From the Zone with love

Author's note: After a vicious encounter with Writer's Block, I think I'm finally back into the game! Let's have a small insight into my new OC, The Piper, shall we? Might not be my proudest work, but it got me writing again ;-;

Warning for cannibalism mention (and the usual Zone related fuckery and violence)

The first bite into a downed prey used to be the worst, when the still warm blood would gush out and fill everything with its metallic taste. But now he barely noticed it anymore, too hungry after days without eating. As leader of the pack he got the first bite, but soon the dogs would get rowdy, eager to tear a chunk out of the boar too. Squatting and eating raw flesh like that, face covered in blood, it was difficult to tell if he was still human or just another abomination of the Zone.

#

Dimitry had lost his stalker guide and his team, but he still had hopes to get out of the Zone alive if he turned tail now. However, the whispers didn't agree with that. And his pride didn't either, truth be told. In his job reputation was everything, he couldn't go back empty handed! The background noise in his brain seemed to hum in agreement. Funny how he'd gotten used to that. Perhaps today he'd be able to sleep at last.

It began two days ago, when Dimitry heard the warning for an impending blowout while crossing the vehicle graveyard. He hid in one of the abandoned jeeps and waited, trusting the thin metal carcass to shield him from the radiation storm. However, when the earth shook and the blood red sky looked like it was going to burn down, Dimitry's mind burned too.

Didn't matter how many anti-radiation pills he took, or that he'd closed his eyes and tried to ignore the ghostly mutants he'd seen crawling around during the emission. In the end, when everything seemed to go back to normal, the whispers stayed. Always in the back of his mind, too quiet to properly understand what they said, but always there.

#

Ironically, their guide, a stalker named Vasya, had been the first to die. The bandits ambushed them, and once they saw Vasya hit the gorund the rest all scattered in diferent directions. Dimitry saw one of his guys get suddenly snatched up in the air and then, boom, gone.

Vasya's demonstration with bolts hadn't prepared him for the reality of seeing someone die in an anomaly.

The other man simply vanished out of Dimitry's sight. He never found out what happened to him.

#

Dimitry avoided the more populated areas. Other stalkers tended to get nervous when they saw him and his dogs. And when stalkers got nervous, their fingers were always on the trigger.

That was fine. He preferred his dogs to other stalkers anyways. He couldn't remember how it started, but after having the first few blind dogs following him, more started to join. He now had some pseudo-dogs too. Old and gnarled, but still fierce. And they were all following him. This pleased Dimitry, since he vaguely remembered wanting a dog, yes? Or was it that he had a dog before? No, that couldn't be right. He had wanted a dog. Now he had many. Dimitry was finally happy.

#

The rookie smelled like fear. He knew it because his dogs knew it. The stalker said something, but he had difficulty understanding him. It had been a long time since he talked to someone. Last time he found stalkers wandering around his forest they tried to shoot him and his pack, calling him monster. He felt his mouther water remembering the taste of their bone marrow and one of the dogs whined. They were all hungry.

"... I need to go back to the Bar. Can you help?" the rookie repeated slowly. "I'll pay you for it, I swear."

He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile. "Yes, help."

#

Sitting on his antique desk, Dimitry laughed. This idiot had just agreed to pay him a goddamn fortune. And all for what, a special kind of albino dog? He'd have to find a way into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, but he had contacts in Ukraine who would take care of that part. How hard could it be to smuggle a pseudo-dog into Moscow? Not much, if you knew which palms to grease and who to threaten. This job was gonna be easy as pie, ha!