Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

Shit, my prospects really don’t look all that good. I don’t want this!

Ah, well, I remember there was something else I didn’t want not so long ago. Did it make any difference to those bandits? They’re looking for me now. Odds on they’ve turned that staircase upside by now. They won’t forgive me.

But what if I come to a deal with them? I show them my basement, hand over my gun. They won’t kill me right there, will they? But implacable logic tells me there’s no chance. They will kill me, and if it’s straight away I’ll be lucky. It could turn out to be a whole lot worse than that.

There’s no way out of it.

Sure, Tarkov’s not a small town. But you can’t call it a big city either. I don’t know the other parts of it, I’ve always lived here. This is my home. There’s no guarantee I’ll be met with open arms in another neighbourhood. Another Makar, another barracks. No, thanks.

I turn awkwardly and curse wildly with pain. Some piece of iron has spiked me painfully in the leg, right through my trousers. That’s what comes of hanging round in all this junk! Suddenly my confusion is replaced by fury. They want to kill me! And not just shoot me, they want to make a whole song and dance out of it. So, one corpse isn’t enough for you, eh? Then there’ll be another! I do have a gun too, you know. And I know how to use it, as some of you may have noticed already.

“But can you really shoot at a living human being? Not accidentally pull the trigger, but consciously and decisively? Wanting to kill someone, to see their hot blood splash onto the tarmac? Can you watch calmly as they die, killed by your hand?”

Yes, actually, I can!

When you’re playing a computer game and you shoot an avatar, you don’t give much thought to the fact it’s being controlled by a living person. Think of these guys as avatars. They may look real, but do they really have a soul? Could a real person be that cynical and shameless?

“Yes, they can,” points out the same voice inside my head. “Of course, they fucking can.”

Maybe I could just give this all up, find myself an even deeper basement. This nightmare has to end at some point surely. This sort of thing can’t go on for ever in the modern world.

I need to leave, and right now!

I jump to my feet, and then carefully settle back into my previous position. Coming round the building, from a completely different direction than the one I expected, is a group of people. Dressed any old way, of different ages, but all with exactly the same expression. Or did I just imagine that? Probably. I’m sitting a fair distance from them. I do see that two of them have guns more or less like mine, but then all guns look much the same to me. Two of them are armed with baseball bats. As one of our famous sports commentators once said: “There’s not a single baseball pitch in the country, yet every month we import whole shiploads of baseball bats!” Then there’s one more with nothing at all – might as well have his hands in his pockets. Is that the lot?

Hmmm, I was expecting them to take me a little more seriously. Somehow it feels like a lack of respect. “Aha, I guess you thought they’d send a whole regiment after you!” That voice inside my head can be a real dick sometimes.

The group is marching purposefully straight towards the entryway. There’s only one in the building, so it’s hard to miss. Still, they might walk past it. No doubt they’ve got other things to do as well.

They didn’t. They slam the entrance door behind them, not leaving anyone outside on the street. True, there is a small chance they’ve simply come to loot one of the flats. Which means they’re going to break down a steel door with their bare hands, does it? Nearly all of them are steel, except mine and two more like it on the first floor.

For some reason, I didn’t hear the explosion. Instead, I saw the glass suddenly come flying out of my windows, showering the courtyard and the nearby alley with a glittering rain. I couldn’t understand what had happened.

The noise came after, echoing off the surrounding buildings like rolling thunder. It was like a truck dropping a load of empty boxes onto the pavement.

Ba-ba-ba-boom. The neighbourhood birds squawked in terror, jumping from their perches. Dogs barked nervously, then all was quiet.

Is it over? It can’t be. What the hell did they put in there?

It’s not over. The door scrapes open, and one of the visitors appears in the doorway. Weirdly, his face is covered in something white. He’s holding his shoulder. He takes a few hesitant steps forward, and then he sees me. Why the hell did I come out from my hiding place? The guy, who’re really quite young, opens his mouth. Did he say something or just scream? I can’t tell. But the gesture he made was more than clear enough. He turns back towards the door.

Is he going for help? What else would he be doing? Now he’ll go and get the others. He’s wounded, maybe they sent him outside to rest.

I raise my shotgun – somehow it was already in my hands. He’s getting away!

“He’s injured.”

That he is, but he’s on his way to get his perfectly healthy bandit friends!

“It’s a living human being!”

It’s an avatar!

My finger squeezes the trigger. At this range it’s hard to miss, particularly with buckshot. I didn’t miss. The boy’s legs went from under him and he slumped gently to the floor. Dead? Probably. At this range the buckshot will go through any clothing, and all he’s wearing is a cloth jacket.

Shit! I’ve done it again. That’s the second time I’ve killed a man. That’s if you count the guy I jumped on from the landing window as the first. But what about the guy who got his throat cut? That wasn’t me, that was his bandit friend!

“But you ordered him to do it, didn’t you?”

I don’t even have time to think of an answer to that before the door swings open again. The guy who comes out this time doesn’t seem quite so helpless. He’s wounded – there’s blood streaming down his face. But it doesn’t seem to have affected his abilities much. Something whistles past me unpleasantly. In the movies, I’ve seen any number of times how the hero makes amazing leaps to avoid bullets. Well, maybe there’s a special technique they teach the actors, and that’s why it all looks so pretty. I’ve never been an actor, never got the lesson, and so I don’t jump anywhere. “Run fast and you’ll die tired.” I don’t remember where that comes from, but I’ve heard that expression before. You can’t outrun a bullet, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that someone just fired at me. This time I remembered to pull on the wood under the barrel in good time, so all I have to do now is squeeze the trigger. The round goes off with an unexpected blast.

Pull again and squeeze again. And again. My ammo’s finished – the shotgun only holds four rounds. But then, my opponent’s finished, too. Or at least his attempts to kill me are. Knocked sideways, he squirms on the tarmac. He’s still alive, but judging by the rich and varied stream of obscenities spewing from his mouth, he was hit hard. I guess it must hurt.

I stand still. Rummaging in my pockets, I pull out more bright-red shells and hurriedly reload my not-quite-sawn-off.

Where’s the bandit’s gun? It’s on the ground over there – a pistol. The kind the police normally carry. Is this guy one of them? Looking like that and with his rich vocabulary? It seems hard to believe somehow. I step around the guy and pick up the pistol. Where am I going to put it? Hang on, the hammer’s pulled back. I’m not a complete moron, I do know something about guns. Pressing with my thumb, I release it carefully. OK, now I won’t be shooting myself in the leg. I can take a calmer look at the scene around me. Apparently, the effects of the blast had gone to the shooter’s head, and that’s why he missed me. Plus, he was shooting with a pistol. If you’re an inch off target, you might as well not bother pulling the trigger. The head of security in our office used to love taking members of staff shooting at the target range. True, for some reason he used to prefer taking the girls, especially the pretty ones. I heard that expression from one of them.