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Land of Death: The Lotus Flower: Chapter 1

I walked through the shanty town station, rickety shacks made of sheet metal and scrap wood, scattered about the station. A few anthropomorphic wolves huddled around a barrel with a fire in it, for warmth.

One looked up at me, he gave a weak smile and I nodded in response.

The sight of the wolves and other furs around the barrels saddened me, food and water was not easy to come by, at least without getting radiation poisoning or eaten by mutants that roamed the shadows.

Life was hard but me and my brother Kostya where some of the most skilled scavengers in the entire metro system. I was returning from a scavenging run which had turned up something quite interesting, a map.

I spotted my house with trade booth next door. Kostya was sitting in a rocking chair behind the booth, reading a book.

I stepped up to the booth and knocked on the counter. He looked up, a smile grew across his scaly maw.

"Brother! You return from the hunt! How was it? Did you find anything special? Food? Water? Gold?-" I cut him off before he could continue. "Let us talk in private brother."

Kostya's eyes grew a twinkle and he stood up turning the open sign over to the closed sign and locked the wears away. He motioned for me to follow him, he lead the way into the house.

When we were inside the small shack Kostya sat down in a nice oak rocking chair, I sat across from him in a large leather chair.

He looked at me intently bringing his right leg up and resting his foot on his left knee, and leaning back folding his arms letting the chair rock by itself.

I reached into my satchel and fished out a leather pouch, and handed it to Kostya who took it and flipped it in his hand looking at the seal. His mouth dropped open with surprise.

"How!?! I never? But where?" My brother asked surprised. "City center"

He expression went from surprise to pure anger. "You did WHAT! Are you an imbecile! trying to get yourself killed! Where you even thinking!" Kostya ranted until he finally stopped and took a breath. "I don't care, just please, don't do it again."

"Brother" I said to get him to look me in the eye, "This is our chance to leave to get out of this nightmare."

My brother nodded and opened the leather pouch exposing a presten map, the title above it said " Lotus: Experimental Technologies Bunker."

He pushed it back into the leather pouch and nodded his head, a smile forming across his maw. He looked me in the eye, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

"We leave tomorrow, if anyone asks we are going on a routine scavenging run." Kostya said.

He walked over to the wall to my right, covered with a wool blanket, he snached down the wool blanket exposing an array of weapons; guns, knifes, gas masks with filters, armor, ammo.

Kosya pulled an SVD Dragunov off the wall, looked it over and tossed it to me.

"Be ready to leave early in the morning." Kostya said, I nodded in understanding.

I got up from my chair and walked over to the wall and pulled a vest and backpack from the wall. I loaded up six, ten round magazines for the SVD. Eight mags for my Makarov, two hand grenades, one smoke canister, and a gas mask with three spare filters.

Kostya pulled his own vest and backpack from the wall. He took a AK-107 with Cobra sight, eight mags for his rifle and eight more for his 1911 pistol. one grenade, two smoke canisters, a few mines of different types and a gas mask with filters.

"If I were you I would get some sleep Alexander" Kostya said.

I nodded in agreement, it had been a long journey home. I decided to hit the hay on the sofa, so I could get up early, there would be a long rail car ride tomorrow.