Ninth Hour – 40 Students Remaining

Simon Reed, a.k.a. B14, flinched as another bullet flew past his head, colliding with a tree on his right so close to him that he felt the bark flying off the trunk hit him in the face. He chanced a quick look behind him and swerved to the left just as another shot was fired, this bullet ending up God knows where. He needed to do something quickly, his luck would only hold out so much longer.

A third shot rang out, this time hitting lower and kicking up a cloud of dirt just in front of him. He jumped at the impact and took another sharp turn, right this time. Another bang and again the bullet hit a tree in front of him, gouging a hole in the wood. He stopped in his tracks instinctively but immediately realised his mistake and didn't bother trying to run again. He heard the footsteps behind him, the ones that had been pursuing him for what seemed like hours. They were a bit lighter than his own, much closer than he would have liked and no longer running.

He turned to face his pursuer and was honestly surprised by who he saw. Standing before him and pointing an obscenely large handgun at him, a Desert Eagle by the look of it, was Gabrielle Rousseau, a.k.a. G7, the French foreign exchange student who had joined there class no more than three months prior to the trip. He didn't even know she was eligible for the trip, not being an official student, let alone that she was actually on the coach with them.

"Hey, don't do this. We can team up, we can work together, we can get out of this. We don't have to kill anyone," Simon pleaded with the girl before him with arms raised, trying to coax her into lowering the gun. His own weapon, a metal pot lid, hung useless in his hands. It might have made a good improvised shield against something like a knife, but stopping a bullet with it was asking a lot.

"You seem to be confused. Killing is the whole point. It's how you get off the island and earn your ticket home" Gabrielle remained unfazed however, the gun level as always at his chest.

"It can't be the only way, I refuse to believe that. They have to have missed something and I plan on finding out what and exploiting it. Help me. We can get out of this together, along with whomever else we find" Simon was raising his voice a little now, a little more urgency in his tone.

"There's no 'we' in this. I shouldn't even be here; I should be back home far away from any of you and this damn island. I just got caught up in something that doesn't include me" Gabrielle pulled back the hammer on her pistol with her thumb, preparing to fire.

"You don't have to do this, we can figure out a plan to get off the island. I can get you home!" Simon was shouting now, trying to convince the girl to not do what she was planning to do.

"I already have a plan; it ends with me being the last one standing and being sent home, and starts with me killing you" Gabrielle pulled the trigger, the powerful weapon kicking back in her hands as it launched a bullet at Simon which hit him square in the chest and slammed into him, knocking him over backwards. She stood there for a moment, waiting to see if one bullet was enough or if more were required. After several seconds of silence in the wake of the loud, explosive bang and stillness from the boy in front of her, she turned he back to his body and began to walk in the opposite direction. That brought the remaining number of students down to forty, she believed.

He waited until the sound of footsteps completely disappeared, and then a few minutes longer, before he decided to get back up. It would not do to live through something like this only to die because he got impatient, because Gabrielle saw him sit back up after she had shot him in the chest. Simon rubbed the area that had been hit before lifting his shirt up and seeing the bullet still stuck in the material of his bullet-proof vest. He plucked the piece of metal away from the fabric and threw it away. He was surprised when he opened his pack at the start of the game and found not one but two weapons, even if one was pretty much useless. Well, Barret had said that there would be some surprises when it came to weapons and I guess that was what he meant.

Simon pulled his pack up over his head and placed it on the ground in front of him, trying not to touch the bruise that was already forming on his chest. He expected the pain, he knew vests like his only stopped the bullet from going in, and didn't stop the fact that they still had a lot of force behind them. Still, it hurt like hell. He didn't know what they were thinking when they decided to give a weapon like that to one of the students; it was more of a cannon than a gun.

He opened up the pack and grabbed a bottle of water, glad that Gabrielle didn't have the urge to try and take his belongings off of his body after she had 'killed' him. It would have been difficult to keep up the dead act in that case. While useful the vest wasn't perfect; a shot to the body, at least from most guns, and he would be fine. A shot to the legs or arms not so much, and getting shot in the head was fatal no matter what kind of armour he had on. That's exactly what would have happened had Gabrielle had decided to check if he was really dead and found out otherwise; a shot to the head, bang, and then there's a killer walking around with a big gun and bullet-proof armour. He couldn't allow something that dangerous to happen.

Simon needed to find his friends, people he could trust, and fast. Then, then they could get started on figuring out a way out of here. It was just too bad that they had taken their belongings when they had brought them here, he would have loved to get his hands on his laptop right about now. Maybe then he could do something about these collars around there necks. After that getting off the island would be easy.

"So, how does it look?"

Gerald Smith, a.k.a. B10, looked out from under the hood of the truck that he had spent the past few hours fixing to see his new 'ally' standing a few feet away. He started at Isaac Holmes, a.k.a. B5, for a few seconds, his eyes flicking down to the shotgun that hung by a strap around his neck briefly before answering.

"The front left tire was flat, but I've already fixed that, and I siphoned gas from all the other vehicles around here so it's got a full tank as well. But really those were the least of the problems with this thing" Gerald got out from under the hood and hopped down to the ground before leaning back against the truck.

"You've got to remember that this thing hasn't been maintained or even driven at any point in the past few decades. It's a wreck. Every major part is either seized up by rust or just too damaged to work at all. Maybe if I can clean it up a bit, get rid of most of the rust, I can get it working, but it's only a matter of time before the whole things gives up and breaks. Hopefully, it'll hold up long enough for what we need"

Isaac nodded his head at this while looking thoughtful. "Keep working on it for now. It's not vital, so if you can't get it working we can just work around it. It would be nice to have an easy way to move things around quickly should we need to, though" Gerald nodded his agreement to this and turned back around to restart work on the engine, but apparently Isaac was not finished yet. "In the meantime, I've got a list of people who I think can be useful to us all worked out. Is there anyone you want me to add to it? Anyone you want to make sure makes it home with us?"

Gerald answered quickly, without even turning around. "No." Frankly he thought that bringing in anyone else was a bad idea. The more people there were the more chance one would betray them, or that they would be found out. He was still uncomfortable even working with Isaac on this.

"Okay then, I'll leave you to it" With that, Isaac turned around and Gerald heard his footsteps fade away as they moved in the direction of the garage. Gerald turned around to make sure he had really left and saw that he was nowhere in sight and that the door to the office had been closed.

With Isaac finally gone, Gerald quietly close the hood of the truck and walked around to the driver side door, hopping inside. His pack already sat in the passenger seat, ready for him, and he reached under the steering column to continue the hot-wire job that he had started earlier. He wasn't lying; not really, the engine truly was a mess. Every surface covered with grime and rust and who knew what else, but the whole thing was in remarkably good shape considering it had been standing outside in the elements for so long. He guessed they just built these things to last. Gerald sat up and looked over at the building again quickly; he needed to move fast if he was going to get it started and leave before Isaac noticed something.

It was not that Isaac's plan was bad one, or that Gerald didn't want to escape, it was just that he didn't think it would work. Isaac's plan was basically to get a bunch of smart people together and hope one of them gets an idea. It's not that it wouldn't work, but it left a lot to chance and relied heavily on the idea that these people could be trusted. Gerald wasn't willing to take that risk.

Just as he was about to start the engine he stopped. He'd though a lot about how he was going to do this, and had decided that this way was the best. Trying to talk to Isaac about it wouldn't end well; he'd just get a lecture on why he shouldn't leave. He had even briefly considered knocking out or even killing Isaac and taking the shotgun for himself. He was leaving to play the game after all and he could use a decent weapon. However, just because Gerald didn't believe in the plan didn't mean it wouldn't work. It deserved a chance, and if it did work, then it would save everyone. Gerald wouldn't have to kill everyone else to survive.

He sparked the last two wires together and the engine roared to life. He took one last look at the garage before pressing on the gas pedal and steering the truck towards the road.

Sorry Isaac. But I've got to look after myself first.

It all came back down to the collars. One could try and get off the island, either by finding or building your own boat, or even hijacking a patrol boat, but you could only get so far before the collars blew up and took your neck with them. If you went the other way, tried to take over the mess hall and end it that manner. Well, the dangerzone around the building would stop anyone before they even got close. They were the main obstacle that stood in the way of their escape; Isaac knew this, but he couldn't think of a way around them. Surely there must be some way of removing them, they had to get the winner of the island some how. Unless there was no winner. No, no. He couldn't think like that. There was a way, a way of unlocking the collars without setting off the explosives. So in essence they were trying to find a way of disarming a bomb. Great.

In that case, their first priority should be to find someone who knew a thing or two about electronics, how they worked and more importantly how to take them apart. He started to scan through the list of students he knew to be on the island, as well as his own list of people who could be trusted. Isaac was looking for someone who could help them when he heard the sound of an engine starting outside. He grabbed his shotgun from the counter next to him and ran outside, just in time to see the truck start moving towards the road.

He realised almost immediately what this meant. Gerald was betraying him; he had fixed up the truck by himself and was heading off on his own. Isaac raised the shotgun in front of him and aimed it at the retreating form of the truck, the back tires more specifically. That would at least slow the truck down without permanently disabling it. However, after a second, he lowered the gun and let the truck disappear from sight, muttering under his breath to himself as he watched it vanish behind the trees.

"Damn it, Gerald. You could have talked to me. I would have let you leave if that's the way you felt"

Dropping the shotgun to let it hang around his waist again, Isaac released a sigh and turned to walk back to the garage. So far his idea of grouping everyone together wasn't off to a great start.

Inside one of the moderately sized suburban houses that made up the area of the island known as the residential district, a dull thumping sound echoed through its interior as a figure paced back and forth on the hard, wooden floor. It was something he had been doing since he had arrived there almost an hour ago.

"Will you stop pacing? It's giving me a headache"

"I can't, I'm restless. People are dying out there, we could be next, I don't see how you can remain so calm right now and expect me to do the same"

Charles Palmer, a.k.a. B17, paused in his pacing just long enough to answer this request from his friend Zack Stone, a.k.a. B11, before starting it up again. Zack himself stood at the window of the house they currently resided in, gazing out over the street from behind what remained of the tattered curtains that hid him from view as they flapped in the breeze coming through the broken glass. In his hands he held his given weapon, a sawn-off shotgun, at the ready. Just in case anybody tried to start a fight with the duo. Not that it was a likely occurrence; the street showed no signs of movement and the other houses on the street appeared deathly still, as if nothing living had entered in years. Although presumably the people who organised this had gone through them recently.

After a few seconds without a response from his friend, Charles stopped in his track again and turned to face him. He waved his arms involuntarily as he spoke, his own weapon, a one handed sickle, still in his hands. "People are already dead, Zack. Edward is already dead, our friend. Stabbed to death by who the fuck knows! How can you just sit there like nothings happening?"

This caught Zack's attention and he turned away from the window to face his friend. He stood in the centre of what was once the living room of this house. He guessed that it still was; only now it was devoid of any furniture or any other object. The last family to live here most likely took everything with them when they moved, leaving only the barren, dust covered room that they stood in now. "Because there's nothing we can do Charlie. Not right now anyway. Rushing in will only get us killed. For now we need to just stay put, keep a rational head and think things through. Which is what I've been doing while you were wearing a grove in the floorboards"

This seemed to calm Charlie down somewhat and he finally ceased his pacing, instead leaning against the door frame that lead from the living room to the dining room. "Your right, I'm sorry. I-I'm just scared Zack. We don't know what's going on out there. Who knows how many people have died since the last announcement?" There was a moment's pause and Zack didn't need to look at his friend to know that he was thinking about how to phrase the next question.

"Do you think she's still alive?"

Zack turned back towards the window to resume his watch other the world outside, pausing for a moment himself as he thought about their mutual friend who, along with the late Edward, made up the rest of their group. "Zoe can handle herself. She's tough. I'm sure she's still alive"

From behind him he heard an audible sign as Charlie relaxed. "You're probably right. We still need to find her as soon as possible though. I won't be able to stop blaming myself if she died before we could meet up with her like with Edward…"

"Yeah, me neither"