Come Together

Sitting in a chair on the church's stage, Isaac Freemantle, a.k.a. Boy # 17, rubbed his temples with his hands. There was a lot to be done, and he was the one who had to set it in motion. The eleven people who were milling about the pews below were waiting for something to happen. They knew that it would be coming from Isaac, and he was waiting to make the announcement. Well, since two had been sent away, the plan was already technically in motion, but he had not made the official announcement. That needed to be a bit more... delicate.

There had been a lot of discussion as to why he hadn't gathered together more people sooner, but he would tell no one why. If he did, well, it would have probably cost him some points. In short, had he tried to gather a lot of people early on, there might have been one or two people who would have tried jockeying for a leadership position. Starting out with a small, loyal circle of people would create a buffer zone before the necessary big gathering. This way at the very least he would have some people willing to protect him. It was selfish, but he was important. It was the only way to make sure the plan would go off without a hitch.

Looking to his watch, Isaac took a deep breath. It was time. He knew it, but he was nervous about implementing it. It carried a lot of potential for good in the rebellion, but at the same time it was the most risky. Thus far he had been drawing in a few people at a time, particularly those who were close and those who he trusted the most. Now though... now it was the time to get some bodies. Now was the time to start bringing in pretty much everyone in the game if they could afford it, minus those who were probably dangerous. The only problem inherent in this was the fact that it was hard to know who was dangerous and who was not. In previous games they had announced who had made what kill in an effort to build up terror and mystique, but in this game... things were different. Isaac didn't like it. It removed some of their advantage and made things more of a minefield. In short, it made gathering a great number of people together very dangerous.

But he had to. That was the only way it would all work.

Stepping up to the pulpit, Isaac pushed his glasses up his nose and cleared his throat.

"Can I have your attention please?" he said as loudly as he could.

The eleven below immediately drew to attention, filling out the first couple of rows as they waited for his speech.

"Now, we've secured this church as much as can be done under the circumstances. All of you who have working cell phones, I suggest you now start making your calls. We are going to need to gather as many people together as possible for this to work, so whoever you can get would be the difference between life and death."

Looking gravely to the people sitting before him, Isaac added, "But be careful. People are playing the game. Some of them are going to be people you know. Because of that, please make sure that if you call someone that it's someone you can trust one hundred percent. We can not afford doubt, and we cannot afford failure at a time like this. We are going to get out, but we are going to need to rely on each other. So start calling, but keep the safety of the group in mind."

Like clockwork, all of those who had cell phones began pulling them out and making calls. Isaac looked down upon them all with a smile. The escape was going to work. They were going to pull it off, and it would be glorious. Sure, some would probably lose their lives in the process, but really it would be a necessary sacrifice. Calling together as many people as possible really did have that morbid element to it. Casualties would be great, so the more people gathered, the more likely some would escape. In spite of that gruesome thought, the boy tried to smile.

"Come together, right now, over me," Isaac sung softly to himself with a hesitant smile.

Gillian Stavros, a.k.a. Girl # 10, was beginning to feel quite satisfied with herself as she cautiously wandered the streets of Grover's Mill. Things were pretty bad, but at the same time they were beginning to slowly gain some semblance of order. She had raided the medical supplies from the clinic and had formed a fairly efficient doctor's bag. It wasn't much, mostly some antibiotics, antiseptics, pain killers, bandages and sewing supplies, but it would have to do. It was crazy, she knew it was crazy, but at the same time she knew that it could make a difference. Try to help everyone, that's how it goes. It's impossible, but it's worth a try. But if you can help one person, maybe, just maybe you can make some good come out of all this...

The girl's cellular phone began to ring rather shrilly in her pocket, scaring her immensely for a moment before she figured out what was going on. Quickly spinning about to make sure that no one was watching, she quickly pulled the phone from her pocket and flipped it open.

"Hello?" she asked.

"Hey Gillian, it's Christina," the voice on the other side of the phone said quickly. It was one of the few voices that Gillian would have actually been glad to hear. Gillian and Christina Montressor, a.k.a. Girl # 24, were teammates on the school's track team. Although they weren't the closest of friends, they were on good terms and Christina was someone she knew that she could trust.

"Chrissy!" Gillian exclaimed.

"Can't and won't talk long," Christina said quickly, "so here's what's gotta happen..."

She can't be dead. She just... can't. It's not her. It can't be her. There were other girls that could look like her, it could be Julie, or Hera, or Kerry... no, it's her. You know it's her. But who could do something like that, something so... so horrible, to anyone? To her? No, it can't be her. Why? What happened? Who is it? It's her, isn't it?

"It is," Calvin Spencer, a.k.a. Boy # 11, said miserably as he knelt by the hanging remains of his girlfriend, Jessica Tyler, a.k.a. Girl # 21. He almost wished he hadn't found it. He almost wished that if he didn't know she were dead that she would still be alive. But that would be stupid. In a game like the Battle Royale, people die all the time. People are killed all the time. That was what happened, that was what they did. That was the purpose. But why her? She was mine, why her? For the love of God... she didn't deserve this. Why her? They could have killed anyone else that they wanted, but not her. She was mine, why did they have to kill her?

Though he tried his best not to, the boy could not help but cry out to the world. With tears streaming down his face, he cried, he screamed, he roared until all that would come forth was a strangled, gravelly rasp. He screamed and wailed, bawled out loud as he hit the snow and punched the wall of the barn. It wasn't fair, none of it was fair, it was all so horrible. Of all the people this could happen to, an atrocity like this, it seemed to be most unfair for it to happen to someone as good as Jessica Tyler. He cried so hard that his nose began to bleed, but he didn't care in the slightest. Everything hurt. Everything felt bad. It felt like the world was ending. Had the ground split open and swallowed him up, he was sure that he would not have minded it. If anything he would have welcomed it. The plan, the future, all of it was torn in two. He was going to spend the rest of his life with Jessica. Instead, she was hanging naked and mutilated by her feet from this shitty barn in this fucking game.

It had been a monster that had at her. It had to be. No rational human could do something so horrible and with such ferocity. They had ripped her apart, spread her out all over the place, and taken what they wanted with them. It would not have surprised the boy in the slightest if they had eaten part of her, or worse... no, don't think like that. She's dead. They did it, they fucked her up, and they killed her. They killed her. She's dead, she's dead because they fucking killed her. And what are you going to do about it?

He stayed kneeling by her for the longest time, but as he began to regain some semblance of sanity, Calvin began looking to the ground. There were footprints on the ground near where she had been butchered. Big ones. They led back and forth from the nearby farmhouse a couple times and then appeared to go off into the forest. Their prints were heavy and pronounced in the snow, sinking deep and giving a distinct path to follow them.

Looking at his girlfriend once more, Calvin spoke with a wavering voice, "I will find them. I will find them and I will kill them. I will make them pay. I will make them suffer. I will kill them. For you."

Getting to his feet, the boy didn't think twice in kissing his girlfriend's remains despite the fact that she had lips no more. As he began to follow the heavy footprints into the forest, the boy became aware that the cellular phone in his pocket was ringing. He didn't even look once at the device as he pulled it from his pocket and hurled it against a nearby tree. The phone shattered to a million pieces, but he didn't care. He was going to hunt down Jessica's killer and make them pay. It would not be easy, it would not be fun, but boy would it feel good...

The chemical mix was almost right. He had never fully tested it out in Amberlaine as blowing stuff up there would probably be seen as bad form, but Nick McIntyre, a.k.a. Boy # 24, was itching to give it a try. He had already capped off several lengths of pipe in an effort to make some bombs of his own. He had filled them with whatever he could get his hands on in the garage of a rather nice house: nuts, bolts, nails, bits of broken glass, some stray chunks of fiber glass. They would rip people to shreds, make them bleed, make them suffer, and it would be fun to watch. It would not be quite like watching a good burn, but the town would burn in its own time. He would make sure of it. The pipe bombs, well... they were more of a defensive thing. They were for those who wouldn't fear the pistol he had, and there would be plenty of those in a game like this.

The only problem with making pipe bombs was that with the chemicals in their current condition, one wrong calculation in dosage would have some fairly deadly conse-

The buzzing of the cellular phone on his thigh nearly caused Nick to drop his funnel. With reasonable fear, the boy screamed miserably. He stopped himself quickly, eyes darting back and forth as he licked his lips. Just the phone, just the phone, don't fuck up and blow yourself to kingdom come just because someone thought they wanted to give you a call.

Nick only needed to wait another moment for the phone to stop ringing. Finishing his pour, the boy set down his bottle of household cleaner and funnel and pulled the phone from his pocket. Why would Hugo call me? Dumbass. He can fight his game, I'll fight mine, no way I'm letting a guy that big pull me into a trap.

With frustration, the boy crammed his cell phone inside one of the pipe bombs. Sure, it wouldn't make that great a piece of shrapnel, but he didn't need to worry about it anymore anyway. All that mattered was the burn. The town would burn, the people would burn, and he would be laughing the entire time.

The boy smelled smoke. Under the circumstances and considering the temperature it wouldn't have been that odd for someone to be using a fireplace, but this smelled different. This smelled bad, and for some reason he began to follow its scent down Ridgemont Street. It was when he heard the screams that Carlos Bautista, a.k.a. Boy # 6, began to run through the snow. He knew it was stupid, he knew that it could be a trap and was likely someone on the verge of death, but he had to do something. To hear something like that and do nothing... that was murder. Couldn't have saved Misty. You tried, but you didn't. It's not your fault, but maybe you can do something this time. You can make things right this time...

The boy could see smoke pouring from the back of a house, seemingly joined by a choked scream that managed to force its way through. It was a girl's voice, and it was crying out for help. That was all he needed to know. Running around to the back, he lifted his shotgun overhead and smashed out two of the windows from which smoke was pouring. A blast of ugly, black smoke blew forth, followed by an even louder scream by the girl inside.

"Get out through the window!" Carlos yelled.

"I can't!" the girl inside cried out, "There's too much fire!"

"Shit," Carlos muttered to himself as he ran around to the backyard of the house. The backyard of this house was quite nice in a rural-suburban sort of way. There was a frozen-over hot tub, a nice brick-oven barbeque, a practical zoo of cute stone animals and a swing set that glistened with frost. The back door to the house was one of sliding glass, quickly taken care of as he chucked a decorative stone frog through it. Smoke began to filter through, but not as strongly as on the corner of the house where he had broken out a window.

"Hello? Where are you?" the boy cried out as he stormed through the house. The question soon proved to be redundant as he could see the choking smoke pouring out of the kitchen. A girl in her heavy, cold-weather clothes was curled into a ball near a cabinet. Fire surrounded her, devouring the room and filling the air with noxious smoke and ash.

"Come on over here!" he shouted. The girl just looked up at him with terrified eyes, shaking her head as if in shock. She wouldn't move. He felt like cursing at the girl but immediately stifled the impulse. It would accomplish nothing, and it wasn't a good thing to do. Great. Time to be a hero.

Slinging his shotgun over his shoulder, Carlos held his breath and ran into the room with his arms over his head to protect against debris. The room was sweltering, the fire practically roaring as it began to consume with even greater ferocity. You broke out a window, just gave that fire a big mouthful of oxygen. Real smooth my friend, real smooth.

Forcing the girl to her feet, the boy pulled her from the room and practically flung her into the backyard. The girl was crying and choking, gasping for air as she looked gratefully to her savior and then fearfully back toward the house. Carlos immediately recognized her as Kerry Rawlings, a.k.a. Girl # 2. An average-looking African-American girl with beaded cornrows, she looked a mess.

"Are you all right?" Carlos asked.

"I found some potatoes, I thought I could make some fries, maybe calm down a bit, but the grease got all over the place and then the fire and then..." the girl blubbered before breaking down once more into sobs.

"It's all right," Carlos said as he embraced the girl comfortingly, "it's all right."

"My backpack's in there!" the girl practically shrieked, "My backpack, it's got my purse and my food and-"

An explosion from within the kitchen blew out another window, the fire quickly spreading around the house.

"It's gone," Carlos said, "can't get anything out of there. But you're alive, all right?"

The girl looked up to him in shock, her deep brown eyes watery as she collapsed once more against him. You saved her man. You did good. That's real good ain't it? Got to be the hero and everything. Now maybe find the boy in that blue ski-mask and everything'll even itself ou-

It was then that the boy's cell phone began to ring.

He'd been on the phone for nearly ten minutes, but at least he was smiling. When Amos Epstein, a.k.a. Boy # 7, was smiling, that meant things were going well. Despite their mutual troubles and the recent departure of one of their members, he called the members of his group around for a meeting. Though they had seen him take a call, few showed any interest. He'd made a bunch of phone calls, few of which really seemed to be of any consequence. This time however, he had yelled for them all to come over and listen.

"That was Isaac," he said, "he said that he's got people coming and that they'll be here any minute now so we can get out and join the rest of his crew."

"What people?" Brenda Lennon, a.k.a. Girl # 15, asked.

"I don't know, he just said that he sent a couple people with guns, this way at least we can move on our own and still stay pretty safe," Amos replied.

"You're sure they're here to protect us?" Brenda asked again, puffing herself out slightly. She seemed to be edging herself to a fight, and nobody was looking to meet her challenge. Well, almost no one.

"What do you think they're going to do, try to wipe us out?" Vic Benedict, a.k.a. Boy # 23, replied as calmly as he could.

"Yeah, it is a possibility ain't it? This is Isaac we're talking about, what's to say he doesn't have an army raised that he's going to use to try to blast us to kingdom come?" Brenda practically accused.

"Why are you still here then? You've known that this was the score from the beginning, you knew that we were all waiting out for Isaac, so why did you stick around?" Vic asked simply. Brenda did not seem to have an answer for this, but she still had a look of indignation on her face that seemed raring for a fight.

Thankfully, as it appeared she was about to try to fight back, a knock came from one of the bowling alley's glass front doors. Cautiously, Vic approached with his pistol held high, watching the two silhouetted figures standing outside.

"Come on guys, let us in, it's fucking cold out here!" Darwin Wong, a.k.a. Boy # 20, hollered through the glass door. Looking to Amos for validation, Vic quickly pulled it open. In spilled Darwin and Conrad Ripley, a.k.a. Boy # 18, wielding a rifle and double-barreled shotgun respectively. Darwin had an enthusiastic, almost joking smile across his face, while Conrad simply looked glad to have the job done.

"We're your escort," Conrad said simply.

"Yeah guys, let's get this mofo on the road," Darwin said as he rubbed his hands together, "this game won't just let us escape on its own!"

Amos and Shaun Archer, a.k.a. Boy # 12, looked positively relieved for someone to come to their rescue. Brenda looked on rather dubiously, but seemed not to be arguing anything for once. The most skeptical of the bunch was probably Alyssa Fallon, a.k.a. Girl # 23. Going over to her boyfriend Vic, she whispered in his ear.

"What the hell does that mean?" she asked softly.

"That he thinks he's cool," Vic replied.

"Ah, gotcha," Alyssa replied.

Nevertheless, the five from the bowling alley followed their armed guards to the church.

Although Isaac had called Basim Sharafi, a.k.a. Boy # 13, several times in the game's earliest hours with high hopes for another close lieutenant, his hopes were once again quashed. Basim's phone was still turned off. Hoping for the best, he left a message.

Madison Holland, a.k.a. Girl # 14, was pissed off. There was nothing about this that was strange as she was generally something of an ill-tempered person, but this was worse than usual. Normally a girl who thrived on the control she held over the world around her, more than anything else she was angry as to how out of her hands everything was here. Two of her four closest friends who had been brought into the game were dead, and the third had gone AWOL. To make things even worse, she hadn't even been assigned a real weapon. They had given her a Magic 8 Ball, which was probably still sitting out there on the road from when she had jumped off the bus, searched her bag and then immediately ditched it. Hiding out in a house in town, the girl had improvised a weapon the best she could by pulling the staff off a toilet plunger and sharpening it against a piece of metal, but that could only go so far. She was fucked, and she hated it.

...and then of course there was the fact that she looked like hell. That much was one of the worst things as far as she was concerned. There was the distinct chance that she could win the whole thing and be a star because of it, but it wouldn't do her much good if she kept looking like shit. Her long blonde hair was a mess, her usually perfect skin was blotchy and dry. She needed makeup, she needed products, and she needed them bad. None of the trailers in the crappy trailer park she had hidden in had anything (well, anything that she would actually use), and this only angered her more. But do you really want to go into town with all the murderers and try to get something? Is it really worth it? Besides, what's a podunk town like this going to have? Cheap Kmart fuckoff wannabe hot makeup? Nothing of quality, nothing that'd work with your skin. You'll figure something out, you always do...

The ringing that pierced shrilly from her backpack scared Madison in the moment, but at the same time made her feel grateful. Someone was calling! She might have an ally after all, and if she had an ally, she had control. She could do it, she could totally do it...

Opening her backpack and fishing the phone from her purse (which the army guys were nice enough to include, but assholes enough to remove most of her possessions aside from feminine hygiene products), she looked at the name of the caller in its window. The frantic smile she had for a moment soon turned into a scowl. It was Mallory. Sure, she pretended to be friendly with her most of the time, but so what? Mallory was a stupid whore as far as Madison was concerned. She'd probably screwed as many people (and maybe a few dogs) as it took to win that whole stupid homecoming queen title (and beat you), and Madison wouldn't have trusted her even with a gun pointed at her head.

Turning the ringer to 'MUTE', the girl stuffed her cell phone and purse back into her backpack. She had no clue what Mallory wanted, nor did she care. She was going to leave the crappy trailer park and try to find some real products. Sure, people would call her stupid, maybe insane, but she didn't give a shit. If any of them gave her any trouble, she'd stab them with her sharpened plunger staff. That'd show 'em.

A variety of odd circumstances prevented some contestants from even receiving phone calls from the revolutionary group.

Chad Doerner, a.k.a. Boy # 25, didn't have a cell phone, and thusly wasn't called.

A matter of days before being taken into the game, Rene Foucalt, a.k.a. Girl # 25, had changed cell phone companies and received a new number that no one else in the contest had.

Natalya Serov, a.k.a. Girl # 8, was using the bathroom while Hera Morgan, a.k.a. Girl # 20, called her. With her phone out of the room, she did not hear it ring, and not thinking ahead Hera did not leave a message.

No one in the church had the phone numbers of Amanda Marquette, a.k.a. Girl # 18, and Kendal Fuchs, a.k.a. Girl # 22.

The phone of Randal Hudson, a.k.a. Boy # 19, was accidentally damaged during processing. It was only minor crush damage, as it only damaged the earpiece, but it made receiving calls next to impossible. Thankfully he was able to text Glen back and get directions to the meeting place. He was one of the lucky ones.

Frank Luczak, a.k.a. Boy # 14, tried his best to brace the cell phone against his head with his shoulder. Had he had a larger phone or not been as busy with his hands, this scenario would have been quite different. Instead, he found himself only slightly annoyed as he talked into the cell.

"Thank you so much for the offer Sophia; that does sound like an excellent idea. Some added protection and maybe more would really be nice. I'm a little tied up at the moment, but I could get there in maybe half an hour I think, forty-five minutes tops, is that all right?" he asked into the phone.

"No problem," Sophia replied over the phone, "just get here as soon as you can, we're looking to get this on and get moving as soon as we can."

"All right, I'll be there as quickly as I can," Frank said simply. Hearing Sophia hang up on the other end, the boy tried to figure out the best way to set the phone down considering his current predicament. If he just contorted his shoulder enough, set it down on the table...

The phone slipped from his shoulder and landed in the mangled mess that once was the torso of Eugene Chidester, a.k.a. Boy # 3. The cellular phone quickly disappeared amidst a massive coil of large intestine, causing Frank as much irritation as he honestly could feel. Well that's going to make a mess of things now, won't it?

The dead boy was strapped to an operating table, split open from sternum to pelvis. With a book on anatomy that he had found in one of the doctor's offices, he had tried identifying all the major organs in the chest and stomach cavity. He liked to think that he was doing a pretty good job too. True, his main incision was a bit inexperienced, and he made an utter mess splitting the sternum with the bone saw and rib-spreader, but the rest went fairly well. With a few slips of paper that he had found inside a desk, the boy labeled as many organs that he could identify with his meticulous block type. Heart, lungs, liver, intestines, spleen, pancreas (he was quite certain he discovered a small tumor on the boy's pancreas, but without better medical training he couldn't be sure), kidneys... True, the rudimentary dissection had been pretty messy, particularly when Eugene was still alive and noisy, but it had been quite educational. The smock, mask, and rubber gloves he had found had cut down on most of the mess, but it was still quite bloody. He would have loved to have stayed until the blood coagulated to do a truly thorough dissection, but that would have to wait.

Finally fishing the phone from a coil of Eugene's intestines, the boy looked on with disgust. Being practically submerged in blood seemed to have killed the phone. No matter how many times he pressed the power button, it would just not turn on.

"Bleh," Frank said as he wiped one gloved finger across the screen to remove blood, "I really hate it when that happens, don't you?"

Iago Cilek, a.k.a. Boy # 21, was unaware of the call he was receiving from Hugo as his phone was turned off. Nevertheless, had he been aware of the call he still would not have answered. He had a job, and there was no way that he was going to divert from it.

The scrawny boy with a samurai sword strapped to his back and an M1 Garand in his hands walked parallel to the Briar Patch. With the late Paxton's bag hanging around his arm and an oddly enthusiastic skip to his step, the boy did look to be a rather odd sight. Still deadly no doubt, but an odd sight all the same. Watching the ground and counting his steps, the boy quickly whipped his head around and found what he had been looking for. One hundred yards down from the old truck, perpendicular to a trailer with a mailbox that looks like a whale and with a sniper's tower across the way... Perfect baby, perfect.

Looking up with a slightly maniacal grin on his face, the boy swung his rifle on its sling around his shoulder, lowered his fly and began to urinate next to the razor wire fence. Had he been less educated on the matter he would have probably pissed on the fence itself, but she had told him that that would be a bad idea. With a minor electric pulse going through the fence every so often, the boy did not want to take any chances with getting electrocuted, especially through his dick. Finishing up and packing back up, the boy dropped the backpack that had been hanging around his arm into his hand. Swinging the bag around overhand once, twice, three times, the boy sent it sailing right into the middle of the Briar Patch's sea of razor wire.

Dropping the rifle back into his hands, the boy gave a quick wave to the nearby sniper tower. Though he could not see it, Sgt. Barry Charon waved back.