting is crumbling from the walls and the brown floor tiles are covered with debris. On the ceiling, another emergency light casts its dim light behind a grill.
At least no snork will jump at me through those grills.
A sign on the wall reads, Sanitary area ahead. Entry forbidden. The small room ahead seems to hold nothing of interest, save for another half-dozen pipes behind an opening in the wall behind chicken wire. The Stalker is about to leave the room when he sees another corridor appear.
From an opening to the right, the strong light of intense fire falls on the faded blue wall. Further down the corridor, another column of flameless heat blurs whatever lies beyond in the darkness. It is no stranger than the fire to the right. Fire casts light, normally, but this light on the wall is moving — as if the fire casting the light is moving in circles.
The anomaly detector starts beeping. Opening the display, the Stalker sees a green circle about a few meters ahead. A dot signals an artifact right at his foot, next to a wooden crate. Without the detector, he would have stepped on it. Eagerly, he bends down, looks closer and carefully picks up the artifact that glows with fiery red light as soon as he touches it.
Stone Blood. There must be a Whirligig nearby. Shit. Why do the most dangerous anomalies create worthless artifacts?
Studying the ugly object made out of pressed together and curiously bent polymerized remnants of plants, soil, and bones, he shakes his head. The artifact is as much beneficial as harmful, speeding up his metabolism but also making his body more susceptible to any wound. It is not even precious, and all the trouble of carrying and selling it at the value of a few boxes of ammunition doesn’t appear worth the effort.
Besides, my artifact containers are full—I already have two Stone Flowers and a Slime, together with a Fireball to neutralize the radiation they emit.
He puts the artifact back on the ground and is about to peer inside the room with the fire when a growl comes from the far end of the corridor. It could have been emitted from a human imitating a mutant but from a mutant that was once human as well. Behind the blurry column, a creature appears. It is walking, or rather leaping, on all fours with the remains of a gas mask dangling from its head.
Snorks! This shotgun better not jam!
Not perceiving imminent danger from the fire room, the Stalker decides to turn the presence of an anomaly ahead to his advantage. He reaches into a container on his belt and fishes out a bolt.
“Hey! Snorky!” he taunts the mutants. “Dinner time!”
The Zone might have given snorks the ability to perform incredible leaps, and sharp teeth that could tear any human opponent into pieces once they manage to kick him off his feet with their strong legs, but left them with barely any intellect. Following only the instinct to hunt the lonely human down, they move to leap over the crates blocking their way.
The Stalker quickly throws it ahead. The column of heat immediately bursts into a jet of fire, burning the first mutant to death. The second one is luckier, though. The Stalker quickly fires both barrels of his shotgun but the mutant has already torn its claws into his armor. Sharp pain bites into his limbs. He recoils, frantically reloading the shotgun. After receiving two more buckshot shells fired from point-blank range, the snork still jolts for a second, then dies with a last growl.
The Stalker is panting now, his heart beating in his ears, and knows that with each heartbeat, more poison from the snork’s infested claws might get into his bloodstream. He reaches for the first aid kit on his belt, tears it open and applies antiseptics on his wound from where blood is trickling.
Shit! Bandage, bandage—
Moaning with pain, he quickly presses a bandage over his wound. The pain starts receding as the antiseptics’ effect kicks in and in a minute, the bandage has at least stabilized the wound.
Nothing moves in the corridor, only the fire burning in the room nearby. Peering cautiously inside from the door frame that still holds with a gutted circuit board, he sees a pile of wooden crates in the middle and an apparition that looks like a fire column moving around the room in circles. If it is a sort of mutant, it doesn’t seem too interested in attacking him. It lights up a dark corner as it moves around, illuminating the body of a dead Stalker among the debris.