Battle Royale Fan Fiction ❯ Battle Royale: All American High School ❯ Morning ( Chapter 7 )

-------> TONIGHT ON A BRAND NEW EPISODE OF “BATTLE ROYALE!”

 

The first night of Battle Royale has come to an end, and we are left with less contestants then what we started with! As Battle Royale launches into it's second time span, more drama then ever before will unfold! Prepare in this episode for the valiant return of favored characters as well as brutal shotgun murder, a crazed attacker, and a defenseless girl in peril! The excitement never stops on the island! The show government critics have been calling “A thrilling experience! I never miss one! The most addictive reality show on television!” Don't miss a moment of tonight's “BATTLE ROYALE 5: DESERTED ISLAND!!!”

 

At 2000 hours tonight on America Network 7.

 

GOD BLESS AMERICA AND THE GOVERNMENT! <-------

 

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Chapter 7: Morning

 

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“Good morning, Contestants!”

 

My mind snaps awake. Mr. Stephens' voice rings clear in my head and for a moment, in my waking daze, I think I have gone insane. Then I realize the voice sounds slightly fuzzy, which means it most be coming from a speaker somewhere. I look down next to me to see Samantha is still sleep. I gently shake her and she slowly comes to consciousness.

 

“Brandon? I fell asleep. Where is that coming from?”

 

“Quiet.” I shush her and listen to Mr. Stephens.

 

“How was your night, contestants? Busy, I can tell. You're all ready better students and citizens, following orders so directly. Your principal is proud of you. Now, listen closely. You might want to get out a piece of paper, to keep count.”

 

All of this is said in a very cheery tone. He seems to be relishing every moment of this. What a bastard.

 

I follow orders despite the fact that the whole thing makes me sick. All of this seems like such a terrible variation of typical early morning school activities. Take out your notebook and pencil and take down the Morning Instruction. I feel really dirty as I remove both a notebook and a pencil from my backpack. It's at this point I notice that my knife is still in my hand. I drop it to the ground and prepare to write. I see pretty well and look around. The sun is just coming up. It wouldn't surprise me if it were the same time the announcements came on during a regular school day. I wonder if the other students back at the school notice we're gone. I wonder if they think about this at all.

 

Mr. Stephens continues, “Many of the contestants proved how weak they were over night by being killed. Rewards to the contestants that follow instruction and destroyed the weak. Getting on to those who where killed, of course, Chris Brown (Boy Number Five) and Christina Keefer (Girl Number Eleven) were eliminated early.”

 

I wince as the memories of those events come back to me. I had almost forgotten about Chris and Christina. God, it's sad. I think I hear Mr. Stephens' laugh. Bastard. You sick bastard.

 

Mr. Stephens continues to read off the list of dead classmates like he was announcing the lunches for the day, “For the girls, Amanda Hamilton (Girl Number Nine), Hannah Williams (Girl Number Twenty), Tammy Bishop (Girl Number Two), and Chelsea Matheny (Girl Number Thirteen). Now the boys, Ben Manoli (Boy Number Sixteen), Bradley Bartles (Boy Number Three), and Aaron Albright (Boy Number Two). That's everyone. Makes sure to keep track, Contestants! I don't want you falling behind! Well, actually, I suppose I do! Ha-ha! The time is seven o'clock. The whole day lies before you! Have fun!”

 

The speaker cracks off. I put down nine hash marks on the page. I then subtract nine from forty. Thirty-one of us remain. God, that many people have died over only one night and I spelt through it. How could I? Nine people died last night and I slept like I was home and in my bed. No, this is too wrong.

 

Samantha speaks for the first time in minutes, “We both fell asleep. That's not good. We could have been killed.”

 

I try to cheer her up. “We should feel lucky that we did survive. It sounds like some people weren't so lucky.”

 

I push the paper and my knife back into my backpack before standing up. Samantha looks grave and upset. I offer my hand to her.

 

“We got to keep on the move.” I say.

 

She takes my hand and I pull her to her feet. She looks small, I notice. I realize this is the first time I ever really looked at her in the sunlight. I mean, I've seen her before, but everything feels so different now this has started. The game has changed us. We aren't the same and it's only been one night.

 

“I'm scared, Brandon.” Samantha whispers to me.

 

I don't know what to say other then, “I'm scared too, Samantha.”

 

The two of us start to walk. The forest looks different in the sunlight. It's almost serene. A beautiful forest, really. A wind begins to blow and I button up my uniform jacket. It's a little cold right now. I look over at Samantha. She must be colder then me, in that uniform skirt. Poor girl. I instantly unbutton my jacket and give it to her.

 

She looks at the jacket, “Brandon, I can't take this.”

 

“Don't argue with me. Take it. I can take the cold. The day will warm up anyway, soon enough.”

 

She doesn't bother to fight me on that and wraps my jacket around her. Girls can be silly sometimes.

 

We start to walk. I keep looking around and never keep the knife far from me. Every once in a while I see Samantha doing the same thing. Look at this, looking over our shoulders like we're in some war-torn, third-world country.

 

Well, we pretty much are, aren't we?

 

I don't think Americans can really understand most of the time. How can we? For the lifetime of almost all the population, we have lived a perfected, peaceful, self-contained civilization. We don't understand how other people live. When we say we are Americans, it's not so much because we're patriotic, it's because we don't know any better. America is all we know. Because of that, we can't understand anything else.

 

This is what the Government wants. They want us to be narrow-minded with no perception. Serve us. Do what we want without any question. Shit, this must be what the military feels like. High school had been preparing me for this, all my life.

 

But this is different, isn't it?

 

I'm not pointing and pulling the trigger. Is it because I know this whole thing is wrong, or is it really just some big, Freudian backlash against the system? I don't know. Who's to say I'll ever know? I can't let myself get bogged down in issues. The only thing that's important now is survival. I have to survive and I need to protect Samantha.

 

Yeah, I need to protect Samantha.

 

This is your chance to prove yourself a hero, Brandon. Time to play the protector for the Damsel in Distress. The Knight-In-Shining-Armour.

 

Gee, does she know this is bullshit too?

 

Either way, this is more about protecting another human life. I just can't let another living person die when I can do something about it. So, yeah, I may be playing the cheesy hero, here, but it's something she needs.

In this confused and uncertain time, it's good to have something to believe in. Even if that something is simple and narrow-minded. I suppose being a patriot is better then having nothing to believe in. It's better to have an objective, even if it's foolish and stupid, then to live your life for no reason.

 

Ugh, I'm confused. I can't think about this. Let's just settle the whole thing by saying this, the whole thing is fucked up in a whole bunch of ways.

 

Samantha and I have been for walking for what feels like hours, but its probably haven't been that long. The sun is fully up now. I don't have a watch (Image, the one day I forget to ware a watch.) but I'd say it's about nine o'clock, maybe. Again, I don't know.

 

The two of us reach the edge of the forest. There is a dip in the forest that looks like a large ditch. Maybe an irrigation ditch for when people where here? I don't think there's any homes around, though. I look ahead and see that the ditch goes downward in the distance.

 

“What is this thing?” Samantha breaks the silence.

 

“I think rain washing down this area has turn it into some kind of canal. We must be at the bottom of a hill, or something.” I comment, sounding a lot like some sort of scientist.

 

“How can you tell all that?”

 

“It's really a guess, Samantha. I don't know, it's sounds right.”

 

I hear a rustling sound from the bushes. I look around but don't see anything. I pull Samantha closer to me and grab the hunting knife out of my bag.

 

“What's wrong?” She asks.

 

“I heard something.”

 

“You sure it wasn't just an animal?” Samantha's voice seems panicky and frightened.

 

“I don't know. Come on, let's keep on the move.”

 

I move backwards, looking forward, down the canal. I step carefully because if I moved wrong I could fall. I keep a watch on the surrounding brush. I hear the noise coming closer to us and I hold up my knife.

 

“You better watch out! I have a knife! I can defend myself!” It sounds like a bluff, probably because it is.

 

Samantha says to me, “Brandon, don't egg him on!” and I almost laugh.

 

It's at this point that everything goes into slow motion. A boy emerges from the bushes and runs at us. I don't recognize him at first but his face isn't what I notice. What I do notice is the two large brass knuckles on his hands. There is a plain brass knuckle on his left hand and a spiked one on his right. As he comes nearer to us, I push Samantha away. Only seconds later the boy has hit me square in the left cheek. I can feel at least three of my teeth cracking and pulling loose. I fall to the ground and drop my knife. I reach for it and have almost gotten to it when the boy, who I now recognize as Eric from the baseball team, jumps on me and hits me hard in the back. I groan and feel like something inside of me has come apart. I turn over on my back just as Eric is about to bring the spiked knuckle down on me when I see Samantha has rushed over to Eric and has jumped on his back. Eric stands up with Samantha hanging off of him.

 

“Get off me!” I hear Eric shout as he spins around. Samantha flies off his back and slams into the wall of the ditch. He glares over her and raises the knuckle above his head, screaming,

 

“You fucking bitch! You goddamn cunt!”

 

I rush over and pick up my knife. I swing it around and shout,

 

“Hey, Eric, pick on someone your own size!”

 

Eric turns to me and seems confused. Maybe this is the first time he's heard his name all day, I don't know. He then screams again and rushes at me. Just in reaction, I lift up my knife, out of the way. God, that was stupid.

 

Eric tackles me and we both go tumbling down the slope. I can't see a lot. I feel myself dropping the knife and I feel myself roll on top of Eric several times. All I get visually is flashes of the ground, sky, and a screaming Eric.

 

When we stop rolling, I feel very dizzy and confused. I'm having a hard time getting situated. I finally get back up on my hands and knees. I look around to see that we have fallen into a muddy embankment. I look to my left to see that Eric is also having issues getting back up. I crawl to my hands and knees and shuffle over to where my knife fell. I pick it up and turn around. I stick out my knife just as Eric runs over and punches it out of my hand with the spiked fist. I wince in pain and the knife goes flying off into oblivion somewhere. He holds me down and punches forward. I move my head to the right. The dirt and ground next to my head explodes in a cloud of dust. My hands shoot out and wrap around his neck. I begin to push on his throat. A gargling sound escapes from his throat and about a minute in I realize what I'm doing. I put my feet up to his chest and pushes, letting go of his neck. He goes backward to the ground and this gives me just enough time to find my knife again. I'm about to lunge out and attack when Eric punches me in the gut. All the air is knocked out of me. I fall to my knees and for a moment I feel as if my entire body is made of spaghetti noodles.

That's it. I'm dead, I know for sure now. My body is worn out and weak and Eric is going in for the deathblow. I don't know Eric very well. He doesn't have any problems against me, as far as I know. It's simple. It makes sense, really. He realize that in order to survive he has to kill me. He's smarter and I'm fucked.

 

Shit…

 

Just before Eric is about to hit me with the spiked brass knuckle and reduce my face to a bloody puddle of goop, something very unusual happens. Eric's lower shoulder is torn to shreds, suddenly full of a hundred little holes. He screams and blood splatters all over my face. I don't know what the fuck is happening. Eric drops me and backs off.

 

“My arm! Holy Christ, my arm!” His voice trails off into out right screaming.

 

Eric's left arm is dangling like a loose hangnail. Eric keeps shaking back and forth, causing the arm to sway and dangle. The sight makes me sick and I nearly barf up my guts. I take my attention away from the sick sight and focus on where the bullets (at least I think they where bullets) came from. All of this happens with-in the time span of a minute.

 

I look over to the slope and see a large male person with a shotgun standing there. I see this person clock the gun and a shell flies out. Eric sees where my eyes have traveled and turns around. Just as he sees the guy, the large man pulls the trigger again. Eric's guts explode outward through his back into the fresh Maine air. I can feel the bile raising in my stomach. I turn away from the ugly sight and begin to vomit. The throw-up is yellow and seems to be filled with little piece of my lunch from yesterday.

 

I stare at the ground. I notice how the vomit has mixed with the dirt and everything looks gray and soupy now. After a minute of staring I force myself to turn around and see what has happen. Eric's body lies in a heap on the ground. I can see the puddle of blood spreading. I look up and see the large man walking towards me. He holds the shotgun in his hands like you would hold a garden rake.

 

My arms fall up in an act of desperation. I don't want to die.

 

“Please! I'm unarmed!” I shout.

 

I recognize the boy from class, I can't think of his name though. He points the shotgun at me.

 

“Did you mean what you said back there?” He says. He speaks in a loud, robust voice. He sounds like a grown man instead of a teenage boy.

 

“What do you mean?” I'm more then a little confused.

 

“Last night. Before you and that girl fell asleep. You said you wanted to fight them. The government system. You said you wanted out. You said you weren't going to kill your classmates. You aren't playing.”

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“I was watching.”

 

“You were the one in the bushes, weren't you? But.. Why?”

 

“You didn't answer my question! Did you mean it?”

 

I stutter. I'm kinda' under stressed. “Y-yes! I mean it! I don't want to hurt anyone!”

 

He lowers the shotgun and walks next to me. He reaches his hand out to me, just like I had for Samantha earlier, and helps me to my feet.

 

“I'm Dustin. Nice to meet you. What's your name again?” He shakes my hand. He seems like a really nice guy, especially considering he just tore a guy apart with a shotgun.

 

“I'm Brandon. Brandon Custer.”

 

Dustin eyes my nametag before speaking again, “Boy Number Nine.”

 

Dustin gives a small chuckle. He walks over to Eric's corpse and pulls off any resources he might have on him. He removes a bottle of water from his back pants pocket and peels the brass knuckles out of his hands. All of this seems very causal to Dustin. It's like he's done it all before. He's practically whistling while he does it. Dustin walks back up the slope, the shotgun in one hand and the stuff he stole off of Eric in the other.

 

As we walk by the corpse I notice something. I get close enough to the body to read his nametag. Eric James, Boy Number Fourteen. Yeah, he was on the baseball team. I played back in my freshmen year. He was a pitcher, a pretty decent one to. We talked every once in a while, but weren't really all that close. He seemed like a nice enough guy. I lost track of him after I got out of baseball. His face is stuck in a screaming position. I try not to look at his belly, but really can't help it. It's sick. I feel like a sick little voyeur, slowing down to eye the remains of a car crash. Is this natural? Is it normal to do this kind of thing? I can't take this…

 

I follow Dustin up the slope. It's about this time that I recognize him. Before everyone fell asleep in the class, he picked up the chair and tried to smash the door. Oh, god, he knew. And when Mr. Stephens was speaking, he answered the question. How does he know these things?

 

“That girl, you got, she's a cutie.” Dustin says, very nonchalantly.

 

I laugh. “No, I'm just protecting her.”

 

Dustin sighs with understanding. “Big brother relationship?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

“I can relate. I've got a younger sister back home.”

 

I want to ask him about how he knows these things but he keeps getting me sidetracked. It's like he's psychic or something and can tell when I'm about to ask. In only a couple of minutes we've climbed the slope and are back where we started. Samantha is sitting on the edge of the ditch, looking upset.

 

“Brandon! You're okay!” She squeals and almost rushes over and hugs me. Her eyes go to Dustin, “He saved you!” She pauses, “Who are you?”

 

“Dustin. Nice to meet you, Samantha, was it?”

 

“It is. Thank you.” She seems very grateful.

 

This whole thing is weirding me out. Dustin has his shotgun tossed over his shoulder like it's a backpack. Why is he so causal?

 

Dustin looks at me. “So, Brandon, how do you and Samantha plan to fight the system?”

 

“I don't know. Why are you asking so many questions?” I still confused and am trying to sort everything out.

 

“I'm doing the same thing that you're doing. I'm sizing you up. Trying to figure you out. What's your motives? What's going through your head? What will you do in the future when faced with certain situations? I'm reading you and your doing the same thing to me. It's all right. This game makes you do it to everyone. You have to if you plan on surviving.”

 

He says all of this in a tone that makes me think of some action star from an old war movie. He's intense, yet very human. While all these goes on he never takes his eyes off me. For a moment, we are locked in a stare. I really look at Dustin for the first time. He is a large boy, build like a wrestling. From a distance he would you like he's really fat, but if you look you can tell that he is actually just muscular. He's head is shaved and he's face is well build. He's an intimidating person. Why is he being so nice with me?

 

“So, who's hungry? I'm sure in-between the three of us, we have a pretty decent breakfast.”

Samantha, Dustin, and me all walk out of the open and into the forest. As soon as we find a nice sturdy log to sit on, we sit down and go through the bread and water rations. The three of us eat about half the bread in my bag and all three of us drink a bottle of water. Dustin spread some butter on the bread that he said he stole from a shop last night. Considering the circumstance, I think we make the best of it. The food, I mean. I not sure if I trust Dustin, though. He seems very shady. He's hiding something.

 

After we finish eating, I finally work up the courage and ask Dustin the big question.

 

“Dustin, don't take this the wrong way, but… You seem to know an awful lot about this `game.' And before everyone in the classroom passed out, you tried to break out of the room. How do you know these things? I don't understand.” I try to sound as reasonable as I possible can.

 

Dustin sighs and seems to concentrate for a long time. He removes a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of his uniform pants. He removes one and lights it up with a matchbox he gets out of he's jacket pocket. Dustin takes a long drag on the cigarette and blows out a perfectly shaped little mushroom puff of smoke. He then looks at Samantha and me very seriously.

 

He says, “I know all these things, I know how to act, because I've done this before. I survived a Battle Royale two years ago.”

 

And I don't know what to say.

 

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End of chapter seven.

 

“30 contestants remain!”