Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

So, I need to think of a plan. As luck would have it, not a single thought comes into my head. All the while, entirely unwelcome sounds can be heard from the cable duct – shuffling and scraping. Someone’s coming down the tunnel. Let them come. Waiting till the sounds become more distinct, I lean forward, stick my rifle round the corner, and spray the remaining rounds across the tunnel. Shrieks, panic, and random shots come in return – sounds like I’ve hit someone. They won’t feel quite so at home down here now.

I jump up and run for my life towards the other tunnel. I dive in there, sprint forward a few more metres, and land straight on a bunch of cables. If the insulation is damaged on even one of them, I’ll fall down dead right here. My only hope is that, as the electrical supply is so fucked up in the city, there may not actually be any current in any of them.

Here’s a comfortable spot for a lie-down. I pull myself up with my hands and turn sideways. I turn off my torch and squeeze between the cables and the tunnel wall. I have to lie down, if I sit up they’ll see me. I lie flat, pulling off my backpack and pushing it a little way in front of me. Only then do I rummage through my webbing and pull out the spare magazine for my rifle. I change out the empty one, and them remember that the box of bullets is in my backpack, and I can’t get it out from here. Shit… Well, what can you do? We’ll make do with what we have. I really should have found myself another magazine by now, even if I had to buy it.

I hear footsteps. As the sounds come nearer, I stop even breathing.

“Mackenzie, Jarosch, Schreiber – with me on the right! The rest of you go left! And check everything down here!”

Men walk past below me. Quietly, almost silently. I stay silent, too, as you’d expect. Even though my nose starts itching unbearably. I need to sneeze, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I put every effort into stopping myself. I don’t think anyone’s going to say “Bless you!”

They’re gone. I stay completely still, holding my breath. Let those smartarses move a little further on. I count to thirty under my breath and quietly slip back down to the floor. I gather up my backpack and throw it on my shoulders. Where to now? Back to cable duct, where else?

I stride quickly back, and suddenly I hear the crash of a shot behind me. From the sound of it, that’s a shotgun. I run forward flat out, and see the flash of a torch beam on the roof of the tunnel. Someone’s running towards me, and I’m only a few metres from the turn.

I pull the trigger, but my rifle just clicks. What the hell’s that all about? “Have you tried pulling the bolt back?” asks the voice in my head with its habitual snideness. “There aren’t any bullets in the barrel, see?” Now there are. The bolt slaps back into place.

Recalling that the gun jumps around more the longer you fire, I try to limit myself to short bursts of three or four bullets. Even so, some of the bullets go way off course, and I see sparks. They jump off the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Makes no sodding difference, they’re still flying in the right direction. There’s a fair chance they’ll still end up where they need to be – we’re not in a park down here, and it’s not like there’s anywhere to hide.

Talking of hiding, I very nearly rushed straight past the turning. It was only a sudden gust of wind from that direction that reminded me to turn. And just in time, as a string of fire races straight past me. What sort of bullet is that? When I was in the army, I only saw them firing tracers once, and that was from quite a distance. So that’s what they look like close up.

My rifle’s empty, so on my back it goes. My pistol magazine is half-empty, too. I drop to the floor and point towards the turning. Where that shot just came from, I hear a serious shootout kicking off. From the sound of it, the group that was heading that way has bumped into the unknown diggers of that new tunnel. Well, the best of luck to them and a feather up their arses! I wish the lot of you excellent shooting.

I don’t know what the guys I shot at were thinking, but none of them turned towards me. They just ran straight past. I manage to contain my disappointment.

I run back into the cable duct and keep on running. Where the fuck am I going? That becomes clear only when I run into something. Dropping with a crash to the floor, I let go of my pistol and it skitters off somewhere.

My torch! In the dim light, I see a body on the floor. So, was I running the wrong way? And where’s my gun? There it is, the little pet, glinting in the torch beam.

I pick up my pistol and take a calmer look at the body. The uniform’s clearly not Russian. What’s this badge on his sleeve… USEC? At a guess, this guy had the misfortune to catch some of the bullets I sent flying down the cable duct. Can’t say I’m sorry for him.

I bend down and pick up his gun. This is something new. Definitely not an AK. I’ve seen these in movies and games – an American assault rifle. There’s some sort of complicated sight fixed on top of it, a serious piece of kit with buttons on it. Let’s see… I raise the rifle to my eyes. In the greenish light I can see the cable duct stretching away in the distance. So, that’s how they can fire in the dark. I put my pistol away in its holster and, with a bit of fiddling, pull the webbing off the corpse. It’s quite a weight. On the dead man’s belt, there’s a big knife and a holster with a pistol. I take all that, too.

The sounds of shooting aren’t getting any further away, but they’re not getting closer, either, so I’m not too worried. I’m not lounging around, though, it took all of thirty seconds to search the dead guy.

Holding the trophy rifle at the ready, I run back towards the factory. I hope there’s nobody guarding the exit, as I’ve no desire to run the other way into the gunfight.

The basement’s empty. All I find is a lone corpse lying in the doorway – the one I shot with my pistol. He only has a pistol, and the same webbing vest. I’ll grab the pistol, but the webbing’s too heavy. Still, I take a moment to drag him under the stairs. Hopefully, nobody will look for him here. While I’m at it, I take a few spare magazines for my pistol out of his webbing. That’s the clever thing to do, and it’s about time I learned. Mind you, it didn’t help this smartarse much, did it?

I turn to the right onto a landing. On the left is an open door. I peak inside. Ah, I see… My self-esteem drops like a lead balloon. On the floor are several sleeping bags, which means that the guys now running round downstairs were all quartered right in here, does it? And, clever me, I ran straight into their lair? That’s what it looks like. On the floor, there are various boxes and chests. There’s no point in even thinking of carrying them out of here, but I can at least hide them somewhere. Boxes begin to fly out of the landing window. Down below is long grass that’ll hide them easily. And anyway, nobody’s going to be looking right under their nose. Once they’re gone, the assumption will be that they’ve been carried far away. Who’d bother to steal all these goodies just to move them a few metres to one side?

While I’m carrying the stuff backwards and forwards, a crazy thought comes into my head.

As I run, I try to reload Shorty’s magazines. It doesn’t work out so well, and I drop a couple of bullets on the way. Never mind, I keep running. I turn a corner, crouch down and ram the reloaded magazine back into my rifle. At the same time, after fiddling with the fastening, I take the sight off the looted rifle and put it in my backpack. Without pausing and without paying much attention to what I find, I turn out the looted webbing and shove everything from it into my backpack, too. The webbing’s now much lighter, so I fold it up and secure it under the top of the pack. Now I’ve had a little rest, too.