Two Foot Wide and Six Foot Deep

[ViolentMedic]

Dylan had lifted the gun to attack again. To keep beating Becky like back on that first day, when she'd hit Brigid over and over until she was sure the girl wasn't going to get up again. But Becky wasn't moving. She wasn't getting up like Chris had.

And Dylan's shoulder was throbbing. Dylan dropped the gun and her bag abruptly before trying to move her shoulder to see if it was—oh dear god.

The pain was mind-numbing. Even as hopped up on painkillers as she'd been lately, it hurt. Oh dear god, what had... she hadn't even properly realised Chris hit her, but the tugging...

The meathook was still in her shoulder. There was a huge wound and oh god, oh god, was that it? How had he got that far, how had she let him, what had happened? Dylan pressed her working hand against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, not knowing what else to do. Her side was red. So much... oh god, oh god, she had to stop herself bleeding, how did she do that? Did she take the meathook out? No, that was bad, wasn't it?

She had so few bandages left. She stole from Chris' first aid kit, as well as from the one she'd nicked from Frank's things. She didn't know what to do except wrap up the wound and hope she didn't die from blood loss. She used almost every bandage from all the med-kits. Her wrapping was clumsy, since she had to do it one-handed and even her working hand was shaking because of the pain and blood loss and there was so much... She hadn't changed the bandages near her ear in a long time, now that she thought about it. But she didn't have enough left over.

She looked like a poor impersonation of a mummy. A mummy with a meathook still stuck in their shoulder, because Dylan had been afraid to remove it. She'd just wrapped around it as tightly as she could, letting out little noises of pain whenever she accidentally nudged it. It wasn't that deep, all things considered. It would have been worse if it'd been a knife or something. But the fact that he'd dragged it down... it was lodged in good. It would be too difficult to remove without damaging herself further.

She took more painkillers. She wanted the pain to stop. She took how many the label suggested, but she wanted to take more. But would more kill her?

She really wanted to sleep. She hadn't since... a while. And a lot had happened. But now she was afraid that if she went to sleep she wouldn't ever wake up again.

The pain didn't fully fade. It faded a bit. Enough so that she could think properly again. But it stayed. Dylan just sat very still for a long time. Or it felt like a long time, anyway. It could have been minutes. Or hours. But not longer than that, even though it felt like years, because it'd been so very long since the last announcement...

Once Dylan felt like she could move even a little bit, she quietly ate and drank most of what she had left. She didn't bother to try and ration it. She had Frank's stuff. She'd stashed bags everywhere from corpses she'd found. And there were probably many still strewn about the valley. There was no danger of running out of supplies now.

And to think that once she'd been so worried about running out of food that she'd beaten a girl to death. It felt so pointless now.

...So what happened now.

She was near the end. She had to be. There'd been twelve left last announcement, and the amount of death she'd seen since... Lenny, Frank, Ashley, Chris, Becky, possibly that asshole that tried to shoot her earlier... that was six. There was her, that made seven. And she couldn't have seen every death in the last twelve hours... Had it really only been twelve hours... Still, she was near the end, and one of the only big killers left. Maybe the biggest. Shit, she had to be right now, didn't she?

She stared at the two corpses nearby. Chris and Becky. She'd thought neither were threats once. Chris had proved he was twice, and Becky had lasted so long after the last time Dylan saw her.

Did they make it this far by back-stabbing whenever they got the chance? Or was Dylan the only one?

“Not brave, Dylan, but smart, I'll give you that.”

“I'm not a coward,” Dylan muttered to herself.

“How do I know you won't just put one in me when I'm not looking?” ”

“Not a coward. Not a coward. Just smart, that doesn't equal cowardice,” she muttered, still talking more to herself than to anything else. Who else was there to talk to.

"So don't you fucking dare accuse me of being a coward Dylan, when that is what defines you!"

“I'm... not a coward!” Dylan yelled. Still at nothing.

She sat there quietly for a little longer before looking down. Who was she even kidding? Bunch of lies, all of it. How could she even deny she was a coward, after all that had happened? She'd pretended all her life to not be like other minorities. To be a proper American. But from the moment she'd entered Program she'd done nothing else but be a traitorous asshole who always attacked from behind. Dylan had made it her goal just to die honorably, like any real American would. She'd done that because she thought her death was guaranteed. And as survival looked more and more likely, she'd dropped more and more principles and shed what little morality a half breed like her had.

She had no courage. She never did.

...Did that make her unworthy to win? Fuck no it didn't.

It didn't matter that she'd cheated her way here or that she was a no-good half breed or any of that. Because what the hell did it matter? Had any of the others left been kicked around like she had? Had any of them gotten bits of them shot off or stabbed? Had any of them spent their whole life just trying to prove that they were a loyal American only be to be constantly not good enough her entire life?

Fuck them. Fuck them all. None of them had been through the shit that Dylan had. All she'd done by cheating was level the playing field. Like an animal with camouflage or poison fangs or whatever. She hadn't just lived this long by dumb luck. She had survived. And she fucking deserved to win.

She glanced up at a camera in the corner of the ceiling.

“Sorry, Grandma. I can't make you proud. I just don't have it in me,” she said. “But I can't give up just because of that. Sorry. ...Take care of yourself and stuff.”

It couldn't be long before Smiley announced who had died. Dylan was sure she'd be one of the only ones left. She'd seen the Program before. She knew how it went down once there was only a few left.

And Dylan was going to see it through, no matter what.

So she sat in the corner, with Becky and Chris quietly rotting nearby. She silently sorted through the ammo she had left, scrounging the few bullets she had for the revolver. Five bullets. That was all she had for the Ruger Blackhawk. Not even a full round. The rifles were useless now. Or at least hard to use. Not with her shoulder how it was. She might as well leave them here. She might as well leave everything but her revolver here.

It would be hard to make it through with so little and so much weighing her down. If it took too long, she might even die along the way from blood loss. She was sure she'd dealt with her shoulder enough for the moment, but it wouldn't last. Not for long. And she was so very tired...

But fuck if that mattered. The odds had always been against her, and she was still here. She would see it through. No matter what she had to do to get there. So she sat and waited for the end to be announced.

((Dylan Walker continued in Semper Fi.))