Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

I carefully turn the handle of the lock and, clutching a gun in each hand, spring out onto the landing. I probably look a little strange – with a modern pistol in one hand and an ancient revolver in the other. It must be three times my age at least, if not four. You might even want to laugh indulgently at my appearance. Alright, I’m not some special forces tough guy. I’m not any kind of soldier at all. Even if I did do my military service, all I did was spend a year sitting at a computer in headquarters, and fire an assault rifle at the range a few times. That’s the full extent of my military achievements. Sure, I can march in file, but who cares about that now? Anyway, we’ll see who’s laughing in a minute! But there’s no one here to laugh. You can’t do that good an impression of a corpse without a whopping great hole in your side, and it’s obvious from here that the second guy bled out long ago. Good Lord, there it is! My beloved first-aid kit.

So, here’s my home. Where the heart is, and all that. It makes quite an impression. The door hasn’t come off its hinges (it is steel, after all), but it has been badly warped and is hanging to the side. My poor flat! The amount of effort I put into it, not to mention money. Now that’s all gone to shit. As well as mutilating the door, the explosion mangled most of my furniture, and tossed my few belongings across the whole room. Actually, that might have been done earlier when they were searching the place.

In the far corner of the room there’s a motionless body. The fact it’s a corpse isn’t hard to tell even from a distance – half his head’s been blown to fuck. There’s a shotgun lying next to him. Not like mine, much bigger. At first glance, I see that the tube under the barrel is much longer. That’s where the shells go, so it must take a bigger load. There’s some kind of mesh over the barrel, and in place of the stock there’s some sort of bent metal shit that can probably be folded up, too. It’s also got a pistol grip. Basically, it’s a much more serious weapon than my not-quite-sawn-off. Not that it helped its owner much…

The shells are the same, so I put my own gun down on the couch with no regrets. Now I’ve got a much more imposing piece.

I ended up having to sleep back in the other flat, the one that was ripe with the smell of death. It was the only place I could shut my eyes and not worry about being woken by a knife tenderly drawn across my throat.

I’d like those bandits to breath that fragrance for the rest of their lives! Tearing open a pack of sanitary towels, I improvised a mask and soaked it in deodorant. It really wasn’t much of an improvement. True, I did open the balcony door and use the cover of darkness to throw out the former owner’s body. It’s only the first floor, so he won’t smash to pieces. Sorry, old boy, but I won’t be organizing any funeral rites for you, else I might end up lying right next to you. The man was followed soon after by his wife. Hell, I’m not going to describe in detail how that all worked out. Suffice to say that I nearly puked three times.

All the spoils I’d gathered I dragged out onto the same balcony in the hope they wouldn’t be infused with the stench of corpse. Genius! I should have slept there myself. After all, there was a sleeping bag in my flat. What did I say before about good ideas and when they come? Idiot! Still, too late now to worry.

Sitting in the fresh air next morning, I was at last able to take stock of all my loot. Three shotguns, two pistols, and the old revolver. Plus a certain amount of ammo for all of them. One of shotguns is a different calibre – sixteen-gauge – so I probably won’t keep it. Of the pistols, I’ll probably keep the newer one, which was made only a couple of years ago. The magazine’s not full, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not really my weapon anyway. The shotgun I picked up in my old flat, however – that’s a serious piece of kit! Just the look of it makes it worth holding on to. Turns out you rechamber it in a completely different way. You don’t need to pull on the forestock, which doesn’t even move, in fact. There’s a lever on the side like on an assault rifle, and that’s what you need to pull. Whether or not that’s convenient, we’ll have to wait and see. But the magazine certainly takes far more ammo – ten rounds at once. Considering my shooting “skills”, that’s a serious argument in its favour. On the other hand, the strap on it is complete shit. I’ll have to take the one off my not-quite-sawn-off, which is much better. I also had several knives and three baseball bats. The latter looked particularly useless next to a twelve-gauge shotgun.

Distracted by this inventory of my stores, I didn’t quite catch what was going on. That was a mistake. I heard the clatter of boots downstairs, and the staircase suddenly filled with noise and commotion.

“Check the corner!”

“Hold there!”

“Second floor!”

What the fuck?

I hear the hammering of gun butts on doors, the splintering of wood, and cries of rage that test the limits of the human vocal cords.

“Find them! The footprints are fresh, so they can’t have gone far.”

Well, I’m in the shit. Looks like the bandits’ guv’nor took my declarations of yesterday seriously.

So… they saw the door my gun barrel was protruding from. Steel it may be, but there’s no such thing as an insurmountable barrier. Shot probably won’t get through it, but pistol bullets might. But they won’t bother to break down the door, will they? There’s the garage downstairs, and who was it mentioned petrol? I can’t jump from the balcony, either. There’s a guy running along the front of the building with a pistol. He’ll see me, he’ll shout, and that’s it for me. The rest will come running in an instant.

I lay my guns on the ground and check the ammo. Looks like this is it. The course of my life ends here. Shit, it’s just not fair! I glance at the street. It’s right there, but I still can’t run!

Something flashes in the corner of my eye. I turn my head in that direction. Creeping along the wall of the building, sweeping the area with their gun barrels, is a file of men in camouflage. Wearing heavy helmets, and with their gun barrels glinting dully, these guys are no bandits. They look a lot like those Bears form the first shop, except their camouflage is completely different. More like the uniforms the guards at our company wore.

“Kiryukha, watch out! Grunts!”

The cries on the staircase die out. The troops outside are going to walk past, and the bandits will go on breaking down doors. Their cries may have stopped, but nobody’s stopped bashing the doors. The results come soon enough. Something in the hallway gives an ugly rasp, and the swinging door slams against the wall.

“Shit! What a stink! You wouldn’t want to hang around in here!”

“Then don’t hang around! Turn the place upside down fast and move on!”

So, this is the end of the party. I look around the wall and aim my gun at the door from the hallway. I don’t have to wait long before it’s slammed open. Bam! Interestingly, I don’t have to cycle the rounds. That little lever I thought you needed to pull shoots backwards and the spent shell flies out of the opening. So, it’s like an automatic shotgun, is it? Cycles by itself? I pull the trigger again, and a new load of shot flies towards the doorway. I hear screams, so I must have hit someone. An answering shot sends down a hail of broken glass. They hit the window, sending the pane flying in all directions, and part of it spraying all over me.

What if… Without waiting to complete the thought, I swing the barrel of the gun round towards the window and fire twice in the direction of the advancing column of soldiers. With my left hand, I pull out the pistol and fire off the full load in the same direction. Obviously, with my skills, my chance of hitting anything is close to zero, but there’s a chance I could provoke return fire at the building. Yup, I barely had time to get my head back inside. The remaining glass in the window flies out with a crash and a bang. Automatic fire comes from several guns at once on the street. F-f-f-fuck, what if they get through the wall?