Chapter Fifteen - Pants of the Apocalypse

Alice wasn't sure if she was entirely comfortable in this new permutation of her magical girl outfit.

Sure, her normal outfit didn't follow the conventions, being one with pants and all, but this was... more different. "This is really stretching the definition of what counts as a magical girl outfit," Alice said.

"You think so?" Crystal asked.

Crystal was in thick army-style boots and tights. A heavy skirt hung around her waist, dropping down to mid-calf, and she was wearing a leathery trench coat over that. There was a hoodie under her coat, with a hooded top that was currently bunched up around her neck, and a mask hung by her front. Two big glass circles inset within a leather face with a plastic tube leading to a box affixed to the front of her outfit. With a pair of gloves on, and her hair pulled back into a tight bun, she looked... more or less ready for the post apocalypse.

"The skirt doesn't really fit," Alice pointed out.

Who wore skirts in the apocalypse?

"Alice," Crystal began. "You know I love you lots, right? But it would take more than just your opinion for me to start wearing pants."

Alice raised her hands in surrender. She wasn't going to start this argument. Her own outfit was much closer to what the Frenchman had pointed out. A leather-like poncho, some fatigues underneath, and a mask that had a full glass plate over her face. The poncho had a hood for her to tuck her hair into. The entire outfit, put together, made her a little androgynous, but she could live with that.

The Frenchman stared at them as they walked out of his backroom, fully equipped in gear he definitely didn't sell. He took a pull from a cigarette he must have lit while they were changing. "Weird fucks," he muttered.

Alice decided to pretend she couldn't hear him.

"What are we missing?" she asked instead as she came to a stop before him. She tugged her mask down a moment later. She didn't like the way it made her voice reverberate.

The Frenchman frowned, took another pull from his cigarette, then looked her up and down. It was more clinical than anything else. "If you're gonna go on pretending to be a Stalker, then you'll need a backpack. And weapons. Most have a knife or--"

The Frenchman cut himself off and glanced to the side where Crystal had manifested a belt around her waist and was tugging it on straighter. Her sword, Scintillating Disharmony, was in a scabbard by her side, the hilt a finely wrought piece of art.

He cleared his throat. "That'll catch some attention."

"I know how to use it!" Crystal said as she patted the hilt. "Alice taught me!"

Alice shook her head. She'd given Crystal a few pointers a few times. It was embarrassing to have someone trip over her own feet in a big team fight, especially when they were televised. It was hard enough convincing the world that they were better off letting the magical girls do what they needed to do without the world seeing up Crystal's skirts when she flipped herself upside down from swinging too hard.

"Most Stalkers carry guns, right?" Alice asked.

"Most, yeah," the Frenchmen said. "Knives, always, because you need them, and guns jam or run out of bullets. But guns too. Some of them have their father's PPSh, some have their great-grandpa's Mosin, and some Stalkers have the rubles to spill on a Kalashnikov. There's a lot of army surplus stock out there, and gear from the first push into the Zone."

"The first push?" Crystal asked.

The Frenchman pinched his cigarette between forefinger and thumb. "Merde, that was a while ago. Then the Zone first showed up. Everything went down, you see. Radio, TVs, everyone was confused. Then the first storms hit. They lasted for days. Storms that went back and forth. I... was on this side. Never was able to make it back to the other."

"The other side of the Zone, or the other side of the storms?" Alice asked.

"Same thing," he replied. "The army mobilised. Haven't seen it do that since the second world war. Ten million men pulled from reserves and given a week's training while the first scouts reported what they could about the edge of the Zone. The government called it an attack from the west."

"But it's not that, is it?" Crystal asked.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Nah, we know that now. There's a few places where you can cross over. The safest route is to go east, cross the country, then the pacific. Still some storms, but they're weaker. It's a bitch of a way though." He pointed to one side, more of less to the west. "If you want to get to Germany from here, it's a thousand kilometres. Used to be a day's ride by train. Now you need to go 'round the whole damned planet to get there."

"There's no other way?" Alice asked. She couldn't begin to imagine the consequences for global trade.

"Oh, there's a few. Some tunnels. I heard that they tried to build a huge covered highway further south, right through Moldova."

"Did it work?" Alice asked.

"No. Big storm swept through and undid two years of work in an afternoon. Some hundred-odd workers died, the whole thing was cancelled."

"What about that first push thing you mentioned," Crystal said.

The Frenchmen rubbed his chin. "That. That was a mess. A million young idiots with everything to lose, old equipment that had been yanked out of storage, machines that broke down all over. The government found out just how deep the corruption went when half of their equipment was missing or had been sold off for scrap. After a while they just started executing old officers for grift."

"Oh," Crystal said.

"Then they finally cordoned off the Zone and started to push in. That was before they walled up Pripyat. There were columns of men walking into the Zone as if they were walking off to the west like their grandfathers did, but they didn't find tanks and men with pointy-hats waiting for them. They found the Zone, and it found them wanting."

"What happened?" Alice asked.

"Everything happened. Back then, trinkets and artefacts were a lot more common. There were anomalies all over, and no one knew how to handle them. Men were getting stuck in time loops, others were being blown apart. Entire tank brigades would stop for the night, and come morning they were gone. Then they'd reappear a month later, just as confused as everyone else."

The Frenchman reached the end of his cigarette, looked at it, then flicked it across the room where it rolled close to a garbage pail.

"There was a rout, at some point, but it started from the front, from the men that had seen the worse the Zone had to offer. They came back... twisted. Not just in their heads, but their bodies too. Walking anomalies. That's when the walls went up. Not to stop the monsters of the Zone, but to stop the monsters they made of their own people by underestimating the Zone."

"That's awful," Crystal said. "On the other hand, we might get to fight zombies, which is kind of fun?"

"Crystal," Alice said, her tone warning. The Frenchman was afraid of them, both of them. She could taste it in the air. He was more afraid of what was in that Zone, but it was a different flavour of fear. He wouldn't go in there for all the money in the world, but the fear was nonetheless intellectual. He'd never seen the monsters, he just knew they existed.

She'd tasted that same flavour of fear from the religious and the devout when they came face-to-face with the reality that hell was real and that it was waiting for them. Dread certainty.

"Well, thank you for the story," Alice said.

"Are you two really going in there?" he asked.

"Of course," Crystal said. "Don't worry, we're not afraid of nothing!"

"That's... not... whatever," Alice sighed. "Yes, we'll be diving into this Zone. But we'll try to go in with a guide. You don't need to worry about us."

"Worry about you? You came in to my shop, paid me in that." He pointed to the crystalline statue of himself. "Then bought nothing. I don't think I'm going to worry about you. What I'm worried about is when the investigator comes here after tracing your steps. Actually, why don't you leave out the back?"

Alice wasn't expecting to be kicked out quite so easily, but she and Crystal found themselves usher out of the back door anyway. The man was brave, she'd give him that.

"So... we have a few hours to kill before we're supposed to meet Mister Koshei, right?" Crystal asked.

"Yes," Alice said.

"How about we find someplace to eat, then? I'm starving!"

"Oh my us! We forgot the amusement park!"

Alice sighed. She'd hoped that Crystal had forgotten that.

***