Survival Of The Fittest

Okay, she was a little skeptical. Elodie raised an eyebrow a bit at Juanita’s explanation. Didn’t help that like… there was a little on her face, too.

Elodie lifted her hand to her own face to make a rubbing motion, as if demonstrating to Juanita.

“Oh, sometimes… er, let’s just say that I watched some movies I honestly shouldn’t? When I was younger. Like The Wall when I was nine. It’s a good movie! Just… not the best for kiddies. My sister’s really into stuff like that, though. Scary things. I can totally relate.”

She kept the shank close.

“Anyways… uh, we’re not that far away, I don’t think. It wouldn’t take too long to get to the research station.”

She looked towards the snowmobile. She wondered for a moment if she should bring it up. It... might be useful?

“I have my ways, though.”

Crap!

Juanita rubbed her sleeve over her face, as if wiping away the blood could somehow make that little bit of awkwardness unhappen. Stupid Fred, getting his stupid blood everywhere and wrecking everything.

Elodie continued talking, and Juanita tried to latch on, anything to find some common ground that'd overshadow the blood and everything it might imply. "The Wall..."

Crud, which movie was that? Wasn't there one about monsters, and they were building the Great Wall of China to keep them out, or something? Was it that one? Or was it that weird German one about the woman in the time bubble with all the animals? It'd certainly fit the lonely soloist camper motif that Elodie had going here. Crap, she didn't know how to respond to this, and she'd blown the window for a meaningful reply... Elodie was talking about the research station now, and... huh. She was looking over at something that Juanita couldn't quite make out.

What did she mean, she had her ways?

Juanita looked over in the same direction. There was something she couldn't quite make out, mechanically straight lines standing out from the crooked scribbles that nature drew in. She took a few steps towards it.

"Whoa. Is that..."

“Oh yeah. It was… It’s all I have of Olive now.”

Elodie fidgeted slightly.

“I was with her, you know? When she passed. I haven’t let go of it, you probably understand why.”

That, and useful’s useful. Olive’s grave was still nearby, but she doubted that it was left intact. She didn’t bury far enough, she felt.

"I know the feeling."

It was hard not to feel a small pang of jealousy. She had John's knife, still. Probably should have let one of the others take it, spread the armory out a little bit, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to give it up. But she didn't have a story like Elodie's. See this knife? It's all I have left of my... well, I guess you'd call him my boyfriend. He stabbed me in the face with it, and I killed him afterwards. He used his last breath to tell me I'm gonna burn in Hell for all eternity, too. I used it to cut the throat of a bully who made my life Hell in middle school. Funny how things work out.

"It's... It's good that you were with her, at least. So she wasn't alone."

The words felt empty. Looking for bright spots and small consolations in the deaths of their friends and classmates felt small and pathetic, a veneer of positivity so thin that all it did was highlight the misery beneath it. But, like, what else was there to say?

Her gaze returned to the snowmobile. So that was what Elodie meant by "ways," huh? A working snowmobile on an island like this. The perfect way to get around without wasting energy, or flee from attackers.

"Does it actually work? Like, do you have gas for it and stuff? Because if so, I could really use a ride."

“Ah… might not be the safest thing, you know? There’s been a lot of snowfall, haha. Vision is important.”

It was true. Elodie wasn’t the biggest expert on snowmobiles. And the snowmobile seemed like a hardy lass, but even she had her limits. There was a lot of snow, which logically meant a lot of extra work that might make it harder even with a snowmobile that would break things up due to the heat and movement. Lots of powder, which can impair vision, for one.

And, uh…

The memory of Olive still stuck with her. Elodie fidgeted. She didn’t want a repeat. Though, she had to admit, at least Juanita understood the sentiment of 'keeping this thing because it was associated with someone else.'

Juanita looked out at the snow. Elodie made a disconcertingly good point. The sky wasn't dark yet, but it was certainly dimming. Between the thick cloud cover and the heavy snow, nightfall would come like a blanket tossed over a birdcage. It wasn't exactly ideal weather for a ride.

But she couldn't leave Colm. Not after what'd happened this morning. He'd probably think she'd abandoned him, left him to stew in his emotions until he rotted. And, she definitely wanted to be there, in person, to give her side of it when her name came up twice on the announcements tomorrow.

So... she'd have to walk. Alone, in conditions that were too miserable for a snowmobile, with a heavy sack of weapons on her back. That prospect had seemed plenty miserable before, but now that she knew that there was an easier way, it sounded downright insane.

On the subject of weapons, well... she did have enough to take the snowmobile by force, and then some.

No. What? No. She wasn't a monster, for crying out loud! Where had that thought even come from? Just left over adrenaline from the fighting today, probably.

No, she wouldn't do that. She'd wait.

"Okay. Okay. What if... What if we go at first light? Maybe the snow will have stopped by then. I have some extra food, too, if yoyee hungry..."

((Timeskip approved))

“That sounds like a good idea.”

---

So, uh. Maybe having Juanita around wasn’t as horrible an idea as she thought? Like, yeah, having someone who killed people before right next to you wasn’t typically the best idea. It meant that she had to be careful. She’d kept a close eye on her. It helped that she had a lot to talk about. Elodie knew about a lot of things, not just horror movies. But also high fantasy and dark fantasy.

Do you know about The Dark Crystal? There’s a bit in it where the Skeksis skekSil, the Chamberlain, who was cast out by the other Skeksis, meets up with the heroes. The movie lets you think that, hey, maybe this mistreated villain is about to become one of the good guys, maybe redeem himself? But then he betrays the group and brings them to the other Skeksis. He never wanted to help them, he wanted to catch them so he could regain favor.

Do you know about Coraline? The Other Mother gave the children everything they could want. Sometimes Elodie would wonder what the Other Mother would give her. But getting things from the Other Mother came with a steep cost. She wanted something to love, or perhaps something to eat. So they had to sew buttons in their eyes, and she’d do everything to make sure you got those buttons.

Anyways, she was on her guard still.

And they didn’t just talk about Coraline and The Dark Crystal and The Blair Witch Project! Elodie brought up the movie Bad Moon, which was honestly… the weirdest premise for a werewolf movie ever? She was still trying to figure out how she felt about it. That dog went through an entire character arc. There hadn’t been that many recent werewolf movies, she realized. Like, yeah, they were still a thing, but they weren’t really that big a thing nowadays unless she was missing something. Which sucked, because she remembered watching Trick R Treat with Bridgette and she liked the werewolves in those.

Eventually, they had to sleep since it was dark out. Juanita offered to keep watch, and Elodie, uh, relented. So she went into the tent. Elodie kept her eyes open.

But eventually, her eyes had to close.

Juanita watched Elodie carefully, paying close attention to the rise and fall of her breathing. You could always tell when someone had nodded off, when they stopped paying attention to their breathing and let their subconscious take the wheel.

Juanita liked Elodie. She was fun to talk to, and she had this really neat passion in her voice when talked about something she really liked. It was infectious, in a good way. Juanita had only heard of a few of the things she mentioned (Coraline was an excellent film, barring the stage show with the disgusting old ladies. Great metaphor for temptation and how it lures you in and slowly robs you of everything) but she'd stayed engaged, asking questions and listening intently while Elodie talked. The conversation was just that good.

In a very real sense, this time with Elodie had been the first genuine conversation she'd had with another person since they'd set foot on this island. Talks with the legion had been stilted, focused around the mission - the next goal, the next target, the next plan. There hadn't been a lot of room for levity, under the circumstances. And talking to Colm, with every sentence wrapped in some form of inscrutable Irish irony, wasn't much easier. Talking with Elodie was breezy, natural. For a while, they were just two girls needing out and sharing their interests. And that was nice.

In another life, Juanita and Elodie could have been friends; it was a shame that they'd wound up in this one.

She'd seen the glint between Elodie's fingers right away. She'd been subtle about taking whatever it was out of her dress pocket and transferring it into her bag, waiting long enough between each motion to make them seem unconnected. And if Juanita hadn't been watching out of the corner of her eye, she'd probably have missed it all together.

The key to the snowmobile. What else could it have been? Elodie would have kept it on her person, but that also meant she know that that was the first place Juanita would look. So she'd attempted a little switcheroo.

Juanita crept over to Elodie's bag, leaving a silent eternity between each footstep. Her eyes never left Elodie's slumbering form, watching for any pause in the rhythm, any change at all to betray the other girl's awakening. Crouching wasn't an option with the knee brace, so she bent at the waist and let her fingertips roam the canvas like a blind spider until she found the zipper. With infinite care, she slid it back tooth by tooth until she could slip her hand inside. After tracing the edges of the med kit and water bottles, she found it lying flat at the bottom, its ridges pressing against her finger like a miniature mountain range.

And then she was up, tiptoeing away, with her heart beating a samba in her eardrums. She wanted to break into a run, get it over with, but she forced herself to maintain her glacial pace until she was next to the snowmobile, barely visible as an angular patch of black that was slightly less black than the black around it. Only then did she risk turning on her flashlight, sweeping the machine for a keyhole.

She'd bring it back, she told herself. She'd go find Colm, she'd sort it all out, and she'd come back and return the key with profuse apologies. Not stealing, just borrowing. That was all.

The keyhole was a black abyss. She shoved the key inside, with some amount of difficulty. Twisted, bracing for the sound of the engine to shatter the silence.

Her fingers met unexpected resistance. The key refused to turn.

“... That’s my house key.”

Elodie, it turned out, wasn’t so out after all. A few soft shuffling noises from the tent after Juanita left, followed by slow crunches in the snow shortly after, foreshadowed her being awake. The flashlight made an arc toward Juanita, illuminating what she was doing.

She fished out a different set of keys with her other hand, frowning.

“Want me to toss it so nobody gets it?”

Juanita bit her lip. Shame burned on her cheeks and neck.

It was hard to say what felt worse - the very obvious fact that Elodie had switched out the keys specifically because she didn't trust her, or the fact that Juanita had just made it eminently clear that she was correct to do so.

The words "I was going to bring it back" choked and died in her throat. No way would Elodie believe that. It was impossible to blame her.

And now she held all the cards. No way could Juanita lunge at her fast enough to keep her from throwing the key out into the blizzard where it would never be found. It was over. She'd been tested, and she had failed, big time.

"I'm... I'm sorry."

She turned and ran off into the woods.

((Juanita Reid continues elsewhere))

Elodie stood for a few moments, just watching the spot where Juanita was when she found her. She put the key away, rubbing her face.



She knew she shouldn’t have trusted her.

They either leave.

Or they use you.

Or they’d do both.

Like Juanita.


Trusting her was a risky game from the start, knowing what she did and seeing the blood. And things briefly worked out, at least for a while. But then, if you open up, there’s a chance that something gets inside and it’ll be hard to remove when you need it to. Then, you’d be stuck for a while. And it’ll all be for nothing.

It was a common pattern. People enter and leave your life. And then you’re alone. It was a hard task letting yourself be genuine because then people will use that against you, even if you open up even slightly. So she hid away emotionally sometimes, hid how she really felt, and sure, she made friends at school, laughed and played and acted like the little goblin she was. Like, she acted like a fantasy guard first thing when Ilya—

She put a hand to her mouth.

If they don’t use you, if they don’t leave you, they will be torn from you.

Like Ilya. Like Tana. Like Monsieur Perez. Like Mr. Ramos. Like Millie. Like Olive.

Elodie felt an urge, an emotional urge, but she hid it. Just smiled.

Don’t let them see you are afraid.

And she went back inside the tent.

---

She didn’t sleep at all this time, even as it got even darker. Elodie sat upright, thinking to herself. She usually tried to be cautious, but sometimes she just… spaced out. She breathed in and out. She drew a sigil in the snow, just outside the tent. She finally finished her tea. And… even then, she was tense.

So that’s why she was zoning out, despite knowing it was a bad idea.

Then, she heard noises. Crunching snow noises in the distance.

Maybe it was an animal. Maybe it was a cryptid, like what Olive liked to talk about. Maybe it was Bigfoot. Bigfoot hanging out in the woods, just paying her a visit. God, she wished. She doubted it. She wasn’t that lucky. It was maybe Jacob, maybe Juanita. Maybe something else entirely.

She briefly crawled out of the tent, making sure the fire was out. Pure darkness. Then, she slid back into the tent. The flashlight was off, too.

Elodie laughed a little nervously. But she slid the shank out. She was very still.

It was getting closer.

Closer.

And closer.

Then, the tent fell on her.

((...elsewhere being the same place, just much, much later.))

Juanita really did like Elodie. And that meant that she wasn't going to kill her. Not if she didn't have to.

That was pretty restrained of her, given the circumstances. After all, it was night time. Pretty darn dark. Sending someone out into a snowstorm in the dead of night was exactly the same as telling them to screw off and die.

Which, yeah. She'd earned that. She'd tried to borrow - not steal, borrow. She was going to return it, okay? - Elodie's last memory of Olive, without permission, and she'd been sneaky, and she'd gotten caught. Actions have consequences, etcetera. Couldn't blame Elodie for telling her to go die in a blizzard after that.

But Juanita had no intention of freezing to death out here.

So she'd spent the last several hours waiting, a ways away. Wrapped herself in her emergency blanket and her towel and waited, there in the darkness, watching Elodie's tent, listening to her movements. If Elodie had been prepared for Juanita to steal the key, she'd thought, then Elodie would obviously be prepared for escalation. She hadn't taken the obvious escape route - the snowmobile - which meant that she was either too scared to drive it in this weather, or she was confident that she'd be able to withstand whatever attack Juanita could muster. Which had meant that Juanita needed to get creative.

Elodie was small. No good weapon that Juanita had observed. So, Elodie wouldn't fight out in the open, not after she'd seen what Juanita was packing. But Elodie was smart. She hadn't just built a tent, she'd camouflaged it - well enough that Juanita had walked right by it the first time. She hid keys, and threatened mutual destruction. She thought defensively. So, what would Elodie do when she heard the things that go bump in the night? She wouldn't be like every horror movie character and investigate the noise by lonesome, oh no. Elodie would do the smart thing. She'd hide, and avoid drawing attention to herself. Make the monster fight her on her own turf.

But what Elodie didn't know is that stick forts were very, very much Reid turf. Juanita and her brothers had built stick forts as a kid, lots and lots of them. And the thing about them was that they were never, never more than one good hit away from toppling. All you had to do was give them a good push, and the whole thing would sag into a shambling pile of matchsticks.

In her case, Elodie had the whole thing supported by a branch in the crook of a tree. And all it took was for Juanita to stick her naginata pole there and then give it a quick hard shove like this, and- whumphf! the whole thing came down on top of Elodie, blanket, branches, and all.

She stomped over, and grabbed what looked like an elbow sticking out of the wreckage. "I don't want to hurt you," she growled. "Just give me the key."

Elodie felt her arm being grabbed, and she was lifted up out of the wreckage.

She looked Juanita straight in the eyes.

And snarled one word.

“No.”

And with her other hand, she swung the shank towards her. Being left-handed had its perks.

Juanita had her hands full - one on the naginata, one on Elodie's arm. And in the darkness she couldn't possibly have seen the small blade coming in time to dodge it. It hit her on the shoulder, slashing a long tear in Fred's sweater, but only a small puncture through the layer beneath. A lancet of pain told her that the shiv's tip had found her flesh, but only just.

Her lips pressed into a thin line. You shouldn't have done that.

She punctuated the thought with a shove, flinging Elodie back down into the wreckage. Both hands were on the naginata now.

this - that famous photo of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the flagpole at a perfect forty-five degree angle as the soldiers stab it down into the dirt with brutal, crushing force.

So, do you know one movie Elodie had mixed thoughts on? It’s… technically another werewolf movie. It’s called The Company of Wolves. She first saw it as a child, then two times during quarantine. She still didn’t know how exactly she felt about it. Now that she was older, she understood what it was trying to say, and it was a visually impressive movie! It’s just… there were some questionable elements to it that made it hard for her to say she liked it unambiguously.

But some parts always stood out to her. Like the pregnant enchantress who would turn her rich ex, his bride, and the wedding reception into wolves, saying that they were really no better than the wolves in the forest. Then, she’d use their howls as a lullaby to lull her baby to sleep.

Another part that always stood out to her was the last vignette. A she-wolf crawled out of a wall, from the underworld. And, she prowled the street. And someone shot her. And she ran, and she ran, until she found a church. The clergyman answered the door, and asked one question as she transformed into a naked, crying woman, curled up in fear.

“Are you God's work, or the Devil's?”

She didn’t respond.

But it didn’t matter what she was. He helped her anyways, and she was touched. But, one day, during the night, she crawled back into the well, to rejoin the underworld. Why? Because… she didn’t belong outside of it.

It’s a metaphor, see? About growing up. When people grow up and lose their innocence, they can’t keep it. Like the she-wolf, an adult doesn’t belong in the world of children, and they can only briefly visit but never stay. At least, that was her read!

When Elodie first showed up at John Endecott, she kind of… wanted to be a kid for a bit. So she joined clubs, made friends, even if it was hard to do so and fear lurked in the back of her head. She always knew she had little time left. If she or Bridgette had made it to eighteen without being adopted… she knew what awaited them when they aged out. She saw it before.

She didn’t want to grow up so soon. Not because she didn’t enjoy responsibility, but she just… wanted what everyone else had. Friends, family, a home. And for a while, she got it!

But someone like her had to return to the underworld eventually. She just didn’t expect it to be so soon.

---

In the present, Elodie lifted herself up from the wreckage of her tent, still swinging the shank. But she dropped it. A pain filled her torso.

She looked down, seeing the blade inside her.

And she felt… woozy.

She fell.

And closed her eyes.

Student #128 Elodie Hailey- ELIMINATED