Survival Of The Fittest

The body was cold.

After wandering from the frozen lake, Lara looked on her map to see what would be the best place to go. The mining town was close by, and she had yet to go there. Perhaps there would be something of use to find there. And so, she set off, making it to the town in a few hours time.

Unfortunately for her, the pitiful amount of sleep she'd gotten combined with the lack of nutrients she usually ate resulted in her being near-totally exhausted by the time she'd reached her destination. When she had reached the houses, she felt like she was going to collapse. So, she had picked out the closest house near her, not even bothering with the one with the door open, and made her way upstairs. When she saw that there was a bed, she almost wept with relief.

By the time she'd noticed the bed did not have any sheets or bedding, her shoes and socks were already removed. It was at that point she realized the closet was wide open. Huh. God, if she was this tired that she was missing very obvious details like this, then she absolutely needed the rest. She would be dead if things kept up like this.

Padding her way over to the closet, she saw bloodied sheets and pillowcases, with something resembling a finger poking out of the mess. Huh. Clearly it was a corpse. Someone had died here yesterday. The blood was too old to be a fresh kill. Gently, Lara grasped one of the sheets before pulling it off to reveal a face. Pulling it down further, it revealed a clean slash across her throat.

Lara let go of the sheet. So this is what a dead body looked like. She had seen dead animals before, but this girl was no animal. She was a person. Was. Now though, she was just a limp collection of dead flesh, doomed to either decompose until her skeleton remained here or was cleaned up by the terrorists. Lara did not know whether the terrorists even did that or not.

Unsure of what to do, Lara simply sat back on the bed before poking the dead girl's face with her foot. The body was cold, that was for sure. She retracted her foot before sitting and staring at the corpse in front of her. She wasn't sure what to do. Her mind told her that she should probably move to another house that had non-ruined bedsheets, but her body could barely comply as it was.

She sat in this strange limbo, of knowing she should move but not doing so, and of seeing a corpse but not particularly caring. It was a sight she would probably have to get used to seeing. May as well desensitize herself to it now.

((Chloé Delacroix continued from Lines in the Sand))

She’d been going from house to house all morning, slowly and carefully at first, but by the tenth empty building, Chloé started to let her guard down. She was halfway up the stairs before she noticed that she wasn’t alone this time; through the doorway of the bedroom ahead she saw a seated figure facing away from her. Fumbling fingers wrapped around the gun in her pocket, but stayed there for now. Deep breathing, whispered prayers, quiet footsteps forward. She pressed herself against the wall to the side of the door. She hadn’t seen the face of the person inside, which hopefully meant she hadn’t been seen either. This meant she had a choice of how to reveal herself, but no information to help make that choice. Was it a friend, who’d react well to a friendly greeting? A stranger who should be approached more cautiously? Or one of the killers? What should she do then?

Her grip tightened. Chloé cast her mind back over the names, the causes of death. A lot of knife wounds. A couple of instances of blunt force trauma. It was only Mallory who’d been shot. So Jessica had a gun, but the other killers probably didn’t, or they’d have used them. Maybe the terrorists only gave them to people called Jess. The bedroom’s occupant looked too tall to be Jessica Romero, so they might have murderous intent or a gun but probably not both. Chloé had the latter, so she didn’t need the former. She could afford to start off friendly so long as she kept her distance. She knocked on the wall that separated them to get their attention whilst staying out of sight. Then she spoke, as calmly as she could.

“Hey. Who’s in there? Do you mind if I come in?”

A knock at the wall snapped Lara out of her dreary reverie and brought her to attention (well, as attentive as she could be at the moment). She had nothing to defend herself with other than her fists, and in her current state, they were not going to be particularly effective. She wasn't even sure if she could punch with her left arm, considering the damage Micah left on it.

When the voice rang out, it lowered Lara's guard, and a sense of strange familiarity the comfort that went along with it.

"Ah, Chloé, our class president."

A simple statement. An acknowledgement of a fact, nothing more.

"It's Lara Bullock. From the lacrosse team."

Ditto.

"..."

She stayed silent for a moment, trying to reason and rationalize with an exhausted brain. Really, Chloé should not be lowering her guard this much. While she was a familiar face, being the class president and all, those counted for little here. It wasn't like Lara knew her very well, either. While she wasn't a stranger, she was a next-to-stranger, someone who Lara knew, but the reciprocal was most likely false.

While pondering this, Lara stopped looking at the corpse and instead swung her body to face the door, scooting back on the bed so that her legs were extended and her feet were dangling over the foot of the bed. She sighed, then yawned.

"You can come in, if you'd like."

Lara Bullock. A lacrosse player- if only Marshall had been here instead, he might be able to connect better with her. To Chloé, Lara was someone somewhere in the middle; not a friend or a foe. Not yet, anyway. That went for either possibility. Giving the other girl the benefit of the doubt, Chloé turned into the room. Lara was facing towards her now, so they came face to face, Chloé’s sympathetic smile met by the other girl’s more neutral expression. It was hard to gauge what she was thinking. Desperate to avoid putting her foot in her mouth again, Chloé decided to start casual and figure out the best way to pitch her plan based on Lara’s response. She leant against the doorframe, kept her eyes fixed on the other girl’s countenance, head tilted, watching out for the slightest betrayal of emotion.

“How are you holding up?”

She looked rough. There were bruises on her arm and a smell of blood in the air. She looked exhausted, too. Chloé wondered if Lara had spent the night alone here. The room looked even less comfortable than the similar one she’d shared with her former allies, and all the other bedrooms she’d turned inside out that morning. There was no bedding, for one thing. It wouldn’t have been a good night’s sleep. Not that a sensible person would get much sleep without someone to keep watch-

Suddenly aware that she’d only assumed Lara was alone, Chloé’s eyes darted across the room towards whatever had held Lara’s attention before her arrival. It wasn’t anyone dangerous. It was worse.

“Oh.”

The moment Chloé noticed the corpse was immediately apparent to Lara. Her whole countenance changed. The small, strangled 'oh' that escaped her lips only served to further highlight it. All Lara could really do was yawn tiredly.

"The corpse is old. It was like that when I got here, around ten minutes ago."

Lara's head turned to face the body before she slowly pivoted it back to Chloé. It felt leaden.

"Unfortunately, I do not know who it is. Odds are someone whose name starts with J killed her."

All of this was stated in an extremely clinical and detached manner, as if Lara was merely an uninterested observer to this whole phenomenon rather than an active participant. Really, there was nothing to be quite fussed about. It was a body of a girl that Lara did not recognize and had no connection to. It was to be the fate of all but one person on the island. There was almost a 100% chance that she'd stumble upon another one during her time here.

Her body shifted as she scooted towards the foot of the bed, her legs bending at the knees as she swung them absentmindedly.

"If you actually are interested in how I'm holding up, I have been better," Lara stated, no trace of mirth in her voice. "As I'm sure you could tell, I am not running off of a sufficient amount of sleep."

“Tristana. And yeah, actually. Janice killed her.”

If the announcements hadn’t warned her that so many people had died, and that Tana was among them, Chloé would probably have been in shock. But this wasn’t the first dead body she’d seen- her grandparents had had open casket funerals. And since this death didn’t come as a surprise, there wasn’t much here to shock her. She felt sad for the dead girl of course, but she had since the announcement. There was nothing new to feel. Sighing, Chloé turned away from the morbid sight.

Where Chloé was unsurprised by the corpse, Lara seemed completely unaffected. That was useful information- there was no point trying to moralise or make emotional arguments about helping their friends. Instead, Chloé would take a rational angle, try and match Lara’s analytical coolness. Lara’s next sentence gave her an opening to do just that.

“If you need sleep, you should come with me. A couple of us set up a headquarters with some simple defences and stuff. You could get some rest without having to worry, and I could take a look at your injuries, if you’d like.”

To Chloé at least it sounded like the logical choice to make. If she could interest Lara in some short term protection, she might be able to gain her support for the longer term plan.

Hm. As much as Lara did not want to throw her lot in with a group, the offer of a good night's sleep was incredibly tempting. Not only that, but if they really had set up a system of defenses, then Lara would have a measure of protection other than her right fist. It was the most rationally sound option for her. Lara yawned.

"That sounds... reasonable. Alright, I will go with you. Let me gather my belongings."

Lara hopped off the bed, stumbling a little bit as her feet it the floor. She ambled over towards her shoes before slipping them on, and then walked over to her bag and scooped it up with her right arm. As she was doing these things, she pondered.

Although a group did offer her protection, she still had no weapon she could really defend herself with. While she knew she had a strong punch, her left arm certainly wouldn't be up for it, leaving her with only one punching arm. She needed a knife, or a one-handed gun, or something that could keep her safe.

Not only that, but groups were destined to fail. It was the logical conclusion. Only one person could win, after all, and so at some point, the group is either going to fall apart of betray each other. It wasn't a viable long-term solution to their problems. However, in the short-term, it provided everything Lara needed. That was it, though. Lara would probably depart with someone else's bag after the short-term was over.

She cast one final glance at Tana before moving over to her body. Silently, she shut the closet door. There probably wasn't any use searching the body. Janice probably took everything of value already. Her gaze turned back towards the class president.

"I am ready when you are."

Chloé waited patiently for Lara to collect her things and shut the door on Tana’s corpse. She vaguely wanted to give the girl a proper burial, but she figured there’d be no convincing Lara to carry her to the church or anything, and Chloé wasn’t strong enough to manage alone. Maybe they’d find someone else later on who’d help move Tana to a more dignified resting place. Chloé was glad that Janice had probably plundered her belongings, since she really didn’t feel like stealing from the dead. There wasn’t anything else worth taking from the room either. If they were going to gather lots of people in one building, they’d need more blankets and mattresses, but they could fetch blood-free ones from a closer house as and when they needed them. Lara was enough to have made this expedition worth it.

“Cool. Let’s go.”

((Chloé Delacroix and Lara Bullock continued in Wake-Up Call.))