Survival Of The Fittest

Salem could roughly follow her movements by the noise, though it was hard to pinpoint exactly what she was doing or where she was at. It was a game of hide-and-seek with nothing but open space between them. No gunfire in his direction, so he was the only one packing.

The guns sat heavy in his coat pockets, pressed against each hip (Big Irooooon), but he didn't reach for either of them. This wasn't about the guns or the end result like Julia and Tim had been. It was about the journey, the chase.

He kept a tight grip on the flashlight and stepped forward over the chair. The floor creaked as he moved, like the house itself was drawing in breath, waiting to see what came next.

Salem's vision slowly adjusted again as he crept forward. The girl didn't say anything, and as far as he could tell, she wasn't going anywhere fast. He almost wished she would. This game of chicken was stretching out into an almost unbearable tension, but at the same time, part of him didn't want it to end.

There. The figure in the chair. Poised and waiting.

Salem darted forward to her side, thrusting his face as close to hers as he thought he could get, and aimed the flashlight underneath his chin. He flicked it on, illuminating his face and temporarily blinding him once again.

"Boo."

It took every ounce of Billie's willpower not to let out a yelp of surprise as the light illuminated the face in front of her. Her heart pounded in her chest as she stared at the boy, trying to recognize the face distorted by the bizarre angle of the flashlight. Even with this complication, however, it wasn't long before she was able to realize who it was. Despite her better judgment, an undercurrent of annoyance began to bubble up beneath the fear that she was feeling, the annoyance of seeing someone who was unable to take the hint that she wanted them to fuck off. Of course, the situation was more complicated than that, obviously, but the experience was close enough to trigger the emotional response regardless.

Still, she had to be at least a little tactical in her response to this. Telling him to go away didn't work the first time, clearly, and doing it again likely wouldn't have a better result. Billie kept her hands beneath the windbreaker as she stared forward, wondering how much he could see with the light in his eyes like that. Perhaps if she wheeled forward fast enough, she could knock him over before he had time to react? It was a tempting idea, but in the end, not very helpful. Even if she knocked him down, she had no way to keep him there, and she wouldn't be able to make it out of the house before he got back up. If she wanted to make it out of this alive, she only had once chance to make the decisive blow.

So, instead, she coughed quietly, speaking out toward the darkness, trying her best to suppress the simultaneously held emotions of fear and contempt from her voice.

"So, you came back. I'll tell you now, I don't have anything on me worth stealing."

That was a lie, and a pretty obvious one, given that no matter what else each of them had been able to scavenge, both of them would definitely have had a decent amount of supplies in their packs. It didn't really matter, though. She knew that he hadn't come all this way just to steal and then leave her alone.

Salem drew back, lip curling in more of a grimace than a smile at the subdued reaction. He let the flashlight drop, keeping the beam aimed more at her face; it took another few moments for his vision to clear, and only then did he finally recognize her. Honestly, he'd kind of forgotten all about Billie until now. At least that explained why she hadn't bailed out of the house once she heard him coming.

"I'm not here to steal from you," he said, tone light but with a testy edge, and side-stepped around her chair.

Really, all of that prep for so little payoff? There was a nagging feeling in the back of Salem's mind, a flash of Cali's weak response to the joke he'd tried to crack when she first approached him out on the beach.

"This ain't about that," he said, letting his free hand come to rest on the back of Billie's wheelchair. He paused there for just a moment, just long enough to let the crossing of the boundary sink in, before he grabbed the frame and yanked the back of the chair upwards, tipping the seat forward and sending Billie onto the floor.

Yeah, that was what she thought was going to happen. This time though, Billie did scream, just a little bit. Luckily, she was able to keep her grip on the weapon without stabbing herself - or at least stabbing herself somewhere where she could feel it. It was dark, after all. It would be just her luck to miraculously get out of this only to bleed out from accidentally slicing open her thigh or something, but there was no point worrying about that now.

It took a moment before she was able to finally orient herself, lifting her head up from the ground and turning towards the now open door. Obviously, she wasn't going to be able to escape just like that, but if she wanted to hide her intentions of stabbing him, she had to look like she was going for it anyway. Taking a deep breath, she began to drag herself along the floor, using as much of her upper body strength as she could muster to transport the mass of unfeeling meat below her waist, wincing as she heard her shoes bumping up against the carpet again and again as they were slowly and painfully transported in the direction of the door.

It probably would have been a lot easier to do this if she let go of the weapon currently wrapped in fabric and taking up space inside her hand, but, well, that wasn't an option, for obvious reasons. Her only hope now was that whenever Salem ended up noticing her moving (probably any second now), he didn't immediately pull out a gun and shoot her rather than walking around to her side of the chair.

The guns remained securely in Salem's pockets, for now. The flashlight beam caught her again and followed her struggling movements almost lazily before he finished rounding the chair and approached.

"Where ya going?" Salem planted one foot on Billie's back, though he pressed down only lightly. "I just wanted to talk."

This was her chance. Billie took a deep breath as she wiggled beneath Salem's foot, keeping a tight grip on the ice axe. Working quickly, she moved to unwrap it with her other hand. Once it was free, she turned, moving her back to get the best view she could of her target.

"Fuck you." Without waiting for a response, Billie swung, sending the jagged surface of her axe flying directly towards Salem's groin.

"Aw, don't take it personal, babe. This is about me, not y-" The rest of what Salem might have said was lost in a shriek as the jagged edge cut through the fabric of his skirt and leggings, caught the skin of his thigh- snagged-

-and tore.

He'd felt and saw her move. He'd watched her do it. He just didn't care until the light caught the glint of the axe's blade.

He had jerked back on reflex, losing his balance slightly as his foot slipped off of Billie's back and he had to do an awkward half-second shuffle to catch himself, and the blade missed its intended target and ripped into his leg instead.

His knee was unhurt, but Salem's left leg almost went out from underneath him regardless, buckling with the white-hot pain of skin and muscle being ripped open by cold metal. He lost his grip on the flashlight as his fingers spasmed, and it clattered to the floor, sending the yellow beam skittering across the room.

Salem clapped one hand over his leg, feeling the torn fabric and the way his skin split, the way hot blood spilled over his fingers and soaked into his skirt and leggings, and he couldn't tell just in this moment how deep it was, but he knew that you could bleed out in minutes if your femoral artery was severed, and maybe this was a fraction of what Cali had felt, this was what it was like to be torn open, and and and-

Salem's face had gone sheet-white, save for two high spots of color on his cheeks, and in the edge of the lost flashlight's beam, it looked like a ghastly mask. All of that took only seconds.

In the next few, he whipped the Mauser out of his coat pocket with jerky movements, leveled it at Billie, and unloaded the clip.

Billie's arm dropped back down to the floor, the now bloody ice axe hitting the ground with a thud. Two thoughts went through her mind, one after the other. The first was a hope that she had taken the bastard's dick off - it was too dark to see where exactly it had landed, but if she was going to die here, she at least wanted to to make him regret messing with her. The next was the realization that unfortunately, the odds hadn't been in her favour yet again. In other words, she was going to die here. Unless the bullet currently striking the floor right next to her head was a hallucination, it was only a few seconds before her brains were splattered all over the carpet.

It was a strange feeling, really. All her life, she had wrestled with the question of whether she wanted to keep on living. She couldn't lie, it was a difficult decision at times. In some ways, as shitty it was of her to say it, Billie's life felt like it had been over almost before it started. Of course, she had stuff to be grateful for - nobody's life was completely terrible. There were countless examples of people who had it far worse than her and seemingly managed just fine. Really though, that wasn't enough to stop the thoughts - it was just enough to make her feel guilty about having them.

Her injury itself was, ironically, not the biggest reason for her depression. All the inconveniences, things that were easy for others but not for her - those sucked, yeah, but years of having the same day-to-day routine meant that those things kind of just faded into the background. It was hard to stay mad for long about something that you had already done yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that... No, it wasn't those things that hurt the most, but the knowledge of all the things she had missed out on. She never really had chance to have a childhood - not like other kids. She had people she talked to sometimes, mostly on the internet, but rarely anyone she could really call a friend. She had just spent most of her life on the computer, reading books, watching movies and listening to music. The worst part of it all was that she couldn't really tell how much of it was out of her control. Like they said, friendship was a two-way street, and she never really made any more effort to understand her peers than they had to understand her.

Of course, he couldn't be too hard on herself - it wouldn't be fair to expect a traumatized eight-year-old to pick up the pieces of her life so quickly, and she had fallen into this dysfunctional rut long before she had the maturity to realize what was happening. Regardless of how the blame needed to be split, the situation remained. Thousands of little steps, all pushing her further and further into isolation, the walls getting higher and higher. Crawling out of that dark hole became nearly impossible, no matter what encouraging words her mother might say.

At this point though, the debate was no longer important. Regardless of how Billie was going to go, she wanted the decision to be hers, not that of some gun-toting classmate on a power trip. Unfortunately, the next gunshot ensured that that outcome was the one she was going to get.

S028: Billie Sommerfield - DECEASED

Salem kept squeezing the trigger until the gun was empty, and then for a few seconds after that, until the ringing in his ears started to fade and his own ragged breathing filtered back in. His arm stayed locked in place, outstretched with the gun aimed vaguely towards Billie's body, even as his knees buckled and he finally went down to the floor beside her.

The adrenaline finally began to dissipate too, and the shaking started up again. Twice in as many days now, no wonder he was so fucking tired. Murder was hard work.

"That was- your fault," Salem gasped, barely able to hear his own voice. "It didn't have to go that way."

Maybe it still would have if she'd let him in, but that wasn't the point. He couldn't be sure. He became aware once again of the blood seeping into his clothes and the way his left leg sang with pain; the weeping gash on his thigh, the throb of his knee where he'd hit the floor, the constant, constant ache in his feet. He let out another long, shuddering breath and then lowered the gun and dragged himself away.

Flashlight first. He needed to be able to see at least a little bit. Then to the couch she'd been sitting next to. Salem remembered now that his own bag was still sitting underneath the kitchen window, and everything in him felt ready to have a full-blown meltdown tantrum at the thought of walking back through the house to get to it, so he swept the light haphazardly over the room until he located Billie's bag. Dragging that back to the couch too, he got to work.

Skirt off, leggings peeled down, and the sensation of the fabric pulling away from his torn skin made him whine. Salem had to hold the flashlight in his teeth to be able to work with both hands, and a distant part of him wanted to make a lewd joke, but the rest was hyper-focused on the wound. It was hard to tell even looking at it exactly how deep it was, and how deep was too deep.

It felt deep enough, but he couldn't see bone. He'd probably be dying if he could see bone, so that didn't do much for him. He could be dying anyway.

Not here, not now. That became the only semi-coherent mantra that Salem could hold onto as he fumbled for gauze to press to the rip in his flesh and muscle and bandages to secure it in place. His hands felt like they were shaking even worse than last time. He vaguely remembered reading somewhere that if you measured the muscle tone of two people who didn't work out, a person with clinical anxiety would have more developed muscle tone, because they were always shaking.

A small, faintly hysterical giggle escaped from the edges of his mouth, around the flashlight.

He couldn't keep messing up like this.

That was the last thought that Salem remembered having in the dark. He woke splayed out on the couch in weak morning sunlight, still half-undressed. The bandages around his thigh were already bloodied and in need of changing. His head hurt, and every muscle and even bone ached.

But he wasn't dead.

Salem changed his bandages and fixed his clothes before weakly getting up off the couch. Billie looked... well, a mess. Salem grimaced at her body, dithering for a moment before stepping over to her just long enough to pick up the ice axe. He'd taken everything else that he needed from her.

"And believe me," he murmured softly, with just the hint of a tune as he stepped over Billie's body, "I am still alive." He carried the tune as he limped down the hall back to the kitchen to retrieve his bag.

"And while you're dying I'll be still alive, and when you're dead I will be still alive-" He exited out the back door and left it standing open without care, half-singing still alive, still alive, under his breath as he left Billie to rot.

((Salem Fox continued in shooting stars only))