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[MurderWeasel]

Then Zandah died of shades.

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Zandah fell to the ground with dull thump, the blade of an Ice Axe embedded in his spine.

P06 - ZANDAH UDALL: DECEASED

The Revenant tore the axe out, and brought it down again.

P06 - ZANDAH UDALL: DECEASED

The spray of blood turned to ice in the air. She could taste it, smell it. It mingled with that of her companion, who lay dead on the stage in front of her.

The hunger never left, but it faded behind a curtain of rage that fell over the Revenant’s senses. She brought the axe down on his back once more.

P06 - ZANDAH UDALL: DECEASED

Again, and again. Memories flashed, of fists landing on another woman’s face. A man in a black and white shirt stepping between them, pulling her away. Blood on the mat. Jeers from a crowd. She screamed, and aimed an overhead swing onto the man’s skull, hard enough to cave it in.

P06 - ZANDAH UDALL: DECEASED

The gunshot to her ribs barely slowed her down. What had been done to her, to her companion, it was supposed to make them better. They were supposed to win. It was all she knew.

So she kept bashing his head in. It was what they wanted, after all.

P06 - ZANDAH UDALL: DECEASED

She held the axe aloft, pieces of the man's brain and skull caked onto the handle. A pair of sunglasses, twisted and broken, hung on the blade.

The crowd went wild.

[Shiola]

The body of the Revenant slumped over beside Evan, chunks of blood and viscera everywhere. He knew the taste of blood, the smell of it - something was distinctly wrong about what came out of the person whose head he had just turned into a canoe. They were a person, he reminded himself, as he caught a glimpse of their blood on his jacket. Something else swirled in it; it reminded him of gasoline, spilled onto water.

He pushed the corpse aside and sat up, just in time to see the other Revenant emerging from behind Zandah - the one they’d shot, that he’d watched fall limply to the ground. The way it moved, he’d never have been able to tell it had been shot. It moved too fast for him to cry out a warning, and he watched helplessly as it buried an ice axe in Zandah’s back.

“No!”

Evan recoiled in horror, another burst of adrenaline scrambling his senses. He forced the bolt of the Obrez open, struggling to close it with shaking, blood-soaked hands. His own words echoed in his mind; You’ve gotta kind of manhandle it, he’d said. Evan slapped the handle of the Obrez closed, and fired it immediately in the Revenant’s direction.

“GOD DAMN YOU!”

He racked the bolt again, before aiming towards where he thought the Revenant was. Since you don’t have a stock, just grab it tight with both hands and raise it up to where you can sorta look down the sight. A flash of movement revealed its position; the creature tore away from the gunfire, and out of view.

“YEAH! RUN, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Every shot from the Obrez blinded him a little bit more.

Honestly, you’ve just gotta try your best with that thing.

It felt like the darkness was closing in somehow, pushing inward after every bright flash. After four blasts, he was empty. Smoke curled from the barrel of the sawed-off rifle, which trembled in his hands. He screamed at the shadows, the light from the hole in the ceiling only barely illuminating the scene. The deafening effect of the gunshots meant he couldn’t really hear his own wordless cry.

As he’d done in so many nightmares, he shouted his lungs empty and barely heard it.

He dropped the empty Obrez to the ground, and reached down to grab his own rifle. As quickly as he knew how, he ejected the empty case and slotted in another of the torpedo-like cartridges from the bloodied bandolier across his chest. Warmth ran down his left arm - blood. Pain shot up it as he attempted to shoulder the rifle against his right side. He clenched his jaw, determined to end the second Revenant if it was still lurking around. After a few moments, his eyes readjusted to the now-empty auditorium. It wasn’t lying dead on the ground, or playing at being dead as it had before.

It was just gone. Nothing about that felt reassuring.

Evan fell to his knees, still clutching the rifle. Just below the stage lay what was left of Zandah. Blood was running along the grooves in the floorboards, pooling out from what was left of his head. At this point, it was more of a suggestion of a person than anything resembling a human being. Evan tried not to think about the moment that the person stopped being a person and started being a corpse. It didn’t work, but he kept trying.

He tried hard enough that everything else sort of faded away.

Evan got up and ran out of the auditorium, doubling back to where they’d started. Through the windows, he could see that the snow was coming down quite heavily, now. Bloody footprints took off into the blizzard, joining with another set of footprints in the snow from the other end of the building. There was no sign of Glenda or Naomi, at least not where he and Zandah had dropped their bags. Part of him wanted to go further, back to where they’d set the fire. To try to find out if the other two had survived - or if they had been butchered like Zandah.

The pain in his shoulder and the uncomfortable silence from the empty hallways deterred him, and he quickly returned to the auditorium. He knew he was in no state to find out what was waiting for him back in the lobby.

---

Against the back wall of the stage, opposite the bodies, he began to tend to his own wounds. Methodically, carefully, as if he hadn’t just watched someone get hacked to death in front of him. As if he hadn’t just blown someone’s head off at point-blank range. As if it was just his own blood all over the front of his parka. There clearly wasn’t time to be a person now.

No, right now he was a still-living body, leaking blood. It had to be fixed so that the person he wanted to be could find time to feel things he wanted to feel.

There were tears, of course, he was sure he’d been crying. It just didn’t feel like it. All it felt like he was cold, and in pain, and shivering with the dried blood and tears and sweat leeching heat from his body every second that passed. He felt every half-assed jab of a needle into his skin, and the pressure of gritting his teeth as he pulled a thread through the opening of the narrow, but deep cut in his shoulder.

When it was wrapped up, he quickly put his layers of clothing back on and buttoned himself back into the parka. Fastened the bandolier to his body once again. Transferred everything useful from Zandah’s bag into his own, and left the rest.

It was then time to take the clips of ammunition off of Zandah’s body.

In his head, he imagined the process, step-by-step. Roll him over, don’t look at his face, grab the clips out of his pockets, don’t look at his face, walk away.

In reality, he walked up to the body and then promptly aside, breaking down in a quivering heap beside him.

“...I’m sorry.”

---

He didn’t know how much time had passed, sitting in the cold next to the slowly freezing body of his - friend? They barely knew each other. They knew each other here, which seemed like it meant something different. Friends, sort of. Zandah had trusted him, it felt like. Evan knew he’d been the one to miss when they’d sprung their trap, not Zandah. If it had gone the other way, the Revenant that killed him wouldn’t have gotten back up.

It was all enough for him to feel buried in guilt, dissociating as the cold slowly sapped what was left of his spirit. Self-awareness peeked in just enough to question his reaction to Zandah’s death.

You left him there while you went and fucked with your shoulder.

“I don’t… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Can’t let myself bleed. Can’t bury him. Can’t burn him. Can’t help him. Sorry.” He muttered.

How do normal people react to this shit? Is this it?

He didn’t know. Sitting something of a vigil for Zandah felt like the right thing to do. Whatever courage he’d had felt like it had been spent fighting the Revenants. He didn’t know what came next, but he didn’t want it to involve getting hacked apart like that. Walking out into the cold didn’t feel like an option - yet.

For the most part, he was pretty sure it didn’t involve putting the Obrez to the side of his head and pulling the trigger. It didn’t stop him from ruminating on that thought for far too long.

Maybe, it was worth it just to catch his breath. After a while, he found it in himself to roll over Zandah’s body and fetched the clips from his jacket. It turned out he was so badly hacked apart there wasn’t much he could identify as a face.

In a way he really didn’t want to investigate further, Evan found that somehow easier. It would’ve been hard to look him in the eyes, after what happened.

Standing back up, it occurred to him he’d not investigated the body of the Revenant any further. He made his way back up to the stage, and to the body, lying in a pool of dried, iridescent blood.

Something about getting near the body felt unsafe to him, as if it was somehow hazardous. Evan had to remind himself that parts of it were already stained into his clothing.

They hadn’t given it much to work with. An old military surplus jacket, some old wool clothes, and winter boots. For anyone else, he’d have assumed it wasn’t enough to survive out here. Between that and the hand-to-hand weapons, it was almost as if Janus-Hayes was trying to make it a challenge for him.

He glanced back at Zandah’s body. If they’d equipped these things properly, they might not have stood much of a chance.

Something else caught his eye, too. He’d been far too busy trying not to die that he hadn’t paid much attention to the nondescript collar around the Revenant’s neck. There were no identifying characteristics, other than what looked to be a small port on the back and a pinhole for what could’ve been a microphone, or a camera. No latch, either.

“Fuck. Fuck, what am I doing…”

Curiosity wouldn’t let him leave it alone. It took a bit of work to slide the collar off of what was left of the Revenant’s head. Breaking what remained of its jaw made it easy enough to slide away. Brushing aside the gore, he found that the inside of the collar was inscribed with lettering:

JANUS-HAYES SAFEGUARD MK. 1* RESTRAINT COLLAR. DANGER - CONTAINS HIGH EXPLOSIVE. DO NOT OPEN.

“What the hell?”

An actual, honest-to-god bomb collar. This wasn’t just incidentally inspired by Battle Royale, they’d actually gone all the way with this shit. A pang of remorse began to churn in his stomach, alongside bile, before he forced it back down. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, whatever the Revenants had become - they’d clearly started out as victims, just like the rest of them.

Evan scanned his surroundings, noting a small orb fastened to the wall opposite himself. It stood out among all of the ancient soviet decor. He gestured with the bloody collar towards it, hoping his voice was picked up on the camera.

“This - this is is evil, I hope you all realize that. Actual, pure evil. Jesus fucking Christ.”

Almost in response, a colossal explosion shook the building.

The tremor caused him to seize up, dropping the device to the ground and stepping back in fear. It quickly became apparent it was coming from somewhere else on the island, and not anywhere nearby.

Snow and dust to fall from the hole in the ceiling to the floor of the auditorium, landing on the broken mess that was Zandah’s corpse. Evan could hear the sound of shattered glass tumbling to the ground, as the rumble of the distant explosion continued to reverberate into the distance.

The jarring unreality of the situation was seeping in, once again. Picking up the collar, he wrapped it in a cloth, before stowing it in his duffel bag. It wouldn't hurt to have some explosives on hand, if he could figure out how to utilize it.

Noting that the hole in the ceiling was slowly beginning to open up, with more snow and debris falling into the auditorium, Evan quickly made for the door. Whatever had shook the island, it was big, and there were no doubt many pieces of this old building that were just waiting for an excuse to collapse.

There was more to all of this. He’d probably die before seeing the full picture, but it felt important to try to find out more. At the very least, it was better than sitting alone and waiting to die.

He quickly made for the front door of the building, clambering over the makeshift barricade they'd built. Briefly, he glanced back at towards the lobby. He didn't know if Glenda and Naomi were alive still. It made him feel sick to admit, but he didn't want to know.

If they were still alive, they'd figure it out. If not, there was nothing he could do. The collar, at least, felt like a way in. A wedge he could force into the monolith that was Janus-Hayes. Something that might lead to a way out.

Looking out towards the village, he could see a massive fire rising out of what was left of the Powerhouse. Debris from the explosion was littered across the snow nearby, which pointed to just how spectacular of an event it must have been. A massive column of smoke rose from the blasted ruin, further than he could see through the slowly falling snow.

They wanted the participants to think this was airtight, that there was no way out. Yet, he'd killed one of their experiments. At great cost, but he'd done it. Now, something had clearly gone terribly wrong out at the Powerhouse. Though he didn't have the full picture, one thing was clear:

You bastards aren't invincible.

Taking in a breath of frigid air, he pulled his scarf up and over the lower half of his face, and made for the village.

((Evan Keane continued elsewhere))