Survival Of The Fittest

Jacob tensed suddenly at the voice. Trembling, he pushed himself out of the snow with his hands, trying and failing to silence his ragged breath. Through red, teary eyes, he glared up at Salem in seething rage.

"Y-You..." he hissed.

Yeah, there we go. That was what he wanted. Salem's grin stretched wider, baring all his teeth.

He jerked his head at Leslie. "Run along then, champ. Mommy and Daddy need to have a talk."

He closed the gap between himself and Jacob in two quick strides, adjusting his grip on the rifle as he did so; he allowed himself just a second to savor looming over Jacob before swinging the butt of the rifle down in a vicious arc.

This was not his problem, and he didn't want to make it his problem.

"OK, bye."

Leslie hitched his bag up his shoulder, turned on his heels, and ran in the direction of noise in the distance.

((Leslie Romero continued in If Walls Could Talk ))

"M-Motherf-"

Jacob had barely gotten to his knees before Salem was on him, cracking him over the head with his rifle and sending him back to the ground. His hands balled into fists as he lay facedown in the snow, trembling furiously and moaning in pain.

The impact of the rifle against Jacob's skull reverberated up the gun, through Salem's arms and into his chest. His whole torso momentarily throbbed with pain; he hadn't exerted himself that much, but he was already getting winded.

"Are you angry?" He gasped at Jacob's prone body. "Do you hate me?"

He glanced over his shoulder in the direction that Leslie had gone, but the other boy had taken his advice and was rapidly disappearing into the distance. At least someone around here knew how to listen.

Turning his attention back to Jacob, Salem gave up on hitting him with the gun and instead aimed a weak kick at his side. "Come on- are you just gonna lay there and take it?"

He exhaled a long plume of mist. He adjusted his grip on the rifle once more, slotting his finger comfortably back on the trigger. "Palling around with the brother-killer, and now you're just gonna lay down and die? You're so lame."

Jacob struggled back to his hands and knees. He barely reacted to Salem kicking him in the ribs - compared to everything else wrong with him now it was barely a blip on the radar. His head felt cracked like a dropped egg. Through both the tear gas and the head injury, his vision was blurred so bad he could barely see Salem despite the boy looming over him. But he heard Salem's taunting loud and clear.

"Fuck you," he growled.

He swung his head forward, connecting with whatever part of Salem was right in front of him; he couldn't see well enough to tell.

Salem idly swung the rifle back and forth as he watched Jacob struggle and squirm to get up. It was tempting to just put him down before he could, but Salem was starting to feel a bit energized again by all of this; he couldn't help wanting to drag it out a bit longer. He remembered the look on Greg's face when the realization had set in. He wanted that again, from Jacob, before it was all over.

Then Jacob reared up and headbutted him right in the balls.

There was a survey somewhere out there on the internet once that polled people on what sort of animals they thought they could take in a fight, and apparently something like 80% of men responded that they were confident they could fight off a bear unarmed. Salem had always been pretty confident that these were the same types of guys that tried to ward off kicks to the balls by insisting that actually, getting kicked in the balls didn't even hurt that badly.

Salem was not in 80% of men. The impact of Jacob's skull, right in his crotch with the full force of Jacob's desperate anger behind it, jolted through his stomach and drove the breath from his lungs. For a moment, he thought his vision whited out before his legs turned to jelly; the next thing he knew, he was sprawled out in the snow right next to Jacob.

"Guh-" He rolled over onto his side, propping himself up with shaky arms. He'd lost his grip on the rifle and momentarily didn't even know where it was. "You-"

With all of the strength he could gather (not a lot, but maybe more than the guy who had just been tear gassed and concussed) Salem lunged across the ground at Jacob and grabbed him by the neck, digging his nails into Jacob's skin.

"You- think you're funny?" He wheezed, unsure if he was even angry or just shocked. "You think you're fucking funny? 'Cause I'm- I'm about to be hilarious." He squeezed Jacob's neck tighter and tighter until he could both feel and hear Jacob fighting for breath, weakly trying to claw him off.

He could have ended it then and there, and for a second he planned to, but there was a flash of memory. An image of Madeleine fleeing with Salem's gun aimed at her back, before he lowered it, because he wasn't going to give her what she wanted. Was this what Jacob wanted? Was he getting the last laugh, if Salem throttled him over a nutshot? Questions you never thought you'd have to ask yourself, truly.

Ugh.

Salem shoved Jacob's face back down into the dirt and released him, sitting back up on his knees with some effort. His eyes darted around the immediate area until he found the rifle and snatched it up, ignoring how his hands were still shaking.

"You wanna play?" Using the rifle as a prop to lever himself up, Salem unsteadily got back to his feet. "Chase me, then. Come and get me."

He didn't wait for a response before limping away as fast as his trembling legs and various aches and pains would allow.

((Salem Fox continued in And the universe said 'I love you'))

Jacob lay there for a moment, listening as Salem trudged away. His head felt split clean in half, so he definitely wasn't following Salem; the headbutt had probably injured Jacob more than Salem, really. His breath was ragged and shallow, every gulp of air a struggle through poisoned, crushed airways. Scratches from Salem's nails had left tiny, painful cuts in his neck; a minor injury compared to everything else, but it was yet one more thing weighing him down. Under his own nails he could feel a fleck or two of Salem's skin in return. He seemingly couldn't stop picking up bits and pieces of the boy every time he saw him.

Jacob rolled over onto his back, staring straight up into the sky. The evening sky was a blur through his damaged eyes

He'd come incredibly close to dying. Closer than he ever had before. Salem had him dead to fucking rights, could have ended him a dozen different ways, and Jacob would have been powerless to stop him. He hadn't lashed out because he thought it would get him out; he'd done it as a last, petty fuck-you before Salem inevitably murdered him. When Salem started choking him, he was certain that was it. That was the end, right there.

Jacob's breathing grew faster. More frantic.

It was the end... and then suddenly it wasn't. Salem gave up. Salem let him go. Salem gave him another chance. Not at living, no, nobody on this island could count on that. At chasing him. At taking him down. At avenging Greg and everyone else Salem had killed. At making sure that, whoever made it home, it wasn't that fucker.

A strange, hoarse sound started echoing out from within his chest.

He had no right to still be breathing. With how injured he was, he might still die anyway; he wasn't sure how bad the head injury was, but he could tell it was bad. But he hadn't died the way he should have, at least. Salem had him completely at his mercy, and then completely gave it up.

The sound grew louder. A laugh, choked and hoarse through ravaged lungs and bruised throat, but a laugh nonetheless. It was all he had the strength to do right now. He lay in the snow, staring blindly up into the sky, and laughed like a madman.

Salem had made a huge fucking mistake.

((Jacob Winters continued in yeah...))