Scar began his tale: “I was down on my luck, late in 2016 I think it was. It was mid fall and while the brown, orange leaves were still clinging to their unreceptive trees, winter was fast approaching, it’s cold fingers reaching out across the land, felt most in the early morning when frost began forming on the grass instead of dew. I needed something to fill my belly and wash away the brimstone down my throat, as well as the cash to make it happen. I was only an inexperienced stalker then,but the demand luckily for me, the demand in the backwater village I was in had recently skyrocketed due to some peculiar circumstances.”

“The local village paranoiac with a HAM radio set in his home had evidently picked up a transmission from another village, Birska forty kilometers away, down what they called a “main road”. In reality it was just a swath of forest cleared out replaced by a frequently swamped dirt road. He claimed they were running low on provender and wouldn’t survive the winter when it came. They offered up a trade, if we would deliver them the food they needed to last the winter and they would in return give the villagers a cache of military tech that they somehow managed to dig up. Rumors began to fly quicker than the crows when some were wagging their tongues about a functional KAMAZ which they thought Birska could include in the trade and how great it would be.”

“And so an expedition was rounded up, a laughable thing really, a good ten volunteers agreed out of the peasant civilians, good hearty young men, muscular and full of vigor, I didn’t doubt their strength nor the courage in their hearts, but I knew that no matter how courageous, the bogatyr wannabes wouldn’t the journey armed with Mosin Nagants that looked like the last time that they were used was on the front of the Great Patriotic War. I naturally took the opportunity to offer my…More professional services which they were glad to accept, and I was glad to get the coin. With us was also another veteran stalker by the name of Vitaz, big burly fellow with a luscious mustache and the envy of many stalkers on his back, a wonderful specimen of weaponry, a PKM. We set off early on the morning of the very next day just as the sun was just beginning to rise over the ferns.”

“The wilderness was a special place here, where the southern fatwoods met and clashed with the more harsher northern taiga and it’s army of evergreens, and it was through such forests that our road led the caravan. We had our supplies carted by a horse drawn cart, pulled by two horses, loaned from the local sleezer and their names matched their owner’s character, Cigarette and Lighter. This rag tag company made camp on the first day among the trees leaning over a running stream, a distance away from the road. The newbies had thought at first it a good idea to just camp right on the roadside but the stories of midnight raids by bandits or scenes of ransacked camps by unknown creatures, vividly seared into mine and Vitaz’s minds resulted in our better judgement. I volunteered for the night watch and then around midnight handed it over to one of the villagers noticing nothing of significance or worry. Unfortunately for the lad, luck wasn’t on his side that night unlike me. I usually wake early but clearly not before Vitaz, and found the stalker shaking me, a worried expression on his face.”

“In the night somebody had killed the poor watchman, problem, was, whoever it was didn’t take anything, except for the man’s body, even the old shotgun he had armed himself with was still there, leaning up against a tree, two shells loaded. Whatever had struck him had done so lightning fast evidently, and it was terribly brutal as a significant puddle of blood pooled where he had stood. The remaining villagers that we were escorting threw a panicked fit at the terrible news and we had to exert a good portion of our authority as stalkers to calm their minds and even then, they exchanged worried glances, because interestingly enough they thought most likely that the threat had come from a man inside the caravan who had used the expedition to get away with murder and not from any external threat in the Grey. At least that should knock some caution into them, this ain’t a roadside picnic.”

“I shouldered my rifle and slid my pack onto my back, my bivy was packet and I was ready to go, Vitaz too, but these peasants, I swear they’re like children that we had to babysit. By Vitaz’s calculations we should arrive in to Birska by sundown today and I was anxious to get there as fast as possible, get paid and go on my merry way, knocking a few back at the local pub on the way. We set off soon after and today, we found ourselves in a change of scenery, surrounded on all sides by an expansive steppe, which had turned a dirty blonde color as the tall grass rose up and died, the cold grip of the coming winter touching them in the night. It was almost enjoyable and in it’s usual twisted humor fate proved it not to be so rather quickly. We had arrived at an impasse where recent rains had flooded a small stream turning it into a larger current which escaped it’s course and flowed over the dirt road turning it into deep muck. The horses could not pass any further and we had to carry the baggage by hand, bags of rather heavy supplies. Here is where mne and Vitaz’s opinions diverged, he wanted us to carry them by continuing down the road.” Scar sighed heavily but continued.

“I was thoroughly done with this shit and decided to take the quicker overland option and going off the road, into the steppe and distant tree line beyond which Birska was supposed to be. We ended up splitting up and I took command of a portion of the villagers, four of them to be precise, VItaz took the other four and one had stayed behind to guard the horses and cart and await our return. After just longer than an hour of difficult hiking we broke through the thickets to find the wooden stakes that formed the barrier between Birska and the outside, a guard on a makeshift scaffolding platform waved at us, brandishing a beat up 74U. I yelled back that we were part of a caravan bearing supplies for them and we were let in without too much further hostilities. Unsurprisingly we had made it ahead of Vitaz and his group. So while the villagers explained themselves and chatted with the Birskans I sat awhile and waited, and waited, but nobody came down that road. It was already sundown and I decided that a man like Vitaz could lead those caravan members here by himself and almost settled down for the night passed out on the far back tables at the local bar, preferably not to far from the fireplace when conscience propelled me to act in contradiction to my own best interests.”

“ I grabbed my SKS that I had with me at the time complete with the high tech addition of a flashlight taped to the barrel and headed out in search of them. I had already been paid and was now focused only on finding the others. With me was one of the caravan members who decided that I desperately needed his help. We went out in the night, and soon as we were walking amid an exceptional thick patch of trees, their dark branches looming over our heads, the man, walking behind me suddenly gasped and exclaimed telling me to look up, and so I did. Up in the trees, maybe twenty meters up hung Vitaz’s gas mask one eye piece broken, a branch piercing it, in another tree, another gas mask, older of the 1980s Soviet variety. As our flashlights scanned the trees overhead we kept on seeing more, and more masks dozens of them, hung up like New Year’s tree ornaments, some had clearly been there for a long time, years maybe, all of them tens of meters in the air. I looked down at the side of the road to find a the ags of supplies, sitting undisturbed, I signalled to my companion but he didn’t respond, I turned around to find nobody there, nobody at all, not a snarling mutant, not gang of malicious bandits, nothing. But my companion was gone. Instantly I realized my mistake, alcohol had previously clouded by judgement but it wasn’t anymore and so I began to take slow careful steps back, one, two, three, four, five, six and on until I was out of the thicket at which point I ran to Birska’s walls and was let in my the guard after he took one look at my face.”

“ I lied to the that the road had been infested by mutants, who had ransacked the supplies killing everybody. I told them to take a different route, preferably the one I had taken that afternoon and i hope to dear god that they had taken my advice. I didn’t stay long in Birska, bought some food and went off into the next town, not even looking for a job.”

“But why did you lie?” Peyta asked looking intensively at the grim stalker before him. In a sudden darting movement, Scar’s eyes moved to meet Peyta’s and in the reflection of the fire they looked like portals to hell itself, ready to spring into action. Upon him registering the question they turned pensive and Scar thought a moment before responding.

“Reflecting back on it I thought it was to patch my self esteem, to hide from everybody my crucial mistakes that nearly cost me my life like the man next to me did, but deep down I know now that it was just denial manifesting in me then, how something could casually kill so many trained veteran stalkers, grizzled men, some former special forces, armed to the teeth, and do so without a sound except for the constant, cold wailing of the wind.”