Tragedy at the Garbage Junkyard

I was playing through the Barkeep's mundane missions and chose to "Eliminate the bandits at the Garbage."  This mission has you returning to the junkyard to kill off the bandits that infest the woods surrounding the Garbage Junkyard.  What I didn't realize is this mission is a death sentence for Bes and the remaining fighters in the junkyard and the game does intend to collect by any means necessary.

"Neither a saint, nor a scoundrel. The Barkeep knows his worth and is respected by all stalkers." ~ STALKER Wiki

Eliminate the bandits at the Garbage

Reward: 2000 RU, bottle of vodka and an F1 grenade.  A job, eh? Let's see what we've got… Aha! Here you go: can you knock out that pack of bandits at the Garbage? The Duty, with all their speeches about law and order, just can't get down to it. Those are some rare scumbags, so they won't last long anyway. But the guy who gets them first will score big… and the booze is on me, of course.

The woods behind the junkyard are filled with several anomalies, artifacts and a few goodies stashed by the bandits.  If you take the fight tot he bandits rather than allowing them to invade the junkyard, expect to run into 8-10 bandits intent on killing you and everyone else in the junkyard.

"I try to fight the lawless just as I did on the outside. I train up rookies and teach them to survive in the Zone." ~ Bes

I rushed back into the woods and carefully engaged all of the bandits while dashing behind trees, crates, and the concrete highway tubes.  I quickly dispatched all of them and began looting, confident I'd spared my  Junkyard Comrades a death at the hands of the vicious bandits.  About halfway through stacking the bodies, I began to hear sounds of gunfire and dogs.

Occasionally, dogs will run through an area and the local will open fire on them.  But these were different sounds, the dogs were attacking the remaining Stalkers, and they were winning.  I ran over to their campfire in time to see Bes firing away at two dogs.  I managed to shoot one of them, but Bes fell to the remaining dog.

Glorious Russian BBQ: Not all dogs go to heaven, some burn slowly, tenderized and marinated by 9x19...

I played through this turn of events several times, but in each turn, Bes fell to either dogs or bandits.  This man's time had come and death was certain to punch his timecard.  Distraught over losing an ally, I did what any Stalker would do - I avenged his death.

Stacking the Dead
This tactic was born of necessity.  Some maps can get pretty crowded and when looting the bodies, you need some way to tell which have been looted and which have not.  Stacking them into piles can alleviate this.  In addition to wasting time, it can also make you a target to re-spawned forces - making more bodies needed to be stacked.