I hated getting crappy gear right off the bat, it made things like going through the woods in the north-west quarter of the island all the more harrowing, especially after seeing another player run in there.

“Ah shit…” I murmured as quietly as I could after coming to a full stop by a tree, “should’ve searched her pod…”

It was a rookie mistake, leaving an enemy pod unsearched, but I’d only very recently been at the mercy of a bunch of gunmen, so I decided to let my minor transgression slide.

I spent a few seconds picking a new direction to go in, before settling for west, the opposite direction of the beach, and resumed hoofing it toward the small pocket of cabins that I knew were in that general direction.

The bad news with picking that though was that I was left with a lot of time to ponder on just how badly shit had gotten for me up in the real world.

I was flunking out of most of my CS classes due to the simple fact that, along with several other, far more mature things, I was having too much fun getting high with my friends and playing videogames.

Then there was the fact that my girlfriend had left me for some douchebag hipster who was conveniently really into music after finding out that she was trying her best to get into a band.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that I’d just missed my first SDCC since I was ten-years-old.

Oh, and then there was the whole getting hit over the back of the head with some kind of small but heavy sack, then getting dragged into a van, and then taken to some warehouse out the middle of nowhere where some nut-job in a purple suit… eh, you know the rest.

Anyway, I was on the north-east part of the island that, while not particularly ideal in terms of loot, meant I had a whole lot of space between myself and the other 249 players getting around the hundred-by-hundred mile map.

I know that seems like a lot of space, especially given how few players there were in a match, but given that most people almost always dropped in one of the cities or the harbor, those numbers ticked down pretty damn quick.

Don’t even get me started on what happens when a few people band together, which they almost always did.

“Goddamn it.” I whispered as I came up to the set of five cabins after a solid twenty minutes of running, only to find that all the doors were open, a surefire sign that the place had been cleared out.

However, right as I was about to turn away and started looking for a road, I spotted one unopened cabin at the end.

Every instinct told me to make a break for that final cabin, grab the loot I could, and hope that it was enough to defend myself from the other player, or players, that were clearly there.

I’d played enough KillStreak to know that that was a death sentence though, and instead took my time, circled around the back of the cabins, and started peeping through windows while at the same time doing my best to remain unseen.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised that the cabins had been all but raided given that I was four or so miles from the lake, and with it, one of the main roads, but there still some part of me that felt like it was unfair that someone else had rolled up on what was supposed to be a barren part of the map.

“Found you…” I breathed as I spotted the girl from the beach, as well as the DMR and backpack she’d managed to collect in her looting.

She seemed pretty nooby, what with the fact that she’d left almost every door she’d gone through open, but a noob with a gun is still… well, a noob with a gun.

The player, clearly not paying attention to her surroundings, went for the side door while I made a stealthy but quick break for the corner of the cabin, where I waited for her to come running blindly out.

As expected, she ran out, her gun aimed at the ground and her face full of hope as she made her way toward the final cabin.

She never reached it though.

Before she’d gotten close enough to open the door, I’d managed to sneak up behind her and crack her over the back of the head with my crowbar.

FinnyBoi incapacitated BonBonBonny

+5 Points (5 Points)

I was left with two choices, bash her over the head again and get what loot I could from her body, or leave her to potentially get up after bandaging and shoot me in the back of the head.

Alright, so I didn’t really have a choice, but that didn’t make the visceral feeling of caving someone’s skull in with a crowbar any less brutal or sickening, especially when there was about a ten percent chance that I was killing a real person.

FinnyBoi murdered BonBonBonny

-1 Player (237 Players Remaining)

+10 Points (15 Points)

1/3 Killstreak

I was surprised by the amount of players that had already been killed, but in all fairness I didn’t really keep up with the server notifications unless they directly applied to me, and, honestly, watching those little blips of text pop up seemed like a really good way to get myself killed.

+SVD

+30 7.62mm

+Tier 2 Backpack

-Tier 1 Backpack

Honestly, I was a bit pissed that I didn’t have at least a red dot sight for the DMR, and I would’ve preferred something with a large ammo capacity and, you know, automatic, but the SVD was a solid gun, and it was certainly better than nothing.

After ensuring that Bonny hadn’t left anything potentially useful behind in the other cabins, I’d moved up to the last one where, to my great disappointment, I found absolutely nothing.

I was no stranger to crappy spawns, but usually I could just accept that I might end up getting killed early on, but with my neck actually on the line I couldn’t help but feel an undeniable sense of anxiety that I didn’t have enough.

“You just need a car,” I said to myself before leaving the empty cabin, “you just need a car, then you’ll be okay.”