Battle Royale Maine

Chapter 22

Epilogue – The Final Enemy

August 1, 1975

The big black limousine with government license plates rolled into Chamberlain around four o'clock. The weather was fine and sunny, with a few fluffy white clouds rolling along through the deep blue sky. Chamberlain was quiet; most people were at work, or off somewhere enjoying the last weeks of summer. The car purred up to one end of Carlin Street, and stopped. A door in the back opened, and Carrie White got out.

She was wearing the same clothes she had been in when she had been shanghaied into the Program, and they hung loosely on her. Although she had been less battered than other Program winners, she had still had had to spend time in the hospital for internal injuries and the nasty cut that had cost her her ear, and she had lost weight while there. The hospital food had been better-balanced and healthier than what she ate at home, and even though she had eaten with good appetite, she had still come out in better shape than she had been when she had left her home last.

When she had reported in, everybody had been as nice as could be. Miss Desjardin had been all honey, cooing over her "remarkable victory" and praising her performance to the skies, even while ruing the fact that Carrie's win had cost her a sizable sum in lost bets. They had medevacked her to a hospital in Portland via helicopter; the first time she had ever flown.

As she walked along, she smiled slightly to herself. She wasn't the same Carrie White that had left this place, and she knew it. She felt better than she ever had in her whole life, despite the ache of her injuries and the twinges from the place where her ear had been. She felt more confident than she ever had before.

Of course, not everybody else could see the difference..."Hey, fart-face! Ol' prayin' Carrie!" It was a kid from the neighborhood, Johnny Erbter. He and his brother, Tommy, were two of the chief mischief-makers in the area, and had always been very fond of picking on Carrie.

She stopped and looked at him. "Are you talking to me, Johnny?"

"Yeah, I am! Whatcha think you can do about it, fart-face?"

I don't have to put up with this any more, do I? Carrie smiled; it was not a nice smile. "Where do you think I've been, Johnny?"

Johnny screwed up his face, making himself even uglier than he naturally was. "I haven't seen you around in a while. I figured you were off prayin' – fart-face!"

He sure seems to like calling me "fart-face," doesn't he? Carrie leaned forward a little, so that their faces were closer. "No. I was off in the Program – the Battle Royale Program. You have heard of that, haven't you?"

"Yeah, I know about it. We watch it every year. But you couldn't have been in that!" His ugly face lit up in what he thought was triumph. "Because everybody gets killed! You're alive! You couldn't have been playing in there..." Then it hit him. "Hey – only one survives at the end! My dad and uncles bet on who'll live! But you couldn't have..."

Carrie lifted her hair up on one side of her face, showing Johnny the stump of her ear and the ragged scars down one side of her neck left by Helen Shyres' desperate sickle-swing. She grinned a death's-head grin. "How do you think that happened, Johnny? Do you think I cut myself shaving?"

Johnny was obnoxious, and a dedicated pain-in-the-ass to everybody older than he was. That did not make him stupid. He looked at the scar and the stump of Carrie's former ear, his eyes growing wider and wider, then leaped onto his bicycle and began pedaling away, faster and faster and faster. He turned for a terrified look back to see if she was chasing him or pulling a gun, and nearly got himself run over by a car. Even though the car missed him, he had to swerve hard enough that he fell off his bike, and his wails echoed down Carlin Street.

Carrie smiled a small triumphant smile. That had been a foretaste of the life that lay ahead. However, the road to that led through a certain small, white bungalow on Carlin Street. She started to walk, heading down the same sidewalk she had walked a million times before. Heading home.

The front door was unlocked; this was Chamberlain, Maine, not a large city, and very few people routinely locked up. That had sometimes helped the local hood squad when they wanted to go stealing, but even so, that hadn't changed. In any case, the Whites had very little that anybody would want to steal, and most people knew it. Carrie let herself in, looking around the familiar rooms.

Nothing had changed here. The huge plaster crucifix that Momma had ordered from a religious-supplies house was still on the wall, the agonized, bleeding body of Jesus nailed to it. There had been a time when that crucifix had terrified a younger Carrie White; she had suffered endless nightmares where that mad-eyed Christ came down off the cross, chasing her through the house, demanding that she take up her cross and follow Him. Now, she could look at it with a critical, knowing eye.

He doesn't look as bad as some of the people I took out on Matinicus...with those wounds, if he got loose, and got a weapon, he could get up on the scoreboard, and have a chance of winning. She turned her back on the crucifix, went on into the kitchen, and got the makings to put together a pot of tea. She fixed it the way she liked it, black and sweet, with a layer of sugar at the bottom, and sipped it meditatively. Even though the hospital's tea had been good, there was nothing like making things the way she wanted them. And that's how it'll be from now on out! There's been some changes!

Of course, some people hadn't heard the news...the door opened, and Momma came in. She hadn't been told that Carrie was coming home; they generally didn't make much of an announcement of a victor's homecoming. Momma was in a bad mood; that meant that she was her usual self. She was muttering "...told that Elt a thing or two down at the laundry...God's got a special blue corner of hell all set up for him..." Then she saw Carrie.

"You're back."

Carrie gave her back stare for stare. No more dropping her eyes when Momma glared..."Yes, I'm back. Didn't they tell you that I'd won the Program?"

"You were out on that island with boys. The only way you could have won would have been to let those – boys – have their way with you." Momma's face twisted in one of her insane rages. "You sinning harlot! You Jezebel!" She drew back one meaty arm for a powerhouse swing across Carrie's face.

Carrie grabbed Momma's arm, pulling and twisting in a way one of the policewomen who had been guarding her in the hospital had shown her. There was a loud crack, and Momma screamed even louder than when she was angry. She staggered back, her arm dangling uselessly at her side, her face going pale beneath its tan. "Sinner! Judas! Apostate! How dare you hurt me?"

"How dare I hurt you, Momma?" Carrie's mouth twisted into an evil grin. "You hymn-singing lunatic, how dare you ask me such a question? You idiot, you tried to swing on a Battle Royale Program winner! You're lucky I let you live!" Luckier than she knew...

Momma stared at Carrie, her mouth twisting and her face twitching. Carrie could see that she was working her way up to a real good rage. There was a time when that would have terrified her; Momma, in the grip of one of her furies, was capable of nearly anything. Now, after Matinicus, Momma's antics only amused Carrie.

"How do you think I won, Momma?" asked Carrie softly. Carrie couldn't see her own smile, but it felt wonderfully predatory. There were no mirrors in the White house outside of the bathroom. Momma thought that mirrors led to vanity, and vanity, like so many, many other things, was a sin. "Do you really think that I let some boy 'have his way' with me?" Carrie shook her head sadly. "Are you really that stupid, or that obsessive?"

"You harlot! You – you Whore of Babylon!" Momma shrieked the last words loud enough that Carrie privately thought that the town fire siren would have been given a good run for its money, had it turned on then. Carrie could have predicted what Momma would say, with a fair chance of accuracy; years of observation, and Momma's one-track mind, made it easy.

"I remember what the neighbor lady said about you, back when I was three...before the stones came. Remember?" Carrie leered. "She said you were a dirty old woman with a can of worms for a mind. She was exactly right. She had a pretty good way with words, didn't she?" Momma gaped, unable to believe her ears, as Carrie went on, meditatively: "There's only one way out of the Program, once you're in it, Momma. The only way out – and the way I took – is to kill your enemies. And that's just what I did."

Momma stared at Carrie. "Go to your closet. Go to your closet and pray for the children you killed..." she finally managed to whisper. "You're a murderer! A murderer!"

"Oh, no, I'm not, Momma," Carrie answered. "Killing in self-defense, or when you're forced to, isn't murder, and neither is killing in the Program. Murder is unlawful killing, Momma, and the Program's legal...legal as church on Sunday!" Carrie reached down the front of her blouse. "And I'm not going to the closet. Not any more. Not ever again."

When Carrie's hand came out of her blouse, she was holding the derringer. It was cocked, and she pointed it at her mother. "You never did think very clearly, did you, Momma?" Carrie asked, her voice almost sad. "If you really think I'm a murderer...what makes you think that getting in my face is a good idea?"

Momma screamed, and lunged at Carrie. The derringer's report was very loud in that confined space, and Momma reeled backward, the back of her head missing and a nasty hole blown right between her eyes. Carrie nodded. .45 Colt hollow-point worked very well.

Carrie stared down at her mother's body, not feeling even a tiny bit of sorrow; years and years of Momma's mistreatment had burned any love she had ever felt for the woman clean out of Carrie's soul. She put the derringer back in her bra once she was sure that Momma was dead. She could see Momma's brains, splattered over the linoleum floor behind her, and she could tell by the smell that Momma's bowels and bladder had cut loose, just like people had done on Matinicus when they were dead.

"You didn't listen, Momma," Carrie said, her voice loud in the sudden stillness. "I won the Program...by killing all my enemies. Now all my enemies are dead."

Paying the cooling corpse of Margaret White no further mind, Carrie turned and went to her room. She collected her few pitiful keepsakes, looked around the bleak little chamber one last time, and shut the door, not looking back. Once she was out on the front porch, Carrie locked the door and walked down the walk to where the government limousine was waiting for her. She got in, and the car pulled away, taking her to her new life in Portland.

THE END

(Author's note: I don't own Carrie or Battle Royale; I am not Stephen King or Koushun Takami. I would like to beg the forgiveness of the residents of Matinicus Island, Maine, for any inadvertent distortions or deliberate destruction I inflicted on their lovely island home; one day I hope to visit it and see for myself how much I got right and how much I got wrong. I did all the research I could, but being well over a thousand miles away and in a small town made it much more difficult, even with the Internet. I would also like to thank my readers, and beg that you review and give me feedback on this story.)