Battle Royale: Season 1

Chapter 3: Clear Shot

Chapter Three

Clear Shot

There are four of them and they stare in silence.

Mia Caras (girl number twenty one) is the first to turn away. With her hands on her knees she vomits back up the few tears of bread she'd managed to get down.

The tree branch creaks like slowly grinding teeth.

Clarissa Jean (girl number seventeen) has turned away to wrap her arms around Mia's back and embrace her into a hug.

The wind shifts the shadow from side to side.

Lindsay Haines (girl number eighteen) crosses herself and turns away, a shiver coursing through her large figure. She closes her eyes in silent prayer.

Only Emma Macmillan (girl number fourteen) approaches the body, reaching out to touch the boy's bare foot. One of his sandals must have fallen off when he made the leap and it lay sideways underneath his shadow. When her fingertips touch his cold skin she draws her hand back, clutching it to her body, and steps back. An icy breeze whips past them, pulling the hanging boy slightly to the side, and when it ends, the corpse begins to swing again from the end of the rope. Emma finally can bear it no longer and she turns to her girlfriends with tears in her eyes. And even though Emma is, and has always been, their fearless leader in their mischief and their joy, she asks them: "What do we do now?"

"Cut him down." Lindsay says, lightly touching the crucifix around her neck.

Clarissa squeezes her eyes when she cries and Mia's arm has flown to clutch Clarissa's. Their backs are turned but the image of the body will never leave them. It's not their first introduction to the Program today but it's hit the hardest. The sky has taken on a fiery hue as morning pushes itself onto the island. The girls are on the swim team and are used to vigorous workouts but they're legs are sore from squatting, crouching, hiding, running. They're exhausted and this is water brimming the cup.

They're tough though. They mourn quietly together. In silent tears, one climbs up the tree with the knife and the other three take hold of the boy's legs. They cut him down and lay him on a bed of leaves. Lindsay says a few kind words about him and Clarissa recalls a memory of the boy's kindness in a diner. Mia uses her blanket to cover the boy's face. Emma stays back, swatting at her tears, trying to keep it all together. Her girls are depending on her not to lose her shit. She can't afford to break down now.

~

If they separate, they don't stray too far. When they rest, they do it in shifts.

Emma listens for gunfire or explosions or screams. There are echoes sometimes. She tries not to let her imagination roam. They come across a burnt out campfire with two logs embedded in the dirt. Clarissa, the smallest of them, sits first, rubbing her red ankles. Lindsay sits next to her, taking a sip of water, her sun-kissed hair falling off of her back, her long thin face in what seems like a permanent scowl of pain. Mia, hands in her back pockets, doesn't look comfortable as she sits, seemingly on the lookout as she hunches forward to peer behind trees and shrubs. Emma doesn't sit either. Instead, she opens her map and holds it in front of her.

As soon as she does this, a trumpet blows fanfare. The four look up, toward a speaker set in a tree.

"B12, P23, R04..."

"What is that?" Asks Clarissa but Emma is a step ahead of her, setting the map on the moist dirt and marking each square with her pencil.

A few more areas are listed and then, the announcement ends. There is an uncomfortable silence shared between them.