Survival Of The Fittest

((Salem Fox continued from Permian))

"...but they fill our hearts with so much, so much love..."

Salem's voice floated up into the cup of the bell hanging above his head, and the faintest echo reflected back at him. Revisiting the church during the day had made him aware of the bell tower ladder just sitting there apparently unused, so he'd crawled up to take a look. He'd been surprised to find the small space at the top completely unoccupied; it seemed like the perfect place to hide away from the rest of the island, if you were into that, and failing that it at least seemed like prime real estate to have a convenient accident. Those were popular lately, from the sound of things.

But it had been empty, so Salem had invoked the law of "finders keepers" and made himself at home for the time being. It was real tiny house hours, but unlike a converted storage container, the tower at least had windows. He'd just brushed away the snow that had blown in and laid back, resting his head on his bag and kicking his feet up on one of the wooden beams that guarded three sides of the ladder opening.

"Too many cooks, too many cooks may spoil the broth... hm, is that how it goes?"

His faint echo didn't offer any clarification.

As he sang and muttered softly to himself, he twisted a length of barbed wire in his hands.

Adam trudged through the snow, his powdery white boots heavier than ever. It was a steady pace, wasn't it? His mind was racing so much that the days just flew by without him having to get his hands dirty (just a little bit dirty with the whole bloody handprints thing to fuck with others). As for getting a kill, he knew the right time would come. It had to. He was Adam fucking Lader, the guy who could get through shit like this in his own way.

So far so good, no? The others were doing the work for him and he was going to figure out the rest on the last day. One by one, they were falling and building him a bridge across the sea. The days kept feeling shorter and blurred together.

((Adam Lader continued from WALK THROUGH THE DOORS AND I’M GOOD))

The town was his cocoon.

Adam had stayed around since leaving the now familiar building in front of him. The small hill gave a good view over the streets below whenever the weather remained calm.

It would take him another moment to notice and register Salem's voice.

Adam looked up at the bell tower looming over him, his messy head tilted.

"Y......"

Who? The shadows? No.

"YOU CAN'T FUCKING SING! BUT NICE TRY!"

Shu had killed his girlfriend on the first day. Gave her a necklace of barbed wire and made sure it was the last gift he ever gave her. Salem had remembered that one even as other names and causes of death blurred together with the passage of time, because of how brutal it had sounded.

He hadn't asked Shu about it yesterday. For all that he was was willing, even eager to pry, he hadn't wanted to know if it was regret that drove Shu to the point that Salem had found him at.

If he pulled the trigger on himself, it wasn't going to be out of regret.

He was turning the barbed wire over in his hands, twisting and untwisting it until it got too kinked up and the metal started to weaken, as he mulled that over. It was kind of zen, the way the wire warmed in his fingers in contrast to the cold wind blowing through the tower's open windows.

Adam's shout, rocketed up to him with the help of acoustics, shattered the zen completely and had Salem jerk upright in surprise, heart leaping into his throat. His fist reflexively closed around the length of barbed wire, and he almost yelped as one of the spikes pierced his palm. If the tower was smaller, he'd probably have quite literally gotten his bell rung by knocking his skull into the church bell's rusted clapper.

"Jesus Christ," he said aloud, now aware how far down his voice was carrying. "Trying to jump scare me to death? Freddy Fazbear, is that you?" There was still the slightest waver in his voice from the sudden shock, but he thought that the distance and echoing nature of the surroundings masked it.

"There's no way you made it far enough into that game to meet the Freddy Fazbear."

But Adam wasn’t really sure about the timing, he just always looked like the final boss.

Adam’s eyes were glued to the top while he froze in his steps before he continued. Once the ladder was in his clear sight, the one that had piqued his interest before, he stopped again. He actually took a step back. A certain shakiness reached his chest, making him feel like he was losing all sense of what was real. He dropped the weight of his bag but kept his sword and smoke grenade on him.

The short silence was palpable.

“How’s the view up there?”

His voice sounded raspy, unusual.

Adam was right about that, at least; Salem had never actually played Five Nights at Freddy's or any of its five million sequels, spin-offs, or fangames. It was just another one of those cultural phenomena that he watched with fascination from afar without really getting it. He'd gotten hours more entertainment out of watching its fandom explode, proliferate, turn on each other, and then collapse into a pile of toxic sludge over the course of a couple years than he'd ever gotten out of watching people actually play the games and fake scream for their Twitch chat.

He leaned over just enough to look down the ladder, in time to see Adam back away from it, perhaps expecting a potshot from on high. Fortunately for him, Salem was occupied with his bleeding hand. He dropped the twisted piece of barbed wire and opened his bag to root around for some bandages.

"Looks like snow and bird shit. Some other roofs. The view from the mountain is better."

Salem narrowly avoided sticking his fingers in the Boston creme pie that had been slowly decomposing in its wrapping for several days and grimaced. It had stayed somewhat frozen, but he wasn't going to chance eating it now. He didn't want to waste it either, though. He'd been carrying it too long to just throw it away without some kind of payoff.

Shaking his head and refocusing, he grabbed a wad of gauze from his first-aid kit and squeezed it in his palm to staunch the bleeding. "You don't sound so good. What have you been up to? I was hoping to have heard you on the announcement by now."

Adam thought he saw a hint of Salem's platinum blond hair when he looked up again. He didn't know how spacious or not it was up there, but at least he knew he was close to the ladder just like Adam was drawn to it as if pulled in by a siren.

“I sound just fine but thank you for your concern,” he said with more firmness this time, validity fluctuating. “I hope you’re enjoying the bird shit.” It was the usual on a day like this, you know; Adam was hungry, but it had turned into the type of abdominal pain and cramps that were just kind of there but not strong enough to be excruciating. He also missed his memory foam mattress.

“I actually stayed in here for a while. I checked out the town and now I’m back. I’m saving my energy is what I’m doing. I knew you’d say that.... I heard you’ve been busy, okay.”

The khanda clung against the ladder.

“You won’t hear my name on the announcement because maybe I want you to be my first. Just like old times," he teased.

"Come to see if I'm on the rebound already?" Salem fumbled with a bandaid wrapper before finally peeling it open and managing to secure it on his injured hand.

"...I'm kind of disappointed, to be honest. There's not a lot of people left. You've been wasting time." Unless he was just waiting for Salem to fall back into his lap. Even if that was the case, Salem was still up here, and Adam was down there, and the sheriff was nowhere to be found. Salem wasn't about to climb down and make things that easy for him.

"Also, we both know I wasn't your first time, you skank."

(Did people say "skank" anymore? Maybe not, it was very Mean Girls-core, and he couldn't remember anyone unironically using it in recent memory. Salem just liked the way it sounded, and "slut" and "whore" were practically terms of endearment in this day and age.)

“Believe it or not!" he spouted while his weapon made more noise against the ladder. "Not like you care….You didn’t last long enough anyways, so I barely remember."

Adam's tone held a simmering anger that was difficult to ignore. He forced himself to take deeper breaths, unnoticeable, to not feel dizzy. Not from anger but…. everything.

"Come down. Fight me, pussy. Come down and fight me. Who's wasting time now?"

"Still you," Salem sing-songed down the ladder. "In case you haven't noticed, I have the high ground, so really if you think about it, I've already won this fight."

He picked a stray, slightly soggy chip out of the assortment of junk in his bag and flicked it over the edge of the tower platform. "I told you before. You want me that badly? Come up and get me. Here, I'll sweeten the deal for you."

Salem pulled the Mauser from his coat pocket and fiddled with the magazine until he pulled it loose. Then he tossed the empty gun over the side after the chip, silently counting the seconds until it either clattered to the floor or bounced off Adam's skull.

"That makes us a little more even, right?"

As the verbal sparring continued, it was clear that their history was filled with tension and unresolved emotions. Adam flinched, shielding his head with his flat palm up (the trauma from the snowball was enough). The sight of the Mauser being tossed down was unexpected, and he watched it with a mix of astonishment and curiosity. There was more at stake here than just their exchange of taunts. Salem's sing-song response grated on his nerves, and Adam had to consciously remind himself to stay focused.

“I’m not fucking stupid.”

He knew that the high ground provided an advantage, but he wasn't one to back down now. Maybe he had been wasting time, just maybe.

“Didn’t you get a nice gift for being an especially good boy?” The best kill award. “Am I gonna have to find out?”

Salem wordlessly picked up the unloaded rifle and dropped it over the edge, head tilted to again listen to the heavier thud of it landing.

"I don't have the other gun anymore. I left that one with somebody else."

His pulse had picked up. It was the same odd sort of not-quite-anxiety, an excitement and apprehension all in one. He retreated back from the very top of the ladder and sat on his knees next to his bag. The handle of the ice axe peeked out from where he'd disturbed it while rummaging around; the loop of barbed wire he'd been playing with sat to the side, one of its points still glistening red with Salem's blood.

Maybe Adam wasn't stupid, but Salem technically hadn't lied. No more guns; that just didn't necessarily mean that he was unarmed.

"You wanna try your luck and see if you can win a prize too? Where's that go-getter grindset? You're really letting me down here, you know - but I guess that's nothing new for you."

There was the other thud.

Each of Salem's words pushed Adam more towards the edge. This was his chance, this was it. Adam didn't think that Salem would literally drop his guns. He could see they were empty.

Adam put the khanda sword down on top of his bag and he did it quickly. It may be light in weight but he needed both of his hands to climb up. He didn't want it.

"You're pretty funny, you know, Salem? Funny!" Adam's voice dripped with sarcasm and a faint crack at the end.

It was time to take the crown, time to put the vague emotions aside and eliminate—just eliminate. He took on the leap and swore, wishing they’d pretend it forever.

He then hurried up, step by step, readying what was left in his pocket: the purple smoke grenade.

The break in Adam's voice reminded Salem of Shu again. He gritted his teeth and breathed through them. Maybe it was just that somewhere in the past, they'd cared about each other somehow, like Shu and Kiera supposedly cared about each other. All of that was past tense. It was over.

He was focused on the top of the ladder, one hand resting on the bag with his fingertips on the handle of the axe. To his surprise, it wasn't Adam's head that came into view; instead, a small, worryingly familiar cylinder was tossed lightly over the edge, hitting the floor with a small metallic thunk that was almost lost in the noise of Adam ascending the ladder. It rolled towards Salem as he gathered himself up, mind racing on whether or not he should be trying to scramble away or whether that would be pointless, and came to a stop against his knee.

The end of the cylinder popped off, like nothing so much as one of those cheap confetti party poppers, and Salem's vision erupted into violet smoke.

He did the stupid thing and inhaled in surprise, and then he was blind and choking. His right arm flailed in front of him, trying to clear the smoke even a little bit; the fingers of the left hand closed around empty air as he missed the ice axe entirely in his sudden spastic dance. He scooted back another little bit, coughing and squinting through the smoke, trying to determine if Adam's shape had loomed into view yet at the ladder.

He thought he saw. He thought he did. His fingertips caught something metal again, but not the axe.

It wasn't quite fair to say that Salem had no choice, but he didn't want to try fighting Adam off with his bare hands when he didn't know what else Adam was packing now. Two could play the game he'd been playing, and he was almost glad to be reminded of it.

Almost.

Salem grabbed the loop of barbed wire, grasped it in both hands - tried his best to grasp it only between the barbs but there was a sinking feeling in the back of his throat about that - and when he was certain that he saw Adam's head and shoulders rising above the edge of the platform, he lunged.

Adam's instincts kicked in as he registered Salem's attack, and he tried to react when he could barely make out his silhouette.

The blinding burst of purple smoke enveloped them.

He really wasn’t stupid, alright, but he hadn’t anticipated how the smoke would affect him in the same way it did others. Knowing it was coming had only granted him a momentary advantage, and it wasn't helping now. The acrid scent filled his nose and he could taste it on his tongue with every heavy breath he took. The color didn't match exactly with Adam's hair, as Fitz had remarked, but it was within the same range. He liked that it was.

There wasn’t much space up there. Adam was up on one knee on the ledge when Salem was suddenly in front of him, hidden in the obscurity of the grenade's smokescreen. Adam moved with desperate swiftness when he jumped to the left to dodge him, but their bodies collided anyway.

Next? Choke the shit out of him perhaps, throw him over the edge maybe, wait for the bell to do its part and have it engulf both of them with its weight possibly.

Adam shot his arm and fist upward to strike Salem anywhere at all. His heaves and groans carried a mix of frustration and it wasn’t until he felt something sharp poke his hand that panic surged through him.

Adam may have sounded bad, but he was still fast; he'd hauled himself up onto the ledge with Salem before they made contact. Their arms collided somewhere in the middle, and Salem felt the barbed wire catch on fabric or skin or something, but only momentarily.

There had been a fleeing moment where it had seemed like this would be easy, but Adam wouldn't be still. Getting the barbed wire around his neck like this was like trying to lasso an angry cat. They slapped mostly uselessly at each other in their confused tangle for a few seconds before Adam managed to make enough distance between them in the cramped space to pull back and swing again, this time catching Salem solidly in the ribs.

"Guh-" Salem recoiled again, but there was nowhere to go. Walls behind him, Adam in front, and the only real way out was down.

He ground his teeth so hard he thought they might crack, and then he stopped bothering with trying to aim so much and instead lunged forward again to rake the length of barbed wire across Adam's face.