Survival Of The Fittest

[Evie McKown has seen enough blood.]

When she’d first moved to Salem, for the first couple of weeks at least, Evie had experienced a similar mood: feeling at once at home and in unfamiliar surroundings. Salem wasn’t so different to Somerville, so whilst it wasn’t wholly alien to her, it was unfamiliar. The nameless little town on the frozen edge of nowhere had become somewhat like that too. More alien than Salem for sure, but still in that strange limbo between feeling like home and not. Even in just a handful of days sheltering there, the town was small enough, and the view from the church complete enough, that the overall layout was plenty familiar to Evie. But her hike down through streets she’d previously only seen from afar revealed new little details that kept her feeling like a stranger there, an intruder in a ghost town.

But it wouldn’t matter for long. Rescue was as good as in sight. The red smoke scarring the sky hung overhead in testament to how close by it had been fired from, and the distant sounds of activity both human and machine grew ever nearer with each weary step.

The weariness was easy to understand. Evie was running on stale crackers, water, and the remaining adrenaline she’d mostly spent on hauling Fitz out of somebody else’s grave. But the lack of enthusiasm was still something of a mystery to her. She grasped the basic truth of it: that she felt deprived of a victory the could only be claimed there upon the desolate island… but why feel that? Why so strongly that the compulsion to remain was so palpable?

When had she become That Girl?

Evie’s introspection was interrupted by a familiar crack splitting the relative stillness that surrounded her.

Immediately she flinched, darting around the nearest corner for cover. Instinct saw her reaching for her handgun before rational thought could intervene. Who the hell would be shooting? The rescue party, running into unexpected resistance? No. That sound had come from inland. And it was horribly, horribly familiar. Whomever had shot Kelsey in her place had come back to finish the job.

A smirk tugged at the corner of Evie’s cracked lips. She’d entertained the idea of revenge before, assuming it’d come in due course as she and Juanita made their way through the last of the competition, but now… now the cameras were off, the mics were dead, and whoever it was on the other end of that gun, they’d shot first.

Others could attest to that, they’d have heard it happen.

And how she went about rightfully neutralising that threat, that maniac who’d decided to keep fighting after the end? Well. Nobody would have to see it.



Keeping low, the comfortable weight of a gun in her hands, now that felt like home to Evie. She hadn’t got a perfect read on where the shot had come from, so she moved slow and careful, house to house, looking and listening for signs of life.

If she’d had a little longer to work with, she might’ve spotted the telltale rifle barrel pointing out of a window not far down the street before the muzzle flare caught her eye.

The pain was immediate, followed by that damn sound that seemed almost like a sarcastic afterthought to add insult to severe injury. Evie howled in agony, grasping the nearest wall in vain as her left leg abruptly refused to carry her weight. It didn’t take long after crumpling to the frozen ground to assess the damage: a bullet had torn clean through her shin, leaving a gruesome mess of blood and splintered bone in its wake.

Several seconds passed in which all she could do was stare at the damage, colour draining from her face and bile threatening to erupt from her throat.

Then, Evie screamed. Screamed as loudly and for as long as her already-dry throat could manage. A wordless howl not only of pain, but in protest at the monstrous unfairness of it all. She’d made it, she’d survived, and now she was to join Kaede in the grave not because the rescue had announced itself mere minutes too late, but because someone had decided to ignore it?

When her lungs were well and truly empty, Evie at long last dragged herself up against the wall. If the shooter was still active, well, she could only hope that she’d picked the right side of it to not be finished off. She tossed aside everything in her bag in search of the first aid kit, desperately seeking something to stop the bleeding. It didn’t have to be perfect, just something resembling a tourniquet, then she could crawl to the shore if she had to, she could… she could…

((June Madison continues from One Last Shot in the Dark))

A couple minutes after that long, drawn-out screech, footsteps thumped in the distance.

The scar in the sky was beginning to dissipate. June was only making her best guess as to where the scream had come from, based off the direction she thought the sound came from. The footsteps she made were inconsistent in rhythm, fast, scattered, and then slow as she peered into a house's windows, seeing if the victim had, perhaps, dragged themself to a corner to die unseen? To seek cover? She had already circled three houses like this, finding no one. Her heart, so tired and ragged from all the running she'd been doing these past few days, was overexerting itself yet again, throbbing inoutinoutinout and tempo increasing as the time passed without her finding the victim. Because, what if, in her slowness, that person died, and Matthew got to claim another victim? What if, in her inadequacy, the terrorists got to claim another one of her classmates?

And then, she rounded the corner, and they came into view of one another. She recognized the victim.

She recognized her name from the announcements.

Another killer she'd been stuck with on this island. Another person who'd acted while they'd been left to react.

Was this really all that was left of their class?

June's search finally came to an end, and yet the only expression she could really summon was disgust.

Her eyes flicked up and down, scanned, judged. The wound looked very similar to Matthew's, actually, a coincidence that brought her a small degree of internal amusement. It was serious, needed to be taken care of before they could leave, but it wouldn't kill her right away. It was workable.

So, despite all her feelings, she said, with a carefully even tone, "I can help."

But despite saying this, she kept her distance, kept her hand on her revolver.

June's eyes flicked over to the weapon in Evie's hand, still.

"If you'll let me help, that is," she added.

By the time she heard footsteps, Evie was fumbling with her best attempt at a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from her shin. She'd lost count of how many times she'd tried and failed: pulled the damn thing tight enough to halt the bleeding, only to let it go slack between her frost-numbed fingers, hissing at the pain of even slightly moving the wounded limb as she did so. She wasn't sure whether to be glad or horrified that the flow wasn't even particularly fast, slow enough that she might be alright if she got help, slow enough that it'd be a lengthy, agonising way to go if she didn't. Evie had thought to call for help, but her throat was hoarse, and the thought that her shooter would come to finish the job gave her pause.

If her rescuers hadn't heard the gunshots, or heard her cry out in pain, why should they hear her now?

Maybe she could crawl towards them. They'd wait around, right? The web of danger zones had started to tighten, but people could still be as far afield as the hot spring, or that hut she'd wrecked the inside of. They'd have to wait. They had to.

When the sound of footsteps reached her, Evie released the tourniquet - mostly in anxious haste to reach for a weapon, but with an unmistakable edge of exasperation at the futility of it. Shivering, blood-soaked hands fumbled in her pocket for the first gun she could find. The MAC-11 came out before its owner could consider that it was probably still empty. Fearful, pale blue eyes rose to meet those of June Madison. Evie knew June; she knew everybody, really. But she didn't know her well. Like everyone else on the island, two weeks without creature comforts had taken a toll on June's appearance, yet the prevailing impression Evie got from the other girl was not the predictable exhaustion all the survivors had in common, but the disgust in her expression.

The notion that she'd come to kill Evie quickly came to mind, up came Evie's arm to take faltering aim around centre-mass. The question Have you come to kill me? rose in her throat, but died on her lips when June pre-empted with an offer of help.

Either she was playing with her food, or June hadn't been the one to shoot Evie. That former notion seemed unlikely... yet not quite impossible. It'd be just her luck, right? Give up the fight once another way to survive presented itself, only to get killed for some misguided attempt at revenge, or justice.

But even so... what did that mean for Evie? What was there to do? The only sliver of control she still had over the situation, over her life, was held in her trembling hands.

It wasn’t so easy to let go of that.

Her face twisted into a grimace. She felt an oozing in her throat, a nausea welling up inside of her.

She was so sick of this. So, so sick of this. Because, even at the very end of all this, she still had to deal with the buzz of her heart as her life fell into danger yet again, fell into danger for, at, the hands of someone she didn't even like very much. Even with the flare in the air and the army on the coast, she had to deal with this.

She didn't raise her gun, despite every nerve in her body begging her to. Because, then it would escalate, and she would be pointing her gun at Evie, and Evie would be pointing her gun at June, and tensions would rise and paranoia would ratchet up and words would be shouted and stakes would rise until the guns fired and one or both of them were dead. It was such fucking bullshit that this was even happening, but if it were to happen, she wanted to be an unwilling victim. She didn't want to be complicit to the very end.

The muscles of her face curled in on itself.

"Come on," she half-mewled, half-growled. "There's nothing to fight for anymore! There's nothing to do! We don't have to do this anymore, I don't want to fight you! We don't have to-"

In a bout of frustration, she threw down her gun onto the ground, clumps of snow splashing out.

"I don't want to do this anymore. Just"-she thrust out her arm-"just take my fucking hand, and let's get out of here."

Her arm shook as it hovered in the air.

"Please."

Evie’s arm shook slightly, muscles flexing and spasming with the twin efforts of holding a gun straight and holding down the pain radiating from her leg. Slow tears rolled down her cheeks where yesterday morning’s bruises had begun to turn from red to purple, and the few seconds’ silence after June’s plea was broken only by Evie’s sharp, shallow breathing.

Everything June had said was of course equally true of Evie. All of it. She hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone in the first place, she’d only wanted to live, didn’t anyone else understand that? Did it not make sense to fear a killing blow when she’d just been shot, despite the so-called game being over? Sure, June had thrown down her weapon, a weapon, but what guarantee was that that she didn’t have another?

But what choice did she have? Realistically, if June truly were here to kill her and Evie shot first, then what? Crawl and scream and pray? No, that was as good as certain death. So perhaps June might kill her after all: that was uncertain, and even then, probably a whole lot less painful. Weighing certain painful death against a possible swift end, Evie made her choice.

Finally, she dropped the gun.

“Thank you,” she breathed. Then she canted her head down towards the mess of her left shin. To the makeshift bandage tourniquet she’d attempted.

“Can you… for the bleeding?”

June didn't reply for a few moments, staring at the gun on the floor. As if she was scared she was hallucinating it, that it'd just jump back into Evie's hand or something.

So, she could drop the gun after all. So, she could beg, and plead, and ask for help. She could do all of that. In the end, she was just as scared and pathetic and human as the rest of them. So, why their diverging paths in the first place? Why did she have to shoot the gun while all the rest of them danced around her bullets?

Air billowed from her nose, thick plumes of vapor emanating, her breath audible.

She hated her.

She still had to save her.

She kneeled down into the cold, wet snow, icy moisture seeping through her skirt and leggings, chilling her knees. She only had one hand to offer, the other still immobilized in its sling. With her hand, she held down the tourniquet while Evie, with her two hands, wrapped it above the wound tight as she could. June had had to do something like this by herself, a couple days ago. She didn't want to remember much about it, but she did remember how long it had taken to wrap her arm. How much it had hurt.

Evie, in comparison, took half the time, half the pain. Even applying the bandage came with only a little hissing, a little craning back of the head.

Getting her up, summoning what little strength she had left in her starved, sleep-deprived, mildly feverish body to lift another person up, was a bit more difficult. There was a specific position you were supposed to do, to get someone with an injured leg standing. Her mom had broken her leg a few years back, so June had practiced this maneuver with her several times.

And so it went like so: injured person's arm over able person's shoulders. Find a surface to brace against (the wall of an abandoned house in this case). Ask injured person to push with all their strength on their uninjured leg, no matter the bleeding, no matter the pain. Able person lifts with all their might, bears one more burden for the road.

And then, finally, weapons down, bags on their sides, finally, off they go to salvation.

((June Madison and Evie McKown continue in the V8 Rescue))