This story spans the life of 2 characters, and is therefore quite long. Names have been changed for operational security purposes. I spawn in, Kamenka flashes in the bottom right corner of my screen. I take cover in bushes and consult my online map. First priority; I must find a weapon. Luckily, I see three deer stands just north of me on the map. Bunny hopping between these locations tells me that someone is looting ahead of me, but luckily at the third stand I find a dead body still clutching an AKS-74U with 3 full mags. Now, with 90 bullets and a sense of security I start working on priority two, food and drinks. I crawl into Pavlovo with little to show for it. I am belly crawling out when another Survivor, unarmed, runs past me with 3 zed in tow. “Idiot.” I can’t help thinking to myself. He is running circles near me, hoping I will shoot his pursuers, but I am invisible on the ground so I just stay put and he runs off. Using him as a distraction I escape the city, but my drink icon is now red, when low and behold the same survivor runs towards me, this time free of zed. I put my iron sights near him and fire 3 warning shots. He stops and salutes. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m looking for a weapon.” “Okay.” I say, nonplussed. “Is that a makarov?” He asks. I don’t know what he’s talking about. “No. I just have this rifle. I’m looking for water. Gotta go.” I say. “I have loads of soda, I’m diabetic.” He says. He drops a can of coke on the ground for me. Okay, maybe I should have helped him in town. I grab the soda and we converse, I tell him to check some deer stands for weapons north, and we part ways amicably. I really didn’t have a secondary to give him, or I would have. Now, I run to Balotta in a roundabout manner, looting deer stands with no luck. I need to find food, it’s almost dark red. I get to Balotta and catch wind of a bandit in the area. I cannot see him, so I enter the ATC Tower carefully. There are some chemlights on the ground, but not much else. I make my way to the roof, and there he is, lying prone, facing away from me. I can see by his primary that I hit the jackpot. I get up on the roof quietly, and put 2 shots in his head, then spray him for good measure. I hate banditry. Hello, M249. This guy was loaded down. He had 2 ammo belts, plus 1 STANAG mag. I also collected an M9 with 1 mag, binoculars, a map, hatchet, hunting knife, 2 can food, 2 sodas, 1 morphine, 1 blood bag, and some other knick knacks I can’t quite remember. I just remember I felt great about my situation. I don’t want to linger so I ran out into the woods and logged out so as not to immediately lose my weapon. I log back in a few hours later, once my roommate is available. Any dialogue between us is in our own TS server. We meet up in Elektro, where he has been desperately searching for a weapon. I hand him my M9 and mag. Elektro seems quiet. Then we hear very quiet chatter on the in-game chat. As we move towards a high value residential target the chatter gets louder and I hear 2 voices, shooting the crap really. My roommate, who we shall call BR, finds a Lee-Enfield in a tunnel, and I enter the res target. Immediately the voices become muffled, and I know that I have entered their building. Unthinking, I round the corner facing some stairs and see a survivor crouched at the top with a kobra aimed at me. I open fire with my M249 in a panic, shooting high over his right shoulder. I adjust my aim and spray his face, but by this time he has fired on me as well. We killed each other, but I was able to run around the corner before bleeding out. BR picks up my machine gun and my most valuable items, and I tell him to cover the stairs. He sees another survivor at the top of the stairs with an M-16 and fires but doesn’t score any significant hits. I respawned just outside of Elektro by some miracle, and immediately haul ass back on scene. BR moves to meet at a safe location when I hear a stream of automatic fire. “That was me,” he says. “I just put one down.” We would later surmise that the survivor he engaged was not part of the bandit party, and he has our apologies. We met up, and BR, swell guy that he is gave me back my MG. He had reloaded and I had a full 200rd belt. “I want to go back and loot that guy I put down.” BR says. We enter the courtyard the same way we had before and I hear the faint chatter again. I also see the guy BR killed. I move to cover as BR loots. “Dude has an M1911.” My stomach clenches in jealousy. I’ve been playing about a week and haven’t come across that sidearm yet. The chatter from the bandits picks up. “Holy shit, they are right there I see ‘em!” I frantically search but don’t see any hostiles. We are backing out of the alley. I am hugging a wall and glance backwards at BR who is moving down the center of our path of egress. One hail of gunfire and gush of blood later, BR is dead on the ground beside me. The direction of the bullets had come from the courtyard we just exited, and I don’t understand where they had fired from. I was unfamiliar with the layout of the particular building they occupied. I ran around the block and found another entrance to the occupied building. Belly crawling, I came in view of the staircase. The body of the first guy I killed still lay there, and appeared to be unlooted, so I guessed he was probably on his way back to his friends. Lying on the ground, out of sight, I see a survivor step onto the staircase and crouch down. “Now or never,” I think to myself. I get into a crouch, 1st person, peek right and spray him. He goes down before he knows what happened. Now I don’t know if this was the first guy returning, another of their group, or some poor schlep who heard my gunshots, but all of a sudden some asshole rounds the corner and shoots me with a Makarov. Well I put about 15-25 bullets in him and he drops. I’m at like 10k blood, and for some reason I’m not bleeding. Fine with me. I enter the house, and cautiously move up the staircase. I am crouched, and in third person, and I can see three more survivors, one on each side of me, peeking out of their respective doorways and the third dude in the center of the hallway. I don’t really see how I am going to get out of this alive, but figure I’ve come this far, and they did kill my friend. They obviously do not know I am there yet. I wouldn’t call it a surprise attack, but I pop up and spray the hallway in third person. I think they fired back, but I didn’t really take damage. I think their bullets hit the staircase wall. Well the guy in the middle of the hallway was killed by my burst, and the other two retreated into their rooms. One guy peeks around the corner and I fired at him, but I don’t think I even hit him. 30 seconds later, a survivor is all of a sudden in the room below me, heading towards the stairs. It goes through my head as I wheel around to face him that this was one of the two I was just firing at and he must have gone down a secondary staircase. I put him down. Now, figuring I only have 1 target left I move towards the door on the right. I peek around and there is the survivor. We fired on each other and he hit me a few times so I retreated and bandaged myself. I was down to 7200 blood. I covered his doorway for a minute and he never peeked again. I move cautiously up again and peek around the corner only to see his dead body. The other guy’s body is nowhere to be found, but I could not find a second staircase, so I’m guessing he just logged out. Well, thoroughly satisfied and completely amazed I had only taken 5k damage through the encounter, I started looting. HOLY hell these guys had been decked out. I found multiple GPS, Maps, water bottles, food, and an assortment of weapons. Including 2 glocks with lights (I took one with 3 mags), the M-16 (he only had 1 STANAG mag on him), 2 kobras, a Remington with a light, and a Winchester. They had some other tools I didn’t have and I loaded up. I put my newly acquired loot into an ALICE pack that I took off one of them. At this point I had only about 100 rounds left, so I put a kobra and 6 mags into the ALICE pack. GF aggro caused me to have to log out before BR got back and he never did make it to the violent scene, so I told him he could have the kobra if he needed it when I met back up with him. All’s well that ends well.
