Tattoo

"Kid? Kid?"

No. I stood there like an idiot, frozen to the spot, my eyes glued to the comm on my wrist.

92 alive. Just a second ago, 93.

I zoomed out on the map, trying to find Kid's location, but my stomach fell to the ground when I saw nothing but a skull instead of an arrow.

He was dead.

I dropped my arm and tried to make myself walk forward, only to clunk my head into a wall. It didn't hurt as much as it should have.

My arm raised itself again, and I looked down at the killfeed on my comm.

"Rex Jones killed Damien Candela with UMP9."

Damien. He was young. Sounded so panicked... and then those words at the end...

My stomach turned over into knots and I cleared my throat. I knew he was going to die. I knew I was going to die. But Battlegrounds had barely started... he'd landed so far from us, in the middle of another team, and that was it. His life, his journey, over.

"Well... that sucks," I heard my female teammate say. Braid. Isn't that was Kid had called her?

I didn't move. Tried to swallow away the dry lump in my throat, but it still felt parched. My eyes dropped from my wrist to the ground, and the objects slowly came into focus. A pump-action shotgun and some 12 gauge lay strew about on the floor.

"I just found a car," My male teammate said. Champ. Why that name... I guess I'd never know.

I picked the shotgun up and loaded the shells into the barrel. On my way upstairs, I scavenged a backpack and a few random gun attachments. After scooping them up into my backpack, I jogged down the steps and brought my voice com to my lips.

"I'm ready to kick some ass. Let's get these motherfuckers that killed Damien."

The woman snorted into the mic, but my male teammate said nothing. I headed in his direction, ready to take the car he mentioned by himself if needed.

"No you're not."

I heard his voice, but not through the comm. I looked up and he was right in front of me, standing in the doorway with his imposing frame.

"You want to go rush those guys with just a shotty? Not gonna happen."

"We have to go after them," I said. No explanation needed.

"Yes, but not with that. Let's loot a few more houses - "

"Fuck that. They're gonna be on the move. We have to go now."

"No." Champ then turned around and walked into the bathroom of the house. I rolled my eyes and yanked open the door. I was going to go no matter what.

"Tattoo."

His deep voice made me stop and turn around. He stood in the doorway holding an AKM, and then walked over to shove it in my hands.

"Now you're ready to kick some ass."

I had to smile. The gun was surprisingly heavy, but felt good in my hands. I was ready to fuck shit up.

"You even know how to handle that thing?" Braid asked as she entered into our house.

"You look like you can barely lift what you're holding," I shot back, eyeing the black gun in her arms.

"Please. I have more years of military training than you are old. What attachments did we find? I need a scope."

I knelt on the floor and emptied my backpack, my teammates doing the same. They both spent some time looking them over and attaching the various components, talking about which was better. I listened in, dumbfounded and forcibly mute. Had I just won the lottery with two teammates that knew the ins-and-outs of guns? Whatever. Give me something to shoot at.

"Here's a red dot sight for your AK, Tattoo," Champ said, handing me the small piece.

I added it to the barrel of my gun, satisfied. "Alright, we've wasted too much time, let's get those guys."

We piled into the blue car and sped out of the compound, Braid at the wheel. We drove through what seemed like miles of nothing but wheat fields. Was that a tractor? I glanced down at the map, estimating we were only about 300 meters from Damien's body, and the other team. The car kept accelerating faster as we passed by these endless wheat fields. How many people had died in this field, over the years and years of using this island? Did they have farmers come by to care for the crops, or did the wheat somehow grow from all the blood spilled here?

"Right here, this one," Champ said, and Braid turned the car into a screeching halt outside a small compound. We piled out of the car and took opposite sides of the corner of the two-story house.

"Okay, here's what we do. I'll take front door, Braid, you're behind me, watch the roof. Tattoo, flank around the back door. And lay into anyone you see. They're probably have everyone upstairs, maybe one downstairs. Make sure you check the bathroom. Let's go."

I let out a breath that had been restricting my chest, and jogged around to the backdoor. I could hear footsteps inside, creaking on old floorboards. I gripped my AK close to my body, my right finger caressing the trigger.

"Tattoo in position?"

"Yep," I whispered and let out a breath.

"Let's move."

I turned the door handle and the door creaked open to the left. I barreled inside, not wasting time. Kitchen clear, closet clear – a guy in the corner!

I laid into my trigger, the gun bouncing in my hands as the bullets ejected out of the barrel. The noise blew my ears, and all I could focus on was the body in front of me crumpling to the ground, blood spraying everywhere, covering the walls. I let go of the trigger and steadied my shaking hands. At that moment Champ came in the front door, his eyes looking up the stairs.

"One down," I made my mouth say, but I couldn't hear until the last word.

"Flash bang going upstairs," Braid yelled from outside.

"Upstairs, go, go, go," Champ motioned to me as he bolted up.

I followed, my eyes laser-focused. More gunfire, shots defeaning. Blood spraying, covering the walls, cries of pain – Champ suddenly staggered in front of me.

"Left, left, left!"

I leaned over his crouched frame and looked left, my trigger ready. Empty and silent hallway. Two bodies on the floor next to Champ, covered in blood and still. I exhaled, my hands shaking, the scope swaying.

"You okay Champ?" I whispered.

"Arm shot. Just get the bastard." In my peripheral I could see him gripping his bicep.

A sudden boom of a gunshot made me leap in the air, and then a thud as the body hit the floor down the hall. I skimmed around Champ's form and checked the room to the left. I had to look away from the sight. A man, lying down, eyes wide open, and one bullet through his forehead, bright red blood gushing down his cheek.

"He's down," I managed to say as I looked outside. Braid nodded to me from below as she lowered her gun and headed inside.

"Champ let's get that wound cleaned," Braid said as she entered. "Tattoo, get what you can off their bodies. Ammo, meds, check what guns they have and let us know."

I barely heard her, my hands still shaking. I set down my AK and kept looking outside, not able to look at the man next to me. I just killed a man. Or maybe it was a woman, I hadn't stopped to check. They were gone, dead. I looked at my hands, and then quickly wiped the sweat off on my pants.

"Looks like we're well inside the circle," Champ said, an obvious wince in his voice. "After we scavenge off these guys let's head further west."

"What do they have, Tat?" Braid asked me.

I kneeled down next to the man, realizing I had to turn his body over to get to his backpack. His body flopped over just like a ragdoll. I unzipped his backpack and reached inside to see some ammo cartridges, some bottles of pills and a first aid kit. I looked at his other weapons but couldn't understand what they were.

"Tat?"

"He's still in shock I think."

I cleared my throat and left the body behind, looking at my teammates. "You guys can check the weapons, I'm good with the AK."

"They have painkillers?"

"Yep," I reached into my backpack pouch and tossed them to Braid. She opened the bottle and shook a few pills out for Champ.

"Guess I'll check these bodies then," I muttered and walked next to them. The blood staining the walls and trickling across the floor was impossible to ignore, but I tried to wipe it from my sight.

"This is good. We won our first fight. Only lost one. We're in the circle," Braid mentioned. She looked down at her map on the com, and then turned towards me.

"Ooh, is that... what I think it is? A Kar98K rifle?" Her dark eyes lit up.

I was about to say I had no idea, but kept my mouth shut. She stepped closer and then smirked as she pried the wooden looking gun out of one of the dead man's hands. I thought it looked like a shotgun, but had no idea.

"Oh, baby..." She looked down the barrel, towards the wall, and her smile grew. She turned towards me again. "If you find any scopes, let's put one of those bad boys on this."

"We shouldn't stay here too long," Champ spoke again. "This was a good fight and we're ahead, but we made a ton of noise. I think with all this equipment we get back in the car, find a place to bunker down in the middle of the circle, somewhere with good sight lines."

I continued looting the backpacks of the dead enemies, slowly getting more comfortable looking at corpses in such a short time. I managed to pick out the meds and equipment from their backpacks. Champ and Braid looked over their weapons and had some more discussions that went over my head, but they seemed thrilled with the pick ups.

"Tat, you good with that AK and shotty?" Braid asked. "There's an UMP here, it's got a grip and extended mag. I think I saw a compensator somewhere too."

I glanced at the gun she was pointing to on the floor and shook my head. I had no idea what that gun was. "I'm good with what I have. Although..."

A thought suddenly crossed my mind, and I stood up. "I'll go check the other house to make sure they didn't leave anything behind."

I exited the house, wind suddenly howling in my ears, and the sun's light blinding. A small grove of trees grew to my left, but my eyes were focused on the ground next to the garage, the corner of the building. A corpse lay there, blood staining the nearby dirt and grass. My feet carried me next to the body, and I knelt down, staring at his face, the only part of his body not covered in blood.

I'd only met him yesterday. He was so eager, so naive, wanting us to get along and talk. I'd been dead inside yesterday, not wanting to talk about nothing. Definitely not my feelings and thoughts. But he'd... just been trying to make the best of a shitty situation. He'd gone to attack a whole team with just a shotgun. He'd panickedly jumped out of the plane and landed only somewhat near us. He'd given us all nicknames that we all automatically started using.

What had he been put away for, I wonder? Not a single tat on him, not even a sign of hardship on his face. He wasn't even wearing the standard prison garb – based on the bright yellow jacket and jeans, he could have walked here from any college in the US.

Damien Candela. If only this cursed island had wifi, I could look up his case on the news. Some rich kid being sent here, of all places, had to be on the news. Maybe he was some kid who got a bad judge and got unlucky. There were at least one or two each Battlegrounds.

Well, whatever it was, it couldn't be worse than whatever my two living teammates had done. The way they talked about guns, they'd killed more than a handful of people each.

A sigh escaped my lips. I wanted to honor his body, I did. But I didn't even know if I should. Maybe he was guilty, maybe he "deserved" to have his body destroyed by bullets, maybe this was all a huge mistake.

I'd never know. The world would never know. They'd just eat up what the news told them.

The cameras were on me now, there's no way they weren't. I raised both of my hands, and extended only my middle fingers to the sky. Fuck them all.

"Ready to go, Tat?"

I nodded, and turned around to look at my team leaning against our vehicle. I took one more look at Kid's body and then steeled my expression as I entered the car. No matter what happened now, I put out my message. That's all I'd ever wanted to do in life. I'd been locked up for protesting this very thing, and now here I was fighting with everyone I wanted to protect. No justice system in the world was perfect enough for this to exist. No crime was bad enough for this level of exploitation.

As we sped across the wheat fields, all I could do was shake my head. 65 people alive, make that 64. 36 people had died. Did they deserve it? It wasn't for me to say... but also not for any other human being to make a judgment.

And now here I was, my life likely about to end... so much I would never do, so much potential wasted, so much tragedy. I'd considered going into this as a pacifist and just refusing to fight, but so many had done that in the past... but that hadn't changed anything. If I was going to die, I was going to die with a gun in my hand. Maybe it was just what the POCI wanted. Maybe. But I'd already let them all know just how I felt about this. And maybe, just maybe, we'd win this. And I'd still have a chance to spread my message.

Braid's voice broke my train of thought. "Let's go Quarry, I think we can get some great sightlines from the top there."

"Sounds good," Champ agreed.

I just nodded, still staring at the disappearing wheat fields, as we headed into a sparse forest. For now, I was alive, and with two people that knew what they were doing. For now, there was still a chance. For now.