((This
brief one-shot post has been approved for postage in this thread))
((Brendan Wallace continues from
Gypsy Rap))
Such a simple plan, it had to have something go wrong, there was no way in the world it wasn't going to happen.
Brendan Wallace had the bright idea of trying to find himself on the map. For starters, he didn't know how to work a compass. He was twisting the thing around for almost half an hour in the safety of a tall climbable tree, before accidentally dropping it into a large group of threatening bushes. Could have been something like Poison Oak, for all he knew, so he decided to just leave it and hope that he took one from a recently deceased classmate's bag a few days ago.
Then he had the bright idea of trying to navigate on his own. The Blair Witch Project couldn't have been more accurate in that he subconsciously walked 'round in circles for god knows how long. He tried to mark his place, somewhere near a packed infirmary, then set off wherever the sun seemed to point him. Course, that didn't work either, either because the sun kept moving places or because he kept on missing the sun. So he ended back up at the Infirmary about 4 times before he just decided to give up directing himself and hope he found somewhere, or someone.
He remembered walking this path 4 days ago, when he fled the scene on the beach because he was just so scared. And that just reminded him of the fact he also fled from Ray, Robert and Neil a few days ago as well, just after people had died, no less. And not to mention the fiasco which he caused with his newly formed group, including his boyfriend.
They've got to be safe, I trusted Stacy with that gun...
That gun was his only way of defending himself. Even the look of the giant, hulking motherfucker should have been enough to either attract people to him like blowflies to sugar or scare off anyone who wanted to have a cheap go at him. But now, he was just an average, seventeen-year-old boy walking across the island, lost, aching, and hungry.
So finally, he made his way out of the forest. By then, it was nightfall. Quiet. Dark. The moon shone down on him, illuminating the vast field of grass and hills he gazed upon from his forest exit. It was...haunting. It reminded him of something from a video game, a vast expansive moonlit field in which two experienced fighters could duke it out. These mindless ponderings distracted him so much that he almost fell down a hill to his right, his leg was just about to step on the uneven ground.
Brendan's eyes shot to the empty space where his foot was about to stand, and he instinctively pulled away. He lost his centre of balance pretty easily, and this was his body's perfect excuse to fall backwards and land on his ass in the grass.
Aren't I elegant?
He held his head in his dominant hand, and let off a sound between a sigh and a grunt. A grigh, or sunt, if you will. Though no one would actually call it that.
He stood back up again, dusting off the back of his pants. As Brendan mindlessly gazed across the moonlit landscape, he noticed something down the hill he almost fell down. It looked like a small hut, he remembered passing it on the other way, it looked pretty hectic back then. People were running, he couldn't go near that kind of activity, so the chances were that as the island slept, he could get his chance to snoop around for anything remotely resembling a weapon.
He took the long way around, instead of doing a good old tumble down the hill (he was rather proficient at those kinds of tricks), he approached from the side, and...
...Oh man...
Well, it...looked like two of the eighty-nine or so people would be accounted for.
These classmates of his were sprawled and lain in the garden of this small house. One of them was wearing a suit, head a gory and unpleasant mess splattered over a nearby rock. The other was a girl, lain in the garden of the hut with a dark and infested-looking hole where her heart should be. The guy in the suit, at a distance he couldn't make out, seemed familiar. Brendan braved the contents of his stomach and shifted closer to it, and...
...nothing. His face wasn't recognisable at all. Just a bloody hunk of rotting flesh, infested with growths and unfamiliar matter. As Brendan looked at the mess, his stomach an unforgiving ocean he needed to tame, he...didn't even know what he was supposed to say in a situation like this.
This guy...he died here, and now no one will ever know who he is again.
...if he got off of here somehow, he should probably chase that writing dream down, really, his thoughts were melodramatic enough.
...and here he was, making jokes about his own condolences.
He didn't know how to treat his own thoughts anymore, that wasn't a good sign.
Upon checking the corpse one more time, Brendan turned away, looking over at the girl's body. This one, now, he had a vague recognition of. He...no, scratch that, he knew this girl.
Petrushka Ivanova.
Brendan shared an English class with her, he remembered seeing her sitting alone one day and fighting off an urge to sit near her, just to speak to her. It wouldn't have been anything interesting or important, just a discussion about the play they were studying. Of course. Nothing more than just a tiny little discussion. What he wouldn't have to give to just be back at Bayview, making another discussion. Hamlet seemed so simple and easy to understand compared to everything he was having to go through now. The guilt of not knowing what to say to a dead person, over their body no less. The questioning of his own sanity. The knowledge that he could be responsible for at least 6 deaths, probably way more than that, ever since he abandoned his allies. Let's see any normal teenager willingly go through that, chances are they wouldn't.
He closed his eyes, just trying to clear out his mind.
Just...don't think about them. You could have spoken to them before, but that's the past now. What matters now is finding something to protect people with. Once we get everyone together, everyone who isn't crazy, it'll all be...better...it's gonna be better!
Rather than following that train track of thought for much longer, he flicked his head away from the body and yanked open the door.
The smell launched itself at his nostrils immediately, the smell of a rotting and decaying corpse. Brendan didn't have time to cover his orifices, and almost instantly collapsed to the ground like he'd been hit over the head with a comedically sized mallet. The raging battle in his stomach almost boiled over, but it didn't. He was still unable to stop himself retching, but he was still trying his best to get back up and face the source of that terrible stench. After a few seconds of scrambling, and his hand moved to his nose in a vain attempt, he spotted it.
On the floor, underneath one or two blankets, was another girl's body. A net of dirty-blonde hair was the canvas to an array of browns and reds, the signs of an exploded collar, or so he assumed. There were really endless possibilities, she could have been shot in the head for all he knew. He couldn't see her face, hell he wanted to brave his fears and take a look, but it was just a matter of looking around the place now, ignoring the perfectly noticeable dead body.
As he tried his best to keep it out of his direct line of sight, he spotted a few bags by the edge of the cabin's bed. Brendan walked over to them, anxious. If there were bags, that meant there was the slight possibility of weapons.
The first one he touched he saw the name of the girl outside. There was nothing important in that one.
In the other one he checked, however...lay something that instantly made his heart jump through his chest.
Ammo.
For a gun.
In this bag was ammo, real, no jokes ammo. He'd finally done it. Brendan's mouth, were it not covered by a hand in an attempt to block out the smell of rotting flesh, would have worn a smile.
Only that smile would have lasted as brief as the girl in that bed.
...where's the gun?
He checked the inside of the bag again. Nothing. Brick-a-brack, some disgusting pieces of food, but no gun.
Brendan even picked the bag up and looked underneath it. There wasn't anything there, no gun. He got a look at the underside of the bag however, and stopped in his tracks.
Rose Codreanu.
The name didn't mean anything to him, but...it had to be the girl on the bed.
......god dammit, it's like this island is trying to warp me into a killer ever with no subtlety.
Brendan inched closer to the bed on the floor of the shack, and pulled back the blanket, still trying to block out the dead smell.
Underneath a decomposing mass of tissue that used to be known as Rose, was a gun, sticking out from underneath. It looked like it was aimed right at the hut's bed.
Brendan swallowed.
All the while continuously blocking his nose, he inched his hand towards the barrel of the gun, and pulled. It came out, nothing much happened to what used to be Rose.
...
...and that was it, really. He stood there, holding the gun out like it was a foreign custom, unusual and alien. Sure, he'd held a gun before, but...
...he didn't have time to finish that sentence as he saw someone off in the distance.
The part of Brendan that had long since adapted to the island took over, and he dashed out of sight to hide behind the doorframe. His short, rasping breaths clung to the air like velcro wasps, and stayed around long enough for the whole cabin to hear it.
...only the person he saw never came. He didn't want to look out, and possibly face an armed killer, but he had to. Slowly, really really slowly, he looked outside.
Someone was sitting there. On the grass outside, someone was sitting down with their head in their hands.
'Course, Brendan would have given the situation a better analysis were he not silently sprinting away from that location, gun and ammo in bag, and taking this once-in-the-rest-of-his-life opportunity by the tusks.
After a few minutes of pained sprinting, him almost surprised that his stitches didn't pop out and start the wound flowing again, he stopped, and fell to the knee-length grass in a gasping, out-of-breath heap. He'd made it. Someone with a gun had just missed their opportunity to take him out, and now he'd escaped.
He couldn't stay there, he was still out in the open, moonlit field. Brendan got right back up, and kept on half-running. He still had a leg to take care of, and loosing his stitches would be the absolute worst way to die.
((Brendan Wallace continues in
Birdland))