Survival Of The Fittest

Chapter 5: Game One

     Maroon woke up in the small shelter she had built the night before. Rubbing her eyes, she sleepily crawled out of her cover. Her other opponents were asleep in their dens as the sun rose over the hill. Maroon sat down on the cool grass and looked into the sunrise for a few minutes. Her clothes were the same as when she came, and she felt stiff, but the peacefulness of the moment made her discomfort fade away. It made all of her worries fade away; the fears about what the first game would be, the concerns about how both her and Ivy would survive, and the fears about whether they would survive or not. For a moment, it felt like she was back at the park on the corner with her dad and sister when they were five, eating ice cream and watching the colors cross the sky, or when she would sit with her sister and tell each other their deepest secrets as they found patterns in the stars.
She was on the verge of nodding off when a friendly voice snapped her out of her thoughts.
"Maroon, guess what I found? Roadkill!" Ivy said, excitedly showing it off to Maroon. Then, to her shock, Ivy held up a giant rabbit, the middle of it flattened by what seemed to be a tire. How she had managed to get her hands on it, Maroon couldn't guess. All the same, she couldn't imagine it was very healthy to eat roadkill. After reading an article about materials that can get caught in car tires, she shuddered at the thought of eating an animal that had died because of it. But she was hungry, and she would have to deal with it.
"Is it safe to eat?" Maroon asked warily.
"Well, maybe. Let's see," Ivy said and took some of the meat she had in her hands, preparing to take a large bite of the leg.
"Ivy," she said disgustedly. "You are supposed to cook it....." Ivy looked up, shocked, before letting out an uncomfortable giggle.
"Oh, right. What was I thinking?" She began scanning the ground for a place to set the rabbit. "Um, can you hold this? I need to get some wood to start a fire." Maroon, who was trying not to throw up, said,
"Yeah....sure. I can hold it." Pinching the tiniest bit of the foot, Ivy smiled, clearly amused by her disgust, and ran into the woods.
Maroon sat there, alone on the grass. She looked down at the road kill and said under her breath,
"I mean, it's meat." Eating roadkill still grossed her out, but she wouldn't be eating it; only her ally, Ivy, would be eating it. Maroon turned to look at the sunrise again, taking in the beauty of it. The bright oranges, pinks, and purples painted the sky in a way the most skilled painter could never replicate. It didn't even begin to match the sunrises back home. The bright lights of the city washed them out.
She snapped out of her thoughts again as Ivy returned with a small stack of skinny sticks and some unknown blade-looking grassy ball.
"I'm back!" She cried, excitement still ringing through her voice.
"You're back already? It seemed like you just left."
"Well, I didn't find many sticks for what I needed to start the fire to cook the roadkill. But I found some grass, and I thought we could use it instead." Ivy replied, plopping down on the grass between the two shelters and starting to rub two of the sticks together. Maroon walked over and said skeptically,
"You know you may be unable to get this to work, right?" Ivy nodded, not looking up from the sticks.
"I know, but it's worth a shot." Not wanting to start an argument, Maroon stood there, watching Ivy try to make a fire. At first, it looked pointless. The sticks refused to spark no matter how fast Ivy rubbed them together. Then, suddenly, a spark came, setting the grass knot on fire.
"It worked! I got a fire! Hey, Maroon, can you hand me the road kill so I can cook it?" Maroon nodded, handed her the rabbit, and watched Ivy run a long stick through the rabbit, prop it up on two Y-shaped stick formations, and turn it over the fire. Maroon started to walk away from Ivy, trying to find anything safe to eat. But, with no shock, she failed to find anything.
Maroon looked farther into the forest, desperate for anything that hadn't met the materials underneath a tire. They had positioned themselves in an area with heavy trees but no fruit trees. Finally, after about ten minutes, she gave up and started heading back to the camp. The rabbit was about halfway cooked, the fire roasting it to a soft brown. Without saying a word to Ivy, Maroon grabbed and opened up her backpack, finding a granola bar and taking a long bite. She was glad she had a whole drawer of snacks for her high school's afterschool program. After finishing the granola bar, Ivy stepped out of her tent. The rabbit had finished cooking, and Ivy had pulled it off the homemade spit and was butchering the rabbit.
"Want some?" She offered, but only for Maroon to say,
"No, thanks." Ivy nodded and took a bite before she ripped a piece off the thigh and stuffed it into Maroon's hand.
"But you do need meat," she said. Ivy did have a point; this game could be physical or mental. If it was physical, she knew the meat would help. She hesitantly took a bite of the rabbit. For having no seasoning, it was delicious.
Just as she was finishing her rabbit, someone came over the speakers.
"Hello, Alone contestants. I hope you are all awake and ready for today's game, which starts in five minutes. Head down the red path to find out what the challenge is. If you don't, we will find and hunt you down." The speakers buzzed loudly and cut off. Maroon looked at Ivy, who was shoveling down her roadkill.
"Come on, let's go. You may be able to finish that later, I don't know." Maroon gestured, standing up. Ivy sighed and placed the remaining meat in the bag she had brought before standing up. They started walking down the red path with a group of other contestants. The two caught small murmurs, questioning what the first game would be. Maroon was also asking what the game would be, but she also knew she didn't have long to wait to find out.
Soon, Maroon, Ivy, and the other contestants they'd walked with arrived on the site. Mrs. Valerie stood outside the edge of a large grey circle, wearing a blue suit and black heels. When everyone had come and stood at the opposite edge of the ring, she started to speak.
"Hello, everyone. I want each of you to stand on one of the black squares in the center of the circle. It doesn't matter where. All that matters is if you do it." The group followed what they were told and found their squares on the gray circle. Mrs. Valerie had walked onto a stage podium with a microphone. The ring started to fade, revealing the courts were pillars. Mrs. Valerie spoke into the microphone, "Contestants, the idea of this game is simple: balance on your pillar as long as you can, and if you fall before we bring back the circle...well," she chuckled slightly. "I wouldn't recommend it, to say the least."
She turned on her heel and stepped into a heavily guarded black truck. When the group went silent, Maroon realized the circle was completely gone, leaving only the glass pillars behind. Maroon's curiosity got the better of her, and she looked down. A pool of lava, triple the width of the columns, bubbled and splashed around the feet of the pillars. Several other contestants had looked down as well and were gasping in alarm. Maroon snapped her head up and tried not to focus on the danger. She could only focus on one thing: don't fall off. The pillar wasn't huge, maybe the length of two library computers. Then, she suddenly heard a scream. Everyone watched in horror as a muscular young man with red hair slammed into the lava, shouting in terror as he desperately reached for anything that could save him. Intense chills went running up and down her spine. She did her best to keep focusing on the pillar, but the screams kept echoing in her head. Two more had fallen; one was a young woman with purple hair, who went screaming like a banshee into the lava and the other one was a middle-aged man with greying blonde hair who had been knocked into the lava by a tall Asian man and looked too shocked to scream. Mrs. Valerie spoke into the microphone once more. None of the contestants had noticed that she had climbed out of the car.
"Oh, I forgot to say this. The challenge will stop once fifteen people have fallen or until nightfall. Maroon had, shockingly, felt a bit more at ease now. But unfortunately, she either had to wait until dusk or wait for thirteen more people to fall to their deaths. It was brutal, but there was no other way to handle it.
It took almost thirty more minutes for someone else to fall. Maroon nearly slipped off the pillar trying to avoid the lava but had managed to catch herself at the last second. A dark-skinned woman with a blonde cornrow braid turned around on her post to see if she could jump, lost her footing, and hurdled into the water. Ten minutes later, two young men were carefully trying to wrestle on their pillars. One, a teenage boy with black hair and big dark brown eyes, pushed the other, another teenage boy with white blonde hair and grey eyes that seemed to fade into his face, into the lava. Before falling, his leg swung out and knocked the dark-haired boy into the pit. At first, their screams seemed to echo in her mind like gongs. Now, they were just another familiar noise, like traffic on the streets or birds in the trees.
Maroon's legs started to numb, but she couldn't focus on it. All she was worried about was not falling. It seemed forty minutes before someone fell again; a middle-aged Latina woman's legs crumpled from under her, and she toppled into the lava, not making a sound. Then the pillars went completely silent for about an hour, everyone doing everything they could to stay alive. Finally, a teenage girl with brown hair and grey eyes tripped over her own feet and fell screaming into the lava. Maroon heard it, but, at this point, she hadn't flinched.
Hours passed, and only three more people had fallen off. Maroon watched as the sun sank lower and lower into the sky. She could barely hold herself up, but sitting down wasn't an option.
Finally, just before she passed out, the pit of lava shrank as the grey circle, and black squares returned. Every surviving contestant sighed in relief.
"Good job, everyone!" Mrs. Valerie spoke into her microphone. "You made it to nightfall! Feel free to return to your shelters and prepare for tomorrow's game. Sleep tight!" With that, she walked away, climbed back into the truck and drove away.
Maroon had practically collapsed down to the ground, relief flooding her body. Despite watching so many people die, she was so happy she had made it through the game. However, Maroon didn't know how many contestants were still alive; she had been too tired to count the remaining contestants. So she began stumbling down the path, a smile stretching across her face. Ivy caught up with her on the way back to their shelters, smiling similarly. The two didn't talk the entire time, just walked in relieved silence. Finally, they both made it back to their burrows, and as Ivy had pulled out the road kill and climbed into her shelter, Maroon had sat down on the grass, looking at the starry sky, and thought:
How much longer will I survive this?