Survival Of The Fittest

Beatrice shrank back a little - not enough to force her to step back into the bloody heap behind her, but enough to make such a big girl seem incredibly small - as both Jessica and Rebekah gave their disapproval to her suggestion in turn. She had rather figured that they’d be unwilling to go back to the location they’d just come from; she didn’t think she wanted to return to that previous office building any time soon, after all, although it sounded like in the other two’s case they physically couldn’t get back there.

It always just stung though, getting dismissed or turned down, no matter how gentle. She didn’t blame either of them for it. It was something that happened, and something that had to happen, every now and then. But it still made her feel dreadful, no matter how necessary.

Rebekah retrieving the map from her pocket gave her an excuse to pull herself away from the snow, that even now felt as though it was piling itself up even further and looming above her. All just in her head, of course. But that was where she spent the majority of her time anyway. She walked across to the other girl, slow and gentle, axe held tight, bag pressed against her back.

She looked in the direction Rebekah was pointing, even though the only thing she was able to see, as her gaze traveled up the girl’s arm and along her pointer finger, was more trees. She found herself nodding slightly, as gentle a motion as she could manage, still so very alert to how her body moved, making certain she didn’t do anything that might have been seen as ‘sudden’.

Had she come from the town? There had been a lot of buildings around her when she’d walked out of the office. It felt like a logical answer to her, and while she wasn’t opposed to returning there someday, that day was definitely not today. Not while there was still such an uneasy atmosphere settled around that building. The ‘research station’ sounded far too cold and clinical for Beatrice’s liking. It gave her the creeps thinking about it, and it was somewhere she actively wanted to avoid so long as she could help it.

So that just left this trapping camp place.

“That sounds good to me,” Beatrice mumbled, still nodding her assent. “I like walking. But I haven’t really had anywhere to shelter in since I woke up, and…”

She fell silent, looking at her feet, before she spoke up once more, voice somehow louder than it had been prior.

“We should go over there as soon as we can. I think so anyway.”

((Skipped with permission))

Rebekah nodded. "Yeah... there's no telling how long the sun will be up, and it's not gonna be safe to travel here after dark. The woods get really confusing at night, and it's easy to get lost."

She turned back to check Jess' reaction, and stopped. Beatrice, and Beatrice's axe, loomed large in Rebekah's peripheral. The other human was getting really quite close now. Aggressing on her personal space, is what her self-defense instructors would call it. She knew, or at least thought that she knew, that Beatrice wasn't a threat. But self-defense training wasn't about knowing, it was about honing instincts so that you were ready to act before you needed to. Her hand wanted to stray from the map, hover towards the pocket where her bear spray was - where it was supposed to be. Where it wasn't anymore. She kept her hand still.

This was what the kidnappers wanted. They wanted everyone to be nervous around each other, to be on edge. Get people riled up, so that they'd make the wrong move, reach for the gun at the wrong time, and then... and then there'd be another bloody mound in the snow. Rebekah wasn't going to make that kind of mistake.

She put on a smile, then looked at Beatrice and Jess in turn. "All right, well... let's grab our stuff and get going!"

She shouldered the gun, being deliberate and careful with her movements. And everything was fine. Nobody freaked out. Just three girls, heading for a campout in the woods. Totally normal stuff. Just three girls holding deadly weapons, out for a cookout, on an island with about a dozen murderers.

Yeah, this was going to be fine.

((Rebekah Hayes and Beatrice Briggs continued elsewhere))

The trapping camp was decided on. Jessica had no thoughts on the choice. As long as it was close by and they could rest and sleep there she didn't care about the rest of the details. Rebekah was right about them needing to move quickly though. The temperature would drop with the sun and if they were still stuck in the forest then they would be in a bad situation. It would have been possible to make a shelter but trying to do that in the dark would have been tough and it wouldn't have been warm.

As Beatrice and Rebekah got their things together Jessica again looked toward the mound. A myriad of faces danced through her mind, each one potentially hidden under the red sheet of snow. She grimaced and turned her face away from the other two to spit some bile onto the ground.

She made a note to ask Rebekah for the gun back at some point then stood up and stretched out her legs.

They had more walking to do.

((Jessica Romero continued elsewhere...))