Survival Of The Fittest

**

November 2008

Brendan's head kinked back reflexively as the plane finally skidded across the tarmac. For all he'd been through, even little things like that euphoric. It reminded him that yes, he was safe, yes he was home, and everything was no longer fucked up. It was a rough few weeks. Yeah, like that was going to sum up the shitstorm he'd funneled through.

The parents, the graffiti etched on the walls and lawn, the email from some kid in Canada with almost a dictionary of profanity. The stress, the panic attacks, the sleepless nights sitting right under that window and jamming his knees into his ribs while he tried to drown out the dry heaves with a British pianist from Russia. Nothing was working, and since he was stuck in the house with his parents until it got better and he could function like a normal human being again among normal people, mum and dad just wanted to speed it up.

As impulsively as they came to America, they left. A slump in the real estate back on the North Coast was the tiniest window of opportunity Rosamaria Marilyn Wallace II needed to get out of the living hell her son was living in.

It was so strange seeing the Australian sun again through his tiny airplane window, but it was a sensation that quickly passed.

Brendan was finally home.

**

January 2009

5:00am.

Brendan's eyes flickered open, and shot back closed.

6:00am.

Once again his eyes opened, then closed.

7:00am

-YOU THINK YOU'VE GOT IT
BUT GOT IT JUST DON'T GET IT WHEN THERE'S NOTHING AT ALLL-ALLLL-ALLL-

A crunch echoed throughout the room as a fist flew down on a snooze button. Brendan finally decided not to go back to sleep.

The usual morning motions kinda blurred through. Shower, teeth, razoring down the sides of his face and keeping the runway clear. Trudging downstairs from the bathroom across the hall towards the kitchen and grabbing two three breakfast bars and an orange juice box. Moving just as fast towards the door.

Brendan slung the shoulder bag into the nook of his neck and pulled his plethora of keys out from a deep pocket. He couldn't remember which one was which, he was still technically asleep. The gravings passed by his fingertips eventually, and he scraped them into their locks. The door, then the ignition. Turned once, chug chug chug. Turn again, chug chug chug chug. Turn one more time, the engine coughed and growled like a puppy.

8:00am

He rolled the metal pipe around lazily in his hands while the metal bar on the disabled toilet wall scraped back and forth against his head. It wasn't something he was getting used to, but friends said he was such a better person when he was under its influence. A pinch of White Widow, an almighty fire, and suddenly you had the Brendan everyone actually wanted to be around instead of this depressed loner who made everyone awkward.

Brendan just went along with it. Sure, it gave him a buzz, but lately it wasn't doing much. Maybe he'd gotten used to it?

His tongue felt the backs of his teeth, ridden with fuzz while he thought about it.

9:00am

The side of his face felt numb. The lecturer wasn't too keen on speaking that much longer, everyone in the crowded, musty auditorium could tell that. But hey, it's the stuff you put with when you want to be a journalist one day.

10:00am

Brendan yawned and packed up his notebooks and recorder. Trudged all the way up the stairs to the doors. A familiar face passed by, was he from school last year? He was happy. He yelled his name and waved from twenty steps down. Not even purging his motion he turned around, flickered a smile back and waved a little bit. His smile faltered, and he shrugged and walked away.

11:00am

The Nissan creeped up along the hillbank, and he pulled back the handbrake. Back to his old hiding spot, the place he used to come on his own after school before the bus. Nature had not been kind to man's influence, and the old bench was gone to the trees. But god, the view was fantastic. You could see all the way to Nimbin from here.

Professionals and doctors and lawmakers all said you weren't supposed to drive under the influence of illicit drugs. When you've spent over a week malnourished, fearing for your life, guilt-wracked over the death of someone who wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place, and finally an inch from death with your own body parts spread around you, you learn to rethink your priorities and listen to whoever you want to listen to in regards to your personal safety and the same of others. It was only six months ago now, so wouldn't a sane person watching from the outside think he'd be over it? Or at the very least, move on?

No.

Since he'd moved back he hadn't answered himself the age old question of "what now?" It was one thing to say you've escaped, it was another to try and move on when you're not sure if you're staying alive on borrowed time or not. Ever since that day, he'd felt like the people in those movies about a group who'd cheated death. They were technically not supposed to be alive, and their influence was disrupting the universe. He hadn't thought about it that much before, but was that the case with him? If he was supposed to die, did him taking up a job at the Woolworths a short walk away from home take away someone else's job, therefor starving someone else who needed the money? Was he robbing another of the chance to learn by getting into Southern Cross University with his Senior results?

It was heavy shit, you know? He was technically not supposed to be alive, yet here he was, sitting above the town he'd spent most of his life in, high as a kite in all senses of the word.

But on the flip side, maybe it was how it was meant to be. If the rescue was the vision, the abduction must have been the preceding one.

Let's look at it in three ways. There were three ways his life could have panned out.

Option one was the trip going off without a hitch. Some other poor school was abducted, while he had an okay time with some okay American teenagers, came back, went to college, got his degrees, and then crashed and burned when he realised way too late that they were useless in terms of getting a job. He wasn't an engineer, or a scientist, someone needed, he was someone who would hypothetically write the news. He moves back in with the parents, he finds a menial job, and spends the rest of his days in absolute misery.

Option two he was abducted and never got off the island. He lived for a short while until he found someone he was looking for, and died quietly and alone when he was an idiot. The world would grieve, his parents would break down, and it would move on and heal.

Here was option three. He was abducted, he suffered everything he did on the island, and escaped. He moved back to Australia to escape the machine, and found himself without impulse or motion. Get the same degree, knowing know what you didn't know then, and then just peter out and waste away from something you never expected. Depression, infection, aneurism, whatever.

He realised just now it had been almost half an hour. Time flew when you thought about stuff like that, the metaphorical and metaphysical high didn't help.

Brendan unbuckled his seatbelt and squirmed in his seat. He tended to get tired like this. He just wanted to...

12:00pm

He twitched.

1:00pm

Indecipherable words mumbled through the sardine can of a car.

2:00pm

A lecturer talked about ethics and bias.

Meanwhile Brendan unknowingly scratched his leg.

3:00pm

An old mobile phone buzzed and spazzed like mad, like a swarm of bees sought to end his life. Brendan flew out of his sleep and clocked his head against the roof. An old curse world could be heard a few houses down, while his hand felt around the ashtray for the source of the noise. He picked it up and clicked the green button on the left, raising it to his ear.

"'lo?"

Brendan's look of apprehension faded quickly and was replaced with an almost forced smile. It wasn't like he could see him, but it was just what he did.

"Oh really now?"

Few seconds later, he laughed.

"Yeah, guess you could say that. Dunno what it is, just hard to sleep."

Scratching the back of his head, his eyes almost rolled on queue.

"Yes, because of that."

"..."

"Yes, sarcasm, that was sarcasm."

Once again, a deep guttural laugh. It still wasn't as genuine as 2008 would remember his real ones.

"Alright, so how about tonight, still on?"

"..."

"Awesome."

"..."

"Yeah, I learnt it a while ago."

"..."

"Alright, yeah."

"..."

"Gotcha."

"Okay, I gotta get back to important stuff right now."

"..."

"Yep. Totally important."

Brendan let out another laugh, and finally tried to interrupt the person on the other side.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I'm totally gonna be there, don't worry. You remind me of-"

"..."

"...what? No, I didn't say anyone."

"..."

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"..."

"Okay, I gotta go, got work, bye."

He held his phone in front of him for a moment, just to remind himself who he was dealing with here, and finally clicked the red button just as the mask slipped from his face.

Brendan had met Wade on the internet, not surprisingly. It wasn't like he had any other choice, seeing as how Brendan never went out anymore. Of course, dates were the exception. Wade was the exception. Wade was the best guy in the world, of course that's what you say when you're having sex with a guy six years older and ten times out of your league. They liked so much of the same things, and hated so many of the same people in this town that it was hard to resist the guy. Plus, he wasn't an asshole. That was a plus.

He pulled the parking brake off and backed out of the parking space. Fallen leaves slid from the read windshield and flew away from the exhaust pipe as the car peeled out of the silent hilltop filled with nothing but good memories.

5pm

"Hi, how are you doing today?"

"..."

"Do you have a Flybuys card?"

"..."

"Cheque, Savings, or Credit?"

"..."

"Any cash out?"

"..."

"Just enter your pin."

"..."

"Here's the receipt, thank you for shopping at Woolworths."

6pm

Repeat ad nauseum.

7pm.

Repeat.

8pm

Repeat.

9pm

Repeat again.

10pm

"Alright, see ya Ben, say hi to Ray for me will ya?"

"Will do Pauline."

Brendan threw his uniform in the back of his car and drove home.

*

11pm

After another shower, he slipped into his desk chair and opened up Facebook. The little hourglass spun for a few moments while a laptop that could legitimately be described as vintage tried to open up the webpage. Few minutes later, he was in business. He spotted Wade's name, with a little green dot beside it, and opened up the conversation.

[font=courier]Yo handsome ; )

Oh tai dur

=0

I'll be over in a bit, just need to grab some stuff

awesome

yep

i got some news i gotta tell ya

oh?

yar

what kind of news?

well you shall find out when you get here ;}

Haha, okay then, I'll be there quickly

Awesome

be there in a bit =D[/font]

Brendan grabbed the hoodie with his pipe and latest stash in it and his keys, before making his way to the door downstairs. He saw his parents watching TV in the living room.

"Hey, gonna be going out for a bit, I'll call if I don't come home."

No movement. He curled his lip and walked out the door.

"Look look look, listen to this, just listen."

"Alright, but you're not gonna convince me."

"No seriously, I'm telling you, it sounds better with the headphones."

Wade slipped his own pair of headphones off and put them precariously on Brendan's ears. He twitched just a bit. Wade's hands were usually cold, and he didn't like being touched around that area. At least, that was the reason he had when he wasn't high as a kite.

A pair of joints lay dormant in Wade's crystalline ashtray. It clashed with the rest of room entirely, a mishmash of abandoned warehouse, the living room of a moving family and decrepit. It was the only place he had to sleep in his parents house, the basement, since they were working on something. A mattress built for two lay dormant in the middle of the floor, a couch against the wall placed precariously between stacks of long, thin boxes, while a computer was perched on top of a pizza box. Each window had a dreamcatcher, each doorway a wind chime, and the bed was lain on top of many, many condom wrappers. Wade never digressed where they were from, and denied all knowledge of their existence for the most part.

And all of this made for quite the interesting listen of some of The Doors.

For all intents and purposes, Wade was Brendan's boyfriend, his lover, his drug-dealer and his best friend. Brendan never told him everything about what he did in America, nor did Wade prod, but it was all for the best. There was literally nobody he felt better around than Wade, simply because they had that kind of relationship that doesn't require dates, or anniversaries, or even seeing each other a lot. Wade had his life, Brendan had his, and they were perfectly fine having a mutual relationship that didn't require heavy maintenance, because that's how Wade was.

"You can hear him right? He's getting a bee-jay while singing that."

"No way, man, they're not gonna record it like that. There's, like..."

Brendan paused and laughed for a moment, just finally remembering a joke he heard at work today.

"Like, who would record that? There's like, a studio and stuff, people gotta be watching and stuff, who'd wanna get a bee-jay while all these people are around? Seems like, like, like way too much trouble."

"Well, it's the 60's. That was when shit went down, y'know?"

"I guess, yeah."

Brendan closed his eyes while his head swirled around again and he resisted the urge to laugh. He put his feet up blindly on the table and reached for his joint from the ashtray below their feet. He fingered around on the wooden floor until he felt the tip of a rolled up joint. The wrong end. It was gone from the tray almost instantly as he cried out and pulled it to his mouth.

"Th'uck! Th'uck, th'uck th'uck th'uck, ny th'inger..."

He looked at the damage. The skin was a little red and ashy, but otherwise, it wasn't looking that bad. He knew he was gonna feel it a lot worse once his head cleared up, but for now it was just a red dot on his fingerprint.

"Ouch, you okay?"

"Yeah, fine fine, it's not that bad."

"Ah, lemme see, I'm the doctor."

Wade swept some hair from his eyes and took a look at his finger, holding it up to the small lamp on the arm of the couch.

"Alright, I may-may be high, but I don't think it's bad or anything."

"You're the med student."

"Yes I am, and doctors orders say you get some drinks from the fridge."

"Will do, doc."

Brendan slid his feet from the table, took off the headphones, and went over to the fridge, perched in the corner. The bed crunched. He opened the fridge to grab whatever drinks were there. There was barely anything perched on the shelves apart from those murky bottles, and Brendan really hadn't bothered to ask why. He trailed back, bottles in hand, and handed Wade some Smirnoff.

"Would this be the correct dosage, Doctor Sharp?"

"Why yes, Nurse-" Wade started, before starting to hysterically giggle once more. In on the non-existent joke, Brendan started to laugh as well.

"I know what I'm laughing at, do you?"

Wade turned to Brendan and smiled, that kind of smile. You know the one, where he's just happy. He giggled a bit once more, then leant in.

They kissed briefly. Wade moved his hand up Brendan's leg, but he stopped and pulled away from the older man's lips.

"Sorry, just..."

There was a pause. Brendan lay there under Wade's grasp, their faces a space away only a mouse could crawl through. Wade wasn't a psychiatrist, but even he could tell that something was troubling him.

"What is it?"

"Nothing, nothing, just...yeah nothing."

Brendan leaned upwards, and kissed Wade again. But this time, he pulled away.

"Oh, that reminds me, I had something I needed to tell you."

Wade slunk away from the couch and over to the computer, typed in a few words, clicked a few links in the bar, while Brendan got up and appeared behind him.

"You know that club we went to last month?"

"Yeah?"

"On the Gold Coast?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I talked to the guy who owned it. I got a job there working at the bar."

"On the Gold Coast?"

"Yeah. They had an opening, and I took it."

"Does that mean you're finally gonna move up there?"

"Well...yeah."

"..."

"Look, you know better than anyone how shit it is here. This is the place where you go to live if you don't want to get arrested for drug trafficking, and-and getting mugged and all that, y'know? I can't spend another month here, it'll ruin me. I'm doing my degree on the Gold Coast anyway, it'll mean less travelling."

"...okay."

"And I think you need to come with me."

Wade turned around in his chair to deliver the last line. Brendan wasn't sure whether he was even supposed to respond to that, let alone how to take such news.

"What?"

"I mean, come on. You're a great guy, and I don't want to see you go to waste here. The only other guys are repressed high-schoolers, sickos with HIV-positive, and fourty-year-old guys looking for a father/son fetish. I mean, we've only known each other for two months, but I'm willing to bet you'd do this."

"But this is my home."

"Everyone leaves home sometime, Brendan."

"But you don't understand."

"I dated a guy like you a few years ago, but we were the same age. Same class, same school, and then we broke up. He was smart, everyone liked him, he could have been someone. But now he's down in Broken Bay, cleaning up at the Fish and Chips shop, because he missed that chance and it's gone now."

"You don't understand."

"I mean, come on, you've left before, right? I mean, you went to America last yea-"

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND."

Brendan hadn't expected to raise his voice, but there he went. It might have been the White Widow talking, but he felt like throwing something, preferably not at Wade. His hands were gripping the sides of the desk, and his eyes were furious.

"You don't...understand. I need this place, this place is normal. This place is my home. I can't live in the city, and I can't leave, because every city I go to, every single place I move if I leave here is going to remind me of him."

Wade wasn't sure what to say. He sat there, just listening, mouth agape.

"I told you, and I've always told you, you can tell me anything."

"Well I neglected to tell you about this, okay?"

"About what?"

"About what happened to me last year, and who I met."

Brendan whipped his head towards the couch and stormed away. Wade couldn't help but follow. This was all news to him.

"In 2007, we moved to Saint Paul in Minnesota, in America. It was the same old story, new kid, new school, I barely had any friends until the last few months of school. I actually did the same whole thing I did with you with this nice Scandinavian kid. Real sweet guy. Everyone loved him, y'know, and it ended disastrously. I met a nice girl, actually two, joined a club, joined a band as the lighting guy or sound guy or whatever, we became pretty good friends, at least y'know I think we did, and then I met him."

"His name was Erik. Nice guy, gay and all, and totally out of my league. I worked at a cafe at the Mall near school, and we chatted, and I eventually ended up asking him out on a date. Although, I didn't call it a date, it was just sort of hanging out as friends at the movies. We were gonna see...I don't know what we were gonna see come to think of it. It was ages ago. Some video game movie. But then somewhere along the way I asked him out to Prom, which was in a few weeks.. My best friend was there, and of course he didn't wanna look like a dick, so he said of course, yes, yeah, he wanted to go."

"And then I was terrified at the prospect afterwards, I think I was overthinking it and thought about the fact that it would be me, coming out to the whole school of people I barely knew, I'd only known them for like a year or so, way less than that as well. But of course, he had to be great, and had to go and help me through that. Because he was so great and stuff, and everything went fine, I had a great night, and of course I was wary of everything that was going to happen afterwards, because people were gonna no. But no, he had to be perfect and help me through that again. I still had my friends, and those guys from those clubs, they were all great great people. I think one of them was jealous of me, they had a crush on me or something, but then of course I came out, and..."

"But then...let me ask you something. You ever hear of that Survival of the Fittest thing over in America? Y'know, that sick fuck who kidnapped that class of students and forced them onto an island to fight to the death? It was like...Battle Royale. We watched that movie a few weeks ago, right? It was like that, but hundreds. Hundreds of teens dead. I looked it up after the one in June, and there's almost no telling how many teenagers, teenagers all over the world, have died from it. Hundreds. Maybe over a thousand. That's like...population control to the extreme. One hundred and thirty or so in 2005, one hundred and twenty or so in 2006, two hundred in 2007, and almost two hundred and fifty in 2008...at least, that's what's supposed to have happened anyway."

"So...I did some more research. A class disappeared in 2005. Thirty. One recorded in the official one in 2005. Three in the one in 2008. And then I found out the statistics. Only one in thirty four Australian students have survived Survival of the Fittest. One in thirty four."

"So I should tell you what this has to do with what I'm saying, cause..."

"I was on a camping trip in June, or May, I can't remember. Our entire senior year was, we were going camping. At least that was the intention. I fell asleep on the bus ride, and woke up in a room. Everyone else was there. Everyone was tied to chairs. And then someone appeared on the screen at the front. The guy in charge."

"And that's how my class ended up on Survival of the Fittest in June."

"I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it when I was tied to that chair, and I didn't believe it when I woke up on a beach in the Pacific Ocean with a collar around my neck, a new bag, and a number instead of a name. I was boy 42. Life, meaning, and everything existence. Forty two."

"I was in disbelief until I saw it begin. A chick, some real loner, not like what I ended up being, shot a guy near me on the beach. Eighteen year olds, and seventeen year olds were already starting to kill each other because a fat man on a television screen said so. And then I started believing it."

"And you know what I did? I stopped her. There was another guy, another guy she hadn't shot, and I got up behind her and tackled her down. I saved a guy's life, and he ran...but that wasn't what I was concerned about then. I'm not sure how I did it, but I got out. It's all such a blur now, all I remember was getting ahold of a gun, I think it was the dead kid's gun. But she was gone, and I was left with the dead kid. He'd been shot in the head. There was...there was a hole under his eye, and the back of his head wasn't there anymore. And I did the only thing I could - instinct took over, and I took everything I could, I closed his eyes, and I ran off."

"And all this time I'd been worrying about everyone. My friends, the ones who were on the trip at least, Erik, and everyone else who could possibly be in danger. It's funny, because I never even found out what happened to Erik. Where he woke up, where he was, who he was with, I mean he could have been on that same beach and I had no idea, because I was so pre-occupied with just thinking to myself and making myself feel bad."

"Of course, I did run into someone. Some members of the school's eco-club, which I was a member of all year. I was so...so glad to see them. It was a start, you know? We were going to stick together, look out for each other, because we were all going to be fine. And then it was the beach all over again, there was this other group, nearby, and this chick got shot. We all went over to help, and everyone was panicking, and crying and-and doing all this helpful shit, and I was being an unhelpful prat. I just sat there with my head in my hands and sort of just...wallowed in self pity for a while. Cause this wasn't a dead person, this chick was still alive. She's still alive today, I think, last time I checked..."

"But then I decided I wasn't helpful. I ran. I ran away from everyone helping out, and to this day I know the ones who survived never forgave me. I haven't spoken to the ones who got out at all...except for one of them."

So I just did the same thing I did when I woke up, I wandered for a while, hoping I wouldn't die. I found another group - bunch of guys in an infirmary. I think one of them made it out as well. We thought about staying put and figuring a way out, then...then the announcement. The very first one. Twenty people dead on the first day. That's when it really hit me, you know? I was going to die on a miserable old rock in the middle of the pacific ocean. I was going to be alone, I was going to be miserable, hurt, and never going to see my friends again. And then I met Sarah. She was this Asian girl, she was scouring for supplies. Then more people came, some girl had her eye basically gouged out of her head. I mean...what do you say to that? What do you do when you're just an ordinary kid stuck on a rock in a room with a girl missing her eye? Recently?"

"It ended badly. There was another chick there as well, and they ended up killing each other. Again, I'm facing my own mortality here. I'm gonna be next. I'm gonna be on those announcements at one point or another, some fat disgusting terrorist is going to make a joke about me getting brutally killed by an insane classmate who I sat near in Economics. The only real thing I could do is cover the bodies. We covered the bodies, and we were about to...I dunno what we were about to do, but it stopped, because the other chick, Sarah, the only chick still alive there besides me, she ran off. She said she was heading towards this place, where her friends were, but it was a danger zone. Y'know, go in-ny, head go boom-y? I had to stop her, so once again I ditched."

"And...that ended pretty well, I guess. I stopped her, met up with one of her friends, but I got my leg banged up in the process. Needed stitches, that's a story for another day. We got it bandaged up, cleaned up, and headed off on walkabout. Scoured for supplies, looked around - there was a huge town there as well, from what I saw a lot of shit went down. But we went through and gathered stuff. We stopped for the night outside town and got my leg stitched up. It's funny, cause once we got back to civilisation, I had to have it restitched. I'd torn the stitches so much, and they were done in such a disgusting place, it's a wonder my leg never fell off. That's where that funky scar on my leg came from, by the way, you asked about that a few weeks ago."

"And then of course, we got it all prettied up, and then..."

"..."

"...and then Erik showed up."

"I couldn't believe it, I was out of my mind. I was at my wits end already, and then suddenly, there's the guy who I've been almost in love with for the past few months? I mean, he shows up, and frankly I'm about to break down. We're together, y'know? And I'm finally feeling okay. I think I was about to lose my mind out there, I'd lost a lot of blood and friends over those few days. I calm down, we set up camp, and then more people start showing up, y'know? Sarah's other friend shows up, the other members of the eco-club show up as well, and we're fine. And then I freak out again."

"You know, I told myself I was doing good. I thought I'd just go look around, and see if I could find anything to help us. But I think I was just scared. I wanted to run again, really. All these people, even Erik, were just going to die, and I didn't want to be around them when it happened. So...yeah, I ran again. I ran from Erik, and...and....and I never saw him again. That was the last time I saw him, I left him with a group of people I didn't want to see die, and he was the first and foremost member of that group."

"So I kept on walking. I walk, and I walk, and I meet more people. Y'know, the whole thing you'd see all the time. It's all, are you playing, am I playing, let's stick together, let's go away, let's separate, all that kinda crap. I met a few guys, some good guys, one of them even made it off as well. It's funny I keep mentioning that, because it's totally not how it's supposed to go. There aren't supposed to be "one of them made it out as well", everyone except one person is supposed to be dead. I meet and lose them. I think they lost me. I wasn't that happy a camper, and they kinda left. They ditched me."

"But then I saw some other chick."

"I watched it again, afterwards, and there was this chick. Kinda looked like my friend, kinda looked like that chick from the Millennium series. If this was a story y'know I'd probably call plagiarism, but hey, it's not like anyone would care. Sour, delusional people with nothing better to do would just call me out, but it's a story no-one would publish anyway. She'd figured it out, she'd broken the system. She managed to neutralise her collar through a fucking miracle. She broke the system, and the guys in charge wanted her dead. I saw her, she was with this other chick. I didn't know any of this at the time, y'know, I'd been sleeping through all the announcements like an idiot."

"She was breaking all these cameras. She was basically fucking with the guy in the sky, and I wanted to know why. I followed them, and ended up at this mansion, where yeah, I followed her in. But I wasn't the only one there, there were all these other guys, other chicks, and they were in on it. I think some of them actually made it out as well. But I found out she had a plan, they were going to try and help her, get her out of there."

"I knew from the moment I stepped in that mansion I was good as dead. In war, if you help the enemy, you're the enemy. I was the enemy, I was helping the enemy, and now I was as good as dead. All these people were as good as dead. But I figured, right there, at that time...hey, I'm going to make it worth while. I'm gonna show everyone I'm not a worthless little sponge. I'm gonna help. I said I would, and I did. She needed help, and I was the only one not fucked up enough to carry her up. She was basically dying anyway, her body was all kinds of fucked up."

"We went to the tunnels, because...well, I can't remember why. I barely remember the plan, I was the sixth ranger. You know, the guy who joined at the last minute. I knew nothing, I just did what I was told for this strange anomaly of a girl I met once before this whole thing. We went up to the tunnels, and she went in. Everyone else followed, and I stayed outside, because I knew they were coming. There were killers coming to off her, they knew where she was, and they were going to plow down everyone in their way, but I grew some balls for about five minutes. I stayed outside."

"This chick appeared. She was a cheerleader, that's all I knew, and to this day that's all I knew about Carla. She said they were coming, and then they blew her head off. They knew more about her than I did. She might have been trying to join us, or warn us, but they killed her without a second thought. That's really the thing that got me the hardest, because they killed her right in front of me. Literally, she was standing almost a few feet away, and...her blood got on my clothing."

"...so then they showed up, and they threatened me. Run, or die. Die for your cause, or run like a coward was what it boiled down to. So...I wanted to stay, I just wanted to shoot them up and go out in a blaze of glory, but I didn't. I did what I did. You already know how that ends."

"So I ran. I ran inside, and I got lost. I thought I was probably going towards Liz, but I ended up halfway through the mountain. It got dark. Really, really dark. No light, nothing. Just darkness, and every time I hit the wall or brushed up against something on the ground, I thought it was a body, or I thought I was dead. Eventually, I did get some light. I'd fallen down, and got out the light I was given. I was in a human body, like...my hands were going through his stomach, it was...it was all cold, and dead, like I was sifting through meat, y'know? I was there, and...I think I might have lost my mind a little bit. I freaked out, I screamed, I panicked, I just wanted it all to be over."

"But I heard noises. Footsteps, y'know? I didn't know what I was thinking, so I grabbed a gun and shot. And it wasn't them. I thought maybe it was those terrorists, they were going to kill me. I don't know why I thought I was important, but I shot into the dark and I hit an innocent person. He was a nice kid. Pretty nice about being shot as well, and then I didn't know what to do. He got shot in the leg, and there was so much blood, blood everywhere, and I screamed, I called out for help, and then someone actually showed up. This guy, asian guy, showed up and saved the day. He got better, the wound was fine, the bleeding stopped, and we all figured out how to get out."

"Or I wish that's what would have happened because...because...because..."

"Because he died right there in that cave."

"..."

"And I think I lost more of my mind. I shut down, I couldn't speak, I couldn't think, I just sort of...stopped."

"I don't remember what happened after that. All I remember was running. I ran, and I ran, and I can't remember what happened in between. I couldn't watch it when I was able to. That was the one thing I couldn't put on my computer, because I couldn't deal."

"But I ended up at the beach again. Once again, back at the water, back where I began. But then I found another body. I've been going at this for days now, probably weeks I've lost count, and all during this time I've heard friends and people I know over those speakers. Eco-members were dead. Band members were dead. But Chase was still alive, and that kept me going. I knew that as long as my best friend was still alive, I'd be okay. Everything would be okay."

"I found Jamie's body by the water. Dead a while. I really just took all the time I could to come to grips with the fact that I was going to die, because I hadn't vocalised it before. I actually said it outloud for once. I'm going to die. I'm never going home. And I didn't know what to do after that, so I just did what I did best - wandered. I walked, and I walked, and...well, then I ran into Peter again. The asian guy who helped the guy I shot, or tried to."

"I told him everything. Basically everything I'm telling you right now. He was the only person I had at that point, so I just stuck to him like glue. We wandered. We went walkabout again, and if this were any kind of real life story, I'd be dead in that time. I think I was close to death. I hadn't eaten well in ages. In real life, someone writes a better ending. But I'm here, so that's not how it went down."

"Came across a church, and I went to investigate. We'd grown a bit closer, me and him. He knew I was fine. I had a gun, and that's all. I wasn't going to let someone get the drop on me that easily, because I'd lived. I'd been out there all that time, and I was fine. I was still alive, which said something about me and the company I kept. I was alive, and all these people kept on coming over the announcements. People I knew, people I'd known, friends, club members, suicides and all these killers, people with tens of kills to their name. But that wasn't the worst part."

"Because she was in that church. My friend, Chase, she was in there, being harassed by some chick. She was there, after all this time, she was right there, and she was so close. I got in there, but things went bad real quick. The chick attacked me. She's the reason I'm missing some of those teeth, and you asked why that time. So now you know."

"But she saved me. Chase saved me, I almost had a bullet where my brain should be, but I don't because of Chase. She attacked the chick and she got scared off when Peter ended up splitting up the party."

"But the impossible happened. If this were any kind of story, we'd stick together and we'd die alone and miserable teenagers trapped in this fucked up game but it happened. Whoever they are, whoever they were, they saved our lives and we managed to escape. Me, Chase, two of my friends from the eco-club, one of my friends from the infirmary, Sarah, one of the guys I met on my own, two of the people who were helping Liz, and countless others. But Peter stayed behind."

"As soon as I was off, I was out. I'd lost so much blood I passed out halfway to the hospital, and I had so much medical work done I thought the bandages were never coming off. But I was alive. I lived. I survived, and it was a miracle. My fate was in the hands of god, and he let me and all these innocent people live."

"I thought it'd be over soon, I could go back to my normal life. But Erik. I had to wait so long to find out what happened to him, because the show went down before I woke back up. I didn't ask. I couldn't handle it. Because Erik wasn't there with the escaped, and I knew he had to have lived. He had to be alive."

"And I thought it'd be simple, y'know? Just a chapter in our lives, we'd all go back to normality eventually, and we'd talk about our stories, but no. It wasn't that simple. It was never. going. to. be. that. simple."

"Every person I met from that day on avoided talking about it. Everyone. No-one wanted to acknowledge they were a part of Survival of the Fittest, they wanted to put it behind them. Sure there was the therapy, but nothing real. No talks, no consoling, it was all just silent suffering for good old Brendan, because everyone else was too 'Oh, I don't thing we should talk about that' to even think about it. For once I needed someone there. If it wasn't going to be Erik, then it should at least be someone else, but no. No. No-one wanted to talk about it, and I was left to carry everything that happened to me until I exploded it onto you. You, and one other person."

"And do you know what happened to Erik? I found out only a few days after I got home, it was all over youtube. Clips of my classmates dying, clips of friends dying, I think the flag police on youtube gave up long ago, because this shit was still up there. I saw him die. I saw Erik die. He got shot in the back, and he spent his last few moments saying I should have been there. I should have been there on that island with him when he died, instead of the chick who I ran from on the very first day with a bullet in her arm sitting right there next to him."

"And that was how Erik died."

Brendan leaned forward, picked up the joint, and inhaled. In a mere few seconds, centimetres were shaved off as the little red dot receded down the rolled-up pinch of white widow and turned into smoke that billowed through his lungs. He threw the joint back in the ashtray, and slumped back onto the couch.

"So there you go."

Wade didn't say a word. Brendan hadn't even looked his way while he told him what happened, but now he spoke up.

"I didn't ask about Erik. I don't know what made you say everything you just told me...every little detail..."

"..."

"But you have definitely been holding that in for way too long."

Brendan couldn't help it. He threw his arms around Erik and squeezed tightly.

"It's true. I'm not Erik. I'm never going to be Erik. But your classmates had a point, however subtle it was, man."

"What?"

"This isn't something you need to dwell on. No matter how much that was part of your life, you need to move on from it. I'm not gonna claim I'm speaking from any experience here, but it's what you need to do. War veterans who never leave the war end up losing their minds. And starting from now, we need to help you change that. You need a change."

"Like what?"

"For starters, getting the hell out of this town. You've got way too many memories here. Just get out of here, you don't have to come to the Gold Coast with me, just...I dunno, man. Get on a bus that goes far far away from here, take everything you want, and don't look back. Just get out."

"..."

"I want you to come with me, but...I dunno, man. You've got demons. You've got things that've happened to you that I can't even think of how they feel, so...it's all up to you."

"...thanks Wade."

"And you're staying here tonight, you just inhaled half a joint, if you drive I might be legally responsible for whatever you hit on the road."

--

Brendan's eyes met the back of Wade's head as he woke up to a rooster's crow. Or at least the ringtone of one. He moved his arms from around Wade's chest and leant up. His companion woke up not long after that.

"I'm getting out of here."

"Good for you. Any ideas?"

"I'm gonna pack a bag today, take all the money I can, and get on a bus to wherever the hell sounds lovely this time of year."

"I hear the Gold Coast is."

"...we'll keep in touch, Wade."

"A guy can dream."

--

A bulging backpack lay wedged in the back of Brendan's Nissan, while Wade budged his knees around the passenger dashboard. They crossed the river bridge, narrowly avoiding a hooded figure on a skateboard clearly ignorant of how the traffic system works.

"So you're sure you wanna do this?"

"Are you kidding me, after all that talking me into-"

"I'm kidding, man, I wouldn't fuck with you like that."

The car passed under a set of tracks, as a train echoed overhead. Soon, they pulled up at the train station. Wade helped yank the backpack, big enough to hold a living human, from the back seat while Brendan removed the plates from the front and back of the car.

"Alright, well, never thought we'd break up like this, although it beats the hell out of how my last relationship ended. There was some town-fleeing involved though..."

"Funny man. Enjoy the Gold Coast. I'll enjoy...well, wherever I end up, I guess."

"No problem, Mister 'Benjamin Harris'. I've gotta say, I'm interested as to why you chose that name in particular. You could always just change your surname, or even don't change it at all. It's a very common name y'know."

"I've got my reasons. It's an amalgamation of two people I think might be forgotten in the grand scheme of things. Right now, they're statistics."

"And that's all I'm gonna get?"

"And that's all you're gonna get."

Wade smiled. A rare smile he hadn't seen without weed. He leant forward and kissed the new Australian in front of him.

"Well, what do I do with the car?"

"You can keep it if you want. I mean, you've already got one, but I guess if you find a shady-enough dealership you can make probably five hundred or so? That's five hundred less on your Hecs loans anyway."

"I'll think of something. Your parents don't know I exist right?"

"They don't and never will."

The bus pulled up a few minutes later, and Brendan was dreading this part.

"So...if everything goes well and I don't die in the first week, I'll find you on Facebook again. We'll keep in touch, right?"

"No objections there."

"...damn."

"Are those tears?"

"Yes, yes those are tears. Every since that date I've been crying at the drop of a loud pin. Weed helps."

"Well...I guess I'm gonna miss you too."

"Really?"

"At least till another fine piece of ass comes along."

"Manslut."

"Crybaby."

"Point taken."

Brendan couldn't help but lean forward and give him at least one more hug. Goodbyes like this were hard, and he hated them.

"Take care, man."

"Will do."

Wade stepped inside the Nissan and drove off into the night. Brendan could have sworn he saw a wave, but he wasn't quite sure.

He turned towards the driver of the bus, and stepped on, handing over his ticket. He waddled slowly towards the back of the bus, taking note of all the people staring at the young kid knocking into each bus seat with a bag the size of a small child strapped to his back. He made his way towards the back and towards the onboard toilet, and settled.

Just like another bus ride that changed his life only a short time ago to him, but in reality a long time waiting, he took the window. He sat his bag next to him and looked out the window.

There were a lot of things that Brendan could guarantee in life, and for the most part he'd taken all the measures to make sure that he knew that whenever he stepped into a car or onto a vehicle he knew what was waiting for him on the other side. But that was then, and this was now. Frankly, he didn't care what was on the other side of that window once he finally got off the bus. It could be Sydney, it could actually be the Gold Coast, it could be Perth, Broome, Alice Springs, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Auckland, Anchorage, Honolulu, or even the island all over again.

So many things he was leaving behind. He'd leave behind parents who loved him. He was leaving behind people who'd almost cried when he was delivered back home safe, people he never thought were capable of crying. He was leaving behind a brother, who he knew that if he were alive today would give him some sort of motivation to do better, to set an example. He was leaving behind Chase, a girl he knew would live happily ever after because she was finally okay. He was leaving behind Hui Xu, a girl who he doubted would ever find her happy ending. He was leaving behind Harun, who was writing his own ending. He was leaving behind Sarah, who needed to find a better ending. He was leaving behind painful memories, of Nik, of Jamie, of Madelyn, Vera, Dutchy, Roland, of Steven, of Peter, and probably most painfully Erik. Their endings were etched already. He was leaving behind Clio, Reiko, Maxwell...and even Kimberly. They'd earned their endings. He was leaving behind Liz, and Ethan, who wrote this story for him. He was leaving behind a whole different life, full of endings that had been foreseen.

But there was one thing he was certain of - wherever he landed after this ride, it wasn't just an ending waiting for him. It was going to be the start of a whole different story.

B042, BRENDAN WALLACE - CONCLUDED