Survival Of The Fittest

"Two, three, four, five," Donovan counted each bullet as they left the barrel. "Six, seven, eight, nine."

The sound of shots echoed out rhythmically like the beat of a drum. Again and again, he squeezed the trigger; again and again, the bullets went out, an explosion of sound and light each time. The only thing he felt about it was the painful ring in his ears. So far, though, he'd just laid down some suppressive fire—as far as he could see, he hadn't landed a real hit yet.

Then, Ash called out an order to the others. Of course. Everyone just wanted a piece of the action. Take the two he'd intended to take out already—Crystal and Juanita—add three more for good measure. Ignore that he hadn't started any of this in the first place, yet everyone still cried out for their blood. Karma, right? It sure did feel like it right about now.

"Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen," and then a click. The magazine well had run dry. "Just another thing I was wrong about."

Donovan groaned and ducked. It was supposed to be so much simpler than this—one shot to the head, and it'd all be done, quick and clean. He ejected the magazine, which hit the floor with a loud thunk, loaded another, and then racked the slide again. If that's what it took, he'd gladly go through a million clips and a billion bullets to end this on his terms.

Then, he raised the gun again, back in action, and peeked his head out. Just long enough to register the consequences of his actions. Jack sputtered for a moment in the corner, head turned away from the camera, blood spilling from an open wound in his chest like a stuck pig. That must've been from his first shot—unfortunate collateral damage.

"Sorry, man," he thought but didn't mean it. "Blame Juanita, not me. She's the one who fucked up my shot."

It was his fault. But, at the moment, Donovan couldn't bring himself to care, even the slightest amount.

Instead, he just gritted his teeth and ducked back into cover. Crystal had focused her fire on the table, and the rifle's powerful shots punched through the thin wood like a sheet of paper. Jenny wasn't going to remain intact much longer at this rate. So, the moment the sound of gunfire stopped, a lull in the carnage, he made his move and took his chances.

He sprinted towards the table, profile low to the ground—like a soldier across the trenches. "Jen!" he shouted, loud enough to register above the ring in his ears. "We run, now!" Then, he took her hand, put the pedal to the metal and his money where his mouth was, and pushed his legs as hard as he could, eyes on the light at the end of the not-so-distant tunnel.

Donovan ran, her hand in his. The end was in sight. They just needed to move past the exit, and they'd be free from all this. His heart pounded in his chest faster than he'd ever known. Breathless and restless, he lunged towards the exit, the metaphorical ribbon breaking as he crossed the finish line. And then, even after that, he kept going, ran for their lives.

Amidst the adrenaline, he didn't even notice the thin trail of blood behind him, trickling toward his final fate.

S043: DONOVAN LAUER & S095: JENNIFER FARROW — CONTINUED IN "Go for Gold"

The adrenaline, her breath, remained right at the fore, pressed against her too thin skin and trying to explode outwards. But it was over, the very next moment.

Foreground, bullet holes and blood.

Ash had barely been able to move an inch, spending most of the intervening moments after she'd tried to take matters into her own hands keeping those two hands very much to herself, lying on the floor and wondering when she'd be the next name on announcements. Turned out bullets moved even faster when someone else was firing them at her, as opposed to them being shot at a target. She'd been trying to get up but in that seemingly brief moment a gun had gone off so many times the clattering ring had flattened out into a single loud noise, formless, deafening

They'd gotten Jack at some point, another thing she'd only seen in a passing of sound and color, flashy but irrelevant in the moment like many a Twitter advert.

Ash finally managed to get up, evaluating things proper now. At some point she'd done... something on Crystal's behalf, that had ended with her hitting the floor and a bullet whizzing by. A real 'GET DOWN MR. PRESIDENT' moment, only Ash had done it without thinking. Less a heroic sacrifice and more an incidental passing action, as if the sum total of Ash's considerations for her allies were impulses. Sounded about right, given their ages.

"We'll figure out what happened later. Let's get people bandgaged up and move before people start descending on all the noise to see if they can pick at the scraps."

Or maybe that was just Ash's own cynical take on the denoument.

Kaede just stared at the scene ahead of her. As Donovan and Crystal stood off against each other, and then shots were fired. She didn't see or hear anything after that, having hit the floor immediately, this time explicitly to avoid the gunfire, and with the shots again threatening to burst her eardrums, she just screwed her eyes shut until the bangs stopped. Only then did she open her eyes, take her fingers out of her ears, and look around.

Donovan and Jennifer were gone, there were several bullet holes in the walls and

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS ALL THAT FOR?"

Oh, shit. Jack was down. And out. The way that the blood was spattered behind him, there wasn't any way he was getting up from that.

Yeah, that was a good question, Kaede. Same one Juanita was asking herself.

She'd been hoping to knock the gun right out of Donovan's hand, give him and Crystal a good dressing down for putting everybody's lives at risk with this stuff, but then Crystal fired and Donovan fired again and there were bullets everywhere, buzzing like hornets through a room that suddenly felt way, way too small. She'd hit the floor, but not quite fast enough. An angry red line had been drawn across her forearm as a stray shot drilled a hole right through her sleeve and into the side of the pool table. She'd half-fallen, half-rolled into the dark space beneath the table, panting, while the rest of the fight played out.

In forever and no time at all, it was over.

Jack was down. She could see him from here, the red creeping across the floorboards in her direction. Didn't look like he'd be getting up again.

Blood was oozing out of her arm. Didn't feel like much more than a scratch - and she ought to know, given how many times she'd lost blood this week. One more fight she nearly hadn't walked away from. Luckier than she deserved to be.

She hauled herself out of her hiding spot, and surveyed the damage. Donovan and Jenny were gone. Jack was dead. Crystal was bleeding. Kaede was all out of sorts. Ash had a thousand-yard stare.

This was the kind of down-and-out moment where a great leader would have given an inspiring speech. Rallied the troops back together from the brink of despair, told them that they'd bounce back from this and become stronger than ever. But as Juanita looked around, inhaling the burnt scent gunpowder and the metallic tang of blood, she knew that there was no point. It'd be trite and meaningless, it'd be a bailing bucket on the Titanic. She'd know it and they'd know it.

She grabbed the naginata and her pack. Briefly made eye contact with Ash and Crystal, and headed for the door.

Crystal held her breath.

It didn't mask the pain. Her side didn't hurt yet. Her hand didn't hurt. Yet. But her ears hurt terribly, the ringing echo of firing her gun until it was empty continuing even as the noises of reality had died down to a girl's screaming. Her hip hurt, too, where it had bounced off the floor. Crystal was on the floor. Ash had shoved her, and maybe that had saved her. Maybe not. She couldn't say. She couldn't say anything except that she was out of bullets.

Crystal's hands were trying to reload the gun, because she couldn't let it out of her grasp. It had to be ready. She was the one with the gun. That was her role, and she couldn't be weak or the others might turn on her. But her hands weren't working right. Her left had a hole it in, a finger flopping limp and lifeless, and her palm was smearing blood everywhere she dragged it like a child pushing a paintbrush around a piece of paper without a plan for what they were drawing. Crystal had practiced pointing the gun a lot, and holding it constantly, but reloading only once or twice, and she couldn't remember how. Blood was dribbling down her side, faster and faster, and she had bigger things to worry about but she just kept trying to reload the gun.

Right up until Juanita gave that look and turned away.

Crystal stopped.

Sat there, frozen.

It was starting to hurt now.

She held her breath.

Without all of her fingers working, it was no wonder she wasn't accomplishing anything.

How would she wrap her hand while holding the gun?

She managed, somehow, to extricate herself from Ash, and stumbling she made her way in Juanita's wake, fumbling with the backpack zipper, the first aid kit, all the while the gun still tucked under her armpit because she couldn't let it go.

Why were people still screaming? It was already over- had been for the past few days, at least.

She found her gaze drawn onto Jack, with focus. No need to confirm what she'd seen, really, corpses had a unique shilouette even on the periphery, blurry like a ghost as the structure of the body already began to relax into its constituent components. At least, that was her impression without looking too much at it. She'd forced herself to study each body they'd made on the way when they'd had the time, and that had ended with her understanding that people were pretty generic, alive or dead.

Same with Jack. A friendly face, but one she'd seen a thousand times before, bloodied or not.

She nodded to herself. Literally herself, as she was the last to move despite being the first on her feet.

Nothing more to be said, and too much left to be done.

-Continued elsewhere-

Juanita stood, leaning against the porch. Ash and Crystal emerged. She could feel their eyes boring into her.

“I told you,” she whispered quietly. Her grip on the naginata trembled. “I told you to drop it."

She turned, to find them staring at her. Why? What did they expect her to do? She wasn't in charge here. She hadn't been able do anything to stop what had just happened. She'd tried to defuse the situation and nobody had given a damn. So what, she was supposed to pick up the pieces afterwards, wipe away the tears and blood and tell them to try again? Rally the troops, make a new plan, go recruit some more and get stabbed in the face a few more times? No. Just, just... no. Not happening.

She banged the butt the naginata handle against the deck. "I told you to DROP IT, Crystal. And what'd you do? You jammed your gun in his face and basically dared him to shoot you! And if I hadn't beaned him with the pool ball, he would have!”

Her pointer finger jabbed back towards the depths of the bar. “Now everything's screwed up. Everything. Jack’s dead, Dani is gone, Kaede’s having a meltdown. You’ve got stigmata, Ash looks like a zombie, and I nearly took a bullet through the arm, and Jenny and Donovan are out there, armed to the teeth and pissed off at us. And I want to say that all of that is on you, but it's not. It's on me. This while stupid group was my idea. And it was stupid."

Juanita studied the snow for a few moments, then looked back at Ash and Crystal, her mouth a thin, resolute line. "I think... I think I'm just gonna go."

"Because, like... what am I supposed to say now? That if you just listen to me next time, it'll go different? Because we all know it won't. Ash has been tased, we've both been tear gassed, I've been stabbed in the face twice, and all three of us have gunshot wounds. By rights, I should've been dead long before now. You guys have had my back and you've kept me alive, and I owe you for that, but the truth is... if you guys keep dragging me around, keeping me alive, sooner or later it's gonna get you killed. You're better off without me. And you know it."

((Juanita Reid hefted her pack and her weapon, and walked away. She continues in I've Seen Your Flag On The Marble Arch))

Kaede just stared at Jack as everybody left. She wanted to say something, but Juanita, actually, Juanita beat her to the punch. Even if, in her, well ... anger Kaede was unable to actually vocalize her feelings, Juanita's words were spot on. Well, mostly. Kaede blamed Crystal for actually pulling the trigger. Juanita's idea of getting a group together was fine. It was Crystal that broke them up.

All she could really do to prevent herself from lashing out was to take Jack's assigned bag before walking out, passing Crystal, who could now do an excellent job of imitating Deadpool with her hand.

"GODDAMMIT."

Okay, maybe she wasn't able to prevent herself from lashing out.

((Kaede Tsurumi continued in Breakdown in the Meantime))

And Crystal was alone.

What was there to say?

Who invited the newcomers without checking with everyone else?

Who decided to tolerate a threat from outsiders?

What lesson would be taught if they let the boy bully them?

Who had her back right up until they didn't?

There was a lot she could bring up, actually, but the trail of blood droplets from her hand and side made a more compelling argument. And if she truly wished to rebut, the gun could speak louder.

Kaede actually almost started a conversation with her parting comment. After the girl had gone fifteen feet, Crystal raised the gun. Trained it on her back. Took deep, steady breaths. Danya's finger felt heavy.

The weapon was still empty.

She ducked back into the church without a word, but soon choked sobs split the silence. A few minutes later, she emerged again, bandages haphazardly wrapped around her injuries. Her eyes now found the other trail of blood, running parallel to hers.

She made sure to turn aside and walk in a different direction.

((Crystal Henderson continued in This Tape Will Self Destruct In Five Seconds))

Sometime later…

“Aisséra, Nanniné, me ne sagliette
Tu saie addó? Tu saie addó?
Addó 'stu core 'ngrato cchiù dispietto
Farme nun pò!”

((Dani Bird continued from In Transit))

Dani’s voice carried through the cold winter air as she walked through the town, putting her singing skills to some use for the first time in what feels like forever. Singing had always been one of her biggest outlets, and when she was feeling down or just generally in a bad mood she’d sing to lift her spirits. She normally also liked to practice regularly, but with the current… situation, she hardly felt appropriate.

First day, she was dragged across the island. Unless Joey Gun Guy threatened to put a bullet in her head unless she sang like a canary, she wasn’t exactly inclined to sing that day.

Second day, she got pissed off and was too crowded with people to want to do it.

Third day, she spent time with Jack and Kaede as they checked out the mountain. Spent some time in the hot spring which was pleasant. But that did take up most of her day.

Fourth day, she wandered up the mountain again, got scared to death and then ran down that mountain. By the end of that she was too exhausted and shaken up to want to do it.

Now though? She hardly cared if people heard her.

“Jamme, jamme, 'ncoppa, jamme jà
Jamme, jamme, 'ncoppa, jamme jà
Funiculì, funiculà!
Funiculì, funiculà!
'Ncoppa, jamme jà
Funiculì, funiculà!”

It was soothing in its own way. It allowed her to escape from the direness of the situation as she focused her efforts into her song as she marched through empty streets to the meeting spot. She didn’t doubt that the others would be annoyed at her for being late, but what the fuck are they going to do? Besides, her nerves were on edge and the singing was helping her keep calm. They can fuck right off as far as she was concerned.

Though the info she had been sitting on since yesterday should soothe any sore feelings they might have.

Well, Kaede probably wouldn’t be upset. Kaede was a good friend like that.

As the bar came into sight, Dani went from singing to humming the tune as she closed the distance. Soon reaching the entrance of the bar and swinging the old door open.

“Hey, everyone!” She greeted with a particular cheer in her voice. “Sorry I’m running la-”

Dani stopped in her tracks, frozen in place as the sight of the interior was presented before her.

Tables overturned, bottles destroyed, bullet holes, blood, LOTS of blood.

Oh, and most importantly? A corpse. Specifically Jack’s, which was laying in a pool of his own blood. Which was especially shocking as Dani thought he was kind of cute and now he is pretty obviously dead.

Dani’s eyes were wide open, sputtering in disbelief as she looked around and analyzed the scene. Her thoughts were a chaotic jumble, the sheer shock of what she was seeing hitting her with the force of a freight train. She had expected many things when she stepped through that door, but the scene of an obvious firefight was not one of them. As her thoughts got back into order, Dani found herself vocalizing her distress in the most elegant, calm, and erudite manner she could muster in this situation.

“WHAT HAPPENED?!”

She had been gone for only a few hours and in that time things had apparently gone straight to shit! Did she have to do everything herself, she wondered?! She had several questions about this and most of them were just variation of “what the fuck happened?”

Immediate first thought as she managed to collect herself was that this was somehow either Crystal’s or Jaunita’s fault. Or both. Neither of those two had really liked her for some reason, so clearly they must have fucked up in some manner. This shit would never have happened were she here and in charge.

Second thought, where was Kaede in all this? No sight of her best friend’s body, so she is clearly still alright. Hopefully. Maybe a few new holes, but Kaede probably did well to keep her head down. So Dani made it a note to try and look for her again.

Third thought, why was her luck with guys so terrible on this goddamn island?

Fourth thought, man did she seriously dodge a bullet not being on time. Several bullets, by the look of things.

With nothing else really keeping her here, she turned on her heel and walked right back out the door and into the cold winter air of the island.

“Well this shit is fucked…” She muttered to herself as she wandered back down the deserted streets.

((Dani Bird continued in Breakdown in the Meantime…))