SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

"Phil?" she whispered, softly, plaintively, as though it were a prayer. Maybe because it was a prayer. Because some essential, foundational part of her was praying now, talking to God, begging Him.

No no not supposed to be this way I saw it I saw the plan I'm a warrior I'm an avenger I'm a protector I'm a savior I'm filled with your light it banished the darkness no darkness in me no hole I'm always trying to fill with Your Word or bleak unspoken fantasies built on the dregs of other sins no no no I'm godly girt with righteousness alive in my faith alive with Your light please

"Phil," she said again, a little stronger, staggering towards him. "Phil. Phil? Phil."

Her voice was cracking. That was not what a warrior of God sounded like. That was not what a child of God girt in his righteousness sounded like. Stronger now. Steadier now. There's a plan here. You know there's a plan here.

"Phil Phil phil phil phil-"

Hoarse and rasping with tears, and she can't walk anymore, she's staggered past Bree bleeding on the shore, she's fallen to her knees as though she's still praying (she is still praying she can't stop praying) and her hands were on his body and he wasn't flinching he was barely moving and she held his cheeks so the blood from her hand mixed with the blood coating him and she couldn't stop praying.

please you can't please a miracle please I've been faithful I've been good please you can't let him die please please please please

And for a moment, blurry eyes focused on her. For a moment he was Phil, looking at her the way Phil always had, looking at her like he saw her, really saw her.

"I-" he started.

And it was several seconds before Terra, half-blind with tears, half-deaf with desperation, saw that his eyes had gone glassy, and that he wasn't going to say anymore.

No light. No prayers. The darkness was absolute. She was only flesh and blood.

"Phil," she said, her voice ragged with tears, clutching at his cheeks as though she could bring him back like Lazarus. "Phil. You...I...I always-"

The air roared with gunfire. Her body roared with pain. Her words were shattered by it, her mind shattered with it, and the darkness bubbled up around the broken pieces, and Terra Johnson slumped bloody and immobile atop Phil's insensate body as the dark drew down upon her like a curtain.

One last thought, an ember rising into the night.

Oh...duh... she realized, with the old, familiar mix of frustration and satisfaction that had always goaded her on when she found the simple, spiritual answer to a sinful, secular world. Abel's...dead...the one who...lives is...

A trail of smeared blood lead from a bullet embeded in the ground to where Terra had dropped the gun. It was now in the possession of a prone Mikki, switched to fully automatic, and empty of bullets.

It fell from Mikki's hands.

Every long, ragged breath she took shook her body as she could no longer keep herself upright. She fell to her elbows as her breaths rasped and eventually her elbows could no longer keep her up. She felt copper coating her throat from within.

She felt so stupid. This was all her fault. Bree was dead, Phillip was dead, Terra was dead, Zach was probably dead since he'd vanished into the pile of bodies and Mikki herself was dead, and it was all thanks to her. She'd caused it all, from the moment she tried to leave to go extract vengeance she didn't deserve. She wasn't even one of Abel's best friends, she was just sad and there. And now thanks to her, five more people were dead, five more spots in the mass grave that awaited them all at the end. There was nobody on this island worse than her - she'd become worse than the person who'd killed Abel, because now there were going to be even more people grieving and mourning for their friends and it would all fall at Mikki's hanging feet.

It wasn't Abel's killer who'd ruined everything - it was her. If she'd just waited, if she'd thought about it properly, then everyone would have been fine. They could have lived. But even in death Mikki had to be petty. It wasn't enough for her to have killed Bree, and Phillip, and possibly Zach. She had to take down the person who was trying to stop her, the person who had done nothing wrong, the real hero. The person who killed her, which Mikki could not let happen without getting in her own smart remark in the form of killing them, because even when she'd done something as wrong as she had now, she had to get the last word.

Mikki felt tears welling up behind her eyes and pained hoarse sobs escaping her throat, as she realized just how weak she was getting. She didn't want to die. All of the plans she'd made for her life, the life she'd planned on living from the moment she was no longer tethered to Chattanooga or its people, they should have been fulfilled. She should have been someone, the person she'd wanted to be from the moment she picked up that guitar. And yet even when she died, nobody was ever going to remember that person, they were only going to remember the girl who killed four people on an island in the middle of the ocean. She would never be a musician, even in death. She'd just be a murderer.

The cries from her throat became weaker and quieter as she could only turn her head to the door, the only amount of energy she had left. She didn't want to die here, alone, in the dark. Mikki wanted her Mom, or Dad, or her friends, her real friends, her boyfriend. She wanted someone to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. She wanted them to tell her how much they loved her, and she could do the same to them. Someone to ease the pain of everything.

Her breath became shallow, no energy to sob remained. Mikki's vision was blurred as she tried to see what was happening beyond the door, but everything was turning dark. But as the last flow of blood left her gut, the blurring darkness changed.

And suddenly, all Mikki could see, the last thing she would see as she drifted, was millions, if not billions, of flashing lights.

Zach shut his eyes tightly as he was latched onto Phillip. Just like his days as a toddler when he’d cling to his mother. He couldn’t tell what was going on in front of him, and only had the sounds to go off of.

Then, suddenly, he felt a shift in weight and movement causing him to fall backwards. He landed on his ass first, then his back made contact with the steps. What happened? Did Phillip slip when Zach grabbed onto him? Zach only meant to bring Phillip closer to him, not have him topple over the short kid. His eyes remained shut out of sheer fear.

Phil?

Terra’s voice rung in the air. Zach had realized the gunfire had stopped. Her voice got closer as she repeated Phillip’s name. Judging by the tone in her voice, something bad must have happened to Phillip. Zach opened one eye, then suddenly, more gunfire erupted! Terra’s body slumped onto Phillip, with Zach being crushed underneath. He stayed put, absolutely still, trying to steady his rapid breathing.

After a moment’s pass, Zach began to shimmy out from under Phil and Terra. Luckily, they had fallen more toward the left side of Zach’s body, so it was heavy, but not too difficult to get out from under them. Zach stood over the gruesome sight. Four dead bodies had been laid out in this lighthouse. Zach was too stunned by the sight to make a sound. All he could do was question how could everything get so fucked up.

Zach then noticed some movement in the left side of his peripheral vision.

Bree was in two places at once.

Dimly, somewhere in the back of her head, she knew she was on top of a pile of rubble bleeding out into the debris. Feeling, she was floating, detached, nothing below her, nothing to touch.

She heard the shouting and gunshots. It sounded both far away and overwhelming. She smelled the blood and lead, both feeling like a faint memory and an unbearing stench. She saw different shades of darkness. Pure dark, blue dark, flashes of light. She felt cold, but the cold also burned, and her side hurt with a numb ache.

She might have been alive, she might have been dead. She couldn’t tell anymore.

But her skin was pale and clammy, and her chest felt both empty and like someone was clenching her heart and lungs really hard in their fist. And she couldn’t move much. Her fingers twitched. Her lungs attempted to bring in more air. But her head spun, and she couldn’t think. Only feel.

Bree wanted to scream, but she couldn’t.

But she whimpered.

“He...elp…”

Another brief moment of pitch darkness.

Someone was still alive!? Zach couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Bree was lying there, just barely clinging onto her last ounce of life. Zach gave a wide eyed stare towards the half-alive Bree, debating to himself over what to do next.

Should he help her? Zach didn’t know how to treat a gunshot. He wasn’t a trained surgeon, so he wasn’t confident in taking out each, single, fucking bullet without harming her further.

Damn it! This was so fucked!

After a moment’s hesitation, Zach stepped over to the dying girl with slow, staggered steps. He wasn’t sure why, but perhaps it could’ve been morbid curiosity. Or, because he still really wanted protection on his way to the village.

He got a closer look at Bree’s wound. It was at this moment when Zach realized just how disgusting real life gore was compared to the gore he’d seen in video games and movies.

“Oh, God,” Zach gulped, “This is bad.”

In any other situation, Bree would have yelled at Zach. Told him that him just standing there stating the obvious wasn't helpful. Put on her “swim team leader” voice, gave him a strict order. But instead, the sounds of him approaching faded in and out, his voice barely audible. It was harder to muster frustration.

She wasn’t even sure if that was Zach. Vision had faded back for a moment, but only to show a silhouette against the flashlight still laying on the ground.

“Z… my bag… get...” she tried to force out.

She had no idea where her bag was in her haze, but it was closer to the entrance, right where she left it when she first came in.

Even in that haze, though, a distant thought told her she needed help, and soon.

Her bag? Zach just barely made out what she was trying to say, but it was simple enough to understand. Zach took one of the flashlights and looked over the area frantically. He saw a bag near the entrance, maybe it was Bree’s?

Zach grabbed the bag and aimed the flashlight above it as he unzipped the top. He rummaged through it’s contents for the first aid kit, when he noticed something in particular shine and reflect the flashlight’s glow. He reached for this item and his eyes widened with surprise. He pulled out a syringe filled with whatever-the-fuck.

He looked back at Bree. He brought the bag back over to her, syringe in hand.

“What do I do?,” Zach whined.

"Fix me..."

Even in the haze, Bree's voice came out harsh.

"There's... first aid... and a needle w..w..."

She tried to force it out. Push the fog away, pull Zach's voice closer to her, try to focus less on the blazing cold and the numbness and the flickering vision and the tight, tight grip that wouldn't let go of the organs inside of her chest. She pushed back some bile that threatened to spew. She had to focus and push her way through, even if her thoughts felt distant.

"W... adrena... adrenali...ne."

Her sweaty, gray-blue fingers felt particularly hot cold, as if they'd fall apart any minute. Her breathing shallowed for a minute. Her head swam, and felt like it had liquidified and sloshed around inside her skull.

Adrenaline? Is that what she said? Zach had seen or heard of the stuff before, but where?

...

Wasn’t that the stuff Uma Thurman’s character from Pulp Fiction got injected with when she overdosed? She had it injected into her heart right? Zach was not 100% sure that it actually worked for real, but it looked like he was running out of time.

He shined the flashlight at Bree’s chest, aiming approximately where the heart would be. In the back of his mind, a little voice was nagging at him to do the opposite of what he was doing.

That won’t work! Fucking idiot, you don’t know what you’re doing! Why are you even trying to help this girl!?

Zach ignored that little voice. He wasn’t sure why, but it was probably going to haunt his conscience if he didn’t at least try to help Bree. If he was going to do something, now was the time to do it.

Zach plunged the syringe into Bree’s chest with all his might.

He missed.

Bree gasped, louder than the haze told her was possible, as the needle was plunged deep inside her lung. For a moment, her tired, graying limbs tried to move away, only slightly. She wanted to scream, she even wanted to whimper, but what came out was more of a gurgled cough.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. Her throat felt tight from the lack of air, and she kept coughing, only causing the numb pain in her side and the tight pain in her chest and the ache in her lung to echo sharply.

Somewhere, in the back of her head, Bree wanted to strangle Zach, make him feel like she was feeling right now, for doing this. But it was quickly shoved away by another cough.

Another.

Another.

Until eventually she stopped.

The room was quiet now. Zach was on his own.

Bree coughed and stopped moving. Zach sat there in silence for a solid minute or two before realizing Bree died. His mind had gone blank. He stared around the room at the carnage. Terra and Phillip were on the stairs, Mikki was slumped by the wall, and Bree was lying in front of him with a syringe in her chest.

Nice work, retard!

After a few hyperventilating breaths, Zach let out a shriek so loud it left his throat totally hoarse.

...

...

...

Dawn had come. Zach was outside on the steps of the lighthouse. Ever since what had transpired within the lighthouse, he hadn’t slept. In his hands was Mikki’s gun and this weird paddle shaped weapon he found in Phillip’s bag. He made sure the safety was off on the gun. He stared at the weapons, at his newfound power, feeling a bit overwhelmed. Still, he wasn’t going to let these things go to waste.

As the first announcement echoed across the island, one part in particular caught Zach’s attention. Yuko had been killed by Katrina. Zach couldn’t help but laugh to himself about the irony of the situation. His laughter was dry and bitter.

“Heh, hahahahahaha,” Zach giggled, “how’s that plan of yours coming along? Hahaha...”

With his two weapons in tow, and his bag stuffed with double the amount of food and water he had to begin with, Zach left this ruined lighthouse that had become home to an overnight massacre.

(Zachary Beck, continued elsewhere...)