"Girls number twenty-four: Vaughan, Lindsay."
But Lindsay was dead, dead and forgotten as she lay on the floor, the blood starting to dry and crust on the floor, making the putrid smell in the room even more infernal.
There was a silence in the room, as the Melissa, the teacher Jeyes, and the two soldiers looked at the corpse of the first student to fall. Jeyes looked up at Melissa.
"Was she a friend of yours?" he asked, his voice calm, his glance strong.
"No," said Melissa quietly, looking defiantly at the man who murdered two of her classmates just minutes earlier.
"Then don't shed a tear for her," Jeyes concluded, before pressing the play button on the video one final time.
"Girls number twenty-five," said the woman firmly, indicative of the fact she had finished the list of names. "Williams, Melissa."
Melissa grabbed her personal bag, the only one remaining, from her feet, and walked quickly to the front, wanting to leave the room as quickly as she could. The soldier Meyer threw a bag at her; she missed it, as her hands were both clutching her own one. She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder, then turned right to head out of the room, nearly forgetting her coat on the way out. Like so many of her comrades felt before her, the passageway that led to the exit seemed to stretch for an eternity. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the main doors, not daring to guess how many of more members of 11D had already fallen.
The air was crisp and chilling. She shuddered slightly as the snow fell thickly on her surroundings. Even though her wristwatch said the time was now ten past two, Melissa was awake, alert, and could see through the black sky, her sight facilitated by the full moon's glow reflected on the snowy layer on the ground. Trying to get her bearings somewhat, she opened her weapons bag and looked for her map. At the bottom, she felt something cold and hard, but she wasn't interested in that at the moment. She found the laminated paper and torch, and read her map carefully. According to this, she was positioned at F-6. Her boyfriend Harry whispered to her that he was heading east. Whether this meant G-6 or H-6 was anybody's guess. There was no scale on the map, either, which meant that even if they were in the same square, the two of them could be some way away from each other. Her eyes chanced upon something lying on the ground. She had been pacing about on the spot, her eyes fixed firmly on the map, serenely unaware of her surroundings. It was the body of William Hutchinson, lying lifelessly on the ground. She shone her torch on him, and saw with revulsion that he had two bullet holes in his chest. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. She wondered who had dared do such a horrid thing to the boy when she felt a cold hand clasp her shoulder.
Jitinder Singh was heading west. His bag on his shoulder, he only had one thing on his mind. Before he did so, though, he wanted to meet at least one of Sam Carter's friends, and give them his condolences. He stood in the room, watching the scene as the three girls huddled around the body, all of them shaking in shock. He wanted to help them, to comfort them, but felt uncomfortable doing so because he feared for his life.
Now he was away from the oppressive ambience of the room, his mind was cleared and he felt a lot more objective about the matter. He was still upset of course; he had liked Sam a lot, but he needed all the strength and resolve he could muster for what he intended to do, so he concluded that, even though there was death occurring all around him, he needed to stay strong, to prove something to himself, to respect her death in the only he way he knew how.
He glanced at his watch, the screen glowed that the time was approximately two-fifteen. He had been walking for just over ten minutes, he reasoned, and he re-checked his compass. If he was correct, then he may already be in D-6. Looking at his map, Jitinder seemed confident that that was indeed his location; there were industrial buildings to the south that indicated the near end of the harbour. He was suddenly stuck with a dilemma: should he risk going entering the docks to look for the girls, or should he just stay away from buildings altogether? He shuddered in his cashmere coat, which was lined with a white rim across his shoulders. He decided he would go south after all. He kept his mind open to alternatives all the time; the main one being to turn and run away at any moment. He ventured south. His torch was held at arm's length. He was slightly unsure what he would do if he were ambushed. He was not a very fast runner, and certainly was not agile enough to dodge any persistent attackers. His weapon was useless (he had paused a few minutes earlier to check, and his face fell when he saw he had been issued with face paints), and he certainly wasn't the most popular of people in 11D. Though he denied it with every ounce of his resolve, he had few people he could truly count as being a true friend, and of those that he could, probably half were deemed as freaks by the rest of the class, so were possibly potential targets. Due to a phase that most of the students went through several years beforehand, the phase of racism for the fun of it, Jitinder resented himself. He hated being a Sikh, hated his family's traditions, and hated his very heritage. He never recovered fully from this nihilism, even when the jibes stopped. Jitinder paused. He was unsure about whether he wanted to venture further down this route. He had a strange sensation, almost a sixth sense, that something bad was going to happen here soon, and that there would be bloodshed. He was already dead. He could feel it. The issue of when he was going to die exactly seemed unimportant, like a formality observed by the doctor who eventually closes the eyes of a terminally ill patient in his care. It seemed like even the sky itself was sobbing faintly at the impending massacre, there was a weeping noise carrying on the wind, accompanying the snowfall. Jitinder rubbed his frozen ears and scanned the area with his torch. He hadn't been imagining it: somebody nearby was definitely crying.
It was Harry Smith. Melissa was startled when she felt his hand upon her shoulder, but after taking in his features, she gasped away her fright, and kissed him gently on the lips. His wide face had a broad smile on it, one that seemed to breathe reassurance back into her body. "You waited for me," she said to him. There was no definable emotion behind this comment; it was a plain statement of fact.
"Of course," Harry said, his large lips kissing his girlfriend reassuringly once more. "I knew I had to wait for you. The second I realised nobody was lurking around the exit, I figured I should chance it."
Her eyes were wide, her mind thinking carefully about his choice of words.
"When you realised nobody was lurking? What made you think that?"
Dreading his answer, she frowned slightly, and pulled her head back. Harry said nothing, but swept his arm round, indicating the bodies scattered over the ground. From where they were stood, Melissa could see the body of Sophie Easton, its face staring upwards, oblivious to the world.
"Oh, my God, I knew about Will, but..." Melissa made movements towards the girl's body. "What happened to her?"
"Someone picked her off when she was leaving the building," Harry hypothesised. "I've counted five bodies in this area."
Melissa noticed Harry's voice trailed off into sadness at the end of this statement, and she wondered why this was so. At the same time, her eyes were scanning the ground, registering an increasing number of bodies. Her stomach churned. "How could somebody do this?" whispered the girl. "Who could live with themselves, killing everybody off like this? It's so cowardly, I can't understand it..."
"Neither can I," said Harry, deciding to share his grief. "They got Little Tom, as well."
Melissa moaned and she hugged Harry firmly. The two boys had been friends. Although she personally was not close to Tom, she felt bad for her boyfriend, knowing how much he must be hurting. For a few minutes neither of them spoke, neither of them wishing to let go of the other. Then Melissa muttered the question brewing in the back of her mind.
"Where are we going to go now?"
"I saw Ben before I turned back to come here; he seemed to have been waiting for me," Harry said, his mind suddenly taking a reprieve from mourning. "He didn't want to come back here, because of all of the... all of the bodies. But he said he'd be in H-6 somewhere. If not there, then he'd probably head east to the cliffs"
"The three of us, then."
"Well," Harry said, slightly cynically, "it would be the three of us, yeah, but I think Ben said he saw James turning and running in that direction through that window, so I don't know, in honesty"
Melissa said nothing, but smiled politely. She didn't like James much, and Harry was quite aware of that. The idea of spending what could be her last few days on Earth with a boy like that was not very comforting. But she was prepared to be friends with him, albeit by proxy.
"Should we go there now, or do something first"
"Like what?"
"Like..." Melissa's voice trailed off and she looked at Julia's body once again. She noticed the issued bag nearby, and an idea crossed her mind. "Like, taking some weapons... from them"
Harry smiled apologetically. "You wouldn't want Julia's; I've checked: she got a rubber chicken."
Melissa snorted, acknowledging the comic value of this, even in the bleak climate.
"What about the others?"
Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Sophie got a golf club, Ian over there had what I think were knuckle dusters, and Will had some shoes. Oh, and I got a frying pan," he added as an afterthought.
Melissa took in these names and their weapons, as her mind wrestled between the two opposing forces of compassion and survival. She looked at Tom's corpse, which was closest to the building of the five of them. Harry hadn't said what his weapon was, meaning he didn't know. Saying nothing, she went over to the body, which was lying still, and had a relatively calm expression on its face, in spite of the fact its body was riddled with holes. There was no bag in sight. A discrepancy crossed her mind: Julia's body and this one. Julia had a single gunshot to the head, whereas this one had a number of holes in its body, which implied that Tom had been gunned down with a machine gun of some form. Saying nothing, incubating a theory, she walked across to the other bodies and inspected them. They too had injuries like Julia's, seemingly from a handgun, and certainly not from machine gun fire. Melissa was forced to draw a conclusion: Tom had been murdered by a different gun to the other four people on the ground, so was probably killed by someone other than the assailant who shot Will, Ian, Julia and Sophie. "Where's Tom's bag?" Melissa asked softly, only to be greeted by a murmured, 'dunno' from her boyfriend. She saw two bags behind a bush; one was an issued bag, and the other was somebody's personal bag. She had no desire to go through someone's personal items, so she examined the weapons bag, only to find it devoid of a weapon. Somewhere, there was one weapon missing from the scene. There was a discrepancy here, and she could sense its nature. Not wanting to upset her boyfriend, though, she kept it to herself, and after taking the knuckle dusters from Ian's bag (she decided that they could be useful, somehow), Melissa returned to her waiting boyfriend, and the two of them stayed close, and travelled to H-6 together.
Emma Harris, Emma Newton and Paula MacNeill were travelling together. The three girls had met one another again out of chance, and decided to stay together as a unit. Safety in numbers: that was the best strategy, right?
Emma Harris led the way. She had been issued the best weapon: a handgun, and because she was the smallest, it followed logically that she would be the hardest person to hit, should they be attacked by hostiles. This was the theory put forward by the other Emma, a taller girl with messy, straggled hair, though she didn't deny that it was just an excuse for her to stay at the back. She was not sold by her weapon, a bottle of chloroform, but it sat in her bag as she took a swig of water to rehydrate. It also allowed her to busy her mouth and avoid making conversation with her two fellow travellers. Paula wasn't much in the mood for speaking either. Her mind was on the savagery of what she had witnessed happen to the two girls in the other room, particularly the violent tongue-wrenching, of which she still had gruesome images flashing across her retinas. She ambled alongside the two Emmas, walking perhaps a little too close to their sides. She was paranoid of the shadows. She could feel the eyes of her entire class staring at her from the darkness coming from all angles, all watching for a weak moment. Paula had felt inside her bag to learn what her weapon was, and her heart fell when she discovered a couple of razor blades. If she had to kill a friend, she thought (as this seemed to be what would be expected of her), then she had hoped ideally for a gun; somehow the concept of an impersonal murder was considerably easier on her conscience. "Wait," said Newton sharply. "Where are we going?"
"Let's check the map," suggested the other Emma, her breath lingering before her in the frigid air.
The three of them fumbled in their bags, and after a small amount of debate, agreed they were in F-5, the base of the small mountain on their right. They were slightly confused because they had felt they had been walking for longer than this. "That's weird," muttered Harris. "We should have gone further than this, seeing as we've only stopped once so far"
"Yeah..." Paula brushed the newest layer of snow from her hair and returned her cold hand to her pocket. "Where are we going to go?"
For a few moments nobody spoke; the three girls looked at one another uneasily, as all of them had expected one of their comrades to have some form of strategem. The usual person to ask for suggestions on practical strategies was Emma Newton, but presently her eyes were shut, her nose wrinkled, a pained look on her face. Harris and Paula looked at their friend in alarm, wondering what had happened to her, when suddenly their curiosity was resolved by Newton's violent sneeze. Paula smiled in relief; she had thought that something dreadful had happened, but it just seemed that Emma had caught a cold.
"We can't stay out here," she said, receiving nods from her companions.
"Well where though?" Harris seemed slightly put out, like she was repeating an obvious question, and was still unaware of the answer.
"If we head north-west over those plains," said Newton slowly, her nose seemingly fighting back another sneeze, "we could probably reach the outskirts of that village at C-3. We should find a house and shack up for a bit."
Neither of the other girls seemed to have any objections to this happening. In Harris' view, the sooner they were in shelter, the better, so the group of three continued their trek. Paula's mind was drifting again, only now she was thinking about her father. He would have been notified of her plight. But what had happened to her dad after he was told? Instantly, her mind began racing through a hundred scenarios, none of which were pleasant, regarding the way they would have silenced him. For she knew he wouldn't let his daughter go without a fight. Fearing the worst, her mind's eye gazed on her dad's dead body, murdered because he loved his daughter. Her mind's eye shifted its gaze; now he was sitting awake, wrapped in a blanket, tense, unable to sleep, too worried about her wellbeing to move. It shifted again: he was dead on the floor again, a hole in his forehead. And again: he was committing suicide, to be with his daughter. Once more: he was now gripping a photo album, gazing at the still images of his happiness, the only sounds in the room being the clock on the fireplace and his deep, racking sobs. Paula stumbled on a stone, and was aware of her walking once more. All these images of her father were haunting her mind. She had to know exactly what had happened to him. She needed to see him again. It was like a fire was burning in her mind. The love she felt for him now was stronger than ever before. She would see him again; comfort his sorrows, for she couldn't allow him to grieve like that. She would see him again; they could recover from the Program's effect, learn to smile and love again, taking every second of life with thanks. She would see him again; she would leave this island a winner. Even though that meant she would first have to...
Jitinder Singh was still closer to the crying figure; it was a girl, though with the darkness and her hiding her head between her knees it was difficult to determine who it was. The girl was holding a length of chain, one made from thick steel, which looked both strong and purposeful at once. He stepped closer still, and something crunched under foot; the girl looked up at Jitinder, seemingly unaware of his approach until that point.
He had been staring at Stephanie Green. She was looking back at him with two red patched eyes, clearly visible from where she had been sobbing. Alarmed, she edged back, holding the length of chain tensely between her hands, part of the end dangling down from her clasp. She had no idea whether or not Jitinder was a threat to her. She had often felt he never really liked her much, but in these circumstances, even that gut feeling could be magnified into a manifestation strong enough to destroy lives. "What do you want?" she asked him, trying to speak with a steady voice.
Jitinder had taken a step back when Steph brandished the chain at him. He had succeeded in finding one of the girls, though he had underestimated the rawness of her emotions.
He struggled to find the right words. Now he had found Steph, he discovered his voice box was choked.
"What do you want?" she repeated, a little more forcefully.
"I... I'm sorry," Jitinder began. "I'm sorry about what happened to Sam."
Her face changed immediately at these words; instead of being hostile to her classmate, she suddenly felt emotionally bonded to him. He knew how she was feeling, and he had just said exactly the thing she needed to hear. He wasn't a threat; she realised this now. Rather, he was a like mind, somebody who still valued his humanity, and what made him a civilised being. She dropped the chain immediately and cried into his shoulder. He held her sympathetically, not knowing what else to do other than offer comfort. She wasn't a threat; he understood that he had made the right decision. Tears were welling inside Jitinder's chest as he thought of Sam looking down upon the two of them; their group of three, just one day earlier, had been sitting together with hearts full of frivolty. Now one of their number was dead, and the survivors, broken. Steph broke apart from their embrace, and looked at Jitinder, her eyes bleary in the cold.
"So then," she asked, looking slightly anxious. "What are we going to do now?"