Survival Of The Fittest

[Ray Gilbert, continued from Ain't No Reprievement Gonna Be Found Otherwise.]

Ray barged the front door of the hospital open with his good shoulder and stormed into the building, yelling and cursing as he clutched at the ragged bandages on his arm, trying to stem the bleeding before he passed out. The wound on his lower arm had re-opened, either from exertion or the infection, and the black, foul-smelling liquid seeped through the blood-stained gauze strips and trickled down his arm. At first, Ray had tried to avoid returning to the grim facade of civilisation the island offered. As soon as he recovered from what was, he continually assured himself, only a minor nervous breakdown, Ray set about putting as much distance between himself and the Residential Areas as possible. Retreating to the less-kept areas, Ray retreated back inwards for several hours. He conjured vague, shapeless memories of his life back at home to keep him company, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in his arm and the syncopated rhythm of his migraines. When the pain in his arm and the nausea and the pounding headaches grew too powerful to ignore any longer, Ray changed his plans dramatically. His brief tenure as a hero was over. What mattered was self-preservation.

Out of supplies, and still unwilling to return to the residential areas- for fear, he admitted, of running into Hansel again- Ray had centred his attentions on salvaging everything he could from the decrepit hospital. His medical supplies had been exhausted dealing with the wound on the first day, as had his water. The last of his food still sat in his pack but Ray knew it could not last for much longer.

He could barely keep his food down, anyway.

Ray rummaged through old, dusty desks in the lobby, searching the drawers for anything he could use to dull the pain or stop the bleeding. He cursed under his breath as he shoved the empty drawers shut and pulled himself back to his feet. Was he past the point of treatment? An icy chill ran down his spine. He tried to push that thought to the back of his mind, but he kept dragging it back to the forefront. Ray had hoped that, if he was going to die on this island, he would die on his own terms. The way he played it in his head was a sacrifice, martyring himself for some doomed attempt at escaping the island, dying for some noble cause. The thought that he could die, slowly and pointlessly, from a trivial injury had never even crossed his mind. Now that it had been dredged up, it angered him. Everything he had done on the island had been the futile struggling of a man whose death warrant had been signed from the moment he woke up.

"God-damn it," He growled under his breath. "I ain't gonna die in a god-damn hospital."

Still clutching his throbbing arm, Ray staggered up the staircase to the second floor. He pushed the door open with the sole of his boot and exhaled sharply, fighting the urge to give up as he staggered through the dark, cold corridors of the hospital, searching for anything he could use to stave off his slow and pointless death for a few hours longer.

((Amaranta Montalvo continued from Out of the Frying Pan...))

Mara half-walked, half-ran from the hangar. She'd done all she could for Miranda, but felt like putting some distance between her and the two girls.  She'd continued around the island, searching for her belongings. Finally upon waking up in the morning she found her bag. She quickly transferred anything usable from Mike's bag into hers and set off once again to go find Fin like she'd said she would. She stopped for a moment and pushed her hand into her waist, feeling for the stitch with her stitches. She swallowed and something wet hit the back of her neck. It was starting to rain. A slight glance up revealed not only the weather, but a sign that indicated the looming building in the background was a hospital. More bandages would definitely be a good thing, maybe some pain killers if she was lucky.

In the distance there was a noise and a scream. She straightened up in an instant and took off towards the decaying building. She reached the side of the building, tugged on the metal handle, went in and leaned with her back against the door. Tilting back her head she saw a dizzying pattern of stairs. Slowly, she started walking up, trying to mask the echo of her dulling Mary Janes.

After two flights there was a door. It yielded silently and she poked her head through. No one in sight. Heel to toe, she slipped past the door and darted to the first room she saw. A moment passed in silence. Mara pulled on the handles of a metal storage locker. They didn't budge. She tugged harder and harder until it noisily flew open. She began grabbing items, tossing the ones that didn't look useful haphazardly behind her as she dug through

Ray paused for breath, pressing his good hand up against the bumpy, yellowing whitewashed wall and struggling with all of his strength to keep his eyes open for just a few more moments. Atrophy was the word he would use to describe his condition; Ray could feel himself lessen, waste away with every passing moment. The hallways span, the walls of the hospital- dusty, smeared with brown water stains from leaking pipework- seemed to palpitate with the throbbing pain in his head. Despite the bitter chill in the night air, Ray felt as if he was burning up. He shivered and wiped beads of sweat from his brow, pushing himself away from the wall with a pained exhale and regretting not packing warmer clothes for the trip to Disneyland.

Disneyland. Ray had almost forgotten their intended destination. Now he turned it on the tip of his tongue, repeating it in his mind until it ceased to sound like a word. Disneyland, Disneyland, Disneyland. Maybe if he said it three times in front of a mirror, Mickey Mouse would appear and kill him. A smile tugged at the corner of Ray's mouth at that thought. At least it would be a better death than feverish blood loss from an infected cut, he thought.

Which brought him crashing back to reality.

With a frantic desperation to his movements, Ray swayed from side to side as he staggered down the dusky hallways, the soles of his shoes clattering loudly against the chipped tile floors with each agonizing footstep. He breathed in sharply through his nose, ragged breaths, and found that the building smelled of musty smoke and old sickness, the gloomy musk that builds up over decades of sickness and death. Swallowing hard to suppress the sickly-sweet taste of blood in his mouth, Ray stopped dead in his tracks to check a nearby door that looked promising. The door was polished wood, covered in a thick layer of dust that made identifying the exact name and number of the room difficult. The window was frosted glass, browned with age. Ray turned the handle with his good arm, to no effect. Jammed. Ray's ears pricked as he caught wind of a noise on the other side of the hall. In the distance, above the ambient noise of wild animals that had nested in the small space between the ceiling and the floor above him and the sounds of conflict on the floor below, Ray heard a cold metal door scrape against concrete.

He was not alone.

Ray was not ready for a confrontation.

He needed to hide, fast.

Pressing his shoulder against the dusty metal door, Ray cursed under his breath and barged it open with what little strength he had left. The door flew inwards with a deafening bang! and Ray fell forwards, his forearms hitting the ground first and thankfully absorbing most of the shock. Wrestling control of his neck from gravity mere seconds before he collided with the ground, Ray rolled onto his back and could not help but laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of his situation.

"That would have been something," Ray said between hoarse chuckles, to no one but himself. "I coulda been the first idiot to die in this game by opening a door."

Ray pulled himself up with the help of an old gurney in the centre of the room, recoiling with disgust when he discovered that the gurney was covered in threadbare sheets and decorated with an assortment of long-dried stains in varying shades of red and brown. The repugnant stench that afflicted the hospital was stronger, far more potent within this room, a miasma of bitter scents and tastes that made Ray feel nauseous. He choked back bile and distracted himself by thinking of potential causes. Were there chemicals in the air? Old cleaning fluids, he guessed. Maybe background radiation from the beige, late 1980s X-Ray machine that was stuffed in the corner of the room. Ray wondered if it still worked, before deciding to focus on the task at hand, rather than sating his curiosity to fiddle with complicated electronics. Choking back bile, Ray surveyed the rest of the room, pulling open the doors of the MDF wall cabinets before he found one containing several glass bottles, labelled and still full. Jackpot, Ray thought. He took a bottle of painkillers that had expired around the time Brock Lesnar was superplexing The Big Show through the ring on SmackDown, opened the childproofed cap with very little trouble and swallowed a handful dry.

The hourglass had been turned over, the game had moved into overtime. In ten minutes, he would be back to what passed for normality on the island. Though he would still be malnourished, dehydrated, sleep-deprived and on the verge of a complete mental breakdown, Ray could take a quantum of solace in the fact that he would soon be rid of the pounding pain constantly assaulting his forehead. Ray stuffed the remainder of the pills into the pocket of his jeans, breathing a sigh of relief as he already felt the pain withdraw back to the dull aching he had grown accustomed to.

A tray of old medical instruments caught Ray's eye as he was leaving. Though he wanted to assume that the person- this vague spectre who he had only heard, not seen- had either chosen to leave in the time he had spent scrounging for supplies, or held no intention of acting hostile towards him, Ray knew that he had to assume everyone on the island was out to get him. It was day three; the only people who survived this long were either lucky, or ruthless.

Ray had been in the first category for far too long.

He took a small, metal scalpel that had not yet rusted and rolled the handle in his clenched fist. This is a deterrent, Ray said. I never hit first. That's not how good guys handle things.

With his boundaries established, Ray quietly closed the wooden door behind him and set off down the corridors, his chest pumped out and the scalpel clutched tight in his balled fist. Ray bopped his head to an imagined soundtrack as he hunted for his target. If they were hostile, he had means to defend himself. If not, he might be able to convince someone he was worth a damn as an ally now.

Finally she got to extra first aid kits. She grabbed one with both hands and ripped it open, grabbing at the gauze. She ripped open the plastic with her teeth and started unraveling. She took off the gauze on her hand which peeled away until she got down to the stitched up mess of her palm. She scowled at it pulled off the dirty gauze, stiff from dirt and blood off her hand. She started rolling the new bandage around her palm when a loud noise came from somewhere nearby.

Mara gasped and dropped the gauze. She stared at the roll and listened as foot steps echoed from somewhere else. She bit her lip and reached out to grab it.

The smell of chemicals and "old" was strong. Quickly, she finished wrapping her hand and secured it with medical tape from the extra kit. She pushed her bag higher up on her shoulder and started talking slow steps out of the room. The gun was kept close to her body with both hands firmly pointing it out towards the halls. She started walking down an empty one.

Ray ducked his head down with some effort, staving off exhaustion and the strain on his aching muscles with the sheer-minded determination to live for a few more hours. He tried to keep as low and quiet as possible as he made his way down the hallways in search of his target, though in truth he was neither as low or as quiet as he believed; the soles of his sneakers rapped loudly against the dusty floor and when Ray caught a glimpse of his haggard reflection in a dirty window, he looked like he was barely stooping. Unable, he decided, to fully trust his eyes any more, especially after the sporadic bouts of migraines and the occasional split-second blackout, Ray had resorted to tracking his target from the patter of their feet against the floor. It wasn't difficult, even for someone in Ray's condition, to follow the clacking of heel to concrete as it reverberated off the walls. They seemed calm, or at least sounded calmer than Ray's own erratic footsteps, and that served to make Ray more nervous. How could anyone be calm at this point? Were they searching for allies? Another wannabe hero, like he had been with Hansel and the girl. That was almost too absurd to be true.

Ray had lost his faith in heroes.

Player, then. He spat the word under his breath like a puce curse. The other half of the island's absurd us versus them dichotomy. How easy it was for Ray to single out a group as the enemy. He continued down a dark corridor. The sound of footsteps grew louder. He was heading, for once, in the right direction. He relapsed back into his thoughts. Were they injured? It was likely, given that they were in a hospital, but Ray doubted it. They weren't skipping steps, there wasn't enough urgency. Were they simply so confident in their ability to kill anyone who got in their way, without remorse, that they felt no need to mask their presence? Perhaps they were toying with him. They were feigning calm confidence to lure Ray into a corner, where they could dispatch him quickly. But Ray had no energy left with which to fear death. The part of his mind that worried, only occasionally, about what would happen to his body after he died, whether St. Peter would judge him favourably or condemn him to hell, had been replaced with a sense of weary resignation. He was dead inside, just waiting for his body to catch up.

Ray emerged from around a corner to find himself a few paces behind his target, relaxing slightly as he established that they were a girl, though he kept his grip on the scalpel in his jacket pocket tight as he thought about the best way to introduce himself. His gaze was drawn to the curves of the girl's rear, accentuated by her pencil miniskirt, where it stayed- Ray had very little shame left- until he caught the glimpse of metal in her hands and the girl instantly registered as a threat again. She had a gun. Ray paused on the spot, gears turning in his head.

I can't win in a fight against this chick, he thought. Better to alert her to my presence now, so she knows I'm not a problem.

"Hey!" He shouted, clearing his throat. He became aware again that he was a gaunt, bloody mess, and briefly wondered if she was going to mistake him for a zombie. "You okay over there?"

Rain continued to patter and drip around the building. She looked out a window that had been smashed in. It was one of the few sources of light in the room, allowing the murky gray glow to provide a little illumination. Suddenly the footsteps were close. Her hands were shaking and she held onto the gun as hard as she could, pressing it against her stomach with her finger on the trigger.


The rain, the steps, the sound of something outside, her own breathing. It was hard to know what was happening where. The sound of the water was drowning out everything else and muffling the other sounds. She moved her head to the left and to the right, swinging around her long black hair. Before she could check behind, the voice called out to her. In between all the many little noises the one big one was a shock. Her finger pulled back on the trigger and a short burst of bullets went into the wall. The short explosion of noise was deafening and she couldn't hear the small scream she let out, but she felt it. Plaster from the wall jumped onto the floor.

She spun to see who was behind her ready to yell at him. Her anger faltered for a moment from shock when she saw the bloody, hunched mess eyeing her. Mara gasped, brought a hand to her mouth and jumped back. She quickly got a hold of herself and her eyebrows drew down and she glared at the boy. Even more than sneaking up on her, she was angry he made her lose her composure. She was embarrassed he made her accidentally fire and look silly.

"What do you want?" she shouted. "Don't you know better than to sneak up on people with weapons you idiot?"

Mara marched up to him and planted her feet firmly. "I guess it's too much to ask from common sense when I already knew most of the kids in my class can't be trusted with safety scissors," she huffed.

A piercing wail penetrated Ray's ears as the burst of rounds perforated the side wall. His eyes stung and he momentarily lost his balance, forcing him to steady himself against the side wall with his still-bleeding bad arm. He felt a jolt of pain in his good hand, and came to the conclusion that he nicked himself on the scalpel in his pocket. The bullets had disoriented him; the firecracker rattle of the sub-machine gun in the tight corridors had almost deafened him, even before the shrill ringing in his ears began, and the flare of the muzzle flash burned his eyes, which had grown accustomed to near-total darkness, and sensitive to even the slightest changes in the light. When he steadied himself, he brought his bad arm up to his brow, shielding his face. The girl, embarrassed, turned to face him. She was shouting, angry at him for startling her, but her voice was barely audible over the shrill tones ringing through his ears.

Though it was obvious from the fact that he managed to catch her off-guard that she was not luring him into a trap, she was a player with a gun and that made her a threat. Ray adjusted his grip on the scalpel in his pocket, manoeuvring his hand until it was wrapped around the handle, ready to use if he needed to. Not to kill, though. Never to kill. He just had to apply enough force to make her stop if the confrontation turned violence. He became aware that his face was contorting as she insulted him, taking every word to heart, holding his tongue for as long as he could before he yelled his retort.

"Why don't you just back the fuck off?" He roared. "You get off on telling people you're better than them or something? You are not better than me!"

Without thinking, his arm emerged from the pocket of his jacket, scalpel held tight in his hand. He lurched forwards and swung wildly, aiming to slice the girl's face, but ultimately not caring where he hit her. It didn't matter where he got her. He just had to make sure it connected.

He swiped at her and at first she thought he was trying to punch her. A sharp sensation dragged across left cheek. She yelped and turned her face away with her bandaged hand covering her face protectively. Her heartbeat sped up and her hands shook. Mara pulled her hand away from her face and saw a thick line of red glisten against the new bandages.

"What...?" she whispered.

She started breathing heavily. Suddenly her fear from a moment ago was gone. She couldn't think of anything except anger. A ball of fury started near the pit of her stomach. It squeezed her heart and built up in her throat before finally escaping as a ragged scream. She took a swing and her gun collided with his head with a crack.

Mara kicked him in the shin as hard as she could and as soon as he was down on his knees she swung again. Her hands were shaking with adrenaline and rage and she couldn't do anything other than hit him over and over. She went for the head and only connected once every few times, hitting the dirty linoleum next to to him or another body. In her hand she could feel the stitched come loose again, but she didn't care. The only thing that mattered was hitting him. It was all she had.

______________________


"Your daughter is so pretty!"


"Say thank you, Mara."


"Thank you!"


"She loves to dress up."


"I love to dress up."


"Her favorite is white gold jewelry."


"My favorite is white gold jewelry," she parroted back.


"She prefers to keep her hair mid-length."


"I prefer to keep my hair mid-length," she intoned.


"She's beautiful"


"I'm beautiful."


______________________

The only noise was her grunting and the clang of her gun against the floor when it wasn't blocked by the warm squishing and cracking of Ray.

For once in his life, he succeeded. The blade slashed across the girl's face, cutting a small, but noticeable gash down her cheek. The girl reached out for her bleeding face, speechless. The trap was sprung; Ray's determination to believe that his attitude to death was merely indifference, nothing but weary resignation to fate was just another internal justification for what he had been planning to do, what he had just done.

Ray had made his choice. Death on his own terms was the only kind of heroism he had left.

The girl let out a hoarse scream, slamming the butt of her gun into the side of his head with a sickening thud. It looked less painful in movies. Ray's head was swimming. He had no doubt been concussed by the impact and could feel blood trickle down his face from his swelling temples. He wheezed, gasping for air with his shallow, ragged breaths as he felt his arms spasm, his useless weapon clattering to the floor. He tumbled to the floor, his balance gone, awaiting his coup de grace. Shoot me, he willed the screaming girl. His will to fight was gone. Ray only wished for the girl to grant him the final reprieve of a quick, relatively painless death.

Ray found no reprievement. The girl continued screaming, slamming the butt of her gun down again, and again, even as Ray lay thrashing against the floor, the butt only sometimes colliding with Ray's head. He writhed reflexively, barely conscious and only reacting to the impacts, too weak to fight back or even to scream, but still aware, too aware, every time the gun came down, broke another part of his face. His teeth were knocked loose, his jaw shattered, his skull fractured in too many places to count. Screaming on the inside about how she was supposed to shoot him, kill him quickly and with some measure of respect. When he finally lost consciousness, his face was a pulpy, undefined mass, unrecognisable even to close family members, and forever long his body remained, the sickly-sweet smell of blood was added to the repugnant stench of the old building.

B032 - Ray Gilbert: Deceased

She felt like she was going to vomit from the nervous tingling all throughout her hands and spine. Mara was only hitting the wet ground now. She stopped to take a clear look at what she had done and saw a disgusting mess where a head once was, connected loosely to a clean neck

A shrill, loud scream that would freeze blood rang out solid and clear for ten seconds. Her throat tore and she threw the gun as hard as she could into the next room. She ran into the same room and huddled next to a sink. She drew her knees up and hugged them with her shaking hands. Mara put her head down and panted into the small space she'd made for herself.

She held onto herself harder and tried to take deep breaths. After a moment she reached out of one of her blood splattered hands and snatched back up the gun. She wrapped her arms around it and pushed it into her chest. A moment passed.

"Get up. Get up. Get up," she muttered hoarsely.

Mara reached her right hand up to the sink and dragged her wobbling body up. With both hands planted on either side of the sink basin she lifted up her head. Her hair fell to the side and revealed the slash across her face. He had attacked her and she attacked him back. He was some faceless nobody from school; she didn't care that he wasn't around anymore. Tilting her head to the side caused more of the hair to shift and show the side of her face more clearly.

She turned her head back towards the hallway and could see one of his legs. She shut her eyes tightly and looked back at the mirror. He marked up her face. She felt cold. Plastic surgery could fix it, but what if she survived and it was too late to fix completely? What if she had a scar forever down the side of her face?

All those beauty trophies in her room, all the times people had told her she was for certain the prettiest girl, much prettier than her sister. Her parents told her over and over how pretty she was, every one did. She was going to marry a respectable, wealthy man. Everything in her life had been planned around her looks. The only thing anyone would look at would be the line down her cheek.

Shakily she went back to the room with first aid kits and got out gauze and medical tape. She went back to the mirror and started bandaging the side of her face, watching the blood come through the white cloth. As she concentrated her mind started to clear. What had she done? She was crazy for a moment, and in her opinion, it was justified, but still. What if she became like Miranda?

No. It wouldn't happen. She was going to survive. She was going to win. The sheer numbers and probability of winning occurred to her and made her feel sick again. Mara finished and looked at herself. She put a hand against the bandage. With her gun and her bag, she tip toed around Ray, shielding her eyes with her hand and carefully left the hospital now that the rain had become lighter.


((Mara Montalvo continued in Disolved Girls))