Reaching the Wild Territories, it was easy to see why it got its name.
The second wreck should have been near a construction site. But even getting a visual on it was challenging. It was the immediate gratification that he brought the grumpy Corporal along.
"Follow in my footsteps only, Major," Sokolov said, not looking up from his strange device.
"Lead the way," Alex nodded, trying to figure out what that thing was.
Not his PDA. That hung from his belt like Alexander's.
Not a phone, either. It looked like a calculator after a kid tried to turn it into a sci-fi prop. Wires and antennas stuck out of it everywhere, and it kept making strange noises.
"There's only one safe route across this place, but if your coordinates are right—"
A loud, alarming beep cut off his mumbling, the display flashing bright red.
"Okay, one step back; we move around."
Alex saw nothing at first, but when the Corporal picked up a pebble and threw it—
A whirlwind appeared out of thin air, launching it into the sky.
"Most anomalies are invisible, and they don't always remain stationary, either," Sokolov explained. Then, following his detector—it had to be one—he found a way around.
They did this back and forth at a crawling pace until he finally spotted the second wreck.
Again, no smoke or signs of gunfire, but the tail sheared clean off and was nowhere in sight.
It shouldn't have been a hard landing despite all that, but getting near was still a challenge.
"Mind if I do my thing?" Alex asked, pulling out his dictaphone.
His way of telling the Corporal he didn't want him to eavesdrop.
"Be my guest, Major," Sokolov shrugged. "But don't blame me if you walk into an anomaly."
Yeah. He could already tell the helicopter's tail did not disappear on its own.
If he strained his eyes, he could almost see the air warping around something. And given how cold this morning was, it couldn't be an ordinary mirage.
"I'll be fine," he said, inching closer, starting his report. "Bort 21, a Mi-24V with a missing tail."
This time, the escape hatches were all blown out, which was a good sign. While he couldn't tell why they would land here of all places, he found no corpses in the double cockpit so far.
Nor the black box. Was this becoming a trend?
"Controls don't seem to react. As if an EMP-like phenomenon knocked everything out."
So that's why they never sent a distress signal, either.
They must have hit one of those electric anomalies in flight.
He could even see some of them pulling arches over the loading bay of a nearby rail line. But if the mechanical and hydraulic components still worked, then—
The crew didn't disappear. They evacuated.
But right as Alex was getting his hopes up—
He noticed a severed arm in green as he scanned the area from the cockpit.
Another hundred paces away?
A leg, resting in a pool of blood.
That was at least one more KIA.
"You done?" Sokolov yelled, waiting at a distance. "Blind dogs are sniffing nearby, and I'd rather not deal with them here. If your guys survived, or a Stalker found them, they'd be at the bar."
Right. The bar.
The safest place in the Zone, according to the scientists. It should have been on the other side of this madness. And judging from the number of body parts he had seen so far—
"Yeah, let's go. I hope at least one of them survived."
***
The Wolves slowed down, scattering in the woods at a single hand signal.
They weren't tired yet. They were alert.
"That smoke's too dark for a campfire," Yuri whispered, checking the chamber of his AK.
"Looks like burning oil to me," Dmitry confirmed, using the Gepard's scope to take a better look. But the trees were too dense, their trunks too thick and swollen, and in general—
Stuff you'd expect from this mutated biom, people have known only as the Red Forest.
"I'll go check," Konrad offered, handing over his guitar case. "I've the Mama's Beads and the Moonlight, so I'll be almost impossible to hit."
And not only that.
His newest artifact pair turned him into an overcaffeinated, hyperactive kid.
If there was anything to do—anything at all—he wanted to do it first, faster and better than anyone. His only grievance was that with all these Stalkers around, he couldn't use his sword.
Especially since he even left his machete at the bar.
Oh well. Pulling the Five-seveN out instead, he only had to wait for the commander's signal.
"Walther's in position to cover you," Yuri grunted. "We'll follow from the west. Let's go."
And he was off with a flying start.
His Moonlight—backed with another Flash—was amazing.
He was skirting the radiation capacity that his Bubble could handle, but man.
It was super invigorating.
They had been running, no, almost sprinting through the forest for the last hour, and he still wasn't tired. He wanted to go even faster, run further, but the unfortunate thing was—
The effect of this artifact was the exact opposite of what Gabrielle's time anomalies did to him.
There, his mind worked without any limitations, but his body couldn't keep up.
Now, his brain felt too slow to coordinate his limbs, and he kept running into obstacles.
The Mama's Beads in this situation were an absolute godsend. Without them, he would have already been full of cuts and bruises—and, well, he still was, but they weren't half as bad.
'Don't space out now, airhead,' the parallel brain warned, sending a jolt through his body.
Without that, he would have run straight into a gnarled tree, but stopped at the last second.
He almost overshot.
From where he was, he could already see the source of all that black smoke, anyway.
A burned-out helicopter wreck in the middle of a small clearing.
"That doesn't look like it crashed hard enough to explode," Konrad mumbled.
'Yeah, the frame looks intact,' the voice confirmed. 'But the crew might have tried to set it on fire? Or they landed in one of those burner anomalies?'
The thought gave him the chills.
Yeah, when leaving the Wild Territories with an unconscious Dmitry, he encountered one.
But that was huge.
When did this thing even crashland here? It couldn't have been that long if he could still make out the details of the frame. But who would even send helicopters into this mess, and why?
"Konrad? Talk to me," Dmitry's voice crackled through the radio. "What is it?"
Oh. Right. He was here to scout.
He should have reported back.
"A downed chopper," he said, a little louder than intended. "It's burning. From an anomaly?"
"Can you see the crew?" the Captain asked, his voice more urgent now.
"Crap, I didn't even think about that," Konrad responded, scanning the wider area.
He could, in fact, see a man in a military uniform.
He even wore his pilot helmet, with a short-barrel AK hanging from his hand.
And all he did was stroll around.
Way too calm for surviving a crash-landing, with the burning wreck twenty paces behind.
It reminded him of something he had seen many of—
But it took a little longer than usual to put two plus two together.
"Fuck," Konrad grunted into his headset. "Looks like we have a zombie."