Hope Castle was going north. She was terrified, for obvious reasons. She had seen two people already out in the field (Jennifer Milton and Catherine Harding, the former roughly an hour and a quarter before the latter), and had no desire to draw attention to herself. She had absolutely no idea where she was going, both in terms of route and of strategy. In the eyes of some of the class, she was quite smart, but a bit of a loner. She listened in classes, attended them fairly regularly, and usually got above average grades. In spite of this, she didn't socialise much, mainly due to her commitments to her family. Her family.
Her blood chilled at the thought of what had happened to her family. What would her parents be doing right now? Her mother would be crying, there was no doubt about that, crying for lost hope, crying for Hope. What was she meant to do know other than grieve for her daughter? Mothers were allowed to do that. And what of her father? She knew her dad cried in his weaker moments from time to time, but only when he thought he was alone. Would he get the chance to do so, a a time when the whole family would be needing each other for solidarity? Most likely, he would be the one to tell Christopher, Germaine and the rest of her siblings. As she thought of little Marcus, crying, needing some care immediately but not getting it because both of his parents would be crying of their own accord, she crumpled to the ground and wept silently with despair, pained by the dilemmas that were drowning her soul.

In the barracks, Jeyes signalled to a technician to flip the frequency of the speakers. He had been listening to Hope's breathing and quiet sobbing for a few minutes, but got bored of it, and requested for it to be changed to a more interesting selection.
But at this particular moment, there was nothing particularly remarkable happening. Disappointed, he turned away, and looked out of the window. The snow had stopped, and the moon was peeking out from behind another cloud, basking the ground in an eerie, refracted light. The snow was probably about half an inch thick in some parts, the parts that had not been disturbed by the trespassing students, delivering the will of the Program upon one another. He could make out a few of the students dead outside the door, their bodies causing irregularities in the layout of the snow; it moulded around their corpses, tinted pink slightly by spilled blood. Strictly speaking, he shouldn't go outside until the area became a danger zone, as any of the students could return and try to attack the staff, potentially killing the personnel. He had no idea how long it would be until he could go outside, as he hadn't looked at the print outs from the computers just yet.
He twisted upon his heels and turned back into the room. The metallic wall had been opened completely, so the room was now over three times its original width. Beyond it were numerous computers, technicians and assorted soldiers, all of whom were patrolling the aisles, tearing off reams of printed paper and comparing them to one another. Jeyes watched them, with Meyer among their number, trying to spot inconsistencies or warning signs using his trained eye. The team have no way to observe what is happening exactly; they could only eavesdrop and carry out post mortems on the corpses at a later stage. Shepherd meanwhile was gazing silently at the largest screen. It was like one seen in lecture halls; large and electronic, it displayed an aerial map of the island. Upon that map, there were dots, all moving slowly in various directions, like ants. The dots came in three colours: yellow, light blue and dark red, and all had numbers upon them. Shepherd understood what these codes meant: the numbers corresponded to the individual students, the yellow dots were girls, the blue ones were boys, and the red ones were the dead. Jeyes went to the side of the soldier, and looked at the map also. To one side was a list of names, student names, forming two orderly columns. Some of the names had been extinguished; Jeyes only realised at this instant exactly how many people had already fallen to the Program, as over a quarter of the names on the board were gone. A sick part of his mind hoped that at this rate, he may be able to finish the Program in under twenty-four hours, though his experience with the game assured him this wasn't going to happen; there was often a flurry of kills at the start, then they would level off to about four or five per quarter, say.
Several smaller screens around the room showed individual details of each of the pupils of 11D, but Jeyes wasn't looking at that. He was looking at Shepherd's expression. There was something about his face as he looked at the map. A face of pure concentration, the face of a regretful addict getting a guilty fix, the face of a person trying to solve a complex riddle, musing over the endless possibilities and likelihoods of an old, unsolved puzzle. There was a sadness to his young features, a gruff man in his early twenties, this was his first time involved with the running of a Battle Royale. Jeyes had been a little bit wary about allowing Shepherd to join in with the organisation, not believing he could hack it, but his commanding officer had nothing but praise for the youngster.
"Sir," called out Meyer from nearby, his hand in the receiver of a telephone. "They're all ready to go."
Jeyes nodded in acknowledgment to Meyer, and the two men moved out of the room together, and turned left down the corridor-- the opposite direction that the students had taken some four hours earlier-- and entered a smaller room, with two television monitors within it, and a few microphones, and got ready to speak to Neil Davey.

Matt Sherman was disorientated, but he didn't really care. His mind was not set on where he was walking at all; rather, his attention was split between his weapon, and a friend.
A girl friend.
Catherine Harding was in his class, and in the same situation as himself. Where was she now? What could he do to help her? The two of them were not going out, as such, but they were close, and both knew they had feelings for the other, but neither were brave enough to make the first move. He was worried about how she would be coping at that moment. He tried to listen out for her, but could hear nothing but heavy breathing, from the exhaustion of moving so far. The time was now gone five o'clock, by his reckoning, which meant that soon, he would be hearing the report coming over the speakers. Praying silently there would be no mention of Catherine on the lists, he trundled onward.
There were numerous reasons why he needed to see her, all of them personal. At the same time, he knew how volatile the girl had been over the past few months, and really hoped she would be feeling strong enough to resist the demonic effects of her rage. She was a monster when in those moods; he scared her often, and while he knew she was not a threat to him, he knew that she wasn't the same person when she was in those moods.
No, she was never the same person after Isobel.
What frightened him most about the situation they were in at the moment was that he would almost certainly die. He reflected quietly on his class. Who could he trust with his life? Catherine, yes, without a doubt, but who else? Jitinder? Probably, but that wouldn't do him a fat load of use; Jitinder was too timid to stand up for himself, let alone anybody else. Dominic? Perhaps. He had been out with Dominic and Kavinder the other afternoon. Dominic was certainly loyal. So was Kavinder come to that, but she simply wasn't loyal to him, and probably to no-one else but herself in the given situation. He thought of one or two other people he may trust, wondering what they were doing at that time. His senses all immersed in thought, he tripped over a heavy body mass that was on the grass.

Wondering where the hell she was, Tina Syme looked down the lens of the camera with terror. She knew how she had gotten there: how two police officers had knocked on her door, how she had slipped some clothes over her nightie and clambered into the back of their car, how she had been forced out, was bound, gagged, blindfolded, and driven somewhere. The policemen had not removed the blindfold until she was seated on the wooden chair, her eyes filled with fearful tears so much she couldn't see anything, nor could she wipe them away due to being bound. There was a camera in front of her. It looked like a professional video camera, big and black, standing on a tripod aimed squarely at her head. There were men in the room, but they seemed to do nothing other than stare her down whenever she kicked up a fuss.
Neil Davey had regained consciousness several hours ago, and was itching to find out the details surrounding his blackout. There had been a man from the government who wanted to ask him a series of questions about the incident, and thus wanted to meet with Neil as soon as possible. The teacher, eager to leave the hospital and return home, had signed his own release papers at about midnight, local time. He rang the number that had been provided, and a man came to take him home.
He never got home. Like the woman, he was taken to a location, and sat in front of a camera. He was horrified; it was like the government were going to interrogate him as a suspect! For what seemed like an eternity, he sat there, fidgeting uncomfortably as the soldiers in opposite corners of the room stared at him inhumanely. What seemed like an eternity passed before something happened. The door of the room opened slightly, and two other men backed into the room, both of them carrying a table on casters. Upon it were a pair of standard-looking television monitors. Nonplussed, Neil watched the soldiers activate the camera before him, and then both of the monitors. Two familiar faces stared at him from two unfamiliar locations: his ex-wife was strapped to a seat like his own, squirming anxiously, and a man was on the other one, a man he knew and trusted.
His former work colleague, Mr Jeyes.

It had taken a bit longer than she had expected, but Chrissie Saxon had finally left Katie's body. It was in a horrific state, as she had feared. The flare had indeed burned much of her friend's skin away, leaving the flesh and bone beneath black and hardened. She wanted to close Katie's eyes, but found with revulsion there was nothing to close as such; the eyes had been burnt away, partly melted by the heat of the charge, and the remnants of her eyelids were lying over the flatness.
At any rate, she had finally given her friend the respect she deserved so much, and had hurried away to catch up with Eddie. However, having not paid attention to exactly where he had gone, she realised that after many minutes of running she was utterly lost. She spun round in a slow circle, staring off into the distance, hoping she could see a person's silhouette against the horizon or the flash of a torch, or maybe even the signal of the flare gun, so she could catch her buddy's murderer and enact her revenge. With smoke canisters? What did it matter, so long as she inflicted pain upon him? Where would the harm lie in showing him what he had done, to demonstrate how much it had hurt her. Was it really wrong to kill him? No. No it wasn't, but as the thought flowed through her mind, she realised a smoke canister was actually totally useless in a combat situation. She needed a weapon. A proper one. There was no chance of a gun, not on the ground or anything, but what about...
Chrissie turned to return to Katie's body. One of the final things Katie had ever said was about her paperweight.
"This looks pretty weighty, y'know? You could knock somebody out with that."
Yet after a few steps, Chrissie paused, confused. Was she going back in the right direction? She was utterly disorientated. It was useless. She was lost. She would have to wait until daybreak now to find her way. She stooped and got out her map. She shone her torch ahead of her, and it flashed against the terrain of a hill. She was probably in F-5 or in G-5 at that moment, even though it was perfectly feasible she could be in H-4, too. Confused, she just found west and opted to run inland. Maybe she'd get lucky after all.

"This could be your lucky day, Tina," Jeyes said into the microphone in front of him. "We're in the process of granting you a wish."
Tina didn't believe a word of this. She was petrified, her face had turned the colour of sour milk, and as she looked at her former husband in the other monitor, she was not comforted at all. That man always brought up bad memories for her. Bad memories and a bad class from a bad school. She had moved on, and her life was almost on course toward normality. She had opted for a career change, and now was working in the housing market. She had no idea what she would say about the room she was trapped in at that particular moment, but it certainly wouldn't be helpful. She was calmed slightly by a reassuring voice issuing from the screen. The second man, the man who seemed in charge was addressing her, saying something she could not absorb. She had never met this man, nor had he introduced himself properly. She interrupted him bravely.
"Who are you?"
The man looked down the lens of his camera; his eyes producing the sort of look that would follow a person around a room.
"I'm terribly sorry," he started, not sounding sorry at all. "I didn't introduce myself, did I? You can call me Jeyes. I am a soldier for the British military, and I have recently undertaken a mission in the school you once worked: White Hill Comprehensive. I believe you know the other gentleman?"
"Of course she knows me," growled Neil. "We were married for years."
"Well then, I guess we can skip the introduction now." Jeyes softened his gaze, to one less hostile, but no more welcoming. "Do you remember, Tina, that time three years ago when a student in one of your history classes took your personal belongings, and in the same lesson you were stabbed in the leg with a syringe?"
"Of course..." Tina nodded slowly, less afraid.
"But nothing ever got done about it," interjected Davey, utterly bewildered by the reference uttered by the man who had betrayed his trust.
"You two should have a little more faith in the education system," chuckled their captor. "Your complaints were enacted upon, but the nature of the action was slow in progress. It went right to the top, and that takes a lot of time. What we are doing about it is being executed right now."
The two captives were still not fully understanding the message that Jeyes was saying. They threw glances at one another from their respective screens. Davey spoke first.
"What are you talking about Jeyes?"
"I'm talking about the Juvenile Reform Bill: Battle Royale!"
As she heard the last two words of this exclamation, Tina's jaw fell, accompanied by a strange involuntary throat noise. She had been a teacher in history, and knew her international politics. She knew what Battle Royale meant. She had heard it all from the newspapers.

David Vales had seen the entire argument unfold before him. He had been perched in a tree, using his weapon, night-vision binoculars, with expert technique. He froze slightly when Melissa and Harry had stopped beneath his feet, but when they had run toward the cliff top, and away from him, he readjusted his position, and watched speechlessly as the events unfolded before him.
It had now been quite some time since three of the students over there had met their demise, and David figured the coast was probably clear enough for him to investigate the scene in person. He leapt from the tree, and landed cat-like on the snowy earth, only to swear when he realised he had left his bag in the tree. It didn't take too much effort to bring it down, so with bag in hand, he crossed over to the body of the girl.
He retched slightly at the sight of Melissa's face, and as he shone the torch into her cavernous features, his own face screwed up and he turned to look away from the macabre sight. It felt like his bowels were freezing inside him, the icy lightness of the sensation making him lose his balance and stumble on the level ground. He had liked the girl, her laughter and prettiness always cheering him up. He would even dare to go so far as to say he was attracted to her, or at least as far as his sexuality would permit. What was sadder in his view was that he had heard mention of Katie Smethwick's demise. He had liked her too, another pretty girl with whom he got on well. Certainly they were friends; some of his best memories seemed to take place at Katie's grandparents' house.
Katie's grandparents. It suddenly dawned on David exactly what this meant; her grandparents were truly alone. It happened four years ago this month, he recalled. It had been on an icy road, her father at the wheel, her mother sat in the front, carrying a number of bags they had brought, a plethora of gifts for her brother, Alan. Katie didn't remember the crash at all. She had been in a coma for nearly eight weeks, the only survivor of the tragic accident that had robbed her of her brother and parents. Reports had revealed that there had been something wrong with the tyres, and the way they gripped the road (or, rather, failed to grip the road). Her only family had been the parents of her father, who grieving for their son, felt it was the only thing they could do to help the situation. Why send their only grand-daughter away to an orphanage? Sure, old Mrs Smethwick wasn't very mobile, but the love was there. Love that David felt whenever he visited Katie at home for whatever reason. If her grandparents disapproved of his sexuality, they never showed it; her granddad may develop an unconscious whistle, but they never complained. They wanted their charge to be happy, and that all that mattered to the old couple; the company Katie kept was irrelevant.
It was sad. David knew it was sad that Mr and Mrs Smethwick had lost their only successor, so long after they had lost three other members of their family, just when it seemed that everything would be okay. David brought his mind forward. He had watched the girl's death from afar. It had certainly been James Aldridge who had instigated the fight. David couldn't lip-read, but he had certainly heard mention of a flare gun, at the moment when Ben was bellowing with rage at his newest companions. David had seen the two fall down the cliff. Curiosity drew his eyes toward the edge, but his survival instinct was telling him to stay away from the edge, as it was clearly unstable enough to crumble underfoot. These same instincts were also advising him to avoid James if he possibly could; his classmate had killed once, and what would stop him from doing so again, should he have extra cartridges?

"What does Battle Royale have to do with me?" Tina asked from her captive location. From an unseen place, Mr Davey wrestled awkwardly. He knew about Battle Royale too, albeit vaguely, and he did not know too much about its content other than it was bad and often involved death. Ever since he had regained consciousness in the hospital, the welfare of 11D had been playing on his mind. Slowly, he was beginning to understand how all these things were connected. He didn't like it at all. He wriggled with his binds, but his attempts were futile.
"Well, your husband over there--"
"Ex-husband," corrected Neil instinctively.
"--Ex-husband and I were invigilating an exam in which practically all of that class, now 11D, were sitting. They were merged with another class who had also become unruly, though that was after you left the school. We gassed them and put them all into the Program."
"No!" It was Tina's turn to struggle with her binds. "No, you can't do that!"
"Too late," said Jeyes, matter-of-factly. "And of course, we had to hunt down the stragglers and get them, too."
"Can somebody please explain to me," Neil interjected, "exactly what this... 'Battle Royale'... entails?"
"Of course," Jeyes said, unfazed by the question that he hadn't anticipated. "In layman's terms: a class of delinquents are taken away to a remote location, each given a weapon, and made to slug it out until there's only one left standing. As it so happens, your class are doing very well, and a lot of progress has been made."
"Progress?" Neil shouted, horrified by the euphemism. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well, let's put it this way: you remember telling me last Friday when I came into your lesson how you were worried about that boy, Tom Clarke?" Neil nodded in affirmation, his eyes wide. "Well, he sorted out a lot of problems, got quite a bit of his anger out, but let's just say that you won't have to worry about him any more."
"You bastard!"
Both the captive man and woman lunged at the screens showing the evil Jeyes, forgetting their restraints momentarily. What sort of person could devastate so many families in one swoop? This was one of the things Tina hated about the Program so much, as she was forced back down by her guards, screaming incoherently at the camera.
"It's touching that you seem so concerned about their wellbeing now," Jeyes began, adopting his mocking tone once more, "when at the time all you wanted was for the guilty parties to pay for what they had done to you. Don't deny it, please; you know perfectly well you wanted something done, and for the class to be dealt with appropriately. But now it seems you have cold feet, the pair of you. We can't be having any of that now I'm afraid."
The man's lips thinned, then he proceeded to relate a dilemma.
"Risky business, this Battle Royale," Jeyes said slowly, choosing his words carefully. "So many people seem to think about it in the wrong way, assuming that what they say is an idle fantasy. Well, I think we've proved this isn't so at the moment. Yet I must impress the seriousness of what you've done..."
"What we've done?" Neil hollered, panicking. "We didn't ask you to do this!"
"Not you personally, but the Governors at White Hill did," clarified Jeyes, unfazed. "They are the ones who seem to have talked about the Reform Bill as being a perfect solution. This isn't true; it is an emergency measure. Which is why I need to use the pair of you to impress the gravity of what they have done. They don't respect children, only adults. Which is why I need to make an example of the pair of you."

Hope cried out in pain as a heavy weight fell on top of her. She struggled and squirmed her way out from underneath it, and at the same time, it was pushing and grunting to get off her. The weight had a voice, and it was Matt Sherman. After much apologising, the two classmates untangled themselves and looked each other in the eye. It seemed like Matt had not been paying any attention to where he was going, and he stumbled on top of Hope in his state of distraction.
"Wasn't very smart of you," Hope said, smiling, feeling totally safe in the presence of the blundering boy.
"I know, sorry. Gahh..."
"Are you okay?" Hope looked at Matt who seemed to be lifting pressure from his ankle. "Are you hurt?"
"No, it's okay, I'm fine. Seriously."
"Are you sure? It's okay; my weapon was a first-aid kit, so I may be able to... what is that?"
She was pointing at Matt's waist, as she had seen something poking out from his belt. He smiled and tugged it free. It looked a lot like a Walkman, only larger and with more buttons. Hope freed her torch and shone it onto the device with curiosity. It had a large switch that seemed to have two modes (labelled: 'F' and 'M'), and a small LCD screen that was showing a large number '07' on its display. On the side opposite from the largest switch, the headphones Matt was wearing led off into his ears.
"Why are you listening to a CD right now?"
"It's not a CD player, Hope. It's my weapon," the blond-haired boy said with a voice conveying a mixture of sardonic humour and pride. "An eavesdropping device."
"I see," Hope said, not really understanding how it might function. "How do you work it?"
"I'm guessing it has something to do with these collars," Matt said, his voice brightening, as he was talking about gadgets and electronics. "They probably have microphones in them, or something. Anyway, you flip that switch to go between boys and girls, and then you pick the appropriate student number with those buttons there, and it tunes in like so."
Hope understood. "In that case, you are listening to... boy number seven?" Matt nodded, as Hope looked at her map, with its names down the side. "So that'd be Rob, then? Is he talking about anything interesting?"
"Sex."
Hope rolled her eyes, looking skywards. Then she was struck with a thought, one she had tried to ignore for the past few hours.
"Sam..." She turned her glance to the boy, her voice deadpan. "She's dead, isn't she?"
Matt opened his mouth to speak, but Hope realised she didn't need to hear the answer. She looked at his collar, and distinctly recalled its cousin's bleeping as she fled the room.
"It's okay, it doesn't matter," she lied. "I just took my stuff and ran. What was I meant to do?"
Again, Matt said nothing. Unlike his companion, he had seen the late Samantha Carter get her throat ripped to pieces by an electronic charge. He had no way to relay this to Hope, nor did he see anything to be gained from doing so. The image filled him with revulsion, so he wasn't going to share it. Hope seemed to be looking for information, but Matt didn't know what he should be telling her.
"Who else has died? Do you know, and does that gadget tell you anything?"
"Why are you so curious?"
"Don't you trust me?
"I don't trust anyone right now," said Matt, being totally honest. "I just want to find Catherine right now."
Hope's eyes turned quizzical once more. "Why?"
Matt didn't answer, but the look in his eyes seemed to answer her question. She remembered the two of them, and how she had seen them draw close to one another in recent weeks. She smiled in understanding.
"Are you sure you need to see her? What with that whole incident with her sister?"
"That's the reason why I need to see her."
"I see," Hope turned round and pointed behind her, roughly to the south-west. "I did meet her about fifteen minutes ago. She was going in that direction, I think."
Matt nodded, seeing no harm in Hope's information. He stepped to one side and picked up a his bag. As he did so, he noticed a white chalk line on the floor. It resembled the type of line found on an athletics track, one that would be painted on by a school groundsman with a converted lawnmower attached to a bucket of paint. As his eyes followed it back toward his person, he saw that both he and Hope were standing on it. It was the marker signalling the boundary between two zones.
"Where are you going now?" Matt looked at his watch, and realised that the first report would be announced in under an hour.
"I'm probably heading this way," Hope said, her arm going in the opposite direction. "I may try and shack up with a couple of the other girls. Like Steph, Nat or Sophie."
Matt frowned. When he left the barracks, he had seen Sophie's body dead on the ground. Feeling uncomfortable in telling Hope this, he instead opted to play dumb.
"Well..." Matt fidgeted on the spot, keen on leaving. "I guess I'll see you around."
"Probably not."
"Probably not," Matt said with a sigh. "At any rate, good luck. I hope you do well."
"Same to you, too." Hope hugged her companion goodbye, appreciating this would surely be the last time they would ever speak to one another. Both Hope and Matt untangled from each other, and with a nod of sadness, went their separate ways.

"No."
It had been about fifteen seconds since Jeyes told the two imprisoned teachers their ultimatum. Because of the stupidity of the Governors, one of the teachers now had to die as an example. Jeyes didn't appear to be too happy with the issue, but Meyer, who was standing behind him with a menacing look upon his face, seemed to be enjoying the looks of inspired terror on their faces. Neil had been the first to regain his composure enough to speak.
"I am afraid it has to be done," Jeyes sighed and continued his explanation. "you see, these Governors above you seemed more than willing to pass the identity of the class onto us that they couldn't understand the consequences of what they had done. It's not a game. They are too removed from the walks of school life; they only see what they want to see, and know about what reaches them through many-times relayed sources. No, the only way they can understand is if one of their teachers tells them exactly what they have done. But how can the teacher know? The teacher isn't out there on the island, fighting for survival. We could of course have replicate the situation, and stuck the two of you in a ring and kept you there until one of you is vanquished, but that is unfair. After all, it's neither of you who are the guilty parties here."
"SO WHY DO THIS?" Tina shrieked. Jeyes had already brought up his reasons before, and was not inclined to repeat himself.
"What you have to do is simple. I merely need one of you to request that the other be killed. You get to choose how they are killed, and when. The other person will die exactly as their opponent chose. The survivor will be driven to the loser's body, and hopefully be under no illusion that this is all a set-up. I have organised a meeting with the Governors who were on the board at the time the decision was made to pass the class over to our authorities. That meeting is three days from now. The winner will simply have to explain what has transpired between him- or herself and the defeated person, and if your explanation is satisfactory, you will be allowed to go free. Any questions?"
Both Tina and Neil were understandably horrified by the prospects. Neither of them moved, both their eyes were fixed upon the screen of their companion, who in turn showed nothing but fear.
"Oh, and there is one other thing I should make clear," Jeyes said, as prompted by Meyer. "There is a time limit on this decision. One day. If we don't have a decision within twenty-four hours, both of you will be executed. If that happens, I will have to phone up the Governors and cancel the meeting, so I hope you will both save me the hassle and embarrassment of doing so, okay?"
"You're unbelievable."
Tina spat at the screen, something that was so unlike her mannerisms, that even she was surprised. Meyer was unfazed; he was, after all, many, many miles away.
"I will be back in about six hours to check on your progress," he said. He turned his camera off, and signalled to Meyer and another soldier to keep an eye on the two monitors in that room, upon which both Neil Davey and Tina Syme sat wide-eyed, feeling nauseous and apprehensive.

David pursed his lips, and suddenly noticed quite how dry they were. It was then that he realised there were some advantages from having seen the scene. Three bags were lying discarded around the ground. He knew what he was doing was crude and disrespectful given the circumstances, but guessed that he may as well make the most of a bad situation. David was tactless when the situation required him to be, which in his eyes seemed to be often. He opened all three extra bags and tipped their contents over the ground. He noticed with relish that two weapons fell to the ground: a switchknife and some brass knuckles.
"What are these?" David asked himself as he shone his torch onto the weapons. Opting to take the knife (his wrists were too puny to merit the knuckles), he pocketed it, and began to put the bread and bottles of water into his own bag, flicking off grass and mud from them as he did so. The job done, he proceeded to pick up his bags and move away from the scene. David underestimated the weight of the water, and after about twenty steps or so, had to put the bag on the ground and drink one of them. He was now moved far enough away from Melissa to spread out down on the ground, and as he did so, his foot kicked the frying pan. David looked at it, and contemplated taking it. What harm could there be in doing so? It may be useful to clobber someone, should he lose the knife for whatever reason. He picked it up and inspected it. The pan was very broad, and had a firm weight behind it. He rapped the centre of it with a flick of the wrist; it reverberated with a deep 'gong' sound. David smiled wryly. He had three weapons. None of them were great, in truth, but at least he had a choice of battle tools. Deciding to spread the weight of his load over both shoulders, David re-organised the load by splitting it in half, put them into two bags, and after staring awkwardly into Melissa's bludgeoned head, made off into the darkness. His binoculars were around his neck, his knife in his pocket, his pan in his hand.

Chrissie was wandering about, hopelessly lost. All hope of finding Eddie or accosting James had left her mind, and had long been replaced with absolute terror. Her boots were getting wet in the melting snow, making her toes freeze uncomfortably. She could get frostbite at this rate. Why did she choose to wear these boots so much? They were a deep brown, and rose slightly above her ankles, from which her knee-length stripy socks rose up to meet with the hem of her school skirt, which was also moist from the snowfall. It was a really bad time to realise her boots weren't waterproof. Water was seeping through to her toes, making walking extremely painful. Chrissie was fucked, she knew it. She was unlike her boots, which in spite of their ill-suitedness for bad weather, were extremely robust and durable. Tough as new boots. Chrissie was no such thing; a weakling without status or company, she knew she wouldn't stand a chance unless she found someone to--
BANG.
There was a hollow-sounding thud coming from nearby, as if someone was banging on a door. It was coming from her left, so she turned to face the noise. The sky was starting to turn to lighter shades of blue as the first signs of dawn began to manifest, but even so the faces weren't quite close enough for Chrissie to distinguish them. She heard some boys' voices coming from the same spot, and hoping that one of them may be Eddie, she flashed her torch over their relief.
There were four people there. None of them were Eddie, but as the light hit them, they were distracted from their attempt to enter a room.
"Who's out there?" a male voice called. Horrified and afraid, Chrissie turned off her torch and backed away. At any rate, two members of that party had their torches shining in her face.
"Chrissie!" yelled a girl's voice.
"Keep... stay away from me!" Chrissie reached into her bag, and waved a smoke canister in front of her, at arm's length. trying to make it look menacing. "Just don't come near me, okay?"
"Chrissie calm down; it's us," said the first boy's voice, as he turned the torch to illuminate his and Alice's features. Nonplussed, Chrissie bent her knees, ready to run if she needed to. "It's us: Graham, Alice, Dominic and Dave Drake. We're not going to hurt you."
"How do I know that?" the blonde girl shrieked, her mind rinsed with paranoia.
"It's Alice Daniels, for crying out loud," Dominic called lamely, hoping the girl's reputation would calm Chrissie down.
"SO WHAT?" the girl was hollering at the top of her voice, waving her canister as menacingly as she could. "That doesn't mean anything any more! You could all be looking to kill people! I didn't think James was capable of murder, but I saw him do it!"
This news stunned the party of four into silence. They didn't believe James could do such a thing either, but the conviction in Chrissie's voice told otherwise. But who was the victim?
Without warning, Chrissie had pulled the pin out of the canister in her hand and hurled it toward the crowd. It landed several feet short, and started to issue smoke from its pressurised nozzle. There was a squeak of surprise, then silence. The crowd were watching as the slight wind blew the gas back away from them and back toward Chrissie. Chrissie didn't even think of moving; she hadn't thought out her plan properly, and had succumbed to hysteria. As the smoke started to fog her vision, she realised it was too late to run away; she coughed and turned to go back the way she came, but that was misting with smoke as well.
"Chrissie? Chrissie! Are you okay?"
They are asking for my wellbeing, she suddenly thought, her mind seemingly resolving a dilemma. Moreover, they aren't coughing. Maybe I should trust them? I have nothing to lose, after all. Slowly, she fumbled her way through the smoke, trying hard not to breathe the fumes, her eyes squinting through the white fog obscuring her senses. Holding her breath, she ambled forward blindly, and eventually walked into the wall of the building the other four students had been trying to access.
"Ow!" she said, shaking her hand. The wooden walls of the building had given her a splinter. She shook her hand, and felt another person's palms touching her wrist. She whisked round and saw Alice peering over her shoulder inspecting the cause of Chrissie's pain.
"It's just a splinter," Alice said. "This building should be a medical clinic according to the map, so there may be some supplies in there. We need to get in to help Dave."
Chrissie looked and saw David standing in front of her. Illuminated by the dull refraction of light in the smoke's mass behind him, she saw he had a scarf wrapped round his shoulder, which was encrusted with dry blood.
"How do we get in though?" The voice came from Graham, who was still out of sight. "The door's locked I think, and we can't break the window."
"Yes we can," Chrissie said, a flash of inspiration flashing through her mind as she looked through the fog to where the boy's voice seemed to be coming from. Pointing her torch at the window, she gazed at the glass; it seemed quite thin. Striding over to the canister, she picked it up, and bashed the hissing weapon against the window's corner, which cracked in an instant. She and Dominic pushed out the glass, and Chrissie climbed gingerly though the hole, and opened the door, which was latched from the inside. Her four companions, quietly impressed by the girl's resourcefulness, piled themselves through the door, sat down, and waited for the impending morning report.