Which R Are You Feeling?

[ViolentMedic]

((Dylan Walker continued from Almost The Last Of Her Kind.))

After running off from Becky, Dylan just walked. It was dark, and she couldn't hide in the pine stands anyway, so she walked the long way around to the town, but she didn't want to stay in another building and get caught by another nutty minority with a gun, so she kept walking once she reached the town anyway.

She could have found somewhere else to sleep, but she didn't feel safe yet. She didn't think she'd find a safe place. If her little indent in the ground with a danger zone at her back hadn't been safe, what was? She wasn't tired right now, anyway, and the walk kept her warm on what was turning out to be another chilly night.

So she just wandered, until she reached the scorched ruins. She didn't think she'd find anything there, but she hadn't investigated them yet. There was always a chance she'd find something. After all, she hadn't expected to find a gun near the river. Couldn't hurt.

Unless there was someone waiting to shoot her in the back there, of course, but that was just as true anywhere else.

Dylan spotted a couple of corpses around. It made her feel both uncomfortable—because, you know, freaking dead bodies and all that—and mildly excited, because last time she'd seen a corpse supplies had been nearby. So she approached them slowly. She turned on her flashlight to get a better look at them, since in the dark they'd been only silhouettes.

The nearest one she recognised as Dan Orvall, though the collar had done a number on him. She checked his bag and discovered that his weapon, if she could call it that, was just a flask of some kind of alcohol. After a moment of consideration, she grabbed it. Maybe she could persuade another classmate to chug it all and pass out. And then shoot them in the face. Or something. That plan was a work in progress. She pushed the bag into a corner of the scorched ruins. She didn't want to be weighed down with too many extra supplies, and knowing it was here helped. Someone else helping themselves was a risk, but there'd be more bags of supplies turning up everywhere now, with so many dead classmates.

She then approached the other corpse, which was sitting further away. He was covered with a jacket. Someone's sad attempt to give him some respect. Dylan reached out gingerly and pulled the jacket up to reveal his face.

Her breath caught in her throat. She was looking at the corpse of Maxim Senders.

The memories of waking up on the island, of crying, throwing a soft drink can in some bizarre attempt to defend herself, screaming insults and eventually getting her ear shot off... and all the rage, terror and hopeless feelings she'd felt then... all that came flooding back at the sight of him. She shrieked, dropped the jacket back on his face and instinctively hid behind part of the ruins.

She wasn't sure why. He was dead. But she'd felt terrified in that moment. She curled up in the ruins, listening for movement. Maxim hadn't been mentioned on the announcement. This death must have been recent. What if the killer was still around? Who was the killer?

A few minutes passed. Nothing happened. Dylan slowly gathered the courage to inch out and look at the corpse again. She removed the jacket from his body to have a look. She wanted to know how he'd died. She hoped it had been painful for him.

She shone the flashlight at his face. There was a jagged wound in it, as well as multiple wounds covering his arms and torso. It was a gruesome sight. Dylan felt something rise in her throat, but put all her energy into forcing it down. She'd murdered a girl. She'd seen Program before. She wouldn't throw up like a delicate flower.

But, god, that smell...

Dylan turned her face away and covered her nose, struggling not to vomit. After a couple of minutes, she looked back. Well, she knew someone had really, really wanted Maxim dead. Almost as much as she'd wanted it. And that they'd done it with... Dylan wasn't sure what. Something sharp. A knife? No, didn't look like it, something was off...

Didn't matter. She'd wanted Maxim dead. Now he was.

...Why did she feel pissed off about it?

The longer she stared at his corpse, the less sick she felt, but the stronger the anger inside her got. It bubbled and frothed, and eventually she expressed it by kicking Maxim in the side.

“You fucker! You fucking... you fucking jackass!” Dylan screamed at him. She kicked him hard again. “You shoot my fucking ear off, you steal my things and leave me with no food, you make me have to club someone to death to feed myself, and then you just run off and die? To fucking stab wounds?! What the fuck? What the fuck kind of... what sort of player were you supposed to fucking be?!”

She kicked him again and again. It didn't help much. Maxim was just a bag of bloody flesh now. Dylan kicked in his sides and screamed obscenities at him. She vented all the anger that'd been slowly storing up since that first day, and all the new anger that came with having one of her goals just yanked out from beneath her feet.

She hadn't even realised how much of a driving force Maxim had been behind what she'd been doing until now. She'd meant to kill him. She was going to find him and murder him, and now she'd found that someone had beaten her to the punch. That just made her so bitter. He wasn't supposed to die so easily. Because he was the only person who'd managed to beat her on the island.

She'd been hurt and attacked by others, and she'd been in danger many times... but she'd always escaped on her own power. She'd only lived through Maxim because he'd had the gall to just shoot her, take her things and leave her there. She hadn't beaten him. She'd lived purely because of things he had—or rather, hadn't—done.

He went down so easily, and he'd never been on the announcements... was she the only one that he'd ever managed to beat? Was it just because she was that pathetic? She was supposed to beat him... If she could have beaten him, then all that weakness in the beginning of the game wouldn't have met anything, because she would have triumphed. And whoever had murdered Maxim... they'd taken that away from her. All she could do was kick this lump of bones and guts and scream like the little girl she was.

Dylan raised her foot and stomped square on his face. She felt his nose crack under her shoe. The sound was sickening. But it wasn't like he was there to hear it. Breathing heavily from the effort of beating a dead guy, Dylan wandered a few feet away and sat down.

So, what did she do now?

She kept surviving, of course. It wasn't like that part of her goal had changed. But how was she supposed to win? If she couldn't even beat Maxim, how was she meant to beat the guy who killed him? And if whoever killed Maxim was killed, then how was she meant to beat the killer's killer? It was a giant loop that would only end when either she won or someone in that loop killed her. The further she went, the closer she'd get to being tangled up in that chain of killers. Either as a victim, or as the killer.

If that was the case, she'd much rather be the killer.

Dylan removed the gun from her pocket and looked down at it. She rubbed her thumb along the handle of it. Maxim's killer had used a melee weapon. She had one advantage over him.

If she couldn't kill Maxim, and prove to herself that she had what it takes to beat this game that way... then she'd find the next best thing. Kill the killer. Not out of any sense of warped morality. She couldn't talk about morality, after killing a girl just because she had food. If she killed the killer, that made her stronger than him.

If she couldn't kill him, she never would have made it to the end anyway. This way, at least she'd face her end head-on like a real American.

It would help if she knew who she was looking for. But the announcements would tell her. And she didn't have to fear the announcements so much any more. There were plenty of killers out there now. First day killer she might be, but there were double killers now, and many other killers besides. No-one gave a shit who'd killed first any more.

Maybe it was time to go on the offensive. Stop hiding. Fight and make her Nana proud, even if she couldn't win. She'd have to fight eventually, and she was tired of hiding like a weak, little minority who couldn't face down anyone in a fair fight.

Dylan looked back down at Maxim and said, “Up yours, Maxi-Pad. I'm gonna beat you.” She didn't drop the jacket back on him. Let the sun cook him. Fucker deserved it.

She found his bag and scavenged the remaining supplies from it (someone had taken stuff already, but there were still things in there, and fuck it, a lot of it probably belonged to her anyway) before slinging her bag back on her shoulder, sticking her gun in her pocket and leaving to find somewhere to sleep until morning.

Then she was going to listen to the announcements. She was going to listen for Maxim's killer and figure out what she was up against.

((Dylan Walker continued in The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed.))