Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

Christ, what am I on about? Where are all these crazy words coming from? This isn’t a film or some role-playing game. Lying on the couch is a man killed by my own hand, and now I’m acting out some comedy in front of his assistant.

“Right! Now you stand here and you count to a hundred out loud. When you’re finished, you can go out into the yard and tell your lads that your new leader needs to pay a visit to the flat next to the shopkeeper’s. You know the one I mean. He should come alone, tomorrow at noon, and we’ll have a chat with him. Bear in mind that you’re all in our cross-hairs. So don’t go playing hide and seek, or it’ll all end in tears.”

I take two steps back and pull the door to. Keeping the pistol pointed at it, I move carefully back along the corridor to the room with the wardrobe stuck in the doorway. It’s only when I’m about half a mile from the bandits’ base that I finally snap out of the trance I’m in.

When Vitalik the Razor came out of the door to the building, Tolyan was the first to see him, and he nearly choked. The boss’s right-hand man looked so strange that Tolyan just froze with his spoon half way from his bowl to his mouth. The Razor was squeezing an empty tray in his trembling left hand while he braced against the door frame with his right. From the look of it, he’d just been given a fearsome crack over the head.

Tolyan nudged the guy next to him, who turned baffled to look at him. Tolyan gestured with his eyes towards the building.

“Hey, Razor, what’s up with you?” asked another of the bandits. Gavrish was a huge man, who nonetheless had a clear head and fast reactions. If he’d had slightly more brains, then who knows who’d be leading the gang?

“They got Kiryukha,” said Vitalik, finally letting go of the door.

“What? How? Who?”

“Dunno.”

“What do you mean?”

The bandits abandoned their meal.

“I took him his food, put the plate down. He grabbed his spoon and we started chatting. Then all of a sudden his face twisted somehow, he dropped his spoon, and started reaching for something. There was a cracking sound, and he just sagged. Then another one got him right in the throat. Then he died.”

“What are you on about?” asked Tolyan uncertainly. “Who else was in the room?”

“Nobody.”

“Then what happened?” asked Gavrish calmly.

“Then… Then he talked to me.”

“Who’s he?”

“I couldn’t see, could I? He just suddenly appeared behind me. I was too scared to turn round – Kiryukha was right there in front of me, blood spurting everywhere!”

“Alright, alright,” said Gavrish, interrupting the panic. “What did he say?”

“Like that we hadn’t listened to them, so they had to finish the job themselves. You know, they told us to bring them the boss, then one of us ratted on the deal, so they had to come over themselves.

“Who said to bring who where? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That did happen,” said another of the bandits, Skinny Kolka, peeling himself away from the wall of the building, which he had been conscientiously supporting for the duration of the conversation. “When they got us on the staircase in that fucking new building. Some cunt of theirs says, like, bring us your leader and we’ll do him. You go free. Kiryukha almost went apeshit when I told him. Didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t let me have a piece, neither. All I had was that bat, and see how it ended?”

“Fucking hell!” snorted Gavrish. “Bring them the leader, my arse! Did they ask for the Soviet Union gold reserve, too?”

“Said nothing about that,” answered Skinny, ignoring the joke. “But they weren’t joking about coming here, now, were they?”

“Right then,” the big man turned again to the Razor, “what happened next?”

“He said to get our new leader to pay a visit to that block of flats near the shopkeeper’s place. Like, we know the one he means. Then he says count to a hundred before you go, and I started counting.”

“Where did he go?”

“Fuck knows. I wasn’t going to turn around, was I? And the front door was still locked! It’s completely fucked up is what it is!” Razor was almost screaming.

“Maybe you dreamed it all? Maybe there wasn’t anybody there at all?” suggested Tolyan. “Come on, boys! Let’s go and check it out!”

Their inspection didn’t really reveal anything, however. On the floor, they found the empty pistol cartridges, but no footprints whatsoever. There were still some doors intact in the corridor, although the bandits had already broken down several of them. Now they broke down the rest. Still they didn’t manage to find anything of interest that could shine a light on what had happened.

“This is bullshit, isn’t it?” Gavrish sat down on the front steps and scratched his head. “Alright, so Kiryukha pissed in their chips somehow. Clearly, they had it in for him one way or another. That I get. But what the fuck do they want from us?”

When I get home – there’s no other way of referring to my basement now – I spend a little time just bouncing off the walls. All sorts of bizarre thoughts are swimming through my head. Do please explain, for example, why the hell I set a meeting with those gangbangers? What do I want from them? At the time, I guess I thought it would sound sinister and terrifying. At the time. But what am I going to do now? Let’s assume that one of them actually keeps the appointment. Leaving aside the fact it’s highly unlikely they’ll be particularly pleased to see me, there’s another problem – I’ve got absolutely nothing to offer them. There should be a purpose to any meeting, surely? Solving problems of some sort, agreeing on cooperation. But the only problem that me and these bandits have is that they want to kill me, isn’t it? How are we going to cooperate on that, I ask you? On that basis, I really can’t see what it is we have to discuss. It’s a dead end. What I’m going to say, and to whom, I have absolutely no idea.

Unable to think of anything, I get my bottle of various blended brandies and, with an unshaking hand, pour myself a full glass. To hell with the lot of them, I want to get some sleep!

When I wake up, I lie on my back for a while, staring blankly at the ceiling. The light coming through the window is forming strange knots and loops on it. I try to identify some sort of order or pattern in them, but I don’t get anywhere. It’s a complete waste of time. So, without having come to any decision, I jump out of bed.

For breakfast today we have a tin of black olives and a tin of beans in tomato sauce. I heat the beans with a camping gas stove, pour them onto a plate and, after a moment’s thought, splash some more brandy into a glass. True, not the whole glass this time – just a standard measure. By the by, some of my food store could easily be flogged off to the shopkeeper. Seriously, I’d get by just fine without those olives, for example. Tinned mushrooms aren’t essential to my survival, either. Without my tinned meat, on the other hand, my life would lose much of its colour, especially as I don’t see much prospect of getting fresh fruit or vegetables any time soon. So, it’s probably a good idea to swap some of these delicacies for simpler but much more nutritious food.

The decision taken, I quickly choose a certain number of tins and pack them in my backpack. My very own much-loved first-aid backpack. Its former contents I have now arranged on the shelves in my hideaway. Some medicines that I had extra stocks of I hid in a completely different place.

On my way to the shopkeeper’s, I glance carefully around out of habit. My shotgun’s in my hands, with the stock unfolded and a shell in the chamber. I’m ready to pull fast on the trigger if I notice the slightest sign of danger. However, nothing happens during my walk; nobody tries to ambush me or rob me. You’d guess the gangbangers are too busy choosing themselves a new boss. That’ll keep them occupied for a while, at least. And it’s very unlikely that any of them will want to miss that entertaining gabfest just to lie in wait for a potential lone shopper.