Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

So, let’s assume that’s how this guy ended up where he is. As far as covering the staircase goes, he’s got it all pretty well worked out. He can see plenty, while it would take a while to notice him. But from the position of the camera, and hence from the position of the door I’m now standing behind. he’s not covered at all. The camera looks out onto the landing from right here – it was installed just to the right of the door, in order to give a view of the door itself and anyone who might be in front of it. If I open the door quickly, the bad guy won’t have any time to take evasive action.

Where the hell do these thoughts come from? I’m just a normal guy, and here I am calmly considering how best to shoot another human being. But then, it’s not like he’s waiting for me with tea and cakes, is it?

He’s not a human being.

He’s an avatar.

A soulless humanoid form, nothing more.

I check again that the alarm’s off – it is. I check my shotgun, and stand it next to the door. I take out the pistol and go downstairs. We open the door on the first floor, making sure to secure the chain first – it’s not like I’m the only one who can come and go this way, so let’s not leave it wide open to other visitors. Am I ready? I make a pyramid of chairs. Now, if somebody wants to come in here, the furniture will tumble and make quite a noise. So no one’s going to creep up this way and take me by surprise. My idea is simple as a nun’s prayer. Now I go and activate the system, and then the alarm starts to shriek downstairs. The bad guy is distracted by the noise, I slam open the door, and it’s curtains for him. You might even call it elegant.

However, real life has confounded better plans than that. A shot suddenly rings out on the landing and somebody starts shouting, providing a scathing critique of all the shooter’s family and friends. I jump to the monitor, grabbing my shotgun on the way. I’m terrified, but on the screen I see a fascinating spectacle. Several guys of now familiar appearance are shaking my cunning opponent by the chest. Face down on the stairs just below the landing there’s one more visitor, apparently the most unlucky.

So, reinforcements have arrived.

What I’m probably looking at is the group that went to search the building near the shop. When they didn’t find anything (which must have seemed strange, to say the least), they quite reasonably made their way here. And that cunning sod, hearing the footsteps he’d been waiting for on the stairs, opened fire on the first guy to reach the landing. Judging by the position of the guy lying down, it was a pretty good shot. Now the comrades of the recently deceased are expressing their discontent with the hapless shooter. Quite right, too! They may yet save me some ammo.

Or not. Sadly, they decide against smashing his face into the wall. They’re heading downstairs, and one of them has even had time to dash upstairs and bring some stuff down. Clearly stripped from the corpses of his partners – I don’t have any shotguns in my flat, and this guy’s carrying two.

So, are they just going to walk out of here? On the one hand, that’s fantastic! And yet… they’ve already gone through my flat, and taken everything of any value out of there. They’re bound to have grabbed my first-aid kit. Fool that I am, I put that together with love, packed it in a special backpack, and hung it in a prominent position. I was so savvy, I kept up-to-date with all the latest medical developments online, and got hold of new remedies when necessary. On hiking expeditions, my little case was always the centre of attention. Somebody would overdo it on the vodka and end up with the runs, and my first-aid kit would have the answer for that or any number of other problems. I even had sanitary towels in it, for which our girls had awarded me respectful glances more than once. Now all of that was hanging on the back of some thieving arsehole. Sure, I could start looking for replacements here, but I was already going crazy from the stench of dead bodies.

The prospect of bleeding out among all these corpses doesn’t appeal.

Then I hear a commanding voice on the staircase: “Go downstairs and get some petrol. There must be some cars in the garage. We’ll burn them all to fuck!”

Well, thanks. That’s an even better prospect. I won’t even have time to bleed out before I start choking on the smoke.

Once again I’m in the shit. How much more of this can I take?

I run downstairs, open the door a little, and take aim at the staircase going up. Well, then, where are these half-arsed arsonists, anyway? Here they are, several of them at once coming round the bend in the staircase.

Avatars!

So my finger squeezes the trigger.

I really have got the hang of the pump action now. Suddenly I remember, the bit of wood you pull is called the forestock. I’ve learned to pull it back and forward with the same hectic speed as the head of an ink-jet printer crossing the page. And just as soon as it comes back, my finger’s already squeezing the trigger. I fire off five rounds at machine-gun speed.

The landing fills with smoke and screams. Someone bellows and runs upstairs. I didn’t miss – there’s a pile of bodies on the stairs. How many? Two or three at least. I close the door, and this time make sure to lock it. If they saw where the shots were coming from, they’ll be very eager to knock it down. Let them try. This is one of the steel ones, so a speedy result is far from guaranteed.

Back I go up the stairs, reloading my shotgun on the way. I don’t have that much ammo left, so I need to start saving. I pull the magazine out of the pistol and find six rounds. Plus, one more in the barrel, I think, makes seven. True, I’m no great shot, but close up I should be able to manage.

Again I look at the monitor. On the landing, chaos rules. Two of the bad guys have their guns trained on the staircase, while another is bandaging his injured comrade. Is that all of them? There’s no one else around.

I’d hate to be in their shoes. When you come to think of it, they’re trapped. In theory, they could rush down from the second floor. But how do they know no one’s lying in wait for them outside? They’ve already been caught out once on the way down, why not again? It looks like they take the prospect of dying in the smoke seriously, and they really don’t want to end up like that.

I have a thought. I could shout from downstairs and offer them to put down their guns and leave. Tell them “we” won’t shoot. After all, they really don’t know how many of “us” there are hiding on the staircase. Could it work? Would I go for it in their situation? Like fuck.

The way the bandits see it, the enemy downstairs is clearly in no hurry, and in no danger. He can go on waiting. The injured guys upstairs could snuff it soon, and it’s unlikely anyone’s got food and water with them – another important factor to take into account. They can’t be expecting much in the way of help to arrive, either. Chances are, nobody else is coming – they’re all here already. So there’s no reason for the enemy to take risks and no reason for them to make a deal with anyone.

In short, those guys aren’t going to believe me.

Still…

“Hey, losers!” I shout through the half-opened door on the first floor. “You still alive up there?”

“Go fuck yourself!” they shout in response. “Our guys are approaching from both sides. Any second now you’re fucked!”

Yeah, right. Who’s going to give their enemy all that useful information? Even in Bollywood films they don’t do anything quite that stupid.

So, that means no one else is coming. There’s nothing to worry about.

“Well, fuck the lot of you, then. That just means a few more of you will end up dead here,” I answer phlegmatically, shrugging my shoulders. They can’t see my gesture, of course, but they can hear it in my voice. Look at them, sitting there all cynical and remorseless. I’ll bet they drink hot blood for breakfast instead of tea.