There was a set of cracks across the front of the optic, spiderwebbing out from the corner Erika had landed on when she fell. Looking through the scope presented little more than a distorted blur. She must’ve landed on a rock, the first time she stood up from Tanisha’s corpse.
Even if she had the time to, she couldn’t take off the scope. It required proprietary tools. Heckler & Koch had a thing with making guns hard to disassemble, at least their high end military and police hardware. So they didn’t issue the PSG-1 with iron sights.; it wasn’t supposed to need them.
Which meant outside of point-blank range, it was effectively one hell of a paperweight. She’d have ditched it already if not for the fact that she had yet to even load the shotgun, let alone check to see that it was even functional.
((Erika Stieglitz continued from i’m telling these tears go and fall away, fall away))
A tourniquet and some gauze was enough to let her stray from the plateau, back into the wilderness. High ground be damned. The way things were, Erika could barely keep her hands steady. Too much pain. Too many frayed nerves. Around every corner, she expected sets of eyes. A menacing silhouette. Hushed voices commiserating on how best to spring a trap on her. Her, the one who had killed so many. The one they all imagined must have enjoyed it, to be so prolific.
Erika could only curse and grit her teeth as she steadied herself against a tree, the dilapidated houses of the eastern half of the village stretching out before her. She’d never admit it to anyone, and could barely admit it to herself, but with what she was going through, she was glad Tanisha was dead.
She wasn’t sure why she’d kept moving, once she left the plateau. By all rights she should’ve stopped, and did for a few solitary moments. But then she'd always hear something. A twig snapping, a distant gunshot. Something to draw her further away from where she’d been. Further from the blue smoke and gunfire of the inner circle. Past the Infirmary, where she heard and smelled carnage continuing well into the latter half of the morning.
It wasn’t the only place on the island she spotted smoke rising. Something had been burning in the village, as well. One of the houses. That meant someone, or a few people, were definitely killed. The terrorists had made their ruling on fires abundantly clear, at least ones set intentionally. They didn’t specify if anyone had been punished for the fire set in the Aviary.
“Alright. Alright let’s figure this shit out.”
Find somewhere dry and concealed. Forest wouldn’t do. Try and remove the lead shot. Redress the hole. Try not to panic about how much blood she had lost, or could lose, or how much a shotgun pellet would expose her to infection. Turn the PSG-1 into little more than a boat anchor. Try not to think about how Normal Erika would be at least a little bit upset that she was ruining a gun like this.
Remember that Normal Erika wouldn’t have ever touched a gun that she knew killed someone. Remember that she didn’t put notches into the stock like some kind of psycho. Erika knew without really thinking about it that if she had, there would be seven notches.
She stopped in her tracks, past the gutted remains of a house. It had partially collapsed in on itself, though it looked like that had been enough to smother the fire. No clear sign that it had been caused by anything spectacular, like some kind of explosive. It wasn’t what caused her to stop though. No, she’d seen the burned out remains of the house from afar. She kept walking, stumbling into the partially obliterated remains of another dwelling. That caused her to stop. She nearly stumbled over the girl, and then nearly tripped backwards as she twitched, noting what had killed her.
It kept her transfixed. Made her forget for a moment that her leg felt like it was on fire, like the smoke and ash she smelled had been from her own limb. A ragged band of red where a shiny black one had been; what remained of her neck was narrow enough Erika could’ve wrapped her fingers around it. Blood spattered the nearby walls, by now familiar enough of a sight. Maybe she should’ve been taking all of this for granted by now. Ten bodies to her name. Blood staining her clothes. Sewing-needle stitches in her arm and a thirty-two caliber lead sphere embedded in her leg.
No, this wasn’t a familiar sight. Not like people shot and stabbed and poisoned. Not the smell of copper and sulfur and wet leaves and everything else in this hell she’d become accustomed to. Yet it was such an essential part of it. Maybe that was what made her feel so afraid. So sick.
Stop it. Can't afford to. Dehydration. Get a grip.
Erika rubbed her neck, swallowing saliva and bile. Only lightly touching the cold metal, as if it would go off at any moment.
It could. That’s why I’m doing this. This is why I’m here.
She wanted to look into the nearest camera, to say something. To point out to the world what she was motivated by. To reassure her captors she wouldn’t follow in this girl’s footsteps. All she saw was a twisted, broken wreck of plastic and glass.
That was why. If not the fire, then the camera. Desperation, or one final “fuck you.” It must’ve meant more than anything to her. Enough to collapse her whole existence into that last moment for. Did this girl die laughing too, Erika wondered. She might’ve been wrong about survival. Everyone else could’ve been right. They knew all of the best ways to die, and she hadn’t a clue how to face it other than to deny it.
She nudged the body with her good leg. With a bit of force, she was able to push it onto its back. Then she finally got a good look at the recognizable parts of Aditi’s face; seeing the expression frozen on it allowed Erika to let go of those particular junk thoughts.
A shell casing lay nearby. Stubby, short. A nine millimeter. Looking left to Aditi’s hand, she noticed an even more familiar sight. The same model of pistol she’d shot probably thousands of rounds through.
Her own Browning Hi-Power had a beaver-tail spur on the back that kept the hammer from biting the skin between her thumb and index finger. Tritium hi-visibility sights. A brass-plated trigger, and the magazine disconnect disabled to give it an even more crisp trigger pull. Mahogany checkered grips. She often thought of the difference between her gun and others like it as the difference between so-called Normal items and Unique ones in RPGs. It was the same gun, but just a little bit better. It was hers.
This was a military model. No less functional, but with none of the creature comforts she was used to. The proof markings were only barely visible, and it had a mil spec plastic grip. Aditi’s blood stained the edge of the slide, pasted onto it as her collar exploded. It was nothing more than a weapon, here.
An attempt at kneeling became a less-than graceful tumble to the floor next to Aditi, Erika letting the defunct PSG-1 land next to her with a thud as she narrowly avoided sitting on Aditi’s opened daypack. Once her leg stopped screaming every thought from her mind, Erika leaned over to grab the pistol. It brought her uncomfortably close to Aditi’s face to do so. She stopped, hand hovering over the gun. Her eyes stared back up at Erika. Bloodshot, lifeless. Yet they still seemed to see. Bringing her hand over to Aditi’s face, she gently closed the girl’s eyelids. She didn’t know why.
"S-sorry."
The pistol felt like an extension of her hand. Only awkward for a moment as she adjusted to the different grip. She always liked the narrow profile. A lot of the old timers at the range remarked on that when they held it. It was smaller than they expected. Good gun for a lady. That made her feel nice.
All of the targets here had friends.
After checking the chamber, Erika flicked on the safety and tucked the weapon into the pocket of her makeshift vest. Looking ahead past her bloodied leg and the useless rifle at her feet, she saw a smaller room that wasn’t as exposed to the outside. Transferring ammunition and medical supplies from Aditi’s bag into her own, Erika tossed the bag next to the body, letting the contents spill onto the floor. Nothing inside was of any use to her, unless she had to resort to using old clothes in place of gauze.
If it gets that far, I’m fucked.
There was a little red spot on the outside of the gauze she wrapped around her leg. It was bleeding through again. It was only a few steps to a room with at least part of a door. A place she could feel safe enough to try and fix this. Erika kicked at the rifle with her good leg. Even that petty act of frustration caused her pain.
Time to fix me and break you, I guess.
Crawling would have to do.
After taking a breather following the arduous task of dragging herself, the rifle, and her bag into what might’ve once been a bedroom, Erika caught the telltale glint of a camera watching her from the corner of the ceiling. Looked like a more compact model, the kind one might see in a department store or a bank. No doubt it was trained on her. She wondered if a finger was hovering over a button, or if the system that killed them was automated somehow.
Erika very quickly reminded herself to not think about things like that, as her heart started to race. It kept racing, as she looked down at her leg and realized just how much she didn’t want to see what was underneath all of the gauze and bandages. She spoke to the camera, and to whoever would eventually watch this.
"So this is gonna be a really shitty how-to video on how to take out a - jesus fucking christ - a chunk of lead. That I got shot with. Followed by a fuckin’ great how-to video on how to wreck a really nice gun."
The hole was neat, though it was surrounded by brownish-red dried blood. Fresh, glistening red left the wound as she moved, trickling down her leg. If it had been an inch to the right, it would’ve shattered her tibia. Any further to the left, and it would’ve missed entirely. Right handers pulled to the right more often than not, if they were inexperienced. Tanisha wasn't experienced. The average buckshot shell chucked out nine pellets.
Chance. It had been random chance.
Don't think about it.
The iodine burned, and highlighted where she had to-
Dig.
The tweezers had little notches on the ends, like small hooks. If she could hold it steady, she assumed, they would enable her to almost scoop the pellet out.
The metal scarcely touched the edge of the hole before Erika felt a fresh spasm of pain run up her leg. She pushed through it, or tried to; only a millimeter into the hole and her trembling hand nearly let go of the tweezers. An involuntary twitch, and a yelp. Her eyes shot to the doorway, searching for movement.
All of her focus had to pour into this. Focus she needed to keep herself safe. To stay quiet. To plan.
Once again, she reached to her leg and tried to insert the tweezers. Once again, she failed. It wasn’t enough that she had to fight through the pain, but the wound was far enough down her calf that it meant leaning over awkwardly; an act that reminded her of every bruise Demetri had left her with the previous day.
Erika sighed and leaned back against the wall. She looked down to the rifle past her leg.
Perfectly capable, except in the one way that it needed to be. One critical fault, and it was now basically useless beyond twenty yards.
This place wasn’t even a bit safe. It was just where she ended up. If it became a danger zone, or if she’d been followed, extricating herself wasn’t even an option.
All because of one little lead pellet. All because survival couldn’t be left to chance. One point of failure.
“...fuck.”
