Journey to the Garbage

[Lysander]

After about an hour of walking, Disciple and Pianist got in sight of the military checkpoint. There was a large squad, about ten men and they seemed to be lining two Stalkers against one of the huge columns that supported the long dead bridge. Disciple took his binoculars from the pouch at his side and looked through Them.
He had been right, they were a sorry looking pair of Rookies, and the squaddies seemed to be taking all of their stuff. "Hey take a look at these poor bastards." he said as he passed the binoculars to Pianist and took out his PDA, scrolling through his list of stashes and checking if any were nearby, he found one, in the abandoned factory off to the north-west. "Hey, can we take a quick detour to this factory?" Disciple asked, tapping Pianist on the shoulder who reluctantly stopped watching to look at Disciple's PDA."Anyway, we might get a better look, i know it's closer, you got anything near there as well?"

[milch]

"You got anything near here as well?" asked Disciple. Pianist thought about it for a second... "No," he said firmly, "No I don't. Look we can't break through the military but I'm also not that willing to get completely stripped of my hard earned stuff... Look, there is a tunnel to the left if the bridge and look up there there is a gap in the fence where a train has smashed through, I think that's the best spot and if we are seen then we can just leg it down the road all guns blazing... Yes, yes that sounds interessting..." Pianist looked at Disciple looking for approval.

[Lysander]

"Sounds like a good idea, let's go." Disciple took his binoculars back from Pianist, put them back in his pouch and they set off at a slow jog, within minutes they were there. "Okay, my gieger counter is clicking, but i think we can make it if we run." He said, breaking into a run and jumping over the wreckage of the old train car, he checked himself for radiation. "It says i haven't got any more radiation, this suit has protected me from the worst i guess, your turn." Disciple said breathless as he gestured for Pianist to follow him.

[milch]

Disciple gestured for Pianist to follow. This was it, his first encounter with the real Zone, the first radiation. He prayed silently in his head and then he took a few steps back for a run-up, hanging his weapon behind his back. He ran and leaped, his foot catching the top of the fence and spikes penetrating his right heel and foot! Disciple rushed to him trying to unwind the wire and when he was done he pulled Pianist away from the tracks... "Shit, shit!" the injured loner was screaming whilst pulling his helmet off... When he was done Disciple saw his face pale as death....

[Lysander]

Disciple was horrified, he'd never seen anything like this, he didn't know what to do. "What the fuck man? What happened, how come i'm not hurt?" Disciple babbled. He took a deep breath and took his rad detector out and quickly scanned himself, nothing. He then ran it over Pianist, dreading the numbers.... Steeling himself he looked. They were the highest he had ever seen. "It's okay buddy, your gonna be okay, i'm gonna stay with you-" He looked at his friend, the veins were standing out blue against his pale visage, slowly creeping up his neck like a strange disease. Disiple pulled some cheap wine from his pack, which was now lying in the grass beside him, he prayed that it would stave of the radiation for a little while longer. "-drink this, the whole thing, i heard it keeps the rads down or somethin' like that." Pianist was shaking so much that he could hardly hold the bottle steady, so Disciple steadied it with his own hand.
"God Dammit..... feel so shit..... fucking barbed wire." Disciple could hear Pianist saying.
"Okay". He thought, closing his eyes. "What can i do?" he thought for a few seconds. "A distress signal, that's what ill do." Disciple opened his eyes and fumbled for his PDA in his pocket, brought it out and scrolled through the options with his thumb.
He pressed the icon which had the word distress signal under it and spoke into the small speaker on the side. "If anyone can hear this, please come quick, my friend and i are by the train east of the collapsed railway bridge, the one that has fallen over the fence near the old railway tunnel, my friend has taken a near-lethal dose of radiation and we don't have anything to stop it but alcohol. HE WON'T LAST LONG, COME QUICKLY IF YOU CAN HELP." He tapped the send to all in vicinity button and pressed loop. He then sat in the grass next to his friend, swearing loudly, pulling his binoculars out of their pouch and starting to scan the horizon.

((If anyone wants to, they can make their character join this thread otherwise we'll just make up our own, even if it's just a newly created one.))

[Lysander]

After a few minutes Disciple heard his PDA chirp twice which meant that two more stalkers had entered the area, he took it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. It said that he had recieved a new message so he tapped the messages icon and read.

Coming to help. Got AntiRads.

Disciple sighed with relief and looked over at his friend, still writhing on the ground. "I hope they get here soon, whoever they are. You aren't gonna last much longer are you buddy?" He said.
He had concluded that the blue veins were exactly like a slow acting disease, except they were faster and it seemed that when they got to Pianist's temples his only friend would die. Disciple would not let that happen, not if he was alive to prevent it.
He got up and started to scan the horizon, it was lucky that the place they had crossed seemed to be one of the highest points in North Cordon as it commanded an excellent view of the area north of the bridge.
Soon Disciple spied two figures jogging up the slope towards him, despite himself he cried out. "Over here, we're over here!" the figures seemed to see him and they broke into a run, he would've run to meet them if he hadn't checked himself at the last second.
In a minute the Loners were with them, panting from the arduous run up the hill.
"Where are the drugs?" Disciple said not looking at them.
"In the bag." One of the stalkers said in a voice like gravel as he dropped a satchel on the ground infront of Disciple.
Disciple snatched up the bag and reached inside, pulling out one of the little needles, running over to Pianist and jabbing it into one of the veins in his neck.
Almost immediately Pianist stopped shaking uncontrollably and his breathing strated to go back to normal but the veins did not go away. Disciple turned around and faced their rescuers and for the first time, he got a good look at them.
One was wearing a sunrise suit, green in colour with a gas mask covering his face and a pump action shotgun, probably a mossberg hung over his back.
The other was wearing the classic attire of a rookie, leather jacket, jeans, jackboots, the full load. He also had a shotgun but it was only a TOZ 34 hunting rifle, the most common of the 'high end' rookie guns.
"Thank you." Disciple said to the man in the gasmask, holding out his hand which the loner shook.
"Don't mention it, name's Vlad." He said in his gravelly voice.
"I'm Rabbit." The Rookie said in a quick and excited voice,eager not to be passed over. "Our camp is down there, in an old farmhouse, you can come and share our meal if you like." Disciple noticed that he was very young, not older than eighteen, but he decided to stay silent.
Their conversation was abruptly ended by a groan from behind them; Pianist was waking up. Disciple walked over to him and looked at his friend. To his dismay the veins had not gone and didn't seem to be going away. Pianist opened his eyes and Disciple realized with a jolt that the irises and pupils of both eyes seemed to be gone.
He heard retreating footsteps behind him and a call of "You can keep the drugs, we took your friends jellyfish as payment, it was, lying on the grass." A burst of laughter sounded in the distance, slowly fading into nothing.
"Pianist, are you okay, can you see me?" Disciple said, pulling down his bandanna.

[milch]

"...can you see me?" Pianist heard Disciple ask. "Well... yes, yes i can. It feels weird, you know, the radiation poisoning and stuff... Am I ok? Will I be fine?" Pianist was still feeling quite weird and sick but he knew that he's not dying anymore. Disciple's face turned from being in complete shock to a degree of calmness and relaxation, as relaxed as you can be in the Zone. Pianist's friend helped him get up after he bandaged his ankle and then they started slowly making their way down to the farm, Pianist slightly limping... after all they did need to rest for a bit...

When they got down to the farm they were greeted by the loner wearing a gas mask, Vlad, and he showed them into the farm where Rabbit was cooking a flesh. "Well here's our patient!" Vlad said to Rabbit "Good as new! Well gentlemen why don't you both take a seat and share our flesh? There's plenty of it for all of us..." Pianist and Disciple took a seat by the fire still not too sure of their rescuers, but they were dead hungry especially Pianist after what happened on the embankment. "So, where are you two going?" Rabbit asked Disciple, still as exited as he was by the train tracks.

[Lysander]

"We're making our way to rostok and the bar, gonna try and make some cash." Disciple replied to the rookies question, pulling down his bandanna. "And you guys, what are you aiming to do here in the zone?" He asked.
"Well, i'm looking after Rabbit here, found him on my way back into the zone, yeah this is my second trip, well i found him, being held hostage by bandits, so, i takes my shotgun and i kill 'em all. Rabbit followed me 'n' we been together ever since." He walked over to a guitar that was lying up against the wall, Vlad picked it up and started to play a merry tune which sounded vaguely familiar to Disciple.
"Where did you get that gun?" Asked Rabbit in his overexcited voice.
"This?" Disciple said reaching for his SVD which was lying on the ground next to him. "This baby i've had since my days in the Spetsnaz, stole her when i was discharged and had her ever since."
"The flesh is ready, there's a leg for each of us so tuck in everyone." Said Vlad, looking up from his guitar. Disciple and Pianist both took a leg and ate ravenously, they hadn't had 'fresh meat' for days, even if this was probably heavily irradiated but Disciple didn't care and neither, by the looks of it, did Pianist.
Disciple was vaguely discomforted by his friend's new visage, the blue veins had stopped reaching up his face but they didn't show any sign of going away either.
Pianist's eyes were what disqueted him the most, they were now milk white, blank emotionless pits, that looked as if a dense fog was moving around inside them.
After a while the flesh had been stripped nearly to the bone, with a few loose scraps hanging off. Disciple felt full to bursting and rather tired, Rabbit, Pianist and Vlad were already asleep. Disciple awkwardly rose and walked over to his pack, which his sleeping bag was strapped to the top of and rolled it out.
Drawing his Pistol but making sure that the safety was on he climbed into his sleeping bag.
He did not see the eyes glowing in the shadows of the farmhouse....

[milch]

Pianist was awakened by the roar of the Pseudo-Dog... The mutant leaped onto the poor stalker in front of him and plunged it's enormous teeth into Vlad's arm waking him up and making him scream like a pig being stabbed in the stomach... Another monster jumped out of the darkness nearly instantly coming straight towards Disciple! Pianist pulled out his pistol and pulled the trigger three or four times, some of the bullets hitting the dog, stopping it but not killing. It jumped away and now was concentrating on Pianist, the only potential threat at the moment. It was only a few meters away when BANG!!! It rolled over five times and hit the wall already dead, it was Rabbit who shot it, with already dead Vlad's shotgun.
Peace came for a moment, everyone forgot about the second predator. But it didn't forget about it's prey... It jumped onto Rabbit from behind, it's teeth hitting him directly on the neck, ending his short, but joyful life forever...
"No!" Pianist cried out, at that point Disciple, who was looking for his gun, took aim at the Dog's face with his pistol and pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit the monster directly in between the eyes, creating a huge empty space where the bullet has entered and exited, leaving the dog nearly brainless...
It fell on the floor with Rabbits body, it's teeth still in him...
"Oh my God..." Pianist said "Poor guys, they didn't deserve to die like this, this was a death for a stinking bandit..."

After they hurried the bodies and looting all that was still intact, Disciple stood next to his companion and put his hand on Pianist's shoulder...

[Lysander]

"Shit, i was just starting to like these guys." Disciple said, looking sorrowfully at the two corpses. "You might want to take Vlads sunrise suit, it's probably better than looking like a bloody soldier." He knelt down over Vlads body and picked up the pump shotgun that was lying next to him, still uncocked. He also picked up Pianists old jellyfish, glowing happily in the dead mans pocket.
Looking through Vlads pack he felt a small object, lumpy and hard, he lifted it out and held it up to his face, squinting in the darkness. Deciding it was an artifact he looked it up on his PDA, a "Stone Blood ", it was supposed to have healing properties so it might come in usefull.
Disciple pocketed it and went on to check Vlads PDA, there was a picture stuck to the back of a man with a mustache, his wife and a young girl. Poor guy Disciple thought as he downloaded stash coordinates from the PDA. He pocketed the photo as well. It reminded him of someone, he couldn't remember who.
"Rabbit is yours." he said, pulling on Vlads gasmask.

Disciple found:
Jellyfish, Stone Blood
Mossburg 88 shotgun
700 roubles

CHECK

[milch]

Pianist struggled to take off Vlad's suit and he didn't feel right doing it either... But when he did get it he changed out of his army suit and stashed it away in a half buried safe in one of the barn rooms... When he came back he saw Discple going through the rest of Vlad's stuff... Pianist went over to Rabbit and started checking his bag and PDA for usefull information... He found some food and medicine, but most importantly he found Rabbit's family hunting rifle... In rabbit's PDA he found the coordinates of a few stashes some quite near the barn, but they'll get that tomorrow... for now they just had to hav a rest somewhere safe... like the atic of the barn, where noone could get them. But then his hand touched something cold and metal, he gripped it and pulled out a Fort-12 pistol, but with no ammo That's no problem... I've got ammo in my bag..." with that he took off Rabbt's bag and took it upstairs with him, "I'll take a closer look at the bag upstairs"... "Hey! Come on! Or do you wanna stay and sleep downthere with the bodies?"

Pianist Found: Sunrise Suit, stashes
Pianist Stashed: Beril Suit

CHECK

[Lysander]

"We're taking them with us." Disciple said rising from Vlad's corpse. "I'll carry Vlad, you carry Rabbit." The man was surprisingly light and Disciple easily carried him up the ladder, dropping him on the attic floor.
"Okay, i'm gonna go and see if there is anything else of interest here." Disciple said. While Pianist was busy searching Rabbit's pack he climbed back down the ladder and fetched the rest of his things.
Back in the attic he leant his dragunov against a wall and layed out his bedroll. Disciple then spied a hole in the roof and, picking up Vlad's shotgun, he climbed out of the hole, and nearly slipped over on the roof. Luckily he found a handhold to keep steady and inexorably pulled himself up the roof. At the top he was glad to see that the roof of the barn levelled out for about a metre and he climbed on.
Opposite him was a large tower-like structure rising from the roof, Disciple decided to investigate. It was easy walking on the top of the barn and he reached the tower with no trouble. Shouldering his gun, he reached up, grabbed an overhanging ledge and hauled himself up, the roof of the tower was sloped but not steeply so so Disciple had no trouble walking on it, there was a man sized whole in the roof and he slipped through, softly landing on old floorboards.
Turning on his headlamp Disciple examined the room, there was a bedroll in the corner and on a crate there was an ashtray and an empty vodka bottle. He jumped when he came full circle and glimpsed the corpse lying against the wall, riddled whith bullet holes.
Walking over to the body he examined it and deigned nothing was salvagable, the man's PDA had taken a great many shots and was completely ruined, but he still had a wallet, in which there was money.
There was a stack of crates against a wall and he could see Pianist through them, so started to lift move them over and soon a doorway was cleared. "Well hello there." Disciple said. "We better get some sleep, i'll take first watch, we'll bury them in the morning." He walked over to his SVD and stood vigil at the roofhole, looking out over the Cordon.

Disciple found:

200 rubles

CHECK

[milch]

"Well hello there..."Disciple greeted Pianist climbing through the other room's barricades back into their sleeping rooms... He came over to the hole he climbed through earlier and was now looking over the never sleeping Zone, presented in this case by the Cordon. "Well are you going to go to sleep or what?" asked Pianist rather stressed, he wanted to get to Rostok as soon as possible and get started on Barkeep's jobs.
He decided to take his mind off of it and carry on searching Rabbit's bag... He pulled the bag over to himself, sat up cross legged and poured out the contents onto his sleeping mat. He found a plastic bag with a miniscule amount of white powder in it, just from the looks os it and the way Rabbit was behaving earlier he could tell that that was cocaine or some sort of drug... That was no use to Pianist, he got up to the hole out of which Disciple was looking and slightly nudging him out of the way and threw the bag into the fire down below... He walked back over to the sleeping mat and sat back down. Looking through the other random junk which lay before him he found only some money, anti-rads and a few photographs which he put away into his own bag.
When he was finished with the things he put them neatly into the bag again and hid it in one of the boxes which he then branded with a mark using his knife...
"I don't know how about you but i'm going to sleep... good night" he declared and with that the loner fell asleep on the cold sleeping mat.

Pianist Found:
3x anti-rads
Photographs
640 rubles

CHECK

[Lysander]

Disciple woke up to a bright and sunny morning, he had not had a good nights sleep and his eyes ached for want of more.
He rose and looked over to Pianist, who was slumped against the side of the watch-hole snoring loudly.
"Get up." Disciple said kicking Pianist who fell over backwards. "We need to get going." He looked at Vlad's corpse, feeling a pang of guilt. "I don't think we have time to bury these guys, but we can at least mark the area." He went over to one of the crates that lay in the attic space and stuck the photo of Vlad's family to it, using the dead man's knife. It was the least he could do, this guy saved his life.
A few minutes later Pianist had left his mark and the pair were setting off towards the northern Cordon. The journey was uneventful and they got about half way to the northern outpost before they heard shouts and the harsh chatter of rapid fire weapons and a screech.
Disciple raised his Dragunov and looked down the sights. A group of Loners were seemingly defending the outpost from something or someone. They were backing out of the outpost and were slowly heading towards the pair. Bandits started spilling out of the outpost building and one of the loners shouted something to his companions, and they started to fire on the bandits dropping two of them.
Disciple shouted to Pianist to help and fired a shot, it hit a bandit square in the forehead, spraying blood and brain matter onto the APC behind him. Another shot sent one of the bandits crashing to the ground, blood fountaining from a wound in his neck.
"I still got it." Disciple said, grinning.
Then a horrible, gurgling roar came from behind the bandits and the firefight stopped for a second, Disciples blood turned to ice in his veins and he stopped.
Then one of the bandits lost his cool and started to fire blindly, but he was rushed to the ground and Disciple saw something on top of him come out of thin air, ripping at him viciously.
"BLOODSUCKER!" one of the loners called and they started to pour fire onto it. The bandits were shredded, inbetween the bloodsucker and the rifles. A few minutes later there was another roar, then silence,the loners put their guns away and started to loot the corpses.
"Come on, or we'll miss all the fun." Disciple said, less fearful no, he wanted to see what that monster was. He broke into a jog and headed for the outpost.

[milch]

By the time the travelers got up to the carnage scene there wasn't much to look at, the dead stalker's bodies which were already looted awaited burial in a pile next to an old, rusty BTR. The bloodsucker was being burned in a campfire, it's tentacles chopped off, courtesy of the hunters probably, the two loners didn't know that monster parts were valuable in any way yet but they were soon to find out. The surviving group was seated around the campfire mending their wounds and planning for their short-term future, talking loudly and they didn't seem to care about the new strangers. The bandits which Disciple skillfully killed were left as they were by the fighters, probably as a sign of gratitude for helping.Disciple went over to the corpses and began looking through their rucksacks, picking out anything of value and leaving the useless crap as it was.
Pianist, with nothing to do, went into the small building next to the BTR and looked around. There were two rooms one had what seemed to be a wardrobe and the next which had a window facing the door where, as Pianist though, the officer would sit at the desk standing by the window and check the passing people's documents, in there there also was an old safe and another wardrobe. The curious stalker went through the first wardrobe as the doors had, old-school USSR, glass frames and he could see that there was nothing of value inside. Next door he tried the safe but it was locked, after a long time trying to break in with his knife he managed to get it opened, inside there was a bunch of old documents, a flash drive and a PMm on top of a pack of ammo. He took everything. You never know the documents could be of value with the trader at Rostok. He left the building after looking in the desk but finding nothing interesting
When he came outside Disciple was talking about something with the group by the fire. The bandits' bodies lay with the rest by the BTR. He took a step towards the warm and welcoming light of the fire by which he could have a rest which he so wanted but then he heard a roar, a roar much similar to the one him and his companion heard on the way here. The people he was looking at a second ago turned around and were now looking at something directly behind him and going pale with fear as they reached for their guns and Disciple screamed "Pianist get down!"