At the top of the hill, Ian could see for miles. There were patches of red and dark smoky looking areas. He was about to take out his binoculars for a better look when he had a sudden attack of dizziness, and then he became aware of the sound of someone crying in the woods behind him. Walking towards the sound, he came out into another opening. He was amazed to see his sister. She sat with her back against a tree sobbing into her hands. Her long blonde hair hid her face. She must have followed me, he thought. He stepped towards her, softly calling her name, so as not to frighten her, but she sprang up at him. It was not his sister at all. It was not even human. He was frozen with shock when a booming shot rang out, hitting the strange man like creature in the side of head.

A huge man, dressed in the green of a stalker, stepped out of the brush. He gave the boy a cold smile that never reached up through the hard planes of his face to his flinty eyes. “What are you doing here, boy? Don’t you know better than to trust anything you see in the zone? That was a controller. They get inside your head and take over. I have been tracking him for days. If he hadn’t been worn out from running, he could have taken both of us.”

“I thought it was my sister,” he stammered. The man was right, I should have known better. But Ian did not like the look of the man. He had a calculating look in his eyes, as if he were sizing Ian up to see if he could be of any use to him. This man is not to be trusted, Ian judged. He thinks me a fool, and I had better play the part. That should not be hard he thought. I have only just started, and already I have almost been killed, and now, I have become entangled with a dangerous man who I do not want at my back.

“No one should work alone in the zone, “the man said. “Are you by yourself?”

There was no point in lying. The truth was too easy to see, Ian thought.

“Yes, I am. I came to make my fortune,” he said, playing the fool.

“Well, you’re in luck I know just the place to go, and I need a new partner. My old one met with a …mishap.” Pointing down the hill at a low, squat, white building, he said, “That building is an old laboratory. There’s always a lot of valuable stuff in them, but it’s too dangerous for someone alone. You need one person to look and one to guard. There’s enough stuff there to make us both rich. Sometimes you can find artifacts just lying around on the ground outside. We can do it together. You lead looking out for stuff on the ground, and I’ll cover you.”

Ian knew it was not a question. He felt the older man watching his face to see if he took the bait. He tried to play along and sound enthused, “Great, I can’t wait to see what we find!”

“Good,” the man said, “Let’s get going.”

Ian started forward pushing his way through the brush. He felt a prickle in the middle of his back imagining the man’s gun pointed there. He scanned the area in front of him, hoping for something to help him escape, but there was nothing. Part way down the slope, he saw a pair legs sticking out of the brush. “I think there’s a body down here,” he hollered up to the man.

“Wait a minute, I’ll be right there,” the man hollered back.

Ian was staring at the body, which looked and smelled like burnt meat. Its face was gone, burned through to the bone in places. “What happened to him?” Ian asked, as the stalker approached.

“Anomaly, acid fog,” he said. Turning the body over, the man went through the dead man’s pack. He noticed Ian staring at him in disgust as he scavenged through the dead man’s belongings. “Don’t look at me like that, kid. In the zone, a man has to do what a man has to do. You’ll find that out, if you live long enough.” Removing the containers from the man’s pack, he opened them one at a time, briefly glancing at the contents. He threw the first two away, but his eyes went wide at the contents of the third. Hiding his surprise, he said to Ian, “Nothing special, but we might as well keep it. Let’s get going.”

Ian knew he was lying but kept silent. Again, the man fell back letting him take the lead. Ian kept looking, searching the ground, and waiting for a chance to get away.

He glanced back at the man following him down the hillside gauging the distance between them and was shocked to see a heavy gray cloud of mist flowing down over the top of the hill, descending soundlessly towards the stalker.

“Don’t look at me kid. Look at ground,” the man shouted.

Ian steeled himself to silence and walked a little faster, pretending to scan the ground in front of him. When he heard the first scream, he began to run. It was several minutes before he even dared to look behind him to see if the fog was still coming. Seeing nothing behind him, he slowed looking for some shelter. There was a small shed, an outbuilding of the laboratory. He ducked into it and shut the rickety door behind him. Sliding to the floor, his back against the wall, he rested. He needed to feel safe for just a few minutes.

He thought about the stalker who had so suddenly run out of luck. He had been right about one thing. The zone was no place for a man alone. He had to get in with a good group, but to do that he had to find some good stuff and make a name for himself. He realized what he had to do. Leaving the shed he back tracked to the hillside he had so recently fled.

There was no sign of the acid cloud. The man’s scorched and blackened body was sprawled on the hillside, his mouth stretched wide in the rictus of a silent scream. “You were right,” Ian said to the lifeless body, “A man has to do what a man has to do.” Pulling the tattered backpack from beneath the corpse he removed the containers and placed them in his own pack. Watching for any sign of the deadly fog, he began to make his way out of the zone.