Hour 5
46 Contestants Remaining
"Did you hear that?" Girl # 18, Sky Hawk asked.
"Just a scream," Girl # 20, Lexie Hawk replied, "we're bound to hear more of those."
"Sounded like a roar," Sky replied as she visibly shuddered.
"Could be," Lexie responded as she exhaled. They had been running for god only knows how long; neither of them wore a watch and neither of them really would've cared how long they were running because of it. They knew it was dark when everything started, and already the sun was starting to inch across the horizon. Nothing obvious, but light rays of purple stretching above the island, already casting an eerie glow on the wall of the random shed where the two girls rested.
They had stopped somewhere among the bases main area, though just where they couldn't quite tell. There were dozens of outbuildings, all of them made of the same non-descript concrete and wood materials. The fact that neither girl could read a map or use a compass all that well didn't make it any better.
The fact that they were lost and that they were more than likely surrounded by dozens of people who wanted to kill them wasn't the issue, although it occupied their thoughts, no, that wasn't a problem. Lexie and Sky were both athletes and fighters in their own respect, yet in completely different realms. Lexie was a star on the softball team, while Sky was a dancer and swimmer of many years, holding many regional medals in diving and speed while also being proud to be able to hold her breath of lengths upwards of five minutes.
No, the dangers outside weren't what scared both girls. There was one thing that scared them.
Only one person would be coming out of it all alive.
Being of the competitive sort, it was a concept that they could understand, and under any other circumstances both of them would have probably run into the thing all out and willing to kill.
The thing was... they were sisters. Identical twin sisters at that. They had a bond that couldn't even be equaled. Up until this moment in life they had done almost everything together, they "became women" at the same time, both broke their arms within the same week, they had lost their virginity on the same night (though to different boys, they shared a lot of things, boys were not one of them), and their bond was a very, very close, nearly spiritual, one.
Odds were that neither would be getting out alive, they both knew that. But just on the off chance that they would make it to the end together...
"So, what do we do?" Sky asked idly, her eyes wide with fear. She thumbed her randomly assigned weapon, an umbrella with a long metal tip. Rotating it around in her hand, she tried holding it defensively, but her shaking was so great that it fell to the ground.
Reasonably confident but more afraid than she would let on, Lexie flexed her hands around her weapon. It was randomly assigned, but it seemed that her weapon was chosen to be the tool of her trade: an aluminum baseball bat. She wrapped her fingers around it, tightening them, holding it, feeling its power. And it was good.
"Survive," Lexie said, "we have to just do what we can to get out of this thing. Find a way out of these…"
As she fingered her belt, Sky looked up and shot her eyes open. She spun her umbrella towards her sisters arm and shot it away from the belt.
"You nuts? You saw what happened to Nick!"
"We all did," Lexie said as she took her hand away, "I was just trying to make a point."
"Look, we can beat this thing," Sky said resignedly, "we just have to be fast. I really think we can."
"Beat it?" Lexie said, "there is no beating it, it's live or die, no more no less. If we make it to the end, which I don't think we will, but even if we make it to the end we're put in a pretty tough situation. I don't want to kill you, nor will I."
"And I'm not going to kill you either, I won't do it. I don't want to kill anyone."
"You're not making sense," Lexie replied, though as she tended to do with her sister, she didn't need to finish the thought. Part of her already knew what was coming, but part of her needed to hear it from her sisters own lips.
Exhaling, Sky slumped against the wall and looked at the ground.
"Why don't we just save ourselves the trouble?"
"What do you mean?" Lexie asked as she joined her sister.
"I say we just find a real tall cliff or building and jump together. We were born together, we've lived together, we might as well die together."
Sky held her sister's hands while a tear crossed down her face. At that sight, Lexie herself lost her resolve and collapsed, hugging her sister tight as she allowed herself to cry.
"I don't want to die," Sky choked through her tears, "but I don't want to lose you either. I couldn't live without you Lexie."
"Let's do that," Lexie said with a mixed sense of dread and happiness, "let's go out together."
The two sisters just held each other close, leaning against the wall of the building and crying their eyes out.
"I love you sis," Sky sobbed.
"I love you too," Lexie muttered before both girls wound up breaking down again.
Lori Nicotero, a.k.a. Girl # 1 was in a world of hurt. She didn't know why, but she was being hunted by someone of great determination. There was an explosion, that much she could remember. Off to her side several hours before there was an explosion. There was light, blinding light and sound, a loud bang. After that shock there was searing pain as she realized that there were extensive burns on her right side and thigh. At that, she had just started running.
She had crossed the paths of a couple other students since then, but they had all been on their own missions. They all ran every which way while she was forced to stay on her own. It wasn't her near death experience or the burns on her side that took her down, but the sounds.
Someone was following her.
She could run, but whatever it was that was chasing her was determined. It was slow, it was fast, it was hunting her. It was out of sight, it was dark, and it was chasing her. As she started to wear out, getting tired of running through jungles and around old and rotted out buildings, she started to hallucinate. It was no longer a darkness chasing her. It had a shape, it had a form, and she could see it clearly.
It was a clown.
Clowns. Not a lot scared Lori, even though she was a loud and proud girly girl into makeup and sleeping with guys in an indiscriminate fashion. She was known for being loose, and, well, she did love sex, so who could argue? But clowns got to her. She saw the movie Poltergeist when she was little and was screwed up for life ever since. Clowns, hiding under the bed, around dark corners, in every particular position of darkness there were clowns. Evil, laughing, smiling, always looking for an opportunity to find you vulnerable and tear you apart. Clowns.
This clown was following her, that much was for sure, she could still hear it cracking through the brush, snapping twigs and branches, tearing through vines. She could hear it, the beast with it's rasping breath and cough, the beast with his large fangs which were sure to tear her to shreds.
Five hours she had been running from these demons of the night, their smiling and painted on faces terrorizing her. The burns in her side from some horribly aborted and painful magic trick. As her energy had run low, her resolve had grown higher and higher. Lori was going to make a stand.
As she rounded one grove of trees she found a building. It wasn't large, nothing more than a storage shed with concrete walls and a wooden door, but it would have to do. She darted in, slammed the door shut and hid right next to the door inside. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her weapon, a large fire ax. It would have to do. The clown with his explosive magic tricks would have to either put up or shut up. At the very least an ax to the mouth would make him shut up.
She stood next to the closed door, listening to her own voice and just barely able to see what was going on with no light in the room and one window just barely letting in a bit of purple light.
A minute passed, soon stretching to five, then ten, then fifteen minutes. The clown never appeared. She knew it was there though, it was watching her. She knew it.
The door creaked open. Her eyes barely adjusted to the light, Lori strained what muscles she had to make sure the swing would be quick, aiming it high so as to decapitate the monster clown of her nightmares, knocking its steel teeth out as it bled a horrible green and gushed it's murky blood all over the floor.
The figure creeped into the room. Lori swung the ax…
…and missed, lodging it into the door. She could see the figure spin around, and using the ax lodged in the door for support, Lori kicked it square in the chest. A female voice groaned in pain as it crumpled to the floor, giving Lori a chance to pull her ax out of the wall.
Another explosion, light filled the room behind Lori and she screamed. The figure on the ground screamed too, watching as Lori held the ax high above her head. Lori was taken aback as she adjusted to the dim morning light and could see what was on the ground. It wasn't the seven foot tall, three hundred pound clown with pale face and steel teeth as she had imagined in her nightmares. It was five foot nothing, barely one hundred pounds, and had a thin pair of glasses that accentuated her square face which hid a couple of small zits.
Lori held her ax above her head defensively in a position that kept Lara Drake, a.k.a. Girl # 24, pinned to the ground of her own volition, holding her oversized in appearance flare gun in hand on Lori. It was useless at the moment, her last shot blasting the wall behind Lori and keeping her one shot weapon without any power.
"You were following me! You tried to kill me!" Lori accused.
In her rasping voice, Lara coughed and spat against the wall.
"You fucked my boyfriend, seemed pretty damned justified at the time," Lara fired back.
Closing her eyes to push a headache out of her head, Lori practically laughed, "Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?"
"Luke," Lara practically hissed, "you fucked Luke and I was going to make you pay for it. Great thing this is, kill folks you don't like without a care in the world. I was gonna take you and him both out, it would've been beautiful."
Lori let a wry smile cross her face as she muttered, "Your facts are extremely off girlie," Lori spat back, "Luke came to me!"
A look of shock and disappointment crossed Lara's face.
"No," she muttered, "it's not possible."
"Yeah, believe it," Lori shot back, "your boyfriend came to me because he knew I was loose and because you wouldn't give him any. The guy's a slut, I mean, look at him, he's been with all sorts of guys and girls while you were saving it for marriage if I'm not mistaken?"
"But I…" Lara said, breaking into tears almost.
"You got morals which is admirable in this fucked up world," Lori said, lowering her ax to her side, "but sex is sex and he's a man, you don't give him what he wants and the shit hits the fan. Did you honestly think he'd save himself for you?"
Lara was breaking down at that, at which point Lori sat beside her in an oddly charitable act.
"I'm not the only one either. I was clean before I slept with the guy but I got a VD afterwards, and since you haven't slept with him either…"
A sickened look crossed Lara's face as she coughed once more and spit onto the wall.
"Oh," Lori said, "so that explains your throat."
Lara nodded with a sickened look on her face and tears rolling down her cheek. In an oddly charitable move, Lori wrapped one arm around Lara's shoulder and hugged her close.
"Look, Luke has caused us both a world of sickness and a world of hurt, and I don't know about you but I think we'll both be able to get by here if we stick together. I know what'll make you feel good… How about we go out, find Luke and string him up by the balls?"
Bringing back her evil smile, Lara looked through the tears and up at Lori, "You really mean it?"
"Sure," Lori said in her own evil manner, "you got that gun, I've got this ax, there's a whole lot of things we can do to take him out, and I think we'll be able to fend off some of the other psychos out there as well."
Coughing once more, Lara looked up and said, "Let's do it."
At that, Lori cracked out a plan in her mind and spread it out to Lara. The two women worked out a plan to find Luke and take him down for good. They laughed, they smiled, and as soon as something was set up for sure they walked side by side out of the building and into the uncertainty of the jungle and what the Battle Royale had to offer.
It was no secret that Brian Pavell, a.k.a. Boy # 9 was not a fan of women. He had gotten in trouble several times before for beating up girls at school, and under every circumstance that he could afford he would refuse to work with them. Women were useless, they had no purpose in life to him other than procreation, and even then he didn't look too interested towards the future with women.
He wasn't gay, fuck no, if there's anything worse than women out there it's queers, and Brian most certainly would never be a queer. They were wrong. So, no women, no men, Brian was just looking to be anti-social. He'd be with the guys, he'd pick fights and beat up on his other classmates at school with the guys, and he'd get arrested with the guys. It was power.
Power, the one thing that had eluded Brian all his life.
Power, the thing that women had but didn't deserve or just used wrong.
Power…
Mom had the power. Brian always looked to his mom in the past, she had raised him on her own and taken care of him the best she could, which truth be told wasn't very good. The Pavell's were part of the darker side of suburbia. Mary Pavell, Brian's mother, was a known and oft-arrested alcoholic. As a baby Brian would often be in a crib in the same room crying his eyes out while his mother was passed out on a couch covered in vomit not but three feet away. Sometimes she'd show up with strange men who would give her money in exchange for sex. Sometimes they'd beat her and Brian if they saw it fit, and they all just walked away having that standard shit-eating grin on their face. They won, and they had used the woman right, and Brian just sat by learning all the way.
Mary of course didn't mind. The money paid for her drink, and Brian was good enough to help the welfare checks coming. It was a nice life, a sweet life. For Mary at least.
She would get drunk and abuse him from time to time, throwing him against the wall on some nights and smashing whiskey bottles while screaming at the top of her lungs others. It was no place to grow up in, no life for any child, but one that he survived and somehow thrived in.
When Brian was sixteen, he was old enough to fight back and would often kick and beat his mother back in similar ways that the men she slept with would. He would enjoy it, he would get off on it, he would receive his power from it.
Then one day they found his mother having drowned in the toilet, asphyxiating on the water and her own vomit. It was called a drug overdose, though some bruises on the back of her neck would have indicated otherwise. With not enough evidence to prove otherwise, Brian was left as an emancipated minor to fend for himself. And things were good.
Except he had no more power. Sure, he could be the bully and beat up other kids at school, but he had no power. Murder had felt great once before, for the whores who deserved it. All the girls whores, they all deserved to die. A look of pure rage crossed his face as he let the word cross his mouth. They all must die.
And now he could do it. He could kill the women, the whores, as he pleased and he could smile and laugh. The gun he cradled in his hand was a powerful talisman, letting him rain fire down upon all the whores. He had fired into a cluster of the worst whores already, but had since lost them when they returned fire. Since then he had gone hunting, searching for just the right ones.
There was a pair now. There were two, he could kill them easily. Point, click and fire, the automatic pistol would do the rest. Exiting the tree line, he opened fire on the two girls he saw and smiled.
The first few shots careened off of the concrete wall of the building, sending Sky and Lexie diving. The sisters dodged in different directions, parting from each other as they sought shelter. The next bullet fired hit Lexie in the shoulder, drawing blood in a spray against the wall. She screamed and fell to the ground. Barely a graze, but still hurt like a bitch.
Brian laughed and walked up to the girl, aiming the gun to her face.
He could hear a scream from behind and barely had enough of a chance to turn before unbelievable pain shot through his body. Sky stood proud, holding her umbrella with great strength as she jammed it into Brian's right kidney. For the moment he was in too much pain to move, giving Lexie enough chance to recover. Jumping up, she ran over with her bat and slammed it into his shoulder. Brian screamed again.
Swinging her bat up in a long arc once more, Lexie prepared for the kill. Killing wasn't in her daily routine, but when in Rome…
Brian gathered what energy he could muster from pure rage, swinging up the hand he held his gun with and smashing it into the side of Lexie's face. The girl was sent sprawling to the ground once more, this time seemingly for good. In another quick arc, he aimed the Colt .45 at Sky.
"No," Sky said as she backed against the wall and away from Brian, "please, no!"
Brian fired four times in succession. The first shot slammed into Sky's stomach, spraying blood against the wall and opening up her belly. The next two went off to the side, both slamming into her left arm at the elbow. The first shot shattered it, while the second nearly severed it, leaving her arm hanging by some loose tissue and a couple tendons. The fourth and final shot went high, gouging a hole through Sky's neck, severing her artery and tearing open a hole in her throat. The blood bubbled and foamed at her neck as she collapsed to the ground.
Nursing his wounds and limping in pain, Brian twisted back around to Lexie. Fucking bitch, this hurts. I'm bleeding, too much, god damn it!
Lexie was recovering, looking on in horror as her sister fell to the ground in a bloody mess. She was backing away, her baseball bat seemingly useless. She could run, all she had to do was stand up, but the bullet wound and the blow to the head slowed her down, not to mention the fact that her twin sister lay dying not but four feet away. Nothing could save her, she was ready. She could see as Brian aimed the gun at her face. This was it, this would be the time…
A yell from the trees caught both of their attentions. A tall and wiry figure ran into the fray shrieking like a madman. In fact, all things considered, he probably was a madman.
Paul Holt, a.k.a. Boy # 12, came into the battle swinging his randomly assigned weapon. Brian was too confused to react, he just stared on as the banshee screaming Paul ran towards him. Paul swung the body of his weapon in both hands, smashing it into Brian's chest. Swinging it once more, he used the side of the flat blade to smack the gun out of Brian's hand.
"Where I come from we don't treat women like that," Paul practically hissed as he yank-started the chainsaw. Brian looked on in horror as Paul ran forward with the weapon. One swing and a gush of blood and all was over. Paul lodged the chainsaw blade into Brian's left shoulder, then pushed it down, slicing it through Brian's right side. The two halves of Brian fell down to the side, coating both Paul and Lexie in a thick layer of gore.
A moment of silence passed between them as both breathed heavily and looked upon each other. Lexie picked up Brian's gun and tentatively held it on Paul with a heavily shaking hand.
"If I was going to kill you by now," Paul commented, "I would have done it already."
Lexie held strong with her terror, lifting the pistol up and aiming it at Paul's chest. He just murdered that guy, cut him in half, he's all, god, we're all covered in, Jesus...
They stood by awkwardly for another moment, broken by a strange wheezing sound that had gone nearly forgotten. Looking down, Lexie could see Sky. She was still alive, nearly missing an arm with a large hole in her stomach and a large piece of her neck missing. There was blood everywhere, and she was very much alive, the blood from her severed artery sputtering as it passed over her shattered throat. She breathed in frantic gasps, eyes searching around wildly as her throat kept rasping and bubbling even more blood.
Lexie looked down pitifully. She would've cried, but in all honesty she was in too much shock. She lived, Sky wouldn't live another few minutes. The two sisters looked into each others eyes, Sky looking up pleadingly, sadly. The pain was gone oddly enough, she was dying and she wanted it to end.
Looking on sympathetically, Paul handed Lexie her aluminum bat. Lexie couldn't help it, she began to bawl.
Still, she ended her sister's suffering.