Murder of crows was startled into flight at the edges of Black Forest by a shotgun blast. A lone pseudodog collapsed down, its ragged fur painted red by buckshot pellets. As its laboured breathing fizzled out, the shooter closed in and finished the job with a sharp, large blade. The man in Noon faction's Apex suit extracted the mutant's tail and parts of its meat, skinning the beast and cutting off chunks of flesh with trained movements. Once satisfied, he took out a plastic bag for the tail and meat and threw it into his rucksack. Rest of his squad soon joined up, taking a look at the carcass.

"You see, Dragoslav, that these things hold value. The tail, for example, is worth a pretty penny from the scientists, but even regular stalkers and especially men from the Hunter clan will pay well for them. And while dogs have little good meat, what is there is alright when cooked with some vegetables or herbs.", the stalker, Amur, noted, while cleaning his blade.

"What do the stalkers do with them, then?", Dragoslav asked, watching the mutant with a mix of curiosity and fear.

"Many things. Some just want a trophy once they leave the Zone, others use it as a talisman for good luck. Some folks, like the Druids, think you can use those to avoid fighting certain mutants. And some use them for pranks, I sold one to a hunter who somehow attached it to his mate's suit. It took the poor guy like an hour to figure out why everyone were smirking at him.", Amur reminisced, his slight smile contrasting the monotone voice of his.

"Let me guess, he ran away with a tail between his legs afterwards?", Dragoslav joked, and the others let out dry chuckles.

Foma, the group leader, took a look at his map and compass while the others continued shooting shit, and with a grunt, ordered them to follow him once the path was clear again. Amur was relieved of his pointman duties for a while, because even though he was the most experienced in that role, even the best of stalkers needed a momentary rest. They had been walking for three hours, and in the Zone, that could feel like three times as long, especially in an area as dangerous and secluded as Black Forest. Dragoslav was starting to get hungry and tired, as he was still recovering from the car crash, but he was too proud to complain. These men had gone through hell to get here and see him on the whim that he would be like them, and even when it had been revealed that Dragoslav was no ordinary Monolith soldier, these stalkers had still offered him a place to stay.

"Up ahead, brothers, I see the checkpoint. Guns ready, it might be occupied by someone... Or something.", Foma ordered, interrupting Dragoslav's musings.

The four others swung their guns around into attention, and with careful steps to avoid any branches or dry leaves, they moved towards the small outpost. It was barely more than a small white military house, with couple windows and a rusted roof, guarding a large gate. Still, anything could lurk in such places... well, except for a pseudogiant, unless one was particularly nimble. Their barrels staring down the lonely construct, Foma advanced close enough to peer in. He immediately jolted back as a horribly pained wheeze echoed in the brisk air. Dragoslav saw a brief flash of something ragged and deformed bolting from the building on four legs, before the gunfire began. He discharged his weapon to where he had spotted whatever the thing had been, but Dragoslav was only rewarded with a puff of sand as the projectile veered upwards off the ground. He only registered anything else when Amur grabbed him by the shoulder and tossed him to the side.

Again for a flash of a second Dragoslav saw a humanoid creature fly by him and land roughly where he had been prior to being pushed aside. Amur's shotgun roared, and the creature disappeared in a red cloud, the wheeze interrupted. Dragoslav scrambled to his feet now, holding the empty rifle in his hands, and what awaited him was a nightmarish sight. The mutant, clearly former human, was covered in wounds, festering and gnawed. Its head was hidden under a worn and cracked gasmask, but it was positioned so that the lipless mouth and rotten teeth were showing. But worst were the hands of the abomination, it had somehow chewed its own fingers to the point that at places, bone was showing. Dragoslav turned around and promptly vomited.

"Now now, lad, this is not the time to be delicate. These bastards travel in packs. Reload that musket of yours and get ready!", Amur ordered, and Dragoslav did so, swallowing the bitter taste from his mouth.

Thankfully, after the squad formed a circle to cover their backs, no other mutated aberrations of nature seemed to appear. When five minutes had passed and no being had crossed their firing lines, Foma ordered the group to stand down. Amur began extracting parts from the mutant again, much to the dismay and confusion of Dragoslav.

"That's a snork. Former human, turned into mindless, agile beast by emissions, I believe. Amur's taking a trophy for sale, as the ecologists are using snork parts for research.", Clover commented as he saw Dragoslav's expression.

"Ugh, horrid thing. Why the name snork though?", Dragoslav asked.

"Some German guy was doing reporting here after the initial disaster, I think he called them snorkels and that led to them becoming snorks in local lingo. Anyways, Foma told me to get you ready for Devil's Trail, we need to keep going if we want to avoid spending the night in Black Forest.", Clover explained, and Dragoslav nodded, watching Amur clean his blade.

Fifteen minutes of looting the outpost and the UAZ truck next to it later, and the squad was back on the road. The road, however, kept getting narrower and narrower by the hour, and as the shadows grew longer, the dirt road turned into a small path in the woods. The woods were eerily quiet around them, the silence only occasionally cracked by a cawing crow or some small animal dashing further into the darkness after spotting the squad. Everyone was quiet, contemplating on things as it seemed, especially in the case of Dragoslav. He was trying his hardest to pull back memories of his past, but kept coming up empty-handed, bar for memories of stalkers. The things that he remembered were of scavenging various abandoned buildings, diving into fields filled with those rifts in reality to fetch some unnatural objects, and of long nights by the fire, rifle on his lap. Things that Foma and the scientists had told him began to click with him, meeting those images of long-forgotten actions with the stories he had heard to form a coherent understanding.

"Stop. Anomalies ahead.", Hyena ordered, having taken the lead only moments ago.

"Many?", Foma asked quickly.

"There. Between the trees up ahead, a bunch of Ghosts.", the leading stalker replied, pointing at a faint green source of light.

"Ghosts? As in dead spirits?", Dragoslav blurted out, receiving a dry scoff from Amur.

"No, although those are not a rarity in the Zone. And to be fair I could go for spirits right now... Anyway, Ghosts are green chemical anomalies, a smaller form of a Comet anomaly, which circle on a pre-determined path. They're very dangerous as I have seen them literally melt men in a single pass, but you can avoid them if you have the patience to observe their patterns.", the old tracked explained, and Dragoslav nodded, not knowing what to add.

They stepped into a small clearing, filled with trees that had been melted mid-way through. The leaves on them had long burned away from exposure to hazardous chemicals. Green, almost alive-looking orbs circled the clearing like haunting spectres, and Dragoslav could feel some foul stench emanating from them even through his gasmask. Amur took the lead and took out some form of measurement device, a thick yellow box with a display screen and couple buttons. The machine whirred for a second, then chirped cheerily and the screen lit up. The scout let out an approving grunt, and took out a bolt, tossing it in front of him. This continued for quite some time, at times the bolt getting turned into paste by a flying green orb, making Amur change course. The others followed behind, sweating under their suits as some of the Ghosts passed mere centimetres from them. The suits were holding... for now.

"There's an artifact there, looks like a Slug.", Clover noted quietly.

"You don't need to whisper, Clover, the anomalies can't hear you.", Hyena mocked, but just then one of the Ghosts struck a tree branch and made a sharp noise.

"You sure about that?", Dragoslav murmured, and Hyena looked far less smug.

"Let's leave the artifact for now, I really don't want to spend the night in Devil's Trail and it's already six o'clock.", Foma ordered, and they marched on in the anomaly field.

Finally, one of Amur's bolts landed back on a path without anomalies, and the group hurriedly clamoured out of the deadly clearing. Only once the green glow of the Ghosts faded into the darkening day could they breath freely, and slowly one by one they removed their helmets and gasmasks to swipe away the sweat. Dragoslav had not felt so tense ever since waking up to almost hypothermia and starvation, but at the same the adrenaline coursing through his veins did make him feel more alive than ever since his supposed rebirth. Amur let out a long sigh, took out some chewing tobacco and cursed.

"It doesn't get easier with experience, I can tell you that much. At least when I was still wearing the winged patch, I didn't have to deal with breaking nerves.", Amur commented.

"Feeling my nerves break is a billion times better than being an unfeeling slave.", Foma replied in a stern tone.

"Absolutely. But my feeble old heart can't take this much excitememt for long.", Amur sighed.

"I'll have Strider look for a desk job for you, then.", Foma said bluntly.

"Blyat, no, that would torment me more than any anomaly field. Forget I said anything.", Amur backpedaled, and the others chuckled.

After roughly fifteen minutes of walking, Amur stopped them and took a quick look at a nearby rock, a large and uniquely shaped rock at that. He hummed approvingly and told the group that they were no further than half an hour from the edge of Devil's Trail. Their pace quickened, partly because of these news and partly because the sky was getting dark and light dim. Nobody spoke for this last leg of the journey, far too preoccupied with getting to a shelter before dark. Dragoslav had heard Hyena mention that mutants would become more active during night, especially strong ones that he had called bloodsuckers and chimeras, but even before Dragoslav had instinctively known that night meant only bad things in the Zone.

Distant howling perked everyone up, but Amur noted that the thing he called a pseudodog was roughly two kilometres from their location. The sudden leap back into attention was not wasted, however, as the warm glow of a live fire flickered between the trees. The squadmembers readied their weapons and Foma signaled for everyone to approach the fire slowly from many sides. They creeped forward, Dragoslav feeling his heart pound in his chest as the campfire came into view.

By the fire, a single person was sitting in a grey trenchcoat, a heavy military helmet on his head and mutant bones assembled around his attire. Foma closed in as silently as he could, and got so close that he managed to push his rifle barrel onto the man's head.The man tumbled down, almost into the campfire from this impact, and Foma jumped back. The "man" turned out to be just a sack of potatoes and couple sticks.

"Halt! Holster your weapons, we have you zeroed.", came a shout from the dark, followed by three flares thrown, flooding the squad in light.

"Okay, okay, calm down.", Foma said and signaled his men to stand down, pained expression on his face.

Three men holding heavy weapons came into the light, dressed in similar grey trenchcoats and military helmets. Curiously, none of them had any devices on them, not even the anomaly detectors even Dragoslav had. One of them removed his helmet, revealing a weathered face with grey beard and hair.

"Blin, if it isn't Noon then. Foma, that you? Strider won't be happy you fell for such an old gag.", the man bellowed in a far friendlier tone now.

"Pavel? What brings you to this place? And I assure you, if you let Strider know of this mistake, I'll let Augur know of that time in Hidden Valley...", Foma replied sternly.

"I'm just messing with you, of course. And we're here on Augur's orders, actually, one of Butcher's best hunters went missing and well, you know the reputation this place has, so he wanted someone a bit more... connected to the Zone to see if the lost hunter could be found.", Pavel replied, and Amur scoffed at the mention of Devil's Trail reputation.

"Really? Some rumours about "the Devil" got Butcher all weak at the knees? I've passed here many times, and all I've seen are some dogs, volks and couple tarks, no mythical Zone beasts.", Amur said in a scornful tone.

"Devil or not, this is difficult terrain. Our specialty. Or do you contest that, Amur?", one of Pavel's men asked, equally scornful, and Amur hesitantly shook his head.

"Could you fill me in on who these guys are?", Dragoslav whispered to Hyena.

"Druids. Zone legends. And if you wait a minute, they'll probably tell you all about themselves, if I know them one bit.", Hyena muttered back.

"Bottom line is, we're here to find a hunter, care to join us?", Pavel offered, but Foma declined.

"We're on our way to the base as soon as possible. Still, we probably need to camp here for the night, care to join us?", Foma proposed in turn, and only now did Dragoslav realize that there was more than just a campfire here, a whole small encampment spread out around them.

"Sure. Let's split the watches equ-", Pavel began, but was cut of by an inhuman screech reverberating throughout the forest, freezing everyone's blood before it abruptly ended.

"What the...", Clover managed to say as the scream ended.

"Why did this place have a reputation again?", Dragoslav asked quickly, suddenly nowhere near as sure that he had made the right choice with his travelling companions.

"Well, it's a long story... Let's set up camp and defenses, and I can tell you that. Unless whatever the fuck that was interrupts me, of course.", Pavel said in a gloomy tone.