Survivors

It took Luke a couple of seconds to regain his composure, but when he did he stormed at Joe “I think it’s pretty obvious were in a pile of shit! You dick! And you’re the one that’s put us in it!”

“What I’ve done is only the half of it, you don’t know nothing yet!”

“What do you mean Joe?” Said Holly as controlled and as reasonably as she could.

“Well just take a good look at this bloke and you’ll see what I mean” said Joe as he aimed a kick at the man lying on the floor.

“Stop it Joe!! You can’t do that!” Shrieked Holly.

“Oh can’t I!” bellowed Joe “Look at his face” he went on rolling the man onto his back. “Don’t you recognise this bastard!?”

Some of the blood had been clumsily cleaned from the man’s face and although he still looked a heck of a mess it was pretty obvious who it was. Lying on the floor was none other than Jacob Farely. Holly put her hands over her mouth to stifle a little shriek of shock, while Luke took an involuntary step backwards.

“I see you know him then” said Joe with a malicious grin. “Now tell me I can’t kick him! He killed the Dane, he brought the Aliens to the camp. He deserves everything he gets!”

There was silence for a moment or two. Then Holly said in a very small voice “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“We think!” said Luke emphatically. “For the first time today we actually do some thinking!” This comment was aimed at Joe, but he was in too much of a state for it to register. “Is thinking okay with you two?”

“Okay “ whispered Holly.

“Okay?” demanded Luke of Joe.

“Okay!” Replied Joe reluctantly.

“This whole mess” went on Luke “Is because we didn’t think clearly about things and didn’t think about the possible outcomes of what we were doing. So let’s think about that now shall we. As far as I can see at the moment we have three choices. One, we just take this bastard and dump him somewhere. Two, take him somewhere, kill him and then dump the body. Three, we tell Bretnel what’s happened and let him come up with a plan.”

“How the hell can we tell Bretnel” barked Joe “He’ll go absolutely mad. Why don’t we just dump him?”

“I agree” said Holly “He has no idea it was us that took him. He will only have seen a giant gorilla. He won’t know it was Joe will he!”

“Okay. We dump him and then he’s dead anyway. The only difference is that we don’t have to actually kill him. The state he’s in, he’ll never survive just being left somewhere. In some ways it’s kinder to kill him now” said Luke coldly. As he said this his hand turned into a giant crabs claw that he fastened round Jacobs neck. “It would just take a little squeeze, just a little pressure”

“No!” Shrieked Holly “You can’t kill him like that”

“Why not after everything he’s done” said Luke slyly.

“No! We can’t just kill someone, not just like that”

“What like the way he killed the Dane or like the way he brought the Aliens to the camp” goaded Luke.

“Hey! You don’t know he did that” said Holly “We don’t know he brought them to the camp!”

“Yeah, it could have been just bad luck” said Joe trying to support Holly.

“You really are stupid sometimes” hissed Luke. “How else do you explain it then?”

Joe squared up to Luke and it looked like they were very rapidly going to come to blows.

“Stop it!!” shrieked Holly close to tears. “It doesn’t matter either way, you can’t… we can’t just murder another human being, not here in this dirty little tunnel. We just can’t do it!”

“Oh I see, I see” said Luke “But it’s okay to leave him to die on a hillside is it, slowly bleeding to death, or savaged by some wild animal or dying of hypothermia, that’s okay is it.. Is it!” he went on with a slightly maniacal look in his eye. “What do you think Joe?”

“I err…” mumbled Joe looking to Holly for guidance. Unfortunately she wasn’t offering any.

“No... nothing... no great ideas?! No I thought not. Well I guess that just leaves us one option” said Luke, letting go of Jacob’s neck. “We talk to Bretnel”.