Survival Of The Fittest

There was a degree of ego that came with being a leader. Especially when you volunteered yourself for the role.

It was the idea that you knew best and that you knew what was best for others. Richard liked being in control, he liked telling people what to do and he enjoyed watching them listen. With one hand on his pistol, another interlaced with Iris’ fingers Dicky moved forward with a familiar confidence that had been briefly shaken by the morning news. That confidence adjusted his focus and directed his duty. He felt more obligation to Iliya’s memory than guilt in her gutting. Dick couldn’t shrink, he couldn’t crumble. The student-body needed him. They had elected Richard to be a leader, that meant he had to lead. Iris had looked him in the eye and echoed his own words back at him. A promise was made, one soul to another. That meant they had to be brave. That meant he had to brave enough for two.

The worst crime was hypocrisy. And it was the one everybody immediately recognized. Especially among self-proclaimed leaders.

Of course, that was also the problem. Nobody really needed a leader when things were going well. When everything was good, that meant it was good for everybody. People could figure out shit for themselves when things were easy. You needed a leader when things were hard. You needed a leader when things were bad. Dicky had to become the man he was meant to be, not tomorrow but today. Not later, but now. He had chosen to be a leader when things were good, he needed to be a leader now that everything had gone bad.


“According to the map, across this field should be a research station,” Dicky spoke aloud, reviewing his own mindset to his partner but also to himself, “no matter what, keep hold of my hand.”

A promise made, one soul to another.

“No matter what,” a proclamation to his partner and also to his person, “we stick together, we stand together. We find our friends, we find a way out.”

((Iris Waite continued from A Girl's Feelings))

Iris squeezed Richard's fingers in agreement with his instructions before voicing it. "As long as we keep moving, we'll be okay." That was what you were supposed to do when stranded out in the cold. Just keep moving, keep the blood flowing. Hypothermia felt way down on the list of worries, comparatively, but an ever-present danger was the most... well, dangerous. If they forgot about keeping warm, they risked losing everything no matter how well they carried out Richard's plans.

Honestly, Iris felt silly, even embarrassed, to be thinking like that. Like she was some cartoon character who had speeches to give about "losing everything." But she was keenly aware of just how close she was to doing that just. She was in great shape, physically, but every step they took through the snowfield was a strain on her aching body. She had to squint even more against the sun glinting off the snow. The glare of the light hurt her head, but squinting so hard for so long also hurt her head, so there was really no winning there.

The research station felt like a promise, a goal to reach. Shelter and safety and resources. Once she was inside, no longer needing to be led along like a wayward child, she could think. She could make herself useful then.

How exactly she was going to do that... well, she'd sort it out when she got there. Another thing to put a pin in, on the rapidly-sprawling mental board of pins and strings that she was cobbling together as they planned and moved.

Big Dick’s heart ran hot but his blood ran cold.

He was a lifelong child of Salem and his husky physique combined well with the many layers that went along with his wardrobe. Dicky had on a cotton tank, a white-t-shirt, a white dress shirt paired with a black vest and tie. Above all that and atop all those layers was a warm-wool suit jacket. In the night that jacket had felt like a mother’s embrace and like a blanket toasted by the flame. Richard didn’t struggle in the cold, not in Salem and not out here. Winter’s wind never felt like a wound. Days were hot and days were cold but even if the day changed, Dick didn't let that alone change him. Dicky wore a suit to school even in May. If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. How much of the real world was practice? How much did practice sincerely feel like preparation?

The December air felt sincerely familiar. Familiar felt sincerely foreign and forged. Familiar felt sincerely like foraging. Foraging for what, Big Dick didn’t know, but he knew all too well that frantic floundering for truth. Rich didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew he had to look.

Was it the same December air out here as it was at home? Back in Salem? Not like, scientifically, but spiritually. Not like, in the micro, but in the macro. Not in the details but in the big picture. Was Kitty Graves always a killer on the inside or had she been made to feel like there was no other choice? Did any of that matter with the choice she made?

What choice did Dick have?

Blue eyes betrayed a pumping red heart. Solid steps sat in conflict with a struggling and shattered confidence. Still Iris’ hand felt as familiar in his palm as the December air. Big Dick took a step and then another. Dicky smiled so hard his eyes hurt. He sold himself a dream knowing he had no real choice but to buy.

“I’m hoping,” he huffed and puffed, “that there isn’t any problems that I can’t handle,” his grip tightened on his pistol as he referenced it, “but this tends to make men outta most monsters. People ain’t gonna shoot us if they know we can shoot back.”

Keep selling, keep buying.

“Being brave isn’t not being scared,” one step, his wrist shook, words said to Iris, but meant for self, Scout’s Honor, Mom’s Apple Pie, God Bless America and the Lord’s Prayer “being brave is going forward anyway.”

And so forward they went.

Iris nodded her agreement this time, and quickly regretted it with the way her head was hurting. She'd shown Richard the flashbangs in her possession before they packed up their small camp; they were no gun, but they were something. Better, in some ways, since they weren't lethal. Just enough to startle somebody who might be looking to cause trouble.

It was the same as dealing with any other kind of predator, when you thought about it. You just had to make yourself bigger and scarier than whatever was scaring you. That wasn't really the same as what Richard was saying about bravery, but it brought Iris its own kind of comfort.

"If we can get there-" She stopped, corrected herself. "When we get there, once we figure out how to signal people, can we also find a way to put in a message for Lily and Amaryllis too? So they'll know we looked for them?"

Had they looked hard enough before fleeing the area? Looked at all? Had the other two girls stumbled back upon an empty camp and come to the conclusion that they'd been abandoned, left for dead?

Iris wouldn't abandon anyone who showed her real kindness. She believed in that with all her heart. So she had to believe that other people believed it of her too, even when she knew that they'd often been all too happy to think the worst.

"...I guess that's kind of a dumb idea."

“You’re not dumb,” Dick soon realized that wasn’t what Iris had said, “it’s not a dumb idea…”

But it wasn’t his idea.

On the surface, Dicky wanted to find and help everybody. Be Welles Crowther, the man with the red-hair as opposed to the man with the red-bandana. Be a hero. Be brave and strong and smart—the man with a plan who was never afraid to take a stand. Richard wanted to be a leader and that meant he had to lead. But he couldn’t lead without any social capital. He didn’t look like a leader standing on his own and declaring himself as such. He needed allies, he needed comrades and he needed people who needed him.

Iris was a start, but Iris wasn’t enough.

Amarylis and Lily weren’t extremely known quantities to Dick. He wanted to help them, but he couldn’t feel confident in voicing himself or his vision to people who weren’t confident in it. Richard needed people like Iris, like Darryl, like Fred—people who knew Big Dick and knew what he was about. People who listened. Friends and allies that he could rely on and that he knew relied on him. Trust was an exchange, a transaction. Dicky couldn’t expect people to buy if he had nothing to sell. There was safety in numbers and out here there was power in safety.

His group needed to be solid, at this stage the trust had to be concrete.

“That was always the plan, we’re going to find and help everybody, this is us looking for them,” Richard lied to Iris and himself, “we stood vigil all night, we had to move on, we couldn’t sit still…”

It still didn’t feel good, it didn’t feel heroic, it felt selfish.

“We came from the houses, I was the one who could start a fire, they had to be looking for shelter and it’s doubtful they’re doubling back.”

They would find those two girls and signal them, after they found their people. They just needed to be patient. Iliya’s corpse and ghost haunted the mood. How had being patient helped her?

“There’s too many people to find, there’s too much stuff to do,” he thought of his words after the announcement, “we can only do one thing at a time, unless we wanna risk doing nothing at all," it sounded like something vaguely like wisdom, "we stack up the wins, we check the boxes,” lies to himself and lies to Iris, “eventually that one thing becomes a lotta things and we end up helping a lotta people. We just gotta keep faith and stay strong.”

((Marshall West continued from Lines In The Sand.))

No way around it. Marshall was lost.

Marshall had stopped to stare at the footprints he’d been following. He had been sure they were footprints at the start, but they’d started to curve in weird directions after a while, like whoever was making them hadn’t been sure where they were going either. Then they started crisscrossing, and after that is where Marshall had lost all sense of direction.

He put his hands on his hips and stared down at the footprints. Had he seen these ones before?

After a moment, he put his foot out and pressed it into the snow by one of the prints he’d been following.

...Oh. Yeah. Definitely.

Marshall stomped irritably once before he went back to sprinting. He gave up on following the trails. He’d made a mess of them anyway. He just ran. Whenever he stopped, he realised that he was really cold. He still had his jacket, but the windbreaker over a bare torso didn’t do as much as he thought it would.

“KAI? JESS? HELLO?!”

He’d been doing this all day. He hated quitting. But what was he meant to do if he couldn’t find either of them?

“KAI! JESS! KA-ah?” Marshall cupped his hands over his eyes, shielding the brightness of the sun against the whiteness of the snow as much as he could.

Oh! Figures in the distance! And… stocky redhead in that outfit? There was only one person that could be, and if that was him, then the person he was holding hands with… a little less distinctive from this distance, but as he squinted further he recognised bits of her style--

He ran full-sprint in that direction, cupping his hands around his mouth as he did so and bellowing into the fast-approaching distance.

“RICHARD! IRIS! I’M COMING OVER THERE! DON’T ATTACK ME!”

"Yeah," Iris said, voice a little weak. "You're right." It wasn't that she disagreed with Richard, she just... everything felt far away and hopeless, despite her promises to be brave. Standing in the middle of this white expanse, there could be shelter and comfort just over the next hill, or it could be a million miles away. It all looked the same from where she was standing.

But it didn't all sound the same, she realized after a few more moments. The echo of a voice, almost familiar, reached them over the vast stretch of snow. Iris turned to try to pinpoint where it had come from, and she almost jumped back against Richard when her eyes focused on the vague and blurry dot that was approaching them far faster than anything really had a right to be doing.

"Wh-" Gears turned and clicked into place as he shouted again. "Oh, it's- Marshall!" Iris let go of Richard's hand and took a few steps in Marshall's direction, raising her voice to yell despite the way that it made her head freshly ache.

"Marshall, it's us! We're not attacking anyone!" She raised her arm to wave at him as vigorously as she could manage, and made the conscious decision not to think about how he had to ask that of them, and how they had to reassure.

“Huh? Could it really be…?”

Iris raised her hand to wave, Dick held at the edge of her peacoat like a child on a field trip with their mother. His grip on the pistol shifted and his palms became coated with sweat. He thought about pointing it, he thought about firing it, but they were brief and distant thoughts, and they were easily waved away by indecision and fear. Big Dick was on edge and about to burst, but his head still carried bigger influence than his heart. There was no need to be scared. There was no need to worry.

“Mr. West! It’s us,” Dicky felt his mood match his companions, if they responded with excitement, so did he, “you’re good! You’re safe! Nothing to worry about!”

It was just a classmate, another teenager, another member of student government Marshall West. Dick was so unthreatened by him that it hadn’t even been much of a bother that West had taken Chloe to homecoming. It didn't matter that he was taller and better looking and that the lacrosse team won more than the basketball team. He may have been the captain of the school’s best team and had gone to homecoming with its most impressive girl…but he wasn’t Big Dick Buster. He wasn't the King. He wasn't somebody Dicky had to worry about.

Least that’s what Richard told himself. He might've even believed it.

Marshall sprinted over and skidded to a halt in front of the two, though he continued jogging on the spot, beaming at the two of them.

He knew the two as decently as he could. Richard less so, because they’d had less reason to talk on a personal level, though they did move in adjacent circles as they were both involved in sports, just different ones. But as much as he refused to use the boy’s nickname, he had respect for anyone that knew the struggle of captaining a sports team and could do his vice president duties on top of that.

(Also he was homecoming king, but that seemed unimportant compared to the rest.)

He was more fond of Iris as a person, since they spent a lot of time together in photography club. She was quick on the shutter, though sometimes in a way people didn’t appreciate. Though Marshall didn’t object to her taking photos of him, he’d taken her to task more than once in the past for not asking permission from others.

Even outside student council and Chloé’s orders, it was just good to meet people he actually knew properly.

“Good, it is you! I'm glad you're safe and not playing! I was looking for both of you! Chloé sent me to find student council members, as well as others, in order to establish authority, form together and work towards escaping! She’s in town, but she’s looking for others! Have you seen Jess—DJ Jazzy Jess, not Jess who shot someone—or Kai? Kai ran off after slapping me after Chloé got mad at me because we had differing opinions on how to handle anyone playing, and Jess fell through the lake yesterday and then wandered off when we weren’t looking and forgot her gun and I’m really worried about her because it’s too cold and she’s already cold! I think one of them went this way!”

Marshall said this in about twenty seconds, the words blurring together as he shouted them. The gas mask, jiggling up and down as he continued jogging on the spot, slipped off his head but he caught it and strapped it back on.

“...How are you?” he finished after the briefest silence, during which he contemplated that perhaps he should have kept about half of that to himself.

"Wait, wait, um- I'm really glad you're okay, and we're safe, and we're not- playing-" Iris struggled to keep up with Marshall's deluge of words. This was how it always was with him, but she'd never quite gotten the hang of responding at the same speed despite how long they had known each other.

"Oh, Chloé! I'm so glad she's okay." It took her until she said the words herself to fully process them, but real, tangible relief watched over her once she had. "But- no, we haven't seen anyone today. And Kai slapped you?"

Iris had to pause to flip through her mental catalogue of classmates. Kai wasn't a common name, and she quickly put a face to it, but it wasn't a face she knew well. "I'm- sorry you got attacked. I did too, on the first day. June shoved me down some stairs." She winced at recounting it again and decided not to go over the story in detail this time. She didn't want to have to do that with every new person they ran into.

"We haven't seen, um, Jazzy Jess. DJ Jazzy Jess. But we're heading to the research station to get more people together too! Richard has a plan." Iris squeezed Richard's hand to punctuate her sentence, turning to look at him for affirmation. Two plans wasn't necessarily better than one, but the fact that both Chloé and Richard had started formulating plans on their own seemed promising. For the first time that day, she started feeling actually hopeful.

((Darryl Smith Jr. continued from 36 Chambers))

Darryl's sprint had rapidly slowed to a jog and then a walk once he was happy he had made it far enough away from the research station. He had turned and checked behind him a couple of times to make sure Letitia wasn't outside aiming at him but he couldn't spot her, and no bullets whistled past his head or embedded themselves in his brain so that was a win. After walking for a while Darryl assessed his situation, he was out in the middle of a field of snow, the tree line, he had thought that the treeline was closer than it was and assumed that he just needed to crest a small hill but what he thought was a hill was only a small bump in a great white expanse.

Not ideal. He knew he would reach the trees within good time, but he had blown himself up running at a full sprint, so he hoped no one suddenly burst out of a hiding place nearby. He also had the other consideration of finding some shelter for the evening. He wasn't cold following his run, but he knew that as the sun went down the situation would become a far dicier prospect. But again, he could reach the trees first and then start to think about that. His eyes scanned the snow around him looking for any telltale drops of red that would make Joan's passage clear but nothing was immediately visible. He sighed and scratched behind his ear. There was little chance of him finding her again.

So he went back to walking and after a few more minutes he heard someone's loud voice and turned to his left. He said someone's loud voice, but it was Marshall's because of course it was Marshall, only one person sounded like that. Regardless when Darryl turned to look he saw a group of three people, just in the distance, partially obscured by another crest of snow. He stood and considered his options before shrugging to himself and taking a few steps closer to the trio. As he did so their features came into clearer view and he saw the glowing orange hair of his best friend.

His steps sped up as he moved closer.

"Yo," He breathed starting to smile and laugh as he sped up. The second time he spoke he was shouting with happiness.

"Yo!"

It was hard for Richard to hide the uncertainty on his face as Marshall ranted and raved and rambled on and on. There was a certain unhinged enthusiasm to the way West spoke that was easier to deal with at home than it was in this life-or-death situation. Chloe having her own idea and plan also gave Dickie pause. Chloe was smart, able, and intelligent—but she was an idealist. How would she have wanted to deal with “players”? What did that even mean? But, even below his uncertainty Richard felt relief. Chloe and West and the other student council members were the ones he had been searching for. Now he had found two and was closer to finding a third. Dicky had only wanted to see a few others before he had wanted to see Chloe.

He knew in his heart and core that there was something simpler and selfish motivating his desire to see the Class President. Iris squeezed his hand and spoke up and about his plan and sold Marshall on his convictions. Big Dick felt himself grow sturdy and strong.

“Yeah,” he began finding his voice, “the plan isn’t that different from yous and Miss Prez’s,” blue eyes revealed a blazing fire, “find my people, help as many as I can for as long as I ca—"

Dicky was interrupted by a familiar voice. He felt himself pull away from Iris’ grip and his feet move before his brain could force the steps. He bounced and stepped quick and clumsily through the snow like an English Bulldog on a freshly waxed floor. Richard’s boyishness won out over his boisterousness. Sturdier and stronger. No longer so uncertain. His best friend was here—Darryl was here! No longer did Dick have to rely on Dick alone to make judgements or be brave. In the ways Dicky was stubborn, Darryl was smart. Richard was captain of the perennial loser basketball team because he never gave up, Darryl had never joined the team because he didn’t fight battles he couldn’t win. Dick needed that wisdom, just as much as he thought Darryl relied on his big-dumb heart.

“Yo! Bro! Yooooooo!”

Only capable of producing teenage exclamations and grunts and hoots and hollers he reached his friend and nearly tackled him before he lifted Darryl up off the ground in a comical bear hug.

“Oh, I didn’t get attacked! Kai was just upset. You got shoved down the stairs? Are you okay? Did you injure yourself? I’ve got a—no, wait, my kit’s back at the house.”

Marshall heard the start of Richard’s plan. He couldn’t pretend that ‘find my people’ worried him in the same way as how Chloe had gone from ‘I’m going to save everyone’ to narrowing her focus within a day, but he’d only had time for the briefest flash of doubt before he heard ‘help as many as I can.’ Not even enough time to formulate his thoughts enough to ask more details.

Darryl’s arrival derailed the conversation, which was not an unusual occurrence with him. Marshall didn’t like Darryl much at the best of times. Darryl seemed to enjoy winding Marshall up, and the fact that it was too regular to be accidental just made Marshall more annoyed. Any conversation between them was liable to end in shouting, at least from Marshall’s end.

But these were the worst of times, and Marshall would take an alive and irritating Darryl over a dead Darryl. So Marshall beamed when he ran up, and when Richard caught him in one huge hug.

This was one more person. Any person – every person – was good. If he could just find Jess and Kai--

As Richard and Darryl reunited, despite the grin of his face Marshall turned away to start scanning the snow again, shifting from foot to foot as he did so. His impatience was clear in his feet if not his face.

But it was okay to give them a moment. ...Maybe. He hoped that moment wouldn’t be life or death for someone else.

“Okay homie, goddamn,” Darryl laughed as he extricated himself from Big Dick’s big grip and got his feet back onto solid snow. “Good to see you too, shit.” Darryl continued smiling as for a brief moment everything was alright. They were alright.

He continued to chuckle to himself as he took stock of Dicks companions, Iris who was cool and he knew Dick was friends with, which meant if he was with her she was probably trustworthy and then Marshall who was as loud as a foghorn and about as easy to set off as one. You could pull his strings easily enough and it had been a fun game of Darryl’s to see just how loud he could make the guy get.

But at that moment it wasn’t at the forefront of his mind, he was more overwhelmed with the joy of the moment. He’d found his best friend so things didn’t seem as dark as they had that morning with Letitia. Now that he had Dick by his side he felt revitalised, it was someone he could rely on. He never had to worry about Richard turning a gun on him if they disagreed on how to proceed. He also wouldn’t try and rob random people for no reason, which wasn’t something Darryl wanted to be involved in. All in all it looked like running far away from the crazy girl with the gun had turned out to be the best decision he’d made. What a surprise.

“What’re y’all doing out here anyway?” He asked once his excitement had died down.

“Tryin’ to stay outta people’s ways, tryin’ to keep movin’ and stay warm,” Richard’s grin remained permanent, but his voice became serious, “tryin’ to find your ass and maybe, just, maybe, tryin’ to find a way to save our class.”

They elected him to be a leader…that meant Big Dick had to lead.

Blue eyes turned to Marshall and Iris and smiled that politician’s smile. A well-rehearsed and practiced smile but ultimately one that stopped just before the eyes. The unrestrained joy he had felt at Darryl’s arrival subsided and the storm inside settled. Darryl’s presence brought a confidence and a truth to the top of Dick’s head. An unspoken promise made, one boy to another. You got my back—I got your back; you go to war—we go to war together.

“Let’s get outta here.”

It was hard to stop people who saw something. All Dick saw at this moment was success. All Dicky could think about was stacking more wins. He didn’t care if the glass was half full or half empty, the only thing that mattered was water on the tongue.

“We’ve run into some good luck; I don’t plan to waste it.”




What came next wasn’t success.

What came next was struggle.

What came next was a waste.

The Snowfield was vast and massive and hard to cross. The ground was uneven, and dips came quickly. Dicky had been skipping-to-his-Lou, sure in his vision and courageous about what lied ahead. They had elected him to lead and with his allies by his side, Richard finally felt the part. Big Dick felt in charge. There was a degree of ego in declaring yourself to be a leader. The idea that you knew what was best and what was best for others. That was the reality of any exercise of ego…

It didn’t end with you being fatigued; it ended with you being humbled.

It came in the form of a rolled ankle and a buckling knee. Dick’s humbling took him to the ground, and he nearly dragged Iris along with him, but ultimately, he let go of her hand in favor of a fistful of sleet. He rolled and writhed in the snow unable to lift his own mass up and having to rely on the strength of Darryl and Marshall together to get him off the ground. In the real-world Dicky hyper compensated being the short, chubby kid by involving himself in athletics. He didn’t let his size get in the way of his style. He felt the shame in his weight and his shortcomings in this instance. It radiated in his heart and burned as bright as the thousands of invisible needles that buzzed from his right ankle up his shin and to his right knee.

He felt slow, he felt pathetic, he felt weak. A fat fuck with a wet ass struggling in the snow like a turtle on his back.

Their pace was affected almost immediately. Dicky could barely stand or step and putting his weight on Darryl’s shoulder had an obvious strain on his friend. They managed to almost make it to the edge of the field before the sun began to slowly fade away. Dick told everybody to stop, that it was better for them to set up camp now. He had packed his bag with scraps of firewood gathered the day before. He choked down ibuprofen, he used his boy scout training and started a fire with little effort or challenge for the second time. They took different shivering sleepless shifts. Sharing stories of struggle and strife and giving warning and description to previously known peers but now mysterious, murderous villains. Slowly, silently and snowily the day turned to night and the night turned to day.

The stillness was interrupted by the announcements declaration. Dick listened in silence. At the moment he was too exhausted for expression.