((Erika Stieglitz continued from Zero Sum))
There wasn’t much to compare Survival of the Fittest to, all things considered.
Killing someone in self-defence occasionally happened out in the world, as every vocal second amendment supporter loved to point out. Implicit in the act of carrying a firearm to protect oneself, there was an admission that at some point they might kill someone if they felt threatened. The reality was, as far as Erika saw it, those situations were so few and far between that carrying a gun only introduced the possibility of something going terribly wrong with it. Even if something like that happened, it usually didn’t keep happening to the same person.
As far as she could remember, by definition, she was now a spree killer. Serial killers killed over a longer period of time. Out in the world, people who did what she had were the type to shoot up schools, or public places. They were the reason metal detectors were so common in public buildings, much as SOTF had created a whole security industry around protecting buses and planes from hijacking. Neither stopped the people they were supposed to.
That didn’t really seem right, either. She wasn’t like a school shooter. She didn’t feel any kind of malice towards anyone else here. Even the people she supposed she truly hated, she didn’t think they deserved to die. Nobody deserved to die in a place like this. It wasn’t as if she wanted to absolve herself of what she was doing, or to claim as if the moments and methods weren’t her fault; she just didn’t see any other way. To claim she shouldn’t have done this would’ve been asking her to die. No school shooter did so because they were in sincere mortal danger from their classmates. That was deranged, premeditated mass murder. This was different.
How?
The only thing that made sense as a comparison was war.
It was what she’d told Michael, or at least alluded to when they were speaking. They’d studied Hobbes briefly in philosophy, and at the time she really didn’t vibe with what he was saying. The State of Nature, without a government or society holding people to some kind of order, was a perpetual war of all against all, bellum omnium contra omnes. Everyone does what’s best for themselves, for they have no reason to believe that anyone else will be compelled to do otherwise. Overcoming the state of nature was the foundation for his political philosophy, a pretty heavy handed sort of authoritarian monarchy.
It wasn’t totally bogus, but Erika had always assumed people were better than that. In a world without bomb collars, she figured people naturally wanted to cooperate. Human beings were social creatures, more or less programmed to help one another. People could be awful, but it wasn’t as if in twelve thousand years of civilization there weren’t myriad ways to resolve conflict that didn’t involve being an authoritarian shithead.
That was, in a world without bomb collars. The Arthro Taskforce had drawn the lines clearly enough as to what kind of world this was; a state of nature, with no means of overcoming it except the key they possessed.
So that was what was left. A war, each one of them an army unto themselves. As things stood, this particular one-woman army was doing well, at least by the numbers. She had enough food and water to last the next few days, and enough ammunition to fight off more than her share of the opposition.
Erika paused, looking down to see the dirt of the forest floor give way to sand. Ahead, she saw waves crashing on the beach. The sand was still wet from the rain, and she could see more than a few sets of footprints crisscrossing it. Stopping to catch her breath, she felt the muscles in her calves ache. Her shoulders joined the chorus, followed by her lower back.
The army was well-equipped, but morale was definitely low. Erika looked through the thinning treeline, and saw a patch of what looked like a mix of deadfall, shoes, and driftwood that washed up at high tide. She traipsed over and set her bag down on the sand, kneeling next to it and looking out at the sea.
The logical thing to do would be to wait and see how many would kill each other, but that was too passive a solution to a problem with a little over a hundred moving parts, last she counted. Every person on the island was a threat, and each one was issued a weapon. Some of the weapons were useless, others were of limited utility, and a decent number were guns.
Not everyone was going to put a knife or blunt object to good use, but any frightened teenager with an automatic rifle could squeeze the trigger and potentially hit something. The people who were so lucky as to be armed had to be the primary targets, as she’d assumed. If the weapons weren’t of any use to her, she’d have to disable them. Most guns could be disassembled with a spare cartridge, unless they were old like the Martini-Henry. In that case, hiding or destroying the ammunition would work just as well.
Prioritizing her targets didn't mean she had the luxury of sparing anyone, at this point. At least four people had died because of-
Over a hundred and fifty are going to die because of the Arthro Taskforce.
There were at least four deaths to her name, five depending on what happened to Julien. There wasn't a word out of any of her classmates' mouths she could trust, and even the people who hadn't accepted the reality of this situation might be inclined to try to kill her. Focusing on the situation, the threat they might pose, had to take precedence over who they had been to Erika. Otherwise...
I'll collapse like I did halfway here with a panic attack, thinking about what I did to-
She wouldn't find shelter with the likes of Connor or Juliette anymore. Any smart person would disarm or kill her the moment the opportunity presented itself, regardless of who she might've been to them. Now she registered differently in folks' minds, a group she felt nauseated to be a part of. The category of People Who it is Totally Okay to Kill wasn't exactly good company, and not just those who'd taken the opportunity of SOTF to settle scores. Thinking about it introduced to Erika junk thoughts that asked her repeatedly if she was really any different from her great-grandfather who totally didn't have a choice but to join the Wehrmacht in the late thirties.
"Goddamnit, it's nothing like that."
It wasn't at all the same, but it did cast the war comparison in an uncomfortable light. Maybe there wasn't any making sense of what she was doing; she just had to do it. Despite the vain hope that she didn't have to see another face until this was all over, Erika desperately wanted someone to talk to. Though, even wishing for that carried with it more guilt than she knew what to do with.
Erika buried her head in her hands, and tried to imagine the sound of a helicopter flying towards the island.
