Survival Of The Fittest

((ROOOAAARRRING from: Vultures))

The stillness and tranquility of the woods was split by whine of a vehicle blasting through the snow. Birds scattered, and small mammals made themselves scarce. Even compared to the violence of a gunfight, the noise was disruptive to the natural ecosystem, sustained as it was.

They hadn't found Millie. They had, however, gotten some time to practice with the snowmobile (it turned out only one of them would start, and they tried the other first, so that took the better part of the day to figure out). Olive had been scared at first. The speed and noise of it were a lot, especially so close, and she felt like she should be wearing a helmet. But on the other hand, it wasn't like anything here was safe.

They'd spent time practicing, and had rested, and now they were scouting. Or something. It didn't matter. Olive was enjoying the wind in her hair, and she felt more or less at home with the vehicle by now. They traded off who was driving, and currently it was Olive's turn.

Olive was sitting in front, Elodie riding behind her, racing through a fairly straight passage between the trees. Her attention, however, was on her passenger. It was loud enough that she had to raise her voice quite a lot to be audible over the engine.

"Bigfoot actually doesn't have much to do with yetis," Olive yelled. "They look similar, but yetis are probably actually bears."

She couldn't really look at Elodie's face while driving, but it didn't stop her from trying, leaning her head all the way over her shoulder.

"I guess both of them have a sort of... exploitative element? But the yeti has a lot more supernatural powers attributed to it."

((Elodie continued from Vultures))

“Hm, like, it’s kinda cool thoughl? Like, two different cultures have similar-ish folklore. And like, different critters, obvs, but I remember hearing about the Patterson-Gimlin type of Bigfoot walking, and how people think it’s just a man in a costume! And–”

She cut herself off.

“OLIVE LOOK OUT!”

"Well," Olive, said, partially talking over Elodie, "it was just a man in—"

The warning came early enough, but Olive's reaction didn't. She paused for a second. Look out? Look where? Oh, maybe forwards?

Then she turned just in time to be caught in the forehead instead of the ear by the thick branch jutting from the tree to the right of her.

There was a sharp crack, and Olive was wrenched from her seat, the momentum sending her spinning over the side. She bounced off the side of the snowmobile, hands in mismatched gloves limply flailing, the vehicle's treads rolling uncaringly over one of her feet.

Her head impacted a log in there somewhere too.

With no hands compressing the throttle lever, the snowmobile immediately began to slow down, but it still had enough momentum to go for quite a ways. Luckily for Elodie, aside from the one overhanging branch, the path was more or less clear.

Olive, meanwhile, lay sprawled on the ground, a toy tossed aside without a care. She did not move, but the snow around her head was slowly turning red. Her glasses had landed half a dozen feet away.

Eventually, the snowmobile stopped.

Elodie was able to think quickly and lean forward to grab the steering wheel, turning it so it moved to the side of the path once it slowed down enough. And then, she sat there, unable to think. She was vaguely aware of puffs of air coming from her mouth.

Her body ached. She wasn’t sure how injured she was, just that Olive had fallen off. Elodie had managed to duck in time, but Olive… didn’t.

Elodie didn’t typically go out of her way to watch horror movies. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the genre or that she was easily spooked. She appreciated a good dark fantasy, honestly, which had their moments. Pure horror just wasn’t something she delved into much.

Bridgette was a bigger horror fan, and one time they watched this movie called Hereditary together. It was about this dysfunctional family, but it eventually became supernatural demon horror, right? There was a cult possessing people or something.

One scene she remembered from the movie was when the little girl was having an allergic reaction, and her teenage brother swerved in the road while she stuck her head out of the car to get some air. Then, she was decapitated by the telephone pole. Her head was sitting in the middle of the road, covered in ants.

And her brother just sat in the car, stunned, and the only thing he could do was drive home wordlessly, and listen in his bed as his mother found her daughter’s beheaded body and cried and screamed downstairs.

At that moment, Elodie could related. She could only sit there, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. It felt like forever.

And then, eventually, without saying a word, she pulled herself off the snowmobile, and traced the tracks back.

It wasn’t long before she found Olive. Blood pooled around her head. Must have been stunned by the branch, looked like her foot was run over, looked like…

Looked like a head decaying on the side of the road.

Heh.

She just kind of stared blankly at her for a few seconds, still tryng to process it.

Eventually, she looked downwards, towards her hands.

They shook. Violently.

A smile crawled across her lips. More puffs of cold air came and went.

"They... look like big, strong hands. Don't they... don't they..."

They did not. They were small and weak.

Elodie chuckled. It felt hollow and weak.

So weak...

Something was filling to the top, like a can of root beer being poured into a glass too small for it. Her stomach curled and did backflips.

"Big... strong..."

She couldn't, she couldn't...

((Elodie Hailey continued in Pine Needle Tea Party))