I return to the Hunter's house with a full basin of water, collected from a blue, peeling, and slightly crooked water pump, for washing dishes. I volunteered to help the Hunter with the dishes; the old man himself sat at the table, sipping herbal tea.
"We need to decide where you'll sleep," the stalker began, setting aside his mug of tea.
"I can find a place to sleep; I'll squeeze in with other stalkers if needed," I reply, lathering a frying pan with detergent.
"Not suitable," the Hunter disagrees. "They'll rob you blind, and it's not right to sleep in such flea-ridden places; it's better to sleep in an open field. Less chance of catching an infection."
"Infection?"
"Heh, of course," the stalker chuckles, scratching his cheek. "Diseases and, what's it called, unsanitary conditions, yeah, no one's canceled that. It's not a sanatorium here, you know. Stalkers get sick, and how they get sick, and many don't pay attention to hygiene. You'll catch lice or some other nastiness, and there's no one to treat it here."
"So maybe I can arrange for a room separately? I have a little money, and I'll earn more there," I calculate in my head how much renting a room might cost, and realize it would be expensive.
"No, son, it still won't work. There are no separate rooms here for anyone," the old man dismisses my suggestion again. "There are few houses here, some are destroyed, some are in personal use, like mine. And the rest are inhabited by stalkers, they lie packed together. They try not to let seriously ill people in, of course, but there are many other carriers."
"Can't I stay with you?" I ask and turn to the stalker, seeing him prop his chin on his fist, leaning on the table. "I won't bother you, and I can pay."
"Hmm, that's an idea, son," the Hunter says, clapping his knees and getting up from the chair. "You finish washing the dishes, and I'll go see where I can fit you in the house."
A couple of minutes later, the old man enters the room and beckons me to follow. I walk behind him into another room and see a workshop equipped with tools, some metal machines, presumably for making cartridges. But judging by the layer of dust on one of the cluttered tables, no one had worked here for a long time. There were also two more doors in this room, one of which the Hunter pointed to.
"Here," he opens the door, and I see a two-by-three-meter closet filled with all sorts of junk. "Just need to clean it up, and it'll be your room. We'll start now. The room next door, if anything, is my bedroom."
"Okay," I enter the small room, surveying the cleaning work ahead. Ideally, the whole house needs a thorough cleaning, but that's for later. "And what are the rules for living here?"
"It's simple," the stalker replies, starting to clear the clutter with me. "Don't make noise, and don't touch my things without permission."
Then we cleared out the various junk the Hunter had accumulated over the years of his stay here. Rusty metal pieces, cans, remnants of something wooden, and various plastic trash. I can understand that he might need a plastic mayonnaise jar for something, but why he needed a bottomless bucket, I don't know. Then he handed me a damp rag, and I started wiping the floor while the stalker went to one of his acquaintances for a mattress, pillow, and blanket.
"Here," he hands me a mattress and blanket rolled into a spiral with a pillow in the center. "Tomorrow I'll find a table; I have a chair, as well as a kerosene lamp. Do you know how to use it?"
"I think so."
"Well, if you don't understand something, don't hesitate to ask," the old man pats me on the shoulder. "I'll throw a couple more logs into the stove; it'll be warm in the house, so you won't freeze your kidneys sleeping on the floor. No extra bed, sorry, none in the village. Oh, the toilet is outside, behind the house. Here's the key to the front door; if you leave, lock it behind you. Good night."
"Sweet dreams," I reply, closing the door behind him, and then settle onto the mattress, falling asleep.
Emerging from my room in the morning, I find the old man settled at the dust-free table with a disassembled rifle in his hands. A desk lamp burned with a yellow light above his workspace, and the Hunter wore glasses.
"Good morning," I greet him.
"Good, good," he replies, not looking up from cleaning the weapon. "Food is on the table; after you eat, wash the dishes, then go see Volk; I arranged for him to show you around. We'll go hunting tomorrow, as soon as I finish with the rifle."
After breakfast and finishing other household chores, I pack my backpack; who knows where Volk will take me, it's better to be prepared for anything. I leave the house, locking the door behind me and tucking the key into my jacket's chest pocket. I stretch on the porch and take a deep breath, exhaling slowly afterward. The weather is good today. The sun is shining, large white clouds are floating across the sky. It doesn't look like it will rain. As soon as I step outside the crooked fence, a stalker bumps into me.
"Sorry, sorry," he smiles. The guy is my height, with long red hair that curls into ringlets and a scattering of freckles on his cheeks and nose. "I'm in a hurry to see the Hunter; is he lucid right now?"
"Yes, he's working right now," I reply and ask in return. "Do you know where to find Volk?"
"Why look for him? He's right there, sitting by the fire, with a Makarov on his shoulder," the stalker pats me on the shoulder and walks towards the Hunter's house, and a few seconds later, a knock sounds behind me.
I look in the direction he indicated and see a stalker sitting alone on his haunches by the fire. It's less crowded in the Novice Village in the morning than in the evening, which is understandable, though. I walk straight towards Volk, observing the first character from the game I'm seeing in person. He looks like him, very much like him. A narrow face, dark hair and stubble, he's wearing a gray jumpsuit with a hood thrown back and a respirator hanging on his chest, though there was no tube going to his back.
"Hello, Volk," I greet him first, to which he looks up from the fire. "I'm from the Hunter."
"Ah, hello, so he took you under his wing?" he replies, getting up from the crate and extending his hand for a handshake. "Well, first, I'll say thank you."
"Thank you for what?" I raise my eyebrows in surprise and shake his firm hand.
"For helping the old man," Volk says. "Almost all the local old-timers owe him a lot. We even thought about hiring someone ourselves to search for the rifle, but you beat us to it."
"You're welcome," I shrug in response.
"Yes, there is a reason," my interlocutor chuckles. "Most stalkers would have either kept the Hunter's weapon for themselves or sold it to avoid trouble. It's a very good gun; you could even sell it to some collector if you had connections."
"So, I'm a little better than most of those stalkers, nothing special. The Hunter said you'd show me around?"
"Yeah, let's go," the stalker says and heads out of the village. "It's not far from here, beyond the village, there's an anomaly zone; we call it the Meat Grinder. Usually, I gather a few rookies and give them, so to speak, a school excursion. But the Hunter asked for you, and I won't have to show you the places mutants prefer and tell you where to hit them, so it won't take long."
On the way to the anomaly zone, I saw open doors leading to Sidorovich's bunker. After a few minutes of walking, we arrived at a dug-out pit full of various debris. I remember this place, and it's not much different from how it was in the game. Rusted iron pipes, remnants of some car cabins, and besides iron, there were also concrete pipes, also in large quantities. And even standing on its edge, by a small fence of iron wire, the dosimeter was crackling noticeably. And the radiation level inside this pit was even higher.
"Here's the Meat Grinder," Volk begins, pulling on his respirator. I follow his example and put on a gas mask. "Now we can start the lesson. First, there are different types of anomalies. In this pit, there are two types. Vortex and Carousel."
"And what's the difference?"
"That's not so important for now," the stalker replies. "Later, I'll send you a summary of anomalies on your PDA that I and other stalkers have managed to collect. You can read everything I don't tell you there. Second, detecting an anomaly with the naked eye is very, very difficult, but possible. For example, a carousel can be recognized by a light dust vortex, but it's hard, and you can't mark the anomaly's boundaries this way. Therefore, stalkers use bolts, nuts, or anything else sufficiently heavy and convenient to throw. The main thing is that the flight of this object can be easily tracked. Watch."
After that, Volk takes a large nut from his side pocket and throws it forward, causing a multicolored shimmer to appear in the air and then disappear. The stalker turns to me, but then something resembling a ball of meat on long legs runs out from behind one of the concrete pipes. I don't have time to raise my sawed-off shotgun before the mutant hits the anomaly, it spins in all directions, then compresses, I hear the chomping of meat and the cracking of bones, and then this mass scatters in all directions, dousing us with blood.
"Damn, what was that?" I ask the stalker.
"That was a good demonstration of how anomalies work, rookie," Volk chuckles. "And that was a flesh. Ask the Hunter later; he'll explain better. It's strange that
it wandered so close to the camp. Well, screw it. Will you try to go in?"
"Are you suggesting I go into the Meat Grinder just like that?" I didn't really want to go in at first, and after seeing the flesh torn apart, I wanted to go even less.
"Well, why not for a reason," Volk replies and pulls out a device from his pocket that reminds me of one of the artifact detectors in the game. Then he opens the lid, pokes somewhere on the device's panel, and a beep sounds. "For an artifact, and you'll get some practice too. And, son, it's not as dangerous here as you think. The anomalies in the pit itself aren't that dense; even two or three people can pass through safely. I'll give you nuts, as well as a simple detector, and I'll guide you if you do something wrong."
"And why do I feel like you knew there was an artifact there before you turned on the detector?"
"I knew," he agrees. "It's a kind of bravery test for rookies. The artifact there isn't particularly valuable, Sidrovich can sell it for three thousand, so there's at least some motivation to go down there. True, it's been lying there for two weeks already, no one dared."
"Even with the detector and your help?" I ask, surprised.
"Even so," Volf nods. "Do you agree?"
"Yes, give me the detector, the nuts, and I'll go," I extend my hand to take the device from Volf's hands, but he hides it back in his pocket, and in response to my bewildered look, he says:
"No, you'll go with something else," the stalker hands me a yellow box with "Otklik" written on the side. "What's the point of you learning to find artifacts with a powerful detector if you won't have one for a long time? So here, the very first artifact detector sample, Otklik. When it detects an artifact, it emits an audible signal; the closer you are to it, the more intense the signal will be."
"By the way," I begin, taking Otklik and the nuts from Volf's hands. "Why are detectors needed at all, especially powerful ones, if artifacts can be found anyway?"
"It's easier than searching with your eyes," the stalker explains. "Take it out, check, and you know there are no artifacts here, or there are, as in our case, it saves a lot of time. And some artifacts still can't be found without these devices."
"Why?"
"Why – I don't know, and no one knows, not even scientists," Volf says. "Just remember that the deeper you are in the Zone, the more you need a powerful detector. In the southern territories, you can find artifacts without them, some rookies make a living this way. They walk for hours around the Cordon, searching, sometimes even finding something. But beyond the Garbage Dump, you won't find anything without a detector."
"Okay," I turn on the detector, take a nut with my free hand, and turn to face the pit.
I didn't want to climb into the anomaly cluster at all, even though, according to Volf, it wasn't too dangerous. But it's better to learn this skill here and now, especially when offered, than to get caught in one of them later and die. And even the cheapest artifact wouldn't be superfluous at the moment. Good gear costs money, and I'll have to save up for it for a long time.
I step behind the barbed wire fence, and the dosimeter starts going crazy from the background radiation. I ignore it and throw a nut in front of me, clean. I walk forward, make another throw, an anomaly, I throw to the right, I can go. Ugh, I don't want to go past that pile of radioactive iron, but I have to.
As soon as I pass the rusty iron, the detector starts blinking and beeping slowly. I glance around the pit; the artifact isn't visible from my side, I'll have to go around. I'll go to that UAZ cabin, if I'm not mistaken, and look around there. I don't forget to throw nuts in all directions, thankfully Volf gave me a large plastic bag filled with nuts. It barely fit in my jacket pocket, I had to move the shotgun shells to make it fit.
The closer I got to the remains of the car, the louder and more frequent the detector beeped. And yes, I was lucky, the artifact was right there. I take off my backpack and quickly transfer the brown oval stone with blue glowing indentations. I need to hurry and get out of here, I don't want to get too much radiation.
"You managed," I say to Volf, approaching him.
"Well done, now give me your hand," I extend my right hand, after which he quickly rolls up my sleeve and injects something into my vein. "This is for radiation, it works well. And another lesson, if you're going into a place with increased radiation, always keep a couple of these anti-rads in reserve."
"And how much does such a pleasure cost?"
"It depends," the stalker replies. "At Sidrovich's, one such syringe will cost seven hundred fifty. But you don't need too much anti-rad anyway, you won't like an overdose of the medicine. Don't inject more than a couple or three a day, but that's for the future. Alright, let's go to the village."