Once more, Mac desperately grabs the handrails when the truck suddenly slows down.
“Grab him! Pull him up, pull him up!”
The wounded Stalker is kneeling on the ground. He looks up, and for a heartbeat Mac sees the pain on his face so clearly as if nothing else existed in the world.
“Your hand! Day ruku! ¡Dame tu mano!” she shouts in several languages and grabs the Stalkers outstretched hand as the truck approaches him at reduced speed.
The Stalker must have realized that his saviors will not stop and politely ask him if he needs a ride. Ignoring his exhaustion, he runs a few steps holding Mac’s hand aside the truck and then jumps. With her free hand, Mac grabs the belt on his armored suit and pulls him up to the flatbed. Then she unslings the weapon once more and starts firing at the mutants closing in.
“Nice catch,” she hears in the intercom. “Now brace yourselves, this will be bumpy.”
With the Stalker in safety, Shrink accelerates the truck and reaches the road embankment in a few seconds. The massive wheels tear into soft mud and toil up the steep ascent. If lifeless rubber and metal could act desperately, the wheels wouldn’t act much differently now from the Stalker who had pulled all his strength together to get into safety. Mac needs both hands to hang on and prevent herself from falling off the truck.
By now, the wolves won’t need to be particularly to jump on the flatbed, but the asphalt road gives the truck an advantage not even the most resolved mutants can match. The truck accelerates to a speed that threatens it with falling apart, bumping over potholes and rocks amid the cloud of dust now blowing from its tires and chassis. The distance between the URAL and the wolf pack quickly grows.
But the mutants don’t give up easily. Running at incredible speed, the quickest ones are almost catching up with the truck when at last the twin-barreled cannon starts firing. Its muzzle blinds Mac who loses any chance to effectively fire her assault rifle, but it is no longer necessary — Ahuizotl swathes their rear with short bursts from the cannon until the hard-hitting 23mm cartridges melt into an arc of fiery steel, decimating the mutants and suppressing the painful yelps coming from their scattered pack.
In a minutes, the truck rolls through the open gate into safety. The guards have barely lowered the container blocking the entrance, and the engine is still idling when Shrink jumps off the cabin. “Is he still alive?”
Mac glances at the Stalker she has held in her lap for the past few minutes. “Yes, he made it!”
“Bonesetter!” Shrink yells. “Where’s the doc?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
A round-headed man appears among the Stalkers gathered up around the truck. He is the only one unarmed and wearing only a light brown jacket, appearing almost like a civilian. He checks on the wounded man whom Mac and Ahuizotl have carefully lifted off the truck.
“Get him into the infirmary! Do you want me to treat him here in the dust, you idiots?”
Inside the steel containers that might have once accommodated transiting visitors when it was still an air base, the Stalker is laid on one of the dozen makeshift surgery beds. Bonesetter cautiously removes his torn body armor. Two gun shots have penetrated the body armor but the integrated Kevlar plates have absorbed much of the impact, turning what would have been deadly into painful, but non-lethal flesh wounds.
“Our Asylum — Ghorband is fallen,” the wounded men mutters. “It was overrun. All dead!”
“What? Overrun? By whom?” Shrink’s face turns pale. “Mutants? The Tribe? Speak up, Stalker!”
The Stalker sighs as the effect of the painkillers administered by Bonesetter begins to set in.
“No. Bandits. They came out of nowhere and slaughtered everyone—I was returning from an artifact hunt and all I could do was to seek cover, stay put and watch how they looted the place… The Bandits saw me. I had to run away—”
“Bandits? There are no Bandits here!”
The Stalker tries to lean up from his bed. Apparently angered about Shrink not believing him, he grabs his arm and pulls him closer. “I have seen enough Bandits in the Zone to recognize not one but dozens of them.”
“Shrink, you know the drill,” Bonesetter calmly says. “He needs rest. You have heard enough for now.”
Shrink grazes his stubble. “Bandits? Then we should have left this sucker to his fate. There’s no need to piss off Bandits if they show up here!”
“Who said that?”
A Stalker steps forward. Shrink narrows his eyes and opens the folder of incoming messages on his PDA.
“Is there a reward for risking my skin for him? Vaska Bulldog, did you send this message?”
“Uhm, yes. Why?”
Shrink’s blue eyes sparkle with anger. “Because you need some cowardice management, Stalker.”
He gives Vaska Bulldog a head-butt and the selfish Stalker collapses with a yell of pain.
“That’s a lesson for all of you,” Shrink says. “This is our base now. A Stalker base. We will not let each other down, neither will we let ourselves be bullied by thugs in ridiculous trench coats. We will fight whatever the New Zone throws at us. If anyone disagrees—he can join Vaska on his way to the wilderness. He is cast out and shall never again set his foot in Bagram!”
The Stalkers gathered in the infirmary look at each other. Some faces lighten up upon hearing their new leader speaking. Others frown, thinking that they might be drawn into a conflict interfering with their plans of staying out of any trouble. But no Stalker sides with the humiliated coward who is moaning on the floor.
Shrink nods. “That’s what I thought. All right, men, let’s Bonesetter do his job. Mac, Box a Little — you spread the warning about Bandits in the northern approaches. Uncle Yar and the rest of you—prepare the defenses. Dima Toad, Mishka Bear — on me. You are old Ghorband hands and will be my first assistants. Let’s prepare the defenses! Those bastards won’t catch us with our pants down!”
The sniper shakes his head as he watches Shrink leave the infirmary with his Stalkers.
“It’s Ahuizotl,” he sighs. “Not Axe-in-a-Bottle or Box a Little.”
Mac gives him a pat on the shoulder. “Cheer up, hermano. Not everyone can be called Mishka Beekeeper!…”
18
“Never believed I’d ever see a road sign for Las Vegas,” Tarasov says as their Jeep takes exit 58A from Interstate 10E and merges into the heavy morning traffic on Ontario Freeway.
“We’ll leave the freeway long before Vegas. In exchange you’ll have a glimpse of AFB Andrews,” Hartman replies. “Not as if you could see much from the distance.”
After thirty miles they take an exit toward Adelanto and continue northward on Three Flags Highway.
“Love this landscape. Reminds me of the sandbox. The New Zone, as you call it,” the Top says with a reference to the Afghan wilderness. “Wide and open. Makes me feel free… Doesn’t look it like home, Nooria?”