A few moments later it appeared once again, scorch marks blackening the tips of rifle sights, set to two hundred yards.
((Erika Stieglitz continued from Heimweh))
Erika put the lighter into her back pocket, and readjusted her aim. A fallen log was her bench rest, and her cover. She looked down the gun towards the Infirmary. They were far enough away that it was at least a little difficult to recognize the faces. All they had to be right now were silhouettes, no different than the ones she’d shot countless times before.
The particular silhouette she trained her blackened sights on was holding a gun. It seemed to be keeping watch with a few others as they scouted the inside of the building.
Once he goes down, either they scatter or they try and help him. Maybe grab the gun to shoot back. I won’t have to change my point of aim much. One target turns into several.
It had to be quick. The Martini-Henry was fine for long distance shooting, but it kicked out a lot of smoke. The people at the Infirmary wouldn’t have any recourse once they figured out where she was shooting from, but there was no telling who else might be nearby with something that could reach her. Once they were all down, she'd run over and take the gun. Any others she found she could disable or destroy. The fewer functioning guns on the island, the better her own chances were.
One step at a time.
Erika went still. Settled into a familiar pattern. Something so natural and comforting she’d been using it off the range to calm herself. Waiting until she felt comfortable enough to squeeze the trigger.
Inhale. The sights were exactly where she wanted them to be, and perfectly still.
They’re just silhouettes.
Exhale. The silhouette stopped moving.
They’re dead already. We all are.
Inhale. She knew the recoil wouldn’t faze her.
I'm going to live again. I just have to do this.
Exhale. Erika squeezed the trigger, just as she saw the boy with the gun reach down for something. She caught a glimpse of a face in her sights before everything was obscured by smoke. The rifle kicked back hard, inflicting a familiar dull pain. The deep report of the rifle echoed throughout the village. As a high pitched ringing in her ear abated, she heard a crack as Thomas returned fire from the Infirmary, though he was off by quite a distance.
“Ah, shit!”
Cursing under her breath, she ejected the smoking brass and inserted another of the torpedo-like cartridges. The smoke cleared away, and Erika readjusted her aim and prepared for another shot. Slowing her breathing once again, she could hear them now.
They called out to one another in the confusion, panicked. Sean, Zach, Thomas. Desiree. Though she'd tried not to, now she couldn't help but put names to faces.
"These people will never forget what you did."
The silhouette – Thomas - wasn’t firing back anymore. Erika watched him intently, waiting for him to move. Though it was difficult to see his face from this distance, his body language told enough of the story. He had been abandoned, and he knew it. Did he understand that she’d kill him if he didn’t run? He had to.
Get up. Run, you stupid bastard.
Inhale. Try and stop the shaking.
What are you doing? Run!
Exhale. Blink away a tear. The gun made him a threat, which made him a target. It made it okay.
It's just another body to crawl through to get to the other side. That's all. It has to be.
Inhale. Swallow bile. The rifle shot high, so she had to aim low.
No one’s coming to help him, and he knows it.
Exhale. Think about going home. Think about how Thomas probably just wanted to go home, too.
“Fuck!”
Erika turned away from the building, lying back down behind the log. Her hands were shaking too badly to take another shot and expect it to hit, not at this distance. Shooting people and shooting targets weren’t at all alike. It had been arrogant and stupid to think they were the same thing. If there were breathing exercises that made it easier to visit unimaginable pain and suffering on other people without giving a shit, she didn't know them.
"What was I trying to prove? What the fuck am I doing?"
Her heart raced. Erika didn't know how to forget they were people, so it had to be at a distance, to make it easier to try to. It had been easy, until she heard their names. Now she couldn’t keep her hands steady. She couldn’t hit anything this far away if her hands weren't steady. Not hitting them meant they'd all live. If they were alive, that meant they would keep trying to be alive. There was only one way to do that here, even if they hadn't realized that yet.
The voices coming from the building were all male. One name wasn’t.
"Desiree."
The face in the window came to mind. The one that had been in her sights. She spoke it. That made it real. She felt she must’ve been crying, because she could feel the tears running down the side of her head. It didn’t feel like it though. She had to have been smiling too, because her face hurt. It was weird. She didn’t feel happy. Relieved, maybe, but not happy. Tension seemed to ebb from her body and run into the earth below, as she stared past the canopy into the sky. Every methodical step, she'd felt hounded by self-doubt. Now she'd done it.
And I have to keep doing it.
Erika sat up, peering over the log once more. Thomas was still there.
Alone.
The desire to take another shot at him just wasn’t. After watching him for a moment, frightened and calling out in vain to his friends, she knew she couldn’t do it.
Not if no one’s coming to help him. Nobody should die alone.
She couldn’t do it with her hands so unsteady, with eyes that were glassing over.
Maybe she didn't have to kill again, she thought. One was enough to be let go at the end.
Now all she had to do was hide. Focus on how she'd have to make up for this. If she lived, she had to find a way to make them worth Desiree's life, somehow. There was more to life than just making it the next day. That was why she had to do this, for all the things she'd still wanted to do with her life, her hopes and dreams. Helping a world she knew deserved better. By getting through this, she was saving those parts of herself, the parts that would never flourish in a place like this. It was trite to mourn the loss of what she used to be instead of the girl she’d just killed, but she knew she had to take the time to remember what it was she was even surviving for.
Everything she ever was, or wanted to be. Anything she ever loved or hated. All she ever learned. Over in a second. Annihilated. It's not even darkness, what she saw and felt. That's something a conscious mind would come up with and hers is scattered all over that Infirmary. Because of what I did, her whole world died with her. What can possibly make up for that?
The faint hope of justifying this seemed to elude her. Fantasies she'd nurtured and held onto in her very worst moments now slipped from her grasp.
One day my world will die, too. Maybe just so someone else can keep living in theirs.
Eclipsing desperate visions of what the rest of her life might look like, her true motivation rose to the surface - Fear.
It plucked her from the damp ground and thrust her back into the deep wilderness. Hopefully she could find somewhere to hole up.
If not, maybe she would find some people kind or naive enough to think she hadn't yet resolved to kill them all.
((Erika Stieglitz continued in Dangerous Burns))