Post by Basil on Sept 28, 2013 13:14:17 GMT -5
The Zone was quiet, the cool autumn air bearing the cawing of crows and the distant chatter of gunfire. From Maginot's position on top of the Eastern guard tower the Zone seemed utterly immobile and unchanging, immortal in its strangeness and misery.
That, of course, was a lie.
The Zone was seething with change, its borders blurring and expanding, its mysteries growing deeper and more numerous by the day. To its parasitic human denizens, it felt like a great and terrible cataclysm was approaching. The sound of thunder, unheard but felt deep within every stalker's bones. The dull weight of the storm.
Maginot sighed and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. With a trembling hand he raised his water canteen and drank, splashing the tasteless liquid down his dry and aching throat. Sleep did not come easily to anyone nowadays. The air felt too thick and seemed to weigh on every man and woman's spirit, crushing away their dreams and forcing them to sit awake and silent in the dead of night. The French stalker put his canteen back on his belt and resumed his observation; the Red Forest sprawled before him in an enormous and twisted mass, silent yet alive with hidden horror and terrifying promise.
Fools! They had been such fools! Only a few months ago they had believed the Red Forest to be open and pacified, its rich bounty free for everyone. They had dived into it like blind idiots, had fought with bandits and Duty. Blood had been spilled, the ranks of Freedom further thinned. But their greed had gone unrewarded. The Red Forest had shown itself to be not full of treasure, but full of horror.
Maginot could see the wavering air near the edge of the forest. The soft woosh of air, the torn and uprooted trees and the twisted archs of earth all revealing a host of new anomalies that had sprung up on previously safe ground. If Maginot were to give the area a cursory look from his perch, he would see dozens more of these anomalies hemming in Freedom's small outposts. Even the Barrier, Freedom's mighty defence against the North's horrors, was beginning to falter.
Maginot squinted as he watched the distant fortified outpost. One of the towers Freedom had built there had been torn apart by an anomaly, the men standing guard ripped to shreds. After that, the Barrier had become weaker, the anomaly fields creeping closer and closer to the men who sat huddled around their fires. Over the past few days, many Freedomers had abandoned their posts and fled, angering Adder beyond belief and further plunging the demoralised faction into gloom.
Maginot sighed again and began to climb down from the tower, the rusting rungs of the ladder groaning under his weight. He needed to talk to Adder.
_____________________________________
Adder wiped her mouth with her sleeve and looked away from the bucket.
"Chiort", she groaned. Her throat still burned from the bile she had regurgitated, and she could feel the fetid smell of vomit on her breath. She stood up and pushed the bucket away with her foot, trying to ignore the nausea that was rising within her again.
"Just my fucking luck", she grumbled. The nausea and vomiting had started a few days ago and had not relented. Adder had feared radiation poisoning, but the camp's medic hadn't found anything of the sort. Now she was left with the thought of something even more terrifying, something...
A knock sounded from the office door. "Adder? It's Mag. We have to talk."
The snake-eyed stalker hastily hid the bucket under the table and went to open the door, hoping her bleary and dishevelled appearance wouldn't be too noticeable. When she opened the door she was greeted by Maginot's familiar but drawn features.
"You look like shit", she said in a weak attempt at sarcasm, but Maginot simply ignored her and slumped onto the nearby sofa.
"The Zone...", began Maginot before stopping. For a moment he was silent, as if struggling to find the appropriate words. Adder had seldom seen him this way before, and every time it had been bad. Maginot was not a man prone to worrying, but when he did let himself fall prey to Worry's jaws it would gnaw away at his soul for days.
"The Zone is changing", said Maginot, "too fast for anyone to keep up."
"I gathered that much", said Adder, "things haven't been going so well at the Barrier. Cowards keep abandoning their posts and I've been forced to have Penumbra perform sentry duties..."
Anger and nausea welled up in her like a spring of putrid water. Swallowing, she fought back the urge to rush for the bucket. Maginot shook his head like a defeated man.
"Not cowards, Adder. Everyone is terrified, even I am afraid. We're haunted by our failures, and these changes are just too much for many. But the Zone...something is different about it. It's changing too quickly! It's as if reality itself was starting to collapse."
Maginot was now staring almost unblinkingly at the floor, his eyes holding some indescribable but terrifying sentiment. Sensing his confusion and fear, Adder sat down next to him and softly passed her arm around his waist.
"Mag...we can't let ourselves fall prey to our fears. The Red Forest and the North were unkind to Freedom, but we are still standing. The cause is still strong. All we need is to draw new blood, perhaps move to a safer area and everything will be good again."
"No. You don't understand. Nowhere is safe. I've been communicating with Rurik and things are the same down South. The Garbage is being swallowed up by anomalies and weird phenomena and Duty's losing dozens of their own. The mercs are being driven out of Yantar by the Zone...can't you see it? The Zone is completely out of control."
"Duty? Rurik? Come on, Mag, you know better than to listen to their lies", said Adder, but the words came out hollow and weak. Her own convictions had been steadily slipping away over the past few weeks.
"We're beyond such petty rivalries now, Adder" said Maginot, "ideology means nothing when the world is collapsing on itself."
________________________________________
Meanwhile, outside the Army Warehouses...
The Freedomer struggled feebly in his grasp, but this was not enough to escape the blade. Skull slipped his knife over the young stalker's throat, turning his muffled cries into inarticulate gargles. The Dutier let the stalker's corpse slump silently to the ground, blood pouring out from his cut throat.
His radio chattered: "The area's clear. We killed every one of these sons of bitches."
Skull raised his radio and spoke: "Good work everyone. Freedom will never see this coming...now how is that sniper up in the tower?"
"Dead, sir. Nastya took him out."
"And nobody noticed?"
"We saw no signs of commotion coming from Freedom's base, sir."
"Excellent. Take up positions, we attack on my signal. Also watch out for those fucking anomalies, the damn things seem to be growing like 'shrooms."
Skull gave the dead Freedomer a final kick before leaving the ruined cabin. He and his men had disobeyed the peace-mongers' orders to abandon all hostilities with the anarchists. Skull only had the utmost contempt for Voronin and Rurik, and he was confident that today's coup d'éclat would end their hold on his faction.
A few metres away from the cabin he found his comrades. Heavily armoured and armed, they were some of Duty's finest men.
"Move out", said Skull before turning to a Dutier carrying a grenade launcher, "Dina, you ready?"
"Yes sir!" barked the Dutier, hefting his grenade launcher. Skull nodded and motioned towards the low concrete fence that surrounded Freedom's base.
"Blast away, then!"
_________________________________
"What the fuck was that?!"
Maginot and Adder stood up as one, all their senses on alert. An explosion had shook the compound like thunder, and now gunfire was echoeing from outside.
"We're under attack!" said Adder before rushing to the window. A quick glance to the West proved her assumption: heavily armoured men had blasted their way through the perimetre fence and were now battling Freedom's defenders.
"Shit, let's go!" shouted Maginot, unslinging his rifle and dashing out of the room. Adder grabbed her Vintorez off the table and smashed the window panes, raising her rifle to take aim at the attackers.
"D...Duty?!", she said, eyes widening in surprise and horror. The men's suits bore Duty's colours and emblems! Had they decided to break the truce?
"Sooka!" she swore, aiming at a Dutier's neck and pulling the trigger.
__________________________________
"FOR DU-"
Wasp blinked as the Dutier she'd been shooting at fell, cut down by a bullet to the neck. Ah well, one down, many more to go.
The Dutiers had smashed their way through Freedom's first line of defence and were now attempting to clear the large platform outside the base as well as the barracks in the Northern half, although the latter seemed to be losing ground quickly. Wasp crouched behind the wreckage of an UAZ jeep, her Protecta shotgun grasped in trembling hands.
"YA SVOBODA!" she yelled, her lungs writhing in agony as she did so. She blasted a few shots from behind her cover, hitting a Dutier square in the chest. Wasp spat as she saw stumble and recover his balance, seemingly unharmed by the buckshot.
"Fucking exos" she muttered. Bullets pinged off the jeep and someone screamed. Wasp saw one of her fellow Freedomers fall, his chest torn open by a direct hit.
"We can't hold!" shouted a nearby Freedomer who crouched behind some heavy crates. Wasp could see the blood seeping from a gash in his suit. She tried to force herself to give the order to fall back, but her body was racked by violent coughs.
"Fall back!" came a commanding and familiar voice. Shaking, Wasp looked up and saw Maginot rushing towards them, ignoring the bullets that flew past him as if they were mere flies.
"It's their leader, kill him!" shouted one of the Dutiers. Wasp saw Maginot feed a grenade into his rifle's underbarrel launcher, and she covered her eyes.
The ensuing blast shook her to the bone and was accompanied by blood curdling screams. Ears ringing she looked out from behind her cover and saw the exo-wearing Dutier writhing on the ground, his two arms nothing but bloody stumps. Two other Dutiers lay dead on the ground while another one was pressing his bloody hands down on a gash in his abdomen.
"Fall back!" repeated Maginot, and Wasp obeyed, hurling herself from out of cover.
"What...what do we do, boss?" she rasped once they had all retreated.
"We try to hold", said Maginot, "but there's not enough of us to hold them off. I called for reinforcements from the Barrier. Hopefully they'll arrive soon."
Wasp felt her body tense. It wasn't the first time Freedom had faced defeat, but this time it was far worse. They were being beaten in their own base by their oldest enemy.
"I can't believe Duty broke the truce" said Maginot, "What the fuck is Rurik thinking?"
"Boss, I told you we couldn't trust those fuckers" said Wasp weakly.
"There's nobody left that we can trust", said Maginot before adding "everyone fall back to the main building and form a line of defence there. We'll try to hold them off until help arrives."
*to be continued*
That, of course, was a lie.
The Zone was seething with change, its borders blurring and expanding, its mysteries growing deeper and more numerous by the day. To its parasitic human denizens, it felt like a great and terrible cataclysm was approaching. The sound of thunder, unheard but felt deep within every stalker's bones. The dull weight of the storm.
Maginot sighed and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. With a trembling hand he raised his water canteen and drank, splashing the tasteless liquid down his dry and aching throat. Sleep did not come easily to anyone nowadays. The air felt too thick and seemed to weigh on every man and woman's spirit, crushing away their dreams and forcing them to sit awake and silent in the dead of night. The French stalker put his canteen back on his belt and resumed his observation; the Red Forest sprawled before him in an enormous and twisted mass, silent yet alive with hidden horror and terrifying promise.
Fools! They had been such fools! Only a few months ago they had believed the Red Forest to be open and pacified, its rich bounty free for everyone. They had dived into it like blind idiots, had fought with bandits and Duty. Blood had been spilled, the ranks of Freedom further thinned. But their greed had gone unrewarded. The Red Forest had shown itself to be not full of treasure, but full of horror.
Maginot could see the wavering air near the edge of the forest. The soft woosh of air, the torn and uprooted trees and the twisted archs of earth all revealing a host of new anomalies that had sprung up on previously safe ground. If Maginot were to give the area a cursory look from his perch, he would see dozens more of these anomalies hemming in Freedom's small outposts. Even the Barrier, Freedom's mighty defence against the North's horrors, was beginning to falter.
Maginot squinted as he watched the distant fortified outpost. One of the towers Freedom had built there had been torn apart by an anomaly, the men standing guard ripped to shreds. After that, the Barrier had become weaker, the anomaly fields creeping closer and closer to the men who sat huddled around their fires. Over the past few days, many Freedomers had abandoned their posts and fled, angering Adder beyond belief and further plunging the demoralised faction into gloom.
Maginot sighed again and began to climb down from the tower, the rusting rungs of the ladder groaning under his weight. He needed to talk to Adder.
_____________________________________
Adder wiped her mouth with her sleeve and looked away from the bucket.
"Chiort", she groaned. Her throat still burned from the bile she had regurgitated, and she could feel the fetid smell of vomit on her breath. She stood up and pushed the bucket away with her foot, trying to ignore the nausea that was rising within her again.
"Just my fucking luck", she grumbled. The nausea and vomiting had started a few days ago and had not relented. Adder had feared radiation poisoning, but the camp's medic hadn't found anything of the sort. Now she was left with the thought of something even more terrifying, something...
A knock sounded from the office door. "Adder? It's Mag. We have to talk."
The snake-eyed stalker hastily hid the bucket under the table and went to open the door, hoping her bleary and dishevelled appearance wouldn't be too noticeable. When she opened the door she was greeted by Maginot's familiar but drawn features.
"You look like shit", she said in a weak attempt at sarcasm, but Maginot simply ignored her and slumped onto the nearby sofa.
"The Zone...", began Maginot before stopping. For a moment he was silent, as if struggling to find the appropriate words. Adder had seldom seen him this way before, and every time it had been bad. Maginot was not a man prone to worrying, but when he did let himself fall prey to Worry's jaws it would gnaw away at his soul for days.
"The Zone is changing", said Maginot, "too fast for anyone to keep up."
"I gathered that much", said Adder, "things haven't been going so well at the Barrier. Cowards keep abandoning their posts and I've been forced to have Penumbra perform sentry duties..."
Anger and nausea welled up in her like a spring of putrid water. Swallowing, she fought back the urge to rush for the bucket. Maginot shook his head like a defeated man.
"Not cowards, Adder. Everyone is terrified, even I am afraid. We're haunted by our failures, and these changes are just too much for many. But the Zone...something is different about it. It's changing too quickly! It's as if reality itself was starting to collapse."
Maginot was now staring almost unblinkingly at the floor, his eyes holding some indescribable but terrifying sentiment. Sensing his confusion and fear, Adder sat down next to him and softly passed her arm around his waist.
"Mag...we can't let ourselves fall prey to our fears. The Red Forest and the North were unkind to Freedom, but we are still standing. The cause is still strong. All we need is to draw new blood, perhaps move to a safer area and everything will be good again."
"No. You don't understand. Nowhere is safe. I've been communicating with Rurik and things are the same down South. The Garbage is being swallowed up by anomalies and weird phenomena and Duty's losing dozens of their own. The mercs are being driven out of Yantar by the Zone...can't you see it? The Zone is completely out of control."
"Duty? Rurik? Come on, Mag, you know better than to listen to their lies", said Adder, but the words came out hollow and weak. Her own convictions had been steadily slipping away over the past few weeks.
"We're beyond such petty rivalries now, Adder" said Maginot, "ideology means nothing when the world is collapsing on itself."
________________________________________
Meanwhile, outside the Army Warehouses...
The Freedomer struggled feebly in his grasp, but this was not enough to escape the blade. Skull slipped his knife over the young stalker's throat, turning his muffled cries into inarticulate gargles. The Dutier let the stalker's corpse slump silently to the ground, blood pouring out from his cut throat.
His radio chattered: "The area's clear. We killed every one of these sons of bitches."
Skull raised his radio and spoke: "Good work everyone. Freedom will never see this coming...now how is that sniper up in the tower?"
"Dead, sir. Nastya took him out."
"And nobody noticed?"
"We saw no signs of commotion coming from Freedom's base, sir."
"Excellent. Take up positions, we attack on my signal. Also watch out for those fucking anomalies, the damn things seem to be growing like 'shrooms."
Skull gave the dead Freedomer a final kick before leaving the ruined cabin. He and his men had disobeyed the peace-mongers' orders to abandon all hostilities with the anarchists. Skull only had the utmost contempt for Voronin and Rurik, and he was confident that today's coup d'éclat would end their hold on his faction.
A few metres away from the cabin he found his comrades. Heavily armoured and armed, they were some of Duty's finest men.
"Move out", said Skull before turning to a Dutier carrying a grenade launcher, "Dina, you ready?"
"Yes sir!" barked the Dutier, hefting his grenade launcher. Skull nodded and motioned towards the low concrete fence that surrounded Freedom's base.
"Blast away, then!"
_________________________________
"What the fuck was that?!"
Maginot and Adder stood up as one, all their senses on alert. An explosion had shook the compound like thunder, and now gunfire was echoeing from outside.
"We're under attack!" said Adder before rushing to the window. A quick glance to the West proved her assumption: heavily armoured men had blasted their way through the perimetre fence and were now battling Freedom's defenders.
"Shit, let's go!" shouted Maginot, unslinging his rifle and dashing out of the room. Adder grabbed her Vintorez off the table and smashed the window panes, raising her rifle to take aim at the attackers.
"D...Duty?!", she said, eyes widening in surprise and horror. The men's suits bore Duty's colours and emblems! Had they decided to break the truce?
"Sooka!" she swore, aiming at a Dutier's neck and pulling the trigger.
__________________________________
"FOR DU-"
Wasp blinked as the Dutier she'd been shooting at fell, cut down by a bullet to the neck. Ah well, one down, many more to go.
The Dutiers had smashed their way through Freedom's first line of defence and were now attempting to clear the large platform outside the base as well as the barracks in the Northern half, although the latter seemed to be losing ground quickly. Wasp crouched behind the wreckage of an UAZ jeep, her Protecta shotgun grasped in trembling hands.
"YA SVOBODA!" she yelled, her lungs writhing in agony as she did so. She blasted a few shots from behind her cover, hitting a Dutier square in the chest. Wasp spat as she saw stumble and recover his balance, seemingly unharmed by the buckshot.
"Fucking exos" she muttered. Bullets pinged off the jeep and someone screamed. Wasp saw one of her fellow Freedomers fall, his chest torn open by a direct hit.
"We can't hold!" shouted a nearby Freedomer who crouched behind some heavy crates. Wasp could see the blood seeping from a gash in his suit. She tried to force herself to give the order to fall back, but her body was racked by violent coughs.
"Fall back!" came a commanding and familiar voice. Shaking, Wasp looked up and saw Maginot rushing towards them, ignoring the bullets that flew past him as if they were mere flies.
"It's their leader, kill him!" shouted one of the Dutiers. Wasp saw Maginot feed a grenade into his rifle's underbarrel launcher, and she covered her eyes.
The ensuing blast shook her to the bone and was accompanied by blood curdling screams. Ears ringing she looked out from behind her cover and saw the exo-wearing Dutier writhing on the ground, his two arms nothing but bloody stumps. Two other Dutiers lay dead on the ground while another one was pressing his bloody hands down on a gash in his abdomen.
"Fall back!" repeated Maginot, and Wasp obeyed, hurling herself from out of cover.
"What...what do we do, boss?" she rasped once they had all retreated.
"We try to hold", said Maginot, "but there's not enough of us to hold them off. I called for reinforcements from the Barrier. Hopefully they'll arrive soon."
Wasp felt her body tense. It wasn't the first time Freedom had faced defeat, but this time it was far worse. They were being beaten in their own base by their oldest enemy.
"I can't believe Duty broke the truce" said Maginot, "What the fuck is Rurik thinking?"
"Boss, I told you we couldn't trust those fuckers" said Wasp weakly.
"There's nobody left that we can trust", said Maginot before adding "everyone fall back to the main building and form a line of defence there. We'll try to hold them off until help arrives."
*to be continued*
