Survival Of The Fittest

Every step threatened to cast him back to the dirt. Every moment he remained standing was a victory. Another step towards defiance. Another away from being another victim. He’d stare this down, welcome it, never to shy away from his fate again. There wouldn’t be another chance for weakness, another chance to fail.

Even as he watched Claude produce the pistol from his waistband, Tyrell knew he had to keep walking. No fear, no flinching, no looking away. Stare down the barrel, stare down the abyss waiting inside. They’d been here before, and he could remember the sound. Taste the copper, the smoke.

I die standing.

He didn’t flinch, didn't acknowledge Claude's parting words.

*click*

Ty’s eyes widened, and he cocked his head at the empty air in front of him. No fire, no lethal projectile. Emptiness. He took another step forward, closing the gap between the two of them. Waiting, once again, for that empty space to violently erupt and end it all.

*click*

He studied the disbelief in Claude’s face, the absence of an end. This wasn’t nerves, it wasn’t a mistake. The hammer fell, again and again on a bullet that should have killed him. The moment continued.

It was meant to.

For the first time since standing back up, Ty looked away from Claude. Upwards, to whatever it was that was witnessing this. Something was watching them; something greater than all of this. The sign it left was a kind one; tangible enough, that Ty was able to believe it. When he looked back down, he was smiling.

Bullets weren't supposed to click.

The subject was not one that Claudeson Bademosi had a whole lot of experience with before coming to the cursed Survival of the Fittest island. The very first gunshot that he'd experienced in person had been the gunshot that had executed Ms. Garcia. It had been sharp, loud, and had the image of her brains being forcibly removed from her head not stuck with him, the noise would have. Later, when he'd shot at Tyrell in the house, the weapon had been nearly deafening in the small space. The wood beside his head had shattered and the ringing had persisted for hours.

The loudness of the bullet that had struck Bryan had all but overloaded all of his senses, to the point where he'd remained on the floor, watching the boy's blood ooze from his shattered head. It was an image that he saw each time he closed his eyes.

This time, it clicked. There was no bang, no thunderous sound, no Tyrell on the ground.

Nothing happened.

A surge of panic flooded through his body, and he stared at the pistol in wonderment. He had loaded it the day before, just before Lori had awoken. Looking back up at Tyrell, the boy looked as surprised as he was, but he didn't stop.

He pulled the trigger again — another click.

Tyrell took a moment and looked to the sky, and — no, he looked to the heavens.

Of course.

A combination of understanding and of fear flooded his body, but that understanding caused his eyes to well up. There was another emotion there, too. It was unfamiliar but welcome. Looking back down from the heavens, Claudeson's face beamed bright, blinking through tears of joy to share his understanding with Tyrell, sharing the boy's smile.

After all of this time, Claudeson had finally found relief.

"He finally answered," he murmured.

They would have no reprieve. No escape, or apologies, no waking up from this. The dead stayed dead, the living would continue to press on as if they’d always live. Someone would win, and that victory would condemn them to a different, quieter torment. The class of 2018 was given nothing more, nothing to stand in place of the lives they were supposed to live. Fate had been cruel.

Still, he continued to stand, continued to find the strength to make a choice, to decide how it would end. Tyrell had been given this, he was more sure of it than anything he’d felt before. For a moment, it felt like it might just be enough recompense for everything that had been taken; more than Ty deserved given what he’d stolen. There wasn’t any need to qualify it, to justify or rationalize anything to himself; his final moments had been given back to him. It wasn’t the God he’d grown up with, or the one Claude once believed in, or anyone else’s.

The belief was his own, something only he understood. It felt real, brought clarity, at last.

There were only minutes left. Hours, if he was lucky.

What could he do with this moment, now that it was his own once more?

His purpose was found between layers of spite, relief, melancholy, sympathy and malice. It was in the smell of sickness and copper, in the weight of indifferent steel and the way his fingernails dug into his palm. It was in the sting of old wounds and the raging heat of new ones. Fond memories of standing over someone he’d beaten, knowing it could have been him. Pride at the fact that he could stand where others had fallen.

The answer lay in gift for violence, and in finding the one place where it really belonged.

Wordlessly, Ty swung the crowbar as hard as he could muster towards Claudeson’s outstretched arm.

All of the happiness that flooded his heart could not mask the pain that shot through his arm as the crowbar connected with the Walther, bashing the weapon and his fingers together with a sickening crunch. Tensing up in agony, he tried to squeeze his hand but all that he could muster sent a surge of pain through his body. With the force of the blow, the weapon clattered to the ground, bouncing off a rock and actually discharging with a loud bang, the bullet flying harmlessly off into the forest. Once more, his ears rang from the sound of a gunshot that came just moments too late.You have your answer.
Taking a shaky step back, Claudeson looked at the mangled and now bleeding flesh of his right hand. His thumb was misshapen and his pinkie and ring fingers were twisted the wrong way. A large gash had formed on his hand, and he felt his own gag reflex take over as he fought the urge to vomit over the damage to his hand. He never left you.
Stumbling over his discarded pack and catching his foot on something hard, Claudeson tried to put some distance between him and his deliverance but only succeeded in sending himself tumbling back to the ground. Unable to resist the urge to brace his fall, he put his mangled hand out and screamed as it absorbed the fall, sending his broken fingers into other directions that only caused him even more agony. You left Him.
It was Min-jae. The crossbow that had been his ally, his one steadfast companion throughout his journey; it had turned against him at the final hour. His foot was caught within his pack and the crossbow, the string wrapped within the strap of his pack. Unable to bring himself to his feet, Claudeson began to crawl away, gingerly trying to avoid using his mangled hand to do so. Looking in front of him, he saw the delta of the lake — it was his best option. If he could make it into the water, he was certain that he could swim away and put some distance between the two.

He felt fear, but all the while, his spirit felt lighter. Finally, he had gotten His attention.

Claudeson had his answer, but it had cost him. This is your penance.

The swipe was anything but graceful, but it did its job; it drew blood, and cast the gun aside. Hearing the weapon go off only as it hit the ground confirmed his belief in what he was doing. Striking as hard as he did, he was forced to commit with the heavy bar, and it momentarily threw him off balance. Any slight twist in his torso and he felt claws dragging him back to the ground, back to groveling.

Pain had a job. It said where and how badly one’s body was injured. What it gave him now was no new information, and so he knew it could be ignored in a way the real damage couldn’t be. Ty watched Claude scramble away, tripping over the crossbow and falling onto his mangled and useless hand.

He wanted to follow up, to bury the crook of the crowbar in the back of Claude’s skull, but heaving breaths and a split-second lapse in awareness delayed that response. Crossing his arm across his chest, he could feel his strength threatening to leave him.

Not threatening. It is.

With his free hand, he reached up and slapped himself across the face, his palm leaving bloody streaks behind. Ty shouted away the unwelcome exhaustion and agony radiating from his chest, letting out something between an anguished wail and a battle cry. Whether it was rage or the last few drops of adrenaline he had left, he tried to summon whatever could buy a few more minutes of focus.

Looking up, he noticed Claude was crawling away, towards the river. Ty shambled unsteadily after him, catching up and stepping into a swing of the crowbar’s crook - aimed directly at Claude’s leg.

The sudden smashing agony that coursed through his leg caused him to cry out, but Claudeson kept on crawling. The lake was only meters away, and if Tyrell was hobbled at all by the shot that he'd managed to hit him with, he knew that swimming would prove far more difficult than lurching after him with the crowbar. His crawl was slowed by the new wound, each push causing his legs to scream with pain.
You should have trusted your teachings.
If he were to face this, his most substantial of trials, it would be at the behest of Tyrell Lahti. Since the moment that he'd met the boy, they had been on a collision course. It was almost preordained, a thought that caused him to smile as he agonizingly crawled towards the water's edge. Each time he brought his hands down to try and escape the danger following him, Claudeson caught a glimpse of the carnage that the crowbar had wreaked upon his right hand. His fingers looked to be barely there; he was unable to move any of them.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Listening for the telltale steps of his pursuer, Claudeson reached forward with his left hand and grasped a handful of soil and dirt, pushing himself further forward. Grunting, he waited until he heard the footsteps stop and instead of bracing for another blow, he rolled to his back and flung the dirt towards Tyrell's face.
Thou shalt not have any strange Gods before me.

The strike slowed Claude, but it didn’t stop him. Not close enough to anything that he could break easily, that could bring all of this to an end. Worse still, the crowbar slipped out of Tyrell’s grasp before he could bring it down again. Landing in the dirt, Ty leaned down to pick it back up when he suddenly felt a shock run up his side, and a startling numbness wash over his midsection.

Wheezing, he fell onto one knee, hands scrabbling in the dirt for the crowbar. Cold sweat ran down his brow, carving tiny paths through the blood smeared across his face. It took a few seconds, but he found his weapon once again.

Only to look up and see Claude pitching a chunk of dirt towards his face. He winced as the gravel and sand impacted his face. It was surprising that he could even notice it sting, given the haze of affliction he found himself in.

The other boy kept scrambling, tearing away from the inevitable instead of facing it down. Refusing to follow Ty’s example, failing now just as he’d always done. As Claude was meant to.

He let go of the crowbar. It was too much to rely on, forced too much commitment. Ty cracked his knuckles, trying to return feeling to them as much as he was allowed. The crowbar was another thing that had been foisted on him, a weapon designated to boy number nine, not Tyrell Lahti. For this act, he knew he was supposed to use his own tools.

Claudeson wasn't sure what he had been trying to accomplish when he tossed the dirt at Tyrell, but it had staggered the boy all the same. Any time that he could buy himself at this point was crucial. Half flipping over once more, Claudeson propped himself up with his elbows and used both of his feet to propel himself forward, the injury to his leg making the maneuver only half-successful. Whatever damage Tyrell had done, it was serious. Not that he needed a reminder.
Honour thy father and mother.
Grunting in near-agony as he kept on crawling, he was more than pleased to feel the earth becoming damper underneath his hand, the sandy bank of the lake finally within his grasp. The embankment had a relatively steep grade, but he knew that he could push himself down within and out onto the water in mere moments. From the glimpse he had gotten of Tyrell, it looked as though the crossbow bolt had done some damage after all; for all of the boy's fortitude, he was likely setting through on his path to whatever came next.
Thou shalt not kill.
"He finally answered me," Claudeson mumbled as he crawled towards salvation. Stopping at the edge of the embankment, he pulled himself to his knees and looked out at the lake. The Heavenly Father had answered his prayers, at long last. What great lengths he had been forced to traverse in order to receive that answer, he was not certain how he would be judged. The sun was just beginning to set and the water was still, a glass sheen on the hellish island they came to live upon.
Thou shalt not kill, Claudeson.
He was free. Almost there.
But you did.

Ty could hear Claude speaking, muttering under his breath, but couldn’t make out the words. Prayers, maybe. Trying desperately to claw back his faith when everything else had failed him. Of course Claude would be the kind to chase down some kind of salvation instead of facing the truth. Weakness drove him to the water’s edge, instead of towards what he’d started.

I just have to follow.

There were only a few yards between them; mist from the water's edge was able to reach his skin. It only made the numb sensation in his extremities more prevalent, the tangible equivalent of the dark spots in his vision. The river looked only waist-deep, nothing compared to the ocean it ran out to.

Nothing to lose, nothing to gain. Only something to take.

Taking several sharp breaths in anticipation of the dance of pain across his body, Ty saw Claude begin to rise at the river’s edge. For a moment, he too was struck by the vivid colours cast across the surface of the water.

Only for a moment. Venting his anguish once again, Ty ran and threw himself at Claude, propelling the two of them into the cold, rushing water.

Something heavy battered him from behind and for a second, Claudeson felt himself tumbling through the air. He felt weightless, as though he were being raptured to the heavens above. It was the primal scream that could only have come from Tyrell that quickly reminded him that was not the case. Even if they were blessed or fortunate enough for the Rapture to have set down upon them, the things that he had done in search of an answer were enough to disqualify him. As he hit the cool water, he instantly felt more awake and more alive than he had been in days.
Remember what you have taken from this world.
Much like he had felt once he had awoken on this island paradise.

One man's paradise was another man's Hell. After all, the devil wore many masks.
Bryan Merryweather.
Tyrell landed on top of him within the water, the splash loud enough to anyone who could possibly hear them. Claudeson's leg pounded as he tumbled into the water, and he found himself on his side. His clothes were now heavy with water and he could taste the faint salt from the ocean upon his lips. Pushing himself up with his left arm, he instinctively aimed a punch towards Tyrell's face with his right.
Bret Carter.
The punch, once perhaps a more powerful effort, was limp and weak, thanks to the mangled mess that had once been his hand. As he connected with Tyrell's face, the blow managed to do Claudeson more harm than good and he howled with pain as he managed to deliver what was nothing more than a hard slap. Battling Tyrell was a fool's errand and he needed to get away from him, but the boy's weight upon his legs made that difficult.
Emeka Gibson. You will always remember his name.

The impact forced the bolt deeper, the sensation sapping the breath from Ty’s lungs. Over and over, he kept reminding himself that it didn’t matter, as long as he pressed on. As long as he’d given everything he had to give. As long as here and now, he won.

Clambering across the rocky riverbed, Ty could only barely see his quarry. The current was strong enough to remind him that it was there, that it carried away detritus and dead things, that it could carry him out to sea if he allowed it.

Pushing the long, wet strands of hair from his eyes, he saw the trails of blood they were leaving in the water. Saw Claudeson struggling to get back up. Only just noticed the strike headed for his face.

The anemic impact just barely jerked Ty’s head to the side, the stinging sensation barely registering against the worse sensations wracking the rest of his body. It was more of a broken slap than a punch; his attention was drawn more to the sounds Claude made as his mangled hand recoiled away.

A manic and ugly sound escaped Ty’s throat, only resembling a laugh. Grabbing Claude by the shirt collar, he pulled him just close enough to level a punch directly at his temple. The exertion of the strike caused Ty to lose his grip, letting Claude fall below the surface of the water.

The world exploded into a hail of stars as Tyrell's fist made contact with Claudeson's head. The punch still hit hard; the boy had not exaggerated his fighting prowess around school. It made perfect sense that he would have felt perfectly able to take on both Carter brothers back in the Chattanooga woods. Both boys had looked more the worse for wear after the incident and now he fully understood how that had come to pass. Everything seemed to move in slow motion for a moment, and his entire body went limp. Feeling himself fall back, gravity did the rest and he found himself immersed in the swampy water.
The time of reckoning is at hand. Are you prepared?
A tingling sensation went down his spine as Claudeson heard nothing but the muted hum of the water around him. The darkness within his mind seemed absent, the aches and pains that plagued him nothing but a distant memory, calling him back only vaguely to the horror of the past several days.

The past several moments.
I commend you my dear brother, to almighty God and entrust you to your creator.
Trying to sit up, he found himself unable to move his legs; Tyrell had shifted on top of him and the boy weighed a good deal more than he was able to move. A slight panic coursed through his mind as realization set in; his own plan had been faulty and he was now trapped. Sitting up out of the water, he gasped as the pain registered, the warm air only shocking his drenched skin. Only able to sit partially up, Claudeson looked Tyrell straight in the eyes. He saw fury, he saw despair — a myriad of emotions wrapped up in a flickering light.

He saw mortality; however fleeting.

"May you see your Redeemer face to face," Claudeson was filled with understanding, "and enjoy the vision of God forever."
Amen.Claudeson smiled.

You still don’t get it. You don’t see what I’m seeing..

Ty had cocked his arm back for another swing at Claude’s face, but found himself cut off by the words that he managed to sputter out. They seemed calm, and he wasn’t sure if Claude was speaking to him, or simply saying out loud what he had to hear. The meaning of it was lost on him; his failing faculties couldn’t make it out through the sound of rushing water or the pounding of his own heartbeat.

“...redeemer… vision of God...”

What Ty did manage to see was where they differed. Claude didn’t want to take his fate into his own hands; he’d hedged his bets on there being a plan for him, and losing that seemed to have been too much. Facing all this, a plan no one could’ve ever explained or justified, he was set up to fall from the very beginning.

This sideways asshole is smiling?

For him, solace came in this fight, in one last victory. In fighting back through sheer force of will, until he had nothing left to give. Knowing all he needed to do was make sure his killer didn’t survive the encounter.

It seemed like Claude must’ve been the opposite, genuinely smiling as he realized all he had to do was let go.

I guess I can respect that.

“Okay.”

Ty shoved Claude beneath the surface of the water, pressing a knee against his foe’s chest and hands around his throat. A lingering cloud of red continued to run from the bolt in Ty’s abdomen, out towards the ocean.

He expected a punch that never came. Instead, confusion followed by acknowledgement flickered across Tyrell's face. Whether he understood or not, Claudeson likely would never know. The two would have no more conversations to debate the subject. Instead, he felt himself being pushed back, and a pressure appeared on his chest, hands surrounding his neck. He felt the coldness of the water around him, shocking him awake. Every pain that coursed through his body, from his hand to his leg to his week-old broken nose, it dulled as the cold water chilled him to the bone.

Claudeson had taken his last breath.

To have the realization while he still retained his consciousness was a strange feeling. He could have fought back against Tyrell's grip, the cold water was likely sapping the strength out of his hands so the chokehold was more of a way to keep him in place rather than an attempt at strangulation. The smile never left his face as he pondered the final moments of his existence. Turning away from the Lord, he had believed in nothingness, in a finality of the body and soul. For years beforehand, he had been a follower of the church, not believing but knowing that what came next was yet another step on God's path.
There is much to answer for.
What he had done was unquestionably horrible in the eyes of the Lord. His mother and father would undoubtedly condemn his actions; not once had he thought about how his straying from the righteous path would impact them. Sorrow filled his body for a moment. Never had he wished to harm them in any way. His actions had been clouded by darkness, a darkness that now at the penultimate moment was nowhere to be found. He would be judged for what he had done; only the Lord could have mercy upon him now. Whatever the judgement, he would wear that. If his soul fell to eternal damnation, he knew that at the very least, he would have Tyrell for company.
Your fates are forever intertwined.
As his lungs strained for oxygen, his body started to instinctively fight against the urge to remain underwater. Claudeson struggled for a moment, still holding his breath and trying to weakly use his uninjured left hand to pry Tyrell's weakened yet still impossibly firm grasp from around his neck. It was no use. His final moments were inevitable. Claudeson hoped that for however long the other boy had left to live that he would reflect upon his own impact upon the world, that perhaps he would allow the lessons that he used within this lifetime to improve upon himself for whatever challenge came next. Quickly, he said a prayer for the boy; for his killer.

Reaching up with his left hand, he reached out of the water and found one of Tyrell's forearms. Instead of trying to fight him off, his body relaxed, and he simply gave him two pats, and a squeeze.

Claudeson's lungs ached for air, yet still, he hung on.It is time.

Some survival instinct of Claude’s must have been fighting to make itself known, as Ty felt him clamber against his grip. It didn’t matter. This was going to happen, it was meant to. The last fight Ty could win, before the one he always knew he was meant to lose.

There were more dark spots appearing in his vision, the noise difficult to distinguish against the rushing water. He wasn’t counting the seconds, only the slow abatement of Claude’s movements. The last of them, less of a frantic claw than a familiar pat against his forearm.

In response, Tyrell shoved him further against the rocky riverbed.