Survival Of The Fittest

((Jerry Fury continued from Let the Darkness Flow Through You))

"Aaaaaah shit, he's ripe!"

Jerry stepped away from the bushes holding his nose and looking more than a little green in the face. "Dude's got... dude's got nothin' on him. Fuuuuuuuck, man! FUCKING CHRIST, Bradley!" He interrupted his own shouting by doubling over and placing his hands on his knees. They were shaking and weak, and he could feel sweat dripping onto his palms. "It's like... shit-covered cheese, that's what it smells like!" He said through quivering jaws. His self-conjured imagery was enough to make his stomach turn completely over, and Jerry wasn't one hundred percent sure what he was puking onto the ground just beside the path that lead into the gym, but it sure as hell wasn't mother's spaghetti.

"Ugh... somebody hand me some water?" He gasped, holding his hand out expectantly. "This was a total fucking wash, coming this way. Whose idea even was this?"

((Matt Moradi continued from here.))

Another rotting corpse, shock and horror. Matt stood a reasonable distance away, covering his noise. It still wasn't enough. He could smell a few days worth of decomposition. He couldn't really figure out whose handiwork this was. He wasn't paying attention to what Jerry was saying, so he didn't quite catch Rotting Corpse #3's name. Hearing Jerry ask for water, Matt reached into his bag and pulled some out. Alan's. He trudged forward to hand it over, gagging.

"Fuck me, this stinks. And it was YOUR idea, Jerry. Good call."

((Bart Cappotelli continued from Let The Darkness Flow Through You))

"Come on..."

Bart softly whined as he struggled to get his leg untangled from the bushes. He tugged at his leg, trying to force it through the thin, grasping branches that had ensnared him. Each time he took a breath between pulls, he wound up taking in an awful stench, like rotting meat in an open dumpster. His stomach was quickly turning sour, but he tensed his jaw and tried his hardest to keep everything down. He didn't want to lose what little food was sitting in his stomach.

At around his fifth or sixth attempt to pull himself free, his leg slipped out of its natural snare and allowed him to rejoin Jerry and Matt. Unfortunately, this also brought him to the source of the smell that had plagued him, an old corpse on the ground. Even though he wasn't as close to it as Matt or Jerry, the sight alone made him even more nauseous. He had seen corpses before on the island, but none of them has smelled quite as bad as this one. That combined with the sound and visual of Jerry retching brought Bart's stomach to its breaking point.

"Uh... uh..." He moaned before heaving the contents of that day's breakfast into a sloppy, oozing pile at his feet. He put his hands on his knees and groaned with anguish as his throat burned from the acidic expulsion.

At this rate, he felt like his own body might do him in before anyone else got the chance.

"Okay, seriously, can we STOP puking!?" Jerry growled. "Thanks," he uttered under his breath while taking the bottle of water that Matt had offered to him. He loosened the cap and did away with it by shoving it into his pocket, figuring that he'd likely take the bottle in its entirety in a few chugs or so. "Let's just back the fuck up, baaaaaack the fuck up," Jerry said in almost a chant, ushering the group away from the entrance to the gym. Just as well he did that, because there was another body in the doorway that he hadn't paid much of a close mind to, and she likely wasn't smelling like a rose garden either.

"Well, soooooooorry that I couldn't manage to find us a weapons cache up Bradley's asshole," Jerry griped. "It only makes sense that nobody's gonna have anything good on them, because whoever's killing them keeps taking it! So here we are with a pipe and a knife and a meat shield named Bart," Jerry said while throwing his head at Barty McPukeGut's way. "We need to start thinking about how far we're going to get. You get that, don't you? Between the three of us here, who's actually, literally KILLED people in order to get what we all want?"

Jerry straightened up, finishing another swig of water. "Thanks for the fucking drink by the way. Keeping me alive is in your interest, because I'M the dude with the knife. I'M the dude with the pipe. I'm the guy that kicked Trav's ass, whose got the experience and the know-how to take on anybody left alive here!"

Alright, Jerry was starting to sound less like "valued meathead" and more like "uppity fuckstick." Matt didn't like that. Not one bit. Hey, maybe Jerry would forget that this gun was empty and feel threatened by it? No, too brazen. Not even Jerry's that big of a fucking idiot. Coughing, Matt spoke up.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" He smiled. "You're the brawn, Jerry, and I'm the brains. Bart's, uh.. the heart. Yeah. The heart. Moral support." He coughed again. Fuck, it smelled in here. "We're all in this together, buddy, so let's start talking about what we're gonna do when we're the last three fuckers left on this shitty rock when it happens. Alright?" That 'we're all in this together' didn't seem at all sincere. Someone could shoot his valued ratfuck meathead and Matt figured he wouldn't feel a thing. Gratitude, maybe, that Jerry was catching bullets that otherwise could've hit him.

"Okay. Yeah. Bart? What'd you think? Moral support sound good to you?"

Bart wearily carried himself over to the others, not wanting to risk making Jerry any madder than he already was. The last day or so had taught him to be very aware of his new ally's volatile temper, and Jerry's kill count gave him a very good reason to avoid provoking him. Despite their claims back at the warehouse, this new alliance did very little to assure Bart that he was safer with them. Actually, it just made him miss his old group even more. At least when they got into an argument, it could be cooled down pretty quickly and without fear of a physical fight breaking out.

Now that he was over here, Bart had two new nicknames: Meat Shield and Moral Support. It wasn't hard to see why they would think of him, considering that he was the weakest, slowest, and most poorly armed of the three. He just wished that they wouldn't admit out loud that he was borderline useless to them. He also wished that he had the courage to admit this to their faces, but that probably wouldn't be happening anytime soon.

Instead, he just meekly followed along with their conversation. "Uh... yeah. That sounds okay, I guess..."

"Nooooo no no no. No."

Jerry waggled a finger.

"No."

Jerry shook his head.

"No no."

He tapped his foot.

"No, sir. No."

Jerry had come up close to Matt, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief. His breath still reeked of vomit; he could tell himself, because he could still taste it, but that wasn't going to let him stop from getting close to him when the dude called this situation onto himself. "I know you didn't just call yourself the brains after that. Think I'm just dumb muscle, like I'm the guy you direct to do your dirty work? I'm Jesse Ventura and you're my  Bobby Heenan?"

Jerry jabbed a finger into Matt's sternum but, sadly, he wasn't falling over like Kevin Nash did that one time. "And what, you're the brilliant schemer and when all's said and done, you're gonna try and kill us, right? Good fucking luck, Matt! Your gun isn't even loaded!"

This was comical. Here Jerry was, trying to tell Matt - more himself, really - that he wasn't the dumb muscle. Jerry approached in an exaggerated, weird way. Repeating no and smiling. Matt, frankly, had no idea what to say to any of this. He was almost expecting Jerry to just agree with him that he didn't do most of the thinking.. though Matt frankly didn't do much deep thinking. He kept telling himself that it wasn't the time for that. Was there ever going to be a time, he couldn't say.

There was a time to convince Jerry to kill himself, or something like that. Or at least back off. Jabbing him, loudly declaring that his gun wasn't loaded.. hey, it wasn't loaded, but he could still hit people with it. Slowly - making a goofy face at Jerry - Matt pulled out his gun and held it in what he assume was the NATO standard pistol whipping grip.

"O-kaaaay, Jerry," he said. "Let's say I do try and kill you! Not saying I won't - I mean, will - when would I do it and with what?" Without waiting for Jerry to respond, Matt gave his best impression of a game show buzzer and then Steve Harvey. "EHH. Survey says I'd let someone else do it, Jerry. Get real!"

For a second, Matt's survival instincts kicked in. Maybe he shouldn't be talking shit to someone who could likely stab him, beat him, etcetera. Maybe he should try and deescalate things before Jerry fuckin' Fury decided to give a knife in the ribs as a retort to whatever ingenious insult he'd cooked up.

Or maybe he'd prove to Jerry that he was the brains behind this operation.

Whichever one came first.

Okay, things were spinning way, way too far out of hand for Bart's comfort. Jerry was getting in Matt's face, and Matt whipped out his gun in response. With the way this situation was headed, he could see no positive outcome unless something happened very soon to get these two away from each other's throats.

Making the decision to be that something, Bart stepped up to the bickering duo. He couldn't quite get between them for physiological reasons, but he did his best to try to impose himself by holding out his hands to try to create some sort of barrier between the two.

"H-hey guys, come on..." He pleaded with halting breath as his hands shook between them. "Can't you, uh... cool it down a little?"

"Bartman, look," Jerry peppered the sentiment with an eye roll, his glance coming to a rest on the well-meaning but, as far as he was concerned, incredibly stupid kid getting between them. "You can either move that hand or I can cut off your fingers, capiche?" To make his point, Jerry's hand was already sliding into his pocket. His eyes hadn't come off of that gun. The way Matt was holding that... that wasn't how you held a gun to shoot somebody. Besides, Jerry knew the thing wasn't loaded. He was willing, but only barely, to give Matt enough credit and assume that he knew that he knew that he knew that he knew the damn thing wasn't loaded.

Jerry finished tallying the 'he knows that I know' count while drawing the switchblade. No time to savor the little 'FWIP' of the blade popping out; he had to cut straight to the good part, sneering at Matt. "Don't do this to yourself, dude. You're letting your alligator mouth run away with your hummingbird ass and if you keep fucking PUSHING me..."

It was louder than Jerry wanted to be, but his barely-constrained-frustration had pushed through the curtain to become outward rage at that one word, that one instance of 'pushing'. He held the knife up threateningly.

"You know how they like to make jokes about bringing a knife to a gun fight or lame, unoriginal shit like that?" Jerry asked. He couldn't see his own face, but he imagined his eyes were bugging out about the same way that one of his favorite wrestlers, Edge, would when getting particularly worked up. "How about when the gun doesn't have any bullets? But I'M never out of ammo!"

((Serena Waters continued from Electric Dreams))

They had been on the lookout since the last day as per their agreement. A few cases of seeing people and trying to be as incospicious as you could be in a huge jeep on a tiny island, but nothing that required their involvement. As they took a break to nap and plan things out when the announcements came on to blare out more Deaths. The list she had made in her mind were crossing out names as she were listening, Alex Tarquin, Will McKinley, Kaitlyn Green and finally, after days of acting like a borderline monster, Isabel Ramirez. The ones who did that deserve a reward, Mel was right on one thing, if they did what Isabel did they would get hunted down and slaugthered. A morbid thought and one she would have been disgusted at days ago, but that's back when she hadn't seen it up close, what these people have done.

Still left a few on it, Caedyn Miller, Kimiko Kao, Alessio Rigano, and speaking of the devil, Jerry Fury. It wasn't much of a suprise to find that Jerry had gone and killed, he already had several screws loose back home, but here? She'd already seen what this place has done to people who were arguably better set than him, didn't need much convincing of him having gone mad.

They had noticed his little group moving about and had silently followed them for a while. Two people were dead because of him, Toby and Travis, Serena didn't know the two that well, but she knew enough to know both were good people, and that was enough for her to make sure if he tried anything, he would pay for it.

It didn't take long, a brief foray into the gym and back he was suddenly threatening the people he was travelling with. She recognised Bart Cappotelli, a nice guy who was harmless back home, the fact he was with Fury made her wonder about that. The other one she didn't recognise as well. Matt something or other, she knew he was kind of abbrasive and a dick, but not to the level of Fury. They were arguing between each other when the weapons came out, almost like a dick measuring contest, except at the end people die.

She could see the methaporicall fuse being lit, Fury has already killed twice and looked like he was set on doing it again. If not to Bart, then definitely to Matt. A weird look on him as he pointed whatever he had at Matt, almost like a dare. It felt like a sudden flash in her mind to a few days ago as they stood there and watched Alvaro end Irene's life without warning.

Not again.

Before her partners could react, Serena stepped on the pedal and made a beeline straight for Fury. Gaining speed as the engine roared before a large thump could be heard.

"... What the fuck is that noise?"

Jerry's threatening efforts towards Matt were interrupted by the roar of an approaching engine. ... The roar of an approaching engine?

Here!?

Jerry damn near felt his eyelids turning themselves inside out from them widening in confusion, shock, surprise, and any other adjective you might have been able to stuff in there for, when he turned, he saw a fully operational vehicle speeding his way. The scenario presented before him was one that raised many, many questions and hurled an entire table of information at the wall, none of which stuck with his brain in the mere fractions of a second he had to try and react to and process what he was seeing. If he was able to fully verbalize the thought processes that scrambled around in his skull at that moment, it might have come out something like...

"What in the world? Where the hell did they find a vehicle like that on a dilapidated island like this? I was so close to breaking down Matt! I had this in the bag, damn it! I had this in the bag! Who's even in that thing and, most importantly, where. The hell. Did they find a goddamn JEEP!?

Of course, Jerry Fury didn't actually get the chance to say all that. Instead, it came out more like

"WWWREEEEEEEEEEE-!!"


And then Jerry Fury died of A.I.D.S. (Automotive Impact-Derived Stress).


B019 - Fury, Jeremiah "Jerry": DELETED


Jerry had helpfully given himself some lift by jumping straight up purely on instinct, causing much of the Jeep's initial impact to strike him in the waist and legs. He flipped over, his back slamming into the windshield and launching up, over the topside of the vehicle while tumbling through the air. He was dead before he hit the ground.

His dayback had been burst wide open, dispersing the contents in a wide spread around the area. A metal tin clattered to the ground while a few empty cellophane wrappers fluttered on the wind. The switchblade had gone off flying somewhere, the blade cleanly snapped off and stuck somewhere in the vehicle's grill while the metal pipe he had managed to lift off of Alan spun several meters away - bent, but still usable.

That left the corpse of Jerry himself; his legs were turned in impossible directions, his head attached only in the loosest sense of the word. The skin held it on just fine, but the spinal column and nearly all of the supporting muscles had been torn and severed. The resulting bruising was mercilessly covered by the collar around this throat, at least for the time being, eyes open and seeing nothing.

If Jerry were alive and able to comment on such a scene, he probably would have said something insensitive like:

'Now that's what I call a shocking swerve!'

Jerry - fucking asshole that he was - now seemed set on starting a fight. One that was potentially deadly. Alright, dickhead, Matt thought, I'll play by your hey is that a car?

That is a car. A car. On the island. Where and how and why and OH FUCK

Purely on instinct, Matt dove out of the way. Given his close proximity to Jerry, this probably might have saved his life. Letting out a short screech, Jerry flew through the air in a manner far from graceful, eventually landing somewhere nearby. Sputtering swear words and speaking in a language men only speak when intensely confused, angry, surprised, or all three, Matt got up, waving his gun around.

"FUCK!" he shouted, momentarily set on avenging his now dead friend/mortal enemy, Jerry fuckin' Fury.

He looked around. Yes, that WAS a car. SOMEHOW. He didn't fucking get it. How the hell did they get a car? Did they build it? Did Danya, dickhead that he was, airdrop it to them? This raised SO MANY QUESTIONS. How did they airdrop a fucking jeep without anyone noticing? Did he airdrop individual parts? When did he put the fucking jeep here?

Slowly, he lowered his gun, eyeing the corpse of Jerry fuckin' Fury. Jerry fuckin' Fury, murderer, dickhead, all around piece of shit.. was dead. And it made Matt feel horrible and then relieved. One less person to kill. He glanced up at the driver of the jeep, raising his hands in a gesture of 'don't kill me.' Then he spoke up.

"Hey, uh.." He had only one question on his mind. "Where'd you get that jeep?"

Bart hastily retracted his hands in response to Jerry's threat, signaling a quick end to his attempt at conflict resolution.  He hesitantly stood back, not willing to completely leave Jerry and Matt to their own devices, but afraid of what would happen should he try to get involved again.

The tensions between his companions quickly became the least of his worries as, unlikely as it may sound, he was faced with something even louder and scarier that Jerry: A jeep coming straight for them that showed no intents of stopping.  As soon as he caught sight of the oncoming vehicle, he froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights, wide-eyed and staring straight at the heavy metal object hurtling toward him.

His senses returned to him with just enough time for his brain to send a crucial message to the rest of his body: GET OUT OF THE WAY!  He dove off to the side, only making it a few feet before hitting the ground and clumsily rolling along in a manner most undignified.  Fortune was just barely on his side, as he dodged the jeep by the most minuscule of margins.

When he came to a stop, he reopened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of Jerry lying behind the jeep.  Even without looking closer, it was a pretty safe bet that the angry boy was dead, run down by the jeep.  He was also aware that had his reflexes been any slower, he could have been in the same position.  Speaking of said jeep, Bart was now lying near the driver's-side door.  He picked himself up slowly, having a hard time standing on his violently shaking legs.

"H-hello...?"  He fearfully called up to the driver, hoping against expectations that they would be merciful.

(Aiden Slattery continued form Electric Dreams)

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Righty.






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"WHAT'N THE EVERLOVIN FUCK GIRL!"