Hour 33
23 Contestants Remaining
At 9:11 AM, a familiar sound echoed from the slightly open door of the mess hall's walk in freezer.
"I AM INVINCIBLE!"
Michael Baxter, a.k.a. Boy # 20, and Gus O'Ryan, a.k.a. Boy # 21 looked up briefly from the card game they were playing, but gave the holler no real heed. They'd heard it before, and it was truly nothing new. Girl # 7 Anna Rourke didn't even look up from Jenny Reese, a.k.a. Girl # 11's, hair as she braided it into two short pigtails. What did however grab their attention was the image of Doug Rodgers, a.k.a. Boy # 2 squeezing his small frame between the door and the frame of the walk in freezer with a wild look behind his glasses and his mouth moving at a mile a minute.
"I'm in it guys, Christ almighty I am in it and I got us on, we're hooked up, we're hooked up!"
With her eyes definitely brightening, Anna dropped Jenny's half finished braids and got to her feet.
"Network?" Anna mouthed.
"I'm the man," Doug responded with a wide smile, waving the remaining four on over to the freezer. Anna practically dashed over with Jenny shortly behind, while Michael and Gus simply remained in their seats playing cards.
"Aren't you guys coming?" Jenny asked.
"Why? Can't you see we're busy?" Gus responded as he did a quick shuffle, noting the pain from the mild burn in his hand. Nevertheless, he had to laugh at his own wit, limited as it may be considered. Jenny looked to Michael as a voice of reason, but he simply shrugged and waited for the cards to be dealt his way. Jenny disappeared into the meat locker with a look of disgust on her face, while Gus simply chuckled.
"When the shit hits the fan," Gus commented, "some guys run and some guys stay. I'd rather be the guy waitin to see what everyone else does first."
"I hear that," Michael responded, "I mean, it's not that I don't want to help the group, it's just I can't go by this hero bullshit. If we all just stuck together, we wouldn't be putting ourselves in danger and no one would die, we'd just get out together as soon as we could figure out how to take off these belts and we'd be gone, end of story."
"Well," Gus responded as he adjusted his mask slightly, "I dunno if I can abide by that entirely, sometimes you need to put yourself in the harms way to get to a place to get out. I'd love to be out there in the field with the rest of the troops now, but hey, can't go out there with a face fucked up by some rich girl with a spray can full of acid, so you're stayin back here. If they don't want me doin anything I'd be happy to oblige them, but it's their loss, not mine."
"But you'd really do it?" Michael asked.
"Shit yeah," Gus responded, "I can't stand just sitting here waiting for it to get too late and to have the game come to us. I wanna go to the game and just get over all this worrying about it crap, I mean we could form this escape thing easier if we go out and kill the dangerous people first, but no, we've gotta sit back here with our thumbs up our butts waiting for the dangerous people to come to us and kill us off, and I really don't know if I can live like that."
"So you want to kill so we won't be killed?" Michael asked.
"Yes I do," Gus said, "it's the best way we can stay safe out here."
"But we're teaming up so we won't kill people," Michael corrected, "I mean, we're not doing this revolutionary-hippie stuff so we can go around slaughtering people, we're doing it so people can live!"
Gus sighed, laying down his cards as he stretched his hands overhead, "Even if we win, we get out of here, we're still killing people."
"I don't follow," Michael responded.
"Well, here's how I see it," Gus responded, showing more thinking than Michael had ever expected from the school's token redneck, "there was, what, seven guys there?"
"I think, yeah."
"Well, to pull off this thing we want that's seven bodies right there, and these are guys just doing their jobs. They woke up today, yesterday, every other day serving their country like any other good patriot, they had their coffee and they reported to work like anyone else would. Sure, their job is making sure we kill each other, but I'd lay odds on that they're just guys maybe our age who don't want to die themselves, so they joined up instead of getting in the way."
Michael sat back a bit enthralled as Gus kept going with a passion he'd not exhibited before (in school at least, Gus was perfectly content to play the dumb redneck part to a T, out here with that mask on his face he seemed to be something of a philosopher).
"Then there's everyone else."
"Who else?" Michael asked.
"Everyone we don't save, now that we just got the 'leven of us, but there's twenty-somethin of us out here. Now, I may be no math wiz but that is a bit of a difference."
"Well, there's some bad ones out there we can't trust to come with us, but we can try to save some of the other good people, maybe Jackson, Eliza, Rudy, Matt..."
"Try?" Gus practically laughed, "how are we gonna find 'em, just start yellin out their names? If we're doing the best to not die, how's that gonna help? It ain't. And the bad ones? Where's this humanity you were talking about with trying to not let people die? If we leave them here, we're as guilty of murder as the folk who kill them."
Gus shuffled the cards again real quick while Michael remained rather silent, a bit confused over the conversation that they had just had (did they really have it? Is Gus really that bright?), and deep in thought.
"So what's your game," Gus said as he changed the subject with a wide yet hidden grin, "Draw, Stud, or Hold 'Em?"
Michael shook his head slightly, blowing a tuft of bright pink hair from in front of his eye.
"How's Go Fish sound?" Michael asked with his goofy grin.
Gus smiled back and playfully punched Michael in the shoulder, "It sounds like I've found a new game to kick your ass at."
The walk in freezer, as well as being the one true hideaway on the island from their personal microphones, had since become a crazed workhouse of Doug's designs. He'd scrawled out dozens of notes on the floor and walls with one of their spare markers, diagramming the various inner workings of the computers as well as hundreds of seemingly indecipherable lines of code. Well, indecipherable to everyone except Doug at least. Still, his proudest achievement was the aerial he had rigged from old pieces of wire and an autopsied cellular phone, one of their rather limited supply.
Looking through their student profiles, Doug pulled up Jenny's profile, looking to the bland picture that they had shot while in the bunker before the game started.
"You know that picture doesn't really do you any justice?" Doug asked Jenny, getting her to giggle and playfully press onto his shoulder.
"So you're sure they can't find us?" Anna asked, changing as she looked over Doug's shoulder. Doug quickly pulled up the real time motion sensor guide of the island, basically equating to a map showing the location of every active belt on the island (living and dead, minus the belts of Homer, Brian and Tammy which had been detonated).
"Please, you must give me more credit," Doug said with his sly smile, "even if they knew someone from the outside was hacking in on their system, which they don't since this is their own computer, I'm better than that. I can route them around around the planet ten times over before they even realize there's a problem, and if they try to sever the connection? I'm gonna put a virus on their system in about five minutes, if they try to shut us down they're seriously going to be regretting it."
"Nice," Anna commented, getting even Jenny to smile.
"Yeah, just need to get into my home computer, I've got some stuff on my hard drive that'll screw them up real good," Doug said as he cracked his fingers, then typing in a succession of letters and numbers. The given belts onscreen suddenly split between green and red with their letter/number designations clear as day.
"We're down to twenty-three," Doug commented as he wiped his brow with the orange SABRE bandana, "seems there was a fight between Joel and his buddies and Jackson and Eliza. J and E are both dead, but it looks like they took down Shane in the process."
"Damn it," Anna responded as she exhaled, "those were some good people."
Jenny was taken aback for a moment at the news. She'd worked for a while as an aid in the school's special ed program and had gotten to know Shane better than pretty much anyone at school would have chosen to. When the people in the athletics department got a hold of the kid, it was pure exploitation of his brute strength, especially around Joel. But, that was Shane's lot in life. He never really knew better, and was always eager to please. So, while Jenny was not really surprised to hear that he was dead, it wasn't exactly something she'd looked forward to seeing.
"But what about the belts?" Anna asked, "Can you disarm them from here?"
"Yeah, of course," Doug said, "I'm going to try to get in and find whatever I can, but I'm pretty sure we can get it from here easily."
"If we can't?" Anna asked.
"Then we're fucked," Doug said earnestly, "but we're not going to have that happen, are we? I'm good, I'm the best and I am invincible, I'm not going to let any of us die. You just trust me, while you make sure everything works outside this room."
"That I can do," Anna said with a smile, "that I can do. How's our team in the field?"
Looking to the monitor, Doug pointed to the screen on the west side of the island.
"They're still sticking to the hills in the west," Doug responded, "they're not alone either. The Demon's sitting by the coast for one reason or another, Matt's approaching him, and Joel and his crew seem to be flocking together a little close to our people for comfort."
"That's bad," Jenny commented.
"Yeah, and I'm thinking it's a lot worse," Doug said as he pointed to the airfield, "Marie's camped out at the airfield, not real far from the drop site, and not too far from that is the body of Jacob. She's picking people off by the looks of it."
"They're walking into a death trap!" Anna exclaimed as she put everything together, "Jenny, get on the phone and call them back, tell them to get their asses back here!"
"The batteries almost dead," Jenny said as she pulled their last good phone from her pocket.
"I don't care, get whatever you can out of it but get them back here!" Anna practically yelled, causing Jenny to run from the room, frantically dialing numbers into her cell phone as she disappeared from sight.
Anna sighed, sitting down on one of the cots they'd dragged into the old freezer. Rubbing her eyes, she asked, "Are you good to keep going in here."
"Yeah," Doug responded, "I've got a lot of stuff to do, so no worries about me getting bored. How are you holding up?"
Not opening her eyes, Anna let out a half smile, "I've got a headache and I need a smoke."
"Kind of cancel each other out, don't they?" Doug mentioned ironically.
"Yeah," Anna replied, "yeah they do. But I need my nicotine and I need it now."
She stood up and made her way for the freezer's large door, "Find a way to get these belts off of us and find it fast. We need to get out of here yesterday."
"Ten steps ahead of ya," Doug responded, "for I am invincible!"
Anna smiled genuinely as she looked at the nerd at work. That was the kind of talk she liked to hear, not the pessimistic drivel that would drive everyone else to death, but the hope that would lead to their eventual revolution. Pulling a packet of cigarettes from her pocket, she flipped out a smoke as she slipped between the door and the wall.
Sighing heavily and taking down his false front, Doug focused back on the computer. He hated pretending to be happy, but around egos like Anna's, sometimes it just made things a whole lot easier. Carter, well, Carter he could be real around, but with Anna being so hell bent on everything going off without a hitch... speaking ones mind seemed almost like lighting a very dangerous fuse.
Looking back to the map, he watched as B15 approached B17 in a smooth and steady manner. It looked like Damien and Matt were about to fight, and Doug tried to lay odds on how long it would take before Matt's name turned out red.
He guessed somewhere around two, maybe three minutes.
He could see him, sitting on the rock. It had taken him a while to find him, since wandering an island blindly wasn't the most efficient way to go about things, but in the end it worked out. There he was, sitting on the rock with the rain pouring all around him completely unaware. He held a smooth round stone in one hand, carefully running it up along the blade of the sword that he held in hand. For a moment Matt Hunter, a.k.a. Boy # 15, tried to figure out who he'd gotten the blade from. After a second, he didn't care.
Passing through the trees, he could hear the ocean crashing below over the rain. Damien had chosen this spot by the cliffs to the west to sharpen his sword, get a view and get your blade, it made perfect sense.
Matt stood maybe ten feet behind Damien, looking at the tuft of hair that stuck out from behind the edge of his fencing mask. He held the sword with his feet, running the rock across his samurai's blade. It was very high quality by the looks of things, but Matt was unconcerned with the matter. He'd put a bullet in the back of Damien's head, and then maybe another if that didn't do it.
Pulling out the Walther PPK that Eliza had given him, Matt walked even closer to The Demon, the monster who had brutally dismembered Dora. He lifted the gun, aiming it at the base of Damien's neck. One to the neck, one to the head, that'll make sure that he is dead.
Matt stood, thinking more than he knew he should have as he looked to The Demon. Was what he was doing really right? I mean, combat on an open field is one thing, but this... this is murder. This isn't even self-defense, this is cold-blooded homicide. Sneaking up on a person and putting two rounds into the back of their head, that's not right on some level, that's almost as bad as what he did to Dor-
With blinding speed, Damien spun around on his rock, slashing out with the samurai sword and putting Matt in a world of blinding pain. He watched as blood flowed from the foot long gash that crossed his chest.
He fell to the ground, looking up as his vision hazed over and Damien got to his feet. He held the samurai sword up high, raising it above his head for what would most certainly be a kill blow.
"Nice sneaking," Damien said with what Matt guessed to be a smile from behind his fencing mask, "but you need to hesitate less."
Taking a cue from Damien, and maybe a bit from the fear and adrenaline that was pumped into his system, Matt raised his pistol and fired. The shot nicked the right side of Damien's neck with a spray of blood, and The Demon faltered in his step. Having something of a sixth sense towards the game as it was, this one totally caught Damien off guard and gave him his most lucid thought of the day thus far.
"Oh fuck," he muttered painfully.
Twice more Matt shot him, knocking Damien to the ground in a prone state. Crawling away, Damien spit some blood into the fencing mask, yeah, it was definitely a broken rib. He deftly sheathed his sword and tried to crawl away, but Matt shot him twice more in the back, rolling him more towards the sloping edge of the cliff.
Matt walked over and kicked The Demon in his ribs, getting the monster to howl as he rolled over onto his belly. He shot Damien twice more, one shot right to the belly and another ricocheting off the side of his mask as it gouged a line in the metal cover. Kicking Damien once more, Matt rolled him another foot, leaning right towards the edge of a sloping section of hill.
Damien rolled faster and faster, watching the world spin around him as he tumbled end over end for twenty feet, and then nothing. Time slowed as he watched the water below him rush to his face, only returning to normal when the icy cling of the ocean hit him like a freight train and stole his consciousness.
In astounding pain from the slash across his chest, Matt tore at a sleeve from his jacket, folded it in half and pressed it hard against the wound. His blood soaked into it, but the pressure did seem to stop the flow for the moment.
Still, despite the wound, he had to know. He had to see the body, he had to know that The Demon was dead. Gingerly placing his body flat against the slight hill that led to the cliff's drop off, Matt inched his way towards the edge. Getting a good enough view, he could see it clear as day, even with the rain coming down around him. The body of The Demon floated in the water face up, the water rushing around him as blood stained the water around him red from the neck wound.
Wincing slightly, Matt climbed back up to where they had fought. He let his hand free from his chest, taking the tattered sleeve with it and letting the blood ooze out once more. Cursing again, he stumbled on over to his supplies. Something, anything would be good, just need to stop the bleeding, put pressure on it...
He saw something that would definitely work, but it broke his heart to use it...
After a rough ten minute operation figuring out how to make it work and work comfortably, Matt fastened the two hook ends of the bungee cord around his chest. He tied it tight, more than enough to put pressure on the injury, and hopefully enough to stop the bleeding. But, with his already hefty arsenal and backpack, and the bungee no longer any good to carry it, Matt abandoned his skateboard at the base of the tree. He noted it on the map, but felt horrible. The board had been his life for the longest time, his defining characteristic, and on more than one occasion a definite lifesaver. It was the good luck charm that had helped him through many a bad time before, and he'd hoped that it would help him find Lexie, but now it was all guesswork and relying on faith.
Now more than ever Matt felt he needed to find Lexie, since the feeling that he may not be around much longer seemed to be more apparent as the hours passed. God I hope she's still alive…