"Hey you! Passport!" The four men approaching the one hundred meter checkpoint of Kitai-Gorod looked up sharply, looking at the seven men sitting beside a fire, just behind the fire, a big 7.62x54mm machine gun. The seven men of the checkpoint all stand up. Big strong armored men. Helmets and shemags on their heads. One of the men, with a big double barrled shotgun on his shoulder. This thing isn't one of the Armory or Market made Duplets. This is an honest to god before the war shotgun. All sleek, with long steel barrels and wooden butt. The four men in the tunnel all raise their hands slowly. All of them decked down with big heavily laden backpack and bags. Merchants by the looks of them. They have weapons, but the seven Kitai-Gorod men are not so worried. Three of the bandits step forward and begin to go through the bags of the four traders by the looks of it. Out come horns of ammo, food, water, drinks, flasks of vodka and other beverages of choice. Items that these four out of the tunnel intended to trade here at the station or beyond, but all of this seems to be pay for the guards here. As one of the bandits gets to the last man he suddenly bolts, back down the way he came.

Stanislav sighed and leveled his shotgun. But held up at the last moment. He grinned instead, "Naw, not gonna waste ammo on that one. All alone down the line, if the Darkness don't get him, something else will. Nosalies, Watcher maybe. Who the hell cares. He dies either way." The other bandits all laugh in agreement and send the remaining three down the line, ignoring their protests that almost a third of their wares have been taken as "toll". Stanislav the big man with the shot gun grabs himself some bread, and a few beakers of vodka and sits back down.

As he does he hears the telltale growl of something, then a hiss and a scream of fear. Stanislav laughs, "See? What'd I tell you." A howl, like something calling other things to arms can be heard followed a few moments later by the scream of someone being taken down by several large hungry predators.

Stanislav makes no faces, he just cracks open one of the beakers and takes a good pull from the contents, "Ah, mushroom vodka. The good stuff. Likely from VDNKh. Just like that bag of tea. The really good stuff." He laughed loudly. One of the men stoking the fire, no one paying attenion that maybe 200 meters down the line, someone is being feasted upon.