Survival Of The Fittest

((Continued from In God's House))

The first rays of sunlight had managed to turn into a luminiscent glow that encompassed the entire island throughout the time Kallie had been running from the chapel. Sean had gotten in front of her almost immediately after they had escaped from the chapel. It was no surprising feat, really, seeing as Sean was one of the better players on the baseball team, and was quite in shape. It wasn't that Kallie was out of shape by any means, but the fact was, throughout the past year, the most running she'd done had been her nightly jogs around their neighborhood.

Somewhere through the dense foliage that encompassed most of the island, she had lost sight of Adam and Sean. As she exited the treeline and found her ears assaulted by the sound of gently flowing water, she slowed to a halt, breathing heavily and scanning the area for any sign of the two boys she had been running after. Unfortunately, they were nowhere to be found. Kallie exhaled deeply and tried to catch her breath.

Everything had all happened so quickly that she'd barely had time to think. She remembered Madison's accusations and how angry they'd made her, but she'd simply turned to leave, not wishing for the rather schizophrenic-acting girl's help. Madison had started in on another rant when Kallie had turned to leave, but Kallie hadn't cared enough to listen to the other girl's words and instead had simply kept walking... at least, until that man's horrible voice started booming across the island.

The next few minutes seemed to fly by.

Adam burst out of the chapel doors, running full-speed away from the area, with Sean O'Cann trailing right behind him. Kallie had taken off after them, partially because she just wanted to get away from the dangerzone as quick as she possibly could, and partially because since Danya's announcement had confirmed that Keith and Adam's friend Izzy were together, she had had somewhat of a change of heart about the group. While she was still leary about sticking with a large group of people that she didn't trust, their priorities had suddenly entwined with one another.

She had wanted to tell Adam that and explain the situation, but somewhere in between all the running, she'd lost him. Kallie sighed frustratedly and surveyed her new surroundings. There was an old log crossing the nearby stream, and the water flowing through didn't seem to be very deep. Up ahead of her, the land slanted upward into a hill, and further down, the stream seemed to get deeper as it cut into what looked like a ravine. The best (or perhaps it was the worst) part was that nobody else seemed to be around.

Kallie came to a seat on the end of the log and dropped her daypack in front of her, unzipping the bag and digging through it to find her water bottle. The physical exertion had worn her out, and she poured the lukewarm liquid down her throat. After recapping the water and placing it back into her pack, she removed her map, staring blankly at the piece of paper. Danya'd said so much in the announcement, but during her hustle away from the hospital, she hadn't been able to retain much of the information. That put her at a significant disadvantage.

She could, however, remember the dangerzones. The chapel, the lookout tower, and the showers, if she recalled correctly. She quickly dug a pen out of her pack and made a note of the dangerzones on the back of her map. Those were necessities in this game. She couldn't very well run into a dangerzone and get herself killed. Something else she desperately needed to know -- information that was surrounded in a haze inside her mind -- were the people who were dead, and the people that had killed them. She couldn't quite remember how many Danya had said were dead.

"Dammit..." Kallie swore under her breath.

She thought back, trying to remember the announcement and the names Danya had read off before things had gone crazy at the church. There were... nine or ten, maybe? There were more people dead than she had anticipated, but throughout everything Danya had said in the announcements, only two things had stuck out at her, and she kept hearing the orchestrator's horrible voice reading out those statements over and over again.

According to Danya, Guy Rapide was playing the game. Come to think of it, see could have sworn she'd seen a twinkle in Guy's eye when he'd been staring down at the bayonet he'd been issued yesterday morning at the cottage. But... had he really tried to kill that other kid? He hadn't succeeded, according to Danya, but he'd locked him in a freezer to wait until his doom. Of course, Guy wasn't a perfect person, but Kallie couldn't believe that he'd try to basically seal somebody into a freezer. She'd only seen him a few hours before and he seemed perfectly fine.

And then there was...

The entire reason she'd followed Adam Dodd away from the chapel in the first place. The person he'd been looking for was Izzy Cheung. In the announcement, Danya had said that Izzy was with one, Keith Jackson -- someone she'd searched for for the entirety of the first day on the island. One of her closest friends. Somebody she thought she knew quite well. But... maybe she didn't know Keith nearly as well as she thought she did. The announcement had said that he, Izzy, and some girl Kallie had never heard of had teamed up and slaughtered another student.

Burchman... Charlie Burchman.

She couldn't say that she knew Charlie on a very personal level. He was in a few of her classes, and his physical appearance -- namely, how short and wide the poor boy was -- made him a bit hard to miss in a crowd. In fact, the poor kid took up most of the crowd he happened to be in at the time. She knew he was snotty and arrogant and selfish... basically, a spoiled brat. People like that had always annoyed Kallie. She had been born into money, and she didn't act like that... but if the announcement was correct, and there was no reason to believe that it wasn't, Keith, Izzy, and that Ivye girl had killed him in cold blood.

But then...

"No..." Kallie voiced aloud, trying to reaffirm the word in her mind.

There's more to it than that... there has to be...

It was so foreign and surreal to hear that two of the three people she'd desperately wanted to find and stay with on the island had resorted to killing people. That couldn't be the whole story. There had to be more to it than that. But what if there wasn't? What if Madison had been telling the truth. Hadn't the announcement said that she had tried to kill Izzy? Nothing made sense anymore, and the blonde-headed girl just round herself getting more and more frustrated.

"This is all just... this is all just so FUCKED UP!" Kallie blurted out angrily before slumping forward on the log and closing her eyes tightly.

((Continued from In God's House))



"You can say that again..." Matt said as he slowly walked out of the woods.

"Now look, I get that you don't really like me and all... but I don't really have any friends... so, I'm just hoping that maybe for a little while, we can keep each other safe... Plus you're the only one I was able to keep up with." He smiled slightly and sighed. He just realized that he'd left his daypack at the Chapel. Didn't matter now he guessed.

Directly after her started sprinting, Sean and Adam had all but disappeared into the dense foliage. Matthew was just barely able to keep up with Kallie's steady pace. He knew she didn't like him, but she was his best bet in a situation like this. He needed some companionship, and she needed someone to trust. A win-win situation in his mind. But the hard part was getting her to trust him.

"So.... how about it? Allies if not friends?" He walked over to her and stuck out his hand for her to shake. "It's in both of our best interests..."

The quite familiar voice that echoed out directly in front of Kallie caused the blonde-headed girl's head to shoot up and her blue eyes to pop wide open. She nearly groaned as she saw the familiar individual standing in front of her. After all the insulting, degrading things she'd said to him, he had still had the nerve to follow her to the brook and even approach her. For approximately half a second, Kallie thought about grabbing the sword resting on her hip and slicing the other student's head off.

Of course, even if she had really, truly, desperately wanted to do that, Kallie knew that she didn't have the willpower to kill someone in cold blood anyway.

"Wittany..." Kallie groaned quietly.

It seemed Matt had something to say. The fact that he hadn't been able to keep up with Adam, Andy, and Sean brought a slight smile to the corners of her lips. Kallie had an excuse -- she was wearing sandals, for Christ sakes. With Matthew, it appeared he was either out of shape or just very slow. Still, he seemed to desperately want to form some sort of truce with her. Fatigue was starting to catch up with her a bit, even though she had managed to catch some sleep at the chapel before everyone had barged in for evening service.

"I'll be really honest with you," Kallie spoke, her gaze locking with Matt's, "I have very specific priorities. I'm finding Darnell, I'm finding Guy, and I'm finding Keith, and I don't give a damn about what any announcement says, because they aren't playing. They can't be playing, I know them all far too well to ever believe anything so ridiculous."

Do you, Kal?

"Aside from those people, I don't care about anyone else. I barely know most of you, and most of the people I do know fall under that little category that they call "fair-weather friends". They aren't the kind of people whose hands I'd be placing my life in out here. I don't know what your priorities are, or who you want to find, and to be really honest with you, I don't really care. I've got my own game plan, and you just happen to keep popping up.

So, if you intend on sticking to me like glue, I guess there's really nothing I can do about it. I've done everything I possibly do aside form killing you outright to get you to leave me alone, and you just won't go away. If you feel like you have to be around me so desperately, than whatever, but just know that, as cruel as it sounds, I'm only looking out for me. If saving myself happens to mean I save you in the process, good for you. If it happens to mean throwing you to the wolves to save my own skin? Well, I'm sorry. I can't die yet."

The words sounded so cold and foreign as they left her mouth. She might have been a little uppity in high school, maybe, but she'd never been so cruel and vindictive. She supposed that was just a side-effect of the game, though. When push comes to shove, nobody wants to die, and instincts like self-preservation start to kick in. Kallie had made it her personal mission to track down her friends before something horrible happened to them, and she wasn't changing that plan for anybody... especially not somebody that she didn't even really like.

She rose to her feet and brushed a few stray strands of hair away from her face before grabbing her daypack and throwing it over her shoulder. Her eyes once again moved over to Matthew and she signed resignedly. She would really rather not have this stalker following her across the island. Part of her almost felt bad that he had no friends. The other part was telling her that it was most certainly his own fault. To Kallie, the boy in front of her seemed like nothing except a liability.

It's just my luck, you know? Everybody I've encountered so far has had a completely useless weapon. God forbid I run into somebody with a nice big gun that's worth keeping around for a while. Instead, I get people like Matt, who are weak, out of shape, and now packless and weaponless. I hope he doesn't think he's mooching off my rations or anything like that, because his survival definitely isn't one of my priorities.

The thought itself felt completely inhuman to her.

"Between what that Madison girl said and what Danya had said over the announcement, Keith was at the tower last, and Guy was at the mess hall. Keith can't be at the tower anymore... Danya made it a dangerzone. So... he could be anywhere by now. The best lead I've got right now is that Guy was at the mess hall at some point. But... that could've been any time between yesterday and now."

Kallie sighed irritatedly, feeling rather frustrated by the entire situation. Of the three people she was searching for, Guy was probably number three on the list, simply because he was loud, and now, people were probably regarding him as a player. Really, Darnell would've been the best of the three to have around, seeing as he was rather soft-spoken and quite intimidating. Keith was right up there with him, although he wasn't nearly as quiet as Darnell was.

"I don't know," Kallie muttered, still deep in thought, "That's the only thing I've got right now. I don't know how likely it is that he's still there, but it wouldn't hurt to go look... just in case."

((Continued in Walk Amongst the Dead))

Matt wasn't all too surprized that kallie barely even cared about his well being. The fact that she had no problems with discarding him at any point in time unsettled him slightly, but perhaps if they found her friends then he'd be just slightly more welcome in her eyes. After all, if he helped her, she might gain a tad bit of respect for him. Just a tad of course. He doubted Kallie knew how to give a crap about anybody but herself. Sure, it was cynical of him, but he wasn't in the best of moods after the previous night.

"Alright... I understand. The mess hall then?" He said slightly nervous. Kallie intimidated him, that was for sure, but he was gonna get her to respect him, if it was the last thing he did.


((Continued in Walk Amongst the Dead))