Survival Of The Fittest

((Juanita Reid continued from Pine Needle Tea Party))

The snowmobile hadn't exactly been the godsend that Juanita had hoped it'd be. Sure, it was faster than walking and it saved her having to carry her ever-growing personal armory around, but the forest wasn't exactly smooth terrain. Even at the low speed she had to maintain to keep her weapons from jostling overboard, every bump and swerve was magnified and transmitted directly to her spinal cord. After only a few minutes, she felt like she'd been riding a wild mustang. On top of that, the engine noise cut through the darkness like a knife, and she couldn't shake the paranoid feeling that she'd be attracting every foe within a country mile.

Then there was the tricky matter of navigation. As it turned out, driving required both hands, so checking the map was out. And it was too dark to even read the thing anyway. All in all, not a great success. These failures put Juanita in a serious funk, because it was dawning on her that Elodie's suggestion of waiting until morning had been an eminently sensible one. If she'd just waited until daybreak, she'd have found her way to the station easily. Which meant that she'd ultimately killed Elodie for nothing.

By the time the sky started to brighten and she could actually get her bearings, she'd realized that she'd been going in entirely the wrong direction. And then the announcements came on, and it turns out that it didn't matter anyway.

"Meanwhile in the spooky basement, Salem Fox thought he saw a ghost and shot at it but it was only the pale skin of Colm Forsyth."

Colm had died the previous night. He was dead before she'd even met Elodie. She'd killed someone to in order to keep an appointment with a corpse.

That was a pretty lousy feeling. But Juanita allowed herself to feel it anyway. Because the alternative was to admit to herself that it'd never really been about Colm. It'd been about a snowmobile and a burning desire to get any advantage she could; moreover, it'd been about a desperate, crippling need to not be alone. And the only thing worse than doing something vile for a pointless reason was doing it for a purposeful one.

She'd stashed the snowmobile where it wouldn't be found, and tucked the key somewhere private so that nobody could do to her what she'd done to Elodie. And then she'd hidden herself away for the rest of the day, bandaging and recuperating. Resting up for all the fights that were yet to come.

The next morning's announcements brought even more emotional turmoil. Ash was dead, killed by her own sister. Juanita didn't know much about their relationship, but from what she'd gathered it hadn't exactly been a rose garden. She had privately wondered, back in the legion days, if Ash would have the fortitude to do what was necessary and put Katelyn down if it came to that. Seemed like she'd gotten her answer.

Josh James had died too. Thinking back on it, yeah, he must have been the Josh from Christian club. It was a shame that they'd never crossed paths - Juanita had privately thought that he was pretty cute, but she'd never had the courage to actually initiate anything. Then again, given the circumstances that was probably for the best. Did that make her the last surviving member of Worship and Prayers? Ugh, no, Karin Han was still around. Not that you could ever have called that nasty little gremlin a real Christian.

Her own kill on Elodie merited only a blasé comment and some bored humming. Juanita was taken aback by that. That whole violent ordeal in the woods, that life-and-death struggle, was just another drop in the stream for the man behind the curtain. Somehow the casual disinterest came off worse than the thinly-veiled glee and snide punnery that a lot of the other announcements had featured. Imagine being violently murdered, and having it not even register as an interesting event to the folks that watched it happen. Insult on top of lethal injury. It was scary to think about.

It was that bored tone that prompted her to come down here, to the basement. Because, yeah, she was two days late for the meetup, and Colm was dead. But if she didn't come, then... what had any of it meant? If people just blipped in and out, if their lives and deaths were just another part of the day, then what was the point of any of this? What was she even fighting for, if the most she had to look forward to was Tracen Danya saying that the past tense of Juanita Reid was Juanita Read? It should matter, she thought, that they were here, and that their lives intersected with mine.

So she went down to the basement, shining her light around the place in case someone was down here lurking. Salem had no doubt moved on, but he wasn't the only thing that went bump in the night. She doubted that Colm's body had been moved. The announcements had confirmed that he was down here, and he was too big for anybody to lug around unless they were really, really dedicated.

And there he was. Toppled over next to a pile of boxes. His weapon was lying beside him. Didn't look like he'd even gotten a chance to use it. As ffar as she could tell, this looked like an ambush. With all of the junk around here, it'd be easy enough to get the drop on someone. And Colm hadn't exactly been focused.

She took a breath. It felt like she should say something. What, she didn't know. They hadn't really been that close, and she doubted he'd have cared much whether she showed up to eulogize him or not - he didn't seem like the kind of guy who put a lot of stock in that sentimental stuff. But what was that saying? Funerals are for the living. And there was something about him that made her want to mark his passing, to make it substantial. Something that'd bothered her, ever since the hot spring. She didn't know what it was. Maybe it couldn't be put into words.

"Look, I'm not good with words and stuff, but... I just wanna say, I'm sorry I wasn't here," she said. "I don't know that I'd have been any help. Heck, I'd probably just have wound up lying there next to you. But I'm still sorry. And I know that we weren't... you know... friends, or anything. I don't think you liked me much, and I'm not sure that I liked you either. But you were civil to me. You didn't want me dead, and that's more than I can say for a lot of people. And you weren't a creep. And... I dunno. That was nice. Being with you, things felt normal, for a little bit. And that meant a lot. So... thanks for that."

She thought a moment longer.

"And... you aren't ugly. I should've told you that. And, like... not just me. People should have told you that."

She looked down, at his body. Then to the weapon lying beside it. Salem hadn't even bothered to take the hammer-axe. Presumably he hadn't thought he'd need it, given that he already had a firearm. Juanita briefly considered adding it to her own armory, but decided against it. Between the shotgun, the naginata, and the knife, she was already armed for bear.

She rifled through it, after losing a brief internal debate between whether Colm would have been cool with her taking his supplies (he wouldn't have cared deeply, she thought, but he'd probably have preferred that they not go to Juanita specifically, because she was a murderer and he'd rather his supplies go to someone who wasn't); whether it was supremely disrespectful to loot him right after the eulogy (yes, one hundred percent); whether this would make her look like an opportunistic weasel in the broadcast (yeah, probably); and whether any of those things would matter if she got low on blood sugar and became too exhausted to fight when it really mattered (nope! Sorry, Colm.)

The search netted a few remaining bits of food and water, and some medical supplies to tend to her ever-growing collection of battle wounds. Bizarrely, there was an extra medical kit next to Colm's. Perhaps it had belonged to Angelo, she thought. Either way, she'd be grateful for the extra bandages and pain meds. The axe she hid behind a pile of boxes. No sense letting anybody else get their hands on it.

As she moved the boxes back into place, she caught a familiar scent. Blood. Recently spilled, not the aged stuff. It really sucked that she knew the difference. She hefted her naginata and went to investigate.

It didn't take long to catch the scent of gunpower. It had been overpowered at first by the fragrance of decay and all of the other smells that one might expect from bodies that were left unattended for days at a time, but once she'd moved a little ways deeper into the basement it was unmistakable. Someone had been down here shooting, and blood had been spilled. Couldn't have been Colm, or at least she didn't think so? Juanita hadn't watched a lot of CSI but it didn't seem like that smell would linger for a day and a half. Besides, the blood smell was stronger over here too, and Colm definitely hadn't been moved. He wasn't exactly easy to drag, and he would have left a blood trail - er... just like the one she was looking at now, actually. But this one went off into the darkness, leading away from a pool that had collected beneath a spray of blood and little meaty bits that Juanita really didn't want to examine too closely.

Following a trail of freshly-spilled blood into a creepy unlit basement seemed like the kind of decision that the first victim in a horror movie would make. But in this case, Juanita was well-armed, and statistically almost certain to be more dangerous than whoever might be lurking back there. And a cursory glance at the floor revealed a few partial footprints, all of them leading away from the darkness. Whoever had been in there had left the same way Juanita had entered, so unless there had been multiple attackers here, it was probably safe to assume that the basement was unoccupied.

Whoever had died here might have had food or supplies. It was possible they'd been looted already, but Colm's things hadn't been touched. And any new supplies were worth going after, even if it meant a hike through the the darkness.

She made her way around some boxes, following the blood. Her boots made gummy, sticky sounds as she walked. She tried not to think about it. Here and there, dust was disturbed and boxes were knocked askance, probably by whichever body had been dragged through here.

It was Dani. Even broken and and bloody, she was unmistakable.

The sight rooted Juanita's feet to the floor. It wasn't just that she'd been part of the legion - and what, that left just her and Crystal now? Kaede, maybe? - it was that it was Dani Bird. Dani Bird was a John Endecott institution. She threw all the parties, she was the head cheerleader, she was the hot one, the "it" girl. She was the sun around which the school's social nebulas revolved. Some part of Juanita had always suspected that if anybody was going to make it out of here, it would be Dani, because girls like Dani always came out ahead and because, like... who'd even have the guts to kill Dani Bird? Juanita had deeply resented her for that, among a lot of other things. But seeing Dani like this, with blood in her hair and brains on the floor... it felt wrong. The whole universe felt out of order.

If even powerful people like Dani weren't surviving, then that meant that the game was wide open. And if Dani wasn't going to win this, then... then anybody could. That thought pumped something entirely new into her veins, a substance that began threading its way through every artery and vein. Hope. She had outlived Dani Bird, and however many others who were bigger, stronger, better armed. She'd survived the collapse of the legion, and only grown stronger while the others had fragmented apart and perished. And if she could get this far, she could outlive anybody.

She looked down, triumphant. It wasn't just Dani Bird lying there. It was her brothers, telling her that she was too slow and too little to keep up with their games. It was those nasty girls in middle school, the ones who'd ruined her life in a thousand little ways. It was the guys who texted her and leered at her body. It was the doctors telling her that she might never regain full use of her leg. It was John, telling her that she was on the express train to Hell.

And... wait, actually, it wasn't just Dani Bird lying there. There was another shape under the cloth. Another body next to Dani's. Kaede, probably. The two of them were always close, to a degree that even Sappho would probably have perked an eyebrow at. Maybe they'd both been together, and had died here? Juanita gave the sheet a tug, and-

Oh.

It was Ash.

Her stomach turned, and she had to look away.

She already knew Ash was dead, but seeing her body up close and personal hit her like an iron bar, took all the fight right out of her. She coughed once, spitting up a few soggy lumps of bread laced with stomach bile.

It shouldn’t have gone like this. The two of them were the beating heart of the legion, the ones who’d really made it all work. Juanita had been the one pulling the trigger on the actual violence, but Ash had been the backup, the competent one who coolly and efficiently took care of business in Juanita’s wake. By rights, it should have been the two of them at the end, taking a second to breathe and laugh together, basking in the victory they’d earned. That was how this all should have ended.

But she’d screwed it up. She’d lost control of the legion. She’d let Ash go without a word of protest, and she hadn’t chased after her. And now Ash was gone.

This was her fault. Just like everything else. Like Colm and Betty, like the legion, and Elodie, and John. Everybody she met was worse off for it. Everything she touched turned to disaster. Maybe that was why Aracelis and Leslie had ditched out, why Eden’s group refused to join. They all sensed the cloud of failure around her and didn’t want to be there when it all ended in tears.

It wasn’t fair. She was trying her best, wasn’t she? She tried to protect the legion, she tried to give people a chance. She wasn’t going around killing people indiscriminately, without reason. But everything turned out crummy anyway, no matter what she did or how good her intentions were.

But that was basically her life summed up in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Put in the effort, do all the right things, make all the good choices, and get absolutely nothing in return.

She could have been out here with oxy, pain free and in peak fighting condition. But she’d slapped away the pills, and now she was at a disadvantage.

She looked down at Ash, and back at Colm, drawing an invisible line between the two. Two people who’d left her, who were now dead. But it wasn’t abandonment that she felt. Not resentment. It was… something different. Both of them, in their own ways, had made her feel something that she hadn’t been able to properly put words to. It was the emotion she’d felt when she held John for the last time, and when she lifted Ash’s shirt to patch her up; she’d felt it again while getting dressed at the hot spring, well after the initial shock of seeing Colm naked had faded away. Not a feeling about either of them, but a feeling that they gave shape and form to.

It was like… a hole in the ground, dug out of the dirt. The dirt isn’t the hole. But it tells you where the hole is, because the hole is where the dirt isn’t. What Juanita had felt, looking at Ash’s bare skin and Colm’s body, feeling John’s body against hers, that was the dirt. Those moments, in and of themselves, weren’t particularly intimate. Juanita wasn’t into girls that way, and Colm was annoying. She doubted that either of them had attached any significance to those encounters. And the less said about John, the better. But those moments called attention to other moments. Absent moments, an emptiness born out of feelings that never were and moments that would never be. That was the hole that those moments were outlining. And it was cavernous.

There comes a point in every young Christian’s life when some well-meaning youth pastor (in Juanita’s case, a very earnest but soppy theology major named Nadine) has to sit all the teens down, boys in one room, and girls in another, and have a conversation about those pesky biological changes that are going on in their bodies, and how the Bible and their hormones are soon going to come into massive conflict. And what those youth pastors recommend is generally boiled down to one word: don’t. Want to have sex with someone? Don’t. Want to go anywhere past first base? Don’t. Want to go to first base? Don’t do that either, because it might lead to some of the other don’ts. Want to look at the free and easily accessible pictures of naked people on the internet? Don’t. There were a lot of don’ts in religion, and very few dos. That’s a pretty hard sell for a bunch of teenagers, many of whom are just now awakening to the concept of carnal relations.

Nadine had told Juanita and the other girls to think of their bodies like a gift. A big beautiful present, immaculately wrapped in pretty paper, with a bow on top. See, the logic was that someday Juanita would find a perfect man and they’d have a perfect relationship and then they’d have a perfect wedding, and then, cough, they’d be on, you know, their honeymoon and it’d be time to unwrap that gift. M-Metaphorically, of course. And it’d be a lovely moment. But if you were to let someone else unwrap that gift and get all up in that box (poor Nadine had no idea why several of the girls lost their composure at this point. Neither did Juanita. She had thought that they were laughing because Nadine was the sort of person who had absolutely no business using phrases like “get all up in” under any circumstances) and let them play with the gift, then what happened after they were done with it? What happened after that guy broke up with you and left? You could try to wrap it all up again, but the paper would be torn and the tape wouldn’t stick right, and the bow would be crooked. And then you let someone else have the gift, and someone else, and someone else. And then by the time you actually found that perfect man, you’d have this battered, crumpled present to give him, and wouldn’t that just make you feel ashamed?

Nadine’s terrible crimes against metaphor notwithstanding, Juanita had broadly taken the advice to heart. She’d kept her gift in pristine condition. It wasn’t always easy. There were more than a few boys who’d encouraged her to open the present early, and others who’d encouraged her to let them take a peek under the wrapping paper, or maybe giving the whole present a good shake to figure out what was inside. So she’d added more wrapping paper, in the form of bulky sweaters and unflattering clothes. She never wore tight shirts or spaghetti-strap tank tops, didn’t own a two-piece swimsuit or yoga pants. All so that one day, the right guy, a worthy guy, could sweep her off her feet and she could be his and no one else’s, and they’d be happy together forever.

But, like… now what, Nadine? Juanita was stuck out here with less than one-percent odds of survival. Her “gift” had been nicked and stabbed and slashed and shot, and it was going straight into the trash, bow and all, unopened. There was no perfect husband, no perfect wedding in a perfect church, no perfect marriage, no perfect house or perfect kids or perfect life. And for what? She could have let Max or John or Teddie or Ash, heck, she could have let the whole damn school see and touch whatever they liked as much as they liked, and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit because she was going to Hell anyway.

Might’ve been nice to try something, even just once. Might’ve been nice to see what all the fuss was about, actually feel like these big, annoying, inconvenient bags of fat and skin on her chest were good for something. Might’ve been nice to actually try some of the bad things and choose for herself instead of rejecting everything on the Almighty’s say-so.

And, like, it wasn’t that she wanted to have sex. Seeing Colm in all his glory had only reinforced her belief that the whole concept seemed kind of icky and the logistics were somewhat vaguely confusing. Besides, there probably weren’t any boys left that she’d be able to trust with something like that. No, it was... it was that she’d spent her whole life saying no to things. She’d spent her whole life being good. And there was supposed to be some kind of payoff for depriving yourself. You were supposed to be able to look back later and be proud of the good choices you made, to reap the harvest that you’d sowed all the way along. And she wasn’t going to get that. If she died here, none of it would mean anything. She’d be dead, and in Hell. It was like missing a party to finish your homework, and then getting the same grade as all the kids who blew it off and went out drinking. How could that possibly be fair?

When it came down to it, that was what Ash and Colm and John had reminded her of. Those moments with them, they were twisted, corrupt imitations of the life she'd been promised, a reminder of everything that she hadn't gotten to have and who she hadn't gotten to be. Unresolved debts that would never be paid off, not unless she survived this. And that was why Juanita hadn’t given up right there at the start, why she had formed the legion. It was why she’d slashed and stabbed and shotgunned her way through nearly half a dozen of her classmates. And why she'd kill a dozen more, if that's what it took.

It wasn’t fair for her to die here. Not when she hadn’t even lived yet.

((Juanita Reid continued elsewhere))