Survival Of The Fittest

As the tension in the area dissipated, Dickhead seemed to suddenly chill the fuck out and started acting all friendly, going so far as to even kinda sorta compliment him on his killer comeback skills.

Of course, Colin already understood the depth of his skills in that field. Being a vocal member of the anime community online, he had to understand how to lay out a verbal smackdown on anyone that would fire a presumptuous comment across his feed. Having enough people try to tell you that K-On! was a “good show” did something to a man. It hardened him.

But this wasn’t a comment section, or Twitter, or a forum. Real life always demanded a slightly more nuanced response.

“Whatever, man.” He scoffed.

So, Dickhead was named… Dick. Fuck, now Colin couldn’t even really feel contempt for the guy anymore. Having a name that ironically suited to your personality was just… pitiful in a way. The self-deprecating joke about Twitch subscribers didn’t help that feeling.

The amateur anime critic folded his arms, waiting for a moment as Dick started to sift through his bags, waiting to hear a similar question in return. When none came, he found himself a bit frustrated and quickly spoke up unprompted.

“And I’m Colin.” He said, taking on a clear authoritative voice, and giving a quick nod.

Then, they were joined by the mystery man that Dick referred to as Tom. The guy seemed tired, and a little shaky in his demeanor. Colin made no move to introduce himself and simply watched the guy, carefully.

He might not be out of the woods yet.

The two men kept talking. Tom kept moving closer. His stride was slower, though; in his head, he could see that gun rising towards him, over and over and over again. He felt fireworks going off in his shoulder, his chest, his leg, his forehead, radiating from the places they bullets would strike. He could see his bloody, shattered body splayed upon the ground. Rich could do it at any moment.

"Is there some kinda problem, Tom?"

"Huh?" Tom's head jerked up, and he stopped where he was. Both the other men were looking at him warily. Rich still had a gun in his had.

Is there some kinda problem?

A smile flickered half-heartedly across Tom's face. "A problem," he repeated, and ran his free hand over eyes that suddenly felt like they were burning. Jesus, he was still smiling. Why was he still smiling. "Yeah, there's a fucking problem." His voice shook, making his words ragged. "We're trapped in a fucking...fucking free-for-all with bombs glued to our fucking necks, Rich!" He laughed, a choked, garbled burst of sound. "It's a...pretty big...!"

He bent over, wheezing with laughter, tears streaming down the side of his face.

Richard waited for Tom's ridiculous laughter to slowly die down, occasionally looking at his naked wrist sarcastically, before he finally spoke back up.

"Yeah, I know, dipshit," Richard began, annoyance dripping from every word he said. Tom might be someone he tolerated, but nobody gets to laugh at him like that and get away with it. "I meant a problem with me, and you knew that."

He brought one of his hands up, gesturing towards the weapon in his lap. "You were staring at my fucking gun like it was some kind of speeding train coming to take your fucking head off." He paused, putting his hand back down. "Was I supposed to specify what I meant? Sorry for respecting your fucking intelligence more than that, I guess."

Richard stopped, considering his words for a moment, letting the last insult clear the air before he kept going.

"Unless, of course," he began again, a shit-eating grin starting to form on his face. "You were actually staring at my cock."

"In which case," he said, all tension draining from his voice, "three things I gotta say to that. First, you'd be disappointed. Second," he pointed towards his face. "My eyes are up here. Third, you should at least buy me dinner before you decide to eye-fuck me, it's just common courtesy."

Well, Dick certainly was committed to the whole not giving a shit thing, huh? Friend comes up to you, has a mental breakdown, and your immediate reaction is to make a dick/gay quip again. There was certainly something to admire in that kind of consistency. Something.

Whatever. It wasn’t like Dick was victimizing this guy or anything, and Colin didn’t really know what this whole dynamic was. Maybe tears followed by quips was, like, a thing between these two.

After rolling his eyes and giving the pair a moment, Colin finally approached them.

“So, I don’t wanna get in the middle of this little thing you’ve got going here-” he turned to Tom, “it’s Colin by the way - but do either of you guys have any ideas on what the fuck to do out here? Cause I’m currently sitting on my ass with nothing but these puppies” he indicated his empty hands.

“Like, I’ve got judo training, but that ain’t much up against some idiot with a shotgun and an itchy trigger-finger."

They might as well know that Colin could handle himself in a fight. Dick had proven to be a non-sociopath, but he didn't want Tom getting some funny ideas. Panic clouds judgement and shit.

Tom had spent a lot of his life laughing.

He didn't know when he'd started, exactly. He'd been young. Almost as young as he had been when he'd found that calming rhthym. Or maybe younger?

It was a lesson Tom had had a hard time understanding. He'd smiled when teachers had punished him, which made them punish him more. He'd smiled when the first girl he asked out stopped talking to him. He'd even cracked a joke over his grandad's wide-eyed, cooling corpse. No one had laughed then. Tom had not even been sure why he'd made the joke. For the same reason he always cracked the joke. Something about absurdity. About struggling for meaning with death's cold weight just a thought away.

He knew this laughter was dangerous. It was hysterical, verging on insane. It wasn't staving off the heavy black ice of his terror. It was inviting it in, deeper with every laugh.

Then Rich started talking. Tom was still chuckling, but there was danger in Rich's tone, and a gun in Rich's hand, and that just made Tom want to laugh harder, and then-

"Unless, of course...you were actually staring at my cock."

For a moment, Tom stopped laughing. He looked up, and caught the shit-eating grin on Rich's face. And as he spat fresh lines, Tom started laughing again, and it was a little less shrill, a little less crazy, and the black ice of his fear felt a little farther away.

"First of all, Rich!" Tom exclaimed, snickering as he straightened up. "You know damn well I'll gobble that cock whether it's an appetizer or a three-course fucking dinner. Emphasis on fucking." A trembling smile was on his face. "Second of all, we don't have time for dinner. We don't even have time for Netflix and Chill. It's hide-in-a-cave-and-fuck-like-rabbits o'cock, so either pull down that fucking zipper or stop teasing me."

He glanced at Colin, remembered him vaguely but couldn't remember from where, and started to wave with the hand holding the kami. Then he glanced at the weapon in his hand and snorted. "Hey Colin. Mostly fuck-all in the way of ideas. I guess if you guys want to help me find a big old black cloak, I can go full fucking grim reaper. Really strike the fear of death into people. Right before I get shot for being a smart-ass."

Saying it this time made it seem a lot less scary. Everything felt a little more sane.

"What about you, boys? Got any plans?" He rested the kami against his shoulder as though he were Cloud Strife himself, and smiled at Rich and Colin. He looked a lot less crazy. He looked a lot less afraid.

Richard had to cover his mouth to hold back his laughter at Tom's response. That had to be the best possible reaction he could've had, and Richard had to admit it was well played. Thankfully, it seemed to also get Tom to stop his odd behavior, so that made it even better, now he once again didn't have to care.

"I ain't got any plans, except survive." He said, as he thumbed the safety on the gun off and on. "I'm not about to go and leave my mom alone, I'm all she has. Even if I don't care about my own hide all that much, I care about her." He looked between Colin and Tom, scratching at his neck underneath his collar.

"The only other idea I had was uh..." He paused, briefly considering how what he was about to say could cause the other two to react, before pushing those thoughts aside. "Look... I hope you guys didn't have the idea to group up with me, because I'm gonna tell you right now that that ain't gonna work."

He cocked his head to one side, his face showing how disgruntled he was. "Like, I like you Tom, and Colin is starting to grow on me not gonna lie, but let's just face the facts. If we group up, even if the best case scenario happens and we all survive to the end, we'll be left with no other option than to kill each other. And frankly, I'm not a fan of that idea, so I think it'd be for the best if we just didn't do that."

Well it seemed that Dick’s preferred method of therapy, that being incessant references to his cock, actually did the damn trick. Tom returned fire with his own stream of vaguely ironic dick/sex jokes.

Colin wondered if the two of them were planning on ironically making out with each other too.

But, the good times weren’t destined to last, with Dick quickly shooting down any ideas of the three forming some sort of temporary alliance out on this island, an idea he backed up with a combo of facts and bullshit. Whatever. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that Dick was in this to survive, since he’d had his gun trained on an unarmed Colin not long ago.

Colin let Dick’s words hang for a moment before replying. “Look, bucko, it’s real noble of you to lay it all out there and shit. Reasoning’s a bit bullshit, since any group’s gonna have a better chance than some lone wolf, but I’m not your fucking keeper.”

The boy shrugged before shoving his hands into his jacket pockets and making a clicking sound with his tongue.

“Well, I guess I’m hunkering down and waiting for announcements then. I’m gonna need something to defend myself, and I ain’t got reason to feel guilty taking from killers.” He spoke plainly, making to leave once more. “If neither of you plan on coming along, I guess I hope you don’t die before tomorrow.”

He turned back to face the two of them, making a jazzy pair of finger guns, before heading back on his path.

Colin took a deep breath. He didn’t plan on dying either.

((Colin McCabe continued in Bent))

The smile on Tom's face died quickly.

Jokes gave way to reminders of where they were. Speculation of what was to come. Of the murder and insanity that lurked on the horizon. There was still a gun in Rich's hand. He could shoot down Tom right now, and there was nothing Tom could do to stop him.

Colin seemed to sense the change too. In spite of his attempt at good humor, Tom thought he could hear very real hesitation in his voice when he said, "I guess I hope you don't die before tomorrow."

Right. Death was right there, leaning over him, casting its shadow upon him. Upon all of them. Rich didn't even want them to stay, for fear of...

"I get that," Tom said softly, lowering the kami from his shoulder and tracing the blade with his finger again. "Really, I...I don't want to die, but...I don't know if I can...

An end. An end to Rich. An end to Colin. An end to Tom. That was all the people at home would see: the endings of their stories. Colin, hunkered down when some assassin came upon him. Rich, gun firing wildly as he went down like a cowboy taking a stand against the bandits. And as for Tom...

Too many visions. Too many endings. So many ways he could die. That was all he was now. An ending.

And Tom found he was repulsed.

He didn't want to end. But more than that, he didn't want to be just an ending. Worse than that, an ending among many, to be perused at the leisure of the monsters who'd put them here and the sick voyeurs who chose to watch. It was only the endings that would entrace them, not the stories. Not the totality of who they were.

All this will be lost...like tears in rain.

A flicker of a smile crossed over Tom's face, though it didn't quite manage to catch.

"I think...I think before it's over..." Tom looked around, spotted a camera in the woods. Another flickering smile. "I think I'd like to hear people's stories." He glanced back at Rich. "What about you, Rich? You got a story you wanna tell?"

Richard scratched his chin as Colin left, caring very little about his sudden departure. He was pretty good at his comeback game, but he was still an idiot that was a liability at best. He probably wouldn't last more than two or three days.

What Tom was saying was much more interesting. A story that Richard would like to tell? That was certainly a thinker. He stared at Tom for a bit, before looking at the ground, humming to himself, trying to think, really considering what he wanted to say. He wanted to say something profound, something meaningful, but he realized that the real answer was fairly simple.

"I think," he began, his voice quieter than normal, "I want to tell the story of how I survive this."

He understood what survival in this situation meant. He understood from the moment he woke up. If he wanted to get out of here, he was going to have to kill his classmates. He was going to have to watch his friends die, if he wasn't the one to put them down himself. He'd have to endure all of that, just to go home to a life that wouldn't be worth living anymore.

"It's hard to think about everything I'll have to do to tell that story, but..."

If it were completely up to him, he wouldn't bother with it. He would have just shot himself as soon as he woke up, hell, he wouldn't have even made it to this point at all, since he had wanted to end it for a long, long time. The same reason he didn't end it before is the same reason that he didn't want to end it now, the thought that he had been returning to over and over again in his head. He couldn't let his mom bury her only child, he couldn't let her lose everything she had left. If he could do something to stop that from happening...

"...I'm not gonna die here."

...he would do it, no questions asked.

It wasn't like he had to kill all of his classmates himself, anyway. He didn't need to point his gun at everyone that showed up in front of him, like he tried with Colin. He could probably score all the kills he needed to leave just by defending himself from attackers. As much as he wasn't ready to become a killer, he was ready to be ready for it.

Plus, killing everyone around you wasn't even that good of a strategy. You could rack up injuries doing it, or wind up painting a massive target on your back that'll get you dog piled on as soon as you're vulnerable, since they announced who killed who every morning. It was better to maintain a low profile, hide out somewhere, stay safe, and kill anyone who threatens you.

Richard started to hoist himself up, making sure his bag was secured to his person, before beginning to walk away in silence. He didn't really want to be here in the open, anymore.

He still wasn't sure he was actually cut out for all of this. At some point, he would need to prove to himself that he was capable of doing what it would take to survive. There probably wasn't a way to do that without killing someone, however, and he really didn't want to do that, since he hadn't yet proven to himself that he could, and it wasn't like killing would actually help him most of the time. He was trapped in a loop of fear and anxiety, and he wasn't sure how to get out of it.

"Don't follow me, by the way," he shouted back to Tom, not turning his head to look at him.

He took a few more steps, before stopping in his tracks as a realization hit him. There was a way to improve his chances, while still eliminating the competition and avoiding the usual problems that came with killing.

"Actually, Tom, wait..."

He could just rob people at gunpoint, have them drop their supplies and weapons, and tell them to run off. If they did, they'd probably either get picked off by someone else or die of exposure. Then he'd be able to collect their supplies to add to his own collection, and potentially get some new weapons for his efforts. That kind of crime wouldn't be reported for all to hear, either. The only people that would know would be any victims and anyone they happened to tell by word of mouth.

"..."

He was well outside of any kind of range where Tom could charge him with that blade of his. He could start with his new strategy right here, right now, if he wanted to. Still, was it a good idea? Was he really about to do this?

"..."

He wouldn't be evil if he did something like that, right? He would just be doing what he had to in order to survive. He would be like a honey badger raiding a beehive. A honey badger wasn't evil for doing that, was it? He had to be the last man standing, the badger needed to eat. The circumstances made it okay.

"..."

That's what he told himself anyway, as the hand holding his gun started to tremble.

"A-Actually..."

He still couldn't do it. Not to Tom, not to someone he could call a friend.

"...N-Never mind."

Finally, he started walking again.

He didn't look back.

((Richard Smith continued in We're Gonna Need A Better Boat))

"I think," Rich began, his voice quieter than normal, "I want to tell the story of how I survive this." Rich paused for a moment. "It's hard to think about everything I'll have to do to tell that story, but..." His voice hardened. "...I'm not gonna die here."

Tom smiled again, to hide the thrill of terror inside him. He knew what Rich was saying. Worse, Rich knew what Rich was saying. Suddenly the gun in his hand seemed to swell like the sun over a horizon, almost blinding Tom with the intensity of its lethal weight.

"Might be a good story," Tom granted, trying to keep his voice casual. "Just hope it's not a tragic one."

Rich did not say anything. Actually, Rich picked himself up to leave. Tom was sure that would trigger some of his low-key abandonment issues later, but for now all he felt was a sense of relief. When Rich told him not to follow him, Tom actually laughed a little under his breath, nodded, and laughed a little harder when he realized Rich couldn't see him.

"Actually, Tom, wait..."

Tom's laughter died at the strangeness in Rich's voice. He froze like a deer in the headlights (and at the same moment realized why the deer froze, felt the stunning weight of mortal terror greater than he'd ever known, like the moment of shock that comes from jumping into water far colder than you expected, except this wasn't water it was pure, sharp fear). His hand tightened on the kami over his shoulder. His eyes fixed on the gun in Rich's hand, which swelled until was all Tom could see.

"...N-Never mind."

He heard the fear in that voice. Worse, he heard the self loathing. Worst, he recognized it.

"Rich-" he started, too late. Rich was gone. Tom was alone again. Alone with only terror. Alone with only death's black shadow hanging over him, the scythe arced high overhead, waiting for any excuse to fall.

He wanted to tell Rich that he knew that feeling. He wanted to tell Rich that he knew that ache, the idea that there was something you should do, and something you couldn't do. He wanted to tell Rich he'd spent his whole life living in the gap between those two moments. In lips never kissed. In words never said.

But the moment was passed, as dead as he might one day be. As dead as he would be, quite soon.

"I hope you survive," he whispered.

But there were other stories to tell, and Tom didn't linger long.

(Tom Swift continued in Woody Harrelson wearing a red wig in the Stinger of Venom saying “There’s Going To Be Carnage”)