There I was, in the middle of the woods with nothing but a pistol and a spare magazine, my palms sweating and my arms shaking as bullets were whizzing by me from what seemed like every direction. Was I going to survive? I didn’t even know where I was, or where I was supposed to go. “This was a terrible idea.” I kept thinking to myself as I walked paranoid through the forest, doing my best not to touch any bushes and give away my position. I looked around to make sure that I wasn’t being stalked by someone less terrified of death than I was.

And then I saw them. Two men, covered from head to toe in heavy armor, each sporting assault rifles, and they were heading right for me. I had to act fast. In an instant, I was out of the forest and across the road. I ran around trees and bushes and up a hill until my stamina was drained and my player was wheezing from exhaustion. Sitting there with heavy breathing and unsteady hands, I looked out from the perch I had positioned myself on, but the two were no longer in my sight. “I’m safe.” I thought as I gave my player and myself some time to calm down.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something shiny. As soon as l looked over to see, there was a flash and a loud bang. My player groaned in pain and my vision became blurry. Someone shot me.

Panicked, I ran for cover farther up the mountain until I came to a cliffside. I threw my body down on the ground into a thicket of bushes and examined myself. I was lucky, they only got my arm, but I was bleeding heavily. Desperately, I shuffled through my items looking for my medical supplies, but as soon as I started patching myself up I heard someone sprinting towards where I had positioned myself before.

I couldn’t see them, nor could they see me, but we both knew that each other was around and that only one of us was going to leave from the top of that hill alive. They got closer and closer to the bush I was in until it seemed like they were just an arm’s length away. There was one way I was going to get out: with sheer force and determination. As soon as I saw them, I made the biggest and last mistake of my life. Full of adrenaline, I stood up and sprayed all 18 rounds from my pistol through the bushes, hoping to land a lucky shot. What I didn’t account for though, and paid for dearly, was the fact that my slow blind-fire of weak pistol rounds would be repaid by a hell-storm of bigger, better, more accurate fully-automatic rifle fire.

As soon as the rounds started whizzing past my head I flopped back on my stomach, this time praying that my death would be swift and painless. I had taken at least one or two more shots to the arms but still was not critically injured. I heard the bushes crunch under the feet of my attacker in what seemed to be him moving away from me, and then, for about ten seconds, nothing. Sheer silence. I thought to myself “Did he run away? Did I actually hurt him bad enough for him to leave the fight?” I sat in shock at what had happened, sweat beading down from the side of my face. Then I made my decision: I was gonna run for it.

Wishful thinking, I know, because the second I got back up from my position there he was, weapon trained on my chest and ready to fire. I didn’t even have a chance to react; I was dead with the pull of a trigger and the blink of an eye.