Life; As It Happens: 6 - Coda

[Cactus]

Unknown Date
Unknown Location
A Boat Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean

As he anxiously tapped his fingers on the table in front of him, Adam Dodd couldn't quite shake the feeling that everything that had come to pass was about to be all for nought. If more than a few of them couldn't get away from the hell that was Survival of the Fittest, then what was the point? How could they fight, how could they stand opposite of Danya and truly strike at the snake behind all of it if there was no symbol to remind him of how he'd failed? He was that symbol. Keith could be that symbol, too. But as he waited for their host — Garnett as he'd called himself — to finish checking on his wounded classmate, Adam wondered just how impactful it'd all be if it was just him making it out alive.

Again.

The transport ship still whipped through the water, Garnett had set it on autopilot and slammed the throttle down, so they were definitely on their way somewhere. He couldn't say how much trust he had in the dark, eyepatched man. In some way or another, he'd been involved in the one thing that had ended up defining his life. It was a story that had been written for him by monsters; one with an ending that he'd come up with on his own. But had he gazed into the abyss for too long? Sometimes, he thought so. It seemed like a thousand years ago that he'd awoken from what he'd pegged as an awful nightmare, to find himself staring off the edge of a cliff with a metal collar wrapped around his neck and a Ballester-Molina handgun in his bag. There had been a second in the beginning; just one single second, where he'd considered giving up. Thrusting his legs back and sending himself off the edge. Declaring to everyone that nope, Adam Dodd wasn't cut out for a game of survival, that in a game where the odds to survive were so infinitesimal that he didn't have a chance, so why even play?

Except he'd been wrong. Not about the odds - no, the odds were against him as they were everyone else. But somehow, between Alan walking up and cracking a gallows-humour attempt at a joke and the moment where he'd pointed his gun at Jack's head and pulled the trigger... somehow between those two points, he'd managed to buck the odds, time and time again. That was the thing about odds. As small or as large as they may have been, someone had to win the game. No matter what happened in between, at the very end of it all, there would be one person left standing, and fate had decided that in that particular situation, the person to walk away was Adam Dodd.

At the time, things seemed almost surreal. He'd grown close to people while fighting for his life, people whom he'd watched die in varying terrible ways. There were others whom he'd encountered, friends from back home and from before who'd been changed so grossly by the horror of their circumstances that they were barely recognizable. By the time that he had stared down at the body of Jack O'Connor, the fact was that he could barely reconcile the things that he had done in a real-life concept. All of it just seemed like a series of bad dreams, each one worse than the last. For a time, he'd tried waking up. Yet each instance of tranquility was almost immediately filled with someone shooting at him, or some sort of horrifying example of how humanity could lower itself to brand-new depths when faced with stress.

Adam knew it, just as well as anyone.

Rational, sane people didn't plan to shoot other rational, sane people in the back.

Rational, sane people didn't use a not-quite-sharpened knife to carve damning letters into a dying teenager's body.

Rational, sane people didn't try and outright murder the leader of a terrorist organization the moment they had the chance when the outcome was certain death.

So while yes, Adam had walked away from it all, to say that he'd made it through the game in one piece didn't seem like a truly accurate statement, now did it?

Sighing, he stared out the front cabin window of the boat. Whatever the nautical vessel they had ended up on, it was sizable, and while their seeming terrorist ally worked on his wounded classmate in the rear of the vessel, it allowed Adam the opportunity to sit and ponder his life in peace. For the moment, everything seemed as though it were going the way that it was supposed to, a moment of happiness amongst a seeming lifetime of horrible coincidences and terrible decisions by other people. He hadn't ended up in this position naturally; once upon a time, he'd been the guy that everyone liked to have around. Just 'hey, it's Adam', and a smile. That had been all that he'd wanted upon moving to California.

He should have known that it was impossible.

Coughing, he doubled over as he was caught in the throes of whatever terrible ailment he'd managed to sustain while fighting for his life. His throat felt like it was on fire, his chest ached something fierce. The wound that fuckboy had given him — whoever the hell the shotgun guy had been who'd attacked them in the jungle; Adam vaguely remembered that his name was Dennis, he was fuckboy now, though — had not done a wonderful job of healing itself, and every time he moved his leg in a manner that was more than just standing, it burned.

"I'm so fucked," he muttered to himself as he stared out the window of the boat. Adam hadn't had the fortune of antibiotics at his disposal, not like he had the first time around, and so the fire within his chest had only grown over the past few days. Since he'd taken the bullet in the leg, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion — perhaps that had just been the pain talking, but he'd done his best to ignore it. Pain was just mental, it was just the body's way of showing alarm. Adam knew; he'd been shot, stabbed with fish hooks, beaten, concussed — the fact that he was still alive after several years worth of injuries sustained in only several weeks was shocking.

What didn't help any was the fact that he'd started coughing up blood.

A small detail, that.

As he straightened up, grimacing at the fact his body felt like it was falling apart, he heard the door to the back cabin come open. Grimacing, Adam turned to look at the newcomer. The terrorist who'd helped them — God knew why he'd even considered it — was a striking man, sharp features contrasted very bluntly by an eyepatch that belaid a past that he wasn't sure he was all that interested in even considering, let alone knowing. Yet the fact remained that he had defected from the fucking monster-squad that Danya and his peons were, and so Adam had to at least allow a modicum of respect for that.

Yet, still — there was something familiar about this man.

"How's Keith?" Adam barely let him enter the room before he started his questions. "Is he going to be okay?"

The man hadn't exactly intended upon Adam being in his line of sight when he'd opened the door, and so as he made his way to a cabinet on the side of the room, he didn't immediately answer the battered teen. Opening one of the doors, he rifled through, looking for something. Adam didn't wait for him to answer — it didn't look like he was about to, anyway.

"Will he live?"

Sighing with his entire body, the man turned from the cabinet and looked at the former SOTF winner. "Maybe."

With self-importance that he almost only assumed that he had, Adam threw his hands up in the air, only wincing as he shifted his weight to his right leg. "C’mon, man! I need something more than that. What the fuck does do for you if nobody gets out but me? You need other kids, other students. If they don't get rescued, it's just one big failure for th—"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP," the ex-terrorist broke through and interrupted Adam as he got started. His voice was more of a growl than a yell, but it did the job all the same. Tonally, he barely got above medium volume, but he had the timbre of a drill sergeant, able to silence people while maintaining a basic indoor voice.

To his chagrin, Adam stopped his diatribe and didn't contribute anything more.

"He's been shot. I'm doing my best; I'm not a doctor."

No shit. Adam didn't want to push the issue, but he opened his mouth to retort.

"You need to help him. The guy's been through enough, if he does—" He was stopped by a cough; it only got worse. Finally, something seemed to give and the cough subsided in his chest, if only for a moment.

"Shit — fuck."

Coughing once more, Adam looked at the back of his hand; he'd used it to cover his mouth. It was covered in a bright red viscous liquid. Blood. The terrorist's eye widened as he saw it; Adam's withdrawn hand sat in front of him, the two of them assessing it for what it was.

"You're hurt."

Adam barely let the observation fly out before he snapped back. "Shocker."

Looking at him with a modicum of an attitude, the terrorist shut his eye for a moment and looked Dodd up and down, his eyes settling on the faint bloodstain that was damp on his thigh. After the trials and tribulations of Survival of the Fittest, plus whatever insanity the warehouse explosion had brought with it; Adam was alive, and for now, that was enough.

"How long?"

The question wasn't much, and the eye-patched man wasn't about to volunteer a whole lot of information, but Adam was annoyed with the line of questioning. He'd been hurting about as long as it had been that he'd been on the island. Whether it had been Paul Smith trying to talk a big game or Gabe Theobaldt monologuing at him like he was some sort of Bond villain, Adam had known the second Survival of the Fittest had reared its ugly head — he would be a target. Anyone who was anyone had known where he'd come from and why he'd joined the class late, and whether it be the simple fact that he'd murdered a human being before and had it be public knowledge or the idea that he was a survivor; Adam had not been a popular human being before Survival of the Fittest's third version.

Why hadn't he stayed in Canada?

"I dunno. Since," he let the words trail off. The truth was, he had no idea. For any of it. He could have stayed home, he could have tried to let people in his Southridge class die without any recourse. The final school trip had been but a rite of passage, something that he'd figured — hey, do this because if you don't, you'll always wonder what if?

At this point, he'd have much rather wondered what if. Living was much more whimsical than believing.

"Since the swamp. Whenever that was."

The terrorist didn't react.

"Let's see it."

Grimacing, Adam unbuttoned his jeans and slowly slid them off, grunting as the dull burn took hold. The bullet had been thankfully a fairly shallow wound; enough that Bill had been able to remove it, but he'd been using the meagre supply of Morphine that he'd been collecting to stave off the inevitable agony that would set in whenever his body would come down and remember that he was running around playing action hero on a bullet wound. The stitch job that he'd gotten had been about as patchwork as they came, and as he gingerly removed the bandage, he saw the terrorist's disapproval.

"Look, man — we did the best with what we ha—"

He glanced down at his leg and realized the disapproval wasn't for the stitch job. Bill Ritch could rest easy knowing that his stitching skills weren't in question. The greenish-white fuzz that seemed to coat the entirety of the stitch job was an ill omen. It looked like his thigh had gone mouldy, and what was worse — it was oozing a viscous liquid that looked like it could have been his blood if he tried really hard to use his imagination. His voice, formerly strong, lost some of its timbre.

"Oh, shit."

Garnett grunted his agreement.

"That's," Adam stumbled over his words, "I— shit. Do you have any more medical supplies? We need to clean this out; I need antibiotics, this looks..."

"Badly infected? Yeah." The terrorist finished his sentence for him as he trailed off, but the small shake of his head told Adam everything he needed to know about what this meant for his prospects. A pit formed in the bottom of his stomach.

"So you've got — no, of course you don't."

Voice cracking, understanding overtook him and strangely, the only urge he had was to laugh. There were no tears, no fury at the helplessness of his situation. Why would they have had medical supplies or antibiotics on this boat? While it was speeding towards salvation — hopefully — it was still a troop transport vessel and wasn't exactly going to be stocked full to the brim with essential supplies.

This was it, then.

"How long until we get back?"

For the first time, Garnett broke his stare and glanced out the window at the sea whipping by. There was no land to be seen for miles; they had to be in the middle of the ocean. Which ocean, Adam wasn't sure, but it didn't really matter. The answer was going to be the same no matter where they were, and he knew the words that would come out of the man's mouth before he even uttered them.

"Hours, probably. If you can hold on until then..."

If. That was a big ask. Adam had been holding on for years, now. Large parts of him died back in 2005 along with the rest of his class. Only two years later, it seemed that fate had decided to circle back and finish the job.

"Sure."

He couldn't look up; his gaze had fallen to the floor, and it seemed to weigh a tonne. Everything felt hollow, the scratching in his throat now more sinister than it'd been. Since the explosion at the warehouse, he'd been coughing and hacking up a lung. The shockwave had blown him back and probably done immeasurable damage to his old wounds; not to mention the new ones he'd picked up in his second tour of duty. He'd taken a faceful of dirt as he'd fallen, and so the easy answer had been that he'd swallowed something not meant to be swallowed. Of course, as was the case so many times in his life, the easy answer wasn't the truth.

A strange feeling settled over his body; the feeling wasn't fear, but something different. Resignation?

Acceptance.

This was it.

Garnett stood in front of him, saying nothing. Adam imagined that the man didn't feel any pity for him. In the long run, there was a larger agenda at play here, and Adam's survival was but a small perk of whatever plan these men had pulled off. It was a minor miracle that his classmates had managed to get the collars off — no thanks to him, he could see now. At the time, he'd wanted to take charge of a situation that had already been well taken care of. Darnell had been what seemed like inches from shooting him right then and there, but fate had intervened. He'd been arrogant; stubborn enough to think that he knew better because of his experience — his trauma. God, he'd been arrogant about so many things, hadn't he?

"You were there," it was more of a statement than a question. Garnett didn't acknowledge it, only raised his one visible eyebrow. Otherwise, the man's expression didn't change. "On the beach, after it was all over. Two years ago."

Understanding clicked into the man's mind, and he gave a slow nod but said nothing.

"Thought so. It's a long way from there to here, isn't it?"

Silence, for a long moment. The terrorist stared at him, but his gaze was far away, as though he were looking right through Adam's head. Betraying the organization that he worked for was a big step, one that was liable to leave him on the run or looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. It probably meant that his life expectancy wasn't much longer than Adam's was, at this point.

Somehow, he didn't exactly feel sorry for him.

"Seems like a million miles," the man muttered, then gave his head a small shake and snapped himself out of his fugue. "Here."

The alcohol pads and bandage that were tossed on the table in front of him weren't much, but they were a gesture. If nothing else, Adam knew he could at least try and appreciate that. In the long run, they weren't likely going to do much of anything for him, not if the nagging cough that happened to bring blood up from his chest was any indication. Even still, he nodded back his thanks. His thanks. This wasn't fair. For years, Adam had tried to put all of this chaos behind him, and instead of staying where he would have been safe and likely never had to worry himself about terrorists, murderers, or dying before the age of twenty, he had spat in the face of safety. For things to come to an end now? After everything?

There was so much more to say; so many more experiences that he wanted to have. So many explanations that he owed to— his eyes widened. The man had turned to head back into the other room.

"Hey, wait!"

There was annoyance now. "What?"

"Do you have — is there paper, and a pen anywhere around here? I should — there's," Adam sighed. "Please?"

Garnett's finger pointed over to the console by the front of the room, near to the windows, and without a word, he was gone, leaving Adam alone with nothing but the faint sound of the motor alongside his haggard breathing. Cleaning his wound was probably a smart idea, but considering how much blood he'd just coughed up, he wasn't sure if it was even worth it. Something inside of him was broken; it was just a matter of time before everything started to shut down.

"Fuck it," he muttered to himself and reached over to grab his jeans. They slid back on gingerly, the wound causing him a great deal of pain. Now that he was no longer fighting for his life, running away from bullets, or trying to hyperfocus on everything around him to lengthen his own survival, all of the adrenaline was drifting away, and every ache and pain started to amplify.

It wouldn't be long now.

Trying to push the fear that appeared in the forefront of his mind back down to where it came from, Adam gently made his way over to where Garnet had pointed; there was a small console that held a portable laser printer on its side. Likely used for printing navigational charts or other such nonsense, it held a white stack of unblemished paper within it. The drawer underneath it contained a myriad of office supplies, black pens amongst them.

Finding himself back over at the table, Adam thought long and hard about what he needed to say.

"Heeey, it looks like you're writing a letter!" Joking about it felt right; that video about the man assaulting the paperclip from Microsoft Office had gone around the Internet a few years ago.

Adam sighed. "Great. Now what?"

There were a great many people that were owed an explanation for the things that he'd done. Family members of people that he'd killed, maybe. Classmates who'd never gotten away, never had the chance to have a full life — there were so many words that they were owed, messages that he'd never have the chance to deliver. Keith might live, he might not — the poor guy needed to know that it would never be okay ever again, but that if he tried hard enough, maybe he could salvage something from the hell they'd just gone through.

Adam tapped the pen to the page repeatedly as he tried to figure out what to say, and whom to say it to. There were a thousand people that he could have said things to, but in the end, once he put pen to paper and began to write, there was only one person whom he owed an explanation to. There was only one person of whom his decisions had been majorly impactful, and that even if they watched every single second of his Survival of the Fittest experience, might never understand why he had done what he had done.

So he wrote; for more time than he figured he had, he wrote what he had to say on the page. More than a few times, he grimaced and crossed something out. At one point he crumpled a page up entirely. Adam knew that back at Barry Coleson, he'd sometimes had a reputation as being long-winded, but the more he wrote, the more he knew that the words had to be right.

In the end, he hoped that they would be enough.

As he folded the pages into thirds, he used his fist to flatten it and looked at the blank space. He didn't have an envelope, but they would have to understand that this was a letter that needed to be delivered. After everything that was happening, maybe Garnett had enough humanity to at least slap a stamp on it and mail it to where it needed to go. Someone would, hopefully. The scratch in his throat had come back, and as he was seized by another coughing fit, the blood that spewed from his mouth onto the floor was telling him that whoever delivered that letter, it wouldn't be Adam Dodd.

Checking to see that the name and address that he'd written onto the back of it was correct, he added one last thing; something that he'd only ever done on birthday or Christmas cards. In big, block letters — his penmanship was actually pretty good, but it was also unmistakable to those who knew it.

TO: MOM

It had taken a lot of energy to write down what he had; as far as last will and testaments went, Adam was satisfied that it would accomplish what it needed to. His own family never understood his decision to come back to the United States. In hindsight, they'd been very correct. It had caused strife between his parents and him, and neither one of his brothers had been all that supportive, either. Sighing, he left the letter on the table and shut his eyes. His energy level was starting to sag, and there was a part of him that felt like the best thing for him right now would be a nice long nap.

"Aw fuck," he pinched the bridge of his nose with his finger as he stifled another cough. He'd seen enough movies to know what that meant. How did the song go?

Closing time; one last call for alcohol — so finish your whiskey or beer.

Exactly.

Adam decided that for however long it took, he wasn't going to be afraid. Fuck that. He had spent too much time in his life being afraid of what was around the next corner, about what was going to happen next. At this point, fear didn't matter anymore, because the next step was inevitable. So the hell with being scared. If there was one thing that he wasn't going to do, it was pass out and die in the control room of some shitty boat.

Looking out the window, he could still see the ocean whipping by him, the boat going about as fast as he surmised that it could away from the horrors of Survival of the Fittest. No matter what, he was leaving that chapter of his life behind forever. No more losing friends, no more Mr. Danya. No more vengeance nor vendetta. That part of his life was over. The more he thought about all of that, the stuffier the cabin became. Perhaps it would be nice to go out and get some air.

After all, he smiled to himself as he stepped through the door to the deck, with the sun shining and the clear blue skies looking down on him, it truly was a beautiful day.



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