Picking It Clean

[Emprexx Plush]

((Garrett Wilde Continued from That's Crate!))

Supplies.

Supplies would be useful.

He didn't know what he was looking for. Anything would work. He just wanted to do something worthwhile. He wanted to stop thinking.

He hadn't examined the pamphlet last night. He couldn't handle it after a day of dangerous thoughts. He'd thought maybe if he left it alone, he could get into a more normal state. He could think clearer. Find some friends, come up with a plan that didn't involve killing or dying.

So far he was wrong.

The stores in around him were mostly full of clothes. What can I do with clothes? Bandages? They're probably too filthy...maybe fuel for a fire.

There was an old music store in front of him. He couldn't imagine anything too valuable would be inside. Still, he was curious. If there was anything left inside, though, it might make for a calming diversion. Quietly, he crept towards the entrance, being careful not to make much noise.

[BROseidon†]

((Matt Vartoogian continued from that one shot that I'll post in when I fix my backend))

The town got announced as a danger zone. That was great. Just fucking great.

How the fuck was he supposed to make a Molotov Cocktail when the place with the goddamn gasoline was cut off.

That meant that the next best thing was to stop by the shopping center. Maybe he could find something useful there.

So Matt had gotten to the shopping center and immediately beelined for the top floor. Scour the top, then the bottom, then be done with it. He had already made his way through two clothing stores by the time he found himself inside the old music store. Matt wandered through racks upon racks of CDs, not finding anything useful. There wasn't anything useful here, and he needed to get to the next–

Matt saw movement from the periphery of his vision and immediately ducked down. He was still without a weapon, well, without a good weapon. He was without allies. He had no idea who this person was.

Hopefully he could get out of this unscathed.

[Emprexx Plush]

Someone was here.

He'd heard them come up the stairs from below. They weren't being very cautious. They hadn't attempted to hide. He watched them from afar. He recognized the boy as Matt. Garrett remembered back when he'd been involved with the GSA, back before he'd checked out of just about everything besides classes to focus on some kind of gaming career. He didn't really understand it, but is first inclination is that he wouldn't be hostile.

You wouldn't have thought Theo would become a killer either.

It was a fair point. He didn't know Theo well, but the thought had been eating at him ever since he'd heard Theo was killing. He was supposed to be a pacifist. How did that change?

Could Matt have changed too?

He decided to take the gamble.

"It's okay. I know you're here. I'm not looking for trouble. Nobody needs to get hurt. We're both just browsing. We can do that civilly, right?"

[BROseidon†]

"Uh, yeah, of course."

It was Garret Wilde. Good. Someone who had a level head, someone he could trust. Right?

He'd have thought the same about Theo too, but he'd seen the trembling wreck that Theo had turned into. It had almost gotten him killed. He had to make sure he wouldn't become that. He had to stay smart and stay together. He had to maintain his composure so he could survive this and move on with his life.

He was already envisioning Garret pulling a gun and shooting him.

No, he had to suppress that. Garrett hadn't killed yet. Garrett was cool, he wasn't going to fucking shoot him.

Matt didn't turn his back. He couldn't, at least not until he'd spoken with Garrett a little bit more.

"So, uh, anything interesting happen to you so far?"

[Emprexx Plush]

Anything interesting happen to you?

Garrett shrugged. "Got shot at. Watched Iselle walk off to go kill somebody. Saw Travis stab himself to try to pull some kind of trick on us and had Michelle try to talk me into suicide. Is any of that really interesting for this place?"

He glanced over Matt's person. He didn't seem armed, at least not in any way that was immediately noticeable. That was good. No more violence. Just one more day without violence. Keep the streak going.

"What about you? Run into anyone so far?"

[BROseidon†]

"Damn, dude, that sucks."

Matt paused when Garrett asked him how his time so far. Should he reveal as much as he saw? Was there a reason to even lie? Matt figured that there probably wasn't.

"Woke up and found myself pretty quickly in a group of five; nobody from that group's killed and everyone's still alive, I think. We went to the golf clubhouse to meet up with Carmina and ran into Theo, Jacquelyn, and Joachim. Jac and Joachim had just killed Carmina, too. We ended up barely getting out, but I ended up separated from the group and went to the meeting place Brianna had stated, but the others never showed. Been wandering by myself mostly since then; although I did have fucking Aileen and Joe Carracso go off on me for no reason."

Matt figured that he shouldn't say that he was looting the corpse. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but maybe Garrett would take offense.

"But yeah, now I'm just digging around for stuff to defend myself with. I'd rather not get fucking wrecked when I run into a killer with a gun."

[Emprexx Plush]

"Yeah. I don't blame you. There seem to be a lot of those so far."

He hesitated slightly. He wasn't sure he wanted an answer to his next question. He couldn't stand the thought more and more people were starting to play. He had to know, though.

"So Jaq and Joachim have really gone off the deep end? It's not a trick, or a misunderstanding? I didn't want to believe it. They're not the ones you expect. People like Maxwell, Tyler, Travis...they're the ones you figure could kill somebody, under the wrong circumstances. Not people like Joachim, or Summer."

He looked around the abandoned store for a moment. "You're not going to find much here. There's some old clothes that could be good for burning, and maybe for bandages if you could find a way to sanitize them, but nothing that'd make a decent weapon so far. Maybe that's for the best."

[BROseidon†]

"Yeah, looks like it. They pulled a shotgun on us once we figured out that they'd killed Carmina. I guess you can't really know how someone's going to react to something like this until you put them in it." Matt hadn't killed anyone yet, so he could pretend to be one of the good guys. He didn't want to kill; Joachim and Jaq had seemed to have a feral energy to them. It was almost like they'd wanted to kill.

Still, the only things separating Matt from many of the killers were intelligence, nerves, and luck. He could only hold on to one of those forever.

"It sucks that there isn't more here. I was at the school last night looking for some stuff, but the terrorists cleared it of any chemicals. Then I wanted to go into town, but they called it a danger zone."

When he phrased it that way, it seemed like the terrorists were fucking with him personally.

[Emprexx Plush]

Garrett patted his back pocket, where he kept his copy of the survival guide. "That fits with what I'm finding in here." He pulled it out and glanced down at his copious notes. "Not what's said directly, mind you, but the mindset they're projecting. They want to leave us with resources, but ones they can control."

He reached behind his ear and retrieved the pencil he'd slipped there this morning. "Like this. My laptop, my notebooks, and my pens were all taken from my bag. But they left paper and pencils all over the office building I woke up in. I figure there's probably some in other places as well. They can see who takes them, and what they do with them. They can do the same thing with anything else they've left here. Clothes, food, chemicals, even weapons if there are any lying around."

Speaking what he'd found out loud made him feel kind of helpless. But at least it was better than brooding on it alone. Matt was smart. Maybe he could figure out something out with it. He looked back at him.

"Everyone I've met seems to have some kind of opinion on what our options are here. What's yours?"

[BROseidon†]

"That seems about right. Didn't some people escape the last time around? I'd suspect that the terrorists would be better about keeping us in check."

Matt paused when Garrett asked him about his opinions on the situation. He didn't want to reveal his motivations. He couldn't say what he honestly thought. But he could spin it. Put it in the same truth, but change his ethics around a bit.

"Honestly, I think our best chance is to hope that somebody finds us. They've done a good job sweeping the island, so all we really have left as a choice is to stall. If people weren't killing, I'd say gather everyone up and randomly choose one person each day to kill so that we'd have the maximum time, but people are already seeing murder as their only way out."

[Emprexx Plush]

Michelle's words tinted Matt's assessment. He wasn't sure he wanted to give voice to his doubts. He didn't know how Matt would react. Still, Matt was smart. He might be able to work out how likely they were.

"I've thought about that. Michelle said something that shook that theory up, though. What if nobody knows we're here? Usually they broadcast live, but what if there's a delay? What if everyone just thinks we disappeared? I mean, think about it: Between drones and satellites, shouldn't they have found us by now?"

[BROseidon†]

((Craptastic post before my away kicks in))

"Well that would fucking suck, wouldn't it." Matt hadn't thought of that, of the terrorists delaying the broadcasts. It would make a lot of sense; people escaped last time, so make it harder to escape by making sure nobody knows they're there. It made a lot of sense, really.

"Yeah, you'd expect a satellite to have picked up on us by now. I'm not really sure why one hasn't. We're still on Earth, right?."

Matt paused for a second, trying to think of what to say that would both confirm his agreement with Garrett while not revealing that this furthered his opinion that killing was the only way out.

"I guess that means our only choice is to stall. Our only shot is that someone stumbles upon this island."

[Emprexx Plush]

A small, quiet sigh escaped his lips. It sounded like resignation. It sounded like letting go.

It sounded like defeat.

"Matt..." he said slowly, "we're smart guys. We both know that stalling may not be an option."

He traced a finger along his color as we spoke. "We're limited by these. I used to think they'd never blow them, that they'd lose too much if they did that live. But if they're not live...nobody knows they're back yet. Nobody knows to look for us. They can work with what they have so far and just kill us. It won't be as effective, but if the deaths stop, I think they really will kill us."

He looked around nervously. "I have an...adjusted plan. One I've been thinking about pretty much non-stop the last couple of days. Still stalling, but with some caveats. If you're interested, we might be able to make it work with help."

[BROseidon†]

"All right, let's hear it."

[Emprexx Plush]

Straight to the point. That might be good, in this scenario.

"We need to maximize how many people survive, agreed? That will allow us to last the longest. If someone really is looking for us, that will give them more time for them to find us. It will give us more time to come up with a plan to escape, if there's anyway out at all to do this. Just hiding isn't enough to do that though."

"I've run the math. According to the announcements, we've lost thirty-seven people in the last few days. Considering we left with, what, a hundred-fifty? That's not good. There's too much killing, and the pace is increasing. We've gone from eight deaths on the first day to twelve deaths on the second day and sixteen deaths yesterday. Some of those have been suicides, but a lot of them have come from people who have killed more than once. People who aren't just surviving. Murderers."

He paused for a moment, hesitating. "It's hard to say this. But for optimal survival we might...we might have to kill them. We have to find the people responsible for most of the deaths, and we have to make them stop, and I think for most of them, that's going to mean killing them first. If we can talk them down, strip them of weapons, keep them somewhere safe that we can watch them or something...that's good, but I don't know if that will work."

His mouth was dry. He couldn't believe he was voicing these ideas out loud. He had to get them out of his head though. "I've seen things, man. I've seen Gabby. I've seen what Theo did to her. I don't know how to make someone who would do that stop rationally."