Battle Royale, Maine—Flight of the Queen Bee

by Technomad

Christine Hargensen ran as she had never run in her life. She had the bag she had been issued slung over her back, but it slowed her down not at all. Her breath rasped in and out, and she felt a terrible pain in one side, but she didn't slow down until she had gained the shelter of the pine trees that covered much of Matinicus Island.

When she had finally come to a place where she wasn't visible, she collapsed, sobbing. Daddy---where are you? rang through her mind. For the first time in her life, she was in a situation where her father couldn't help her, and she didn't like it one little bit. She looked around herself, shivering in fear. She couldn't hear anybody, and there was fog rolling in, so she was fairly safe from being seen, at least for the moment.

Her stomach rumbled, and she remembered that she hadn't eaten anything that day. She was on a diet---but that didn't matter now, did it? She smiled to herself. This "Program" thing might have its good side! She dieted religiously, not wanting to get all bloated and puffy like some girls---but she was a healthy, growing girl with a healthy appetite, and it was always a struggle to avoid temptation.

She dug into her bag, pulling out a package of bread and a bottle of spring water. The bread tasted like it was half made out of sawdust, but with the water, it went down, and the nagging empty feeling in her stomach subsided.

She had felt something else in there, and when she had temporarily satisfied her hunger, she looked inside. She found that she'd been issued a Police Special revolver in .38 caliber, and a hundred rounds of ammunition in boxes. Better than some things, I guess…She knew that some of the participants in the Program got useless surprises of one sort or another, and she was glad that she'd received a useable weapon.

She had had enough experience with firearms, thanks to her father, to be able to load the pistol easily. Once it was loaded, its weight was as comforting in her hand as a teddy bear on a cold dark night. She peered around, to little avail. The fog was getting thicker and thicker. Anything could be out there. For the moment, she decided, she would stay precisely where she was.

Not far away, she heard running footsteps. She held very still, trusting to the bushes and the fog to keep her hidden, her eyes sweeping around for any sign of motion. She heard a body crashing through the bushes; from what she could hear, whoever it was wasn't headed in her direction, so she stayed quiet.

The footsteps stopped. Chris could hear heavy breathing, not far away. Then, she heard voices.

"Oh, thank God, it's you! I thought---I thought you were playing!" That was George Dawson. "It's good to see a friendly face, Frieda!"

"It's good to see you, too, George," Frieda answered. Chris shivered at how close she'd come to stumbling across the other girl, unprepared. She and Frieda Jason had a history of not getting along, and if she'd run slap into the other girl, she could have been killed before she knew what had hit her. That is, of course, if Frieda had a weapon---and the will to use it.

"What did they give you for a weapon, George?" asked Frieda.

"This." A rustling sound. "I lucked out---I got this pistol."

"Really? All I got was an Army knife. Do you think we should team up?"

"Sounds good to me, Frieda. It'll be nice to have someone beside me I can trust."

"We'll do it that way, then. Between us, we should be able to find a way off this island."

Chris smiled sourly to herself. While she was an indifferent student, she was far from stupid. Confronted with the situation of being in the Program, she could easily see the only solution. There was no escape save through victory, so that just meant that she had to win. Once she came to that conclusion, she began to analyze how best to go about it.

She knew that she had some advantages. With her looks and her sex appeal, she could lure boys in to destruction easily; most boys their age thought with the little head more than the big one, and if they believed that sex was in the offing, a smart girl could wrap them around her finger. She didn't think that the boys would be a problem, for the most part.

Girls, on the other hand---girls might easily be a real danger. They were all but immune to her looks, and while she had always been the Queen Bee of her year, that status meant little or nothing in the Program. If anything, it could be a deadly disadvantage. Many girls had reasons to resent and dislike her, and now, with all the usual restraints gone and almost all of them armed, they could do something about it.

Some of the girls might follow her, if only out of habit, but Chris concluded quickly that in general, she wouldn't trust any female she saw. She'd pretend to be friendly and nice to get them off their guard, but when she saw the opportunity, she would eliminate her girl classmates as soon as she could.

She heard a rustling, and then she heard Frieda's voice. "Could you show me how to use that pistol? I might need to know."

George answered: "Sure, Frieda. Here you go. It's loaded and ready to fire, see? You can tell because this indicator back here is up. The safety's here, and you take it off so." A slight pause, and then a gunshot; even muffled by the fog, it was incredibly loud. "Frieda! You---you shot me!" Another gunshot, and some thrashing noises, followed by silence.

Chris nodded in reluctant respect. For Frieda to be tricky enough to get her boyfriend's gun, and cold-blooded enough to realize that the two of them couldn't, in the end, stay together---that meant that Frieda had more to her than Chris had suspected she did.

She heard Frieda gathering her gear and her late boyfriend's, muttering to herself: "Sorry, George, but it was either you or me. I intend to survive this little outing, so you had to go. I wouldn't have done it if I'd had any other choice, but as it was…at least I made it quick. I don't think you suffered."

Chris agreed completely with Frieda's logic, except on the part about making sure that people didn't suffer. A dark, nasty part of Chris' mind took savage pleasure in the pain of others, whether it was setting her clique of toadies on someone like Carrie White, or sticking a firecracker into Irma Swope's shoe. What's the point of all this, if people aren't going to suffer? she asked herself.

However, Frieda was still very close by, and still armed with that pistol, so Chris didn't say anything aloud. She held as still as she could while Frieda finished consolidating the gear she had been issued or had inherited, and finally got ready to go. To Chris' delight, Frieda walked out right past the bush that concealed where Chris was hiding.

Even though they were in the Program, and Frieda was playing, she was still slack. She didn't look around herself, so Chris had a clear shot. She stood up, poising the revolver in one hand while steadying it with the other hand cupped beneath the butt, and squeezed the trigger just as Frieda came by.

The revolver bucked and roared in her hand, and Frieda's head seemed to disintegrate, collapsing in on itself as the hollow-point bullet tore through her brain. She took a step, purely on automatic, and crumpled to the ground, her bags falling from her suddenly-nerveless hand. Chris held the gun on her for a second, trying to make sure that she wasn't playing 'possum, but even though she had never killed anybody before, she could see that Frieda was dead. After one or two twitches, she lay there on her side, very, very still.

Chris bent down and took the bag that Frieda had been carrying. "Thank you, Frieda," she cooed softly; she knew that between the trees and the fog, others could be not far away---she had every reason to know that!---and she didn't want to give her position away any more than she had to. "I'll make sure to put this to good use, and when I've won, I'll give you all the credit you deserve!"

With that as a valedictory, she turned and headed on up the path. She strained her ears to hear through the ringing that her gunshot had left, wondering who she'd run into next and hoping that whoever it was, she'd see them in time to avoid them or shoot.