Survival Of The Fittest

Scrape

Scrape

Scrape

Scrape

In hindsight, Shawn was starting to regret not stealing Calvin's shoes after all. Or at the very least ripped out his shoe laces, so that he actually had something ropelike to work with.

((Shawn Bellamy continued from Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature))

Instead, he had to make do with the tools the forest was offering them: Rocks, tree branches, trigs, leaves. He wished he knew more about how to make natural cordage, but unfortunately it wasn't a skill he ever thought to learn.

But, that didn't stop him and Bethany from making the most out of what they had at their disposal. Over the day's course they had built themselves a nifty little survival shelter, consisting of pretty much every long stick they could find propped up together and covered in leaves and moss, just about big enough for two. It wasn't much to brag about, but it did the trick.

At that time Shawn was chipping away at one of the leftover sticks they gathered together, trying to turn it into a makeshift spear of sorts. With nothing to bind the end, he had to make do with roughly sharpening it's point with a jagged rock, until it was nice and stabby. Again, nothing to brag about, but he figured it had to be beat the empty beer bottle he'd been wielding up to this point.

He sat back on a tree stump, looking up at the setting sun in the distance as he warmed himself by the campfire they set up. Jesus, had they really been at this all day? He supposed a day of not much happening beat a day of getting shot at, but he suspected that Bethany wanted to be a bit more proactive. God forbid, he didn't want to open up THAT conversation again, not after last night.

But, neither did he want to continue the awkward silence between them any longer.

"What do you think of this?" he asks her, lifting up his makeshift spear. "Think this'll be any good, or..."

[Bethany Lyon has no Great Plan.]

“Kitty Graves. Jezzie Stark. Janice Cresner.”

Bethany went about her work mostly in silence. She had nothing she wished to say to Shawn outside of businesslike discussion of their little project, but she did punctuate her pointed quiet with those three names every few minutes. The name Daenerys Todd had been in the announcement that morning, and it had reminded her of another Ms. Stark - Bethany hadn’t herself watched Game of Thrones, her parents disapproved of the sexual content, but the cultural footprint was inescapable. Beth knew Arya’s so-called prayer, the people whose names she wouldn’t forget until she crossed them off her list for good. So she set to drilling the names of those who’d killed more than once into her memory. She would know them. She would kill them if she got the chance.

“Kitty Graves. Jezzie Stark. Janice Cresner.”

Between the knowledge that 26 of her classmates were now dead, 9 at the hands of just 3 girls, and the grating task of putting her father’s wilderness training to use, Bethany was on a foul mood. On their hikes around Mount Washington or the Northeast Kingdom, they’d always had actual tents and actual firelighters, so while Bethany did know how to construct a bivouac in principle she’d never actually needed to make a good one in practice. Every small setback and snag ate at her resolve, making it harder and harder to resist the urge to drive her pickaxe through the whole accursed project.

But resist she did. She needed shelter. People had already frozen to death.

“Kitty Graves. Jezzie Stark. Ja… what?!”

The interruption was so minor. But Beth had held off snapping for long enough. She rounded on Shawn, scowling as she murmured ”Janice fucking Cresner.” under her breath to complete the trio.

“It’s… fine. If you plan on using it.”

Sigh.

No, that hadn’t been fair. Even if it had, she needed to be diplomatic. Her life very much could depend on it.

“Sorry.”

"...s'alright" he lied, uninterested in starting another argument. "With any luck I'll never have to put it to the test."

Shawn hadn't given the second announcement that much thought, beyond one name that he found himself mulling over for a while. Zhijuan, death via an adverse reaction to the gas, yet another example of how this entire operation was run by a bunch of fucking amateurs. He couldn't help but wonder if that was the girl he bumped into day 1, back at the research station. The one who started convulsing and throwing up blood everywhere. Would certainly explain a lot.

Otherwise, it seemed Corbs was still alive, which was good. Mostly. He couldn't deny that it would've made things more convenient in the long term if Abhishek had been more thorough.

Shawn sighed, leaning his spear up against a wall as he gazed into those flames. Much as he didn't want to dig up the past, he knew they couldn' ignore the elephant in the room forever.

"Look, about... Yesterday"

Bethany approached the fire, but stayed at somewhat of a distance from it for the time being. Downwind, she could still enjoy the waft of warmth, but stayed clear of the cinders and kept a comfortable distance from Shawn. She ran a hand through her hair, fruitlessly trying to keep it straight and neat despite the circumstances, before folding her arms under her chest and responding.

"What about it?"

She was willing, eager even, to be conciliatory. But old habits died hard, and Bethany wanted to let Shawn lead the conversation rather than offer more than he was looking for.

Shawn took a deep breath, wondering whether or not he should open with an apology, before deciding against it in the end.

"Look, I don't want to dig up... THAT conversation again. Whats done is done, and at the end of the day we both at least agree that mistakes were made."

He reached out for one of the broken sticks they were using as firewood, poking the embers before tossing it on to join the rest.

"What I do want to talk about is... What exactly should be our gameplan moving forward. What should we do if we bump into another Abhishek, or..."

He paused, clearing his throat. "God forbid, any of the people on that list of yours..."

(Wendy Kennedy, continued from Inland Empire)

Wendy trudged aimlessly through the forest. It was then she realized she had no idea where she was. After Daniel and Taylor ran off, Wendy became so deep in thought on what to do, she hadn’t noticed her surroundings changing. Last thing she remembered was staring at the corpse of Extreme Steve and thinking back to her life at home. She wanted to return. Return to her sisters, her parents, her favorite hobbies.

As she stopped and looked around, Wendy noticed what looked like a fire in the distance. She also realized how cold it had gotten. She needed to be warm, otherwise she’d freeze to death. She made her way closer to the flickering light as discreetly as possible. As she got closer, she could imagine the warmth of the flames. It felt very nice, like a blanket. The fire was just within reach. However, she then noticed two people from beyond her hiding spot in the behind the tree bark. One of them was familiar.

It was Shawn. One of the boys she met on the first day in the research station’s living quarters. Wendy wanted to greet him, but she spotted the makeshift spear he was wielding. She didn’t want to provoke him into attacking her, so she started to think up a peaceful enough way to get his attention. As for the girl Shawn was with, she wasn’t too familiar with her, and couldn’t tell if she was trustworthy. Regardless, Wendy decided muster up the courage and come out from the woods.

“Um, excuse me,” Wendy said, “How have you been?”

The gameplan.

Part of Beth wanted to put on her brave-and-tough face again, remind him that she’d told him what her plan was already. But even if she felt that now was an appropriate time for it, he was probably looking for something more specific and substantial than her purported desire to play judge, jury, and executioner for the wilful murderers among her peers.

No, he needed a strategy. They both did.

“Well. We’re two, for starters. I assume anyone that’s willingly killing already is alone. Not exactly an attractive personality trait.”

Bethany stepped closer to the fire, but a sound in the distance had her hesitate before continuing her train of thought. Probably just some of the wildlife, but even so, she changed course, shifting towards her bag - and more importantly, the weapon in it. Casting her eyes about the trees turned up no signs of threat.

“Ambush, bait and switch, plain ganging up, having an ally is an advantage that’s hard t…”

Nope. There was definitely someone else here. Bethany turned towards the source of the sound, only to spot a small girl approaching about as peaceably as one really could, given the circumstances.

“Oh, just fantastic.”

A sarcastic answer for what she judged a useless question. Beth kept her eye-roll internal, at least.

“I do believe they’ve taken us to the wrong ski resort, though.”

Beth wanted to go for her weapon. She didn’t recognise the newcomer, and though she was decently sure she wasn’t one of her four most-wanted, that didn’t make the other girl any less potentially dangerous. But sudden moves felt like a dangerous move: she had Shawn on hand, he could surely repel a small girl for long enough for Beth to arm herself.

Unless Wendy had a gun, in which case… well, no amount of pickaxe was going to ward off bullets. So Bethany made peace with staying unarmed for the time being.

Shawn nodded his head in agreement, though he barely had the chance to respond before a rustling in the bushes drew their attention.

Thankfully, it turned out to be a familiar face, Shawn letting out a sigh or relief when he realised it was Wendy of all people. Not someone he ever really expected to see again, but considering the circumstances of their last encounter he considered himself lucky she wasn't calling him out for ditching her back at the research station. 

"I recall the accommodation at Whiteface being a bit more... Accommodating, yeah" he added, chuckling softly as he casually pointed his spear towards the newcomer. Not in a threatening manner per say, more using it to emphasise his words as he made some quick introductions. "Wendy, say hello to Bethany." he continues, gesturing to his companion with that spear tip. 

"Bethany, Wendy. Bumped into her and a couple others day one, but we all ended up splitting off when some girl we thought was dead drew a knife and attacked us..."

He looked Wendy in the eyes. "Ain't that right? Take it you lost sight of Andrew and Pinkman too?"

“Hello,” Wendy said, waving her hand to Bethany.

From the sound of things, Bethany wasn’t too pleased to have her here. Still, Wendy tried to make a good first impression.

“Yeah,” she continued, “I’ve been wandering around these woods for the past day or so. I was with a couple new people when I found Steve’s body. Then we just kinda, separated after that.”

She thought back to Taylor and Daniel. Hopefully they were still okay.

“Do you mind if I stay here with you two?,” Wendy asked, “I’m pretty cold.”

Bethany returned the greeting with what could just barely be described as a wave. More of a slight twist of the wrist and half-hearted flexing of the fingers, like the reverse of turning a doorknob.

After yesterday, it would truly be the height of hypocrisy to not share the fire with Wendy. Nonetheless, Beth didn't really want to.

Unfortunately for her, the quick checklist of remotely legitimate reasons to turn the other girl away was coming up quite empty: not visibly threatening or hostile, no kills to her name, Shawn evidently knew her, she was asking politely, hell, she'd even probably been pretty traumatised seeing a corpse up close. Even Bethany hadn't really had that displeasure yet. Only one question left to ask before she gave her assent.

"Are you armed?"

She didn't relish the thought of being caught unaware.

Shawn pondered that offer, fumbling the spear in his hands. Like Bethany he wasn't too keen on the idea of having too many bodies around that campfire, but neither did he have much reason to turn her away. He was fairly certain at this point that Wendy was harmless - not to mention naive, which was a bonus - so it wasn't as if he was afraid of her making off with their things during the night. She didn't strike him as the kind of person who would even entertain such an idea.

Himself, on the other hand...

For now Shawn simply shrugged. He suspected that Wendy likely still had that shield-gauntlet thing he saw her with the other day, but opted to let her respond to Bethany's query herself.

“Aside from my assigned weapon, no,” Wendy said to Bethany, “It’s some shield-gauntlet thing.”

Wendy waited for the go ahead to sit down and enjoy the warmth of the fire.

It certainly didn’t sound made up, and Shawn could presumably vouch, since the two had evidently met up previously. Which left essentially no excuse to turn her away besides selfishness or paranoia.

Maybe if she weren’t fresh from passionately arguing against the latter two when she was herself in Wendy’s position, she’d be more inclined to use one or both of those regardless. But Bethany wasn’t of a mind to be hypocritical. Besides, hadn’t she set out to do good, protect good people as much as punish the bad ones? In the absence of any double-killers to test her mettle upon - or Aracelis Fuentes, the one single-killer she couldn’t extend the benefit of the doubt to - what possible excuse did she have to not at least share the fire with an innocent?

“Well then. Make yourself at home. Welcome to Base Camp Lyon.”

Shawn cleared his throat. "Funny, last I checked we were calling it Fort Bellamy..."

He forced another chuckle, trying to ease the tension as he gestured for their guest to take a seat. Not that Wendy came across as though her guard was up or anything, but a bit of levity never hurt.

"You said you were with some people, right?" he asked, laying his spear down as he reached for his bag, slowly unzipping it to retrieve a quarter chunk of bread to tuck into. "Mind if I ask who? Been keeping an eye out for a couple folk, Corbin and Matthew, so was wondering if you'd happened across either of 'em?"

“Thank you,” said Wendy with a sigh of relief.

Wendy walked up and set her bag down beside her. She crouched down and reached her hands out to the fire, warming them up. Shawn asked her who she was with.

“I was with Taylor, the one with green hair,” said Wendy, “And Daniel Ozanne.”

She unzipped her bag and brought out her emergency blanket, laid it down, and sat on it.

“After we found Steve, Taylor went off on their own,” she continued, “Daniel followed them. I waited for them to come back, but they didn’t return.”