Survival Of The Fittest

((Beatrice Briggs continued from She was like a sunflower))

“Down to the wire,” the voice had said.

How many people - how many friends - were still alive, she wondered, for everything to now be down to the final play? How many people had she even set out on this horribly-fated trip to begin with? It wasn’t as though she’d counted heads on the bus before they’d set off. She had presumed, just like near-everyone else had, that she’d be spending time with her friends, those outside of her circle flitting past each day - a crowd of familiar faces, not a number to tick down slowly but steadily.

So what was it? Twenty children? Ten? Less? An entire class, nearly wiped out, and she could barely tell you anything about it. She’d blocked herself from hearing half the announcements, and the other half had all started blurring together into an endless list, a toll of the damned, just names upon names upon names. It was little more than white noise at this point. Who was still alive? She wished she could tell you. It was hard enough to focus on putting two feet in front of the other, after so many days of limited food, poor sleep, and endless walking.

It was enough to make one sink into the very depths of despair, never to rise up again. And yet, here Beatrice Briggs was, standing by the side of the mountain trail, looking out over the ridge across the land that stretched before her, ready to resume her journey after a much-needed rest period, heart full of hope.

There were still people out there, people who she could help, people who she hadn’t for one second given up on. That meant she still had a goal. That meant she still had a reason to keep fighting, and she would forever have a reason, right up until her final breath. She still didn’t know what she would do, exactly, whenever she found someone who was desperately seeking help, but she would find a way to give them what they needed, regardless of what it was. She’d find a way, she was sure of it.

She had hoped, truly hoped, that she had managed to give that to Evie and Rebekah the previous night - that her words, that the offer of having their voices heard when many others would have shot on sight, would have been enough to help them find what they were searching for. No such luck with Evie. Her name had popped up once more, for reasons that would now only be known to herself.

Juanita had escaped the list, though. And Beatrice continued to hope, and clutched that hope tight to her chest, that this was a pattern, not a one off. That it would hold firm, for the rest of their days.

The snow had thinned out some in the last couple of days; perhaps not notable to someone on ground level, focusing more on the sound of incoming trespassers than on the surrounding winter scenery. But the sight from this path had stuck firm in Beatrice’s memory from the moment she’d first caught a glimpse of it. And though the blanket of cotton white had grown patchy and threadbare since, the island was no less beautiful for it.

The cold mountain air surrounded her, as she floated above the world, gazing down at the map of green and grey, interwoven with one another, stitches of burnished gold along the coast, deep bronze patterns in bold, sharp shapes forming pockets of civilisation. She was alone, for a moment; not on the road, in the universe itself. It was just her. Just her and her island. Her heart fled her body. Her body turned into stardust. It was exhilarating, it was terrifying, she was part of the island, and everything she had done and ever would do was a brand new thread, permanently interwoven into its soul.

And then in an instant, she was on solid ground again, freezing cold air filling up her lungs, letting out a couple of short, heavy breaths. She closed her eyes and smiled.

As she turned around to resume her trek towards the hot springs, she hoped that everybody got a chance to experience what she had just done, an opportunity to see just how beautiful the life they’d been granted was, even if just for a minute. Even after it was snuffed out, that experience, that spark, that wonder of the universe they had been lucky enough to explore the tiniest corner of - they could never steal that away.

She also hoped that nobody would be already there at the sanctuary, in the middle of something. That would make a funeral difficult to organise.

Maybe there was someone at the designated funeral spot, maybe not. Beatrice wasn't going to find out.

A roadblock revealed itself in a bundle of tan and red fabric, leaning against a section of mountain wall and eating the last of the soggy, stale chips that had been left in his bag.

They'd given Kai some fresh chips and what sounded like a proper big-ass sandwich for killing Katelyn, and Salem was sure that guy wasn't even going to appreciate it.

((Salem Fox continued from GAME OVER--))

Jacob hadn't caught up to him yet. Not too surprising, considering the state that Salem had left him in, but space on the island was dwindling more and more. They'd be thrown back together eventually; he just hoped that Jacob was going to put some actual effort into his half of it. You only got one allowance of flopping around like a dead fish and then hitting a guy in the dick; if he tried something similar again, Salem was putting a bullet in his head without fanfare.

Maybe it was a little late to think about showmanship, but that was about all that Salem had left. He was thankful to Kai, in a way.

When Beatrice entered his field of view, Salem didn't immediately draw attention to himself. The rifle was leaned up against the rock next to him in easy grabbing reach, and the Mauser sat comfortably in his coat pocket like always. She appeared armed, but he wasn't that concerned about it; he'd underestimated people before, yes, but Beatrice had shown what she was made of the last time they crossed paths, and it was about comparable to papier-mâché.

Salem wanted the jumpscare moment when her eyes finally landed on him, that roller coaster progression of realization, first that someone was there, and secondly that the someone was him.

When their eyes did meet, he popped another chip into his mouth before raising his hand and wiggling his fingers in a jaunty little wave.

There had been a sort of crunching noise accompanying Beatrice’s footsteps as she continued her hike forwards and upwards, one that simultaneously had an oddly damp undercurrent; it was difficult to describe, all things considered. It was almost like when her mom had made those little cornflake nests for Easter, stirring the cereal into a big pan of melted chocolate, making sure that nobody - ‘and that especially includes you, Marcus’ - tried to touch them before they had properly cooled yet. Beatrice had presumed that the sound was nothing more than the melting snow and the ice and the gravel underneath her boots.

The truth, as it so frequently turned out to be, was far stranger than that. And far, far less welcome.

She jumped backward at first, when the figure initially came into view, breath catching in her throat as the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. He had been shockingly quiet, chip eating aside. If she was going to bump into anyone while still on the trail, she had expected it to be while they were making their descent, visible from afar, or at least audible round corners and sharp turns. Not leaning against the rock face, quiet and still as the snow itself, almost as if he had been waiting for somebody to pass by.

Had he been waiting for her? For a moment, it seemed like a possibility. Her hand unlocked itself from its grip on the rifle, raising slightly to mirror his wave.

But then the penny dropped. Everything clicked into place as to exactly who she was now facing, what his name was, what he had done. The things he had done to her.

A gasp escaped from her lips, as her hand clasped against the barrel of the rifle again, fingers in a deadlock around it. She scuttled back, loose pebbles and grit kicked up from the heel of her shoe, bouncing down the fierce slope behind her, the yawning sky at her back. She bit the inside of her lip, and forced herself to lock eyes with Salem.

“You-”

Was all she managed to blurt out before her throat seized up once more.

Salem gave Beatrice a slow smile as she backpedaled.

"Me," he singsonged back. Brushing chip crumbs from his fingers, he pushed away from the rock wall and straightened up, slipping his hands into his coat pockets. One curled securely around the Mauser; its weight in his hand was comfortable and familiar at this point, moreso than the rifle.

"What's up, Bea? Kind of a nice day for a hike. Snow's starting to melt." He scuffed a bit of slush on the edge of the rocky trail with the toe of his shoe to punctuate his point.

"You by yourself?"

“That’s not my name.”

There was no need to bite her tongue this time. This was not an ally, using their last few breaths as they bled out into the earth, trying to say something to her. This was not a long-lost acquaintance encountered in the middle of a stand-off, where she needed to tread carefully in order to reach the very best outcome. This was someone who had absolutely no intention to be friendly right now.

His words suggested otherwise, and that had always been something that Beatrice struggled to work out, back at school. People had a habit of saying things they didn’t truly mean, or saying something nice when they were trying to be rude. More than once, people had then gotten even more upset at her for taking their statements at face value. And here Salem stood, asking how she was, talking about the weather, munching on chips.

With his name on the announcements, over and over. Identified squarely as Jessica’s killer. The sheer gulf between what he had done and what he was doing was making Beatrice’s heart feel like she had already toppled backwards over the cliff.

“But… yes. It’s just me now.”

For the most part, at least. And would be entirely soon enough. If she could just get past and up to the hot springs.

“You and I… you and I both know it was you who made that happen.”

She grit her teeth, clamping down in both hands and jaw. She hadn’t moved her gaze away from him for a single second - she didn’t even think she had blinked yet. If she tried to leave, would he even hesitate to stop her from doing so? She had one avenue, here. The one that had served her well up to this point.

“And you? What are you planning on doing out here? Are you going to do the same to me as you did to Jessica?”

"Right, right... sorry, Trice." Salem withdrew one hand from his pocket and scratched his nose; the other stayed hidden, resting on the handgun. Two options here. One: Beatrice was lying and had an ally not far behind, or someone waiting for her up above who might come looking, and she was talking to him to buy time for them to show up. Or two, she really was alone, and she'd just blown her one chance to bluff him.

She didn't seem like someone who was good at lying, but that wasn't an assumption that Salem was necessarily willing to rest on now. If it came down to a battle of wills alone, he'd bet on himself, of course. He'd just had too many close calls lately to feel secure that whoever he was dealing with didn't have something up their sleeve.

Bringing up Jessica made Shu's face appear in his mind. Salem exhaled through his teeth.

"As far as plans go, I was just kind of hanging around, you know? Been a rough couple of days. I got tired of spending time in town, but it seems like they're probably going to herd us back there sooner rather than later, so I wanted to get a change of scenery while I could." None of that was strictly untrue. Salem watched Beatrice watching him as he spoke, wondering when she was going to blink. Watching her face in case her eyes locked onto something behind him.

"What about you? Are you looking for someone to do the same to you as Jessica, or...?"

“It’s been rough for everybody, Salem.”

She chose to ignore the second name that he had chosen for her - it was born out of bad faith, after all, and if she tried to protest again, maybe he would start referring to her as ‘Atri’ instead, something that appealed to her even less. The very idea made her skin crawl, honestly. Using a name that wasn’t hers already made her feel disregarded and dismissed. Doing it to that extent? That would feel dehumanising. Like her voice and her thoughts weren’t worth anyone’s time nor energy.

This entire situation was making her feel uncomfortable in ways she could barely articulate; the closest she could describe it was feeling like there were ants crawling up and down her body, swarming over her arms and legs and back. She hadn’t felt this way during her encounter with Juanita and Evie. She hadn’t even felt this awful the last time her path had crossed with Salem’s. Beatrice could feel her heart racing, as sweat trickled down her back. She could run now, for as much good as it would do her. The option was there. It was open. She’d probably make it about three feet away before she was gunned down. But she could take that window.

The outcome would likely be the same either way.

That was true unless she did something, wasn’t it?

So with that in mind and heart, Beatrice planted her feet and remained facing Salem. Her breathing didn’t slow, and the goosebumps on her arms didn’t fade. But she looked him in the eyes, as her fingers rapped against the side of the rifle.

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

Her words could be her weapons. She would use them to be as brave as her friends.

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.

“No. I’m not.”

She punctuated her statement with a brisk shake of her head.

“I have… there’s someone I need to see, up there. Um, at the top of the mountain. And then…”

Beatrice took a deep breath in. The cold burned her lungs. For a second, she was standing in the entrance to the changing rooms, looking out onto the field at school, her teammates jostling around her.

“... And then there’s still people out there who need my help, I think. I want to do that. So that’s what I’m looking for.”

Beatrice stanced up at Salem a bit, but she just kept fiddling with her rifle instead of raising it. He was a little surprised that she was actually engaging him in conversation, but it was an easy routine to fall back into. Beatrice was passive, and Salem was driving this bus. That was how he liked it.

He'd also noticed that she hadn't pressed him for a straight answer on whether he was going to give her the same treatment as Jessica.

"Oh, yeah? Somebody waiting for you up there? I've been thinking about heading up too, to check out that hot spring that's on the map." Inside his pocket, he ran his thumb over the barrel of the gun. "It feels like it's been forever since I had a hot bath." He thought about following that up with, I could kill for one, but that was kind of on the nose.

"Sounds like you've got big plans, though, so don't let me hold you up." So saying, he stepped to the side as much as the path would allow, giving Beatrice room to squeeze past him if she so desired.

He had to wonder if she'd ever come across such obvious bait. He was even more eager to see if she'd actually take it. Sometimes you had to go for the low-hanging fruit, you know?

Beatrice wasn’t an actress, and had never professed to be one. The idea of Salem following her up the mountain, stepping foot onto the hot spring’s plateau that had become her form of sanctuary, was enough to make her scrunch up her nose in disapproval. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling a twinge of selfishness at the act, no matter the character of the person in front of her; as important a place as the springs were to her, they didn’t belong to her. She couldn’t stop anyone from trying to take a respite there, nor would she want to.

She’d been granted the opportunity to make a head start towards it, however; or, at least, the illusion of such. Salem’s back was practically pressed up against the face of the mountain, now, giving her enough space to push on past him. Too awkward to draw a weapon or anything like that, perhaps, but ideal for giving someone a good, hearty shove off of the precipice.

Still though, it was rude to look a gift horse in the mouth - a saying she had come to understand the meaning behind, but not for the life of her why it was used as such. She gave a quick nod in Salem’s direction, still feeling like she hadn’t blinked this whole time. She turned, and took two short steps forwards, still keeping Salem tracked out of the corner of her vision.

And then she stopped. And then she turned back around towards him.

“Yes. Um, yes, you’re right. I do. But I think I can start right here with them, actually.”

Beatrice inhaled through her nostrils, long and slow. The sound of tap-tap-tapping had vanished now. Her hands were still and steady.

“You killed Jessica, after all. You shot her, right in front of me. She wasn’t the first person. She wasn’t the last. The announcements told me what you did. And I think I know what you want to do now.”

She waited, letting the wind tousle her hair and ruffle her jacket, for Salem’s reaction.

"Oh, yeah?"

Salem really shouldn't have brought up taking a bath; the mention of needing one made him freshly aware of how battered, dirty, and greasy he was, and how his skin felt drawn tight over his face. His skin all over felt like an unwashed bedsheet if he dwelt on it.

That was internal, though. Outwardly he just looked up at Beatrice where she'd drawn level with him, peering at her through his bangs with a smile. His hands hadn't moved from his pockets.

"What do you think I wanna do, Bea?" He'd always gotten a kick out of it when interviewees turned the questions back on the interviewer, even if it usually wasn't the sick own they tended to think it was.

“I think you might want to try and kill me too.”

It didn’t terrify her as much as she thought it might, hearing that out loud, having it come from her own lips. Maybe it was because it was the only logical conclusion she could come to, a fact laid out in front of her, one that she couldn’t avoid so she might as well go ahead and embrace it. Maybe it was because she’d been mulling over that fact for the past few minutes, feeling it ricochet inside of her head even as she’d stared Salem down. Maybe it was because she’d known for a while that this all had to come to an end eventually, sooner or later - and if she had to be honest with herself, she had never considered herself to be the titular ‘fittest’.

But the exact rhyme and reason didn’t matter in the end, really. The words were out of her mouth now, that was the important thing. Better to be unafraid, here in the last dying seconds of overtime. Grace under pressure.

“But, Salem? Jessica’s name had been on the announcements too, before we first met. She killed again, while I was with her. But she never hurt me, or Rebekah. I never felt more safe than when I was with her, in fact. There’s only so much that secondhand knowledge can teach you.”

Beatrice rolled her shoulders, adjusting them for the extended period they’d been held in position, working out the aches that lingered in her joints.

“I know some things. And I think some other things. But…”

She paused. And then she tilted her head a little to the side, and smiled at Salem, mouth and eyes.

“But I don’t know why you did everything. I don’t know anything at all about you, really, Salem. I talked to someone a little while ago who nobody would have given a second chance to, and I think I got to understand them a bit better afterwards.”

Wisps of smoke curled upwards, flitting away towards the hot springs.

“Are you tired, Salem?”

Beatrice was exhausted.

“Let me hear your story.”

Salem's smile went brittle around the edges when Beatrice started up with the same kind of garbage that Julia had spouted at him. It faded from his face fully as she went on, until he was left staring up at her with a blank face.

The wind whistled between them for several moments before he gathered himself to answer. "Yeah," he said, "I am tired."

He withdrew the handgun from his pocket. It dangled at his side for the moment, but his finger was obviously wound around the trigger.

"You've got a good point about secondhand information," he said instead of elaborating on that. "Primary sources are always the best when you're hunting for information. But it's kind of a paradox, you know? People aren't reliable. There's been a bunch of studies about how you can't even trust your own memory. But the ones responsible for recording information, keeping track of everything we know, are... us."

The barrel of the gun tapped against his leg. "But that's kind of comforting, too. At least to me."

The smile returned to Salem's face, a thin and tight shadow of itself. "I could tell you anything about myself, and you'd just have to believe it if you don't have some kind of other source. Maybe I was in love with Mallory. Maybe the Flanagans were my besties. If I tell you that to me, Jessica deserved to die, what then? Can you prove I'm lying?"

He snorted a little. "You really think anyone is going to give you anything but excuses? Everybody is going to keep saying that they're right to do what they've done, until they can't anymore."

He let his head loll to the side, but his eyes stayed fixed on Beatrice's forehead. His smile widened a little, showing some teeth. "Except me, anyway."

He finally raised the gun to center it on Beatrice's chest. "Yeah, I've been waiting for someone like you to come by, and you're right about why. But you should be happy - I'm not gonna lie to you about it."

Beatrice’s eyes finally switched targets, her gaze moving down to the barrel of the handgun aimed directly at her chest. Her smile, however, remained - solidified, in fact, even as Salem’s cracked and crumbled and tried to reconstruct itself. Her words had landed, that much was obvious. It was a much different reaction to that of Evie and Juanita, certainly; raising his weapon was pretty much the exact opposite of what they had done.

But it was the fact the response existed that mattered, much more than the contents of it. Something she’d said had sunk in, something had clearly touched a nerve. He was more than just this aloof, facade of a young man, someone who had mowed his way through their class, and was preparing to do the same to her. There was something there. There was history. There was a tale to be told.

And maybe her part in this story would still end with a gunshot and a spray of blood, no matter what she did. She had been right on the money, as to what his plan had been, standing out here alone in the cold. If she had tried to run, she would have received nothing but a bullet to the spine. Accept his offer of safe passage, the same deal. Talk long enough to him… the point was thoroughly made, she was sure. He hadn’t seemed to realise it yet, but this was the only way she got something out of this, the only act that got some measure of net gain. She was getting a sense of how he thought, who he was, exactly what made him tick. It wasn’t anything she could take with her, no. But there would be somebody out there, watching down over them, through a maze of static and wires, who needed to understand.

“I am happy, Salem.”

Her smile, as resolute as ever, turned sorrowful as she shook her head.

“But I don’t think you understand why that is just yet.”

She was shaking now, quite a bit, the tap-tap-tap of skin on wood returning once more, without her permission this go around. A justified reaction, she thought - there was a pistol aimed directly at her torso, after all.

“You’re right. I can’t stop you from lying, I can’t prove whether anything you say is the truth or not. You could give me countless different reasons why you had to shoot Jessica, and I’d have no way of knowing which one is true. But… I don’t think it matters. I don’t think it matters at all whether you lie or not.”

Beatrice had one hand in her own pocket too. Her fingertips brushed over the lock of hair she had snipped free, turning it over in her hand, running it between her fingers, clenching it tight in her fist.

“Juanita and Evie lied to me. They made justifications for what they did, said they had no choice or that it was an act of mercy. It couldn’t all be true, I know. But it didn’t matter. They were my friends, before all of this. And for just one evening, there was a ceasefire, and they were my friends once again.”

She wondered where they were, right now. She wondered if they were thinking of her the same way she thought of them.

“Rebekah and Jessica, they both hid things from me, kept things vague, fudged details. That’s a form of lying, I think. It didn’t matter, either. I never felt more safe than when I was with the two of them. One of them’s waiting for me, up there at the peak.”

She looked upwards once more, meeting Salem’s own gaze. She took in another deep breath, and she kept that smile right where it belonged.

“And look at us now. Here we are, together at the top of the world, talking. You can tell me anything you like, now. You can tell me how badly you want me to die. You can tell me you thought Jessica was a justified murder, same as all of the others. You can lie through your teeth if you want to. But you’ve already told me - shown me, I guess - exactly how you think. I think I know exactly the sort of person that your story has made you think you’ve become.”

Slowly, silently, her index finger slipped down off of the stock, smothering the side of the trigger, curling upwards into a c-shape.

“Your name’s been in my head ever since I heard the announcement to chronicle Jessica’s death, you know? I could have shot on sight, the moment I saw you. I could have fired first, without hesitation. It would have been easy for me to justify it, wouldn’t it? I could have told everybody I was right to do what I had done.”

Her smile faltered now. She could feel pin pricks at the corners of her eyes.

“It hasn’t crossed my mind for a moment, Salem. Not once.”

Salem had always been gifted with words, written and spoken. His retort to Beatrice reflected that.

"Shut the fuck up, Jul-"

He realized what he was saying in the middle of saying it and caught himself, but there was no real recovering from the slip. He covered for it instead with a burst of gunfire.

You could hear the sound for miles.

The first impact made her jolt backwards, stumbling ever closer to the edge of the sky, jacket sheared into pieces, blood on the snow, her eternal ghost, finally caught up with her. The second hit shook her body, like a ragdoll tearing at the seams. The third barely moved her at all.

It hurt less than she’d expected; but then again, she didn’t have a benchmark for what that pain threshold might be. She’d escaped every situation she’d run into for the past week or so physically unscathed. Her luck had finally run out. But even so, now that she’d finally been put through it, metal searing through her flesh, blood coursing down her torso, the pain was practically an afterthought.

It was the smaller things instead. The pinpricks that had turned into full-blown streams running down her cheeks. The shaking in her body that had only intensified and taken over every part of her. How tight her throat had gotten, how harsh and heavy each breath felt to take. She exhaled, letting out a noise that sounded like her vocal chords had been dragged through gravel. Sweat dripped from her bangs. She was practically bent-double now.

Slowly, Beatrice tilted her head up. She forced her bloodstained smile to stay in position, just for a moment longer.

Her index finger, so tightly wound until now, suddenly pulled taut. Another deafening crack echoed across the mountains.

And that was enough, with the shockwave running through her body, to finally make her pitch forwards, facedown in the snow. She didn’t know whether she’d actually hit Salem or not, but once again, it didn’t actually matter. He had underestimated her. Misjudged her. No doubt he had also expected the rifle to be a prop in her hands. More fool him.

Even at the end, at the final whistle, he’d still refused to use her actual name.

An odd thing to think about in her position, maybe. But she’d run out the clock. There wasn’t anything left for her to do other than to think. She’d burned through her fear already; now all that was left was exhaustion, gnawing away at her bones. And she hadn’t been lying either - she’d never even entertained the idea of revenge. So she wasn’t going to waste these last few precious moments with thoughts of loathing or by choking on her curses.

Oh. Oh, but there was one thing left for her to do.

She used the last of her strength to push herself over, roll herself onto her back, the exertion making her hack and cough and spit out blood. The sky was as grey as it had ever been, such a beautiful, complex grey, like steel and stars and cigarette smoke all merging into one. The vortex of clouds, surrounding the peak of the mountain, swirled around her, encircling her.

Her fingers, heavy and awkward, popped open her pocket on the fourth attempt. Her hand spilled out, sprawling onto the melting snow, knuckles clenched and facing the heavens. She breathed out, the dragon’s breath so thin and wispy and tired-looking now.

“I’ll… see you guys… soon…”

‘Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all,’ she remembered her father saying. She’d never understood it more than right at this very moment.

Beatrice closed her eyes. She cracked open her fingers. She let Jessica go, letting her catch on the breeze and drift away.

To sanctuary, finally.



BEATRICE BRIGGS: DECEASED