Day 1 9:00 AM
For Liz Dunn (who a few years later would be commonly known across the nation as Girl #6) it had seemingly been nothing more than a typical Saturday morning. She'd perched herself on her favourite park bench, resigned – as usual - to the prospect of whiling away the hours in abject boredom; having no friends or any sort of material entertainment to distract her. She was dressed entirely in black. This was not intended to be a fashion statement (she was far too young to be infatuated with the idea of becoming a Goth) nor was it an attempt to derive attention from others – the sight of such a young girl dressed so morbidly was always a sure-fire method to turn heads – instead it was simply due to the ill-advised judgement of one person; her mother. She continually professed to be colour-blind and would always use this alleged disability as the excuse for her questionable decisions about her daughter's clothes, which proved to be the bane of her life as she was forced to suffer the ignominy of mocking glances and derisive whispering that occurred whenever she strayed into the sight-line of an especially arrogant passer-by.
Her mother was an indolent drunk, a washed out hippie who parasitically leeched off her swarthy estate-agent husband and spent her days smoking pot with a consortium of equally stoned chums from her 1960's heyday. She was carefree and work-shy, content to leave her daughter to her own devices; occasionally encouraging Liz to explore her 'spiritual creativity' but usually too hung-over or strung-out to act like the family's proper matriarch.
It was early – her watch stated the time to be half past eight. Mercifully the park was empty, apart from a handful for homeless paupers who lay asleep on several other benches, meaning that Liz could at least expect her first few hours of solitude to be blissfully serene and peaceful and free of unwanted interest from strangers.
Liz was startled when four figures strolled into the park; two blonde mothers, fashionably dressed, with expertly styled hair and a general appearance designed to disguise the onset of age, swaggered along whilst each of their pampered daughters ran ahead towards the swings. Both children were blonde, but whilst one was svelte and beautiful the other was rather dumpy and plain – though she compensated for her lack of good-looks by being loud and obnoxious in the childish sort of way that many adults found oddly endearing.
Frankie was tiring of having to put up with Hillary's disagreeable company and found herself intrigued by the small figure of a girl that sat hunched on a park bench. She estimated that they were of roughly the same age –eight years old to be precise- and was surprised to see so young a girl all by herself (Liz had to travel around alone, her parents obstinately refusing to take her anywhere), Frankie having always been taught that she was not to leave the house unaccompanied due to the risk of being abducted by perverts.
Despite Hilary's vociferous protestations, Frankie strolled over to the silent figure of Liz – Hilary sulkily tagging along – who looked up with vulnerable timidity.
Hilary's mother only briefly glanced up as the girls sauntered away from them, too ensconced in the gossip that Frankie's mother was fervently relaying to her to really take notice. In years to come, Hilary's mother would daily torment herself about her lack of intervention in these moments, wishing that she had somehow taken the initiative to call the two girls away from the secretly malicious enigma that had so intrigued them. Had she prevented them from ever meeting, she suspected that that wretched girl Liz would never have been able to wreak the kind of havoc on their lives that she ultimately did.
Liz looked bemusedly at the two girls in front of her. Hilary had furrowed her brow and was grimacing overtly, seemingly offended by the very sight of Liz. Frankie, by contrast, was entranced by the beguilingly unusual girl; she was so unlike the cosseted little princesses that her mother constantly selected to be friends for her 'little darling' and her atypical persona thoroughly fascinated the sheltered Frankie.
"Do you want to come and play with us?" asked Frankie, ignoring the way Hilary's jaw dropped in mortification at the mere suggestion of having to socialise with this weirdo.
"Sure," said Liz, giving an uncharacteristically genuine smile.
That was where it began. For Liz it was the most wonderful thing she could imagine; having ceaselessly been shunned at whatever school she attended, it was a uniquely fantastic experience to finally gain a close friend. But things were never so simple; there remained a single factor that impeded Liz's chances of becoming Frankie's closest companion, namely Hilary. Having always been taught in Maths that when an equation is uneven, the only viable course of action to solve it and obtain the desired answer is to balance out the equation's components, Liz concluded that she would apply this rule with Hilary, though in a much deadlier fashion.
At the age of ten, a few weeks before Christmas, Liz goaded Hilary into stepping onto the pond in Frankie's back garden. The snow had been constantly falling and the temperature was well below freezing, but the thin coating of ice that layered the pond was still too fragile to support the weight of Hilary. Liz had stood there with sadistic indifference and watched as Hilary thrashed about, desperately trying to escape the water, before finally succumbing to its superior power.
Hilary's mother had never liked nor trusted Liz and suspected that her involvement in the whole situation was far less innocent than Liz led others to believe. But there was nothing to incriminate her and the inquest determined that Hilary's death by drowning was a result of her own misjudgement and that though Liz had bravely attempted to rescue her she'd been unable to do so due to her inability to swim.
It may have been the first time that Liz violated one of the most fundamental laws of humanity, but as Liz watched the sight of Anthony flail and yelp in his last living moments with a sinister satisfaction, she knew it wouldn't be the last.
"I don't know how it happened!" Liz protested; her face lined with tear stains, "I just found him rolling about on the floor and vomiting, there wasn't anything I could do, I swear! I suppose he just couldn't take the pressure and so he overdosed on the cyanide, you know, a way to escape from the pain he was feeling – what Christopher decided to earlier...poor bastard."
The three of them were assembled in a semi-circle around the corpse of Anthony Stapleton. It was a surreal sight; each of their faces wanly gaunt, their eyes deadened with fatigue, all of them looking like wild-eyed devils incarnate, seemingly about to enact a pagan ritual upon the dead body that lay before them. Liz had managed to coax Jeremy Callaghan (Boy #7) from his bathroom retreat and fetched Saul Emerson (Boy #13) from his futile attempts at repairing the proximity sensors. Both now stood in front of the cadaver of their dearly departed friend, each bearing an expression of shell-shocked disbelief. Liz repressed a gloating smile; these two hapless fools were effortlessly playing into her hands. She'd sprinkled a smattering of cyanide into Jeremy's mug of coffee, not enough to kill him, but a satisfactory quantity guaranteed to mess up his innards and make him feel extremely unwell (the fact that a small amount was used also prevented Anthony from realising that any was missing). Breaking the proximity sensors had been a greater challenge, but as always Liz had found a way...
Jeremy looked even more sickly than beforehand; it was bad enough that the acid was eating away at his intestines, but the sight of his friend lying dead in a pool of his own vomit had really compounded his sickliness.
"Why should I believe you?" Jeremy rasped weakly, "it's not like you ever gave a fuck about Anthony...or any of us for that matter."
"How can you say that?" gasped Liz with expertly feigned horrified indignation.
"With ease," Jeremy retorted, choking again, "I personally think you're a liability that we can't afford to have around us – I've never trusted you; least of all now."
"Don't say that!" wailed Liz, crocodile tears welling up in her piggy little eyes.
"This area becomes a danger zone in just under an hour, let's try and figure out what happened without temper tantrums shall we?" Saul snapped.
"What the fuck are you talking about? 'Without temper tantrums' – our best friend's literally puked his guts out, she's the most likely suspect and you don't even give a shit!" yelled Jeremy, his voice hoarse with anxiety.
"I seem to recall British law goes by the principle that everybody is innocent until proven guilty - there's no reason not to take into account Liz's recollection of what happened!"
"Why are you even listening to all the crap she's telling us?" Jeremy exasperatedly yelled, "Have you forgotten what she did to us? Have you somehow managed to exorcise the memory of finding all your textbooks with 'Scarface' scrawled all over them? Do you remember what she and her pack of bitches and sluts treated us like? Do you? Or were you too concerned with getting inside her panties that you just ignored every fucking thing she said to you!"
Game, set and match thought Liz as she stepped back slightly from Jeremy and Saul, who were glowering at one another with blazing intensity. This was it, she thought, her plan was about to be finalised and she'd barely have had to lift a finger to get what she wanted, the sense of victory was so strong that it was only with great effort that she did not smile widely.
The tangibly hostile atmosphere was interrupted by the slow opening of the entrance to the cottage. The figure walked along the small corridor and entered the living room, the three living inhabitants agog with a mixture of apprehension and disbelief.
"Err, is it ok if I get myself something to drink and use your toilet?" the girl said with her silky smooth voice.
Liz blushed with anger, realising her plan faced potential ruin as she stared at the elegantly beautiful Frankie Almond Smith (Girl #14).
"Ok girls," said Simon Holcombe (Boy #6) as emerged from one of the apartment's bedrooms, "right now what do you want more than anything in the world?"
Tulista Patel (Girl #1) and Joanna Simpson (Girl #5) looked at one another with a mixture amusement and confusion. Since Joanna's cathartic spillage of emotion the atmosphere had become more relaxed and infinitely less tense; the guard patrol around the flat had been more or less abandoned whilst Tulista maternally comforted Joanna.
"Hmm," said Joanna, "I'm torn between bubble bath and Mr. Samuel's head on a silver platter – how about you Tulista?"
Tulista stopped chuckling and became solemn, "I just want to see Krisha again," she said in an almost inaudible whisper, Simon and Joanna looked awkwardly at each other in discomfiture. Seeing this, Tulista quickly added, "or a helicopter with a pilot who could fly us out of here, or maybe even a super computer that could crash the BR admin system."
"Your wish madam," said Simon in an exaggeratedly pompous voice "is my command." Simon gave a bow and drew out a laptop from his school rucksack. Tulista and Joanna stared bewilderedly at it.
"You've had this all the time we've been here?" asked Tulista.
"Yep, but what with all the carnage and fear it sorta slipped my mind," Simon answered, trying not to let his gaze linger too obviously on Tulista's perfect face.
"This doesn't make sense, they checked our bags when they brought us to the island – they wouldn't have let you keep that of all things," said Joanna with atypical scepticism.
"Ah but my bag has one thing that nobody – least of all the klutzes that run the Battle Royale – could have reckoned on," Simon continued, pleased by the look of expectation that spread across the faces of his two female compatriots, "a secret pouch to be precise."
There was a pause.
"And did your bag come custom made with this err...hiding place?" said Joanna with just a hint of ridicule.
"Actually," said Simon, looking slightly embarrassed, "I sewed it in myself."
"How manly," giggled Tulista.
"Oh yes very macho, I agree," Simon said dryly, grinning self-deprecatingly. For a few blissful seconds he and Tulista maintained an unbroken gaze with one another, before they quickly averted their eyes out of mild embarrassment. Joanna surreptitiously sniggered.
"Why the hell did you sew a pouch in your backpack?" she laughed.
"The simple answer is so I could bring my laptop on the Geography field trip – Mr. Channing knows that I take it with me pretty much wherever I go because my handwriting's so fucking awful and I need to make things legible if I actually want to get decent grades, but he didn't want me taking it on the field trip."
"Why?" asked the nonplussed Tulista.
"Because the trip was supposed to involve hiking and sloshing about in mud and rain, the laptop could have got damaged and my parents could, in theory, have held the school accountable and made them pay for a new one – something Mr. Channing didn't want to happen, so he checked my bag before we'd boarded the bus to ensure it wasn't there." Simon gave a self-congratulatory smile, "But I was already two steps ahead of him and had created the pouch which I knew he wouldn't be able to find."
"Slick," said Tulista.
"Very slick," Joanna concurred.
"But I'm no hacker so please don't ask me to launch an uber-virus against the Battle Royale administrators – truth be told I'm not sure there's very much I can actually do with a laptop," said Simon ruefully.
"Surely you can look up porno?" said Joanna with a knowing smile.
"Apart from that, of course," laughed an unabashed Simon.
"Well hey, look on the bright side; at least we can spend the last hours of our lives playing solitaire and pinball," quipped Tulista. This caustically witty comment was intended to be taken lightly, but Tulista's unmistakably cynical tone brought the group's surprisingly flippant tittering to a standstill.
After an uncomfortably long pause Joanna spoke up "Simon, can you make contact with anybody using the computer?"
"Sure, my laptop has a modem and so long as the person who I try to contact has one too, I could potentially be able to communicate with somebody."
Joanna smiled broadly, "Well then, you'd better get on with it,"
"Who exactly do you want me to try and get in touch with – assuming that I'm able to?" asked Simon.
Joanna's smile widened, "Can't you guess?"
"Are you fucking kidding? Of course it was her!" wailed Liz, "She must have climbed in through the window, poisoned Anthony and snuck out again whilst I was in the kitchen."
"Nice theory Miss Marple, but why would anybody want to go to such lengths to kill someone that way when they could just shoot 'em?" Jeremy challenged in between coughing profusely as the pernicious acid chomped away at his lungs.
"I didn't kill anyone!" yelled Frankie, they'd lured her into the living room and now she was cornered, unable to get out.
"Oh yeah?" snarled Saul, "Then what about Jun?"
"An accident," snapped Frankie, feeling a sharp pain in her stomach as the memory returned to her.
"Bullshit!" retorted Saul.
"If she did poison Anthony, why are there no signs of a struggle? People don't generally guzzle down cyanide just because somebody tells them to," Jeremy said with unmasked aggression.
"The fucking place is doused in puke how can you tell whether or not there was a fucking wrestling match here? And the window was open, what does that tell you?" said Liz, shaking her clenched fist as she did so.
"It tells me that somebody opened it; hardly a Herculean feat of human effort!" Jeremy shouted in return.
"Shut the fuck up!" screamed Saul, "Why won't you just accept that this whore, this slut, this anorexic, worthless, pathetic excuse of a human being has just killed our friend!"
Frankie raised her Sig Sauer pistol, gripping it tighter than ever before, "Firstly, you will never ever call me a slut again you fucking weirdo and secondly you will get out of my way and let me out of this shit-hole right now!"
"Fuck you!" bellowed Liz. Frankie was, quite literally, stood in a corner, the other three stood about a meter away, encircling her in an impenetrable half moon formation. Saul stood at the centre, Jeremy to his left and Liz to his right.
There is a popular misconception in society that girls are weaker than boys and that a boy will always be able to overpower or resist a girl in a fight. As Liz grabbed Saul's gun-carrying right arm, clasped her hand over his and levelled the pistol at Frankie, it was clear to see who the stronger party was. Liz placed her hand over Saul's; his finger inching towards the trigger has her finger pushed firmly down on his.
Frankie found herself with three unenviable choices before her, a choice that she had approximately half of a second to decide upon; shoot Saul, shoot Liz or shoot the gun from Saul's hand. Frankie scrunched up her eyes and frenziedly fired off three shots, the first and last bullets failed to hit anything other than the ceiling but the second struck Saul directly between the eyes.
As he fell backwards, firing a single shot against the ceiling as he did so, Liz wrenched the Colt. 357 revolver from his hand and aimed it at Frankie. For a few interminable seconds they held each other's gaze, guns trained at one another's heads, before Liz suddenly swivelled to her left to face the flabbergasted Jeremy. She fired two bullets, the first collided with his abdomen and the second with his neck, he slumped to the floor with a subdued thud, trickles of blood leaking from his wounds as he lay there. Within a matter of seconds his breathing ceased.
Liz returned to face Frankie with an exaggerated twirl. Frankie charged towards Liz as though about to perform a rugby tackle, forcefully driving her shoulder into Liz's stomach (Liz gave a high-pitched shriek) and shoving her to the ground. With Frankie now on top of her, Liz futilely attempted to fire her gun whilst Frankie tried to slam the butt of her pistol against Liz's nose, with equally limited success. Eventually Liz swung her revolver against Frankie's head, a soft 'thwock' sound being produced. Though the hit was not as powerful as Liz had intended, Frankie nonetheless reeled in shock and quickly got to her feet, consequently freeing Liz's limbs from the weight she'd applied to them. Frankie fired off a few shot at Liz, all of which missed by a matter of inches and became embedded in the carpet.
Liz swiftly cocked her revolver and aimed it at Frankie, who promptly dived behind a nearby sofa, narrowly missing the bullet that Liz fired at her. Frankie blindly shot off a few more bullets from behind the sofa, not even daring to peek over the top and forlornly hoping that somehow a stray bullet would strike Liz. Liz, in imitation of Frankie, took refuge behind the other sofa, which was directly opposite Frankie's hideout, and also unloaded a volley of shots against her former best friend. The gunfire lasted little more than a minute; neither girl was able to hit the other and all they achieved was catapulting tufts of foam into the air as their bullets sliced through the weak fabric of the sofas. Eventually there was a 'click' as Liz and Frankie's guns revealed their bullet revenues were depleted.
"So is this it?" said Frankie, the realisation that the person she was trying to kill was none other than her best friend was starting to have an impact on her.
"You'd better fucking believe it!" spat Liz in return. The girls had more ammunition, but only in their bags, both of which were clearly out of reach.
Liz vaulted herself over her sofa, Frankie dashed around the side of hers and the two met in the centre of the living room, their new battleground. Frankie raised her right leg upwards, attempting to kick Liz in the chin. Liz caught her leg mid-way and jolted her backwards; Frankie stumbled but managed to retain her balance, quickly dodging Liz's amateurish attempt at delivering an uppercut to her jaw. Frankie tried to punch Liz in the chest, but it was only a half-hearted manoeuvre that Liz was able to parry with ease before thumping her clenched fist into Frankie's abdomen. Now painfully winded, Frankie struggled to block another of Liz's blows, weakly trying to slap her. Liz pulled back her fist and launched it towards Frankie's perfectly shaped nose, Frankie ducked just in time and as Liz staggered forward she forcefully delivered an uppercut to Liz's cheek.
The concussed Liz collapsed to the floor, unconscious and vulnerable. With unnerving speed, Frankie gathered her possessions, took Liz's weapons and supplies and loaded another clip into her Sig Sauer, which she aimed at Liz's forehead.
But she couldn't....
She thought of Anthony, Saul, Jeremy and Jun, death enveloped her, she couldn't breathe and she knew she couldn't do this to her best friend! She saw Jun gasping for breath, her lungs failing her as she died, she thought of Saul, the blood that run down his scarred face as he fell to the floor with a dull thud, and finally she thought of Jeremy and his expression of mortified shock and disbelief as the bullets penetrated his chest. It was all too much...
When Liz awakened, Frankie was nowhere in sight. Liz knew that the cottage would become a danger zone in a matter of minutes, so she hurriedly left the building, angered to discover that Frankie had thieved all her weaponry and food.
The bitch...
As Liz paced around the outskirts of the forest, trying to think of what to do next, only one thought filled her mind:
Frankie.
She had been lucky this time, thought Liz, the next time they met, Frankie would regret having ever left her alive...
24 Students Remain.