Survival Of The Fittest

Harry was not feeling anywhere near patient at the moment. He was tired (exhausted really), malnourished, and quite stressed. However, he was feeling pretty good about the contest starting to wind down. It wouldn't be long before this was all over. He really could win this game. That's good mood fuel right there. Harry could honestly say that Andrea V could've won his mercy by telling him where the other competitors were heading. Being able to honestly say that, he felt quite alright in rushing to extreme measures to get what he wanted when she refused to spill it.

The GPS's range was far too limited to facilitate keeping up with two fleeing students going in different directions, especially when the most Harry could average right now was a labored jog...and there was no way he was going around the whole perimeter of the island to find them. They'd be gone by then anyway. This would make things so much easier. Besides, at this point Harry was starting to embrace the direction his persona was heading. Cold, relentless and a little twisted? He liked the sound of that. Very much.

"Well," he hissed in frustration, his eyes darting around for something as he shouldered the strap of the Jackhammer and reached behind him for the doloire. "I suggest you..." He shortly found what he was looking for and, with a tight grip on the girl still, dragged her a few meters away to the nearby stump of a tree. "...get...a fucking...idea!..." He withdrew the blade from the back of his belt and pulled Andrea's wrist in between them, at this point relishing her resistance because of the way it intensified his own efforts. He slammed her hand down on the stump.

"...what I'm talking about." Harry's voice had become soft and almost intimate. An empty DMV smile played on his face for half-a-moment before disappearing back into a look of intense seriousness.

He'd gotten the idea from a movie. Reservoir Dogs. Rather violent film by Tarantino. One of the characters, an experienced bank robber, described a method to get a safe combination from a teller. It seemed like a good method. The doloire was fairly sharp. It cut through Andrea's little finger like a particularly durable breakfast sausage, within an instant applying a liberal amount of blood to the surface of the dead tree.

Harry could hear Harvey Keitel's no-nonsense fuck-around-and-I'll-kill-you voice echoing in his head: '...Then tell him his thumb's next.'

"Your thumb is next. Where are they going, Andrea!?"

Andrea's stubborn resistance gave way to petrifying terror as Harry reached for the doloire, his grip around her wrist tightening as his gaze became even scarier. All at once she felt every muscle in her body aching in protest, the terrible premonition of what was to come sinking in.

"NO! Harry, LET ME GO!" she screamed in futility as he dragged her across the jagged rocks, the hard edges catching open bulletwounds as he pulled. She winced and seethed in pain as he finally slammed her hand down against a tree stump, his startling calm voice chilling her to the core. His eerily relaxed visage slowly melted into another look of pure terror, and as its effects diffused from Harry to her, Andrea found herself writhing more frantically.

"STOP IT! NO!" she protested, but as if it was the cue he'd been waiting for Harry brought the doloire down upon her pinky. All at once her severed nerves screamed at her in agony, their tiny voices manifesting itself into a primal shriek of pain that seemed to last five or so seconds. The end of it trailed off into a string of sobbing curses, her mind rushing as fast as the blood that poured out of her lost ulnar digit.

"Your thumb is next. Where are they going, Andrea?"

The pain coursed through her veins, overpowering all of her other senses. For a brief moment Andrea considered telling Harry, the hot tears stinging her face and blood pouring out of all her newly opened bodily orifices. Still, something about seeing the crazed look in his eyes and her own mutilation reminded her that this was her duty. She couldn't let Emma and Shameeca wind up like her, otherwise everything would be a failure.

Never in her life had the Student Council President been more valiant than she felt at that moment.

"They went...to..." she seethed through gritted teeth, her eyes gridlocking on his.

"Hawaii," she concluded stupidly, the answer not mattering as much as its intent. "They went on fucking vacation!" she winced through the pain, horking up a gigantic loogie and spitting it directly into Harry's face.

Absent-mindedly Andrea began to prepare herself for what was sure to come next, but her steel resolution prevented her from showing her weakness to Harry. A smug attempt at a smirk played across her lips.

Harry's expression remained sombre as Andrea looked him in the eye, finally seeming to wise up and tell him, but inside he was feeling the thrilling triumph of having broken her insufferable spirit.

That was until she horked on the bridge of his nose. Harry threw a surprised little fit, burying his face in his sleeve and wiping at the phlegm and snot vigorously. He was on the verge of striking her, but seized control as it began to sink in that his frustration would only delight her. Harry let out an audible breath through his nostrils and made sure to sport a neutral expression before removing his face from his sleeve and promptly spitting what he could gather up right back at hers. Then he adjusted her wrist on the stump with a jerk and went about removing her thumb.

"This...little...piggy..." The thumb was a little thicker and took a little more effort to cut through, but it soon yielded and severed like its neighbor four doors down.

Andrea recoiled slightly as the spit ball missed its mark, landing somewhere along the lining of her neck near her shoulder blade. She turned her head to look at it for a moment before returning her attention to Harry, his irritation and fury now clearly higher than before.

Suddenly he jerked her hand in his grip and slammed it back onto the stump. Andrea knew what was next.

"This...little...piggy..."

"AUUUUUUUUGH!" she screamed as the doloire chiselled through her radial bone, effectively severing her thumb from her hand. The three remaining fingers twitched involuntarily as if they knew they were next, but somehow Andrea found herself recovering much faster from this blow than she had from the last. Whether it was the adrenaline or her sheer fortitude didn't matter to her at this point - every second she kept Harry occupied was a second that the girls could use to escape.

Still, part of her knew that she couldn't take much more of this, and she wasn't quite ready to lie down and die just yet.

"You would know something about being little, huh, Harry!?" she taunted menacingly in a last ditch effort to free herself from his clutches. Her rushed rationale suggested that if she could get him mad enough, she just might be able to break his focus.

"NEEDLEDICK!"

Harry's patience was circling the drain. Andrea's hand was almost nightmarish in its appearance now, like some kind of bizarre crimson alien appendage, but she was showing no signs of wising up. Harry decided to get a little more drastic. He reacted to her penis insult with a look of irritation that masked a deeper offense, burying the blade of the doloire in the corner of the stump and letting go of her wrist for a snatch at her long brown hair. He tugged to the side, illiciting a yelp of pain from the tortured girl as he raised his fist and punched her in the temple. Andrea twisted and fell away from him on her belly, shaking violently as a choked sob turned into a chuckle halfway past her lips. It continued as she got unsteadily to her knees.

"Aww, Harry...did I strike a--"

The barrel of the Jackhammer came to rest on her cheek.

"--nerve?"

Harry radiated fury as he loomed over her, not an ounce of sympathy or shame in his cold eyes. "Tell me where they're going or I swear I will stick this shotgun up your big ugly cunt and empty the fucking clip."

Andrea made no answer, providing no competing noise for the crunching footsteps that came from somewhere off to her right. Harry turned quickly and raised the shotgun. Andrea's eyes flicked in the direction of the third party, sincerity abruptly returning to her face as she moaned, "Denise...no..."

Denise stood alone at the treeline, clutching her butcher's knife tightly in one hand and halting her approach as Harry turned the gun on her. Her eyes met with Andrea's for a moment, visibly shaken from both what she could see and what she'd just heard Harry say. They returned to him. It had taken so much out of her just to intervene that she felt like she couldn't even take just standing there with the shotgun trained on her. Somehow she did it anyway. Denise chose her words carefully, but the first couple got caught in her throat and she had to choke them out.

"H-Harry, stop! Please. You don't have to do this. We've found a way off the island." It was a bit of a bluff, but it was really all she had to go with. "Andrea has. If you kill her then the whole thing'll be fucked. We can get out of here, Harry. Come with us, please. We can all go home together."

Harry's expression remained cold. "Thanks, but I'm not interested."

"Harry, I'm telling the truth, look--"

"I'm sure you are," he interrupted her, a corner of his mouth curling up enough to show some teeth. "And I'm telling you I'm not fucking interested."

Denise glared intensely at him, sure she was missing something. "What...Why not?"

"Because I'm going to win," said Harry. This time Denise had no inquiry to accompany her bewilderment, so he continued as her expression became one of shocked disbelief. "I'm sick of people overlooking my talents. Ignoring me. I'm not going back to being a nobody from nowhere. If I...When, I win...everyone's going to know who I am. I'm going to be a fucking legend."

Denise was silent for a moment, lost for any way to respond. Her free hand came up to cover her face, muffling the soft heaving that followed. She was so exhausted, so scared...

...so why was she laughing? An undignified snort escaped her nostrils and revealed this to Harry, who sported an incredulous expression. Her bitter laughter became more intense, as did his anger.

"Wh..What a faggot!" came her response through her fit of giggling. "That's just, just too much...wow...Hey, maybe if you beat and torture enough girls you'll get knighted!" Harry's trigger finger was getting itchy, and Denise was sure of this but she didn't fucking care anymore. "Gonna shoot me? Go ahead, show everyone how macho you are by gunning down another chick."

"I don't care, I'm fucking playing to win!" Harry was quivering with rage. The Jackhammer rattled in his hands.

Denise's smile faded into a look of resignation. She knew it'd be coming any second. He wasn't above it. Her eyes rested once more on the brave girl to whom she owed so much. "...Andrea's the legend. You're just chicken shit."

"Shut the fuck up!"

Andrea's stomach had dropped when Denise made her appearance along the treeline, her mind racing over the worst-case scenario in her head. Harry would change targets and vent his rage on Denise, bloodying and mangling her before turning back to Andrea and finishing the job. Her voyage had been counter-productive. While managing to pass the message along to Emma and Shameeca, she may have very well just gotten Denise killed.

"Go ahead, show everyone how macho you are by gunning down another chick."

"I don't care, I'm fucking playing to win!"

Andrea's head reeled, and suddenly it hit her. If she'd struck a nerve with Harry, then Denise was most certainly burning the rest of them away. She was buying her time. Denise was coming to her rescue.

"Shut the fuck up!"

This was her only chance. Denise was giving her an opening, and if either of them had any hope of leaving the island alive Andrea would have to work with her and act on it now.

Harry's gun came up towards Denise, but before he could act on his building rage Andrea was already on top of the situation. Snatching up a huge rock that had evidently been displaced from the rocky cave-face to the treeline, she braced it with both hands and drove it into the back of Harry's leg with a sickening crack.

"DENISE, RUN!"

The frantic scream erupted out of her lips, and before she knew what she was doing she was raising the rock above her head again and driving it down towards the now crippled Harry's shoulder.

Andrea intervened. Like the answer to a resigned prayer that never made it from the bottom of Denise's heart, the brave girl suddenly threw herself at Harry with what little she had left. She staggered him enough to provide a window of escape.

"DENISE, RUN!"

Her mind was frozen on the spot. It had happened too fast. She wasn't ready. Fortunately, her body moved with a mind of its own, clumsily wheeling around and darting off into the trees on pure thoughtless survival instinct. It took a second for her brain to catch up. Within seconds she'd put a good twenty-five yards behind her. A shot rang out. Denise kept running.

~~~

Harry cried out in surprise and pain as something struck his leg, which promptly buckled and fucked his balance in the ear. He landed ungracefully on one knee, throwing one hand in front of him to try to break his fall. He hissed furiously, the realization that Andrea'd had the nerve to attack him exponentially increasing his outrage as he immediately turned on her and fired the Jackhammer in her pretty face.

Breathing heavily, he snatched the GPS from around his neck and zoomed out once to display Denise's blip. She was escaping. He snarled and scrambled to his feet, his leg sore at the knee but still in seemingly working order. There was no way he was letting her go after mocking him like that. Without another moment of hesitation Harry darted into the trees after her.

'Why don't things ever go my way!?'

((Harry and Denise continued in Walkin' in Circles))

Andrea's attack was a last-ditch maneuver, and as Harry fell to the ground she inevitably missed. She dropped the rock, the scattered bullet wounds roaring out in pain as the movement she'd required to counter Harry's torture made her injuries flare up. She fell and leaned back against the rock, unable to muster any more energy.

Harry's gun came up once more, and she noticed in her peripheral vision that Denise had taken her warning and started to run. The distraction had worked, evidently, and for that brief moment, Andrea was happy.

The Jackhammer exploded in sound, and the shells mercilessly ripped through her face. The close range the shot was delivered from served to amplify the impact tenfold, the various scattered rounds blowing her face clean apart and embedding themselves in her skull. Blood, bone and brain mattered erupted from the headmash that was once Andrea Vanlandingham, completing her martyrdom.

G62: Andrea Vanlandingham: DECEASED

13 Students Remaining