Survival Of The Fittest

((June Madison continues from keep looking forward on paths sideways))

The face of a dead girl stared from the snow.

June stared back.

Her eyes jittered all over, occasionally pacing over the streaks of red snow, tiger's blood slushy, she thought, but they mostly came back to the face, chilled by the sub-freezing morning temperatures.

A fish in an outside freezer.

"Oh god." She gulped loudly, swallowed down the vomit.

The two had stepped out following the most recent announcements, and made a beeline for the first building they saw. June had gone ahead, wanted to scout for any dangers. This is what she found.

They were bound to find a body sooner or later, but Medea... she'd spend an entire day feeling bad about stepping on an ant.

She turned back, shouted over to her companion.

"Don't look!"

((Medea Parth continued from keep looking forward on paths sideways))

Another morning, another announcement of lost souls.

Still no K.

She was still thankful her wayward friend was still out there, somewhere, and was safe. Maybe he had found himself in a group and was looking for her and June. Maybe he was working on trying to escape. She wasn’t sure, but every second that ticked by reminded her that they were all running out of time. They were finally in the big set of buildings she saw on the map. Now they just had to find what they were looking for, which… she wasn’t sure what.

She had all sorts of imaginary scenarios of MacGuyvering her way out of this, but the reality of the situation needed more practical applications. She wasn’t even sure what she would find. She would have to work with whatever tools she could get her hands on, which may not be enough.

She watched as June ran on ahead as they trudged through the snow, when June came to a complete stop. She watched as her friend turned around and called back, telling her not to look. Medea frowned as she continued her approach.

“Why? What’s wrong?” She asked as she closed the distance. As she drew closer, she moved to look past June.

What she saw…

She went pale.

Her eyes widened.

Her mind and body going completely still.

Blood rushed through June's head again. She felt light-headed, like she was about to faint, and yet at the same time, the heat within her spiked.

She wasn't supposed to look.

She rushed over to Medea, and gripped her shoulder—why was she so mad?—held her shoulder, yanked her—she should've fucking done this in the first place—pulled her a meter or three from the danger—her name was Eden—the body.

She grabbed the other shoulder, made Medea face her.

"ARE YOU O"—she shook her head rapidly, get it together, get it together—"are you okay?"

In, out, in, out. June's eyes drifted down to her hands, realized her knuckles were white.

"I'm sorry."

She lightened her grip.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

((Olive Mayo continued from The Hunting Of The Snark))

They hadn't found Millie.

It was a difficult trail. There were lots of rocks. It was slippery and dangerous. The path of destruction was so extreme that there was no hope. Millie was obviously dead. It was tragic, but there was nothing they could do. They would continue the quest in her memory. They moved on.

Millie's name was not on the announcements that just played.

Well, once they found a ride, they could go back for her. It would be easier and faster. If they turned around now, at the end of their journey, they would just waste more precious time.

It wasn't just excuses.

Olive peeped around the side of the building. Luckily, there was a distraction. The door on the side was shut tight, with ice caked all around it. Better to check the other sides before forcing it. Except, there were also people.

Looking at a body.

Olive ducked back. She puffed out a big cloud.

"I see people," she said.

"They might've killed someone."

((Elodie Hailey continued from The Hunting of the Snark))

Elodie was still thinking about stories.

One that came to mind was Neverending Story. There was a scene where the Rock-Biter stared at his hands in horror.

They look like big good strong hands, don’t they? That was what he said. He talked about how he tried to save his friends from The Nothing, but…he couldn’t. Everyone– the little man with his racing snail, the Nighthob, even the stupid bat– were ripped out of his hands, and he blamed himself. Atreyu, too, blamed himself, because he couldn’t have stopped it from happening. They were big, good, strong hands, and yet, the Rock-Biter couldn’t do anything, and Atreyu couldn’t either. So the Rock-Biter waited for The Nothing to take him too.

… It was weird, but she kind of looked at her own hands a bit. They weren’t big and strong and good like the Rock-Biter’s, but she could sort of relate to him right now.

She’d been spacing out a bit until Olive spoke up, and she ducked as well.

“People?” she hissed quietly. "Who did they kill?"

She touched the shiv inside her pocket again, wondering if she could stab someone with it if need be. That was one of the reasons why she made it, right? People who were dangerous, cutting things that needed to be cut like rope and plants and maybe animals…

But then, they had killed. Elodie had never ran into anybody who killed that she knew of. But Tana flashed into her brain, and Monsieur Perez, and Mr. Ramos, and what could have likely been Millie’s last moments.

She sucked in a breath.

And kept her face straight.

Don’t let them see you are afraid.

Medea was snapped from her stupor as June painfully gripped her shoulders and pulled her away from the body. Her face cringed in pain as June’s grip tightened on her and yelled at her from a few inches away. Medea whimpered, turning her head way from June, frightened by the sudden anger directed towards her.

Even as June lightened her grip and apologized, she couldn’t help but feel scared. First seeing a dead body, then her friend manhandling her and yelling at her…

Was she okay?

She breathed out, a cloud of mist trailing upward as hot breath met the cold winter air.

She wasn’t sure if she had been okay this whole time.

She certainly put on a brave face, tried to stay positive, and kept in mind the bigger picture. A bigger picture that seemed to be out of reach and with its distance growing every passing day. Muddled by all the little pictures. She was able to hold it together for so long…

She thought about Eden. The first actual body she’d encountered this whole time she’d been on the island. She supposed it was simply an inevitability, but she couldn’t help but feel bad about it all. Like she was somehow responsible. She knew it wasn’t actually her fault, but maybe if she got here sooner or if she had stayed longer with Juanita Reid… Maybe Eden Glass would still be alive.

Eden Glass… Medea couldn’t say she was close to her, but she made an active attempt to know the people she went to school with. Eden… She liked video games and photography. And now she is gone. So many have passed away now. A multitude of stories. A multitude of songs. Each once full of life, of laughter, of misery, of hate… All gone. It was one thing to hear about it over the announcements, but another to experience the results.

The first day on that mountain with June… She saw the bigger picture. Had this grand idea of what to do. But that big picture became muddled. It was hard to see it through a pile of corpses.

Was she okay?

“No,” Medea said, voice cracking. Her mouth felt incredibly dry and had an acidic, metallic taste lingering on the back of her tongue. “No, I-I don’t think I am.”

June heard Medea whimpering and recoiled, let go completely. She looked at her hands, puffs of air rapidly leaving her mouth with each exhale.


In the 14th century, Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, journeyed to Cairo.

It was said that Mali was the closest thing to El Dorado that ever existed, according to her eighth-grade history teacher. When the then-king of Mali, Mansa Musa, went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in the 14th century, he and his entourage of 60,000 men happened to pass by the city of Cairo. He and each of his men brought with them four pounds of gold each, to give as charity to the poor and fellow pilgrims they happened to encounter.

And with his extreme generosity, he spent enough gold to cause a decade of hyperinflation in Egypt.


Apologies were not a finite resource. June could say 'sorry' a million times if she wanted, and she did. But, every time she said the word, its value lessened and lessened, until she was reduced to throwing pennies at her problems.

But she couldn't resist herself. That had always been part of her problem. She exploded on impulse, but she also tried to clean up the debris on impulse, like it mattered. Because she had to clean up, she had to fix it.

So, she grabbed Medea again, this time in a gentle embrace, and settled her head into her shoulder, held her, and she recklessly spent her sorry's.

"I don't know."

Olive's head moved around the side of the building again. The two were hugging now. She faintly heard words pass between them, but couldn't say what they were. The body on the ground didn't move.

"I can't tell," Olive said. "Maybe they just found it?"

She leaned out another time.

Those two seemed preoccupied. Maybe they weren't paying attention.

Olive took slow and careful steps around the corner of the building, forgetting to explain her plan to Elodie. It was simple. While they were distracted, she would scout.

She walked over the ground, looking at the others and then back in front of her, step by step. Then a step found a patch of invisible ice.

Olive's sneaker shot across the ice. She yelped loudly, stumbled two steps forward, and caught herself against the door of the garage, which she now saw was partially open. It was too dark inside to see clearly, but Olive wasn't looking that way for long anyways.

Her head turned and she stared at the other two, wide eyes behind her glasses.

Oops, she fell.

Elodie bit her lip. Okay, so how can she save this situation? She had no idea who the people were, if they were armed or not. She continued to touch the shank in her pocket.

A lot of things about surviving really came down to quick thinking. About how to say the right thing at the right time. About how to do the right thing at the right time. Presuming for a sec that Olive is completely correct in that they made the corpse, that meant they were dangerous, and should be treated as such. If they saw Olive on the ground like this, she was easy prey.

However, if they saw she was with someone else…

Might make things a little trickier. After all, predators sometimes go after the easy ones, the ones by themselves, rather than the entire herd.

So…

Elodie stepped out, waving.

“Hey there! We’re just passing through, don’t mind us!”

She knelt down to help Olive, but not without keeping an eye on them for what they did next. She did not try to look at the corpse.

June pulled her in again, repeating apologies over and over again. Medea moved her arms and embraced her friend again. She sniffled, tears welling in her eyes as the dam of emotion she’d been trying to keep up started to crack. She didn’t know what to do anymore. She had an idea but now she doubted herself. June was holding her and saying sorry, and after a few times the apologies started to become background noise as Medea became lost in her thoughts.

She was scared.

Very scared.

Not so much from dying, but more about what she will lose. June had been with her, but for how much longer before something happened? What about K? They still haven't found him after all this time. Then there was everyone at home… Seeing Eden’s corpse had shook these fears from their nestled cage in the back of her mind and out to the forefront.

She was afraid she'd lose the people she cared about. She knew on some level that may happen while on the island. She knew that sometimes you lose people you care about, and that you’ll never get to see them again. But the worst part, she felt, was that she may lose them and never get the chance to apologize for letting them down.

There was a sound nearby, and Medea pried herself from June to turn towards it. Two people stood near the garage door — Olive Mayo and Elodie Hailey. Olive was on the ground, looking at them wide-eyed while Elodie greeted them as she tried to help Olive up. Medea regarded them curiously for a moment, though completely quiet. She was feeling tired, emotionally drained in the moment, unable to really muster the energy to even greet them properly as she normally might have.

She looked from them back down to the corpse of Eden. She sniffled, tears staining her face. She shook her head, trying to clear the intrusive thoughts that were still creeping into her head.

She couldn’t do this. Not right now, anyway.

She stepped away from June, turning away from everyone and walking back the way she came.

She couldn’t do this right now. Right now, she needs to think and reflect.

((Medea Parth continued in Ego Te Absolvo...))

She didn't even answer. Not even a word. Her sorry's fell on deaf ears.

June felt sick. She was cleaning, but the mess wasn't going away. It was happening, she'd broken things for good.

One girl came onto the scene with a yelp, and her friend came in shortly after, asked not to be minded. And all June had the energy to do was oblige. She couldn't even afford them a second glance. Couldn't shout at them, couldn't even ask them who they were or where they had come from or what they wanted. All her energy was spent on trying not to spew her guts in front of her classmates.

She turned around too and followed hesitantly behind Medea, leaving the corpse behind, tagging along, but at a distance.

((June Madison continues in Ego Te Absolvo))

Elodie popped out of hiding too, extending a hand. Olive could have told her to run, or grabbed her hand and pulled herself up. She couldn't decide, so she did nothing.

But the other two possible-murderers didn't charge over. They didn't open fire. They just sort of looked at Olive and Elodie and then left. Olive stared a few seconds longer, and then reached up and took Elodie's hand.

She spun around like an overturned turtle, feet slipping in their search for traction and snow pants sliding over the ice. Finally she used her other hand to brace, and then with further wriggling she was in a squat. She still held Elodie's hand.

Olive did not pull herself to a stand, however. She squinted towards where the other two had vanished. There was no sign of them racing back with spears and cudgels, or lining up a shot from far off. No red laser dots marked a bead being drawn on Olive or Elodie. They seemed to be alone.

So Olive, still in a crouch, waddled under the door instead, tugging at Elodie to follow.

It was dark inside, and her eyes did not adjust quickly. The light that came in through the partially-open door made it only a third of the way over the floor, but it was enough. Her free hand grabbed around in her bag.

She pulled out the flashlight and turned it on.

"Jackpot."

They just scrambled away? Kinda. But that meant that either Elodie’s plan worked, or they weren’t an issue after all. She stared at them as they left, keeping an eye on them. A few beats passed after they left. Elodie looked around, to see if there were signs of an ambush or them hiding out with, dunno, sniper rifles. Nothing.

After helping Olive up, Elodie took out her own flashlight, and it wasn’t long before they found their bounty. Elodie shined her own light on it.

“Ah! Finally, I was worried about the whole walking in the snow thing, it’s kinda a drag, haha” she said.

Elodie didn’t have a good indoor voice, it was one of her vices and got her in trouble a few times. But, she remembered to keep her voice down a bit.

…

Milly wasn’t here to enjoy the snowmobile.

She couldn’t think about that right now.

"Right," Olive said. "Okay."

Her mind was racing. Snowmobiles at last! She hoped this would work.

She padded over to the closer vehicle. It seemed operable. Olive didn't know what that would look like, actually, but there were no big holes in it and nothing seemed to be missing. Or if it was, she couldn't tell.

Only one way to find out.

She pulled the keys from the pocket. She sort of remembered that you just used them to start these, and they didn't have to be in the ignition all the time?

Maybe that was wrong.

She was about to start the vehicle, when she looked at the garage door. Was it open enough? She'd have to crouch really low. This might be more of a process.

"Let's see if we can get these outside," she said to Elodie.

Elodie looked at the garage door. Her flashlight shone on the halfway open entrance. She bit her lip.

"Might be a good call to open that a bit more, if we can."

((Elodie continued in Fearsome Critters))