Survival Of The Fittest

((Kai Rosado-Prince continued from Floyd’s Tomb))

The palms of Kai’s gloves were stained. Even a day after he’d spent what felt like hours soaking them in the snow, Dominiqua’s blood wouldn’t totally wash out.

After crawling back out of the cave and leaving Dominiqua and Mallory, Kai had spent most of the rest of the day wandering in a daze. He was constantly aware of the faint wetness on his palms. It felt like it lingered even after his gloves had finally dried.

He had no idea how to even parse what had happened. How quickly DeMarcus had snapped. Kai dragging Mallory’s body around would have looked bad in the first moment, yes, but- he had just been standing there. It seemed like DeMarcus had immediately jumped to saying the most insane things that came to mind, and for what? For what reason?

Had he really just wanted any excuse to shoot somebody?

Kai wasn’t getting numb to the announcements. He hadn’t been blind to the reality of what was happening before, and he wasn’t now. He just felt… beaten down, he guessed. Kitty had been on there again. Other people who had killed once were continuing to kill. New people kept cropping up. That was the way it always went, he guessed.

Maybe it was a wonder that everyone didn’t go crazy sooner.

There had been additional information this time, though. A particular place. Kai had retreated to the woods again yesterday, and now he found himself backtracking once more. Back to the town this time. The thought of being so close to Chloe’s base of operations made him uneasy, but…

Kai kept a steady hold on the umbrella as he weaved through the trees, taking care to not let it catch on things. Carrying it over his shoulder as he wandered had developed into an odd sense of routine and comfort. He barely had any belongings left with him, but this was his. He’d heard the saying somewhere that humans would pack bond with literally anything, given the chance. That seemed true now.

He didn’t have a direct path back to the town in mind. Just a direction. He hadn’t seen anyone since leaving the cave. Security in solitude. So when he broke through a denser patch of trees into a more open space and saw what looked like several figures standing in a row, he immediately tensed.

A few seconds more revealed that only one of the figures was actually moving. Kai paused a little longer, watching it like- well, any number of animals coming across a strange human. Or vice versa. Then he finished closing the distance.

“What… are you doing?”

((Salem Fox continued from do you like Phil Collins))

Salem didn’t react with any particular hurry; he’d heard Kai’s footsteps crunching through the snow, and he figured that if someone was trying to sneak up on him to put a bullet in the back of his head, they’d do a better job. He finished planting the last of a handful of pebbles into the front of the snowman’s head, pressing them carefully into the snow in a series of concentric circles.

“I think they call it landscaping. Or performance art.” He finally turned to Kai and shrugged. The snowman had been incomplete, so he was finishing it. All there was to it, really.

So, he’d heard Kitty’s name thrice more since their meeting. No particular surprise, though in his professional opinion (worth about 5 cents, just like Lucy’s psychiatric advice in Peanuts), she should slow her roll a little bit. Take some time to develop her technique, find some style. A little pizzazz, because you could only feel bad about stuff for so long, and she was really veering into the “self-fulfilling prophecy” category now.

Anyway, Kai looked like someone who had spent time mulling over those three more instances of Kitty’s name, or at least Salem was going to project that onto him. He looked deeply tired. Not running on empty yet, but like somebody who could use a bit of a bump. Too bad he was straight-edge, from what Salem heard.

“So you’re probably heading to town, I guess? To the bar I mean.”

Kai initially just blinked in response. Salem had always been kind of an enigma to him. He seemed about as different from Cali as Kitty and Ash, as far as siblings were concerned. There was at least some sort of affection between him and Cali, though. Kai didn’t talk to Salem much, but he got the sense that Salem cared about his sister for more than just obligation. That was enough to hold him in slightly higher esteem than Ash. Bad taste in women aside.

If he was going to be kind of rude about things, it didn’t seem like Salem had good taste in many things, actually. But maybe that was a kettle-black situation.

“...I was thinking of heading there,” he eventually confirmed. Half-hearted confirmation, at least. Maybe he wasn’t sure yet, despite his previous conviction. Maybe he just didn’t want to be followed.

Ride-or-die, like Salem had said to Kitty. Jury was out on how much of a percentage of each there would end up being. He nodded to Kai in a halfway-competent fakery of understanding.

Honestly? He’d thought about it his fair share over the past day, and he figured he didn’t want to run into her again. He’d tempted fate enough.

When he thought back about all of the conversations he’d had on the island so far, there was always just an unfortunate through-line of reality there. Salem wasn’t feeling it with Kai yet, but probably he would. The problem with everyone around you having ambitions was that it made you have to think about whether you had any.

“What’re you gonna say to her?”

Kai frowned. To be honest, half of what Salem said at any given time was something he didn’t really understand. A lot of it was memes that were baffling even with context. Sometimes it was just stuff like this.

He didn’t have to ask for clarification, so he didn’t offer any either. “I don’t know.”

Salem tilted his head slightly. It didn’t seem like much of a lie, which was maybe a little sadder than building a snowman all by your lonesome on murder island. His close brush with murderous women hadn’t really instilled a new lease on life in him so far, and Kai was kind of being more of a limp noodle than murderous. He was awkward around people most of the time though, and it wasn’t like the ever-present threat of death and nonexistence and people he knew killing and dying had done Salem’s social skills a lot of favors either.

He shrugged, and brushed his hands over the pocket of his jacket where he’d stowed his gun.

After a moment’s pause, he held up one hand, palm out to indicate a lack of immediate drastic action from Kai, and then withdrew the pistol.

He spun it around his fingers a couple times (no slipping and sad, wet splat into the snow, which was probably his finest success in the past few days, being honest) and stopped the movement with his fingers clenched tightly around the barrel. Wordlessly, he held the grip of the gun out to Kai and raised an eyebrow.

Kai’s shoulders tensed as soon as Salem revealed the gun. The lack of any explanation beyond the hand asking him to pause didn’t help. He tightened his grip on the umbrella, but he was tensed to take a step back, not closer.

He did step back when Salem offered him the gun.

Kai glanced from the gun to Salem’s face a few times. Waited for the reasoning, the question- something. It didn’t come. Just a quizzical look. Expectant, maybe.

“I don’t- want that.” Don’t want to think about what you’re suggesting, or offering.

It had been a promise that was easy enough to make at the time, that he’d take himself out if things came down to himself and Kitty. If it did get to that, Salem figured maybe he’d be a new person in a few hours or days. Lots of people were dying, and lots more were going to die, so the market on some of the real niche personalities was going to be depleted, and vulture culture was in.

“Oh, I wasn’t gonna say who you had to use it on, or anything. Kitty was pretty down on herself when I saw her the other day and scared more people were going to come after her, and you know, she’s probably right.” Another shrug; he loosened his grip on the barrel of the pistol so that it was more balanced on his fingers, and the movement made it sway there. “She might feel better if you had it. Like I guess she’s not going to be hurting for firepower now, but at least she’d know you were pulling your own weight?”

What was he saying? Honestly just anything that came to mind. Kai wasn’t an open book so much as one Salem had never been especially interested in reading, and was generally about as engaging as the former tree that the book was printed on. Great if you are a particular fan of one tree, bad conversationalist. Salem liked planning, but he had a bad habit of trying to plan while he was also doing, which was why he’d decided to chat up Janice five minutes after she slit a girl’s throat.

Salem’s words were a hell of a thing to process all at once. He latched onto the thing that mattered most, focusing on Salem’s face instead of the still outstretched gun.

“When did you see her? How was she?”

Why aren’t you asking me the same thing about your sister or your girlfriend? Why are you standing here playing games?

“Two days ago. After Mitch.” Kai didn’t manage to conceal a wince in the face of Salem’s improvised method of timekeeping, and Salem’s nod this time hit the right note of sympathetic understanding. You know, aside from the gun, and the rest.

“I mean, the second thing is kind of a stupid question. No offense.” He guessed that Kai genuinely wanted to know and wasn’t asking in the sense that you asked about your second cousin’s family when you ran into them at Target. So in that sense, he was sort of obligated to actually answer, at least by social convention.

“She wasn’t doing too hot. Looked beat up, but was mostly beating herself up, you feel me? Lots of talk about how she could have done stuff differently, but she also thought it was just going to keep happening. All that jazz.” Salem flapped one hand side to side in a movement that could have been half a jazz hands and could have just been a very localized seizure.

The more Salem talked, the tighter the uneasy knots in Kai’s stomach twisted. He couldn’t understand how Salem could be so- cavalier about everything.

“And what did you say to her?”

Salem shrugged again. Kai pressed his lips together. Deliberated for a moment, and then didn’t press.

He had a way to find out what had really happened there.

“I saw Ash on the first day,” he said instead. “I’m- not going to look for her again. I guess she’s doing okay.” He felt like he should mention Cali. Pull at least a little on the thread of why she hadn’t been the first thing Salem brought up.

He had no idea what was going to provoke Salem when he was already acting so weird, though, and the gun was still very visible. Even the faint thought of repeating yesterday had him tasting bile.

“What are you going to do from here?” He asked finally.

“How do you prove you’re alive?”

“Wh-what?”

Salem shrugged, like that in itself was an answer. The thing with Kai was that he hit different than everyone else Salem had encountered so far. All of them, even Kitty, wanted to be part of human society, so instinct or maybe his own wants compelled him to act like he belonged among them. Tree man made it easier to be a little honest, though honesty in general wasn’t exactly on Salem’s list of virtues.

“Anyway. It’s probably best for everyone that Ash and I don’t run into each other. But if you do see her again, tell her I said hi.” He shrugged. “You know how it is.”

At this point, Kai was certain that he didn’t know at all, but he nodded stiffly. It wasn’t an explicit goodbye, but Salem turned away from him to move a few paces from the snowman, severing the invisible thread of conversation linking them.

Kai took the hint and took a couple of steps back from him, before turning away and taking his leave. Maybe he walked away a little faster than he normally would have otherwise.