Survival Of The Fittest

South of the lake, at the end of a small river, was a delta leading into the sea. Marshy and damp, the land splits the river into several vein-like passageways that open into the ocean, the meeting between fresh and salt mixtures signified in a distinct, foamy line of brackish muck. The mid-morning sun shined down harshly, reflected blindingly in the calm waters, scorching the land. A disembodied voice spoke from many mouths, as he had done for the last week and some change. Then, all was quiet.

All, that is, for the softly muttered curses of one sweaty, sleep-deprived clout-crusader, making his way downhill from a cluster of trees.

[Lucas Diaz continued from Dude! FO(U)RTIFIED!!! Pt. 4: A New Hope.]

The night had been absolutely fucking fruitless. In spite of his best efforts, Lucas had gotten all turned around in the woods and spent a good while trying to make sense of what trees looked familiar in the dark. He'd gotten excited over a good deal of radar blips, but they were all in groups, or corpses, and Erika was neither of those. When he tried to call it quits and sleep next to a tree, a monkey came down and tried to steal his stuff. He tried to bat it away with the light-saber, but it managed to grab it and ran away. Lucas made the decision not to go to sleep after that. The last thing he wanted was some chimp running off with his Uzi.

It took him a good while to even recognize where he was. He didn't remember seeing the delta on the map at first, and he was fairly certain, from the relative lack of bodies, that most other people had forgotten its existence as well. Holding his radar-hand over his forehead to block out the sun, he scanned the area. A visual once-over would do it. There weren't any hiding places here, no houses to investigate. His gaze swept down from the edge of the lake, down the river, over the patches of land, and settled on a collection of small rocks at the end of one of the many mouths. Lucas looked past even that, into the endless blue, before his eyes returned to the estuary.

And that's when he saw her.

Standing on a rock, looking out towards the sea, just out of range of the radar. Unmistakably, definitively, irreplaceably.

Cautiously, he took several steps forward. The collar blipped in recognition. Lucas gulped, and held out the Uzi, staring down the sight, taking aim, flicking off the safety, and—

—wait—

—what the fuck was she doing?

Lucas lowered the gun and squinted at her, trying to get a better look. It didn't seem like she'd spotted him yet, but it was impossible to tell given how bright it was, ironically enough. He had a good enough visual on her to tell what was going on, though. And he didn't like what he saw, not one fucking bit. Slowly, cautiously, Lucas started to make his approach. There was absolutely no fucking way that she was getting out of this that easily.

Not on his fucking watch.

It was crisp. Broke easily. Hard to miss with something like this.

Not like her. It took awhile to get here. She didn’t break easily. It took so much.

Started out, thinking she’d not lived long enough. That it wasn’t fair.

Now she’d lived too long, and the things she felt seemed like they were owed.

Click.



The hammer fell, and she felt steel bump against the side of her head. It was still somehow cold, the barrel of her pistol. The back of the neck was tried and true, she knew that from books and from killing Tom. She knew it from killing Tom. He died instantly. It was too awkward to reach that way, though maybe putting it in her mouth would do well enough. Blow out through the back of her head, severing the brain stem. There was always the chance though, that it was slow, and she had time to think about it. Time for things to feel real again, and for the old terror to return.

The temple felt right. Like even if it took longer than an instant, how much of her brain would even be left to think? Maybe the parts that felt existential fear were right there. They’d be gone. She couldn’t be afraid anymore, couldn’t do things that she wished she’d never done because she’d been so afraid.

It would be over. She could wake. There’d be a warm bed, and rain on the windows. Mom and Dad would be downstairs, already awake. Dad would be ranting about something he’d read in the local newspaper, once again suggesting that her mother retire already so they could live somewhere more enlightened. They had enough to get by. More than they needed. They could get somewhere with some space. Erika could get a flatbed trailer, and start working. Build a tiny home, somewhere safe and free.

Click.

Oh, but she didn’t know. The best of it, the worst of it, neither felt real. The weight of ammunition and weaponry didn’t seem familiar. The sound of the waves she’d tuned into so deeply when she arrived here, there were a few moments that it felt like the whole world. Then she looked out at the ocean, and it went on forever. She knew it couldn’t go on forever. Somewhere over the horizon, another shore. Somewhere in the depths, solid ground. Everything ended. One day the waves would stop lapping at these shores. One day there would be no more days.

Click practicing with an empty chamber, rehearsing that last moment. Trying to find the right state of mind, the right memory. The trigger pull was nice. Did the powder burn and launch the bullet out the barrel faster than her nervous system registered the little click? Only one way to find out, but maybe it was too much to leave to chance. All she wanted to hear was the ocean.

Click.

There could be more. The other side of the dream might still be there. Maybe there was a small chance she was correct. Getting it right was just a swift ending this nightmare. If it was more than that, if it was still real, she had to find out. She couldn't keep doing this.

It could be real. If she believed it was, then she’d keep going, and there’d be someone left on the other side. Someone they’d throw onto screens, into a cage, then a hospital. If the brain she contemplated destroying was her, then something inside it was broken. Something maybe no one could fix. Something maybe no one wanted to fix. They’d never let her see trees again, never let her get lost on purpose again.

Click. It didn’t make any difference, it was all heading in the same direction, except she had to carry with her memories of the path she’d walked, they were too much to hold onto, Click. Practice made perfect, and she didn’t want to end up like Amber, maybe she should’ve been practicing with the shotgun, but perhaps only if this wasn’t all that there was or would be -

Click.

If that was all there was, then that was all there was. Maybe hope for peace and freedom from herself was enough to stand in for everything she’d lost. If an important piece of her died, it ought not to have died for nothing, shouldn’t it? A few more steps to the horizon, through this island hell, it didn’t have any bearing on the steps she’d already taken. It didn’t make a difference.

Erika opened her eyes, and gazed out at the ocean. She didn’t know what she’d see if she let the hammer fall on a loaded chamber, and she could only guess what would happen if she kept going. Kept killing other people and other parts of herself. Quickly racking the slide and pressing the gun to her temple, for a moment she seemed knew which path seemed most bearable. She focused on the sound of the waves on the shore, and the sunlight glinting off of distant whitecaps.

She’d been here for almost an hour, hearing only the ocean and the hammer strike an empty chamber. It was enough to pick up on a sound she didn’t recognize. Slowly lowering the gun from the side of her head, she turned slowly to face its source.

“Hello.”

It was the fact that, in spite of her victories, in spite of the bloody path she had torn across the island, in spite of the rewards for having the best kills or all of the collected supplies of the fallen sustaining her, that she still looked just about as broken and vacant as he did—it was this that caught him off-guard.

In some ways she looked like an animated corpse. Nature was already reclaiming her body—dirt and stray foliage covered her clothes, mixed with the sprays and splatters of blood—which looked like shit—blood dries brown—that dotted her figure. Those clothes were torn and ripped, tormented, shredded like her arm, wrapped in bandages covering a wound to match Tyrell's. Her leg, too, was mangled, likely a fresher wound given the less shit-brown color in the blood. The bits of Jewelry he remembered seeing her wear in the halls were all gone now, likely lost to the wilds, or taken off because they got in the way. Her lip was split and her face was bruised. Her eyes had always been a sort of empty gray color, but now they looked as mirrors. They weren't taking photos anymore, that much Lucas could tell. Her body shook and trembled, like how frog legs danced in salt. In contrast, the hand holding her gun was steady and still—it looked like it had been Frankensteined onto the rest of her body.

A good deal—not all of it, but a sizable enough portion—of all the anger and hatred Lucas had felt towards her over the past hundred or so hours, all of a sudden, spoiled. Like rotten milk, it turned putrid, chunky, inedible. He felt a deep wave of nausea bubble up from his stomach. Worse than what he'd felt when he carried an actual, headless corpse. It was a mix of disgust at himself for taking someone who he had been on good terms, even friendly with in high school, and turning them into a one-dimensional villain, an monster who deserved not even an ounce of sympathy, instead of a person just as complicated as he was put into the same situation and given just a slightly different circumstance. He'd let himself forget that, if he had been given a gun at the start, their positions might have been reversed.

The rest of his fury magnified, to make up for the parts that had pussied out.

"Put the gun down," Lucas said in as level a tone as he could muster.

"Stop fucking around, and put the gun down."

The Uzi, while not pointed directly at her just yet, was half-raised.

"Motherfucker."

Her eyes widened at the sight of Lucas. Familiar, and yet not. He carried his journey with him, the way he stood and looked at her.

The last time, when was it?

Taking pictures was a good enough excuse. The last time she laid eyes on him was at school, in the photography club. She thought he was cute.

No. That was a different lens.

It was through a rifle scope. He dragged Julien to safety. She’d meant to kill him, and fled when it seemed he wasn’t going to break cover. At the time she’d been frustrated, at how much it felt like he was doing the right thing trying to save people, when it didn’t seem to make sense to try. All a far cry from how he looked now.

She stood still at the first words he spoke, and cocked her head at the curse. Of course he’d be angry at her, but there was something else about it. Something forced, almost. Like he was keeping up an appearance rather than drawing straight from a wellspring of anger. He hated more than just her, but she was the best target in front of him.

Yet he hadn’t shot her. He had more than enough of a chance. That didn’t add up. She was seriously thinking of pulling the trigger herself. Certainly thought about it. End whatever this was, answer the question she never wanted to have to ask in the first place. It would’ve been easier if he’d just made the choice for her.

“Why? I’m not supposed to be here, Lucas. I was thinking of… thinking of leaving, y’know? Thinking maybe I’ve had enough of this.”

A stream ran between the two of them, setting them a little under twenty yards apart. It flowed gently into the ocean, the water barely making much of a sound as it ran through rocks and sand. Her eyes locked on his, he drew her full attention. Lucas stood out from their surroundings like colour in a black and white photo. He seemed animate, alive, real. They both did. It was the place that was wrong.

“Why do you care?”

"This is such bullshit," Lucas said, "this is bullshit, Erika, and you know it.

"You're thinking of leaving? What, after all the blood you've spilled, you've finally decided that enough is enough? You could have stopped at any point, and yet you decide to wait until after you've killed, I don't fucking know, twelve fucking people? Give me a fucking break. I've spent the last week hunting you, and I finally track you down, and then I find out that you want to kill yourself?!"

If there wasn't a stream between them, he would have probably started walking forward, closing the gap between them. The space between his ears whistled like a tea kettle. It hissed like an old, broken radiator. It was screaming at him to point the gun at her, and pull the trigger. It was telling him that if he really wanted her dead, he'd have done it already. Dad always told him that if he knew there was a problem, and he had the means and the motivation to solve it, and it hadn't been solved yet, then he was doing something wrong. The problem was in front of him. Lucas still had the motivation to end Erika. He had the gun with which to do it. So why wasn't this solved?

Because before she died, Erika needed to know. She needed to understand what she had done. To Desiree. To Katie, and to Saffron. To Tyrell, in the long run.

And she needed to know what she'd done to Lucas most of all.

"To be absolutely crystal fucking clear," he continued, "you deserve to die. There's no argument there. Everyone I've met here and talked to agrees that you need to die. No. Fucking. Contest.

"But I'm the one to do it. I'm the one who's meant to do it. It's my fucking purpose. Tyrell fucking said as much to me. You don't get to kill yourself. Ka-pi-shay? That's not how your story ends, with 'and she killed herself because she was sad that she was such a murderer who just kept murdering,' you miserable fuck, it ends with 'and Lucas avenged Desiree and put an end to the horrible monster's terrible bullshit once and for all, and then he killed himself because his work here, was fucking done!'"

Something wet was going on with his left foot. He glanced down for a split second—Lucas had stepped forward into the water and he hadn't even noticed. His body was moving on its own, now. Look, the gun was even sort of pointing at her, now. When did that happen? Clearly, his body was being puppeteered forward by some divine, heavenly force—his flesh was being animated by the spirit of Clout itself, ready to turn his meager vessel into a weapon of Mass-Erika-Destruction. Clout moved his hand. Clout walked him forward. Clout even leapt from the back of every word he spat forth.

The nervous trembling, though?

That was all Lucas.

She listened, and it was everything she expected to hear, at first. Instinctively she gripped her pistol tightly as Lucas ranted, the hostility drawing on reserves of adrenaline she was sure had been exhausted until that point. Her heart started to race, though her mind held steady.

Curiously, the feeling of derealization seemed to ebb. His words, his hatred made her present. Things made sense again in a way she really didn’t like. It was easy to remember how she thought she should feel at things like this. They all thought she deserved to die, Tyrell hated her and said to Lucas something like she’d said to Katie on the first day. Lucas thought that wanting to kill herself after all of this was bullshit, that it wasn’t legitimate or honest.

She felt again. Justifications she’d discarded because they felt like they were poisoning her. Hurt. Truth. Fear.

Suddenly, the feeling of a ring of steel against her head felt all the more frightening. Not like an escape, no. It felt like exactly what she deserved. It felt like an end, not an exit. It was one thing to have to justify her own existence, to put her continued survival up against the values she thought she held and find it all lacking. Worse still to look out at the world and what she’d done and wonder if she even could exist, given the gulf between who she was and who she should’ve been. Given the way her eyes and ears and mind kept dismantling the meaning in every shape and texture and sound she experienced, it didn’t seem feasible to continue. It didn’t feel like living.

It was different to hear those voices coming from somewhere on the outside. To see the hate, to and the real damage she caused. Nothing seemed more real. Erika blinked, and the rest of her body drew on the same reserve of calm that kept her gun hand steady. As Lucas walked forward, she paced slowly at the other side of the stream. Her bearing itself said enough, but she still had words for him.

“I wasn’t aiming for Desiree, I went for Thomas. He moved, she died, and every single one of you scattered and left him alone out there. Because you wanted to save yourselves. Get it?! You fucking hypocrite, you’ve got a collar on your neck too, so did she. It means you fight or you die. Whatever else you wanted is already fucking gone, if you've got any illusions about being anything more, you're an idiot.

“There’s no purpose here! We weren’t supposed to be here, I’m not supposed to be this, none of us deserved to die! You’re right though, yeah, by now I fucking earned it. I wasn’t me anymore, that's why I was gonna end it. 'Course then you come along acting like being suicidal is somehow convenient, like it’s the easy way out, even though you know exactly what I’m feeling. And you think I’M full of shit?!”

Her own weapon was pointed back towards him now as well, gradually finding itself in place as she gesticulated. All of the magical thinking, all of the thoughts that had driven her here, now stood aside. A drive to live, and a reason to kill. Spite. Rage, at the delusion she was watching play out in front of her.

Are you all so fucking blind?

“I know what I’ve done, I know what it means. I can see it right now, I hate it. But you’re not punishing me, and it’s not justice. Even if it matters to you. You’re nothing anymore, and that shit only makes sense in a place that makes sense. This didn’t begin with me and it won’t end with me, either. You hunted me for nothing.”

As soon as Erika began to speak, to defend herself—as much as he knew that she'd deny it, that was exactly what she was doing right now—Lucas found himself growing annoyed. More than that, he felt insulted. It had been obvious that she'd meant to shoot Thomas. It was also obvious she didn't stick around to see what happened afterwards, because Lucas didn't scatter, he went inside and saw Desiree's lifeless, shattered corpse splayed on the ground. He'd never forget it for as long as he lived. If Lucas wanted to save himself, he wouldn't have gone inside. If he had wanted to save himself, he wouldn't have saved Julien. He wouldn't have let Erika speak for as long as he did.

Every point she raised, he defeated simply by existing. By having lived the last week the way that he did, he already proved her wrong. Lucas was the antithesis of Erika. He'd heard someone say before that people were like arguments, and each thing they did in life was another point in that argument, or something like that. Effectively, the way Lucas saw it, he'd rendered Erika moot. People didn't work the way she said they did. He was proof enough. And if there was one thing that person also said at one point that Lucas definitely remembered, it was that if your argument can't stand up to a marginal case, then it could not function.

Lucas had been a marginal case for as long as he lived.

And so here he stood, with a gun aimed towards his face.

It wasn't the first time.

"I didn't hunt you for nothing," Lucas said, "I hunted you to kill you. I'd say that's a pretty clear fucking goal. I'm not trying to make a statement. I'm not trying to make some bigger fucking point about anything. I want to kill you because I want you dead. I'm selfish. I'm spiteful.

"You'd probably say that I'm exactly the same as you.

"If I let you talk."

He pointed the gun towards her and squeezed the trigger.

At least he admitted it. He was no better.

Vindication should have felt like a relief.

To see so clearly just how entirely this place had broken them all, to see that acting so selfishly and so desperately was just human nature. To see that she wasn’t insane, or bloodthirsty. Just more decisive than anyone else, just not wasting time hoping that things were different.

Except, he was selfish in a way that didn’t make sense. Not like hers. If it wasn’t a bigger point about anything, if he intended on dying afterwards, why do it in the first place? Why not let her end it on her own?

Her instinct when he raised the gun had been to just shoot him. She knew she should have.

Confusion at the person standing before her and more than a bit of sleep deprivation created little gaps in her perception; delayed her reaction, just long enough. She flinched as a short burst of fire and sound erupted from the muzzle of the Uzi. Unable to muster a reply from her own weapon, Erika quickly lost her footing and fell to the ground as a sudden numbness in her side quickly gave way to icy, searing pain.

She gasped, trying to pull back the breath that had been stolen from her. The rock and sand against her face felt real. It felt like all there was ever going to be.

Erika went down.

Lucas didn't know quite how he hit her, or where. He didn't know much about how his gun worked to begin with. He pointed it at her, and he fired several times, and she went down, which meant that she had been hit. And people who got hit with gunfire and, subsequently, fell onto the ground, generally didn't survive. Erika had just fallen onto the ground. Lucas had reason to believe that was because he shot her, because him pulling the trigger and feeling his arm jerk back and her snapping backwards and collapsing were all roughly in sync. So, logically, it was entirely possible that Lucas had just shot Erika, and she had fallen over, and hit the dirt, and stone, and gravel, and

died.

For a brief moment, Lucas thought about all the times he'd lay awake in bed at night, staring at the slats supporting the top bunk, wondering what would happen if they broke and his brother's bed would fall on him. Could that kill him? Would he die if a mattress fell on him? What about if it happened while he was sleeping? Would he be able to tell the difference? What was death like? Lucas was going to have to die, someday. The thought kept him up at night, into the wee hours of the morning. The more he thought about it, the longer he stayed awake. Two in the morning, three in the morning, four thirty in the morning, longer and longer into the dead of night. Death was like sleep. It was to be avoided at all costs, until he couldn't anymore.

He had just caused someone to undergo that final sleep. Right now, with his bullet. With his gun. The thing he had spent his life in fear of, writhing in his blankets, clawing at his face, had now come about because of his own direct action. Erika had done it many, many times. She hadn't offset the lives she'd taken with any sort of karmic reversal, to the extent that karma existed, which, well, Lucas was fairly certain up to this point that it didn't, but honestly now he wasn't so sure. Was it karma that Erika died? Was it karma that he got to kill her? There was an oblivion forming in her body, a nothingness that she had surely already fallen into, instantly. Death was a void. Death was the kerning between letters on a piece of paper. It was the gap between paragraphs. The indent, even, at the start. It was there before, and it would be there after.

Maybe that's what Lucas was afraid of. Death wasn't just the end. It was a consignment to irrelevancy. Everyone who lived had died or was going to die. There wasn't anything special about being dead. That was joining the great majority, the silent majority of all times. He'd just consigned Erika to irrelevancy, then. She was dead. He was almost completely certain. She'd gone down, which meant that she was gone for good. Now and forever, she was irrelevant. Her narrative potential was gone. Complete. Was it not the greatest of crimes to commit someone to that before their time was up? Had he just committed, to the extent that they existed, a sin? Sins did not exist, to be sure, because there was no God, a conclusion Lucas had arrived at a long time ago—but wouldn't he be regarded now as sinful? By his peers? By his family? His enemies, even?

No, he mustn't. Thinking of himself as sinful, it wasn't productive. It wasn't good for his survival past this point. Erika was thirteen times more sinful than him. She'd killed, over and over and over and over. She'd put an end to so many stories before they had reached their intended end. Desiree's, specifically. That was a story that was going to be, well, amazing! She'd have grown to really like Lucas, he was sure. They'd hit it off really well. Maybe then the Clout Gang wouldn't fall apart. They'd find a way to escape, possibly, and make it free from this terrible, horrible, no good very bad island. Wouldn't that be great? Lucas thought it would be great.

He looked across the water, out to sea. Somewhere, over the horizon, was home. Chattanooga, for as much as Lucas complained about it, was the only place he felt like he really belonged. He certainly didn't belong here, holding a gun, one foot absolutely soaked through by a stream of who knows how dirty that water is really, running through his shoe and between his toes and water-logging his sock. Thank goodness it was warm here at least and he could dry his sock on a rock, at least. Just let it bake in the sun. The water would evaporate, and it'd be dry again, and he could put it back on and step again into the water and undo all his work. That sounded like something he'd do.

Lucas turned back towards the space where Erika's corpse was supposed to be, and opened his mouth.

It would’ve made sense, to die right then and there. Probably would've been the right thing to do. Live and die by the gun; on the wrong side of a personal vendetta, borne from the most impersonal of her crimes. Somebody might find it poetic, or fated. Like it should have been this way.

The world wasn’t fading out, though. Not yet.

Darkness wasn’t encircling her vision, like she thought it should. No part of her allowed sleep, or would let her fade away. There was no lingering desire to close her eyes, to let it all end. There was no other side beckoning, no better world. No comforting dream. Only icy, stabbing pain in her side. Only the feeling of damp rock against her skin and blood seeping through her clothes. Only fear, and resistance.

This isn’t supposed to be.

All of them fated to die here, save one. She had refused to accept long odds like that, to give up. Everything she’d done was to be that one exception. To feel like she had some role in how she lived and died. It was all so she didn’t feel like someone else, some hateful malevolent force had made the choice for her. It was all so she wouldn’t find herself here.

I never meant for this to happen, not like this.

The choice she made now was the same choice she’d made at the very beginning, the one that didn’t feel like much of a choice at all back then. By now she knew it was selfish, it was spiteful. It cost too much for too little gain; too much blood spilled to try and win back a life that was already gone.

That choice was also all she had, all she felt past the pain and rocks and sand and blood.

Slowly, she stirred. Caring to keep her movements minute, lest Lucas notice. Moving made it clear where the damage was. The bullet had torn a ragged gash across her midsection, likely having deflected off of her rib. It could have been fractured, or broken. Might have been worse than she imagined it was, as she couldn't look to examine it. The pain was indistinct, and raging. Terrifyingly close to places she knew would have killed her; it was also far enough away to know that if it hadn't happened yet, it wasn't going to.

It’s not over. Not yet. Maybe soon.

She didn’t know what she could do about it. Didn't want to think that far ahead. Right now, it was enough to know it wouldn’t stop what was about to happen.

One step at a time.

Erika breathed in. Her fingers were still wrapped around the pistol. The weapon was live.

You’re not real.

She exhaled. Fell where she was standing, and her knee was tucked underneath her. It would hurt, but she could rise quickly.

You don’t get to be.

Inhale. Steel herself to what might come. A dream bathed in red, or black.

I can’t let this happen.

Exhale. For a second, dying felt like an exit. She was so close. She’d almost made a different choice. It was almost over, and he took that away.

It is over.

Inhale.

"For you."

She rose, letting out a feral cry that was quickly drowned out by gunfire.

The first shot caught Lucas in the space between the two twin halves of his rib cage. With the impact, he jerked backwards before another shot tore through him, several centimeters higher, cracking through his bone and spraying the air with his blood. Two more shots came, hitting him on his right side in roughly the same place, loosing the Uzi from his grip. It fell onto the edge of the stream behind him, next to a small rock. The next shot caught him on the opposite side, launching the collar radar from his hand several feet back. It landed in a clump of grass. The next two shots, in quick succession, caught him again on the right and once more in the center. Seven shots in total collided with Lucas, tore through, ripped him apart, ventilated his body.

For a brief moment, Lucas found himself able to stand. The world around him fell quiet. He looked down at his chest, and saw holes in his shirt, leaking blood that dripped down into the water, staining the estuary red.

His knees grew heavy, and it felt harder to stand. It was as if the metal from each round had filtered out somehow, snaking through his veins, collecting in his legs and pulling him to the ground. Lucas looked up from himself as his vision started to blur and double in on itself. Erika had risen. The angel of death, covered in mud, and dirt, and shit. Bigger than him. Stronger, too. Alive. Here.

"Fuck," Lucas sputtered, though it sounded less like a curse and more like a cough.

Then he fell backwards, hit the ground, and promptly bled the fuck out.

She watched him fall, with some satisfaction. Holding the muzzle of the pistol steady, she kept her sights trained in his direction. Smoke curled away from the barrel, the wind from the sea quickly blowing it away. Erika didn’t so much lower the gun as she almost dropped it, adrenaline only capable of taking her so far. After catching her breath, she spat at the ground towards Lucas, defiant.

He failed. She won. Whatever he’d brought to this confrontation would just push her further, now. Erika wanted to believe this.

So she tried to stand up completely. Rise out of suicidal ideation, out of someone else’s revenge fantasy. Out of the sandy dirt, and away from the place she’d chosen to die. The exertion brought on a conspicuous weakness, causing her legs to buckle. She just barely caught herself at first, then fell to her knees in agony.

The voice in her head went into overdrive, layering rationalizations and denial between best and worst-case scenarios.

It’s okay. I’ll be fine. I can still get up. It didn’t hit anything important. Just winged me. I’m lucky. If it had been a few inches to the left, maybe my liver. Or stomach. I can’t remember which side. What if it ruptured something? Secondary cavitation, that would be bad. It was a nine millimeter, maybe a three eighty, it couldn’t have caused that much damage aside from where it hit. It’s like a stab. Like the cut in my arm. I’m lucky. I’ve lived with those for a few days now. I’m okay. It’ll stop. I have my supplies. I’ll take whatever he’s got. I can do this. It didn’t hit anything important. Human beings are hardy, they can survive all kinds of shit. Amber didn’t die from a shot right to the head. Not right away. Julien survived getting shot in the leg, at least till today. Tanisha survived a few minutes. Only a few minutes. I’m lucky. I’ll make it, I’ll make it. A few more days. I have to make it, I can’t end it, he took that away, I’ll make it. I have to fucking make it or it’s all for nothing. I’m not bleeding too bad, am I-

She looked down. It hadn’t hit anything important, but it still hit. Tore across her side and kept going, muscle and fat and skin cut away. Bleeding, exposed, and cold. She cradled herself with one arm, the other still fanatically gripped to her weapon. Shivering, alone except for the body across the stream and the sea birds calling out on distant rocks. Imagination turned them into carrion birds, circling, hovering on the heat drafts rising up from the beach.

A whimper turned into a cry, then a scream. Erika screamed until her throat felt raw, until she couldn’t hear the birds calling or the stream running into the ocean; until the voice in her head shut up and left her in peace. In emptying her lungs she made space for silence, feel the pain the way she was supposed to, listened to her body and let it tell her everything she needed to know.

This was more than she was prepared to deal with. Focusing too much on the visceral aspect of this would make her sick, and pass out. Die. The moment had passed, when she was dissociated and confused enough to mistake an end for an exit. She imagined this was the same kind of feeling people had halfway through jumping off of a tall building; the way she’d planned on ending it would’ve left no space for that kind of contemplation.

Should I thank you, Lucas?

The answer was clearly no, made abundantly clear by how miserable it felt to get to her feet. It took a few tries, but she made her way up. She cursed through gritted teeth, stumbling forward towards the stream. A few careful, painful steps took her across, over top of a pair of flat rocks. The mental image of falling, landing on her side, and drowning in an ankle-deep stream kept her movements slow and deliberate.

Lucas’ gun, an Uzi, landed at the bank of the stream. Water rushed over it, the barrel no doubt now caked in sand. She could pick it up, fidget with the internals, remove the bolt, bury it in the sand. All things that required more of her than she could give. She haphazardly nudged it aside, and continued up the bank towards the body.

He was lying on his back, chest now uniformly covered in blood. Seven holes in his midsection.

Lousy grouping.

She shut her eyes, as if that would crush the shameful thought. Once she’d told herself they were all just silhouettes, just targets. As if that would make it easier. Here she couldn’t help but equate him with one, and it made everything worse.

Gingerly, she sat down beside him. It took some time. After letting needling pain in her side settle, she looked towards Lucas’ face.

He still seemed shocked. Eyes wide, staring up at the sky. Blood running from the side of his mouth, from what he’d coughed up. He didn’t seem like the others, like life had truly left him. Almost more like someone had put his last moment on pause, instead of turning out the lights. The thought of only ever occupying a final moment for all time almost seemed worse than annihilation.

She reached over and closed his eyelids. Spite and defiance didn’t last the twenty yard journey over here.

Tugging his duffel bag towards her, she unzipped it and immediately dug through for the first aid kit, tossing it on the ground in front of her. Besides the kit, she picked out one of his shirts. Fabric would have to do where she couldn’t find gauze.

The process should’ve been familiar by now, but she couldn’t help noticing that every time she had to do this, it was something worse. A gash on her arm, a pellet lodged in her leg, and now this. There was no helping the alcohol running down her side, soaking into her clothes. What little packing of the wound she was able to do was surely not enough, and spots of red began to appear on the outside of the gauze almost immediately.

Pressure and time. Right.

Aborting her initial attempt to immediately fix the problem, she balled up the shirt and pressed it to her side, and waited. Painting a surreal picture, sitting here bloodied next to someone she couldn’t help but identify, a totem to the worst excesses of her actions. It almost felt like she was forced into standing a vigil for this person, baking in the hot sun and bleeding into a ball of cloth.

As she leaned onto the back of her free hand, it bumped against something. A grey plastic shape, that at first she almost mistook for a retro Gameboy. It was clearly custom, not looking like anything she’d seen up close before. Lucas carried it, but she was certain it wasn’t his. The AT had confiscated all of the electronics. Grabbing the device, she set it in her lap. A little switch brought the readout to life, a sparse radial pattern with a pair of dots sitting just off-center, with measurements rated in yards.

“...the fuck?”

She waved the device to the side, watching the two dots move ever so slightly. Like an old bruise, the feeling of the collar around her neck returned uncomfortably.

It finds collars. Out to a hundred yards, from the markings. The longest distance I should try and reach with my guns, I figure. Wait a second, I've seen this before...

She thought back to the first day on the island, running into Garnet, Sapphire, Nona, Emmett and Emil. Em & Em she'd called them. Emil had carried this before, called it a buddy tracker. Lorenzo killed him. Ty killed Lorenzo. Gave it to Lucas, evidently. Now it was hers, and she could only hope to put it to better use than their previous owners. If she knew whether someone was coming, she could act first. Know if a building she was approaching had people inside, no matter how quiet they were. Catch an ambush before it was sprung. Ultimately, a tool to hide and wait out this death game. Safety in information, in the ability to see what was coming. It was the best chance she’d been given this whole time.

Her eyes fell from the device to the t-shirt at her side. Looking at it seemed to draw up another uncomfortable, searing jolt.

Bullets cut a path through the air before they cut through flesh. They carried that air with them as they went. Particulate matter got drawn into wounds; it was worse with rifles, but pistol calibers could do it as well. Sanitizing the outside with alcohol and wrapping herself in sterile gauze was the best she could do. Even if the bleeding stopped, the threat of infection could remain. Long-term, she needed antibiotics and help to get better; neither was available here on the island. All of that aside, it hurt. It would slow her down, sapping whatever advantage this device provided her.

In one hand, she held a boon to her continued survival. With the other, she cradled herself in a desperate plea for time she knew she didn’t have. Erika switched off the device, glancing at Lucas.

She tried to imagine it was still a dream, and wondered how she’d look at Lucas now when his face popped up on social media. Whether she could still look at his photos if he’d been so much the focus of this horrible nightmare. Tell him about it, spinning the story to make sense. Like she associated him with shooting pictures, that was why he was the one that shot her in the dream she had. Don’t tell him how he didn’t finish the job, and how she killed him. Let him think that he’d won, as if it would somehow matter to the Lucas she knew, the one who didn’t despair over Desiree.

Fantasy bled into the nightmare, neither easy to appraise as reality. All she had to go on was the fact that the pain of one was far more tangible than the comfort of the other. That she couldn’t help but expect the world she really lived in to be this one, the one where everything went wrong.

As easily as it was to imagine a way out of here, she couldn’t find the way back home. It slipped away, falling apart faster and faster as she tried to fill in details. She wanted it to come back, but it wouldn’t. This world intruded too brazenly on the one she carried in memories. Erika lay back in the dirt next to Lucas, laughing and sobbing. The sound was swept away like smoke into a breeze. No more worth notice than a few drops of blood into the river.

The sun had started to set before she was able to do what she had to, leaving scraps of paper and plastic medical wrapping next to Lucas’ body. Only some time afterward did she leave the craggy rocks and sand of the delta and began the journey back inland.

There was only one thing left to do.

((Erika Stieglitz continued No Exit))