Zombie

[Cactus]

She could hear the whispers of the sea on the wind that whipped through her hair. On a regular day, that would have calmed her. But not today.

Today was to be the day that she died.

((KATE SANDERSON GAME START))

Kate had been pushed off the bus as roughly as she'd ever felt before in her lifetime, and had numbly just clutched her pack to her chest and started walking, the sound of the bus echoing behind her, the sound eventually fading into a dim buzz. Over and over in her head, she replayed the events in the auditorium, watching the General's lips say her name. It didn't even feel real, and yet...

Here she was. All eyes on her.

Kate couldn't think of a worse way to die.

As she absently walked forward, she almost tripped over a stray stone on the ground, correcting herself to not fall over as she continued forwards. There was no destination, no place in mind. Kate had no answer for what she would do now. Any time she'd been able to pull herself to land in the swarming maelstrom going on within her own psyche, she'd asked the question: now what? The answer was always the same.

You die.

It felt so melodramatic in a sense - quiet girl that nobody knew, doomed to die in an elimination program, probably with the lowest odds in the whole thing. Her brain chastised herself. Nice job, Kate. Maybe if you'd been a bit more like Jerry or Frankie, you wouldn't be such a lost cause. Maybe you'd be able to be more than a footnote in the history books.

"N-no..."

The utterance surprised even herself, talking to herself wasn't really Kate's style. But her subconscious had crossed a line that her heart wouldn't accept. This wasn't her fault. Not even a little. No, she was in this situation because the world was shit, and the country that she was born into was ruled by an aggressive dictatorship. This was at the very worst, bad luck.

Bad. Freaking. Luck.

It was almost worse than it was had she been targeted.

The utterance derailed the runaway train that was her self-doubt, but also proved to have a secondary purpose: it snapped her back into the real world. As the wind whipped through her hair as she looked out at the ocean, eyes following the fence that extended out, she finally felt the telltale ache in her feet that her shock had been masking. Kate had been walking for hours, body on autopilot as her fragile mind tried to sort her situation out. And now? She hadn't managed to sort much of anything out, aside from where she was. By the looks of things, in another thirty feet, she wouldn't be able to move any further, as the ground seemed to vanish in a steep drop-off. Again on seeming instinct, she'd stopped walking once her eyes had come upon the cliff. So again, as she stood looking out onto the water, spotting the small patrol boats as they did their laps, she wondered. What now?

Having snapped back into a more reasonable mode of consciousness and no longer in shock, her mind didn't automatically respond back with the same two-word affirmation of her impending demise, but there wasn't anything else that took its place, either. Kate Sanderson found herself at a genuine loss about what to do. How did one know how to act in a situation like this?

Her eyes moved from the water to a closer target: the cliff in front of her. A chill went down her spine, as her brain began to formulate a new idea. It had the same basic premise as the old idea, she still ended up the same way, but maybe instead of walking around waiting for somebody to inflict endless amounts of pain and suffering on her? Maybe she could take control of her own destiny.

End it before things got too difficult.

Finally take some ownership.

Some strength.

Would her brothers understand? More importantly, would her mother? Kate knew that Veronica Sanderson constantly wished that her daughter had more of an upstanding constitution for the ways of the world, but Kate never felt judged and always felt protected by her mother's kindness. Veronica knew what kind of a person Kate was. She made sure that there was always a safe place, because her daughter was essentially born in the wrong time. The wrong world.

So she would understand.

Kate dropped her pack in front of her. This was the better option. The easier way. She knew that the rest of her family might feel the shame, but that didn't matter. All that did was that her mother would get it. Taking a deep breath, Kate's eyes teared up, blurring her vision. She dug her heel into the soft ground - a running start would prevent any second thoughts as momentum carried her over the side. Extending her leg, she brushed some hair out of her eyes, and rea-

"Hey, bitch! The fuck do you think you're doing?"

Kate jumped nearly a foot in the air, twirling around to see an unfamiliar face standing a few paces away. He was tall and skinny, with a classic pubescent patchy beard all over his face. He sounded crude, if not aggressive. Not yet, anyway. Kate's opened and shut her mouth a few times, barely able to squeak out an answer.

"I-I'm... I can't do this."

The boy standing across from her rolled his eyes, shaking his head in disgust at the lithe girl in front of him. "You can't do this? C'mon, you stupid bitch. You can't take the coward's way out."

Kate blanched at the crude language and certainly didn't appreciate twice-being called a bitch. She frowned, but before she had a chance to open her mouth to speak again, the boy eyed her pack, on the ground in front of them both.

"What a waste. I don't know why they even wasted their time giving someone like you a weapon. God knows you're just going to end up fodder on someone's kill list." He broke into a big smile as he emptied something into one of his hands. "Might as well be mine!"

At the exclamation, the tall boy threw something at Kate's head. Instinctively, she turned away and put her hands up, but a cool liquid still managed to splash across her face, forehead, and into her left eye. Immediately, her eye started to burn, and as she clawed up at her face to rub whatever the liquid was away, she felt a mass slam into her chest and knock her violently to the ground.

Instinctively, Kate screamed.

The boy laughed, and she realized that it had been him who had barreled into her and knocking her down. The fear now coming in waves, Kate wasted no time and desperately tried to crawl back the other way, towards her pack, towards the playing field, towards salvation. One eye still stinging, vision badly blurred from whatever it was he'd thrown in her face, she could smell the sharp smell of ... aloe vera? Her confusion was fleeting, as she felt a hand grab hold of her back and violently yank her up by the shirt and bra-strap.

"Wh-why are yo-" Kate started to whisper out a cry, but was cut off by her view of the boy spinning her around and punching her squarely in the face, her good eye's vision exploding in a white frenzy of stars and leaving the world feeling foggy. She collapsed to the ground, weakly trying to pull herself to her feet, tasting something strange in her mouth as she did. It was coppery, and seemed to be filling...

Kate spat a mouthful of blood on the ground.

That explained that.

"It's okay, I know what you were going to do, but it's better this way. Trust me. You get to be kill number one on the eventual winner's list! You should be honoured!" The boy's voice had a frenzied quality to it, and as Kate tried to sort out the confusion and the fog from her own mind, she realized that she didn't know who he was. She was about to be murdered by a stranger.

"And to think, all I had was a little bottle of hand-sanitizer!"

The stranger reached back and forcefully kicked the prone girl in the ribs, causing her to cry out in pain. Laughing, he repeated the motion, this time earning a loud crack for his efforts. The wind rushed from Kate's lungs quickly, and she gasped for air as the pain jolted through her body. Her eye still burned from what she now knew to be hand sanitizer. Her good eye scanned the surroundings, and she dug her hands in, crawling towards the only thing she could possibly see as salvation.

"Come on, now, where are you going?! We're only getting started!"

His next kick hit Kate in the rear, sending her stumbling forward, scraping her face into the dirt. Pulling herself up once more, she continued her trek ahead, earning a disbelieving laugh from her attacker. Footsteps came up towards her and she felt a hand grab her by the hair, pulling her head back at a painful angle. He stepped towards her and she felt the warmth of his face as he leaned in close to her ear. She shivered, both the pain and the fear overwhelming her. "You're lucky, you know? A more inappropriate person might think it a good idea to rape you first."

The pain seemingly disappeared as fear filled Kate's entire body. Her face trembled as she tried in vain to shake her head, to protest. She coughed out some blood, and could only manage a whisper.

"P-please no. Please don't."

Just like that, her head was violently thrown back down to the ground, her forehead hitting a small rock in the grass and giving her a minor cut, but her assailant laughed out loud, a mocking sound that made her want to vomit.

"Awww, come on. What do you take me for? Lucky Larry might be a whole lot of things, but I'm no two-bit rapist. I've got a little bit more class than that."

The fear having activated her adrenaline, Kate's entire body was now focused on one very clear goal: reaching her green pack that she knew to be a few feet away. It was her only chance to not die at the hands of this sick bastard. She had no idea what kind of weapon or protection that she received - she hadn't checked since she'd been so shaken, but now, all of her survival instincts focused on that bag, and trying to will something useful into it. Taking one more crawling step towards the bag, she felt another agonizing blow as Larry kicked her again in the rear, sending her sprawling in a manner that her mother would have described as "ass over tea-kettle".

She ignored the pain; the kick had sent her the remainder of the way to her destination. She landed on her pack, and adrenaline took over, her fingers shakily wrenching around the zipper and pulling it apart. Larry seemed to be mulling something over, taking his time as he made his way to the prone girl in front of him. His next proclamation sent a shockwave down the back of Kate's neck.

"Ahhh, you know what? Fuck it! Maybe I don't have any class after all. Looks like it's gonna be your lucky day!"

Kate's hands closed around something within her pack.

It was her lucky day.

Zealously, Larry walked towards Kate, having decided that he would inflict maximum damage as well as maximum defamation towards his ill-fated classmate (anything to make an impact). Standing over her, he raised his eyebrows. A big part of him didn't approve of sexual violence, but when he survived, he could tell the General that he was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done - that he was willing to cross any line to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. That would clearly prove that he could be trusted to serve as part of the General's primary strike force.

Striking the girl in the back with a knee and hearing the wind leave her lungs once more, Larry bent down overtop of her, eyes filled with menace. Maybe when he was done, he'd be able to get a sponsorship with a hand sanitizer company. The smile got even wider, and he forcefully flipped the girl onto her back, kneeling down and putting his full weight over her torso.

While Larry was thinking about sponsorship opportunities and a future in the General's guard, he missed the boat on a small detail that he should have been paying a lot more attention to: namely that the small girl that he'd been attacking now held a particularly vicious-looking scimitar in her hands.

"Whoa, wher-"

Kate didn't give Larry the chance to finish his thought as she raised the vicious blade and with all of the strength that she could muster, she plunged it deep into his chest, pulling down as she did to try and inflict as much damage as she could. Much as any weapons in the program were, the blade had been sharpened before it had been assigned, and it opened Larry's chest up more easily than Kate ever thought possible.

Blood immediately poured from the wound, and as internal organs and viscera flooded over her, the dying boy coughed blood up into the air, some of it coming down onto her face. Wincing at the impact of the splatter, she shrieked as Larry quickly expired, his body flopping down on top of her, covering her in a shower of blood and leaving her with a brand new blanket of warm, newly-rotting flesh to contend with.

As the pain came back to the forefront and barged past her adrenaline, Kate found her own consciousness slipping away, battling the agony of her wounds and the horror of what she'd just done for supremacy within her head. She barely had enough time to justify it to herself as she mercifully passed out.

Had she been able to retain any consciousness at all, the only thing she would have heard would be the whispers of the wind, travelling up the cliff face and flowing through the grassy hillside, whipping through the barbed-wire fence and through the freshly-created corpse that now lay on top of her.

Perhaps fate had other plans for Kate Sanderson after all.

ROSENBERG, LARRY - DECEASED

[Cactus]

Pressure and pain.

That was the whole world right now, for Kathryn Sanderson. An unusual pressure, and a constant sharp burst of pain. As if on cue, each time she took a breath, her chest caught aflame.

She coughed. It hurt, of course. Eyes still closed, Kate found enough inner fortitude to try and slowly open them. Pain shot through her face as she tried in vain to will her left eye open. Something had crusted it shut, and it was quickly apparent that she should not try to change that status anytime soon. Her right eye opened, though, and Kate was quickly brought back up to speed on the cause of the immense pressure all over her body.

The terror she felt at realizing that she was wearing the disemboweled corpse of Larry Rosenberg as a blanket erupted from her mouth as little more than a pained squeak. Kate feebly struggled at the dead flesh that lay atop her, but it was no use. Her effort was doomed from the very beginning; she was too weak - she barely weighed one hundred pounds, and she had been brutally beaten before her fortuitous attack had stopped her assailant in his tracks. This was her own personal version of Gerald's Game, an old horror novel that she recalled reading months ago.

She hadn't cared for it then, and she liked it even less now.

Struggling one more time against the body that covered her, Kate's attempt was even more feeble than the last. She was too weak, her broken rib sharply prevented any exertion, and when she moved her head too quickly, everything got dizzy. She shut her one good eye, and softly began to cry. Each tear that ran down her face reminded her of another ailment, another pain.

"Oh my God."

A voice. Unfamiliar, and distant. She didn't bother opening her eyes. The protagonist of the novel had started to hear voices and see things. Kate wouldn't give her subconscious the satisfaction of tricking her into anything. Her head remained dizzy, even in darkness and even on the ground. She wondered if perhaps she had a concussion.

Footsteps. Coming closer.

A gasp.

Kate focused her ears on the wind. She could still hear it, coming in from the ocean and up the cliff face. If she listened carefully she could hear the zipping sound that the barbed-wire made as it twitched in the breeze.

A thud. Something hit the ground.

She could hear the water, too. The waves were faint, but the surf crashed against the rocks on the distant bottom of the cliff. The sound had always calmed her, always made her feel at peace in a world full of danger. Whenever she felt miserable, Kate would often listen to the sounds of the ocean. The ocean never judged. The ocean had no malice. It just was.

The pressure disappeared from Kate's body, and something hit the ground with a disgusting squelch. Only pain remained.

Another gasp.

"Oh, man. Hang on."

Kate sniffed, a mixture of phlegm and blood clearing themselves from her sinuses. She coughed, spitting it out. The cough sent pain spiralling all over her body. Now that the pressure was gone, her ribs didn't hurt as badly, but still felt tender when she thought about moving.

The sound of a zipper.

She still lay still, eyes closed, the fear returning to her body as forcefully as any of Larry's punches. With clearer sinuses, Kate now had the full spectrum of how awful the area smelled. She had never smelled something so foul in her entire life. It smelled like a mixture of rotten meat, of blood, of feces and ... something else that she couldn't place.

It could only be the smell of death.

Suddenly, the ground disappeared from beneath her. She was floating. Was this it? Was the death that she smelled her own? She moaned, still feeling the pain from the beating that she had endured. She still couldn't bear to open her eyes.

"It's going to be okay. I promise."

The voice sounded confident, but hollow. Kate wasn't sure what to make of this. Was she on her way to the afterlife? Eyes still shut, she felt herself moving. The wind blew through her hair as she floated away from where she'd been. The dizziness returned - though she couldn't be sure it had really disappeared in the first place. She moaned in pain.

Shouldn't the pain have been going away?

As Kate felt her consciousness slipping away again, she moaned again as the sounds of the ocean became fainter, and fainter. She wanted to be near the ocean. She wanted to know that she was safe. She wanted to be okay.

In that moment, she wanted so many things, but the blackness overtook her and then Kate Sanderson wanted nothing more.

((Kathryn Sanderson has been carried off to You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet))