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The foreman sniffs behind my back. So that’s that, this evening I can expect a further educational experience. And it’s not a given that after that I’ll be able to get back up and work in the crew. Very well, let’s just say I’ve taken the hint.
It’s back to running up and down stairs. The stairwell echoes with the ring of the beam-carriers’ work. Where are they now? The fourth floor? Too soon, let’s not rush this. My partner prods me in the back – no standing around! Alright, I’m running.
Now the crashing is on the third floor. I run down the stairs. From the clouds of dust I can see where the crew are working – chunks are flying off the door frame. The beam doesn’t always break down the doors. Sometimes they’ve been fitted really well. Then the boys have to break down a party wall or smash the piece of wall holding the bolts of the locks. In most cases, as far as I know, they’re all built the same way. There’s only so many types of door.
Onto the second floor. I’m dying of thirst. My mouth is completely dry. Seizing the moment, I pause on the stairs and gulp from a bottle I’m carrying. It’s just ordinary drinking water – I’m carrying a whole case. It’s not vodka, so the guards aren’t likely to pay much attention to my load, and it won’t smell afterwards.
“Hurry up!”
The beam-carriers are going down to the first floor. Now’s the time! As I run past them, I kick the man closest to me below the knee. He lets out a shriek and loses his balance. Then the heavy steel girder lurches dangerously.
Wham! Another guy’s having trouble on the steps, and down he goes. Not just down, but forward, too.
“Fuck me!”
Inertia’s a powerful force, and it can be a tricky fucker. The beam (with the help of a kick from me) is pulling the front two carriers forward with all its weight. The window flies out of the wall with a crash, followed by the beam, which pulls with it the two remaining carriers.
I crouch on the edge of the window sill, turn around, and hang by my fingers. A little to the left and down we go! Somebody’s body breaks my fall. Thanks, friend, that’s what I was counting on.
There are no guards on this side of the building – the doors are all on the other side. So there’s nothing to stop me unless it’s a bullet. As I round the corner, I stop for a second. There’s no sound of gunfire, nor of anyone chasing. Don’t they miss me yet? That’s fine by me. Wallow in your own shit, arseholes!
So, what would any normal person do in my situation? Run home as fast as he can, obviously. And I doubt he’d manage to run very far. How many other Makars are there out there with their gangs? That’s not something I want to find out. I’ve no desire whatsoever to change one shed for another. So, for now, let’s not run anywhere.
Choosing a building – an ordinary five-storey block of flats – I climb over the fence and up to the first-floor balcony. Thankfully, the occupants of the ground floor have covered their balcony with a security grille, which serves as a kind of ladder to help my climb. It isn’t that easy, but I manage to get up there. I still have the strength for now. I lie down on the balcony floor and take a look around. Some old clothes in a little cupboard. An axe! Not a big one, but then I’m not a lumberjack, am I? A can of motor oil, and all sorts of household junk. We’ll leave that for later. Laying the old clothes on the floor, I soak them in motor oil. I look round carefully to check there’s no one nearby. No one in sight, anyway. I press one of the oily rags against the pane of the window and give a sharp tap with the axe. The glass crunches quietly. I read about this in a book when I was still at school. Young Guard, that’s what it was! It said that if you break glass with an oily rag, then it won’t make a smashing sound. Turns out the author was basically right. I climb carefully over the sill and I’m in the flat. Hopefully, nobody saw my movements from the street. Now I can take a look round, provided I keep away from the windows. In the kitchen I find a stale loaf of bread, a little pasta that’s long gone to mold, and two jars of home-pickled vegetables. The tomatoes are just what I need! And I can dip the bread in the pickle juice. I even find a little water to wash it down with. When I turn the tap, however, there’s nothing but a sad whistle – the pipes are empty. Now I can stop holding my breath.
Basically, my escape was a success. It was all improvisation, but what choice did I have? Yes, I did cripple one of the beam-carriers, and it’s quite possible I killed the second by jumping on him from the landing between the first and second floors. Let the great moral guardians weep and wail, but I don’t feel the even slightest pangs of conscience. Nothing of the sort. This very night, my cell-mates, as I guess we can call them, would have held my arms and legs while one of their number beat shit out of me. And I’m sure they’d all have slept soundly afterwards. Soon after that, one of the beam-carriers would have dropped that steel girder on my foot, and again I doubt their conscience would have bothered them much. “You die today, and I’ll live till tomorrow!” Well, I’ve no desire to die just yet. I wouldn’t want to give the long-haired foreman the pleasure. Dare I hope that he’s getting the mother of all bollockings right now?
I told the bandits my address, so it’s quite possible that somebody remembers it. No doubt they’ll wait for me there. And good luck to them. Perhaps they’ll even take a look inside. I’m all for it. There’s nothing of any use to me there anyway. Everything I need I’ll have to rustle up somewhere else. In these abandoned flats, for example. Why should I leave all the good stuff to the bandits?
Makar and his henchman are clearing out buildings gradually and methodically, leaving no stone unturned. At that rate, they won’t even reach this building for a long while yet. So I can afford to rest for a while – Makar won’t be looking for me this close to his “manor”. He is, however, quite capable of sending a couple of his thugs round to my home, but there’ll be no joy for them there. I’ve still got enough of my senses about me.
My sleep wasn’t the most peaceful – someone managed to get up a shootout nearby. Not right next to the building, which was something to be grateful for. Still, it reminded me that I need to get out of here.
A search of the flat, following the methodology taught me by the bandits, brought only fairly modest results – clearly the former occupants were not rich. Apart from the home-pickled gherkins, I found apples and three tins – of mackerel, salmon, and tea. Which really wasn’t bad. Plus some sugar. The rest was junk. I didn’t bother to take the overcoat – not the season yet, but I did grab a leather jacket, even if it was a little worn. None of the shoes were my size, unfortunately.
I sit and wait for night. Not because I can see like an owl, but because nobody else will have that advantage either. And I do know where I’m going. As I say, my visual memory is pretty good. So, step by baby step, or even crawling, I’m out of here. On my way towards home and as far as possible from this dump.
To be honest, I even snoozed for a while – my nerves weren’t up to the waiting. When I awoke, it was already dark enough outside to hide the neighbouring building. I really had no idea that it could ever get this dark in the city. One way or another, there was always light somewhere. Even when there were power-cuts, somebody always found a light of some sort. But now it was absolutely pitch black! No fires, no lights. It was even a little frightening.
Then there were the sounds. The sounds of Tarkov used to be completely different. Now even the sound of the wind on the windows sounded strange. Somewhere there’s a creaking noise of some sort. Apparently someone forgot to close a door. Then there’s the rustle of all sorts of rubbish blowing in the breeze. And no sound of footsteps of car engines whatsoever.
Still, I need to move. I won’t last long here with almost nothing to eat. And if I start gutting apartments like Makar’s gang, I’ll always be in danger of coming across someone better organized in the business. Then I’ll be back to carrying the beam again, and even that’s not the worst that could happen. Best avoided.
I decide not to leave via the balcony. What do they make doors for, after all? The lock is simple as. I wisely decide not to close it, and instead wedge the spring latch with a piece of paper to stop it snapping shut. I shove more paper in the crack between the stile and the jamb so the door won’t swing open in the breeze. Not straight away, at any rate. Do I need a place I can run to in case of danger? I do indeed, and now I have one.
It was kind of awful in the stairwell. The whistle of the wind sounded very different from the way it did in the apartment.
Carefully pushing the door to the street ajar, I listen for a while to what’s going on… No, nothing I could feel for now.
* * *
The street gives me a chilly greeting, and I mentally congratulate myself on getting hold of a leather jacket. Keeping my eyes (or rather my ears) peeled, I run to the next building. Another street, this time wider than the last. I glance around. My eyes are growing accustomed to the dark, and I can begin to make out the silhouettes of the buildings and the nearby trees. Still quiet for now. I choose my moment and quickly cross the street, coming away from the wall of the apartment building.
Nobody calls out or reacts in any way to my appearance. Great.
And off we go…
Dawn found me not so very far from my usual haunts. There was no point whatsoever in heading for any port, and obviously I wasn’t planning on going home. A meeting with Makar’s errand boys was all I needed to make my happiness complete. But I could always visit my little hidey-hole. And there was the basement office. Clearly no one had busted that open yet. The uninviting sign – “Sanitary Service Solutions” – made it all too obvious there was nothing worth looking for in there. A paper pusher’s paradise, no more. At least, that’s what’s obvious to someone who’s never been there before. Whereas I have. I can’t say I was a regular visitor, but I did pop in from time to time. True, I don’t have a crowbar, but I do have an axe. And some knowledge of the internal set-up of this particular building. If I’d been a little smarter before, I’d have managed without a crowbar. But that’s the thing with good ideas, they don’t always come exactly when you need them.
Anyway, I don’t need to break down the door. Let it stand. There’s another way in, from the opposite end of the basement. To get in there, you don’t need to break anything. The area inside is reasonably clean, or at least contains an unexceptional amount of the sort of junk and dirt that builds up in all places like that. Also, a fair amount of daylight gets through the little windows, so my progress through the narrow corridors is reasonably quick.
And what is it I’m looking for? There it is – a dark metal box fixed in the wall. At first glance, it appears to be just the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a place like this. In fact, that’s exactly what it is – installed here way back when. However, while once upon a time in the age of a long-forgotten empire it contained only telephone switchboards, nowadays… Well, yes, it’s an old communications cabinet for the local telephone network. This is where they used to put them all, before they moved them out onto the street to make servicing easier. Or rather, they installed new, more modern ones outside and left these old things to rot. It was only some considerable time later that some clever sods started to use this one as a way to connect illegally to phone lines. The extensions inside were never fully disconnected – that would have required extra work from somebody… Then there were all sorts of different organizations occupying the building, and the vast majority didn’t work at night. That’s when you could use their phone lines to connect illegally to the internet. To be absolutely clear, the lines were used by hackers sitting in the very offices I was trying so hard to get into. Although back then, they referred to these “pioneers of the internet” by a very different name.
Time passed, and the hackers grew up a little, found some money somewhere, and gradually abandoned their old habits. It was getting more dangerous, too. The government started making pointed hints. The guys in the office found a more respectable and lucrative activity – money laundering. Obviously, no actual money was brought or stored here. Here was where they cobbled together the laundry systems, enthusiastically and on a grand scale. Tarkov’s customs regime meant there was no end to the amount of dirty money that could flow in.
The wire-filled cabinet remained, nonetheless. And nobody, not even the old hands in the office, ever suspected that all that was separating them from the rest of the basement was one metal wall of an old communications cabinet. I, on the other hand, knew all about it – I’d dragged the wires there myself, or at least helped out. It was just one of any number of odd jobs I’d done back in the day. I’d even been a warehouse hand for a while, and fixed and soldered enough mechanisms to make your head spin. Why on earth hadn’t I remembered earlier?
The wall of the cabinet led, as you might expect, straight into the office storeroom. Once I was inside, it took a while to get rid of all the dust and junk I’d gathered on the climb through. I’ll have to think of a way of cleaning up in there for the future.
It was dark in the office. The electricity was turned off. Strange somehow, but it seems like someone’s choosing where to cut the power and where to leave the lights on. Never mind, there’s enough light from the windows to find my way around for now.
I didn’t go into the main office, as there was no chance of finding anything interesting there. There’s a high turnover of workers here, so very few people have time to settle in properly. But the managers’ offices, where I was usually entertained on my visits, might well have something worth searching for.
Standing in the doorway of Vitya’s office, I survey the scene in despair. It’s as if every law enforcement agency in town, followed by the tax inspector, has had a go at turning the place upside down. If they were originally after documents then it looks very much like the tax inspectors, frustrated at not finding what they were after, just grabbed every little thing they might be able to flog to make up for their losses. The wide open cupboards, desk drawers strewn across the floor, and safe door hanging on its hinges all indicate that the offices were not just abandoned in a hurry, but evacuated like they were on fire. Hmmm, not quite what I was expecting to find here.
I trawl through the office rapidly, but apart from a few packs of cigarettes and piles of paper everywhere, all I find is a single unopened bottle of vodka. That’s it. Still, Vitya wasn’t the only manager, was he? There are other offices to take a look at. But they weren’t much different from the first one, perhaps a little less messy.
I found a few boxes of chocolates, some unopened bottles of cognac, and a couple of cans of beer. Apart from that, just a bunch of useless junk. On a coat stand, I found a bag with a laptop in it. The computer was quite old, but appeared to be in working order. On the other hand, the battery level was very low. Shit, does it mean all that effort to get in here was for nothing?
Vitya was nobody’s fool, and I had every reason to think he’d have some useful supplies. Instead I’d found yet more chaos and destruction. Cursing everything, I head back into the main office to see what I can find there.
I’d have been better off not looking. I go back to the boss’s office and flop down in his magnificent leather chair. At least that survived the attack. I take a slug of cognac and eat a couple of chocolates, which slightly improve my foul mood.
Shit, so what do I have in the way of reserves. Enough to live on for two or three days, and that’s already something. I also have a roof over my head. I doubt very much that anyone will try to break in here any time soon. I should pile all this junk up against the entrance door just in case – I’m not planning to use it, in any event. I’ll be coming and going through the cabinet. It’s safer that way.
Hang about! I jump out of the chair. What about the leisure room? Vitya always had one. They used to keep the servers in there. Then, when all the hacking business was over, he turned it into a shag pad. How did they ever get such a big bed through the door? In pieces, obviously. Now then, the door should be somewhere round here. I find it quickly enough, but it takes me a whole lot longer to work out how to open it. I didn’t want to break it down. Who knows, I might need it sometime? Finally, the bookshelf shifted slightly and silently turned on its hinges. There it is!
Yup, it was a shag pad alright, and a pretty fucking fancy one at that! (If only I could bring that girl here now…) There was a stack of clean bed linen, and several packs of condoms. Vital supplies in the present situation, obviously. Where have all the ladies got to, I wonder? That guy Makar has a few, I guess. I saw bras and other, hm-hmm, items of ladies’ toilette hanging on a line to dry. I doubt very much that it’s Makar’s thugs who wear that sort of thing. On the other hand, how the hell should I know?
There’s a vast flatscreen TV taking up half the wall, an en suite shower room (with no water), and that’s it. Nothing else, unless you count all sorts of gels and creams, and a razor with a packet of blades. Well, at least I’ll get the chance to shave – I’m beginning to look a little wild. No more luck with washing, however, as there’s still no water. I’ll even have to go outside to piss if I don’t want it to start stinking in here.
When it comes down to it, I now have a well disguised lair and a sumptuous bed with a fair supply of clean sheets, a razor, and all sorts of creams and gels. That’s it. And the condoms, lest I forget. Made in France, too. Valuable goods, if only I had someone to fence them to.
Hang about! Fencing… Associations began to form in my brain. No, not a plan to take the condoms back home to France (although it’s not like I’d turn down the opportunity), but something much more important and real.
Wandering the streets with the gutting crew, I saw several looted shops. And at the time I began to have some doubts on the subject – it seemed like those stores had been stripped out rather too quickly.
How long were we sitting at work completing our urgent project, without any contact with the outside world? Around two weeks. And in that time, had everyone cleverly worked out that they needed to leave town? Far from all of the flats that we gutted looked as if they’d been abandoned in a hurry. And that means people were evacuated. Probably in a reasonably organized manner. So where did the police go? That’s an interesting question.
So, the shops were looted, and that was clearly done when there was already no effort by the police to stop it. In other words, not during the official evacuation, when they’d have been even more eager than usual to keep peace and order.
It would take at least two full days to evacuate a city of this size, if not more. But we were working at the Spa for nearly a fortnight! And then I spent a bit longer at home, watching the news on TV. Idiot. Just at the time I should have been hightailing it out of there. Yeah, well… There I was, listening to the newsreaders’ fairy tales. Then there was Galperin with his escape plan, and my sleepless night on the stairwell landing next to my tripwired flat…
I remember the first looted shop. By then, they’d had time to strip it bare. You’d guess that the man those two guys in uniform shot was a looter running a little late. But, wait! That was the second shop I came to. The first one greeted me with battened down doors and steel shutters on the windows. Say what you will, but something doesn’t fit. All the other shops have been turned inside out, but that one they leave completely intact. At least, from all I could see it hadn’t been touched. Didn’t look like it had been abandoned, either. I follow the twists and turns of my memories. Wasn’t there a sign above the entrance? Something like “Proprietor – A. A. Ogryzko”. Or was it A.V.? Does that make any fucking difference? The shop hadn’t been raided, and that’s all that matters. That means the owner had somehow managed to survive, at least till that moment. And, who knows, he might peek out from behind the shutters one day.
At any rate, I now have an objective – to establish a good business relationship with him. It is a shop, after all. Which means there should even be some food there. And in exchange I’ve got a rich stock of condoms.
Chapter 3
The shop building has been transformed. Sandbags now cover all the windows, and there are even concrete blocks obstructing the path to the front doors. So, tell me do, who would go to all this effort if they weren’t planning to do some sort of business here? The shopfront sign is still hanging above the entrance, even. But there’s nobody around. Just the wind skipping down the street, kicking up all sorts of junk.
I listen carefully. I find I’m beginning to trust my ears more and more. People aren’t so easy to spot, especially if they don’t want to be seen. Hearing them, on the other hand… What did they write in that clever book? “There’s no such thing as a silent ambush.” That’s the Strugatsky brothers… True, nobody’s scratching or belching the way they do in the book, but there are other sounds to listen for. Maybe nobody here is rattling chains, but they do shift from foot to foot every now and then.
That’s what I hear now – somebody gets impatient and starts moving around. Roughly twenty meters from me. I’m lying on a balcony on the third floor. To get there, I had to come down from the roof. Thankfully, the house is old and the balconies aren’t covered. On the other hand, there is a fire escape that goes up to the attic, and from there it’s simple. So, stomp around for now. Meanwhile, I take out my axe and carefully prise open the balcony door. I’ve no desire to smash the glass here, it’s a nice place. I’d like to keep it from myself. The view is pretty good.
Clearly, I’m no great housebreaker, but then again this isn’t Fort Knox. The door squeaked as it was opening, which got a response from the guy stomping round downstairs. He ran up from somewhere, and for an instant I caught a glimpse of him.
Definitely not one of Makar’s crew. His clothes are just too shitty. And it doesn’t look like he has a gun, either, although that doesn’t really mean anything. You can easily hide a pistol in a pocket. And what exactly is he waiting for down there? Doesn’t look like he’s seriously thinking of robbing or killing somebody. Then again, that’s not the sort of intention you go around advertising.
I take a quick look round the flat for anything useful. Jam, stale bread, matches, and three packs of cigarettes which go straight in my bag. I don’t smoke, but I can try to trade them for something. And where do I plan to do that? Why, in the shop downstairs, of course! I decide to leave everything else where it is. I could do with the food myself, and I still don’t know what the trader downstairs might want.
I hear a scraping sound from down below. I climb up on the windowsill, but nothing’s changed down there. I guess the man’s given up on waiting. Looks like he’s on his way. I’ll just give him a minute or two.
A clanging sound as the door of the shop is opened, and out onto the stage comes a new character. One look at him tells you he’s the reason the other guy’s done a runner. Dressed in full camouflage gear (clearly expensive and imported), with a bullet-proof vest and all sorts of other kit I don’t recognize, he’s a big, strong guy. The rifle in his hands looks like something out of a sci-fi film, it’s got so many accessories bolted on. Well, I’m certainly not going to take that on with my axe. You’d need a machine gun just to get that guy’s attention. A big man, and full of self-confidence.
I hear the scrape of the door again, and another similar-looking figure appears, also armed. Have they got an arsenal in there? I move away from the window – they could shoot me from there. But no, I hear their footsteps withdrawing. I perform the same old trick with lock and door, and carefully creep downstairs.
Woah! My feet freeze. There’s a thin wire drawn tight across the staircase. A hundred different swear words come into my head as I think of tripwires, mines, and all the related horrors. If it’s a tripwire, then it’s bound to be connected to something, right? But if I don’t touch anything and don’t pull on it, then in theory it shouldn’t go off. As it turns out on inspection, there’s nothing actually to go off – the wire’s attached to an ordinary tin can which has been carelessly stuffed with a bunch of kitchen spoons and forks. Touch the wire and it’ll rattle, nothing more. In other words, all we’ve got here is a jerry-rigged early warning system. Which means?
It means that if someone put it there, they should be near enough to hear it. And maybe they’re sitting there now, listening. Perhaps they even live on this very staircase. So let’s move carefully. And one more thing
Seeing as this shop’s populated by armed tough guys like the two I’ve just seen, it doesn’t make much sense to go in there showing off my axe. At the very best, all I’ll do is make them laugh, and comedy is not the effect I’m going for. As I walk through the archway of the building, therefore, I hide my axe in a pile of rubbish. It may not be much good as a weapon, but it’s great for opening doors and windows. That’s what I value it as – a tool not a weapon.
I snake between the concrete blocks and stop in front of the door. It wasn’t just for decoration before, and now it looks like the front of a safe. The same impression of weight and thickness. I don’t see a bell anywhere, and there’s no electricity anyway, so I knock and the door resounds thickly under my fist. There’s a scrape, and a peephole opens in the door. So that’s the sound that guy was running from.
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to trade.”
“Is that right?” says the invisible voice with surprise. “Well, go ahead and trade. We won’t stop you.”
And the peephole scrapes shut.
“Hey, maybe I want to buy something from you!”
“Yeah?” Once again the peephole scrapes open, and this time I’m examined more intently. “Step back from the door!”
Apparently I passed the examination, as I hear the bolts being drawn on the other side of the door.
“Come on in.”
Inside, the shop has also been transformed. Now there are grilles on my right and on my left, right up to the ceiling. Behind one of them, there’s a guy slumped in a chair with an assault rifle in his hands. Opposite me stands another guy, unarmed as far as I can tell.
“Spread ’em!” I’m frisked professionally. “What, no weapons whatsoever?”
“What for?”
The guy sniffs and steps to one side, gesturing me forward.
There’s only a small length left of the counter, and even that is all shut off behind thick metal bars. Everything else has been walled over. It’s recent work, I can still catch the smell of fresh plaster.
Behind the counter is a face that I can’t quite place. I know I’ve seen him somewhere before. He’s wearing a wool hat, a warm sweater, and a scarf wrapped round his neck.
“Well?” he says, eying me doubtfully, “what have you got?”
He took a look at my cigarettes and pushed them carelessly to one side – I’d brought six sealed packs with me and one that was half full. The condoms, on the other hand, caused great amusement.
“Now that’s what we’re really after! Selling like hotcakes. What the fuck do you expect me to do with them?”
He slides the pack back across the counter towards me.
“You can keep ’em. Never know when you might need them, eh? What else have you got?”
“What else do you need?”
The shopkeeper laughs.
“We need everything. What exactly do you have?”
“All sorts of clothes.”
A cynical laugh tells me all I need to know.
“Electronics”
The same reaction.
“Look,” he says, nodding at the cigarettes, “I’ll take these. I can give you food and ammo, but not much.”
“I need tinned meat.”
“Two tins! And a pack of hardtack on top.”
I’m in no position to haggle, so I agree to the deal.
“You can bring the same goods again. Water, beer, fizzy drinks – those I’ll take, too. Spirits are always welcome. Can’t imagine what else you’ll find. You’re going through flats, I guess?”
“That, too.”
