Leprechaun Luck

[ViolentMedic]

((Dylan Walker continued from In Hindsight, This Was A Terrible Idea.))

Dylan ran for a while. She ran the same way that she'd come in, and it wasn't long before she'd made her way, fumbling through the darkness and bushes and trees, back to the stream. She couldn't see well, because she didn't dare turn on her flashlight, but she saw light reflecting off the river through the trees. She didn't venture out into the open, and stayed within the trees nearest to the river.

No more cabins. No more houses. They might be comforting and dry and mostly free of bugs, but it was too easy to get cornered in one. No, she'd stick to the outside from now on. It couldn't be that hard, could it?

She still didn't turn on the flashlight. Instead, she squinted at the ground and started to push away dirt. When the dirt didn't move, she removed the rock from her pocket and tried to use the pointier end to scrape dirt away. She worked at making a tiny pit for herself to sleep in. Not very deep, of course, just enough so that she could pull some branches over it and provide a decent camouflage without her head sticking out like a giant curly melon.

Dammit, if only she'd gotten Caleb's camouflage outfit. How hard would it be to glue leaves to her clothes or something? ...Nah, dumb idea.

Dylan pushed dirt aside for a while until she had a space in the ground just a few inches deep, at best. Lumpy. Uncomfortable. But she wouldn't stick out quite as much. She just needed a few bits of branches and leaves to pull over her and she'd be fine.

She dragged some bits of bush and fallen tree branches over, arranged them carefully, then curled up in her little pit and pulled the stuff over her.

...It was a terrible camouflage, but it was dark. It'd do.

For the third time that night, she fell asleep.

-

She didn't have any dreams this time, or at least none that she remembered. She woke up to a loud, crackling noise. The noise that signaled the announcements. Dylan groaned and turned over in her little, dusty bed. Eyes still shut. But she listened.

Smiley didn't sound smiley today. He sounded serious. So even the smiles of a guy who sentenced kids to death for a living could break, if only out of annoyance at some idiot badmouthing him. Marley Jenkins... oh, right. Ginger giant. Ash had been looking for him when the first announcements... Dylan felt sad for a moment. Not for Marley. Who cared, he was an idiot if he got killed by telling off the man with the buttons. But Ash had seemed set on spending her last moments with him. Dylan hoped she'd gotten the chance to see him. But if she hadn't, maybe it would have been better.

The rant about punk kids and how Smiley had served his time went a good, long while, followed by a stretch of silence. Dylan had almost drifted back to sleep when he finally started listing the other deaths. And the next name she heard definitely woke her up. Gwen was dead. The bitch that had taken Dylan's weapon away (okay, so it had been Gwen's to start with, but dammit Dylan had wanted that icepick), pushed her down a hill, punched her in the face... was dead. Good. Fucking. Riddance. Dylan smiled smugly and stretched out a little in her dusty bed. Good start to the day. She'd have to thank Carlyle if she saw him.

After that... Becky Long killed Erin Underwood, Dan Orvall was an idiot...

And wow. Callison and Damien worked fast! They'd barely made their little alliance and they'd tracked down little Yumi. Again, good riddance. Though rather than smiling, Dylan just sighed with relief. There would have been no mercy if they'd seen her that night.

The announcement wrapped up with Frank Callahan killing Stella Barnes. Both patriots. But oh well, patriots fought sometimes. Dylan wasn't in a danger zone.

Dylan sighed, tried opening her eyes and immediately shut them at the sight of sunlight streaming through the tree branches. She really didn't want to face the valley today. She ached like mad. Her head was throbbing again, she was feeling phantom pains where her ear should be and all the little injuries from yesterday... being kicked, being shoved down a hill, being punched in the face... they were all making her hurt. It was better than being dead, but still...

She was lucky to last a day. But she didn't think she could repeat it. Not without something besides a rock to defend herself with. Dylan opened her eyes a little and glared at the ground nearby. More rocks and pebbles were scattered among the trees here and there. Anyone could grab a rock. She shut her eyes because one of the rocks was reflecting light back at her.

It took her a few moments to realise that rocks didn't reflect light that well. No. She was staring metal. There was a gun lying in the bushes.

Dylan sat up, suddenly wide awake, and scrambled over on all fours to where the gun was lying. It had just been left in the bushes. It would have been hidden entirely, had Dylan not torn at the bushes in an attempt to find leaves to camouflage herself. Dylan picked it up, not quite believing until she touched it that she had stumbled across a gun.

Who had been dumb enough to leave it here? Even if someone had knocked it out of their opponents hands...

What if it was a trap? No, that made no sense. If they'd set a trap right there, that would mean they would have already seen Dylan. And then she'd be dead.

Dylan wanted to check the ammo. But she didn't know how to open the gun.

Dammit. Figures that she'd find a good weapon and then not have a damn clue on how to use it. Dylan glared at the weapon in her hands, then stood up and looked around. Maybe the rest of their things were nearby.

It turned out that the daypack the gun came from wasn't nearly as well hidden. Because it was very close to the impaled corpse of Erin Underwood. Dylan hadn't seen it in the dark last night, but it wasn't far at all from the river. It gave her the jitters to think that she'd been sleeping so close to a dead body and never even noticed.

It took Dylan a very long time to summon the courage to approach the corpse. Apart from Brigid, this was the first body she'd seen on the island. It wasn't as disconcerting as looking at a corpse that she'd made herself, but it was close. Dylan stepped closer to it, edging inch by inch like it was going to explode, before grabbing Erin's daypack and pulling it away from the body. It hadn't been looted. Maybe the attacker had better things to do. Who had it been? Becky Long, that was it. The gun was probably knocked into the bushes during the fight or something.

Dylan found the instructions and some spare bullets in the bag. She didn't remove anything else from the bag except the painkillers. The rest, she dragged it over (far, far away from Erin) and pushed it into the dusty hole she'd slept in. She covered it with branches and bushes, just like how she'd slept. She knew where it was. (Turn left at the body of Miss Underwood and go several paces.) She could come back for it. If someone robbed her again, it wouldn't hurt to have some back-up supplies here.

But the back-up supplies weren't the highlight. She had a gun. A gun!

Dylan couldn't help it. She laughed. Not a crazy laugh. Just a happy one, which given the circumstances was pretty crazy, she supposed. But she had a gun! A fucking gun! Now no-one could mess with her! If Maxim came at her again, she'd be all 'no, screw you, bitch!' and make his head explode. She didn't have to run and hide like a cowardly... no, she could take the fight to them.

Though... discretion would probably still help. She was on the radar. She was still the first murderer. The game would progress, and people wouldn't care after a while. Eventually, everyone would be killing. And that's when she'd strike. Until then, she would stay subtle. But she wouldn't have to run and cry and hide.

Because she had a fucking gun.

She was hyped. If this was how Maxim felt when he found out that he'd been given a gun, she could hardly blame him for wanting to try it out so soon. She felt like she was on five cups of ridiculously strong coffee.

She could face the game again.

Dylan stayed long enough to look through the instruction manual of her gun (more specifically, a Ruger Blackhawk New Model), scarf down some bread and water and take some more painkillers to stop the side of her head from aching. And then she left. What was next? She didn't know.

But it couldn't be worse than that first day.

((Dylan Walker continued in Destroying Soda: The Most Heinous Of Crimes.))