Survival Of The Fittest

Desiree nodded and shouted back with an "All right." She had no fucking clue what Sean just said, but he seemed content to just stay in his own world out there for now. She returned to hers at the pleading of her feet to please find somewhere to sit down.

The back deck was bare save for a small alcove shielded from the sun by the upper part of the yacht and a door that presumably led to the main part of the ship. Desiree carefully stepped over the slightly scary holes in the ground and tried the grimy knob on the door.

Nothing. The door just shook, laughing at her for daring to reveal its secrets. She gave one good shake with a grunt, mostly out of annoyance.

When she pulled away, the knob went with her. She stared at the brass thing in her hand, her heart audibly pounding again. She scanned left and right and behind her, and with the knowledge that no one saw her deed she just slapped the knob back on.

On second thought, right here was good enough. She threw her bag on the ground and slid down the interior wall with her back until she hit the floor. She got out the half-finished bag of Doritos and proceeded to eat, staring out at the ocean from an acceptably close and safe distance.

Well, if being on the island was a death sentence, the obvious conclusion was to then get off of the island. However, such a course of action had its own problems.

Yes, Thomas. You, a teenage boy, will simply outwit a terrorist organization that has managed to outmaneuver the U.S. government for over a decade. What a genius plan!

But, what other choice did he have? Just sit around and wait for something(?) to happen? Where did that leave him? Where did that leave his odds?

Thomas ran his fingers through his hair and began to pull at it.

He was getting all worked up again. He needed to calm down. Breathe. Orient himself again.

Suddenly, he heard Lucas call out about not feeling good before running off somewhere.

Thomas whirled around to see where he had gone. It just seemed to be one thing after another with this guy. Was something else up? Had he, like, seen some real shit before showing up at the beach or something?

“Lucas? Hey- What’s up? Everything alright?” He called out, trying to follow after the boy.

He stumbled out in the general direction of the bow of the boat, finding shortly a way outside and a way over to the railing, to the side looking out towards the ocean. The ocean looked blue and wide and made Lucas feel gray and small. The thoughts inside Lucas' own mind made him, whatever part of the collective whole he decided to stand trial for what he had done, feel gray, and small.

Lucas leaned himself out over the edge of the yacht and threw up, aiming for the water but due to the inwardly leaning angle of the yacht towards the beach wound up with some of his vomit hitting the side of the boat.

Staring down and over at the stain he had left down there, the mark he had left on the side of the vessel, Lucas wondered how he had managed to work up enough content within his stomach to throw up at all. He hadn't eaten much at all yet today. There was some nibbling at bread with some water to chase it down earlier on his way to the beach, before he met these people, and the people were the problem, more specifically a person he had left behind and not given her due diligence at all, or acknowledged, or anything like that.

Lucas turned away from the edge of the boat and kept walking, along the boat's bow, or starboard, or whatever the hell this side was, and went looking for the nearest camera, but stopped in his tracks when he heard the concerned shouting of Thomas behind him.

"I need a bit of time alone," he said, looking over his shoulder, "I'm going to find a spot and be alone for a bit, and I won't be long, okay?"

And he set right back to walking.

Once Sean saw she had gone back to whatever she was doing on the deck, he turned his attention back to the fruit as he started experimenting with his throws. He figured it'd be fine since he hadn't heard any screaming or yelling yet so it was probably fine for him to do this.

His mind wandered as he did this. He tended to do this out on walks or during menial tasks. Usually they were just distractions about music and such, but now?

He thought of home. How he struggled to get along with his mother and how he barely talked to his brother anymore and his father? It was hard to tell with him where you stood in regards to him. He often sat in his chair while Sean and his mother fought over things. Like a judge of some kind, but one who never laid down the charges.

But Sean felt it now.

He'd rather have had more days of them yelling at each other than be out here. How will they take it? Will his brother be fine? What will happen to them? These questions and more swirled round his head till he stopped with a final throw as he chucked the fruit away from him. It ddin't land far away and laid there. Mocking him.

Sean sat down and leaned back, his hands to the ground as he stared into the sky and started counting clouds. At least then he would have to concentrate.

As he moved after Lucas, Thomas heard the sound of him retching, followed by a plea to be left alone.

Thomas hesitated on this for a moment, frozen mid-stride. To him, this seemed like one of those times where what somebody said they needed and what somebody actually needed didn’t exactly line up. Lucas was clearly not handling all of this well.

And are you doing any better? You trying to help him out would just be the blind leading the blind. Let it go.

Thomas let out a deep sigh. He didn’t feel much like checking out the yacht for now. He needed to sit down.

Wandering outside the capsized vessel, he wandered out onto the thin strip of beach beach where Sean strolled about, seemingly fiddling with that strange fruit of his. As Thomas watched his classmate, a bit of a stoner by reputation, a question weaseled its way into his mind. It was a simple thought, an idle musing really, but it probably wouldn’t do any harm to ask.

Making his way over to Sean, he caught another whiff of that thing in his hands and couldn’t help but cringe a bit. Still, he tried to put on a friendly face as he approached his companion.

“Um, hey. So, I was wondering… do you have a light on you, or whatever?”

Lucas made it around the corner and back inside the boat to find staring right into his eyes a camera inside a closet.

This was, he realized, it. The moment. Address the people. Tell them, Mom and Dad and Milo and maybe even Ophelia you love them, familial, all of them familial, lie, say that you're sorry, apologize to people that you've wronged, tell them not to watch the broadcast, and if they do that he's going to try and come home, or that he's not going to stoop to that level, grand stand, make some judgments based on what other people are going to wind up doing, look like a morally informed person, stuff like that. This was the moment, and here was the place, and this was the time.

He got as far as opening his mouth before he realized that it wasn't going to work out quite that way.

For starters, he wasn't going to lie. He didn't really love his family. Not in the way that he figured that other people did. Even if he did, he couldn't admit that to them and give them the satisfaction of knowing. He wasn't sorry for anything either. He had lived his life in constant fear of social shame, of faux pas's, of ostracization, and had done some things that hadn't come back to bite him in ways visible to him but surely worked under the surface. Things like not really saying hello to people in the hallways. Things like not meeting their eyes. Becoming classmates with people all friendly like and then treating them like strangers because he could not manage them outside of that specific context, could not imagine that they had any other sort of use or need for him. An uncanny social valley between stranger and friend, the acquaintance abyss down which so many disappeared. He also couldn't say how he'd end up anymore, because of what he just remembered.

So there he stood, dumbstruck, mouth slightly open so the air could run in and out, staring dead-eyed into a fish-eyed lens.

Here come the planes...

Imagine them, he could. Once this island was found, once this terrorist broadcast was ended and over, planes and boats. Corpses dug up, put in coffins. What was left of them. Taken away, taken far and long away to ancestral homes and various locales, and graveyards and crypts. His body would be among them.

And this was the one thing that would set him apart from the rest of the corpses; a clear set of instructions.

"When I die, and you get my body," he finally got the nerve to say, "I want to be stuffed. Like, full on taxidermy stuffed. Make me look stern, thoughtful, cool, dark, neat. I have no idea who's going to watch this or if anyone's going to watch this. I want to be stuffed and made to look lifelike and still alive. Plate me with fucking gold if you want, and close my eyes if you need to. That's it. Sorry, but I'm not making it out of here. Auction my taxidermied floppy body off to the highest bidder and donate the proceeds to a charity for depressed teens. Just don't cremate it. Put my fucking cadaver in a goddamn orphanage and have children swing on my outstretched arms like monkey bars. Please, for the love of god, don't cremate it."

Lucas exhaled, and closed his eyes, still standing in front of the lens, before flipping off the camera and walking away, out to the back deck and into the sunlight.

It didn't take long for his concentration to be broken by Thomas walking out of the ship. This got Sean to raise an eyebrow specially since they all made it such a big deal to explore this thing. Something must have happened or he just lost his lust for adventure or some shit like that.

Thomas approached him and asked if he had a light on him which was pretty curious.

"Well, yeah..." He said as he fished it out of his bag and gently tossed it to him. "A bit late to take up smoking, don't you think?"

There was a brief pause as Thomas caught the lighter befoire Sean asked him. "So what's all this about? Where's Lucas and Desiree?"

Desiree chomped on another cool ranch Dorito, wiping the residue on the bottom of her already kinda dirty from all the walking pants.

Lucas came around the corner. She nodded her head at him, acknowledging his presence before extending the bag out at him, digging in and getting one for herself at the same time. "Want one?" she asked, her mouth half-full.

The doorknob dropped and barely stayed on its perch on the door. Hopefully Lucas didn't notice, or didn't ask if she did something to it. Because she didn't.

Sean seemed a bit surprised by the question, which was pretty understandable. Thomas didn’t smoke and really didn’t drink either. A straight-laced guy like him would need a pretty good reason to take up this sort of habit.

“Well-” Thomas began to explain himself before he saw Sean just toss him the lighter. Panicking, the boy scrambled to catch it, juggling device around a bit before managing to get a firm grip on it. He turned to his companion and delivered a nervous laugh.

Smooth move, pal.

Clearing his throat, Thomas began his explanation anew. “Well, um, you know. Seems like as good a time as any, all things considered.” He then looked down at the lighter in his hand, carefully opening the top, and pressing the ignition button to produce a flame.

It actually works?

After a moment of gazing into the light, Thomas quickly took his finger off of the button, closed the lighter and walked over to gingerly place it in Sean’s hand.

“Anyway, I don’t need it right now or anything. I was just asking for, you know, future reference and all that.” He explained himself, trying to take up an amicable tone, but feeling a strong sense of nervousness following his experience with the lighter. He had to shove his hands in his pockets to make sure the subtle shaking of his hands stayed hidden.

“Lucas is still in the boat, by the way. He wasn’t feeling too good and needed some space, so I decided to give it to him. Besides, I get the feeling he’d prefer Desiree’s company to mine.” That last bit was kind of meant to be a joke, but also kind of not.

“So, uh, how’ve things been out here?” Thomas asked, thinking he should maybe change the subject as he rocked slightly on his heels.

"Sure," Lucas said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a chip, "thank you."

Shit, they got Cool Ranch here? thought Lucas, Maybe this place isn't so bad after all.

But then he realized shortly that no, this island didn't have the Cool Ranch Doritos, just Desiree. Desiree was smart enough to have packed some in her bag and the terrorists were strangely chill enough to let her keep it. There likely were not any more Doritos to eat around here. This was probably the last Dorito Lucas would ever had, and this was probably the last person that Lucas would ever share a Dorito with.

He put it in his mouth. Crunch, crunch.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked, "I'm thinking it's about time we head back out. If you want to, I mean. We could stay here and chill out for a bit too."

Lucas kept his gaze fixed on the Dorito bag.

For a second there, Thomas seemed mesmerised by the light that came from Sean's lighter. Like some mystical thing he hadn't seen before, however it didn't take long before said lighter was put back in his hand by Thomas who's hands shot down into his pockets afterwards.

Sean knew what that meant, but he didn't pry. Instead he followed what he said about Lucas. Apparantly he was sick or something and neeeded time alone. Sean wasn't sure how to feel about that since it was his idea along with Desiree to park here. Hell, as far as he knew Lucas just wanted everyone to leave him alone for a few minutes so he can pretend captain the ship for a bit.

Sean hoped that wasn't the case because he wasn't ready for that level of crazy yet.

"Y'know, the usual out here. Trying to figure out how to juggle that." He said as he pointed with his right hand at the fruit. "Counting the clouds when I got bored of that, thinking of home. That kind of stuff."

"Yeah, I'm good now. Let's head back." Desiree grabbed one last chip out of the bag before rolling the top over and replacing it in her sad little duffel bag. "If you want any more, it's okay. But don't tell the others I'm holding out."

There was maybe a third of a bag now. But without a food source of her own, that bag was gonna go pretty quick if she weren't more careful. But after everything that happened in the last couple of hours, she could afford to treat herself.

With Lucas's helping hand she pulled back onto her feet, grabbed the duffel, and started walking back the way she came with Lucas close by.

As they approached the stairs, she stopped and gave one last look at the sea outstretched beyond.

"It's nice out here," she said to both Lucas and to no one in particular. And almost as soon as those words came, she started heading back over to the entrance of the deck.

It seemed clear to Thomas that Sean wasn’t exactly a conversationalist, which was certainly fine, because Thomas wasn’t sure what to talk about with the guy.

All in all, though Sean seemed pretty on the level, probably the most put together of this whole group, if Thomas was being honest, since he was the only one not crying or throwing up or making Minecraft references.

The attachment to the smelly fruit was still a bit out there, though.

“Oh, yeah. Sounds cool.” The boy replied. Sean had brought up family, and that really wasn’t something Thomas wanted to discuss, like, at all right now.

He turned and gazed inland, wondering how far away the infirmary. Not how long the distance was on the map, but how long the distance would feel in the traversal. Trapped out here, away from the world, time seemed to flow slower. It wasn't by a lot, but enough that you always knew things were stretched out somehow.

“Hey, any guess on how long they’ll be?” Thomas asked out loud, having no reason to think Sean would have a clue about the others.

"Cool," replied Lucas, "if I get hungry, I'll let you know."

He thought of saying that it'd be tough to keep the secret, but he didn't want to lie. Fuck Thomas and Sean, these Cool Ranch Doritos were Desiree and Lucas' own child, basically. A secret kid to keep hidden away from the other two. He knew that the Cool Ranch things were all Desiree had to eat, but that was okay because Lucas would give her some of his food too. He knew what hunger was like and could deal with it much better than she could, he thought. He'd skipped lunches for days on end a few times, for that purpose. Well, not really. It was because he thought that he was getting fat.

Lucas helped her get steadied and ready to leave the dock, acting as a post for her to lean on. The two were almost out the door before Desiree commented on just how nice it was out here. It almost made Lucas want to turn around and just stay.

"It's quiet," Lucas said jokingly in a gruff voice, "tooooo quiet."

The pair walked the length of the boat over to the front deck, where they found Thomas and Sean conversing about someone, somewhere, taking a long time with something, and Lucas couldn't help but feel like he should be able to tell what they were talking about, but for some reason he couldn't quite put his finger on it, like it was just on the tip of his tongue and he should have been able to express it but for some reason could not find the words.

"Long enough to decide that we should get going off this boat," Lucas quipped.

Psyche.

"We should get moving. We've spent a loooong time over here, it feels like."

There wasn't much of a conversation with THomas. Neither were comfortable with each other, that was clear. Sean didn't really know what to think of the guy, he didn't talk to him at all back home and racking his mind for anything to talk about was difficult.

Thank god for him breaking the ice with a question about Lucas and Desiree then.

But as he was about to answer, Lucas said something to them from on top. Suprisingly enough they were done here apparantly, which Sean was shocked by. After all, one wanted a place to crash, the other wanted to be sea captain. It wouldn't take a genius to figure it might take a bit for them to want to walk away from here.

Looking around, Sean saw some small rocks nearby that he grabbed with his left hand and one by one threw at the fruit in front of him. As he did so he said out loud. "You think their alright, those two?"