Survival Of The Fittest

((Marshall West continued from Trespasser.))

The collars had stopped beeping.

But Marshall had kept running anyway, hauling June along with him. Running until the trees swallowed them up, and blocked the shore from view. Only then did Marshall stop. Breath ragged, he didn’t immediately let go of June. He couldn’t look at her.

He waited for his collar to switch back on and detonate. A terrorist must have manually started them beeping, because June’s had started without her stepping forward into the DZ. He expected them to wait, then surprise them. Expected a prank worse than anything Jacob would have done. But nothing happened.

Marshall let go of June’s arm after a few more moments, then dropped his bag against a tree. He turned and walked back the way they’d came, just a little, until he could see the sky through a sliver of the trees. In that direction, the sky was black with smoke. Marshall could smell hints of it on the wind.

When he blinked, he didn’t see the light from the explosion any more. He tried to make it come back, closing his eyes and pressing his palms to the lids to try and see the imprint. The half-dry blood that had soaked into his bandages smeared over one eye as he did, but he continued on anyway. He’d done it occasionally when he was a kid, pressing until he saw checkerboard patterns or the prints of the room’s lights, and now he looked for Kai’s silhouette instead. But it didn’t come back to him.

The terrorists had, for whatever reason, allowed him and June to flee. But Kai was dead.

Marshall lowered his hands, then wiped away the blood smeared over his eye, along with the tears and snot that had leaked over his face as he ran. He didn’t feel cleaner, just like he’d moved the mess around a lot. He rested an arm on the tree he was nearest to and half-hid behind it, still watching the smoke.

He had time to cry now, but his tears had gotten jammed up inside him.

“June.” He paused for several seconds, before he said, “Are you okay? Did I grab you too hard?”

((June Madison continues from Trespasser))

"No," she said, trying to rub away the phantom sensation of fingers around her wrist, trying to blink away the phantom sight of blood splattering, "I- I'm fi- You didn't no."

It was silent now, the collars silenced. The only sound, aside from Marshall speaking, was their huffed breaths, slowing as their lungs finally began to catch up, wisps of carbon dioxide twirling and curling into the air, dwarfed by the black plume of smoke in the distance.

It was silent. No boats in the distance, no further explosions since the plane, since the one on the speakers a day ago. Like nothing had happened.

Kai dead, their collars working again. Like nothing had happened.

June felt herself begin to tremble. It was so cold, here in the long shadows of the forest. The sky was blue, the world was so wide and large around them, there was so much sunlight, and yet none of it filtered down here. It was as cold and lonely as it'd been for the past twelve days.

Breath caught in her throat, she looked at Marshall, teeth pressing down on the inside of her cheek.

"We're... we're not making it out of here, aren't we?"

Marshall watched the smoke a little longer, then turned back to June and slid down the tree. Last time he’d been in the forest, he’d just watched someone else die and been able to do nothing about it, and be able to see very clearly how he could have prevented it.

He didn’t want to agree with June. He wanted to say something that would make it better. Like watching Kai die could be fixed with a word.

The best he could say was, “I don’t know.”

Last time, he’d kept his hands busy to try and push off the guilt. To focus on something, so that he didn’t flounder. That had been in these woods, too.

There was still weed in his bag… somewhere.

He opened it, and found it cluttered with some of Kai’s belongings. At least, he assumed they were. Kai and California between them had been carrying a lot since they’d robbed Katelyn, and maybe more since Kai killed her. Items had gotten dropped and mixed around when they’d stopped last night to mend Kai’s leg.

He shut the bag again without grabbing anything, lowering his head. Eyes shut tight, trying not to break down again.

Don’t fall apart. Compartmentalize. Focus on the living.

But he was struggling to come up with faces when he thought of ‘the living.’ Aside from Evie. Matthew. People who had served only to take away others who might have been worth focusing on.

He opened the bag again and started to rummage, looking for green amid all the metal, and what little food and water remained.

“How many do you think are left?” he asked. His voice was hollow and quiet. “Who do you think would be left to save, if anyone was coming?”

"I- I don't... Matthew? Shawn? Out of what, ten, twenty?"

Everyone she loved on this island was dead. Plenty of the people she didn't, as well. Of all the people she'd meaningfully interacted with on this island, anyone more than a passing glance, it was only Marshall, Matthew, and Shawn that were alive to her knowledge. One allied, two not. One she cared for, and two she hated. All that came to mind. All that was left to her on this island.

And, that was the endgame, wasn't it? The danger zones, the ones they'd thought they could defy, just circling them in closer and closer until it was physically impossible to step away from the game, closer and closer until they were all skin-to-skin, so little space that there was nowhere for their nails to go but someone else's jugular.

She tugged the hem of her jacket away from her neck, tried to give herself breathing space, though it only reminded her of the metal enclosed around her neck.

She looked at Marshall, eyes wide, voice quiet but fervent.

"What do you mean save anyone? Our- our window's past. The danger zones weren't working, and then they fucking- they blew up Kai, and now these things," she said, gesturing at her collar, "are working. What else is there to do?"

“It’s not as if we were using the window. We were just letting Kai take the risk.” Bitterness and self-hatred were evident in his voice.

Marshall found the bag of weed, accompanied by several prepared joints. He pulled them out of the bag and placed them to the side between him and June.

Smoking now, knowing that Matthew and Evie and the rest were out there, and that they were being slowly crammed together… it had felt dangerous when he’d smoked with Kai and California, but he hadn’t cared as much. Maybe it was guilt over Jacob, or a lack of hope in his plan to track down Evie. Or maybe he’d felt safe with Kai and California.

His hands paused over the bag as he fought to stop himself from screaming. Guilt and anger and grief continued to bubble away in his stomach, to the point of becoming nausea. His good hand clenched, and his bandaged hand twitched as much as it could under the bandages, the perpetual throbbing from underneath seeming to speed up. But for now, he swallowed down the grief and nausea and focused on the bag, sticking his hands back inside.

He could stall a breakdown until he’d sorted out all these weapons, most of which were unusable by either him or June.

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

He found the one thing he’d been certain was in the bag. The revolver that he’d been given as they prepared joints, the one he’d intended to use to make Evie give her weapon up. He placed it to his other side, away from June.

At the time, they’d had another revolver in the pile of weapons. Marshall was hoping, despite himself, that it’d ended up in this bag.

“No, that’s… not right,” he admitted. “I know what the options are.”

He might as well have punched her in the gut when he said that. Because, it was true, they had just let Kai take the risk. He was their canary in the coalmine, and he did what canaries were supposed to do when they ran into danger, and they did what miners were supposed to do when canaries did what they did.

They weren't as bad as Matthew or Shawn, not yet. But, she wasn't sure they were all that better, either.

And then, finally, Marshall seemed to come to the same conclusion she did. I know what the options are, he said, same time he took out a gun.

She'd forgotten that they had all that. In the day that stretched after California's death, and then the five minutes of panic that preceded and followed Kai's, that simple fact had eluded her. But, it was here now, in front of her, staring her in the face.

Enclosed in a shrinking ring, enemies circling closer and closer to each other. The hem of her jacket tightening more and more around her neck.

"We're... we're not making it out, right? We're not saving anyone."

June's pace of breath began to pick up.

"We're just- all that's left now is just- Matthew and Shawn are just gonna, they're just gonna fucking hunt us down like they did California, they'll kill us, or- or we'll find them, we'll kill them, and, we're just gonna be like them."

That's all there ever was. All the good, kind words Medea had told her, all the good feelings Dick and Darryl had given out, it was all gonna go to naught. No matter how much they talked about other paths, about better ways, in the end, they were all going to fall down the same.

She laughed to herself, softly, eyes dilating.

"They kill us, or we kill them, and then other people kill us, or we kill them, and on and and on it goes until we're just fucking tearing each other apart, right? right? and then, and then, and then," and then her lungs, hyperventilating, her lungs struggling to get air in, the world closing in and in and in and

As June started babbling about their options, Marshall continued going through the bag. Most of it unusable, but sitting in there was a small, flat electronic. Marshall pulled it out, thinking for a moment that it was a phone even as he knew that there wasn’t a possibility that the terrorists would have left Kai with one.

He turned it on, and saw two dots in the middle, in the same arrangement as him and June. His mind started to tick over this, but got derailed as June started hyperventilating in her panic. He quickly put it down and shifted over so he was sitting by her instead.

“June. June! Breathe!”

He almost grabbed her shoulder, but no-- he can’t grab people during a panic attack, he’d made that mistake before. He looked around, then picked up the bag of weed and one of the papers and shoved them at her.

“Here, look. Do you know how to roll this? Roll this. Keep your hands… uh, hand… busy. Just… roll this. Focus on this. It’s hard with one hand, but we’ve got plenty to waste here.”

…

A few minutes passed, during which they both made a huge mess, scattering green all over the snow.

California had taught Marshall how to roll, but he still didn’t have the dexterity to do it well, and June was doing even worse since she couldn’t use her broken arm at all. At least Marshall could use his hand to press things or hold things down, even if he couldn’t utilize his fingers.

Still, it did the important part. June stopped hyperventilating. And it gave Marshall a bit of time to think about the response.

Though he had thought about this before, whenever any hope of escape had faded. Most prominently during the days where he’d waited for Chloe at the safehouse, just him and California. Fingers freshly severed, and the knowledge that he could do nothing to stop people like DeMarcus or Matthew.

The question being, that if it was the game or death… what was his choice? And no matter how dark things got, or how much he hated the choices he made and his inability to save others… his choice was always the same.

“Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s us or them.”

He had his current attempt at a joint sitting on his leg, and he started pushing the edge with his good hand, rolling it along his thigh while occasionally nudging it with his bandaged hand to try and stop the contents from falling out.

“Or… maybe it’s them and someone else who takes the field. Maybe they’ll play the game and wipe each other out, and we’ll be left because we hid. We’ve survived a long time just by not dying while others did. We could keep doing that.”

Marshall looked up from his rolling, a crumpled but vaguely recognisable joint in his hands.

“Is that better? Because I’m fucking sick of it.”

The panic that had taken over June was, by now, replaced mostly by confusion and low-grade frustration as she attempted to roll the hemp leaf wrapper with one hand, using the elbow on her broken arm to pin down the end. She would've struggled with this even with two functional arms, much less now. Her parents were the type of people who voted yes on the marijuana referendum five years ago, same day as the 2016 election, only to then turn around and ban it in the household. They told her cooking while being high was a workplace accident waiting to happen, as if the rest of her adult life would just be spent in the kitchen.

As if there'd be an adult life awaiting her.

Mechanical difficulties aside, she did find some sort of focus and something resembling calm in the difficult, unwieldy task of rolling a wrapper. This was supposed to provide immediate relaxation, said the gaudy packaging she had only ever seen in gas station display shelves beforehand. She never knew peace. Maybe this could give her that.

It'd have to wait though. Marshall spoke to her again, laid out the possibilities. His words tasted acidic. He was accusing her of wanting to roll up and die.

She took a deep breath, gripped the joint in her hand tighter. She didn't have the energy anymore to lose it, but she felt her face getting hot anyways. Eyes focused on the wrapper, on tightening the roll, she replied.

"I...I don't know what you think of me right now but, I'm tired of hiding too, you know? I'm tired of reacting, yeah. I'm tired of, of just being at the mercy of bad people. I agree, I'm fucking tired of that too. But..."

She twisted one last time. Then she looked up at him, gaze piercing.

"I don't want to be like them. I need you to understand that. I need you to. Matthew came up to us, all frothing at the mouth about Kitty, and all he accomplished was making California's last moments fucking miserable. I don't wanna be on the backfoot anymore but also, I want to be better than them."

She set the joint aside.

"That's all I ask for."

“Yeah. ...yeah.”

Marshall’s face briefly crumpled as he thought about California again, which made him think about Kai, too. The temptation to wallow swamped him for just a moment, and he turned his head away.

He put down his disfigured joint and turned back to the bag, returning to rummaging through. He wanted to grieve. But he couldn’t sit here smoking for most of the day like he had after Jacob’s death. Or frozen under a bed like after Jess. That would just be another form of hiding from the reality.

“Sometimes I wish I could be,” he muttered, voice watery. He swallowed, and blinked a few times before rubbing his eyes. “The game would be easier if we let ourselves be like that. But you’re right. We shouldn’t.”

He lowered his hand from his eyes and continued going through the mess. Removing items one after the other, and setting them in two piles. The first was anything still needed. First-aid kit. Food and water to last a day or two. The strange radar. Bullets that seemed to match the revolver. The rest--anything left that was unwieldy or simply unnecessary--went into a separate pile.

Most of this paled in importance to what he was looking for. But he found it eventually. The second revolver, the other one that had been shown to him when he’d asked to borrow one to track Evie down with. Bigger than the one he’d taken with him. After some consideration, he decided keeping the bigger one would be better. Unwieldy… but not as unwieldy as it would be for June. At least he could use his arm, if not the fingers.

“I won’t make you play. I don’t know if it’s the right move to take. But even if we take the offensive… we don’t have to attack anyone who’s peaceful. We don’t have to threaten torture. We can act with a bit of common decency. Careful, this is loaded.”

Marshall held out the smaller revolver to June. The gun pointed to the side, away from either of them. He had it flat on his palm so she could easily grab it by the handle.

“As for tearing each other apart… I think that’s our choice and no-one else’s.”

It would be a simple matter for her to shoot him the moment she took it. Still, Marshall waited patiently for June to take the gun anyway.

"...where's the safety on this?" June asked.

Silently, Marshall showed her the metal spur on the back of the gun, and flicked it down for her.

And then she took it.

Weighed it, turned it around, considered all its nooks and crannies and switches and all. She hadn't had the time to consider it, last time it was in her hands. All there was time to do in the panic and mayhem was obey Marshall's command, cover us, fire a bullet at their attacker, and that was it. Now, in this oppressive quiet, it was all she could look at, her eyes drawn to it, the same way a compass needle was drawn to the north.

Initiative, in the palm of her hand. Oblivion, in the palm of her hand.

Her gaze flicked, lingered for a few moments on the joints she and Marshall had put down.

She looked away, returned her attention to Marshall.

"You wanna get going then?"

As expected, June didn’t shoot him. Even though it wasn’t surprising, it made him a little happier to be proven right. Even now, the island wasn’t devoid of people who could be trusted. For every Matthew, maybe there was still a June. And he could only hope that he wouldn’t let her down.

As June examined her revolver, Marshall weighed the other one in his hand. The weight was different, and the capacity – this one had six bullets, the other seven - but he hadn’t ever fired the other one either. He had nothing to unlearn.

June asked if he wanted to get going. He didn’t, but he had to. Still, he had one more excuse to delay.

“Just a moment.”

His bag emptied and sorted, he started piling what little he still needed back into it. The first pile – some food and drink, the first-aid kit, and the revolver bullets… those went back into the bag. The weapons they couldn’t use, he hurled each one by one in the direction of the danger zone. He wouldn’t know if any of it made it far enough. He wasn’t going to make sure, but anyone else who wanted them would have to risk it all on checking.

The joints went in his pocket. Though he wouldn’t smoke them until he was done, no matter what form being done took. For the radar, after a moment to consider how he was going to manage to hold it, he took some of the surgical tape from his first-aid kit and taped it to his jacket sleeve.

The only item he got stuck on was the gas mask that he’d been assigned, one eye patched up clumsily with tape. He had no practical reason to keep it, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away either.

The load lightened, he slung his arm through the strap. Revolver in his good hand, he turned back to June.

“Okay, let’s go.”

-

Hours later, as they made their way south, a red beacon appeared in the sky.

((Marshall West and June Madison continued in One Last Roll in the Dark.))