Prioritize the PMCs

You’re out of ideas. You crawl out and **** your guy to stand and sprint forward, your half-full stamina bar draining hilariously quickly.

“Go, go, go,” you urge Colby.

“I’m going!”

The Scav you shot is in the open; there’s no safe way to do this, so you just have to hurry. You crouch beside him and tap F, discarding everything you’re carrying. There’s no time to pick and choose what to loot. You grab his rifle, his rig, his pistol, and his backpack and scuttle to the other side of the car. Now you have cover between you and the PMCs, but you don’t know which way they’ll approach if they do come. They could follow you directly, which would be dumb, or they could flank a bit and crawl under the train off to the left or right. There are also some planks that allow you to walk up and through the train to get past it. You have no idea what the meta would be for this encounter.

You have some kind of crummy AK with no stock and tiny, stubby mags and a PM pistol all of it is in terrible condition. Classic Scav gear. You aren’t even going to risk the time to check the magazine, so you double tap R to drop it and slap in a new one, getting up and taking aim over the car. You look left, then right, scanning the underside of the train. Are you really going to see someone come crawling under? Probably not.

But the Scav also had a bandage. You drop back into cover and use it to stop your bleeding. There’s a grenade too. You drag that into a quick-use slot and get up to provide cover again. Seconds are passing; Colby’s getting closer to the finish line. You hope.

You see movement to the left. Just as you thought: someone crawled under the train, but they did it intelligently. If those bushes hadn’t rustled, you wouldn’t have known.

Without hesitation, you pull the grenade, prime it, and throw it in that direction. Your throw is terrible, and you don’t even get it close, but it makes your point. You get down as it goes off. If these guys are really smart they will have split up to come at you from two sides. You crouch-walk to the rear of the car and lean out, but you don’t see anything moving. You can’t waste much time watching when you know there’s a guy close. Has he seen you? No, he’d have fired if he had. He knows you’re onto him, but he doesn’t know exactly where you are.

You are not bullish about your odds of winning the fight, but for the purpose of stalling, this is going well.

Your guy grunts. Right. You’re still dehydrated and losing HP. You don’t know how quickly that will kill you.

You try to listen, but your grunting guy is not helping. If these PMCs don’t hear you yet, they will soon. Scowling, you lean to peek out again.

“How we doing?” you ask Colby nervously.

“Getting there,” she replies, sounding a little deranged.

Then you see him: his green camo is working, but he’s crouching by the guardrail. He must think you’re farther back than you really are. It’s your chance.

You line up on his head and fire. The AK jumps with ridiculous recoil, but AKs have great iron sights. You bring it back as he turns and nail him again, but the gun doesn’t fire. There’s a red flash and a beep. It’s malfunctioning.

“Ack!” You pull back behind cover, swearing as bullets zing off the car. You don’t even have a key bound to clear the malfunction. Sometimes reloading fixes it, sometimes not. You don’t have time to screw with it. You hit the 1 key to switch to your pistol and lean back out, firing.

He’s back in cover. You fire twice more past the guardrail to make sure that he understands, then duck and reload. It occurs to you to watch your back, and you find the other PMC lumbering around the side of the car. He’s wearing a helmet, but you unload the PM on his unprotected face, but his rifle goes off.

Your screen flashes as he crumples to the ground and your PM’s slide locks back.

Mumbling various curse words, you get to his body and repeat the process from a minute ago, dumping everything and taking his gear wholesale, but your guy can barely move. This PMC was wearing full armor and carrying a full backpack. Your dying, dehydrated dude can barely stand. Poor guy.

But fuck him. He needs to stop being a pussy. You hit 2 to bring out the PMC’s rifle, some overly tactical, unnecessarily huge DMR. You wheel around awkwardly and fire it several times in the direction of that other guy. It’s a good thing that they’re out of grenades, because you are not going anywhere.

The other guy returns fire, but he has a suppressor. You duck back behind the car, unsure exactly where is. He’s in the bushes by the train, but that doesn’t narrow it down. Does this rig that you just put on have any grenades? No. Or he’d have used them. You check your magazine; half full. No sense in saving bullets for a rainy day. You probably have seconds to live. The heavy box magazine clunks to the ground as your guy slaps another one in. You just have to hope that these mags in this rig have bullets in them.

“Oh, fuck me!” Colby wails.

“What?” you demand. “What now?”

“Oh, some fucking player Scav’s camping it,” she grumbles. “I can see his gun.”

“OK.” You think fast, heart pounding. “I have a big scope. How do I get an angle on him?” you ask, peeking. No one shoots at you.

“You can’t. He’s behind the concrete.” She hesitates. “Unless I draw him out. Hey, bro! Bro!”

Oh god, she’s just doing it. You get turned around and ADS, your injured guy taking an eternity to lift the rifle, which sways outrageously.

The bushes are moving in the distance on the right-hand side of the road.

Several shots ring out.

“OK! You got me! Come loot me! Do it!”

“Do it now!” you join Colby automatically, doing the voice of the buff guy from Predator.

“I’m right here!” Colby shouts. “Do it now!”

“Do it now!” you chorus.

A figure emerges hesitantly from behind a stack of huge, concrete barriers. Your scope is wobbling so much that you can’t possibly aim at him, but you weren’t born yesterday. You aim low and to the right, letting the sway take you to him.

The DMR booms and he drops with a single shot.

“Let’s go!” Colby shrieks in her best streamer voice. “Let’s goo!”

“Let’s goo!” you join in, laughing as she limps out of the bushes.

You let the ADS go and turn to find the second PMC right in your face. Before he can shoot you, your guy lets out a pitiful noise and the screen fades to black. Unable to help yourself, you laugh as the match ends.

“Fuck,” Colby’s saying. “Longest five seconds ever…”

Right, the extraction timer. She has to stand on the exit for several seconds to get out.

“And we’re out! Let’s go,” she says.

“Let’s go,” you agree, wiggling excitedly. You can’t believe all that stuff worked.

“I got your damn watch, Prapor. How do you like me now?” Colby mutters.

Buzzing, you tap your keyboard to advance through the post-raid screens. You died, but you did a lot of combat and got a lot of XP. Too bad you don’t really care about this game. You sigh in satisfaction as you get back to your character screen.

“Did it work?”

“Yup,” Colby says smugly. “Since when are you such a chad?”

You roll your eyes. “I’ve played shooters, Colby.”

“You were a scrub when we first started this game.”

“Oh my god, so were you,” you say. You both were. Colby just stuck with it longer than you did. You only tried it because everyone was talking about how hardcore it was. You and Colby had wanted to find out how hard it could be.

Pretty hard, actually.

The adrenaline is thinning out. You are reminded that you are freezing.

Colby giggles. “Naked Tarkov. Maybe you’re onto something.”

“Being naked gives you a plus five to staying frosty,” you say. “That’s a thing, right?”

“I heard someone say it in CoD. It’s an older saying, but it checks out.”

You gaze at your screen. That took almost forty minutes. You need to wrap up here and go talk to Athena, but you’re very content. Just cold.

“Hey,” you say.

“Yeah?” Colby replies.

You want to see her tomorrow, but how to say it?

Ask her to hang out?

Or

Tell her that you want to talk?