Survival Of The Fittest

Every time she got into a fight, win or lose, there was an adrenaline spike. Her body’s way of declaring a state of emergency, telling her leg that its aches and pains would be addressed in due time, but right now those muscles were needed for the war effort. It wasn’t a bad setup, all things considered. It meant that when the crap hit the fan, Juanita had at least a few seconds’ worth of movement where she’d be too numb to feel whatever damage she was doing to herseslf. But there was a cost. The bill came due. You couldn’t just punch a shotgun stock into your shoulder blade and donkey-kick a guy’s leg out from under him and expect that your body would shrug it off.

Usually it took a while for the adrenaline to wear off. A few seconds of power, enough time for the situation to calm down, for things to settle a bit. But not this time. This time, she felt the pain within a few steps of abandoning Fred to his fate. Her shoulder stiffening, the thick pain of a bruise welling up where the stock had slammed into her. Little lightning bolts in the ankle of her good leg, where she’d crushed Fred’s injury to bring him into stabbing range. And, of courses, the bassline of the pain symphony, ever-present since she’d woken up, was her knee. She gritted her teeth and kept going, her boots pounding into the snow. No zigging or zagging – her leg couldn’t handle that kind of lateral movement, not right now, so she’d have to settle for putting distance between her and DeMarcus.

She didn’t hear anything. No bullets, no shouts. Maybe he wasn’t out there, maybe he - Her foot caught something under the snow. A root, a branch, something solid. She tripped forward, reached for a branch to break her fall – and missed. Hit the ground shoulder-first, plunging into the snow with a muffled whump. She groaned, and flopped onto her back. A bunch of blaring red alerts were going off in the control center of her brain. Getting up was gonna take a minute.

She took a few deep breaths, clutching the parachute knife to her chest. It wouldn’t do much to ward off an attack, especially from a gun. But it was marginally better than nothing.

There was no sound. Snow drifted down from the dark grey underbelly of the clouds. Just her and the silent void, trees and a sky strewn with little white dots. If DeMarcus was out there, he was taking his time. Which… probably meant that DeMarcus wasn’t out there at all. Call the guy a lot of things, but silent was never gonna be one of them, even out here.

She lay back, and looked up at the sky. When she was a kid, she used to lie like this in the snow. She’d imagine that the white specks were stars, and she was flying into hyperspace like they did in old video games. She remembered thinking that the space bar on her computer was called that because it was the button you used to shoot the blasters on your little pixelated spaceship. She could practically hear the old scotchy electronic noises that the games would make. Pew pew pew, blam blam blam. Blowing up all of the alien ships.

You never thought about who was flying those ships. Whether they had families. Whether they were scared. You just went on killing them, blowing up their ships with them inside, because you were the hero, and they were bad and you were good. They had to be bad, because why else would you be killing them?

It was cold. Snow was getting down her neck, filling up her hood. Seeping into the butt of her pajama pants. Colm would give her crap about getting her clothes wet again, and the last thing she wanted was another one of those self-righteous looks from him.

She hauled herself upright. Had to crawl to a nearby tree to do it properly, because the knee brace made untangling her limbs a little extra problematic. She dusted the snow off of herself as best she could, and then made her way back to the scene, following the hollows left by her past self.

It didn’t take her long to get back. She hadn’t run nearly as far as she’d thought she had. Good thing DeMarcus hadn’t been there, or she’d probably have been toas-

“GAAH!”

The sight of Fred's gangly corpse threw her for a loop. Someone had hung him up on a tree with his arms hooked around two low-hanging branches, as if to create some kind of nauseating scarecrow. Or maybe it was meant as a lure? Had DeMarcus done this? No, wait... there were only Fred's footprints and her own, and those were already partly filled in. Her gun was still there, too, right where she'd dropped it. Nobody else had been here, which meant... She looked at the trail of blood, leading from her own footprints to the base of the tree. Fred hadn't died instantly. He'd staggered back against the tree and tried to pull himself up. Then he'd probably bled out, hanging there cold and alone.

Oh, God...

Nausea hit her, and she doubled over, retching. After two false starts, she coughed up some stomach acid and dry bread into the snow. She hung there, folded over, panting. A thin string of drool and bile ran down her lip.

This was different. This was... wrong. With Eden and John, it had been clear-cut self-defence. Self-defence prompted by aggression, sure, but they had both been actively trying to kill her when she'd cut them down. With Daniel, it had been mercy. He asked for it, pure and simple. She hadn't goaded him into it, the worst you could argue was that she hadn't done much (if anything) to talk him down off the ledge. But with Fred… Fred hadn't dived for the gun or tried to get her in a chokehold. He hadn't asked her to cut his throat - heck, he wanted to live badly enough to keep trying even with his throat cut open. The worst you could say was that there was a chance that DeMarcus was out there waiting to gun her down. But that was thin suspicion, paranoia. Clearly, DeMarcus wasn't out here. She'd gotten it wrong. She'd killed him for nothing.

No. No! Fred was bad. He was cruel, and cowardly. He was the villain, and she was the hero. The underdog.

She'd had to kill him. She’d killed him because she had to. Not because she wanted to. Because he was a jerk. Because his bullying and taunting and texting had put her through more pain than he ever could have imagined; him and his buddies has inflicted long-lasting, enduring pain that made his few seconds with a torn jugular look like a walk in the park. Because unlike Colm or the legion, he was someone who'd already burned any hope of trust or partnership. Yeah, that was why she'd done it. Those were… those were decent reasons. But they didn't do anything to loosen the knot of guilt in her stomach.

This is what you chose, Peg, said a voice in her ear. You said you'd go out there and you'd survive and you'd kill everybody who stood in your way. Did you really think that you'd always have a good excuse to make it all okay? That you'd always be able to pretend that you're the good guy? You chose this path, so you might as well accept it. I mean, damn, Peg. You stomped the crap out of his busted leg. You didn’t even think about it. You booted the guy right in your own weak spot? What do you think that means?

She shook her head, shutting up the voice. Coughed once and wiped the gunk from her lips with the back of her sleeve, once she'd found a bit that didn't have obvious bloodstains on it. All right. Clothes. She was here for clothes. First things first, she needed those jeans. She make her shaky-legged way over to Daniel's body. The shotgun blast hadn't done any damage to his pants that she could see, which meant that she just needed to... take them off.

A moment passed.

She hesitated, not sure how she was supposed to go about this, blocking-wise. Kneeling next to him would have been the optimal way, but that wasn't gonna be a great option with the brace. She could take it off, but then she'd get it all full of snow, and that wasn't a great plan either. In the end she settled for sort of sitting down next to him. And that's when the next challenge hit. She'd never taken off someone else's pants before, or at least she couldn't remember having ever done so. She just had to unbutton... no, unzip? Something about the act, the feeling of fumbling around with his pants, felt like she was doing something terrible, some forbidden act. He'd given her permission to shoot him and take his gun, but he hadn't given her permission for this.

She eventually got the pants unfastened, and then set about tugging them off. This, too, was difficult, with Daniel's dead weight trapping the fabric. It was like trying to pull a tablecloth out from under a heavy stone. By the time she finally got the jeans down around of his unresisting ankles, she'd worked up so much of a sweat that she almost felt like she no longer needed them. Only then did she realize that she hadn't taken his boots off, and thus couldn't get the pants free. She very nearly broke her personal vow against cursing at that point, but settled for shouting some angry gibberish before settling down to unlace them.

Finally, at long last, the jeans were free. She shook the snow out of them, and began the awkward process of putting them on over top of the pants she was currently wearing, removing one boot and balancing, socked foot in the chilly air, as she tried to pull the pant leg on. It took some false starts and several precipitously dangerous wobbles, but she eventually managed to get them on and zipped up. Warm legs, achieved! She wouldn't have to worry about freezing, for now at least. The cuffs were a bit low on her ankles, but she could roll them up when she got to the research station.

The gun was still sticking up out of the snow. Juanita hobbled over, and hefted it. It was heavy, as though being frozen in the snowstorm had somehow increased its weight. She retrieved Daniel's bag from where it had fallen nearby. Ammo rattled around as she picked it up. Well, she wouldn't be at risk of running out, at least. There was a manual, too. She stuffed that into her hoodie pocket. She could read it as she walked, maybe figure out if there was a way of firing the thing without maiming herself.

Juanita paused. Rolled the fabric of her sleeve between two fingers. The hoodie felt thin. Too thin to keep out the cold.

She looked down. Daniel's jacket was right out, because... well, because of the hole in it. Fred was wearing a hoodie that was largely undamaged, aside from the stains. Well... needs must. It was easier to get it off of him, because gravity did most of the work in pulling his arms out of the sleeves. She left him slumped at the base of the tree, head down. Like he had just nodded off. It left a better visual for any unfortunate passers-by, she thought.

Fully armed and layered up, she headed off towards the research station. She'd be a good while behind Colm, at this rate. But that'd be fine. He needed time to grieve. And she needed time to think how she was going to explain Fred's death before it came up on the morning announcements.

((Juanita Reid continued elsewhere))