Survival Of The Fittest

K. rotated so hard he wound up on the mountain. He didn't notice it happening; several spins around the research complex and he couldn't tell what building was what, by the back or their profile across the circle. And then he lost the plot entirely, and was climbing, or hiking, moseying, perhaps, up the mountain.

[K. Emerson continued from Cue Fanfare.]

His mace bobbed up and down as he walked. Occasionally he lunged off to the side of the path to grab some untrampled upon snow. White clumps dribbled down the sides of his cheeks like foam off a rabid animal. The comparison was apt; though now watered, K. was ravenous for some meat to sink his teeth into. The earlier fear that had kept him starving another day more was gone, as was much of his strength.

But even his depleted senses were saturated with fear, as he noticed the darkening sky overhead.

Sweat, despite the cold, lined his forehead. He scooped snow faster as he walked, building up a mass in his hand from which he could pull tufts to eat.

K. continued along the path, and started to whistle their old fight song as they went. Whistling was one of their favorite pass-times, even if it wasn't something they were involved in to the degree of it being a hobby or something they wanted to enter compositions over. It helped to have some kind of tune, a soundtrack to carry them by as they went. Romanticize to survive.

Another tuft of snow in their mouth now. It wasn't filling. Their stomach grumbled, and the tune faltered, going flat then sharp then flat again.

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The path never ended. Had he even moved? The sky overhead was the same and so were the trees besides. Maybe he was finally going crazy. This thought made him laugh because he was already there.

((Jessica Romero continued from One Restful, Gentle, Happy Final Day))

The walk had been mostly quiet. Beatrice had taken Rebekah's snuggie from her and Jessica hadn't been happy about it but had refrained from vocalizing her feelings. If it made Beatrice feel better she could deal with it. It had been hard without Rebekah. It transpired that she had been an effective bridge between Jessica and Beatrice and without her, they weren't prone to conversation. Jessica herself was naturally quiet and Beatrice seemed to share in that, or the situation they found themselves in made her more prone to it.

Still, they had dutifully set out to complete the task they had set themselves and that meant making their way up the paths of the mountain. Despite the cave being off-limits to them Jessica had deliberately chosen to lead them in a way that would avoid it. At least that was what the map had said.

So they had been steadily making their way along the lower mountain pass in an attempt to reach the hot springs in as timely a fashion as possible. Not that Jessica knew exactly what they would do once they got there. There was every chance she and Beatrice would separate, having finished their joint task.

As they continued walking and the snow continued to crunch beneath their feet Jessica looked out from the path and across the island.

The trees stuck up out of the ground and with their light dusting of snow looked like a store display. But the concrete grey clouds on the horizon warned of more inclement weather and a more difficult descent. The land itself was a patchwork of greens and whites, with a large wound in the geography in the form of the town. The various buildings and their unnatural blend of colors along with the mine gave the appearance of an infection. She turned away and continued walking for a little while longer only to stop when she heard something, a laugh carried by the wind. A ghost on the mountain.

She raised a hand to signal Beatrice to stop and got the rifle ready.

"Heard someone laughing," She said.

Then taking a few steps further up the path she crested a ridge and saw K walking towards them, mace in hand.

Her grip on the rifle tightened along with her heartrate spiking.

"Uh hi!" She called out.

The sound of a human voice, at this turn so alien and foreign as to feel only like an animal noise, stopped K. dead still.

K. looked up and saw her, and then the wrong end of the gun. All this walking and the thought that he was unalone had gone ever onward out of his mind. Fucked him sharply it did. So it stopped the march and stopped still dead and dead alive it was.

A ghost? This was the living corporeal dead, here, nothing so ectoplasmic or poltergeisteral. As the hysterical smile dropped from his face his jaw popped and if not for the lack of pain the sound alone would have made him think it fallen off, the bottom row of his teeth and tongue entire.

He looked her in the eye and did not drop his mace.

"I'm dying," he wheezed.

They were the first words he had said aloud to another person in days.

((Beatrice Briggs continued from One Restful, Gentle, Happy Final Day))

It had been another quiet walk.

She hoped that this would be the last of them, if she could help it. She hadn’t managed to find her voice yet, while on the road; she didn’t want to speak on Jessica’s behalf, but she imagined they were both weighed down by the baggage they had just picked up. Rebekah’s death was certainly still heavy on her own mind. She knew that their goal was to reach the hot springs, to find some small measure of enjoyment, and to relax. But right at this moment, with the image of their friend so vivid and fresh in her mind, small talk didn’t really feel appropriate.

And when it came to baggage, there was also the physical load that Beatrice had just picked up. The one that she had still not been able to figure out whether she was in the right for taking or not, or if a ‘right’ even existed. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she felt as though there was an air of tension hanging over them both as they walked slowly up the mountainside. Had Jessica noticed her bundling the Snuggie into her bag? Was she judging Beatrice now for having done so, silent, but unable to prevent the frost from building in the atmosphere? The mere potential for that to be the case was almost enough to make her rip the blanket out of her bag and hurl it down the rocky slope by her side. But the idea of doing that, of abandoning the last remaining part of Rebekah, was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat, a shiver, that had nothing to do with the weather on this mountain.

So the cycle continued, as they made their way up towards the hot springs.

It was an untenable position. All the more reason why, when they finally found a place to sit and rest, they needed to actually break the silence and talk to one another. Beatrice had needed to slip into a state of being non-verbal on too many occasions to count, whenever the location she was in grew too noisy or overwhelming to fully handle. She understood the importance of silence in moments of stress. But she had to talk again eventually. She had to let her friends know what was going on, and to do her best to let them know what she was feeling, and why. It was difficult, a lot of the time, the words to explain herself not even in her head to begin with, but it was so important for her to try and do so despite that. Or, perhaps, because of that.

If they talked, then Beatrice could explain why she’d done it, why she’d taken the Snuggie. She could explain herself. They could come to an understanding. Maybe, together, they could find a solution, some form of combined closure. After that? She didn’t know for certain. But this was, finally, a definitive answer to work towards, and with a route to get there to boot.

Which was a lot more than could be said for their current situation.

She had heard the laughter as well, felt the chill it had sent down her spine. She hadn’t sensed any true mirth or joy within it; it felt out of place, isolated against the backdrop of this mountain path. She stopped walking, on cue as Jessica threw out her arm, nodding at the other girl and standing sentinel as she went to investigate the source of the noise.

The wind gently tousled her hair, as she looked down over the island from her lofty perch. The forest that spread out across their island home had been so full of vivid sights when she had been within it, each tree and snowbank and clump of grass breaking through the ice so distinct from one another, a watercolour painting of whites and browns and so many different shades of green. Now, up here, it only showed the latter, in one solid colour underneath the greying sky, a blotch of paint spread across the stark white canvas. Grey merged into grey as sea met sky, slate against steel. If she closed her eyes, she could have been anywhere but here, taking a moment to drink everything in, fresh, cold air filling her lungs.

This was exactly what Rebekah would have loved, she was sure. This, living and not just breathing and struggling to survive, was what she had been aiming for all this time.

She had promised her friend, not out loud but just as important despite the fact, to be brave for her. No matter how much of a struggle it was to do so, she didn't want to sit idle any longer whilst those around her faced the threats looming up over them.

Beatrice remained still for a moment. She took a deep breath. Her fingers rattled against the handle of her axe. It had been a while since she had heard the sound, felt the comfortable sensation of her fingertips bouncing gently against wood.

Tap tap tap.

Tap tap tap.

She put one foot after the other, and stepped up behind Jessica, weapon pressed into her chest.

Jessica got a response and she didn't know what to do with it. K's hair, normally deliberately messy had become wild and tangled, he looked like a man out of time and when he spoke it was as if he crawled out of the cave and didn't know he had a voice. It was weak and creaky from lack of use.

For a moment Jessica merely stood, too stunned to react to the appearance and sound of her classmate on the path. She heard Beatrice move behind her, the rocks grinding against each other as she shifted her feet. Jessica's grip on the gun tightened at first. Uncertain of what the first response to the situation should have been before she rushed the shock from her mind and took in what K. was telling her, but her eyes darted to the mace and she did not move straight away.

She took a pair of steps forward, not dynamic movements but considered and deliberate. The wariness of the situation conflicted with her desire not to use the gun again. Every time she had fired it, life had ended.

Her hands shifted and pointed the rifle at the ground.

"We have water if you need water." She offered.

She took another step forward.

She had always been somewhat concerned, whenever she had seen Kyle at school.

He was another person who lay just outside of her usual circle of friends, although in this case it was mostly because of his nocturnal disposition, compared to Beatrice who, without fail, would be in bed by 10 each night. And for someone who she didn’t actively feel she could call a friend, she had learned a lot about him since she had first gotten to know him.

He preferred to go by ‘K’, rather than Kyle, for a start. She had used the latter for him, when she had first met him, until she had realised that she was the only one doing so. It had taken her a little while to stop feeling self-conscious for that faux pas, no matter how minor it may truly have been. She had also learned, a little after that, why he always looked to be on the wrong side of dishevelled, why his painful-looking red eyes and the bags underneath them never seemed to truly fade away, why exactly the hours that he was active were a near mirror to her own.

She had continued to worry since that very moment, even once she knew there was nothing that she, personally, could do to assist. Whenever she passed him in the corridors at school, there was that small tugging sensation inside her head that wanted to just give him a nudge, ask if things were going okay, even when they both knew the answer, even when they both knew she didn’t have any sort of qualifications or know-how to provide even a small salve for his exhaustion.

So her reaction upon seeing K now, hair a wild untamed mess, eyes that looked as though he was constantly seeing ghosts, took her usual worries, and compounded and exacerbated them beyond the point that even she thought possible. She felt her breath catch in her throat, and her body catch in two minds; rush forwards to try and do something, irregardless of whether she knew what that ‘thing’ could even be, or stumble backwards and flee, make as much space between herself and this walking ghost.

When she looked into his eyes, she thought she saw them turn stark white, flecks of red streaked across them.

She squeezed the handle of her axe even tighter, tight enough that she couldn’t even perform her usual comforting tap tap tap any longer. She breathed in, harder and sharper and more suddenly than she had anticipated, making herself lightheaded, as though she had just dunked her head underwater and accidentally opened her nostrils.

She couldn’t - wouldn’t - freeze up any longer. She couldn’t let herself get trapped between flight and the fear of turning her back, forcing her allies to make her decisions for her. She would tell herself this over and over again, no matter how long it took to sink in - even if it never did. So she had to make a choice; although, truthfully, it barely counted as one. She wouldn’t flee, not while Jessica was still here, not when the result would be either distrust or separation.

Staying and helping was the only choice she had, then. And she knew she couldn’t act rashly; this was not the time for sudden movements, or flurries of fancy. She would follow Jessica’s lead instead. She would remain.

“And… and, um, if you need anything else,” she spoke up, trying to make the volume of her voice match Jessica’s. “We’ll do our best to, um… assist. Please don’t worry. We want to help you.”

All the same, and all the while, she nudged her ally’s back, lightly, with the base of her axe handle. She gave a quick shift of her head to the right, swivelling towards the empty space on the bath besides K, onwards and upwards to their goal. She hoped that Jessica would understand what she was trying to suggest.

Just in case things took a turn for the worst.

There was no response from K, which was concerning. Jessica had been rethinking her approach to the problem of what they were going to do about him but the lack of response and his general demeanor. Beatrice said they wanted to help but Jessica wasn't sure if that was true about herself. At least, she was unsure about getting close to help.

Her footing shifted slightly as she adjusted, sliding herself backward across the shale to be closer to Beatrice in case of anything happening. K. didn't make any outward movements but he still looked like wild and by extension unpredictable. So instead of getting close to him she decided to channel something she thought Rebekah would have done.

Slowly, she slid her pack off her shoulder and slung it around to the front of her body. Her eyes stayed on K. the entire time, especially as she shifted the gun into one hand. Then she reached in, withdrew a water bottle, and crouched down and placed it on the floor.

"There," She said, making sure to keep her hands open and her movements as open and clear as possible. "Some water for you." Then the bag was slung back over her should and she took a step backward so she was level with Beatrice.

"We'll leave you be." She announced to K. before sending a whisper over her shoulder.

"We'll backtrack and find another way around, this is too risky."

"Good uh, good luck." Was the last thing she said to K. before gently tugging on Beatrice's arm and retreating down the path, then turning and hurriedly heading down the mountain until she found another way they could go.

((Jessica Romero continued elsewhere...))

Beatrice stayed sentinel, slightly behind and to the right of Jessica as her friend performed her duty, practicing her own vigil, her eyes never wavering from K’s own. He was not a particularly large or imposing young man, and likely had even less musculature on him after all these days and nights of living rough, but right now, he seemed to fill the entire pathway ahead of them, blocking the way ahead, without even the tiniest gap to squeeze past.

When Beatrice had been a lot younger, and all of her brothers had still been living together with her, there was a story that Marcus liked to tell, on Halloween and on winter nights when the darkness rolled in quickly and there was a permanent chill in the air. He claimed to have made it up himself, but Frederick confided in her that he’d stolen it from a book he’d read once. The story was about a giant who lived in the mountains, with skin as rugged and grey as the stone itself, and a beard made from moss and lichen. He would lie in wait for any travellers that tried to cross the mountain pass, and as soon as one did, he would stretch his arm out to block the entire path. If anyone approached him without bringing some sort of tribute along with them, food or fabric or riches, he would close his hand around them instead, before lifting them up into the air, and dropping them into his cavernous mouth.

Marcus, of course, would go into much greater and more gruesome detail than that. It kept Beatrice up at night for weeks after he told the story, and she didn’t really get over her fear that the mountain giant was somehow hiding under her bed until her brother left for college. It wasn’t exactly fair, to compare K to that man-eating creature; he hadn’t done anything to them yet, after all, not even a single blink of an eye as Jessica slipped her bag from her shoulders and opened it up. But it was the only thing that she could think of right at this moment.

But she wouldn’t hide. She wouldn’t cower. Not anymore. She stood firm. Her grip on the axe didn’t waver for a moment.

And then, she felt a tug on her jacket sleeve, and saw Jessica turning to head back down the way they had just come from, and she felt herself release a breath she hadn’t quite realised she’d been holding. It still wasn’t easy, to be brave like this, to be strong in this manner. She doubted it ever would be. But she could do it. She would do it. She had to believe in that.

“Um… Stay safe, okay?”

She nodded at K, and tried to give him a smile. It almost felt like she should say something else, but the words weren’t geared up in her brain. There wasn’t anything ready on the tip of her tongue to levy to him.

So Beatrice just nodded again, and hurriedly followed after Jessica.

((Beatrice Briggs continued in Ordovician))