((OOC: Okay, this'll be edited a bit later, since I lost the final copy of this post. Computers and their inability to keep stuff DX))
Clio needed to get out of this person's grasp. This person, who felt like he weighed a ton, had just stopped her from killing the other guy. Her hand was on fire again, as something beneath the sand had wedged itself into her knuckles when she was pinned down. Though it was no longer in that position, her hand was throbbing, and she needed to keep it out of danger so she could fight it out.
"Okay....okay, you are going to CALM THE HELL DOWN NOW!" yelled Brendan, trying to stop her from getting her gun, which had just skidded across the sand a few metres away from her. He knew yelling wasn't that good for use in this situation, but he needed to recall every therapy session he had to try and keep her from doing something. Maybe she would stop, who knew?
"Okay...okay...okay...look, I can tell you're like everyone else on this island here. You're a scared little girl inside. You want to go home. You miss your paren-"
"FUCK YOU! MY PARENTS ARE DEAD ASSHOLE!"
"-okay, not what I needed to hear right now, but okay."
Clio's hand started to feel less like a timpani and more like a bass drum. She started to wedge it out from under her, just so he wouldn't feel it.
"Okay, so...look, they've made it off here before haven't they?" Brendan asked rhetorically, lying through his teeth. He never watch SOTF, he had no idea of the going ons of the island. For all he knew no-one could have died at all, like an excellent Doctor Who episode.
Her hand was now out from under her body, but was rocketing around her nervous system in pain. Almost okay now...
"So why don't we just think this over? We can sit down, have something to eat..."
Brendan stared blankly at the optimistic bullcrap that came out of his mouth.
"Okay, just ignore I said tha-"
Brendan didn't have time to apologize, as Clio's hand was now ready. It struck like a viper, hitting him square in the groin.
He keeled over in pain, clutching his privates like they had just been ripped off by Jason's machete or something.
Clio scrambled towards her gun, only a few metres away, feeling it in her grasp.
Brendan, realising the hugely immense danger he was in, tried to reach out and crawl away. His hand, instead of touching sand and shells, found himself with something in his grasp.
The familiar touch of grip and metal molded with her fingers and, smile across her face, whipped around to find her target.
The unfamiliar touch of shiny metal and grip fell straight into his fingers, and he realised what this was. He swung his arm around to face his foe.
Clio's smile flickered away when she realised she had one of the hugest revolvers on the island staring her in the face. Chris Davidson's Taurus Raging Bull.
Brendan's face remained blank and, still, scared as ever, found Clio's gun in his face.
*
The two teenagers, both still lying on the sand, had each not moved a muscle. They knew they were facing potentially dangerous threats in the form of large revolvers and an expert marksman, but they dare not make a move.
Brendan finally decided to break the silence.
"So I take it you don't plan on getting out of this alive?"
"Fuck you."
"Alright, I suppose through some string of logic, I deserved that."
"Shut up, you're gonna die today."
"Okay, look. I'm no science student, but I remember one thing from that class when I was back home: humans have some of the fastest reaction times ever recorded. Do you really want to bet that you can shoot me, or I can shoot you, faster that we have the time to react?"
"Don't lecture me, I'm a fucking scientists wet dream. I know more about physics than could fit in your entire brain."
"Again with the swearing?" Look, I have a proposal. If we stay like this, we aren't getting out alive. Either we kill each other, or someone who really intends on winning comes along and picks us off. I wouldn't put it past anyone I don't know to do that."
"..."
"So how about this? Next time you meet me, you try and kill me then. By then you'd have probably killed off, what, 5, 6, more people? You seem...capable."
"You can really talk out of your ass, can't you?"
"...you might say that. Although I suppose you don't plan on killing me by sunburn, do you? You know if you pull that trigger, we're both dead, right?"
"..."
Not taking her eyes off Brendan, Clio got up, and with her gun pointed at him all the way, backing off with her belongings. She got as far as she could across the beach, and once she finally reach the rocks that lined the border separating land from the path to the sea, she ran into the forest.
Ran to her heart's content.
((Clio Gabriella
carries on...))
And Brendan could not
believe his luck!
He just talked his way out of being killed by a crazy, insane, totally inconsolable (he wasn't even sure if that was a word or not, or if it fit the situation) Italian girl. Using his free hand, he opened the Taurus's chamber.
Zero rounds.
Letting all the air he'd been holding in his lungs out, he just realised how much garbage and lies he had just spurted out to get her to not kill him! He could just have easily been a politician, if he didn't have morals!
With the will to move finally reaching his legs again, Brendan got up, and examined the scene around him.
Crap, he had a lot of stuff to do.
*
After a few more minutes of shuffling, moving, and cramming, he finally emptied Chris's bag of all his stuff. Every redeemable item was now his...except for his personal belongings. It would just be like urinating on his body to take his worldly possessions.
Making the body more respectable as far as corpses go was easy. Brendan turned the body onto his back, and could not believe he was actually this close to a dead person. He had seen it all before on movies, the foreign movie marathon he shared with Chase a few days after exams, but this...this came close to the most disturbing thing he had seen in his life.
How could someone just take a life like this?
Brendan moved his fingers to Chris's open, shocked eyes, and closed them.
Just as he was squatting down to do this, he noticed that something had fallen out of his pocket. A wallet. Curiosity got the better of Brendan, and he took a look inside.
Where one's drivers liscence should be was a photo. Not just a single photo, now that Brendan checked properly, it was a number of photos stacked inside the one compartment. There was one of a smiling young boy with two adults who could only be his parents.
The same boy at 13.
15.
16.
17.
But the final one was different. Instead of being with both of his parents, there was only two people in the photo: the boy laying below him, and...his father.
Brendan flipped the photo around, and found messy writing covering the back.
Missing you always, Mom.
Chris
That hurt, a lot harder than when he saw the body. This boy...this father...he was all he had. And all he had was just killed in front of millions of people.
He just let his killer go free in front of millions of people.
Brendan felt like he had to say something. Hell, if someone like Chris, this bewildering, always friendly bible-kid had found him dead, he would have.
He didn't get down on his knees or anything. Brendan simply dropped the photo onto his body, his figure protecting it from the breeze, and it stayed there, with his wallet and his bag, a figure in the sand.
"...I'm sorry."
It was all he could say.
Brendan knew that people like Clio couldn't make it off the island. People who killed meaninglessly, looked upon each death as an advantage to themselves. People who didn't care about the lives of others.
He made himself a promise.
I will never be like these people.
With nothing else to do, with a Taurus in his hand, he walked along the beach, until the body was out of sight and out of his mind.
...
((Brendan Wallace continues in
False Awakening))