Survival Of The Fittest

((Bart Cappotelli continued from Little Pig))

There was no way to describe the day Bart had just been through aside from one word: Miserable.

He, Jennifer, and Kizi had been headed for the supply depot, but had to stop moving after nightfall and camp out in the woods for the night.  They somehow managed to wake up before announcements and hike the rest of the way to their destination, only for the announcements to reveal that they were standing right in the middle of a Danger Zone.  All of their hard work was for nothing as they had to clear out as fast as their legs could take them.

Once they had successfully fled the Danger Zone, the rest of the day was spent hiking across the island in search of shelter.  Frequent stops to rest were required, mostly because they were running on limited energy due to the fact that they were trying to conserve their food and water as much as possible.  However, Bart's poor physical condition necessitated a few more stops than planned so that he could restore his poor reserves of stamina.

He couldn't help but feel responsible for their day of prolonged hiking.  If he hadn't had such awful conditioning, then they might have actually reached the supply depot before nightfall the previous night.  They still would have had to rush out after the morning announcements, but at least they could have slept in a sheltered area rather than in the bushes, at the mercy of whatever organisms were living therein.

They had turned down every other shelter they could find, either because they could hear something coming from inside that sounded a bit too much like other people, or there was something else about it that just didn't feel right.  But now they were essentially out of options.  They had walked all the way across the island, and the warehouse before them was the only new area they would find without crossing the bridge back to the asylum.  In short, it was this or go right back to where they started, and Bart was far too tired to consider the latter.  The sun was already on the verge of setting, and he just wanted to get off his feet.

He walked into the warehouse, took note of a nearby crate, and immediately sat on top of it.  He didn't care that it wasn't a chair or even a piece of furniture.  It was something that could relieve his legs, and that was all that mattered.  He let out a heavy sigh, both from disappointment and exhaustion.  He had accomplished almost nothing that day, and yet he felt more tired than he had ever been, at least to his knowledge.

((Jennifer Wallace continued from Little Pig))

Her feet were tired. Her mind was weary.

Jennifer wasn't in the best mental space possible. They hadn't made it to the depot before nightfall, so they spent the night in the woods. That wasn't as bad as it sounded at first, until she woke up with some red bumps from mosquitos. Lovely. She had to hope that they didn't carry any diseases. It would be the worst thing ever if she somehow survived, only to die of malaria a few months later. Then they finally made it to the supply depot. It wasn't long before the announcements came on and declared it a "danger zone" anyways, though.

Jennifer could remember the panic she felt once that was announced. She only had, at most, a few minutes to process who died and how before that terror sunk in. They escaped though, thank god. But it meant that the one place they'd been trekking towards was no longer available.

She would have loved for a pen and paper, too. They'd taken hers, which was a damn shame. It would have been a prudent idea to keep information like who was killing down in a notebook. That way, she could easily figure out who to avoid. She wasn't sure where she could get something like that, either. But she remembered some details, and…

Scarlett McAfee was dead. Jennifer remembered her. She wrote Star Wars fanfiction, and was an energetic, talkative girl. Who'd just murder her with an ax, honestly? What's worse was, Danya had cracked a joke about it. She was sure he'd cracked a joke about all of them. Cristobal Morales was also dead, and got a joke about it too. But they, and others, were dead.

She wished she could have written everything down. She wished that she could have fully processed who died, and who murdered in time. Wishing didn't do anything, though.

So, Jennifer wasn't in the best of spirits by the time they made it to the warehouse. Her feet were sore, and she needed a shower, a cup of coffee, some aspirin, and some bug spray. But they slipped inside, and like Bart, she placed herself on a crate, her leg muscles still aching. She wasn't out of shape, not by any stretch. A few years of hiking and urban exploration had made her able to walk for quite a while. Looking him over, she couldn't imagine how Bart felt. His face was red, and the scent that fell off him had increased, as if it because he was sweaty. He hadn't done so good hiking, either.

She looked at him, sitting on the crate across. Jennifer wondered for a moment if she could ask how he was. But another question came up.

"Once we're done resting, do you think it'd be a good idea to see if there's anything useful we could find?" she asked.

((Kiziah Saraki continued from Little Pig.))

Kiziah had made a lot of bad calls during the long hike.

At times, she had been all too eager to rush into a building, desperate for shelter, despondent about the fatiguing and aimless wandering of their journey. She had been saved by Bart and Jennifer, urging more prudent and circumspect attitudes. She had been impulsive, she realised every time, willing to compromise not only her safety but the safety of others. She was sure that an encounter with others would, most likely, offer hope rather than friction, but the other two seemed more sure in their aversion to contact. She knew that listening to them would probably be a good idea.

She had made a lot of bad calls. Gotten lost a couple of times. Forced the group to implement something approximating an official strategy around bathroom breaks and inventory management, what with her persistently threatening an act of negligence. Tried talking, tried keeping spirits up, during slightly inopportune times, when silence and sensory precision were of greater utility. Been slightly too willing to sit down, whenever the thought passed the lips of one of her travelling companions, and take a break and maybe flip through the map for the umpteenth time or eat slightly too much bread.

She had tried to take initiative. Tried to show she was adapting. She wanted to. Really, she did. Not 'adapt' in the sense of forget who she was. She prayed, remembered her manners, made sure to keep hold of any litter they accumulated in her bag until they reached bins. Whenever she could, she turned away, told Bart and Jennifer her plans, and moved a few steps apart from the other two, still within eyesight but out of earshot, to share some words with her mother and siblings. Platitudes, mostly. But they had her voice there, offering words of comfort, sharing fond memories. It felt good, really. These cameras were, if anything, a sign that the terrorists had some sympathy, some empathy. She knew all too well how important it was, even if one was powerless to help them, to hear how your loved one was doing.

But instead, adapt in just...developing sharper instincts. A couple of times, she was the one to call out a building as suspicious, as a bit dubious and questionable. In hindsight, she always felt that she had made a mistake. That the sound she had was probably an animal stirring or something, and she always made these concerns known, suggested that maybe heading back would be smart, advising them not to place too much stock in her judgements. Her intuition was weak. Arbitrary. If they wanted to take her gun and some of her supplies, and just leave her to stop being a liability, she would understand. She had said that in one moment of particularly pathetic weakness. She would not do so again.

And then the announcements.

Kizi could not stop thinking about them. She had absorbed the information, the lurid jokes and macabre details seared into her mind, and could not help but ruminate on it. Friends, acquaintances, people she had passed in the corridors. Lives cut short, lives ruined by loss and emotional trauma. It was too much. Perhaps that was a blessing. One death might have forced her mind to settle, to imagine that one family grieving, to reflect on how hundreds of lives would be upturned by that person being jolted out of existence. But...

No. She felt bad for thinking that. That was a monstrous thought, really. Callous to the core. There had to be something that could be done. Something to mitigate the carnage, mediate the horror. But what could she do? She knew maths and languages, knew a bit about human rights. But not enough in any of those fields to be able to serve some useful role, or impart some important substantive message to those watching.

When they reached the warehouse, Kizi's first instinct was to slump against a crate and cry. But Jennifer's comment rescued her from that. She blinked a few times, and a couple of tears began the path down her cheeks. But a quick wipe from the back of her hand, and they were gone. "I could start looking for stuff now." She offered her labour as a distraction, as a way of avoiding the contemplation induced by rest. "Are you guys okay? Because if you need a rest, that's fine. I could check for supplies."

Bart raised his arm to wipe his forehead with his sleeve.  The fabric that had been a light gray when he boarded the bus however long ago had been tinted much darker by the collected sweat from both that day and the last.  It was starting to stick to his skin periodically, and felt warm and damp to the touch.  He had just bought this shirt about a week before the trip, and this had been his first time wearing it, yet now it felt more worn than anything in his closet.

Kizi and Jennifer both floated the idea of searching for something useful in the warehouse while they were there.  Bart agreed with the plan, but he was far too exhausted to make an active effort at the moment.  He weakly raised his hand and spoke out with his tired voice.  "Yeah, that sounds... uh... pretty good."  He was breathing pretty heavily, and had to pause between forcing words out to inhale.  "Just give me a... a couple minutes, and I should, uh... I'll help too."

As Bart sat there, slumped on his crate, his mind wandered back to the announcements from that morning.  However, he was particularly disturbed by one specific detail... or rather, a bunch of specific details that were missing.  Aside from the announcement of the supply depot being unsafe, he couldn't remember a thing about it.  He had no clue who was dead, who had killed, or anything else that had been told to them.  He wasn't sure whether he had not been paying enough attention or his brain has blocked it out, but he was at a severe loss for information, and that bothered him.

"Hey..."  Another statement fought its way out of his mouth.  "Do you guys remember anything about the, um... announcements?  You know, this morning?"

((Skipping to escape the DZ))

Bart was awakened by the sound of a screeching loudspeaker.  He had fallen asleep without realizing it the previous evening, and apparently the girls decided to let him rest rather than wake him back up.  Considering the day he had just been through, it was probably an act of sympathy on their part.  He sat at attention and listened to the results of the previous day as they were recanted over the loudspeaker.

Hearing the deaths read off made Bart feel awful for multiple reasons.  There was the obvious reason, being that the people who had their names read off were dead, and would never be able to see their friends or families again.  However, Bart also felt bad because outside of general horror, he had very little emotional reaction to the names.  He had been so introverted and afraid to socialize during his time at Cochise that many of the people who had died were essentially complete strangers to him.  A good portion of the time he couldn't even put a face to the names of the deceased.  He felt that he should have felt a more visceral reaction, but he didn't, and that only made him feel worse.  He had not known most of these people, and now he never would.

Next came the Danger Zone announcement, the one that had really stuck in his head the previous morning.  The supply area they had previously been chased out of was safe again, but now the utilities compound was off-limits.  That area sounded familiar to Bart, and his pupils shrank and his mouth hung open once he realized why.

No no no no no no no...

*beep*

Bart's hand shot up to his neck as his collar began to sound an alert, just as it had the previous morning.  With a shout of alarm, he hopped to his feet with surprising speed and scrambled about with his hands to find his bag.  Once he got a grip on the strap, he pulled it onto his shoulder and called out desperately to Kizi and Jennifer.  "We've gotta get out of here!"  His voice cracked midway through, but given the situation, he either didn't notice or didn't care.

He moved as fast as his feet could carry him, not stopping until his collar's warnings ceased.

((Bart Cappotelli continued in Why We Fight))

It was a peaceful day. Kizi didn't know what to make of that.

Was it good fortune, or some kind of small miracle shining through their hellish surroundings? Was it just the calm before the storm, a phenomenon and phrase she remembered just as complacency threatened to take her to a false place of security? She couldn't trust it at first. Kizi knew better than to place too much stock into her own senses, and it was only when Bart and Jennifer seemed to accept that there was no immediate threat did her own state of overzealous vigilance ease slightly. Perhaps a bad choice, but Kizi had been wishing for a peaceful day. Just one, an island of tranquility in the madness of the island. That wasn't too much to ask.

Of course, it wasn't a normal day. The conversation was stilted and coltish, lumbering around with a cloddish necessity and a desire to avoid the even more unpleasant threat of silence. They rarely confronted the actual facts of their predicament, but could not escape it either. Bar a few abortive attempts, normal conversation, of that casual and friendly manner that they had so taken for granted, remained elusive. The arduous trek had left them all unusually fatigued, Bart most of all. That inescapable grip of weariness and overexertion also added a stark physical reminder of their dire circumstances.

So it wasn't normal, yet it was productive. The search, not so much. Kizi, at least, found nothing. She was always bad at looking for things, always missed things right in front of her. She made sure Jennifer was well-aware of that defect, but did not outright tell her to doublecheck the areas she had already searched.

Kizi had wanted a day like this. She talked to the camera. Past the camera, more accurately. She attempted begging, briefly, but even she soon saw the futility of that. Understood that destroying lives was, as inexplicable as it was to Kizi, probably the point for them. She wished she knew what their actual logic was. Politics? A perverted interpretation of a peaceful religion? Some kind of monetary motivation? If it was one of those, maybe debating and compromise would be possible, but either way, she was ill qualified to intervene.

So, she stopped. "Please, just let me talk to my family." That was her final request, and she knew that a conversation would not be permitted. But she talked to the camera anyway. And it was inelegant. She cried more than she spoke. But still, it felt important. Some kind of profound meaning could be derived from her constant apologies, her constant reiterations of how much she missed them all, of how sorry she was to no longer be part of their lives.

Again, the announcements hurt. Every death, every revelation of murder, it hurt.

But again, there was no time to mourn. She felt selfish for prioritising her own survival over showing due respect to her fallen friends, but she was in a danger zone. When she heard the danger zone announcement, she reached into her bag, in between sniffs and quiet sobs, to pull out her map, the Utilities Compound sounding familiar. Her suspicions were confirmed when Bart jumped up, and Kizi realised that the beeping sound was the collars.

Oh dear.

She too broke into a sprint, dropping one of the bottles of water.

Instead of running away or looking at it, she did that stupid thing where she hovered, torn between escape and water, for a few seconds, unsure what to do. Finally, impulse took over, and she just ran.

((Kiziah Saraki continued in Why We Fight.))

Jennifer processed the question Bart asked her, but shook her head. She was still trying to figure it out herself.

"No, I didn't, too much," she said. "I wish there could be something to write this stuff down."


Later, while Bart rested, she did a bit of looking around. She was still on the lookout for something decent for her feet. Again, why couldn't she have packed better shoes for when, you know, she had to take her heels off? Sure, science trip, but really. Each moment made her regret her decision more and more. She'd been hoping to find extra food, but then again, would there be canned food that was still edible laying around? Also, again, something to write down information. There was some kind of check-out book on a desk, and it seemed in pretty good condition. However, she wasn't sure if any other paper they found would be in good condition. It really depended on how long the island had been abandoned.

There wasn't much found, unfortunately. Which was a damn shame. Again, still holding out for good supplies, fingers crossed. Maybe they could check later, when there were more rested. There was probably something more noteworthy where they hadn't searched yet.

The next morning, the announcements came on again. Jane Madison was shot, Jasmine King killed herself. Jennifer tensed up as the names went on and on. She knew Jane, she knew Jasmine. Sanford was another photographer, she knew. Brendan Harte, of all people, a boy whose work she had critiqued in the Writing Club, who took everything she said to hard and tried to improve, had killed someone. Isabel had killed again, and Min-Jae had beaten someone to death.

There wasn't much time to process the information, though.

Jennifer mouthed a curse as she realized quickly where the "Utilities Compound" was. She would care a bit more about language if the circumstances were different. But as if in reminder, the beeping started again.

She lifted her bag's strap over her shoulder, and started moving as quickly as possible. She stumbled a bit as she tried to follow the sound of Bart and Kiziah's sprinting, but adrenaline kept her moving. Somewhere she heard something drop, but she didn't pay much mind to it.

All she was focused on was leaving.

((Jennifer Wallace continued elsewhere))